The Decrypter: Secret of the Lost Manuscript (Calla Cress Techno Thriller Series: Book 1) (52 page)

She thanked the woman and heaved herself upward.  “Do you know where I can get a car?”

“My brother has a car.  Where do you need to go?” the woman said.

How could she explain that she wanted to go back to the falls and find Nash and Jack, dead or alive?

“I lost something in the hills by the falls and I need to get back with help.”

Thirty minutes later, the shopkeeper’s brother, a giant, trendy man with prominent ears and two other helpers took a Jeep up to the falls.  Calla searched through her waist pack and pulled out a couple of, hundred-thousand shillings, the equivalent of about fifty pound sterling.  She paid them for their trouble.

When they reached the spot Calla had tried all night to forget, there was no sign of a struggle.  With the help of the local men, they searched the area but could not locate Jack’s body or Nash’s backpack. 

Nothing.

Not even the empty tear gas can.

“I’m pretty sure this was the location,” she told the shopkeeper’s brother, and the leader of the men.

He rounded his men up.  “We’re leaving!”

Calla gripped his arm.  “You can’t leave.”

“There’s nothing here.  Let’s go.”

“No, please, I can’t leave my friends here.”

“There’s no one here dead or alive.  Let us go!”

The men started towards the car with Calla looking on, fatigued with grief and fraught with vulnerability. “Please!”

The leader shot round and launched her a greedy smile. 

He drew out an ethnic spear from the back of the Jeep.

Calla held her breath as she carefully eyed the weapon pointed at her, its leaf-shaped tip advancing towards her midriff. 

  “You have something that could persuade us otherwise.  Give us the Deveron Manuscript and the rocks and we’ll let you live.”

“Are you serious?”

“We may be from around here, but news does travel down to the dark continent.  We’ve a good price waiting for those stones and the manuscript.” He snickered. “Don’t you realize you stick out like a sore thumb in this place?”

Yet again, Calla found herself poised between life and fatality.  “I don’t believe you.”

He threw his head back, snorting a thunderous cackle.  “It was easy to find you.  The Englishman is willing to pay handsomely for that bag.  He’s been spreading news round the local area all night.  We know you have what he wants.  Now, hand it over!”

Nausea settled in her gut as the blood drained from her face.  Clotted with numb dread, she shuffled backwards and set off at a sprint.  Too weak to contest them and a will to match, she scarpered down the rocky path. 

Her foot struck a loose root that threw her off balance, twisting her already weak ankle. 

She yelped out in excruciating pain as the men gained on her. 

“Not very smart for a government curator,” cried the leader.

Calla’s fingers crawled in search for the bag that had fallen off her waist, landing a few feet from her.  Her tortured ankle forbade her to move and she massaged the wound to relieve the pain. 

As she cringed on the ground, the gang leader set a heavy-booted foot over her injured foot. 

Pain shot up her entire body, and she let out a piercing scream.

He grasped the waist pack as he grazed her skin with his spear. “Thank you.”

She pierced burnished eyes into his core. “The
Banyoro
people don’t hunt humans. They hunt beasts.”

He eased his foot off her throbbing ankle.  “Not this time. Good luck finding your friends.”

Calla gawked in disbelief as they parted. “You can’t leave me here!”

The bulky spear-man glanced back. “Pay us, and we’ll take you back to the village.”

“I have no more money.”

He belted out laughing, another deafening eruption.  “Then we’ll leave you to the fate of the savannah! Happy Safari.”

The other men snorted and followed their commander back towards the Jeep.

Moments later, she heard the Jeep start and watched it accelerate towards urban life. Soon, the only sounds she heard were the whistling titters of forest birds and the anarchic munching of the creatures of the grasslands.

She slithered upward, landing in unbearable pain.  Seconds later, she heard a movement; a lone shrub stirred inches from her feet.  She sat up, eyes terrified as colossal drops of tropical rain began a treacherous decent.

She gripped her arms for warmth and scuttled backwards catching sight of abandoned caves in the distance. 

There would be shelter in there. 

She advanced steadily towards them dragging non-compliant limps. Calla stopped to breathe, her anguished lungs heaved for air.

Move!

Burdened clouds, pregnant with rain and thunder gathered above her, before bursting down in merciless downpours. Tropical rain transformed daylight to darkness as the unforgiving waterfall behind her commanded the edge of the cliff, mirroring the desperation in her spirit. 

A few kilometers to the south, lay the desolate African wilderness.  Further beyond, in the savannah grasslands the sound of a rout signaled that the elephants were heading for shelter, with the stampede of death in their rushing feet. 

Eager for sanctuary, Calla trudged with weighty strides along the sodden riverbank, scampering inland, away from the river, towards higher ground. 

Paralyzed with the intense fear of slipping on wet surfaces, meters ahead, she spotted rock-strewn caverns. 

They stood several stone throws away from the waterfalls’ edge.  She staggered into legendary caves many feared to approach - home to hundreds of fruit bats and pythons. 

Safely inside, she set her back against the soiled wall, and tried to ignore the moldy stench attacking her nostrils. 

Without warning, a low flying bat slashed its way through the tangled vines that obscured the cave’s entrance.  It caught its lengthy, dog-like muzzle in her hair.  Screeching with hunger, it heralded its army - a swarm of plaguing bats lunging towards her as they emerged from the roost to forage for food, emitting a series of sharp clicks with their famished tongues. 

A deafening cacophony.

