It wasn’t Wednesday. It was Friday, at just after ten in the morning. I ripped the sheet off the bed and sat up. Then I set about trying to find how to disconnect myself from the feed.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Akuji, alarmed.

‘Leaving,’ I said. I had just over four hours to get to Udi.

XXI

XXI

It took me less than a second to realize my mistake. Our little chat had sharpened my mind but not my body, and I hadn’t made enough allowances. I had deliberately stepped onto the floor with my back facing him, calculating that my apparent helplessness would delay him for a fraction of a moment in reaching for the gun he would inevitably be carrying. As I landed, I raised my right foot so it was in front of my left kneecap, then fired the right edge of the foot out towards Akuji, aiming at his thigh.

I’d executed this manoeuvre hundreds of times, and Akuji was no match for it: he crashed into a table on wheels behind him before I’d even brought my foot to a stop. I immediately followed up with a two-finger hand to his left carotid, after which he fell to the floor with a permanent-sounding thud. But by then I was also falling, because my stomach had suddenly been engulfed by a wave of nausea so intense I thought I was going to pass out. I managed to turn back to the bed and caught hold of the iron bars that ran around it for a second or two, but the nausea was overwhelming and I started slipping to the floor, automatically hunching myself into the fetal position as I came into contact with the concrete. My ears started ringing, and grey blotches were floating in front of my eyes, so I took to slapping myself in the face to stave off unconsciousness.

‘Four hours,’ I said aloud, partly to remind myself of the deadline, partly just to get my body and brain back on speaking terms. It was down to the wire now, and I couldn’t afford to lose another minute. I couldn’t wake up with the Prime Minister dead and Anna having fled the country, never to be seen again. Which would be worse, I wondered: Nigeria becoming a Soviet state, or the Biafrans continuing to be slaughtered in a war they could never win? Wilson dead or alive?

‘Four hours.’

Akuji. You need to find him, make sure he’s out, get his gun. You need Akuji’s gun to get through this, so turn now, turn to your right . . .

If I’d had any voice then, I’d have screamed. I was practically on top of him: his eyes lolled obscenely, and blood was leaking from his mouth. He was out, all right, and would be for a while.