Payback (32 page)

Touching
the radio in his side pocket for the hundredth time, Tom tried to relax for the nine hour flight. But the early morning alcohol and his physical and mental exhaustion soon had his head slumping involuntarily as boarding continued.

‘
Champagne - yet
again,
Tom?’

The
voice and sound of his own name abruptly dragged him back to gritty-eyed consciousness. Looking up he could not believe what he saw. Wide awake again and automatically trying to stand, he bruised his hip on the fastened seat-belt. ‘Maddie! What the hell...?’

She
looked gorgeous, and knew it. Straight off the pages of
Vogue
in her flowing, generously cut Christian Dior cream woollen topcoat and matching Cossack-influenced hat. ‘Nice to see
you
too.’

‘
I didn’t mean that. It’s just, well...What the hell
are
you doing here?’ For all kinds of reasons he did not like it.

The
stewardess took her coat and Maddie sat down, those endless legs turned towards him, her cold lips on his cheek. ‘I thought I’d come and keep you company,’ she said mischievously, but her eyes then took in his tiredness. She saw he was in no mood for their usual banter and mild flirting.

‘
But seriously?’ he asked wearily.

‘
Seriously...? Partly because, like you, I’m worried sick about poor Lydia. I just want to be out there. And partly because...I’ve finally decided, Tom. To divorce him. And I need to confront this thing while I still have the courage. To tell him to his face. He desperately wants to be the richest man in Europe. You’ve heard him say that often enough.’ She smiled distantly. There was a hard, petulant aura about her he had never sensed before. ‘Well, I’ve briefed my lawyers. And I’m going to take the bastard for every cent he’s got. I’m going to break him again.’

*

The paca’s squeals would haunt Lydia for the rest of her life.

It
had come blundering through the jungle, skilfully driven by Banto, and into the clearing. There it backed into the ceiba in front of her, panting, and faced the native defiantly, pawing the ground. As before, only one arrow was permitted: only one arrow in the heart to despatch it. Banto stealthily closed in on his prey until he was within twelve feet. Lydia wanted to scream, to interfere, to save the frightened animal, but she knew it was hopeless.

The
killing had not been quick. Although the arrow slammed into its mark, the little paca ran off, frantically trying to escape, running its only method of defence. But fatally it stayed in the clearing and, when it was dazed and exhausted, Banto walked over and pushed the arrow in harder to finish it off. Even then it refused to die, fighting many minutes more, frothing at the mouth and snorting noisily, until at last, mercifully, it was all over.

Having
made a fire, and burned the body hair off, Banto had next dug a shallow hole in the ground and lined it with wet vegetation, covered the charred, bloated carcass with clay, put the glowing hardwood coals on top, before covering the whole lot over with earth. After an hour he estimated the feast would be ready, and he eagerly broke open the earth oven with a pair of sticks he then used to pick the meat out. The aroma of the juices was in truth mouthwatering, but Lydia had still been in a state of shock from the trauma of expecting at any time to be raped and killed, from the horror-movie experience of finding the dismembered arm—and now being witness to the killing. When he hacked off a leg and offered it to her, she made a soft scream and ran off to the other side of the clearing, falling to her knees, trying to control her heaving stomach.

This
had made Banto angry with her for the first time. He had been treating her well. Honouring her, even, with the first, choicest offering from the ceremonial feast. And it had been their first substantial food. Her refusal was bad. Insulting to the very spirits he was seeking to win favour from for his mission. Standing over her he aggressively thrust the greasy leg into her face. ‘Eat!’ he roared, tugging her hair and forcing her head back. ‘Eat!’

She
looked into his thundery face, but recognised in it hurt and incomprehension, not real menace; recognised in it the non-verbal messages his limited English could not communicate. This was something very important to him. Pulling herself together, she began to appreciate the millennia yawning between them. A small, proud native, someone who had carried her miles on his back, who had looked out for her in the jungle, allowing plenty of rest periods which he certainly did not need, and who now had caught some special food and cooked it, offering her the first morsel. His incomprehension at her behaviour, at her vegetarianism, was as understandable as his anger. Especially considering who she was—the daughter of his tormentor. Partly in fear, but mostly in recognition of all this, she took the leg and, steeling herself, bit into the leathery skin through to a layer of fat, making a real attempt to chew.

He
watched intently, nodding vigorously. There was now nowhere to hide. No way to fake it by spitting out the smoky mess. With a Herculean effort she swallowed and prayed for the self-control to keep it down. Still watching, he looked on sternly for a minute longer before breaking into a beautiful, childish smile. ‘Good. Good,’ he giggled, falsetto, before returning to the carcass at last to feed himself.

Lydia
had immediately run into the jungle and involuntarily threw up, pleased none the less rather than ashamed at her temporary tumble from veganism. For once she had seen a more powerful moral reason to eat flesh than to abstain: to acknowledge the native’s cultural heritage; even to show respect for the brave little paca, so that its death would not have been pointless after all. There had to be a meaning to it all, some way to reconcile the moral dilemma, but that would require a lot of thought, a lot later.

Several
hours on, just before the light went, she had tried to talk to him. Establishing he had somehow got a smattering of missionary education, their first common ground was Jesus, and snatches of the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Jesus here?’ he asked.

‘
He’s everywhere,’ she had replied lamely. It was exactly like talking to an intelligent, inquisitive Sunday School child. As a long-lapsed communicant, however, she wanted to change the subject, afraid of losing her credibility as some kind of sage. ‘And you. You have a wife? And children maybe in your village?’

He
burst into his falsetto giggle again. ‘No, no!’

She
had smiled back, wondering now how she could ever have been afraid of him. ‘But why? You
handsome
boy. Strong.’

