Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Map

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by Chris Ryan

Copyright

About the Book

Code Red . . . Code Red . . . people are dying here . . .

A mine full of valuable ore.

Thousands of dead bats.

And a terrible sickness in a small village . . .

Ben Tracy is in Africa with his scientist father when they discover a danger they cannot even see: a deadly virus, spawned in an underground lake and newly released by the opening of a mine. Can Ben and his new friend Halima get the news out so that the virus can be stopped? If they fail, millions of people could die in a worldwide pandemic . . .

Code Red, Code Red . . .

A gripping and action-packed thriller from Chris Ryan, SAS hero and bestselling author.

Location: Democratic Republic of Congo

PROLOGUE

A small village in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, not far from the Rwandan border. Just before midnight.

They would be dead by morning. When you’ve seen it happen enough times, you get used to the signs.

Naked apart from an old pair of underpants, he lay listlessly on the elderly, stained mattress, its springs broken and its stuffing now home to a thousand invisible bugs. By the dim, smoky light of a candle, she watched his chest rise and fall in time with his heavy, laboured breathing. It seemed somehow too big for the rest of his emaciated body. He had not eaten for eight days, not since he fell ill. And he hadn’t eaten much even before that: he was a poor man.

Beside him on the mattress lay his wife. Her body, heavier than her husband’s, was covered with a piece of material that had once been colourful but was now ragged and dirty. Her breathing was forced too. Rasping. Occasionally her eyes would open and roll around, unseeing, in their sockets, before closing again. Now and then she would shout out, but it was impossible to understand what she was saying.

She sounded frightened, though.

Her left hand lay lightly against her husband’s arm; but like his, it didn’t move. The unmistakable buzz of a mosquito hummed around them, explaining the angry welts that covered their skin. And despite the hot humidity of the night air, they did not sweat. Their bodies were too dehydrated for that.

A young girl, no more than fourteen, walked across the dusty floor of the hut with an earthenware cup of water in her hands. Gently she dipped her fingers into it, then brushed the moistness against the cracked lips of her two patients. The man’s tongue, furred and leathery, moved slightly towards the wetness, but in the end it seemed like too much effort and it fell back into the hollow of his mouth, giving his tired face an even more spectral appearance. Her wide eyes gazed at them, then she sighed and stepped back to the small wooden stool from which she had nursed them ever since they had become too weak to stand up.

The girl spoke five languages: French, three dialects of Bantu, and even some English. And in all of them she had repeated the same words over the past few days more times than she could count. ‘Mama, Papa, please do not die.’

But she knew it was a vain hope. She had seen villagers die of malaria before, driven to madness by their feverish hallucinations, and she muttered a silent prayer of thanks that her parents had, at least, been spared that. It had been the same for the two other families who had been hit by the disease in recent days: quick, virulent. Malaria was a constant presence in the life of these villagers, and the girl had learned enough about it in her short life to know that it came in different forms. But she had never seen it this bad before.

Perhaps that was why there were others in the village who thought there was something more sinister at work.

It had been a year since the mine on the edge of the village had been opened. Originally they had hoped to be digging for tin, but the boss men had found something else down there. Something valuable. It had made some in the village nervous. They knew that the ground was sacred to the village ancestors, being the final resting place of the tribal elders for as long as their people had been in these parts. They knew that great harm would befall those who disturbed it. But the lure of the money had been too great.

Her father had worked hard all his life. When the mine-owners came, he was offered three times his normal pay to work for them – enough to make him forget about tribal superstitions, or at least put them to a far corner of his mind. Many other workers in the village had made the same decision, although most of them carried magical objects somewhere about their bodies to protect them from ancient evils. And now three of them had succumbed to this horrific illness, as had various members of their families. The tribal elders, who had been so keen to welcome the mine-owners into the village in the first place, had ordered an X to be marked in thick, red paint on the corrugated-iron doors of their dwellings – so that the villagers could identify the cursed houses, and stay away.

