Flawless (33 page)

This trip was very different.

Unbeknownst to Scarlett, about a month ago he’d read one of the books she’d given him. Written by a boy soldier from Sierra Leone, it painted a horrifically vivid picture of the country’s civil war through the eyes of a child. Though he’d die rather than admit it to Scarlett, the book had affected Jake deeply. He realized with a sharp pang of remorse that the last
time he’d been here, living it up with Danny at some warlord’s pad, this kid had been less than a hundred miles away, terrified and alone in the jungle, watching his mum and dad being sliced to pieces by some machete-wielding madman. He also realized that there was every chance that this same madman, or at least his bosses, controlled the very diamond mines from which he was buying ice to sell to the spoiled housewives of Beverly Hills.

Scarlett had been ramming this shit down his throat for so long now he’d learned to switch it off completely, dismissing her impassioned lectures as so much irritating white noise. But this boy’s stark, honestly written book had jolted him out of his stupor. Jake was no saint, he knew that—not like Magnus the holier-than-thou civil rights lawyer. He was quite happy ripping off clients with more money than sense, or doing the dirty with their wives and girlfriends when he thought he could get away with it. But the atrocities that had gone on here and were still going on in countless other diamond-producing parts of Africa? That shit was of a whole different order. Suddenly the well-worn arguments he’d trotted out to Scarlett about the blacks bringing it on themselves or the damage that boycotting conflict diamonds would do to African economies sounded laughably hollow.

What the fuck was this Katenge playing at?

“Mr. Meyer?” A pretty, very dark-skinned woman in a shift dress and sandals emerged from the director’s office and held out her hand. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Doctor Katenge.”

“Hi. You’re…? Wow.” He stumbled to his feet. “Thank you for seeing me.”

She laughed at his confusion. “You were expecting a man? Or someone older?”

“Both, actually,” he admitted. “They say it’s a sign of aging when you start to think that doctors and policemen look young. I must be getting up there.”

Dr. Katenge smiled. “Nonsense. You’re in the prime of your life, Mr. Meyer. I’ve had fifteen-year-olds turn up on my doorstep looking older than you do.”

Knowing a little about what they might have been through, Jake wasn’t surprised. He’d heard about the St. Catherine’s orphanage through a friend in New York, another transplanted North London Jew who was heavily involved in fund-raising for a charity called Hope for Children. At first the friend had thought Jake was joking.

“This is a joke, right? You and Danny wanna start giving something back to Africa? Give me a break!”

“Not Danny,” said Jake, mildly offended that the idea he might choose to do something selfless provoked such instant disbelief and hilarity among his friends. “He’s got enough on his plate right now. Just me.”

“Blimey, you are serious,” said the friend. “What do you want to know?”

Jake wasn’t sure. Part of him felt foolish. He’d read one book, and now he wanted to wade in like the Lone Ranger and start changing things? After telling Scarlett
she
was naive?

“I’d like to find a small charity, something that isn’t already funded by one of the big Save Africa foundations, that works with kids from the diamond-mining areas.”

“I can give you a thousand,” said the friend ruefully. “They all need cash. Want to narrow it down any more?”

“A group that isn’t run by a muppet,” said Jake. “Or some greedy bastard with his hand in the cash register.”

“Ah, well, that’s a little tougher,” admitted the friend. “It’s pretty much every man for himself out there. I mean, some of the NGOs do good work, but they all take bribes. It’s part of the culture.”

“Screw the culture,” said Jake. “I’m buggered if I’m gonna line the pockets of those fuckers. I want to deal with someone I can trust.”

“All right,” said the friend. “Give me a few days. I’ll dig up some names and get back to you.”

When he heard about St. Catherine’s, a small, church-run orphanage on the outskirts of Freetown that took in teenage girls who’d been raped by the rebels and their unwanted, ostracized babies, Jake thought it sounded like a good place to start. Following Dr. Katenge through the gaudily painted corridors, peering into rooms stuffed with tatty, broken toys and noisily happy toddlers, he was confirmed in this impression.

