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Eritrea had ticked both boxes. No papers, and no international relations with America to speak of. But instead of leaving when he should have done, for the first time since he’d made the promise to stop looking, just over four years ago, he’d taken the opportunity. Broken his promises and headed south, hoping to speak to a tribe of the Rashaida, a nomadic Arabic-speaking people, living predominantly in scattered areas of western Eritrea, wanting to know if they knew anything. Seen anything. Heard anything… about her.
But he’d been spotted by authorities. Accused of being a political spy and thrown into the detention center with no access to anything even slightly resembling an American consul. But then taking such stupid risks came with consequences. Danger. He of all people knew that. And at times he thought he lived for that. It was one of the few things which made him feel.
He also knew that was part of his problem.
Although he hadn’t known how and when, he knew Maddie and Levi would track him down and come. As they’d always done in the past. And he owed them. Both of them. But especially Maddie, for more reasons than one.
Abruptly. Cutting through the silence of his thoughts, Maddie spoke, in the high-pitched tone which made it impossible for him to ignore no matter how much he tried. ‘You know what I don’t understand is why you want to go that little bit further? What are you trying to prove? You wanna see if it breaks? Well it does, Tom. It has. We all do eventually and you of all people should know that.’
Opening his eyes. Slowly. Cooper looked at her. Sighed real heavy. ‘Listen, I made a mistake, deciding to travel through Eritrea. Don’t make this about us, Maddie.’
Maddie shook her head. Her look of disappointment hitting him like an ice cold shower.
‘Don’t do that Tom. Don’t try to get me to back off. You’re right, I am making it about us because it is about us. About you. More to the point it’s about her… You know what Tom. Forget it. Just forget the whole goddamn thing.’
Eight miles outside Buziba, Sud-Kivu (#ulink_ea84d1d0-ed0b-5ba5-8c13-b6b7ea8ee814)
Democratic Republic of Congo
3 (#ulink_a5f999c8-79b6-5a72-98a7-8eb49e82d9a7)
It was only the sound of the heavy rain which hid the screams. The blood flowed from the palm leaf roofed hut into the red dirt track like a tributary feeding into a river. Inside only an oil light flickered, barely disturbing the darkness. The carcass of a rotted goat writhed and wriggled as maggots fed and moved inside it. The sickly sweet smell of putrefying mounds of blood-covered feathers filled the air.
The villagers sat on the floor, dressed in vibrantly colored cloths with batik print and bold patterns – a stark contrast to the bleak. Taut. Tense atmosphere.
Papa Bemba nodded. Stood on the home made dais next to his folding wooden altar. His face disfigured, mutilated by his own hands. Scarred raised flesh filling the sockets where his eyes should be. It had been the souls of the undead, the spirits of those greater, who’d directed him to gouge out his own eyes. A gift bestowed on him to drive out the evil, allowing him to be the conveyer of all that is pure, and to rid those amongst them of the sorcery within. The darkness of blindness had given him the power along with the vision of the possessed. For now he saw better. Clearer.
His fingers expertly guided him along the body of the naked man lying on the altar. He stopped. Thoughtful for a moment as he felt a lump on the man’s neck, before his furrowed swollen hands moved on, down to the area where his liver lay.
It was there. The evil. The Kindoki spirit. The force of wrong which had taken over this man’s being. Making him defiant. Making him question.
And then Papa Bemba cried out. Flamboyancy lacing his tone as he pressed down on the man’s ribs, rubbing his skin with berries.
‘I have found it. It rises. Pushes out towards the living to harm those gathered. To harm those with child. To harm those who seek a better life. Let us deliver your brother, Emmanuel Mutombo.’
Mutterings of Amen sounded through the hut as Bemba leant over Emmanuel again, pushing his ear down on the man’s face. He could hear the shallow rasps coming from him which told him the spirits were there.