But the superstitions were not enough to keep men from going down the mine. Poverty and war had killed so many in this part of the world for so long that death was a common occurrence, more likely to come upon you if you had no money. And money was what the mine was all about.

The girl put all these thoughts from her head. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the malevolent powers of the ancestors; it was just that all she could think about was that her parents were at death’s door, and she had to look after them.

But not for long. As the first light of dawn eased the village and the dense jungle that surrounded it out of darkness, her father drew his last breath. He exhaled as though he was breathing his spirit out of his body. Five minutes later, her mother too slipped silently away.

The girl had expected to cry when it happened, but now the moment was upon her, she found she could not. She just sat on that little wooden stool and looked at them, her mind a confusion of memories.

And then she stood up and walked out of the tiny hut. A small group of villagers had congregated at the end of her ramshackle street, looking out onto a stark clearing. They were safely outside the ring of protective symbols that had been crudely drawn in the dusty earth. How long they had been there the girl did not know – all night, probably – but now they watched her expectantly, not daring to draw near to the house that had fallen under this terrible curse for fear of bringing it upon themselves – just like the girl’s father had done upon her mother, and upon the girl herself, for all they knew.

She stood up straight and, in a clear voice, spoke in Kikongo, the language of the region. ‘They have departed.’

The bystanders looked fearfully at each other, then melted away, no doubt to spread the news around the village. The girl knew what they would be saying, knew the rumour that would be spreading round the population like a contagious infection. She half believed it herself. ‘The curse of the ancestors has not been lifted,’ the villagers would be muttering. ‘Halima’s parents are dead. We told you it would be so . . .’

CHAPTER ONE

Kinshasa International Airport. Four weeks later.

‘YOU HAVE MONEY?’

Russell Tracey and his son Ben looked nervously at the sinewy man in front of them who held their bags as though they weighed next to nothing. Ben had always quietly assumed that he was stronger than most of his friends, but even he had had trouble lifting his dad’s heavy suitcase onto the check-in belt at Heathrow when they had started their journey more than twenty hours ago. Now this tough Congolese man, his skin a deep, ebony black and his close-cropped hair flecked with grey, had made him doubt himself.

‘Um . . . I’m not sure what you mean,’ Russell stuttered slightly, his northern accent sounding peculiarly out of place in the stark, basic surroundings of the airport. His eyes flicked down at Ben, and then back at the man who had already told them, in a gruff, unfriendly voice, that his name was Abele. A flash of a dog-eared identification card bearing the logo of the Eastern Congo Mining Corporation had told them that this was indeed the person they had been expecting to meet them.

It had been a real relief when they had heard Abele’s deep and harshly accented voice calling their names out of the crowd. Within moments of stepping onto the airport concourse, they had been surrounded by a crowd of young Congolese, not much older than Ben, all jostling to try and carry their bags in return for payment. Russell had tried to tell them as politely as he could that their services weren’t required; but his politeness had been met with indifference at best, aggressiveness at worst. One of their unwanted porters, older than the others and with a nasty glint in his eye, had started to argue with him. His English wasn’t good enough for them to understand what he was saying, but the tone of his voice left them in no doubt that he was unimpressed that they were declining his offer of help. Ben’s dad had instinctively placed himself between his son and the crowd of people who had gathered round to witness the argument, stuttering politely in English in an attempt to defuse the situation. So when they heard their names being called, he had let out an audible breath of relief.

It took a few harsh words from Abele in a language they didn’t understand for the vultures to disappear and swoop on some other unsuspecting new arrival, though these were few and far between by now. But it seemed like this Abele wanted their money too.

He turned and started carrying their luggage towards the exit, with Ben and his dad trotting nervously along, one on either side. ‘If you have money, take it out of your wallet. Leave only’ – the Congolese thought for a moment – ‘four hundred francs.’

They stepped through the automatic doors into the oppressive morning heat as Ben performed a quick calculation in his head. Four hundred francs – about fifty pence. He had forty pounds in his wallet, and travellers’ cheques on top of that. Where was he supposed to put the rest of his money if not there? As if echoing his question, his dad spoke. ‘What should we do with the rest of it?’

