The Night of the Cobra - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

She couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t just the unfamiliar room, the stale smell of spicy fish dishes or the clatter of the clunky air conditioner. The whiskey lapped around her mind, blurring the edges.

She allowed her thoughts to drift. Why did he touch her face? She wondered if the mugging had created the kind of high-intensity intimacy that made such a gesture appropriate.

She felt his finger again, lingering over her cheekbone, lightly caressing her jaw. It was a long time since another man had touched her in that way. She was surprised at the effect.

She imagined him kissing her, brushing her hair back from her forehead. She wondered if it would be different, better.

With an almost physical jolt she reined in her runaway thoughts and sat up, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands. Even to think such things was reprehensible.

She was happily married. She loved her husband. There was no doubt about these facts so what was going on? She would never be unfaithful. She was not that kind of woman.

She dragged deeply on the cigarette, feeling a little calmer. She was not that kind of woman. But a part of her mind did not wholly buy into the blunt assertion and tormented her certitude with questions like pinpricks. What kind of woman? The kind that responds to a man’s touch? The kind that finds a handsome man attractive? That wants something a little different?

God, surely it wasn’t as simple and banal as her craving a change? True, she and Tim had been married for five years. And, looking at things dispassionately, one would have to admit the passion had cooled.

Their lives were so busy that often they did not have the energy for the kind of rumpled nights that once used to leave her blissed out and bathed in sweat as dawn broke.

On the other hand, their lovemaking was in some ways sweeter. Less passionate perhaps, if passion was equated with urgency, but more satisfying.

In the beginning, when they were just starting out, sex was like a race to slake a gut-twisting thirst. Now when they made love, it was more than just sex, it was the physical rendering of their union. And part of her could not now imagine making love to anyone else. She was too familiar with Tim’s body , with how it worked with hers.

But sometimes she yearned for the frisson of new sex. Sex that was not part of a package, that could exist on its own, raw lust devoid of emotion.

As she lay her head down again on the slightly damp pillow, she wondered if for the first time she would have to be faithful actively. Maybe five years was the limit for a marriage to survive on love alone. Now it would take work to stay together.

She would have to defend her virtue rather than just assume its presence. Familiarity had loosened the bonds of love and she would have to keep her guard up. If the flesh was weak, there were also question marks over her spirit.

She was up early to phone her Paris office about the theft of her mobile phone. After breakfast, she headed out into the churning city to do her interviews. Her driver Sam launched into a tale of how he had once helped a businessman smuggle diamonds out of the country in the soles of his shoes.

She made appropriately admiring noises but her mind was elsewhere as the car crawled through strangled streets where beggars, pedestrians, ramshackle buses and carts jostled for space among the gaping potholes.

She had half hoped to see Shaun at breakfast. They had made no such arrangement but she thought she might take it as a sign if he was sitting in the concrete-walled dim breakfast room.

Like when she was young and used traffic lights as fortune tellers, silently whispering “he loves me, he loves me not” over and over as she waited for the lights to change. If green lit up on “he’ll call”, she would feel ludicrously relieved.

It never mattered that most of the time the lights predicted the wrong result. They remained her simple crutch in times of uncertainty and even now, she found herself chanting questions like mantras as she sat in her car waiting for the change from red to green at the few traffic lights.

But Shaun was not in the breakfast room. She thought of calling his room from the front desk to thank him for dinner but an irate group of men with shiny fake crocodile skin briefcases were berating the lone receptionist, who met their criticism with a heavy-lidded look of total indifference.

After her first two interviews, Nina rattled back to the hotel.

“Madame, please.” The same receptionist beckoned her over and slid a piece of paper across the desk. Nina felt excited, and stupid for it. But the note was not from him.

“Please call the Chronicle in Paris.” She asked for a line and waited for the call to be put through, lighting a cigarette and idly watching the handful of girls on the make in the lobby. Compared to their ostentatious outfits and gold jewellery, she looked shabby in her faded jeans and sweat-stained white shirt.

She studied her reflection in the vast mirrors near the revolving door. She had lost weight again, and was positively skinny. Her face looked tired, her brown eyes ringed with dark patches. She pulled a stray curl back into the careless mound on top of her head. The unruly blonde curls might be natural but they could do with some serious help right now, she thought.

“Hi Nina.” The line was appalling but she could just make out the clipped Scottish accent of Tony Richards, the assignments editor.

“Listen, all hell’s just broken out in Monrovia. It looks like the rebels have finally decided to go for it. They’re shelling the city, lots of dead. The president’s holed up in his mansion at least we think so … but anyway, wondered if you might be up to go. I know it’s more newsy than we usually do but it will make great copy. Looks like this could be the final push. You interested?”

Nina’s mind raced. Of course, she was interested. Liberia was one of her favourite stomping grounds. She had been three times in the past year, covering the slow attrition of civil war as fighting sparked in remote forests and the country sank into stultifying ruin.

“Is the airport still open?” she asked.

“As far as we know. And there should be a flight from Freetown at 4 p.m. Glenn Philips is already in Monrovia and he’s got an extra flak jacket, a satphone and a bunch of other stuff.”