He spoke to those assembled. His voice, trance like. ‘Pray for him. Pray for your brother, Mutombo… Vous êtes le médecin de mon âme. Vous êtes le salut de ceux qui se tournent vers vous. Je vous exhorte à bannir et chasser tous les maux et les esprits des ténèbres.’
He swayed rhythmically and the humming and moaning and chanting became louder.
Yes… yes, he could feel it now. It was time…
And with a sudden movement, Papa Bemba drove his thumbs deep into Emmanuel’s eyes, saving him from the sight of evil in the next life.
Helped by one of the assembled, Bemba, leaving behind Emmanuel, descended from the dais. Moved outside into the pouring Congolese rain and spoke once more to those gathered.
‘Il est temps,’ he said. ‘It is time.’
Kneeling down in the mud, where the wet red clay earth mixed with blood and stained his white and gold dashiki, he took out a piece of charcoal from his pocket. Placed it on the ground near where the other villagers had placed theirs. And shouted out once more.
‘Deliver him…! Deliver him!’
The hut having already being doused with petrol, and the twisted branches of the banana tree piled around, even in the humid, wet rain it took only a single match. A single moment for it to be greedily swallowed up by dancing orange flames.
And as Papa Bemba stood outside, he could feel the heat of the fire. Hear the smothered rasps. The terrified cries of Emmanuel Mutombo amid the crackling and sizzling and splintering noise of the blaze. He smiled. The screams were the sound of the possessed burning. Defeated. Overcome by the righteous. By the chosen one and he, like the other villagers, was satisfied.
*
As the night drew in and darkness set, cementing its rule over the day, a solitary figure, shadowed and blotted out by the night, moved quickly across the mud-logged ground. The noise of breaking branches over the sound of the heavy rain made the man crouch down, hiding behind the tangled foliage of the sprawling forest.
After a while, and deciding it was probably only the sound of the nocturnal animals who roamed and hunted for prey and, like him, didn’t want to be seen, he moved on, hurrying towards the partially burnt down hut – now doused by the heavy rain.
Drawing himself up against it, he looked round, making sure he hadn’t been followed. And it took a moment for him to be assured that darkness had been his advocate; letting him come here without being seen.
Inside the hut he called out. Moving towards the dais. ‘Emmanuel…? Emmanuel? C’est moi.’
The putrid smell from the burnt flesh of Emmanuel Mutombo was overpowering, but a groan – a sign of life – made him speak once more.
‘Emmanuel, I’m here to help you.’
Then picking up Emmanuel, he carried him out into the night, before both of them disappeared into the darkness and sanctuary of the forest.
4 (#ulink_bacea177-1a05-5528-88a6-3d35c18e5ef1)
At the Scottsdale airport, Arizona, which served as the home for many of the area’s corporate aircraft, Levi Walker wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘Man, I’m hot. I got to get me a cold drink. I can almost taste the beer on my lips.’
Joining Levi by the side of the airstrip, Cooper leant on the hood of Maddie’s truck. His six foot three frame towering over both Maddie and Walker. He gave a crooked smile to his friend, relieved to be on US soil. He’d thought about this moment since Eritrea, and it sure as hell didn’t disappoint.
‘Anyone would think you’d spent the last week in a hot penitentiary, the way you’re talking.’
‘Not me, Coop, no way. I’ll leave that to the crazy folk… Oh crap. Is that who I think it is, Maddie?’
Levi pointed up to the sky. Shielded his eyes from the dazzling sun. Watched as a beautiful Diamond DA62 aircraft with turbocharged Austro AE330 jet fuel piston engines came into view. Soaring down gracefully.
‘I’m afraid so.’
Levi raised his eyebrows. Scratched his newly cornrowed afro and admired the expert landing of the plane. He walked towards it but stopped. Turned back. ‘You know, Coop, I never told you earlier, but it’s good to have you back.’
And in the glaring sun a few hundred meters back from the plane, the warm winds caressed Cooper’s handsome face and the light bounced off the white body of the aircraft, making it difficult for him to see.
