Presbyter Iohannes.
He gripped the token tighter.
It cannot be.
Though the name was in Latin, Sheppard knew this particular gold coin had not been minted by any Roman legion. Nor had the gold been mined by the forces of King Solomon. Instead, what was written here hinted at another story, one as fanciful as those other tales.
“Prester John,” he mumbled, translating the Latin.
During his theological studies, he had learned of the formidable Christian priest-king of Africa. According to accounts dating back to the twelfth century, Prester John had ruled ancient Ethiopia for close to a century. He was said to be a descendant of Balthazar, the black Magi, one of the trio of kings who had visited the Christ child in His manger. Prester John’s kingdom was believed to be one of astronomical wealth and secret knowledge. His legend was even tied to the Fountain of Youth and to the lost Ark of the Covenant. For many centuries, European rulers had sought out this illustrious personage. They sent forth emissaries, many of whom vanished into the jungle and never returned. Even Shakespeare mentioned this lost African patriarch in his play Much Ado About Nothing.
However, most historians of today dismissed this tale of a black Christian king who ruled over a vast swath of Africa as mere myth.
Sheppard stared down at the name written in gold. He wanted to discount what he held as some bit of fakery. Still, as the son of a slave, he could not. Instead, he felt a shiver of a kinship to this legend, to another black Christian from centuries earlier.
Could there be some truth behind all those stories?
While the promise of gold might have lured Captain Deprez into the forest, Sheppard could not dismiss his own longing—not for riches, but for the history hinted at by this coin.
He lowered the token and faced M’lumba. “How long have Deprez and the others been gone?”
M’lumba shook his head. “Twelve days. They take twenty men.” A deep sneer of anger showed sharp teeth. “And my brother, Nzare. I tell him not to go. But Capitaine make him go.”
Sheppard sensed that here was the root of the cannibal’s ire—which offered an opportunity. “Then let us make an mkataba. A pact between you and me.”
M’lumba’s hairless brows bunched warily. “Nini mkataba?”
Sheppard placed a palm atop his shirt, over his heart. “I will travel to Mfupa Ufalme and fetch your brother back to you—but only if you swear that you and your men will remain here and go no farther into Kuba lands.”
M’lumba stared across the ruins of the village, contemplating this offer.
“Give me three weeks,” Sheppard pleaded.
M’lumba’s scowl only deepened.
Sheppard waited stiffly for a response. If nothing else, those weeks would allow time for the villagers in the Kuba territory to evacuate and hide themselves within the forests. He prayed such a gambit might protect those fifty thousand souls from the barbarity on display here.
M’lumba finally held up three fingers. “Tatu weeks. We will stay.” He stared at the sprawl of bodies. “Then I will get hungry again.”
Sheppard hid a shudder of revulsion at the threat in those last words. He pictured the well-kept streets of the Kuba’s royal village, lined by life-sized statues of former kings, echoing with the laughter of women and children. He imagined those happy sounds replaced by screams, the clean avenues awash in a tide of blood.
He stared past the Kasai River to the dark jungle beyond. He did not know if there was a lost gold mine out there. He doubted there was even any truth to what was written in Latin on the coin. And he definitely did not believe in any ancient curses rooted in a Kingdom of Bones.
Instead, the smoky stench of burned flesh reminded him of one certainty.
I must not fail.
First
1
April 23, 7:23 A.M. CAT
Tshopo Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
A sharp sting woke Charlotte Girard to the harsh reality of her situation. She had been dreaming of swimming naked in the bracingly cold pool at her family’s country estate on the French Riviera. She slapped at her neck and sat up abruptly inside the hot, humid tent. The air stifled and swamped. Another sting struck the back of her other hand. Startled, she shook her arm, tangling it in the gauzy mosquito netting around the cot.
She cursed in French and fought her limb free. She stared down at the culprit, expecting to see one of the biting black flies that plagued the refugee camp. Instead, a red-black ant—as long as her thumbnail—perched on her wrist. Its mandibles had latched deep into her flesh.
Aghast, she knocked it away and sent the insect flying into the netting, where it scrabbled up the gauze. With her heart pounding, she pushed through the drape around her cot. Lines of crawling ants traced the dormitory tent’s floor and zigzagged up the walls.
Where had they all come from?
She retrieved her sandals and donned them, knocking loose a few stray ants. She then tiptoed across the flowing map on the floor. Thankfully, she was already dressed in blue scrubs and a white vest.
She caught a peek at herself in a standing mirror, momentarily shocked by her appearance. She looked a decade older than her late twenties. She had tied her ebony hair into an efficient ponytail, but it hung askew from sleeping on it. Her eyes were still puffy and shadowed by exhaustion. Her complexion was peeling from days under the sun. Her dermatologist back in Montmartre would be aghast, but out here in the bush, she had no time for niceties like expensive sunscreens and moisturizers.
Last night, well past midnight, she had dropped, exhausted, onto her cot. She was the youngest of the four-member medical team from Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, at the camp. They were severely shorthanded with more refugees still pouring into the village camp as the jungles to the east continued to flood from the near-constant rain.
Eight days ago, she had been airlifted here via helicopter from the city of Kisangani, where she had been assisting UNICEF with their Healthy Villages program. Once here, she had quickly been overwhelmed. She had only finished her residency in pediatrics at USPC—Université Sorbonne-Paris-Cité—two years ago and had decided to give something back by applying for a one-year stint with MSF. At the time, her plan had seemed like a grand adventure, one she was determined to experience before settling into a routine at some clinic or hospital. Plus, she had spent part of her childhood in the neighboring Republic of Congo, at its capital of Brazzaville. Ever since then, she had always wanted to return to these jungles. Unfortunately, the passage of years had colored her perspective of the Congo region. It certainly had not prepared her for the hardships out in the rural bush.
Like the fact that everything here tried to eat, sting, poison, or swindle you.
She crossed to the dormitory tent flap and shouldered through to the morning’s cloudy sunlight. She squinted at the brightness and shadowed her eyes with a hand. The village’s thatched huts and tin-roofed shacks spread to her right. A good portion of the homes had already been swept away by the neighboring storm-swollen Tshopo River. To her left, a sprawl of tents and makeshift lean-tos spread far into the forest, occupied by refugees from other villages who had been forced to flee the rising waters.
And more people continued to flock here every day, overwhelming the area.
The smoke from a score of campfires did little to push back the smell of raw sewage. Cholera cases were already climbing, and the medical team was running low on fluids and doxycycline. Only yesterday, she had treated a dozen malaria cases, too.