It was another beautiful day with just a few wisps of cloud in an otherwise perfect sky. There was a familiar chatter above Alex’s head and he looked up to see that at least one monkey had dared to come back, looking down on him with shock-filled eyes as if it knew what was about to happen. Birds with long tails and brilliant plumage hopped along the pathways. There would have been a time when tourists would have woken up to this scenery and thought themselves in heaven. But one sight of the glowering guards reminded Alex. McCain had turned it into his own peculiar version of hell.
“It’s not very far,” Beckett said. “Please, follow me.” She led him out of the camp, away from the landing strip, and also away from the open area where he had eaten the night before. Alex was still wearing part of his school uniform—the shirt, pants, and shoes. Even with his sleeves rolled up, he was still too warm and sweaty, but they hadn’t bothered to give him any fresh clothes. He had just one crumb of comfort. The gel-ink pen was in his pants pocket.
Even now he might get a chance to use it. He had no other surprises left.
With two guards behind him and the woman a few steps ahead, he was taken down a path that followed the edge of the river. The camp disappeared behind them, and looking ahead in the far distance, Alex saw a family of elephants washing themselves in the sparkling water. It was an extraordinary sight, but Alex couldn’t enjoy it. Not when it might be the last thing he ever saw.
Desmond McCain was waiting ahead of them, dressed comfortably in a well-tailored safari suit with a white silk neckerchief. It seemed they had arrived at their destination. Alex looked around him. He didn’t like what he saw.
A steep slope ran down to a stretch of sandy shingle, a narrow beach at the very edge of the water.
There was a stepladder, about twenty feet high, standing on the beach, and above it a metal pipe that had been fastened to the branch of a tree. The pipe ended with two handles and reminded Alex of a periscope in a submarine. A wooden observation platform had been constructed at the top of the slope.
This was where McCain was standing.
Alex had already worked out what might be going on here and was making calculations. If he walked down to the beach and climbed the ladder, he would be able to reach the handles. Then the ladder could be taken away and he would be left hanging from the pipe. He would be close enough to the platform to be able to talk to McCain and to hear what he had to say—but not close enough to reach him.
Because the pipe was rigid, he wouldn’t be able to swing back and forth. In other words, he would simply have to stay there until his arms grew tired and he dropped.
The question was—why? What was the point?
“This will not take very long, Alex,” McCain said. He had watched Alex taking everything in. “I will talk to you a little bit, and then, I’m afraid, we will begin. As I have already told you, I need most urgently the answer to three questions. What was it that brought you to Greenfields? Why did MI6 send you? And how much do the intelligence services know about Poison Dawn?” Alex had already decided what he was going to say. “You don’t need to play your sadistic games, Mr.
McCain,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know anyway.” McCain held up a hand. “I don’t think you were listening to me last night. Of course you will tell me what I want to hear. That is the point I’m trying to make. You will tell me anything to protect yourself.
But I have to be one hundred percent certain that you are telling me the truth. There cannot be even the tiniest margin of doubt.”
“And you think torturing me will achieve that?”
“Normally, no. There are many horrible things I could do to you, Alex. We have electricity here and wires attached to various parts of your body could produce excruciating pain. My Kikuyu friends could take you far beyond the limits of endurance using only their spears, perhaps heated first in the flames of a fire. We could cut pieces off of you. We could boil you alive. And do not think for a single minute that I would hesitate to do any of this because you are fourteen. MI6 clearly does not think of you as a child, so why should I?”
“Is part of the torture boring me to death?” Alex asked.
McCain nodded. “Bravely spoken, Alex. Let us see how brave you are ten minutes from now.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. The sun was beating down on his bald head, and beads of sweat were standing out. “The pain that you are about to experience is going to be all the worse because you will inflict it on yourself. You will, as it were, cooperate with your torturers. And you will do so to escape the terror that lies below.” He took out a gun, an old-fashioned Mauser with a shortened barrel and a white ivory plate over the grip. It looked like something out of a museum. “I would like you now to go down to the river,” he explained. “If you refuse to do so, if you attempt to run away, I will shoot you through the knee.”
Alex stood where he was. Beckett was smiling properly for the first time, and he realized that she knew what to expect, that she had seen this all before. The two tribesmen were covering him with their rifles.
If McCain missed with his pistol, they would certainly gun him down before he’d taken a single step.
He glanced at the beach and at the river. There was nobody else down there. He had a nasty feeling he wasn’t going to be alone for long.
“I’m waiting, Alex,” McCain said.
Without speaking, Alex made his way down the slope. Now McCain and the others were directly above him, looking down from the protected height of the observation platform. Alex was reminded of a Roman emperor and his entourage. They were in the royal box. He was the gladiator, about to entertain them.
“This is part of the River Simba,” McCain explained. “It runs all the way up to the Simba Dam and Lake Simba beyond. It is the water from this river that will be feeding my wheat field, Alex. And as you are about to learn, it is infested with crocodiles.”
“Here comes one now!” Beckett crowed.
Crocodiles.
Alex turned to see a dark shape on the opposite bank slither forward and launch itself into the water, followed quickly by a second. There was something strikingly evil about the way they moved. They twisted and sliced their way through the water like two knife wounds, and somehow they managed to swim—or slither—very quickly without seeming to be in a hurry. They would be across the river in less than a minute. They somehow knew he was here. But then, of course, they had been fed this way before. And Alex had a feeling they were hungry.
Alex looked up. Beckett was gazing at him with her mouth open, and he could see the saliva glistening on her