Abele continued walking along a poorly maintained road towards a group of cars. ‘Put it in your shoes,’ he said bluntly.

‘I see,’ Russell said earnestly. ‘Well, if you think it’s sensible . . .’ and he removed his wallet from inside his light linen jacket. Beads of sweat were already forming on the bald part of his head.

‘Not here!’ Abele snapped, looking around to check that nobody had seen, then flashing Russell an impatient look. ‘Wait until the car.’ He strode on in silence.

The vehicle to which he led them looked as though it had seen better days. The green and orange stripes along the bonnet suggested it was – or had once been – a taxi, but if that was the case it was like no taxi Ben had ever seen. There were dents all over the side that was facing them, and patches of rust had entirely eaten their way through the metal. The rear bumper was hanging precariously at an angle. As Abele opened the boot, Ben was sure he caught sight of a large cockroach scurrying away from the sudden sunlight. He and his father climbed into the hard, uncomfortable back seat and both looked around for a non-existent seatbelt as Abele tried to turn the engine over. It took six choking coughs of the machinery before he managed to judder it into life, and as it did so, the inside of the car filled with the unmistakably greasy smell of petrol fumes. They jolted as Abele pulled out into the road and sped off, paying no attention to the fact that the rickety suspension made it feel more like a roller-coaster ride than a car.

Ben felt his brown combat trousers and white T-shirt start to cling to him in the heat. ‘Why do we need to put our money in our shoes?’ he asked, half out of a desire to break the uncomfortable silence that had descended on the car.

‘Voleurs,’ Abele spoke the word in his native French, and neither Ben nor his dad needed anyone to translate for them: robbers.

‘Between here and Kinshasa, you think?’ Russell asked lightly, sceptically almost, removing his wallet to act on Abele’s instructions and giving Ben a nod that indicated he should do the same. ‘We’ll be safe in the car, surely?’

Abele smiled slightly, the first time he had done so since they had met, and displayed a full set of yellowing teeth.

‘With you, I mean . . .’ Ben’s dad continued.

‘In the Congo, Mr Tracey’ – Abele spoke more slowly now, leisurely almost – ‘the only person not at risk from voleurs is the man with no money.’ He thought for a moment before continuing in a quieter voice, ‘And even he is not safe.’

The car fell silent once again as Abele’s passengers secreted their valuables in their shoes. Ben looked out of the window to try and divert his attention from the intolerable heat. The road was busy, and most of the cars were in a state of similar disrepair to Abele’s, though occasionally there was something a bit more modern and in better condition. Occasionally they were passed by white minibuses filled with passengers – the bush taxis he had read about, Ben assumed.

After a while he almost managed to forget how fast Abele was travelling, and it came as something of a surprise when he slowed down rapidly. ‘Checkpoint,’ the black man muttered under his breath.

Ben and his dad exchanged a glance. ‘Will we need our passports?’ Russell asked.

Abele shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Not passports.’ His voice didn’t encourage further questioning.

They crawled forwards, and it was five minutes before the checkpoint guards came into view. They wore khaki uniforms and grim expressions, and had ugly-looking AK-47s brandished under their arms. Some of the cars in the queue were waved through without question; others were held for longer before being allowed to go forward. Eventually it was their turn. A guard rapped harshly on Abele’s closed window, and he opened it reluctantly. The guard peered in, looked at Ben and his father without emotion, then started talking to Abele. They spoke in deeply accented French that Ben could barely understand. Suddenly the guard turned his attention to the back seat and spoke slowly, more clearly. ‘Mille francs, chaque personne,’ he instructed.

Ben glanced into the rear-view mirror. Abele was watching him, and he shook his head imperceptibly. Ben took his lead and pulled his wallet from his pocket. ‘Je n’ai que quatre cent francs,’ he enunciated in his best French. I only have four hundred francs.

