make reversing practicable. She pressed on in increasing dismay until she reached a heap of broken rock and loose debris left across the track by a small landslide. She crossed it at crawling speed, leaning almost sideways in her seat. Her relief at making it safely to the other side lasted only to the next hairpin when the track turned back on itself and she reached the place from which the landslide had fallen. The surface was completely gone. There was no possible way forwards. She was trapped.
She gave a yell of frustration. Her cry echoed forlornly. A wild dog barked. Her father and sister were depending upon her, and she was already grotesquely late. She needed to get back to the main road right now. With no way to turn, she had no choice but to try reversing. Negotiating the hairpin backwards was a nightmare. She kept hauling on the hand-brake and leaning out the window to check her wheels weren’t over the edge. Even after she’d successfully made it, she still had the buttress of rock to cross. It had been difficult enough going forwards. In reverse it was unbearable. Pebbles cascaded from beneath her wheels, clattering down the steep hillside until they were netted by the undergrowth. Each time she heard another miniature avalanche, her heart leapt. The Jeep was tilted so far over by now that she was pressed against the driver door, could see nothing in her mirrors.
And then, perhaps inevitably, the steady trickle of earth turned to a cascade, and the ground simply sheared away beneath her, and the Jeep began sliding down the hill like a ship launched sideways into the sea.
THIRTY-SIX
I
Knox sped south as fast as the track would allow him, the bike’s balding tyres slithering on the dust, forcing him every so often to throw out a foot to save himself. But he reached Tulear in good time, stopped to check the GPS handset. Rebecca had turned on the transmitter at last; and though the tracker’s map of Madagascar was rudimentary, it was evident she’d taken the Ilakaka road. He followed signs for it, passed out of the suburbs. The road grew better; he opened the throttle wide. It didn’t take him long to reach the place from where the most recent signal had been sent, but there was no sign of her. According to her note, she’d set the transmissions for once every hour. He’d just have to wait. With nothing else to do, he turned on his mobile. It found a signal, notified him of messages. Most were from Miles, sounding increasingly strained, wondering what had happened to him, begging him to get in touch as soon as he could.
‘About bloody time!’ he erupted, when Knox complied. ‘Are you on your way back?’
‘Not yet,’ said Knox.
‘Things are turning ugly here,’ said Miles. ‘We’ve found jack shit, our new tests have come back negative and the Chinese have sniffed something. They’re sending a delegation.’
‘Christ! When?’
‘The day after tomorrow. And I need you here. No excuses. We’re going to have to blind them with science and archaeology. I can do the science, but I need you for the archaeology.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Knox promised him. ‘But listen: I think I’m on to something.’
‘What kind of something?’
‘I need your word first. You’re not to tell Cheung or anyone else. Not yet.’
‘Whatever you say. Now spill.’
He gave Miles a digest of what he’d been up to since he’d left the Maritsa. The shards in Eden’s wall; Adam’s interest in medieval charts; the boathouse basement and the Chinese artefacts. He outlined his theory about the treasure ship floating itself off the reef and sailing down to Eden’s waters; and why the Kirkpatricks might have lied about it.
Miles was silent for a second or two after he’d finished, as though struggling to take it all in. ‘Any chance you can get us proof?’ he asked. ‘Something to show the Chinese?’
Knox thought of the blue-and-white porcelain bowl, the enamelled flask. ‘I’ll need to clear it with one of the Kirkpatricks first.’
‘And when will you be able to do that?’
He checked the GPS tracker again. A new signal had just come in, about ten miles to his east. ‘With any luck,’ he said, ‘maybe pretty soon.’
II
Once the ground started to give way beneath Rebecca, everything became reflexive, something she couldn’t stop, only manage. She sat up straight and buckled her seatbelt. Her rear-end cannoned a tree and the impact turned the Jeep face-on to the slope. She stamped hard on the brake and clutch, thrust her gear-stick into reverse, but something snapped and then the Jeep was bounding down the steep gradient, wheels barely in contact with the earth, punching a way through the thin vegetation, branches and tendrils slapping the windscreen. A baobab loomed. She wrenched the steering wheel around but it had no effect. She braced her feet against the floor and threw up her forearms to protect her head. The front left hit hard. She heard the crunch of metal and the tinkle of a headlight. The Jeep flew up on to two wheels and then fell back. The brush opened up in front of her; the hillside simply dropped away. The Jeep plunged down an embankment and smashed nose-first into the compacted earth of the track which had wended back on itself. The bonnet buckled like a concertina against her knees. The windscreen and side windows shattered. Pebbles of glass spat everywhere. She slammed against her seat-belt, her head flew forward and she felt her left shoulder dislocate. The Jeep tumbled over itself before settling on its passenger door. It rocked for a few moments and then was still.
Rebecca’s head slowly cleared. She checked her arms, legs, head and torso, was relieved to find scratches and bruises but no serious damage except for her shoulder. She looked out. Smoke and water vapour rose in clouds from her crumpled bonnet. The slope was so steep that the Jeep was only held in place by a tangled net of spiny brush, creaking and groaning beneath the strain. She could smell diesel and oil. She needed to get out quick. She tried to unfasten her seat-belt, but the buckle had jammed. She shimmied out sideways instead, keeping her shoulder as still as possible, retrieved the holdall and her bag, dropped them through the empty windscreen and followed them out. She had to jump down to the ground. The jolt was so exquisite on her left shoulder that she cried out, both from the pain itself and from knowledge of what lay ahead. Her shoulder had dislocated twice before, once after an awkward parachute landing, once deep in the Australian outback, trying to grab the reins of a snake-spooked horse that had bucked her. Catching that damned mare and riding her six miles back to camp had taken Rebecca three hours. For the last two of those, her shoulder muscles had been in spasm. It had been the most gruelling ordeal of her life, the kind that ages you, that makes you understand why patients in chronic pain seek to die. They’d had to cut open her shoulder to fix it. God only knew what would happen in Madagascar.
She took her mobile from her bag, but it had no signal. She breathed deeply to quell her rising panic. On safari in Kenya last year, a knuckle-head South African had tried to impress her with all his scars, so she’d retorted with her shoulder. He’d laughed at that. Dislocations didn’t count. Christ only knew how many times he’d dislocated his shoulder; he just slammed it against the nearest tree. If some loudmouth guide could do it, thought Rebecca grimly, then she could, too. She held her left arm with its ball as near its socket as she could figure, then threw herself hard against the front bumper of the Jeep. She screamed in agony and failure. She stood, wiped away her tears, gritted her teeth and hurled herself even harder. The pain was so fierce and prolonged that she screamed and carried on screaming, her screams turning into cries of frustration. It wasn’t going to work. Your body would tell you these things if you listened. She squatted down. As a zoologist, she understood the rudiments of primate anatomy. The shoulder wasn’t a typical ball-and-socket joint, because it needed to facilitate such a wide range of movement. The ball therefore sat upon the socket rather like an egg upon its cup, held in place by muscles, tendons and ligaments. That made it all the more prone to dislocation, but it also made it easier to fix. Reduction was a matter of angles, torque and traction. That South African had been a braggart, but not a liar.
The carry-straps of Mustafa’s canvas holdall had detachable metal buckles at either end. She took them off