“How many children do you have here?”

“Right now, twenty-eight,” said the doctor, scooping a lost little girl into her arms without breaking stride and depositing her in another overcrowded nursery room two doors down. “We have had as many as forty. That’s not including the mothers, of course, most of whom are children themselves.”

Turning down a second, smaller corridor, she led him into a classroom with two rows of old-fashioned desks and a teacher, a white man in his twenties, standing at a blackboard at the front. Each desk was occupied by a smiling black girl—some of them were heartbreakingly young, not more than eleven, Jake guessed—all of whom swiveled around to stare at this unexpected, not to mention handsome, visitor.

“Carry on, Mr. Harris,” said Dr. Katenge. “We’re not staying.”

“What are they learning?” asked Jake, wiping the sweat off his forehead as they continued the tour. It was stiflingly hot.

“Not much.” Dr. Katenge sighed. “Their teacher is a volunteer, on loan to us from UNICEF, but he only comes for two hours, twice a week. Very few of the girls can read or write; only half speak English. He’s trying to give them basic instruction in child care and health and safety—how to sterilize a bottle, what to do if their baby has a fever, contraceptive advice. One or two will learn other skills, to help give them a chance of a job once they leave us. We have a computer, so they can practice typing.”

“Only one?” said Jake, trying not to look as shocked as he felt. Passing the kitchen and dormitories, he saw that the girls were sleeping on rush mats on the floor and living off maize meal and chicken scraps. He couldn’t understand why they all looked so happy.

“We’re lucky to have that,” said Dr. Katenge. “To be honest with you, Mr. Meyer, it’s not a priority. Most of these girls are from rural communities—villages where the RUF arrived one day, maiming and killing and raping—which are now slowly rebuilding.”

Jake wondered guiltily whether his specific diamonds had contributed to this death and destruction, but said nothing.

“Unfortunately, in Muslim culture there is no place for these children born of rape, or their mothers,” said Dr. Katenge. “They’re considered an embarrassment, a shameful reminder of a past that everybody in Sierra Leone wants to forget.”

They were back in her office now, a simple, whitewashed room with a desk, four filing cabinets, and a big hamper of children’s books and teddies stuffed in the corner. Dr. Katenge gestured for Jake to sit in the lone, fraying armchair while she brought her own chair around from the other side of the desk.

“Our main role is community liaison,” she told him. “We train counselors to go back to these villages. We talk to the grandmothers; they’re often the key. If we can get the grandmother to hold a child, just once, that’s often all it takes to forge a bond and break down some of the prejudices keeping these poor girls from their homes.”

Jake looked at her earnestly, uncomfortably conscious of his fifteen-thousand-dollar Rolex burning into his wrist like a brand.

“How can I help?” he asked humbly. “What do you need?”

Dr. Katenge smiled broadly, her straight, white teeth lighting up her pretty, open face. “Everything.”

Jake had never preferred black girls—even in the old days, he’d never taken advantage of the hookers on offer up at the
dealer’s mansion—but he thought he could make an exception for Dr. Katenge.

“Lots of the international diamond companies are giving money to Sierra Leone now, but it’s all for show. They want it to go toward something visible, something they can wave in front of their shareholders, like shiny new school buildings or libraries. They’re not interested in small, community projects like ours.”

For the first time, Jake detected a trace of bitterness in her gentle, patient voice.

“These girls don’t need a library, or even an education,” she murmured, shaking her head at the stupidity of the world. “They need their families back.”

“So, what can
I
do?” asked Jake. “I don’t have millions to give,” he added hastily, thinking of Danny’s disintegrating business and mounting divorce-attorney fees, “but I would like to help.”

“Air-conditioning for the center would cost about five thousand dollars,” she cut to the chase. “Counselors’ wages run to around the same, per year.”

