BAMAKO - Aribert Raphael (red queen ebook TXT) 📗

Those prevent me from taking this baby down in a farmer’s field. We need 1500 meters of solid tarmac plus a safety zone at both ends of the strip. So, I couldn’t take you to a deserted island, even if I’d like to.” He laughed and Talya smiled, panic slowly replacing dread.
“It’s like with our landing in Kedougou today. I couldn’t land—”
“What?” Talya faked total surprise at this announcement. Pierre straightened up his hands gripping the arms of the seat. He reminded her of a cat ready to pounce.
“Yes, my orders are to take you to Kedougou and—”
“I’ve heard you the first time. Whose orders are they?”
“Monsieur Hjamal, of course.” They looked at each other. “I can see that you knew nothing of this. How could that be?” It was his turn to be astonished (and not faking it). He reclined in the chair, holding Talya’s eyes in his gaze.
“I have no idea what is going on, Pierre. On Friday afternoon, Monsieur Hjamal invited me to come to Dakar. He never mentioned anything about my being dropped off in Kedougou.”
“I’m sorry no one has told you, but we’ll be landing in about an hour’s time at the town’s airport. I was told Monsieur Hjamal is meeting you there to take you to the mine site.”
What had been panic thus far slowly became determination to get to the truth. “Okay then, if that’s where Monsieur Hjamal wants us to meet, that’s where we’ll go.”
“Again, I’m sorry, but our flight plans have been filed already and I couldn’t just change them in mid-air.” Pierre’s red cheeks were getting redder with irritation. “We’re flying a commercial route and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do it. I’d lose my job over something like this.”
Talya shook her head. “It’s okay, Pierre, don’t worry about it. We’ll see what happens when we get there.”

Soon after landing and when a cloud of dust began to mask the horizon, Pierre lowered the binoculars and turned to Talya. “You’re ride is here, Madame Kartz. Do you want us to wait…?”
“No, Pierre, that won’t be necessary. When we’re sure the vehicle is from the mine, you can leave me. I should be in good hands.” She shot him a tentative smile.
Pierre hesitated. “Alright then….” He didn’t want to leave this woman in the middle of nowhere. This whole thing didn’t feel right. “We’ll wait until we’re sure ‘you’re in good hands’ as you say.”
Two men climbed out of the Landrover and rushed toward Talya. Their ragged clothes and dirt-covered skins didn’t inspire confidence but their engaging smiles did.
As soon as they were on the road, Talya asked them how far the mine site was. She didn’t get an answer. An hour of a bumpy ride later, Talya stood in front of a hut at the end of a central road.
The man, who had climbed out of the Landrover with her, deposited her knapsack beside the door and looked down at her. “You go in and wait. We come later to give water to drink.”
Talya didn’t care about that; she wanted to know when Hjamal or Rasheed were going to show up. “Where is Monsieur Hjamal or Monsieur Rasheed? Are they here?”
The man smiled. “We come later,” he repeated. “You wait.”
“What’s your name?” Talya yelled to his back. He was already walking back to the Landrover.
Talya shrugged. She was not going to get anything out of him, she knew.
She pushed the door open to discover a two-room domicile freshly painted, tiled throughout and a bed standing to the one side of the main room. On the other side of a dividing wall she found a large tin basin filled with water and a sink fixed to the wall. She looked around her and sat on the bed. Not bad—not a prison anyway.

Pierre and John, the navigator, were not pleased with this situation. They had watched the Landrover go down the dirt track with misgivings. What would happen if Madame Kartz had no means of transport to complete her journey to Dakar? Hjamal had not given them any further instructions. They had simply been told Hjamal and the Rasheed guy would drive back to Dakar the next day.
Apparently having made up his mind, Pierre said, “Let’s go to town and get us a vehicle.”
“Do you want to drive to the mine?” John asked, knowing the answer already.
“Yes. This woman is not equipped to stay at a mine site. You’ve seen it—all she’s carrying is a shoulder bag—that’s hardly enough gear to stay anywhere.”
John nodded. “Besides, she told us Hjamal was expecting her in Dakar, didn’t she?”
“Yeah. Why don’t we call him on the radio and see if he’s home.”
“Okay.” John nodded again. “I don’t trust this guy. And that Rasheed is some piece of work—”
“Hjamal here,” the man said when he answered the radio call.
“This is Pierre Masson, sir. We’ve just dropped Madame Kartz in Kedougou. Do you want us to wait for her…?”
“Did you see Monsieur Rasheed?”
“No, sir, just the driver and one other man, why?”
“Never mind why. Get yourself a vehicle and go to the mine. She’s not supposed to visit the place alone. I’ll contact Rasheed and see where he is.”
“That’s a roger, sir. We’ll be in touch when we’ve found her and we’ll see you in Dakar.”
“Roger and out,” Hjamal said, cutting off the communication abruptly.