The guard looked at him suspiciously. ‘Get out,’ he said, reverting to English. Ben did as he was told. ‘You too,’ the guard told his dad, before turning back to Abele and saying, ‘You, wait there.’

Ben and his dad stood uncomfortably together by the side of the car. One of Ben’s hands brushed lightly against the metal, making him wince: it was piping hot. The guard snatched Ben’s wallet from his hand and hungrily rifled through, pulling the few crumpled notes that had been stored away there and then handing it back. He gestured impatiently at Ben’s dad, who also handed over his wallet, and was also relieved of his money. The cash in his hand, the guard visibly lost interest in his captives. ‘Allez,’ he muttered before turning to the next car in line; but he stopped in his tracks when he heard Ben speak.

‘What are we paying for?’ he asked in a clear voice.

The guard looked back over his shoulder, a dangerous look on his face, then turned round to look at Ben. He licked his lips, and his right hand lightly touched the body of his AK-47 before he answered with a single word. ‘Taxes.’

Ben was about to respond, when he heard his father interrupt. ‘Just get back in the car, Ben,’ he hissed. Another look at the face of the guard persuaded him that maybe his dad was right, and quickly the two of them got back inside and shut the doors behind them. Abele sped off.

Ben couldn’t help feeling indignant at having been so blatantly stolen from, and at the same time he felt the heat of Abele’s frequent glances in the smeared rear-view mirror. ‘That wasn’t taxes,’ he burst out finally. ‘Was it?’

Abele shrugged. ‘I already told you, in the Congo the only man safe from voleurs is the man with no money.’

‘But they were policemen, not robbers.’

‘Then you should think yourself lucky, young Ben,’ Abele intoned. ‘If they were real’ – he struggled with the English word – ‘robbers, you would not have got away without being searched. And if they had found more money in your shoe . . .’ He put two fingers to his head to indicate a gun before making a clicking sound with his tongue.

‘Then why on earth did you tell us to hide the money away?’ Ben’s dad asked, unable to hide his anger.

Abele shrugged again. ‘On this road,’ he said, ‘you are probably safe from that kind of robber.’ He thought for a minute, before adding, ‘In the daytime, at least.’

They drove on in silence.

Ben felt the sickness of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach. Maybe his mum had been right – maybe he really shouldn’t have come. The idea of Dr Bel Kelland, world-famous environmental activist, trying to ban her son from travelling to Africa had seemed pretty out of character, but she’d been adamant. The Democratic Republic of Congo was one of the most unstable places on earth, she had fumed, and she had been shocked that Ben’s dad – or ‘your father’ as she would always disapprovingly refer to him – had even suggested that he accompany him on his business trip to the region.

‘It’s just too dangerous, Ben,’ she had told him.

‘More dangerous than Adelaide?’ Ben had replied archly. It had only been a matter of months since the two of them had been caught at the centre of the terrible fires that had swept across the Australian city. A couple of weeks of his longed-for summer holiday spent exploring an exciting part of Africa would seem like a walk in the park compared to that, surely. It would take his dad a week at the most to complete his business, and then they would be free to do as they pleased. Russell had even suggested taking a flight to the holiday resorts of Kenya, and Ben was certainly up for that.

‘Don’t be flippant, Ben,’ his mother had chided sharply, before changing tack a little and appealing to his reason. ‘Look, love, I’m not going to ban you from going, but just think about it carefully, OK?’

‘OK, Mum.’

He’d been as good as his word, reading up on the country that used to be known as Zaire on the Foreign Office’s website. It made for pretty alarming reading, and the list of vaccinations he had needed was as long as his punctured arm. Back in England, though, the warnings had just been words on paper; now Abele’s words had highlighted the fact that these were not just idle fears: this strange land in the middle of Africa was clearly a very dangerous place.

Bel had eventually become resigned to Ben’s decision to go, but she had still been full of instructions. ‘Don’t forget to take clean water with you wherever you go; and make sure you and your father take your malaria tablets – before you leave and after you come back. It’s very important, Ben. People die of malaria, in their millions. Its incubation period is between seven days and a month – chances are you wouldn’t even know you’d got it till you were back in England.’

