The Mission Song (33 page)

Grace takes back her phone, and her voice is as scathing as Hannah’s. ‘There’s a fine café halfway down the road to Bognor. Coaches Welcome. Me and Hannah, we did a deal with this fine café. Thirty chicken nuggets, complimentary meals for the carers and the driver. One soft drink per person. One hundred pounds. Is that fair?’

‘Very fair, Grace. Very reasonable, by the sound of it.’

‘The driver, he’s been takin’ groups to that fine café for like fifteen years. School kids, all kinds of kids. Except they’re white. When the proprietor realised ours were goin’ to be black, he remembered he had a new policy. “It’s the pensioners,” he tells us. “They come for the quiet, see. That’s why we don’t take no kids except white ones.” ’

‘You know what, Salvo?’ Hannah is back, this time in fighting mood.

‘What do I know, my love?’

‘Maybe Congo should invade Bognor.’

I laugh, she laughs. Should I tell her of my brilliant plan and risk causing her more anxiety, or keep it for later? Keep it, I tell myself. With Baptiste to worry about, she has enough on her plate already.

My brilliant plan requires paperwork.

For five hours, with no more to sustain me than a chunk of cold lasagne, I go to work on my laptop. Assisted by choice passages from my tapes and notepads which I render where necessary into English, plus an assortment of Philip’s verbatims over the sat-phone, I assemble a damning exposé of the plot that Mr Anderson assured me was in the best interests of our country. Rejecting the traditional
Dear Mr Anderson
, I open my attack with:
Knowing you as I do to be a man of honour and integrity
. Knowing him also to be a slow reader as well as a meticulous one, with views on plain English, I confine myself to twenty carefully compiled pages, which include as a tailpiece an account of the illegal break-in at Norfolk Mansions. In a final flourish I entitle my completed opus
J’Accuse!
after Émile Zola’s spirited defence of Colonel Dreyfus, a saga of moral tenacity beloved of Brother Michael. I make a floppy and hasten downstairs to Mrs Hakim, a computer buff. With the stolen tapes and notepads returned to their hiding place behind our flimsy wardrobe, and my copy of
J’Accuse!
with them, and the floppy for security reasons discreetly smashed and consigned to Mrs Hakim’s kitchen bin, I turn on the six o’clock news and am pleased to establish that there are still no unsettling reports of a mad
zebra
on the run.

I was not impressed by the operational arrangements for our rendezvous with Baptiste, but then neither did I expect to be. Since he refused to reveal his current address, he and Hannah had agreed over my head that she would bring me to Rico’s Coffee Parlour in Fleet Street at ten-thirty that night. From there, a no-name comrade-in-arms would conduct us to a no-name meeting-point. My first thought was for the tapes and notepads. To take them with me or leave them in their hiding place? I could not envisage handing them to Baptiste on first acquaintance, but out of loyalty to Hannah I knew I must take them with me.

Given her morning’s setback and her afternoon’s exertions, I expected to find her in sombre mood but such, to my relief, was not the case. The immediate cause of her good spirits was Noah, with whom she had conducted a lengthy conversation only an hour previously. As usual she had first spoken to her aunt in case there was worrying news ahead, but her aunt had said, ‘Let him tell you himself, Hannah,’ and put him on the line.

‘He is third boy in his class, Salvo, imagine,’ she explained, all aglow. ‘We spoke English together and his English is really coming on, I was amazed. And yesterday his school football team won the Kampala under-tens and Noah nearly scored a goal.’

I was sharing her euphoria when a mauve BMW with rap music pouring out of every open window screeched to a halt in the street outside. The driver wore dark glasses and a pointed beard like Dieudonné’s. The burly African man beside him reminded me of Franco. We jumped aboard, the driver slammed his foot down. With erratic twists, we raced southward with precious little regard to traffic lights or bus lanes. We bumped across a pot-holed industrial wasteland of tyre dumps, and swerved to avoid a trio of kids stacked on a wheelchair who came careering out of a side turning with their arms out like acrobats. We pulled up and the driver shouted, ‘
Now
.’ The BMW made a three-point turn and roared away, leaving us standing in a reeking cobbled alley. Above the Victorian chimneys, giant cranes like giraffes peered down at us from the orange night sky. Two African men sauntered towards us. The taller wore a silky frock-coat and a lot of gold.

‘This the guy with no name?’ he demanded of Hannah in Congolese Swahili.

You speak English only, Salvo
, she had warned me.
Anyone who speaks our languages is too interesting
. In return, I had extracted an agreement from her that, for the purposes of our interview, we were acquaintances not lovers. Her involvement in these events was of my own making. I was determined to keep her distant from them wherever possible.

‘What’s in the bag?’ the shorter man asked, also in Swahili.

‘It’s private for Baptiste,’ Hannah retorted.

The taller man advanced on me and with slender fingers sampled the weight and contents of my shoulder-bag, but didn’t open it. With his colleague bringing up the rear, we followed him up a stone staircase into the house, to be greeted by more rap music. In a neon-lit café, elderly Africans in hats were watching a Congolese band playing its heart out on an industrial-sized plasma television screen. The men were drinking beer, the women juice. At separate tables, boys in hoods talked head to head. We climbed a staircase and entered a parlour of chintz sofas, flock wallpaper and rugs of nylon leopard skin. On the wall hung a photograph of an African family in Sunday best. The mother and father stood at the centre, their seven children in descending sizes to either side of them. We sat down, Hannah on the sofa, I on a chair opposite her. The tall man hovered at the door, tapping his foot to the beat of the music from the café beneath.