Left alone in the hut, Talya decided to take a look around the site. If Savoi and Rheza were held someplace in the compound, she wanted to find them. She made her way out of the hut furtively. Seeing no one observing her, she went down the dirt lane that would probably lead her to Hjamal’s plant—she hoped. Going down the steep hillside, she noticed a parking lot ahead with an assortment of trucks, Landrovers and tractors—all of them old and in need of repair, it seemed. Farther down the track and round a corner, a bench carved out of the hill hosted a long line of equipment surrounding a water pond. The ball mill and crusher Richard had described in his letter were well in evidence. Yet, what was also evident was the fact that this machinery was ominously silent and appeared to have been in this dormant state for quite some time.
Talya walked along the road adjacent to the processing line for some five minutes until she neared the two buildings she had seen from the top of the hill. She made her way to the first one and found its door locked. She shook her head and went round it to the second building. This one was open. She went inside and discovered a fully furnished lab with assay equipment encumbering several tables. In one of the crucibles she noticed two little gold pellets. That plant is producing gold—not much by the looks of it, though.
She went out and closed the door of the lab gently, all the while looking around her to see if anyone was watching her. No one was in sight, which fact bothered her a little. Where is everyone? The answer was staring at her a hundred yards down the road. A group of men were prostrated in prayer, their backs to her. It was two o’clock—prayer time. This ritual would probably last another ten minutes—at the most—and Talya had no time to lose. She needed to return to the hut unseen. She quickly and silently made her way back up the hill and to her temporary residence. She waited. She thought someone would come to fetch her, but, when looking at her watch, she realized that a half-an-hour had passed and no one had shown up, she wondered why she had been brought up here. It made no sense. Hjamal had said he wanted to meet her in Dakar…. Where is he? Does he know I’m here?
Suddenly, she heard voices outside and a car stop in front of the door. She opened it cautiously only to have it pushed wide open in her face. She stumbled back to find Pierre grabbing her by the arm before she fell backward.
“What are you doing here?” Talya blurted, stunned.
“Don’t say anything, Madame Kartz, and come with us. We’re bringing you back to Dakar.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now!”
The men outside had surrounded a Landrover with John at the wheel. The men that Talya assumed to be workers seemed impatient and not at all happy with what was happening.
Pierre pushed Talya into the backseat—a bit roughly, she thought—and went to sit in the front seat beside John.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said to the navigator. The latter nodded and revved the vehicle before turning it round and driving out of the camp rather quickly.
58
Once Talya had regained her seat in the Lear’s comfortable cabin, she decided to let Pierre know a little more than he seemed to do about this affair. When they reached cruising altitude once again, Pierre came back to sit opposite her.
“Why did you come and get me?” Talya asked him.
“Because I contacted Hjamal in Dakar and when he learned that Monsieur Rasheed didn’t come to meet you at the strip, he told me to get a vehicle and to bring you to Dakar as originally planned.”
“So, he was in Dakar, was he?”
“Yes, he was. It’s when you told me that Monsieur Hjamal had invited you to come to Dakar and you didn’t know anything about the Kedougou stop-over, that I wondered what was going on.”
“I tell you what, Pierre: if you had not come back, I would have had you arrested for kidnapping at the first opportunity I got. Not only that, but the Canadian ambassador is expecting me in Dakar, he has been advised of our approximate time of arrival.” Pierre was agape. “What’s more, and since you made the decision to alert Monsieur Hjamal and you came back to get me, I should tell you that he is under suspicion of murder. One of my colleagues has been killed under very strange circumstances. He was an employee of Monsieur Hjamal.” Pierre looked down at the table between them.
A moment later, he exhaled and raised his face to Talya. “That explains a lot.” He pointed his right index finger at her. “Thank you for telling me this” He stood up, grabbed the edge of the table, and bent over. “But, you’ll have to tell me what this is all about in more details.” He then turned on his heels toward the front of the cabin.
With an almost imperceptible smile coming across his lips, Pierre went in and sat at the controls.
Talya breathed an audible sigh of relief. She hadn’t noticed it until then but she was trembling, and perspiration was beading on her forehead. The back of her shirt was wet and sticking to her seat.
Pierre was a French citizen, not employed directly by Minorex. He clearly didn’t want to abet a client—and a good one at that—into any sort of criminal activities. There was nothing worse for an aircraft company than to be involved, even remotely, with what looked like the abduction of a passenger.


59
An hour into the flight, Samir took off his earphones and beckoned to his passengers. “If you’re not sleeping back there, would you mind handing me something to drink from the fridge behind me?”
Mohammed, who was closest to the cockpit, opened the cooler they had put on board before take-off, and handed their friend an