Ben was snapped out of his reverie by the sound of his dad and Abele in conversation – or rather his dad talking enthusiastically, and Abele listening quietly. ‘I’m a scientist,’ Russell was saying in that slightly monotone voice that he always seemed to lapse into when he started explaining about his work. ‘A chemist, actually. Specializing in minerals and ores. The company I work for is in the business of examining naturally occurring ores and evaluating whether they are of a good enough standard for mining. The company you work for, as I’m sure you know, is currently mining tin in the east of your country, and they believe they have hit upon a rich vein of Coltan.’

‘I would not know about that,’ Abele muttered. ‘I just run errands for the boss men.’

‘Ah, well, it’s a very interesting substance, Coltan . . .’

Ben’s attention wandered again. He had heard his dad expound about the value of Coltan more times than he could count since it had been confirmed that he would be accompanying him on this work trip. Columbite tantalite – used to create tantalum, the magic ingredient in almost any electrical item you care to name. Without Coltan, there would be no mobile phones, no computer chips, no PlayStations. It sold for $100 a pound, and anyone who mined it would be rich. The DRC was one of the major producers in the world.

‘The mine is in a village in the east of the country called Udok. Are you familiar with it?’

‘Of course.’ Ben could have been mistaken, but as Abele spoke he was looking at him in the mirror. He could have sworn he saw a tightening of the eyes, a look that was half suspicion, half fear. ‘I would not travel to Udok if it were up to me,’ he muttered.

‘Why on earth not?’

Abele paused. When he answered, it was without much conviction, as though he was not saying everything he was thinking. ‘That part of the country is very dangerous,’ he explained. ‘Many voleurs . . . And anyway,’ he continued with a certain reluctance, ‘it is not wise to disturb the land like that. No good can come of such things.’

Ben was about to quiz him further when he felt the car suddenly slow down again. The road had led them to what seemed to be a slightly more built-up area – the outskirts of Kinshasa, he assumed. ‘Not another checkpoint?’ he asked.

Abele shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then why is everyone slowing down?’

For a moment Abele didn’t answer. When he did, it was curt. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to something on the side of the road.

Ben squinted his eyes. There was something lying there in a disjointed heap. It was only after several seconds had passed that he realized what it was.

A human body.

It was raggedly clothed: what material there was appeared to have been ripped to shreds. The limbs seemed to be cruelly out of position, pointing in different directions that were never naturally intended. The head was facing away from the road, a fact for which Ben was profoundly grateful. ‘Why doesn’t someone do something?’ he whispered, craning his neck to look back at the body as the car passed it.

‘What is there to do?’ Abele replied simply.

‘Well . . .’ Ben stuttered, ‘he should be taken away. Buried. His family should be told . . .’

Abele laughed gently, but there was no humour in that laugh. ‘In my country,’ he explained, ‘if you approach that body, you take responsibility for it. Nobody wants that.’

‘But you can’t just leave him there.’

‘He won’t be left,’ Abele said gruffly. ‘The wild animals will see to that. He will be gone in three days. Maybe four.’

Ben didn’t know what to say.

‘You are shocked,’ Abele continued. ‘And so you should be. My poor country is a shocking place. You are not in your safe England now, Ben Tracey. Remember that.’

Ben glanced in the mirror to see Abele peering back at him, his sharp, bright eyes seeming to glow in his black face. It made Ben distinctly uncomfortable.

He turned his head and looked out of the window once more as they made their way deeper into Kinshasa.

CHAPTER TWO

BACK IN ENGLAND, Ben had checked on the Internet what the Foreign Office had said about travel to the area. It had been pretty straightforward: don’t do it. If you must, move around with caution. Stay away from crowds. Remain vigilant. But Ben had been determined to look past that and find out as much about the country as possible. He had learned that Kinshasa lay on the south side of the Congo river, directly opposite Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo – they were the only two capital cities in the world to be so situated. What came through most, though, was that the DRC, formerly known as Zaire, had been ravaged by civil war. Violence and unrest were everywhere. British citizens were advised not to travel to the east of the country towards the Rwandan border, and they were being told to exercise extreme caution even in Kinshasa.

