demonic figure silhouetted in the moonlight is half man and half animal. The kudu head and horns look huge. It is stripped to the waist and muscular and in the flat silver light she can see the artery in its neck, beating fast just under the rim of the headdress. It is breathing hard and beads of sweat roll down its chest. The smell of the forest pours into the hut, musty and damp.
Eve cowers on the floor and looks up, wide-eyed in terror. Her hand moves to hold the baby tighter and Marie lets out a loud wail.
The creature holds its Kalashnikov in its right hand and stretches out its left to her. Eve makes a noise of denial, just a whimper. The Kudu is enraged and bellows at her before ducking its long horns under the roof and grabbing her arm. Its fingers are like steel, biting deep into her flesh, dragging her out of the doorway, clutching the baby in one arm. She is screaming now with fear, ‘No! No! No!’
As soon as she is out in the open, a soldier in a black cloth hood shouts excitedly at the sight of the pale baby and hits her in the back with the butt of his rifle. A rib cracks and she makes an oof sound as the air is forced out of her.
She loses her grip on the child and the Kudu grabs it by one arm and lifts it up in the air. It throws back its horned head and howls in triumph. The other members of the gang all join in howling and firing their rifles in the air.
Eve lies winded on the ground until they finish celebrating. The baby is taken away and then they look down at her. Rough hands grab her under her arms and throw her on her back and tear off her pagne. As the first man presses his heavy weight on her stomach, something inside her says, ‘This isn’t happening.’
But the tearing and jabbing continues and she thinks, ‘Why are you doing this to me, God? Why have you made this terrible country?’
Chapter Two
‘We are going to make a new country, Mr Devereux.’
The Chinese businessman looks at him closely to gauge his reaction.
Alex Devereux has the face of a man with strong feelings deeply controlled.
Dark tides run just under the surface but you will never find out what drives them.
His eyes lock onto the businessman’s and flicker with interest before a shutter comes down and he glances away to look out of the window over the lawns of his country house.
Alex has a stern cast to his face, the habit of command engraved on his features by his time as a major in the Household Cavalry and his subsequent career as a mercenary commander. He is six foot four, broad shouldered, lean and fit, running every day up and down the hills of his Herefordshire estate – ‘exercising his demons’ he calls it.
Outwardly he is dressed like a modern gentleman with jeans, loafers and button-down shirt, black hair neatly trimmed; he’s just turned forty and there is some salt and pepper at the temples. But there is a lot more to him than that.
At the moment he is very relaxed with one arm thrown over the back of the old Chesterfield and his long legs stretched out in front of him. It’s April, a shower is thrashing the rose bushes about outside, and it’s cold so he’s lit a log fire in the oak-panelled drawing room of Akerley, the Devereux country house where he lives alone. His family has been there nearly a thousand years, since Guy D’Evereux was granted the land by William the Conqueror. He is currently restoring the house with money from his Russian adventures but it is still always freezing cold.
He looks back at Mr Fang Xei Dong and says, ‘That sounds interesting,’ without any feeling.
It is a measure of how much more relaxed he is about life than before his success that he can be so detached about such a huge project. He refused to go up to London for the meeting and only agreed to it if it was at Akerley. It is also a measure of how interested in him the businessman must be that he agreed to the demand, arriving just after lunch in the back of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes.
Alex was surprised by Fang when his long limbs unfolded themselves like a daddy longlegs from the car door. He is northern Chinese, as tall as the Englishman, with wavy black hair, blue eyes and an angular face with cheekbones that seem painfully large. His skin is smooth and he looks to be about thirty.
When he arrived he strode up the imposing stone steps of the house towards Alex, full of confidence, completely unfazed by his first time in the heart of the English countryside. He thrust his hand out, ‘Hello, my name is Fang Xei Dong but my business name is Simon Jones.’
His English is American-accented but it still has the flat, staccato Chinese diction. He clearly knows that no Westerner will ever get the sliding tones of his name right and doesn’t want them to embarrass them with untoward mispronunciations. He cheerfully laughs off Alex’s polite attempts at saying his name. ‘Don’t worry, in Congo I am called Monsieur Wu. It’s the only Chinese name they can pronounce.’
He talks in rapid bursts, his long arms often reaching forwards as he speaks, as if trying to get hold of some perceived future.
He wears the casual uniform of the modern global businessman: neatly pressed chinos, button-down blue shirt with a pen in his top pocket and iPod earphones hanging down over his top button, a casual black blazer and loafers. When he settles himself in the drawing room he sets out an iPad and two BlackBerries on the coffee table in front of him that beep and chirrup frequently.
He sits forward on the leather armchair now and pushes his narrow-lensed titanium glasses back up his nose with a rapid unconscious dab of his hand; they slip off the bridge of his nose because his head jerks about as he speaks.
‘This operation is completely covert at the moment but I understand from my contacts in the defence community that you are used to operating in this manner?’
Alex just narrows his eyes in response.
‘I am referring to your operation in Central African Republic, which I understand was a Battlegroup level command?’
Alex nods. He is very cagey about his past activities. His CAR mission has achieved legendary status in the mercenary community but they don’t know the half of it. Any mention of the word Russia or any possible operations he was involved in there and he clams up completely.
Fang is reassured by his discretion.
‘This operation will require that level of skill and more. To be candid with you, we realise that it is …’ he pauses ‘…unconventional, from an international relations point of view, and we would prefer to work with a discreet operator such as yourself rather than one of the big defence contractors. They are much more … conventional,’ he finishes, sounding evasive.
Alex knows that by conventional he means law-abiding. He nods politely in acceptance of the point but winces internally. It wasn’t the sort of reputation he had sought at the start of his career. He had always wanted to be able to serve his country for his whole life; major general was what he had been hoping for. Somehow things just didn’t work out like that.
Fang blasts on regardless. ‘I represent a consortium of Chinese business interests that will lease Kivu Province off the Congolese government for ninety-nine years. Under the terms of the lease it will effectively be ours to do what we want with.’
He stretches out his arms and says with a note of wonder in his voice, ‘In Operation Tiananmen we are going to set up a new country and bring order out of anarchy!’
Alex
