David Gilman - The Devil's breath

Slye nodded. Tom Gordon would have a great deal of pain inflicted on him now.

“Anything else, Mr. Slye?”

“A boy. We’ve spotted a Bushman boy, heading this way. Directly towards Skeleton Rock.”

“Why would a child do that?” Shaka Chang waited a moment, his dark eyes seeming to creep into Slye’s soul. “Unless …,” he said almost tenderly, “he was the boy who was with Gordon’s son. You assured me those boys were dead.” His eyes never left Slye’s face as his arm pointed towards the open window and the desert beyond. “You did make a note in your personal organizer that those boys were dead. Didn’t you?”

Mr. Slye’s Adam’s apple made a jerking motion, like a chicken about to cluck. “The odds I calculated, based on the extreme conditions-the temperature alone was fifty degrees; even a scorpion would think twice about venturing out-indicated certain death. Then there was their lack of food and water, their inability to contend with attacks from wild animals and their complete lack of knowledge of who we are and where we are. All of this, Mr. Chang, sir, determined that they died more than three days ago.”

“But?”

“But … Bushmen are … Bushmen.”

“So they could have survived?”

“The Bushman boy, perhaps. Max Gordon, definitely not. Otherwise, why is the Bushman boy coming towards us on his own?”

Shaka Chang smiled at his factotum. The perfect white teeth glistened like freshly painted tombstones. “Why? Perhaps because Max Gordon is near here. Because he is alive. Because he has learned the secret we have been so determined to find. Perhaps you have underestimated everything, Mr. Slye.”

Slye, a trifle indignant at being insulted by the suggestion of incompetence, was silent.

“Check the boy’s father, tell Zhernastyn there are no holds barred, and capture that Bushman boy. If necessary, bring me his body. I want to see it for myself this time.”

Shaka Chang threw his towel across Slye’s face. Slye nearly fainted from the suffocating, sweaty stench.

Max stepped between the pieces of Land Rover, an ever-increasing sense of panic working away in his stomach, threatening to rise up and take complete control. There was just no way Shaka Chang’s men would have missed the evidence, whatever it was, after they’d done this. Maybe his father’s memory was completely shot. What if he only thought he’d hidden the evidence here? It was hopeless.

A small bird fluttered in and landed at the edge of the dismantled Land Rover. The radiator, bonnet and headlights, neatly separated from each other, were propped against the wall. Like a disembodied skull, the gaping holes in the Land Rover’s front bodywork, and the yawning space where the radiator would have been, stared blindly back at him. The bird chirped, flew up and found a perch next to the burlap water bag, hanging from its original position on the front of the Land Rover. This was what kept water cool in the crippling heat, condensing the seepage from the bag and allowing a fine layer of moisture to form on its rough skin. The bird took some drops in its beak, had its fill and flew back outside.

Max was rooted to the spot, remembering the water bag on van Reenen’s Land Rover that Kallie had given him; the attack and the loss of the water bag and the fear that came with the prospect of thirst in the wilderness. Water Proof. Waterproof. Proof in the water?

He picked his way through the Land Rover’s remains and lifted the bag from the hook. It was heavy, a belly of water that pressed tightly against the sacking. He twisted open the bag’s mouth and sniffed. No smell of anything untoward, so he sipped the cold water. That was what it was: cool, refreshing, life-saving water. But there had to be more than that. He squeezed and felt the bag, and his fingers touched something with an edge to it. He upended the bag to let the water gush out, a silly memory of emptying a hot-water bottle after a freezing night at Dartmoor High intruding into his concentration. When the bag was empty, he could definitely feel a square of something, but there was no way it could have been pushed inside the bag through the narrow neck. He searched along the seam. Underneath the sack, someone had cut the burlap and restitched it. The water had stretched the material so there was no likelihood of it leaking.

Max quickly found a knife on a workbench and slit the stitching. Shoving his hand inside, he felt the flat box, cold to the touch and wrapped in something smooth. He eased it out. It was a DVD case, bound in duct tape to make it watertight.

He wiped the box dry. The tape’s adhesive had congealed and it resisted the efforts of his fingernail to cut along the lid. He quickly found a craft knife on the workbench, slid out the blade and slit the tape open. A black marker’s indelible ink had scrawled three words on the DVD’s shiny surface- Shaka Chang Evidence . Max held the disc as if it were the Holy Grail. The secrets of life and death lay captured just below its surface.

Jumbled thoughts fought for his attention. He had to get the evidence out, at any moment he ran the risk of being captured, and he’d just destroyed the best hiding place ever for the disc. He had to rescue his father and get the disc to the authorities. He couldn’t count on the cavalry riding to the rescue, not in time anyway, if at all. !Koga, Kallie, Sayid. Help me. Come on, someone. Anyone. Give me an idea .

Sayid!

Max pushed Zhernastyn in front of the diagnostic system. It all looked so bewildering. Max was OK with games consoles and his computer, but this had a different, a more formidable look to it. Then he reasoned that every computer worked on the same principle: it had to be switched on somewhere. He found a scooped button big enough for the convenience of switching the machine on without thought. He pressed it, and the screens came to life.

A blue screen twisted and twirled, ran a montage of Shaka Chang industries, then two spears plunged by invisible hands formed an X. In each quadrant of the X was a blinking cursor. Blazoned across the top of the spears were eight letters: PASSWORD .

Sayid was worth his weight in gold at times like this, but he wasn’t there, was he? He was probably sitting, glued to his own computer, playing some game that he always won. Max bent down to Zhernastyn, and caught the edge of the duct tape that was stuck to his face.

“I can either tear this off slowly or rip it off quickly-slow pain, fast pain-either way, you’re going to lose most of that beard and mustache. You decide.”

Zhernastyn muttered a muffled plea for mercy.

Max waited. “Nod for slow, shake your head for fast.”

Zhernastyn squeezed his eyes shut, then, in anticipation of what was to come, shook his head. Max ripped the tape free and heard the rasping tear of whiskers separating from half of Zhernastyn’s face. His mouth opened to yell, but Max smothered it with a grubby hand. “You say a word and I’ll send you and your wheelchair down there,” he said, nodding towards the railed slipway that swept down to the river and the crocodiles. “If anyone hears you cry out, it’ll be too late. Understand?”

Zhernastyn nodded vigorously.

Max eased his hand away. “I’ll give you one chance, and only one.”

“Listen, my young friend, you are so out of your depth you cannot even comprehend it.” Zhernastyn indicated the DVD in Max’s hand. “If that is what we have been seeking, you are too late. You understand? You would be wise to consider your position. You cannot save the thousands of people who will die. You have no comprehension of what Shaka Chang has done.” Zhernastyn enjoyed the status that having access to secrets often gave people. “You can never escape from this place, you know that.”