The African Equation by Yasmina Khadra

up in the room that Tao had occupied, down in the hold. The boy with the lensless glasses came and took up position in the doorway. He leant one shoulder against the door frame, tilted his head to one side and began watching us in a strange way. The stupid grin on his face sent a chill down my spine.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Hans asked me.
    ‘I think so. How about you?’
    ‘I’ll be OK … Do you realise? They threw Tao overboard!’
    ‘Do you think he’ll make it?’
    ‘He can’t swim.’
    ‘They have us at their mercy. They didn’t need to do that.’
    ‘It’s their way of showing they’re in control. People’s mindset is different in this part of the world. The life of a man and the life of a mosquito are the same to them. These people are alive now, but they come from another time.’
    The guard kept moving his greyish tongue over his lips. The stillness of his eyes accentuated my sense of unease.
    ‘Where did they spring from?’
    Hans shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I heard an engine coming closer. I thought it was the coastguard at first, but they aren’t allowed to operate in international waters. Tao came and told me that a felucca was heading straight for us. Something hit the hull. Within a fraction of a second, these maniacs were coming on board. I couldn’t do a thing.’
    ‘Who are they?’
    ‘No idea. This area’s full of all kinds of predators: rebels, mercenaries, pirates, terrorists, smugglers, arms dealers. But I never imagined they were capable of venturing so far from their bases. I’ve done this stretch of water twice before, the last time only six months ago, and had no trouble …’
    He paused for breath. When he spoke again, his voice was heavier.
    ‘I’m sorry, Kurt. You have no idea how sorry I am to have got you mixed up in all this after what you’ve been through.’
    ‘It’s not your fault, Hans. It’s the way of things: it never rains but it pours.’
    ‘I really am sorry.’
    ‘Shhhh!’ said our guard in a whistling voice, raising his finger to his lips.
    Again, his glassy eyes sent a shiver through me.
     
    Hans and I were flung unceremoniously in the felucca, to be guarded by the giant with the amulets and three of his associates. The leader and the rest of the gang remained on board the yacht. As our new craft set sail for whatever fate had in store for us, we watched the boat make a series of clumsy manoeuvres before moving away in the opposite direction to ours. Hans had tears in his eyes; I saw the resentment well up in him. When the boat had faded into the darkness, he placed his chin on his bound fists and withdrew into himself.
    The felucca pitched on the waves, throwing us from side to side. In the silence of the night, the noise of the engine was like the moans of a dying pachyderm. I began feeling seasick and my migraine was getting worse. I threw up over my knees.
    The crossing seemed endless. Far in the distance, the first blood-red marks of dawn sprinkled the horizon. The wind froze my arms and knees. My back felt itchy. I couldn’t scratch myself or rub myself against the worm-eaten wood of the boat, from which big splinters as deadly as knives stuck out in places. Every now and again, the giant kicked me in the shin to stop me sleeping. Facing me, the boy with the lensless glasses was watching me constantly, a strange smile on his granite face.
    The cries of seagulls … I had dozed off. The sun had risen; the felucca threaded its way through the jagged edges of a reef, glided along a narrow, meandering passage filledwith silt, and sailed up the lagoon as far as a tiny, gravelly beach. The giant threw us to the ground. The others pulled the boat out of the water and dragged it into a blind spot, where they covered it with a tarpaulin to camouflage it. We immediately set off on foot. A
thalweg
led us into a creek that we had to go around in order to advance further inland. After an hour’s walking, we reached a basin thick with undergrowth, where an