“That’s all?” Jake looked amazed.

“That’s all,” she smiled. “We receive contraceptives free, but we could use more of everything else: antibiotics for the babies, paracetamol, whatever you can get. We need beds, sheets, toys, clothes for the kids. I could go on.”

“That’s OK,” said Jake, looking at his watch. He’d sell it as soon as he got back to the States. “I’ll get you the air-conditioning tomorrow. And I’ll wire you a year’s wages for two more counselors before the end of the month.”

Dr. Katenge looked at him quizzically, as if seeing him properly for the first time.

“Thank you,” she said, shaking his hand. “You’re a good man, Mr. Meyer.”

“Trust me, Dr. Katenge,” Jake laughed. “I’m not.”

She walked him out to the street, past a waiting room full of tired women, all hoping for a meal from the St. Catherine’s drop-in center.

“You know, the most important thing you can do for us,” she told Jake, as he climbed into his rented four-by-four, “is to spread the word in America. The American women who wear diamond rings from Sierra Leone on their fingers? They don’t know what’s happening here. If they knew, they’d help us. They’d help my girls.”

Jake thought about Julia Brookstein and her diamond-obsessed cronies and wasn’t so sure.

“Listen, there’s something I haven’t told you,” he said, his mouth dry with embarrassment. “I’m a diamond dealer myself. I’ve bought stones from here, in the past, from some pretty terrible people. So, if you don’t want my money—”

She stopped him, laying a hand on his arm.

“The past is the past,” she said gently. “We’re very grateful for your money, Mr. Meyer, believe me. Drive safely.”

Back in his room at the Cape Sierra, a complex of beach villas with the dubious reputation as the best hotel in Sierra Leone, Jake peeled off his sweaty clothes and showered before settling down on the bed to check his messages.

There were only four: two from Danny, wanting to know when Jake would be back with the diamonds and how much over the odds he’d had to pay to follow Scarlett’s strict new ethical guidelines, one from his mother, Minty, reminding him to take his malaria tablets, and one from the girl he’d been screwing on and off in LA, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was playing at, disappearing on her like that without so much as a phone call.

“I know it’s difficult, like, with Richard,” she said, her whiney, vacuous voice slicing into the dry, air-conditioned atmosphere
like a razor. “But I thought you and I had something special. Guess I was wrong.”

“Guess you were,” said Jake aloud, switching off his phone, but not before deleting her number from his address book. Silly cow. This always happened when he slept with a woman more than twice. They got clingy. He really must stick to his own rules next time.

Opening the minibar, he pulled out a warm Budweiser—nothing in the fridge was cold; the electricity must have gone off again while he was at the orphanage—and drank it, trying to think about the things he’d seen today and block out his disappointment that Scarlett hadn’t bothered to call.

It was her Jimmy Choo thing at the Chateau tonight. She’d done well, putting that together on such short notice. He ought to call, say congratulations, see how things had gone. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, knowing that Magnus would be there, hovering in the background like an overgrown weed, no doubt talking shit about him to Scarlett like he always did.

Recently his innate dislike of Magnus had blossomed into something more sinister, or at least more all-consuming. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he simply didn’t trust the guy. The self-satisfaction would have been bad enough on its own. But the way he had Scarlett running around after him like a puppy, the way he controlled every aspect of their relationship from the geography to the timing…it all smelled faintly fishy to Jake. An expert in infidelity himself, he knew the signs of a fellow cheater: the secrecy, the unpredictable flashes of romance, the righteous indignation when challenged. If Magnus were being faithful to Scarlett, he’d eat his hat. Of course, proving his suspicions was quite another matter.

Closing his eyes, he lay back against the pillow. Stupid bloody Magnus. Within minutes he was asleep, beer bottle still in hand, dreaming about the classroom at St. Catherine’s, machete-wielding rebels, and Scarlett, running naked through the garden of the Chateau Marmont.