“Sounds good. Listen, let me get my shit together, find out a few things and call me back in 15 minutes.”

Nina hung up and raced upstairs. This was a break. Liberia was a mad, dangerous place of ruins and wrecked lives where death was an incident not an event. So much blood had already been spilt that it had become a banality.

But she liked the people, their unquenchable hope, their will to survive, their angry criticism of the warlords.

She didn’t have much time. She picked up the phone, and tucked it under her ear as she began to pack up her notebooks and computer.

Two hours later, she was driving into Freetown airport, past the giant sign reading “Welcome to Sierra Leone. If you cannot help us, please do not corrupt us.”

She had managed to reach Tim from the hotel. He was already at home, shattered and demoralised as always after a trip.

“Monrovia? Today? Is it safe? CNN is saying the rebels are shelling the capital. Are you sure you can get in?”

“Yes, the fighting is on the west side of town, so the road to the airport is still OK,” she said. “You know Glenn, the photographer, he’s meeting me at the airport and we’ll drive in together. Should be fine.”

“OK, well, take care. I really miss you baby. Get back soon yeah?” His voice was sad, the slight lilt of his Cork accent more pronounced.

“I will darling,” she said, feeling a rush of love. “Any chance you might join me? Your guys must need reinforcement with all the refugees pouring in?”

“Not sure yet. I’ve got to go and meet with the rest of the gang later. But first I’m going for a swim. It’s bloody hot. And that desert really takes it out of you.”

“OK love, I’ll call tonight. Give Casper a kiss from me,” she said and then he was gone.

She had been looking forward to seeing Tim again but it wasn’t the first time a sudden call had changed their plans.

Now, in the cold light of day after her chat with him, she couldn’t believe her anguish of the night before. Of course she loved her husband. She would never betray him. She knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she did. She must have been temporarily insane to think otherwise.

There was a palpable air of excitement around the check-in desk for the flight to Liberia. Four slightly bedraggled men stood near a pile of chunky silver and black boxes. One carried a video camera, another was talking into a mobile phone. They wore the self-conscious insouciance of journalists heading out to cover a big story.

The man on the mobile phone spotted Nina and waved her over, snapping his phone shut with panache.

“Nina darling, how wonderful to see you. Are you coming along on this jaunt too?”

It was Peter Hammond, the regional correspondent for one of the big British TV channels. A short and stocky man with the start of a beer gut, curly black hair and an almost foppish elegance which belied the toughness beneath his deliberately camp exterior.

Peter was based in Johannesburg but Nina had seen a lot of him over the past year. He would pop up in Abidjan periodically, with his crisp shirts, thin Indian cigarettes and seen-it-all irony that she enjoyed.

She kissed him twice and grinned. “Looks like it. Is the flight still leaving or has the ruckus reached the airport?” she asked.

“No, the airport is still open. Seems they are still shelling Monrovia but you know these guys. Couldn’t organise the proverbial in a brewery. Missing all the obvious military targets and hitting schools and churches so far. In any case, it seems to have died down in the last hour or so, so London tells me. Anyway, enough about that. What are you doing in Freetown?”

As Nina filled him in, she looked around, noticing another obvious group of journalists huddled in the far corner of the steamy hall, looking moody and French.

Peter had flown in from Abidjan that morning on the hunt for a way into Monrovia.

“This must be the only way into today” Nina said, as more journalists arrived dragging cases of equipment and sweeping the terminal with the hunted looks of people in a hurry and under pressure.

Soon their corner of the building was shrouded in cigarette smoke and zinging with a kind of electric tension as mobile phones rang incessantly. The check-in took forever and then finally they were outside, walking across the sticky asphalt to the banged-up Turpolev that would fly them to West Africa’s oldest battlefield.

The crew was Russian – silent men who looked like this was very probably just their day job and a dull one at that.

Suddenly exhausted, Nina collapsed into one of the sagging seats near three stacked crates of live chickens at the front of the plane. Peter was still on the runway, arguing fiercely with the crew about the loading of his equipment.

She appreciated the brief solitude, time to gather her thoughts before arriving in Monrovia’s maelstrom. It was a city that paralysed at the best of times – the heat, the torrential rain, the sheer number of people crammed into the rickety, destroyed buildings. Now it would be mind-blowing.

Her excitement blended with fear. You just never knew what could happen in these situations. She hoped ….

“May I?” Nina looked up.

It was Shaun, his arms full of cameras his face split by a delighted grin.

Even then, she knew this to be a moment that would change her life. The hand of fate was so obvious that for years afterwards she felt the numbing weight of inevitability whenever she thought about what had happened.

She motioned him into the seat beside her, her heart pounding. The fantasy, or whatever you wanted to call it, had been given a second wind. Instead of leaving him and the awkward questions he represented behind, she was helping him stash his canvas bag under the seat.

Instead of slipping out of her life, he was here, squeezing his long frame into the dirty, yellow seat beside her, smiling and chatting and terrifying her.