The jet’s door opened and casually he sauntered forward. Greeted the pilot with warm words and a gesture of his hand.
‘Hey! Good to see you, Granger.’
The punch to Cooper’s jaw was quick. Hard. Knocked his head sideward. He touched his lip with his tongue and tasted the spring of blood. He stared back at Granger. Said nothing.
‘If you ever. Ever, do anything like this again, you’re out. You got that Cooper? You want to play Superman, maybe you should’ve done that when it mattered.’
Cooper lunged forward, but although he was angry he let Maddie grab him, letting the familiarity of her touch calm him down.
‘Don’t like the truth Cooper? Neither do I.’
Granger rubbed his face, red from stress. He turned to Maddie and Levi. ‘I expected better from you Maddison, thought you were the one who was supposed to have a sensible head on. And as for you, Levi, never, ever try to pull a fast one on me again.’
And with that he stomped back to the plane, stamping his feet into the dust, followed by Levi.
Cooper watched on, unable to move. Resentment had a funny way of doing that to him. Granger had a funny way of doing that to him. He felt Maddie touch his arm gently.
‘It’s only because he cares, Tom. We were all worried. I don’t know what you expected. You can’t just go around doing what you want and think it won’t hurt others. Because it does… It really does.’
Without bothering to say anything, Cooper lit a cigarette before walking over to join the others. Something told him this was going to be one helluva day.
5 (#ulink_083d9608-af12-5657-bcc5-c5b373143268)
Cooper wasn’t sure what had woken him up. Knowing it could have been one of many things he decided not to dwell on it. Even though the Colorado night was cool . Chill. Both he and the white linen sheets which Levi, or rather Levi’s wife Dorothy, had bought him last year for Thanksgiving were drenched in sweat. He kicked them off. Sighed away the images of the past which had awoken and were playing in his head like a movie reel.
Reaching across he grabbed one of the many bottles of pills by the side of his bed. It didn’t matter which. As long as they worked. How many he took, it didn’t matter to him either, though tonight it happened to be three. Two OxyContin and a Xanax always seemed to do the trick.
Rubbing his face and feeling the hurried job he’d done with shaving the night before, Cooper wearily got out of bed to get some water. Just to do something, rather than just lying there. Thinking. Anything was better than that.
He didn’t bother to look at the clock. It was dark. He was tired, which could only mean it was late. Any other information seemed irrelevant. He wasn’t going anywhere, not even to sleep, it seemed.
The sanded wooden stairs felt smooth under foot. It’d taken him the whole of last year’s 4
July holiday weekend to complete them. Unlike the unfinished kitchen of the ranch. Seven years untouched. Semi-masked up, with unopened paint tins with names such as Ancient Map and Cottage Leaf and Proud Peacock, colors he couldn’t even guess without opening the tins, yet colors he and Ellie had argued about when they’d bought them… just before he’d been deployed to Lamu.
He hadn’t seen the point of finishing the kitchen. Not now. He never cooked anyway. At a push he used the microwave to heat up the meals Maddie or Dorothy Walker made for him. Because it was Ellie who’d wanted the big, open plan room with a Sully seven burner stove and a view out over the acres of meadow which ran up to the aspen covered hills and on to the mountain ridges beyond. She’d wanted it. Not him. But like the ranch, which she’d fallen in love with when the realtor had simply shown them photos of it, he’d been happy to give it to her. He’d have given her anything.
So now he was stuck with the ranch along with the paint and the unused brushes and the stove which he’d always thought too big and the view of the goddamn meadow. And the only way he could see round the problem was for her to come back. Come back to him. Just so he could give it to her all over again. Because he needed her to remind him of what the colors were, to prove to him why the hell, when there were just the two of them, they needed seven burners instead of four, but this time, this time, he wouldn’t care if she painted the whole of the goddamn place bright green.
