has to breathe through her shirt. She seems to be moving faster than Lovemore, her feet keeps connecting with his hands. Of course he is weaker: he was beaten and tortured before being left to languish in that nightmarish cell.
They have the Leatherman, her phone, her money belt and wallet, her cigarettes and lighter. It isn't much. Veronica turns on the phone only once while downclimbing, after half an hour, when the voices above are no longer audible. Green light blooms from its screen, enough to illuminate a narrow shaft continuing both up and down without any visible end. The sight is so horrifying she immediately switches the phone off and has to bite her lip until it bleeds to forestall another panic attack.
Veronica decides not to think about where she is, or about the future, near or distant. The present is all that matters, and in it she is climbing down. The future does not exist.
It gets steadily warmer as they descend, and her sweat-soaked hands begin to slip off the rocks. She is already desperately thirsty. At least there is a draft, hot air rising past them. She can't imagine where that air is coming from.
A small eternity seems to pass before Lovemore grunts, "Floor."
She follows him down to a flat surface that seems unnatural after their long descent. Lovemore is doubled over, panting for breath. This worries Veronica more than she lets on. Going down is easy compared to climbing up, and they might have descended as much as a kilometre below ground level. At least they haven't been intercepted.
She checks her phone. Nine PM. Somewhere up above, night has fallen. They have thirty-six hours to try to avert a bloody civil war, and all they've succeeded in doing is going deeper into this mine with no idea how to get out. It's not going to happen, Veronica realizes, they're not going to be able to get the word out and save Mugabe, she doesn't even know who to call. She and Lovemore have to focus on saving themselves.
The phone's LCD seems incredibly bright in the absolute darkness of the mine. Its pale green glow illuminates another corridor with inset rail tracks, almost exactly like the level above. Veronica supposes there isn't a whole lot of room for originality in mine design.
"No signal?" Lovemore asks, with the ghost of a smile.
"Very funny."
Veronica realizes she can look around at this corridor's low ceiling and narrow walls with something like equilibrium. Maybe her body has run out of the enzymes and chemicals required to manufacture a panic attack. Maybe this mine has served as involuntary exposure therapy. After the ventilation shaft this tight corridor seems almost spacious.
Lovemore's face and body are streaked with blood. He is wider and thicker than her, was less able to keep clear of the sharp stones of the shaft walls. None of the cuts are serious, but they worry her all the same, the opening and descent of the shaft seem to have consumed all of his strength reserves, he looks worryingly frail and feeble.
"What do we do now?" she asks, and her voice is more frightened than she had intended.
Lovemore says, "We must walk into the wind."
She blinks. "But - no, the wind's coming from below. We have to go up now."
"I know something about mines. My father was a miner. They are built with ventilation circuits. As we go deeper, it becomes hotter." She nods, wondering how deep they are right now, how close to the Earth's molten mantle. "Hot air rises, any schoolboy will tell you. This creates a pressure imbalance that brings cooler air down from somewhere else, somewhere outside. All we must do is keep walking into the wind, to the source of that air."
It sounds good. As long as their escape isn't discovered, or the air doesn't get unbreathable, or the heat unbearable, or the climb up to the surface isn't too much for them, or the exit isn't blocked. There are so many ways to fail. But at least they have a plan.
"How are you feeling?" she asks.
She sees his teeth but can't tell if he's smiling or grimacing. "I will be fine."
Veronica isn't at all sure of that. "Let's rest a little longer."
"We have no time."
"Five minutes won't make any difference."
"With this air perhaps it will."
He has a point. The air is now so thick and hot it feels like breathing through a cigarette. If they stay too long at this level oxygen deprivation might become