The hotel where they were to stay formed a striking contrast to the shanty-town outskirts of the city through which they had driven. Ben had been shocked and a little unnerved by the sight of the rickety dwellings with corrugated-iron roofs and all manner of emaciated animals scratching around outside. The further towards the centre they drove, however, the more these poor places gave way to broad streets and imposing yet shabby buildings. It should have been impressive, but somehow it wasn’t.

The hotel was no different – two great white buildings surrounding a couple of swimming pools and tables covered with coconut-fibre parasols; there was room here for hundreds of people, but it was practically deserted. Abele looked decidedly uncomfortable as he carried their bags all the way to the steps leading to the hotel reception, but he refused to come in. Ben could sense his embarrassment as his father pressed him to join them for a drink: he obviously just wanted to get away from this place, the domain of Kinshasa’s rich, whoever they might be. ‘This is not somewhere for me,’ he finally muttered. ‘I will meet you outside when you want to go out.’ He walked away before turning his head back towards them. ‘You don’t go with anyone else,’ he warned. ‘Only me.’

They would only be staying here for one night, and when Ben saw the room he was to share with his dad, he was glad about that – although half of him wondered what the rest of his trip had in store, if this was the best hotel in the country. Two single beds with fraying sheets were pushed up against the wall, and there was a large fan on the ceiling between the beds. A switch on the wall was supposed to operate it, but it didn’t. The small sink was coming away from the wall, and there was an overriding smell of stale tobacco and something Ben couldn’t quite place. Food, probably. He washed his hands and face – something he had been wanting to do ever since seeing the dead body by the side of the road – then pulled on a clean T-shirt. He and his dad were ready to leave within ten minutes.

Russell Tracey was being employed by the Eastern Congo Mining Corporation, and he was keen to meet his clients as soon as possible to make arrangements for the rest of their stay. It was only a five-minute drive to the company’s headquarters, a faceless modern building on an island in the centre of one of the city’s broad boulevards. Ben was surprised to see stony-faced guards carrying heavy weapons flanking the doors, but they recognized Abele, and the trio were allowed to enter without questions or other hindrance. The reception room itself was deliciously cool, with white stone floors and a wooden desk behind which a uniformed man sat with an imperious expression, nothing in front of him other than an old-style telephone and a holster. Ben noticed that it was empty, and couldn’t help wondering where the accompanying weapon was. Abele spoke to him in what Ben assumed to be Lingala, the Bantu dialect most prevalent in this part of the country – though in truth there was no way he could have known the difference between Lingala and Kikongo, which was spoken in the jungle regions further east – and the receptionist made a phone call. Abele turned to them, nodded speechlessly, then wandered off to a different part of the building while Ben and his dad were left waiting, unsure what to do.

They didn’t have to wait for long, however. Within a minute a large white man burst through a set of double doors into the reception and walked towards Ben’s dad with an outstretched hand and a broad, toothy smile on his face. He had a thick mane of black hair – suspiciously black, Ben thought, given that the lines on his face suggested he was at least sixty years of age. He grabbed Russell’s hand and shook it firmly. ‘Mr Tracey,’ he almost bellowed in a tight South African accent. ‘What a pleasure it is to have you here.’

‘Likewise, Mr . . .?’

‘Kruger.’ He smiled. ‘Stefan Kruger.’

‘Likewise, Mr Kruger.’ Russell looked down at Ben. ‘This is my son, Ben.’

Kruger appeared to notice Ben for the first time. He glanced at him, and the smile on his face seem to fail for a moment. ‘You will be taking him to Udok?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ Ben’s dad replied diffidently. ‘They said it would be OK.’

