Outbreak Read online

  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 h
ave 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 twohundred- 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.

  Fatima looked down at the floor. 'It is not possible. If I leave to go home, then I lose this job. And then…' She left it hanging. There was a short silence before she continued. 'Mr Ben,' she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, 'it is many months since I am in Udok. When I left, it was very poor. Malaria a big problem. But now, I hear things.'

  'What sort of things?'

  'Bad things. The people here, they do not want me to know, but they cannot keep everything secret. People talk. It is the mine. It is, how do you say, maudit.'

  Ben looked blankly at her. It was not a word he knew.

  'The ancestors,' Fatima insisted. 'They say they have been-'

  But suddenly Ben stopped the flow of her conversation by silently placing a hand on her arm; over her shoulder he had noticed someone standing quietly by the open door.

  It was Kruger.

  How long he had been there Ben couldn't tell, so intently had he been listening to Fatima; but for a moment all vestiges of that oily smile of his had been wiped from his face. As their eyes met, he started grinning once more, then strode purposefully towards them and pulled Fatima away by a rough tug on her shoulder. 'Excuse me, Ben,' he said with what came across as a strained politeness, then turned and started to admonish Fatima in that African dialect Ben could not understand. It wasn't necessary to know what the words meant, though: the harshness of his voice spoke volumes. When she was finally dismissed, Fatima scurried around collecting her cleaning things, then left without a word. 'She wasn't worrying you, I hope, eh, Ben?' Kruger asked, having lapsed back into his booming Afrikaans accent. He seemed a different person to the man who had been so abrupt with Fatima.

  Ben shook his head.

  'Good, I'm glad. Come with me.' They walked out of the room and Kruger led him along the corridor. 'You know what girls can be like, eh? Full of silly gossip. Especially girls like her – villagers. They don't know any better, eh?'

  'Has my dad finished?' Ben tried to change the subject.

  'Nearly finished, Ben. But there's been a change of plan. You'll be travelling to Udok later on today.'

  'Today?' Ben was confused. 'I thought we were going tomorrow.'

  'Like I say, a change of plan,' Kruger replied evasively. 'The plane has to fly this afternoon. Abele has been sent to collect your things from the hotel. He has' – Kruger smiled faintly to himself – 'volunteered to accompany you to the village.' They stopped outside an office in which three men were tapping away at old computers with boxy grey monitors. 'Wait here, Ben. Your dad will be along in a minute.' He walked off, leaving Ben loitering in the corridor.


  Volunteered? Ben didn't like the way Kruger had said that. And it didn't make sense either. What was it Abele had said in the car just earlier that morning? 'I would not travel to Udok if it were up to me.'

  Ben felt into his pocket and wrapped his fingers round the crumpled note and the small wooden token Fatima had given him. He was beginning to think he might be of the same opinion…

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hundreds of miles away, a bat shrieked. It was a weak, pitiful sound.

  The cave in which it lived was cool and perfectly dark, the water beneath it still and black. No light had found its way in here for millennia; no humans had tracked its existence, although lately they had come close. The bat was one of many thousands populating this hidden refuge; but in recent weeks their numbers had been declining.

  Of late, the flight path of the bat had been erratic, and had become increasingly so in the past twentyfour hours. Occasionally its wing had scraped on the rough rock, causing it to shriek again, its panicked voice becoming lost in the echoing hubbub of the bats around him. Now and then it had flown blindly into one of its companions, causing a flurry of aggression from which it would fly away, knowing it could only come out worse.

  Now, though, it lay on the floor. Its tiny abdomen made uneven attempts to breathe; its wings were spread on either side, occasionally twitching.

  The bat gave one more call, though this would have been hardly audible even if it had not been drowned out by the cacophony of the colony. Then it twitched for a final time, before lying perfectly noiseless. Perfectly still.

  And perfectly dead.

  'Kruger said we were leaving this afternoon.'

  It had taken Ben's dad about ten minutes to rejoin him, during which time he had hung around outside the office pondering the conversation he had had with Fatima. She had been cut off short, but clearly had wanted to tell him something. The look of fear on her face when Kruger had dismissed her suggested she would be unlikely to try again, though.