She suddenly realized where she was. Legend held that no one had ever escaped the bat caves unharmed, at least not without losing their sanity.  The last person ever to leave the hollow caverns left traumatized with a disease the locals called
“Maramagambo’
- without words.  Exploration within the caves had led to trauma and exhaustion, and the patient in question had not spoken for days.

Calla clawed past the assailing army, gasping for air with each shaky stride. 

She scurried outside.  Her wet safari shirt and trekking combat trousers hung sheared by twigs on her exhausted body, drenched with sweat, rain, and red mud. 

Her disheveled hair trickled with heavy droplets, challenging her visibility and balance.  As the rain attacked her nose and cheeks, she scuttled into its intensity and came to a deserted mud path. 

This must be the way.

She dared not look behind her.  The rural footpath enlarged into a potholed road heading further away from the river.  Steep and barely visible, the trail threatened to give way to slick mudslides and she stopped to rest with her hands on her knees. 

Calla mustered every ounce of strength and rose.  She continued her hasty dash down the ever dangerous, mucky footpath, as fast as her hiking boots would allow.  With her heart throbbing in her chest, a piercing pain probed her thigh. 

Perhaps she could run to the nearest town in about four hours.

Maybe six. 

It might as well be a day.

Nash?
 
Jack? Why did I drag you into this mess?

Would there be time? 

Would anyone believe her? 

Who could she trust?

In her haste, she slipped and landed with an awkward thud.  Her sore ankle twisted inward, sending sickening pain up her leg.  As it rapidly swelled, agony threatened with any further movement and it bore the pain of a thousand javelins. 

Mud-spattered, alone and hurt, she struggled to stand as the extreme downpour showed no sign of yielding. 

A red-throated bee-eater pecked peacefully in the branches above.  Hallucinating, she begged for it to keep her company.  In an instant, the bird soared off the mahogany branch. 

Calla’s eyes glimpsed through the blinding showers and she made out a deserted, vast grassland across the raging river below. 

Snap!

The rapid crack of a loose twig on the trail behind her interrupted the brief pause. 

Fear gripped her very core and with a daring heart, she turned to face her pursuer. 

A beast! 

Its front right hoof hoed the sludge in rhythmic, patterned motions.

Calla stood immobile in his path as the male water buffalo prepared to charge.

The ferocious bovine bore into her stunned gaze communicating that it could crush her with one vicious jolt. 

* * *

1:40 P.M.

Central London

Eva raced through London’s swamped streets ignoring all traffic regulations.  Her white Bentley cruised towards Riche Enterprises and she pressed down the button for the car phone system.  “Mark, I’ll be in the office in a few minutes.  I emailed you some images a few minutes ago.  Look at image twenty-seven.”

Mark found the photographs in question. “Ah. The one with some documents and scribbled notes.”

“That’s right.  Get that printed for me, and find me a good German translator.”

Traffic remained congested in the city, but she managed to skulk her car to the Riche Media offices in Holborn’s busy district within twenty minutes.

 “I’ve got the documents you requested on your desk,” Mark said as Eva strode into her office.

She asked him to come in and close the door.  Littered with more images than she had requested, her desk mirrored a reckless professor’s grading desk.  Mark slithered into the office with his wide-tooth grin, irritating Eva.

He slumped uninvited across from her.  “I found this name on the documents.”

The words TOP SECRET on the first page had been circled as well as SILVER X3.

Her journalistic interest was triggered.  Eva studied the words Mark had circled.  “What’s this?”

Mark was extremely resourceful.  That’s why she’d hired him.  How he did it, she did not really care, as long as he got it done.  Upon founding her new media company, she had decided to rake in only journalists, even for the administrative posts. 

She wanted the best of the best.  There were many out there toiling to find a job in a marred economy.  Mark had been fired from a prestigious news corporation that was struggling to save its image after the hacking scandal hit media companies in London.  He was an exceptional investigative journalist who was sacked for participating in the bugging of two politicians’ private cell phone lines.  Mark also had been involved in the details surrounding the bribing of two charged police officers.  Somehow, he had escaped conviction.  His defense team successfully pointed to the lack of hard evidence. 

Eva did not care when she read his resume. 
He’ll do just fine.

Eva shot him a commanding look.  “Do you have the translations?”

Mark pointed to two separate documents he’d asked a legal, in-house translator to work on.

“What bells are ringing in your head, Mark?”

Clearly impressed with what he was about to reveal, he fingered through the translated documents.  “When I reported for the Holzworth-Bendel News Corporation, we used to do some undercover investigations on the Secret Intelligence Service.  We would also pay off some ISTF agents for information, the corrupt ones like us, of course.”

Eva listened intently.

Mark maintained a straight face unembarrassed with his revelations.  “That name came up very often with regards to the Deveron document.  I remember speaking to this one agent whom I coerced for a legal name for the agent.  He didn’t know it, but after a cash handover, he revealed that he could get me an address.  That was all he was willing to do for the sum we had paid.”

 “Go on,” encouraged Eva.

“I wanted to track that agent down.  But before I could pursue, I was fired and well, you know the rest.”

“Why did you want to follow the agent and the Deveron Manuscript?”

“It was not the Deveron that really interested us.  Rather, some of us wanted to expose the government and ISTF for malpractices such as empowering agents to commit all kinds of atrocities in the field.  That was all before the hype began around these new developments with the Deveron.”

“What’s the address?” Eva said.

Mark scribbled the details on her notes.  “I’ve had this memorized since the initial investigation.  I believe he or she resides there.  Whoever this man or woman is, they know more about the Deveron document than anyone.  They must.  Look here, even the German cop has taken an interest by making some notes on them.”