‘You want a soft drink or something? Coke or something?’

I shook my head.

‘Her?’

A quiet car was pulling up in the street outside. We heard the double clunk of an expensive car door opening and closing, and footsteps coming up the stairs. Baptiste was a Haj without the grace. He was sleek, hollow-featured and long-limbed. He was designer-dressed in Ray-Ban sunglasses, buckskin jacket, gold necklaces and Texan boots embroidered with cowboy hats. There was an air of the unreal about him, as if not only the clothes but the body inside them had been newly bought. He wore a gold Rolex on his right wrist. On catching sight of him, Hannah leaped to her feet in joy and cried his name. Without answering, he pulled off his jacket, slung it over a chair, and murmured, ‘Blow,’ to our guide, who vanished down the stairs. He placed himself pelvis forward and feet astride and held out his hands, inviting Hannah to embrace him. Which after a moment’s puzzlement she did, then broke out laughing.

‘Whatever did America do to you, Baptiste?’ she protested, in the English we had agreed upon. ‘You are so—’ she hunted for the word—‘so
rich
suddenly!’

To which, still without a word, he kissed her in what I considered an excessively proprietorial manner, left cheek, right cheek, then her left cheek a second time while he took the measure of me.

Hannah had resumed her place on the sofa. I sat opposite her, my shoulder-bag at my side. Baptiste, more relaxed than either of us, had slumped himself in a brocade armchair with his knees spread towards Hannah, as if proposing to enfold her between them.

‘So what’s the headache?’ he demanded, thumbs Blair-Bush style jammed into his Gucci belt.

I proceeded cautiously, fully conscious that my first duty was to prepare him for the shock I was about to inflict on him. As gently as I could—and in hindsight, I admit, with a touch of Anderson-like verbosity—I advised him that what I had to tell him was likely to upset certain loyalties he had, and certain expectations regarding a charismatic and respected political figure on the Congolese scene.

‘You talking about the Mwangaza?’

‘I’m afraid I am,’ I agreed sadly.

I took no pleasure in bringing him bad news, I said, but I had made a promise to an unnamed person of my acquaintance, and must now discharge it. This was the fictional character that Hannah and I, after much debate, had agreed upon. I will add that there are few things I enjoy less than talking to dark glasses. In extreme cases, I have been known to request my clients to remove them on the grounds that they curtail my powers of communication. But for Hannah’s sake I decided to grin and bear it.

‘Man person? Woman person? What kind of fucking person?’ he demanded.

‘I’m afraid that’s not something I’m prepared to divulge,’ I retorted, grateful for this early opportunity to print my mark on the proceedings. ‘Let’s call him
he
for simplicity’s sake,’ I added, as a conciliatory afterthought. ‘And this
friend
of mine, who is totally trustworthy and honourable in my opinion, is engaged in highly confidential government work.’

‘
British
fucking government?’—with a sneer on
British
which coupled with the Ray-Bans and the American accent might have raised my hackles, were he not a valued friend of Hannah’s.

‘My friend’s
duties
,’ I resumed, ‘provide him with regular access to signals and other forms of communication passing between African nations and the European entities that they are in touch with.’

‘Who the fuck’s entity? You mean governments or what?’

‘Not
necessarily
a government, Baptiste. Not all entities are nations. Many are more powerful and less accountable than nations. Also wealthier.’

I glanced to Hannah for encouragement but she had closed her eyes as if praying.

‘And what this friend of mine has told me—in total confidence, after much agonising,’ I continued, deciding to come straight to the point, ‘is that a secret meeting recently took place on an island somewhere in the North Sea’—I allowed a pause for this to sink in—‘between your Mwangaza—I’m sorry to have to tell you this—and the representatives of certain East Congolese militias’—I was watching the lower half of his face for signs of dawning apprehension, but the most I got was a barely perceptible straightening of the lips—‘and
other
representatives of an offshore anonymous syndicate of international investors. At this same conference it was agreed that they would jointly mount, with the assistance of Western and African mercenaries, a military coup against Kivu.’ I again waited for some hint of a reaction, but in vain. ‘A covert coup. Deniable. Using the local militias that they have done a deal with. Units of the Mai Mai forming one such militia, the Banyamulenge another.’

Instinct having advised me to keep Haj and Luc out of the equation, I once more glanced at Baptiste to see how he was taking it. His Ray-Bans, so far as I could determine, were beamed on Hannah’s bosom.

‘The
ostensible
purpose of the operation,’ I pressed on more loudly, ‘is to create an inclusive, united, democratic Kivu, north and south. However, the
actual
purpose is somewhat different. It’s to milk the Eastern Congo of all minerals the Syndicate can get its hands on, including large stockpiles of coltan, thereby notching up untold millions for the investors, and absolutely nothing for the people of Kivu.’

No movement of the head, no change in the direction of the Ray-Bans.

‘The people will be robbed. Ripped off, as per usual,’ I protested, feeling by now that I was talking to no one but myself. ‘It’s the oldest story. Carpetbagging by another name.’ I had kept back my trump card till last. ‘And Kinshasa is in on the plot. Kinshasa will turn a blind eye provided it gets a piece of the action, which in this case means the People’s Portion. All of it.’

From upstairs a child screamed and was soothed. Hannah gave a remote smile, but it was for the child, not for me. Baptiste’s blacked-out expression had not altered by a quaver and his impassivity was by now having a seriously retarding effect on my narrative powers.