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Kneeling on the ground so he was on eye-level with the two of them. His eyes, already cold before, took on that same merciless look he had had when holding the guns to their heads. I shivered - partly with instinctive trepidation, but far more with anticipation. I couldn’t wait to have those dangerous eyes on me again.
‘My business,’ he told them, his voice coming straight from Antarctica, ‘is not your business. And yet you chose to interfere. Be thankful that I am leaving you alive. Others have not been so lucky.’
‘You bastardo!’ de Alvarez growled. ‘You will pay for this!’
‘I doubt it,’ Mr Ambrose retorted, letting his gaze wander over the officers. ‘I never pay for goods of substandard quality.’
‘You…!’
The officer didn’t get out anything more. He seemed to choke on his own indignation, and his nemesis tied up right next to him didn’t appear to fare any better.
‘I would advise you,’ Mr Ambrose continued as if they hadn’t spoken, ‘not to follow us. Where we are going, there is no place for people like you. The treasure is mine! All mine! And if my man Karim catches so much of a glimpse of any of you, he will not hesitate to use that metal instrument he is caressing so fondly. Do we understand each other?’
The two officers remained silent.
‘Adequate.’ Mr Ambrose rose to his feet. ‘I will have to hope that you use your heads and heed my warning. Oh, and I almost forgot-’
He reached into his pocket with one hand. When he drew it out again, he a held long, shining steel blade. De Alvarez and Silveira shrank back, for the first time since they had been disarmed real fear showing in their eyes.
‘Oh, don’t be afraid. This isn’t for you.’ Stepping up to a falling tree trunk nearby, Mr Ambrose placed the shiny dagger on top of it, and let it lie there. ‘Or I suppose it is, in a way. After all, we wouldn’t want you all to starve to death in the jungle, would we? No, I hope you die much more unpleasant deaths. So I am going to leave this here with you. Once we are gone, you may try to reach it. Whoever gets to it first, rebel or imperial, can cut his bond. And whoever is free first, with a knife in his hand…’
He let his gaze wander over his wide-eyed audience. Something much too cold to be a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth for a millisecond.
‘Well, I’m sure I won’t have to explain that part to you.’
Without another word, he turned, grabbed the reins of his horse and marched off into the jungle.
‘Come on, Karim, Mr Linton!’ he called. ‘Time to go and leave these gentlemen to their business!’
Something goes ‘Bang’ in the Night
We didn’t try the river trick again. Since it had not worked twice in a row now, it was clear that the Brazilians, imperialists and rebels both, had excellent trackers among them. Instead, we marched as hard and as fast as we could, and hoped that Mr Ambrose’s threats were enough to deter them. They certainly would have been if I’d been the one following.
Still…I did wonder why Mr Ambrose hadn’t employed a simpler method of preventing trouble. A method that, usually, he didn’t seem averse to using.
‘Why didn’t you do it?’ I demanded, once we were well out of hearing range of our enemies.
‘Do what, Mr Linton?’
‘Kill them, of course! You could have, after all, easily. They were bound and at your mercy, which we both know is not very considerable. So why did you spare them? You didn’t have any qualms about disposing of the pirates.’
‘I have business interests in Brazil. I didn’t think the Brazilian government would look kindly on my shooting one of its officers, even if that officer is a worthless, greedy worm.’
‘And the rebels? You could have shot the rebels.’
‘I could have.’ He gave me a look. The kind of look that Julius Caesar probably gave his slow-witted little centurions before he explained why he wanted to invade Gaul. ‘But if I leave them both alive, maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll kill each other.’
I remembered the gleaming blade Mr Ambrose had left behind at our former campsite, and the greedy gazes of the tied-up soldiers. If they did indeed kill each other, it would have little or nothing to do with luck.
We continued through the jungle, keeping up not quite as gruelling a pace as before, but still, it was pure torture for my poor legs. For hours upon hours filled with ceaseless marching, I craved nothing so much as a soft bed to lie on, and three pounds of solid chocolate to forget my aches - at least at first. After a few days, very slowly, a change set in. My legs ached less and less. My behind, which had felt like the dead weight of a mammoth dragging behind me, somehow got…lighter. My steps grew steadier. Only my craving for solid chocolate stayed. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as another craving.
‘Come here!’
‘You are my subordinate, Mr Linton! You cannot give orders to- mmmmph!’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed before,’ I whispered against his smooth lips, ‘I like breaking rules.’
‘You don’t say.’