He shook his head. This was bullshit. He wasn’t thinking straight. Didn’t know if it was the pills beginning to work or just him. He snorted with audible self-contempt. Jesus, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d managed to spend more than a few days at the ranch. Hell, nor did he have any desire to try. He wasn’t good at quiet. Give him a crowded prison cell any day. What the hell had he been thinking coming here? He never learnt. He thought each time it would be different.
Already he could feel the tightness in his chest. And it wasn’t just the opiates. It was his warning sign. The sign telling him he had to stop. Get away. Because any minute now it was going to hurt. Hurt real bad. Memories hypoxic. Stopping him breathing. Depriving him of air.
Turning to leave the kitchen to grab his clothes, he stopped, not wanting to, but unable to force himself to walk past without looking. To his right, where he and Ellie had planned to build a row of cream wooden cupboards, was a map. A map of Africa adorned with multi colored pins and criss-cross patterns of nylon red string, depicting the towns, the routes and ultimately the dead ends. Illustrating all the days and weeks and months which had translated to years he’d spent searching for Ellie.
His thoughts spilled aloud. ‘Come on, Ellie. Where did you get to baby? Where the hell are you?’
‘Tom?’
‘Ellie?’
Maddie threw down her car keys on the side as she walked into the kitchen.
‘What did you say…? What did you just say to me?’
Confused, Cooper said, ‘I didn’t say anything.’
She brushed past Cooper, her face sketched with tiredness and stress. Looking around and shaking her head she picked up a photo of Ellie and Cooper before resting her eyes on him.
‘Seriously? Jesus, Tom, this place is like a shrine to her. Why the hell did you get all this stuff out of the attic? Could you push me away anymore?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You really did skip charm school didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Maddie’s gaze drifted from Cooper to the large table in the corner of the room. Her voice accusatory. Her manner tense. She said, ‘What are they?’
Cooper followed Maddie’s stare. He shrugged. Never met her eye. ‘Nothing.’
‘You’re back on those pills aren’t you?’
‘Maddie… look…’
‘Don’t, Tom. I don’t want to hear any bullshit. No more than you’ve told me already.’
Cooper walked across to the table. Scooped the bottle of pills up. Quickly threw them in the khaki canvas bag on the floor. ‘I’m not. They’re old pills. Stuff from before. I was just having a clear out, okay? Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. How come you’re here?’
Hands on hip and a shake of the head. ‘Well if you do turn off your phone for two days what do you expect? And you know what, Tom, some people might think a wife coming to see her husband was kind of a normal thing to do, but not you, Tom? Not you, hey? You want to just disappear whenever you feel like it and don’t give a damn how anyone else feels.’
It was Cooper’s turn to shake his head. He licked his lips. Tried to conjure up saliva from his dry mouth. A side effect of the pills. ‘You came all this way to tell me what a hopeless husband I am? Well you wasted your time. I already know… but believe it or not, I’m sorry.’
Her beautiful brown face flushed red. Flushed anger. ‘No, Tom, I didn’t come here to tell you how bad you are as a husband. I came to tell you our daughter wouldn’t blow out her candles at her party until her daddy came. And you know we waited. Me and her friends, Levi and Granger, and my parents all waiting for you. But guess what…’
‘Maddison, I’m so sorry. Is Cora okay?’
‘Oh she will be, once she’s put her heart back together. No little girl should have their heart broken at four years old. Especially not by her daddy.’
‘I don’t know what happened, I was going to come. I got her a present.’
Maddie’s voice was loud and broken. ‘She doesn’t want a present, she wants you. That’s all, Tom. You!’ Her tone softened. ‘A bit like the rest of us.’
‘Please, Maddie…’
‘Don’t say you’re sorry, Tom because you’re not. No, I’m wrong, you are sorry but only sorry for yourself. I came to get you from Eritrea, Tom, and you couldn’t even come home to us. That hurt.’
‘I thought you might want some time on your own.’
‘No you didn’t, because you never even asked me! You came here so you could be close to her. Let me ask you something. Why did you marry me?’
