Two Hangmen, One Scaffold Book I: Baiting the Hangman

Chapter 16

145 C Chapter 16 oises from the rustic stairway from level 38 reached Binga and pulled him from his DRC war reflections. The six-man cooperative was coming up. His wristwatch said it was 9 pm. If he ascended that very moment, he would emerge any time during the day on 29 November. He had descended and would now ascend for his exaltation. Everything pointed to it. Although he was thousands of kilometres from Europe, never before had he felt within reach of grabbing the object of his longing. Excitement raced his imagination. He saw himself in the hurly bustle of Paris. A taxi whisked him down Rue de Rivoli and Rue Castiglione. He alighted at the Tuileries Gardens, entered the monumental garden through the splendid northern entrance and strolled across its breadth only to exit at the southern side and take another taxi to the Musée de I’Armee, to stare at the sculpture of the Napoleonic grenadier. This trip, seemingly aimless, was necessary for him to get a feel of Paris as he mingled with genuine tourists. It accorded him the opportunity to check if he wasn’t rousing suspicion with his movements. In the Army Museum, he would perform a disappearing act, just to test the juju on French soil. The next day he would go for the haul in the Musée du Louvre. After visiting the hermit in Chipinge, he would meticulously plan the practical details of the robbery and the safest way to transact the Mona Lisa with the New York dealer. Binga waited anxiously in the darkness, his eyes in the direction of the opening from the level below. His heart beat faster. On the spur of killing, the would-be victims could kill him instead. Figuring he was breathing rapidly, he held his breath. With his breathing steady, he would be more precise in his strikes and judgments. N 146 Minutes passed. Grunting with effort, one by one the men emerged onto Level 37 and beamed the darkness around them with their torches. Their boots crushed loose ore as they trudged away in single file in the opposite direction. They headed towards a planned staircase hewn in the earth’s crust. Binga studied the men like a predator eyeing a herd of wild beasts for a weakling. They were visibly tired. In old torn clothing, they appeared like victims of a mudslide recently dug up. He tried to think like the men. What security logistics would they employ in such a situation? A man he envisaged as the team’s giant walked in front, swinging a machete. Tall and stout, he struck Binga as a weightlifter; his neck was thick and his shoulders were broad and hefty. A man of average height, age and weight walked in the middle. Unlike the others, the man didn’t carry anything in his hands or on his back. Binga noticed it was the same man the team brought the ore to for pounding. The man definitely carried the gold. The other machete was in the hand of a tall man bringing the rear. Pillars eventually obstructed his sight of the men. Now and then bumping into pillars, Binga walked in the opposite direction until he reached the eastern wall of the underground vault. He groped his way to a burrowing resembling the mouth of a cave and entered it. Inside the opening, he switched on the torch on his forehead and looked up. The glare of the torch caught an amateur wire rope with wooden rungs about half a metre apart. Heaving up, rung by painful rung, the ladder perilously took him to the next level, which he reached ahead of the team. In the darkness he waited for their emergence onto Level 36 from the mine’s standard staircase. After about fifteen minutes, their torch beams appeared in the distance. The men spoke in low contented tones. From their primitive security formation, he was sure they had realised a weighty gold nugget. As they headed to the other traditional route to the next level, Binga made his way towards another 147 dangerous exit burrowing most diggers shunned. Unlike the descent, the way up taxed a climber and tortured his body. About nine hours later, when the sun was breaking from the eastern horizon, Binga was about to emerge from the earth’s crust through the mine’s breather. His biceps, triceps...