Kruger appeared to consider that for a moment. Suddenly the grin reappeared on his face. ‘Of course!’ He wordlessly ruffled Ben’s hair with his big hand. Ben said nothing.

‘Come!’ Kruger explained. ‘We have plenty of people waiting to meet you, Mr Tracey. Ben, you want a Coke? There is a room to the side here where you can wait while the grown-ups do their work.’

Ben glanced up at his father. ‘Um . . . actually,’ Russell said politely, ‘I was hoping Ben might join us. I’m sure he’ll find it terribly interesti—’

‘Rubbish!’ Kruger shouted. ‘Boring old grown-ups’ stuff, eh, Ben?’ He turned to the receptionist and said something in Lingala, his mock-friendliness suddenly falling away as he spoke to someone he clearly considered his inferior. ‘Nkosana here will show you to the waiting place. We won’t be long, eh, Mr Tracey?’

Ben’s dad looked down at him apologetically and made as if to say something, but Ben spared him. ‘It’s all right, Dad. I’ll wait.’

Russell Tracey nodded and followed Kruger out of the reception, while Nkosana stood up and unsmilingly gestured at Ben to follow him.

The room into which he was led was sparse. There were ten or fifteen chairs, and the Coke Ben had been promised was firmly imprisoned inside a vending machine that was not connected to the electricity. The steel-framed windows looked out onto the busy, car-filled boulevard. He looked around him, then turned to thank Nkosana, but when he did so the man was already gone. With a sigh, Ben strode over to the window and watched the cars go by. There was only so much interest to be had in doing that, however, so he pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. There was no service, so he cranked up one of the games and started playing on that instead.

Ben had been in the room for perhaps forty-five minutes when the door opened. He looked up sharply to see a young woman walk in. She wore a colourful two-piece outfit and a headscarf that covered most of her hair but allowed a few tightly plaited strands to hang onto her long, shapely neck. She was perhaps eighteen years old, though it was difficult to say for sure, and she carried a metal bucket and a mop. The girl eyed Ben suspiciously as she entered; he just nodded curtly in return as she started to mop the floor slowly and, he thought, rather laboriously. All the while he felt her eyes on him, and he carried on playing on his phone more out of embarrassment than anything else.

Suddenly she spoke. ‘You are one of the English?’ she asked, her voice hesitant as she carefully enunciated the unfamiliar words.

Ben looked up from his phone and nodded.

‘They say you travel to Udok tomorrow.’

‘That’s right,’ Ben acknowledged. ‘I’m Ben, by the way.’

‘My name is Fatima. Udok is my village.’

Ben nodded, then watched as Fatima continued to mop the floor. Occasionally her eyes would flicker up to the door, and she would take a breath as if to say something, before thinking better of it. ‘Do your family still live there?’ Ben asked, more to persuade her to talk than anything else. ‘In Udok, I mean.’

Immediately her eyes filled with tears as she nodded her head. ‘Mr Ben,’ she whispered, her voice low, ‘I do not hear from them for many weeks. Each month I send them money, but I hear nothing. No letter, nothing.’ Her voice became quieter, and she glanced once more at the door. ‘I do not think the money reach them. My father work in the mine, but it is not enough.’

Ben smiled sympathetically, but he didn’t know what to say. Suddenly the girl approached him with another conspiratorial glance at the door.

‘Mr Ben,’ she continued urgently, ‘you do something for me. You find my sister, give her this.’ She pulled something out of her pocket and pressed it into Ben’s hand. He looked down to see a crumpled two-hundred-franc note. Twenty-five pence. And wrapped in the dog-eared note there was a small, roughly hewn piece of wood with a crude symbol etched into it, rather like an eye. Ben looked back up at Fatima, who was staring at him, the tears still brimming in her own wide, dark eyes.

Ben secreted the money and the wooden token away. ‘How will I know your sister?’ he asked.

‘Her name is Halima,’ Fatima said. ‘She speak English very well, better than me. Ask in the village. They will know her.’

Ben nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can. When did you last go home?’ he asked her gently.

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