Looking
away, painfully shy, he giggled on. The native used about a quarter of the eye contact of modern man, and her direct gaze disconcerted him greatly. Attempts to encourage him to explain what had happened to him largely failed—perhaps for the same reason. He clearly did not like any kind of directness. The only slight progress she made was when she found oblique ways to question him. But that was painfully slow. At last, for the question she really needed answering, she reverted to her usual in-your-face-approach to see where that led. ‘So, Banto.’ She touched his arm to force him to look at her. ‘What do we do now? Do we stay here, with your giant tree? Or do we go back?’

Not
happy at being touched, he drew away sharply, but answered this once as a way to escape her directness. ‘Go back.
Pay
back,’ he said simply.

Then
suddenly he had shot up, standing rigid to his full height, his senses straining, spooked like a timid forest animal by sounds she could not even hear. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

But
he ignored her and climbed with astonishing speed high up in the tree, higher and higher towards the gloomy forest canopy roof. She lost him from sight for a while in the rapidly gathering darkness. When he came down, his mood had radically changed. No giggles now. This was the hard warrior Banto. Moving quickly but somehow, as ever, succeeding in not rushing, he went to a cache where he kept his new arrows and brought them out with his poison. Very carefully he redipped the points in the curare.

‘
What is it?’ she had repeated, worried and afraid again. Not looking at her, his face now a mask, he said, ‘Hunters. They smell fire. You stay with tree.’ Then without even a look back he was gone as the forest nightfall completed its rapid descent.

*

Barton’s three-strong crack pursuit team had pitched camp alongside an angular outcrop of limestone. They had not lit a fire, chewed gum or eaten any of the processed food they carried. The scent of everyday consumer products alien in the jungle, detectable from surprising distances by animals and primitive man. It was the same with sounds. Animals crash through jungles, breaking vegetation, and a man’s voice is not so different to that of other creatures. But a bottle smashing or metal striking is foreign and jarring.

And
so it had been with the high frequency electronic squawk of the team leader’s radio; broadcasting sounds beyond the acoustic range of modem man’s hearing, it had acted like a beacon, directing Banto. By the time he had actually got within a quarter-mile of them, they were no longer using the thing, already sleeping in their first night camp. He had pin-pointed their location for this final leg as a result of another mistake they had made. The men had used the same area as a latrine in their unconscious need to create some kind of Western normality.

Banto
’s splayed feet delicately picked his way over the forest floor, shifting his weight, probing and testing before each pace forward. He made no sound that did not lose itself in the ambient background hubbub of the night. When he saw the first man’s hammock—the first warrior hunting him—he paused briefly, scanning the area with his acute bush baby eyes. When finally satisfied, he drew the knife and silently despatched him in his sleeping bag. The huge hand covered the mercenary’s face as the throat was cut, again just as Bolitho had taught him—the windpipe severed to extinguish any vocal noise. Despite this something woke the next man as Banto lifted the mosquito net from over his face. The giant hand and dripping knife were silently about him, however, before his brain even registered any comprehension of danger. This time, though, his body desperately thrashed in its death throes, and fell out of the hammock, crashing to the floor. The noise immediately woke leader Mike Pitcher and had him freeing himself, his hand already holding the automatic with which he always slept.

Seeing
Banto’s figure stooping over his comrade, he fired four rapid shots through the bag at him. Banto disappeared unhurt into the shadows as the explosion of sound once more panicked the forest above and around them. Desperately recognising his vulnerability, Pitcher kicked off the bag, ran crouching to the nearby rock-face and turned, his back to it, desperately wishing he had the night-sight from his Bergen. His pump-action shotgun was also resting on the rucksack, but he knew a dash to retrieve it was far too risky. The thirteen-round Browning, now reduced to nine, would have to do.

The
first arrow slammed into his chest with such force that it hurled him back against the rock. The second, a heartbeat later, flew into his stomach. Pitcher staggered uncomprehending, turning, as a third hit him in the back, throwing him on to his knees. The Browning fell from his limp hand, and his last memory was of his hair being pulled back, a flash of steel and black, emotionless eyes.

They
were the non-triumphal eyes of Stone-Age man who had, in seconds, taken out three of the most experienced, highly trained and best equipped jungle fighters in the world. Once again, Banto had been underestimated.

He
returned to the ceiba an hour later, blood-stained and carrying one of the rucksacks to show Lydia, as a kind of trophy. Her heart sank, knowing immediately what it must mean. Rescue was not coming. She was still completely at his mercurial mercy.

But
later, as Banto spilled the contents of the Bergen on the ground, her optimism raced. Amongst the clothes and rations she saw a flare gun. And a pack of batteries. Batteries that might just fit... Banto had picked up a powerful flashlight, and as she showed him how to work it, he giggled, and swept the forest canopy with its beam, sending birds and monkeys into clattering confusion high above them. As he ran and played, she grabbed her own treasures and hid them under a bush. The flare was a lethal weapon in its own right, as well as a means to attract any other search parties. And the batteries might just fire up the two-way radio she had found near that nightmare severed arm. She had left the unit out there, but was confident she could find it again, perhaps with the help of the flashlight later. This semblance of a plan cheered her up to an irrational degree. A little hope for the desperate, she now knew, went a very long way.

Chapter Sixteen

Andrei Rybinski had sounded uncharacteristically stressed over the scrambled line. ‘Pressure getting to you?’ Barton sneered. ‘I am dealing with very dangerous people,’ the Russian protested.

‘
None more dangerous than me!’ Barton spat, menacingly. ‘So I hope you have spent my £15 million wisely with your friends.’