Part 9 (1/2)
The sevens are the guest suite. Eyes on Spider's Underground plan while I follow the delegates down the corridor and wait for one of them to delve for his key and unlock their front door clever Philip to entrust them with keys to increase their sense of security! Next comes the cannon-fire of feet on floorboards and the deluge of lavatory cisterns and taps. Vroom! Cras.h.!.+ et cetera. Now they're in the living room, pouring themselves soft drinks, honking, clanking, stretching and emitting nervous yawns.
Their suite is as familiar to me today as the four dreary walls that presently enclose me, although I never saw it and never will, any more than I saw the inside of the Mw.a.n.gaza's royal apartments, or Sam'sops room with its encrypted satellite phone for secure communications with the Syndicate and other persons unnamed or so Spider informed me in one of our quick-fire opening exchanges, for Spider like many sound-thieves was garrulous, and Welsh with it. Asked what tasks he had performed during his days in the Chat Room, he replied that he was not an earwig meaning linguist-transcriber but a humble b.u.g.g.e.r, as the old joke runs, an installer of clandestine devices for the greater joy of Mr. Anderson. But what he liked best was mayhem: ”Nothing like it in the world, Brian. Never happier than when I'm flat on my face in s.h.i.+t with ordnance coming in from all sides, and a nice piece of sixty-millimetre mortar up my a.r.s.e.”
The stolen sound is coming over loud and clear, down to the ice cubes bursting into the tumblers, and a coffee machine that generates more ba.s.s-sound than a symphony orchestra. Spider, however many times he's been through this before, is as tense as I am, but there are no last-minute hitches, nothing has blown or fused or died on him, it's all systems go.
Except it isn't, because we are in the delegates' living room and n.o.body's speaking. We have background, but no foreground. Grunts and groans, but not a word spoken. A crash, a belch, a squeak. Then far away the sound of someone muttering, but who, in whose ear, is anybody's guess. But still no real voices, or none to overhear. Has the Mw.a.n.gaza's oratory robbed them of their tongues?
I'm holding my breath. So's Spider. I'm lying mouse-still in Hannah's bed, pretending I'm not there while her friend Grace rattles the locked door, demanding to know why she didn't show up for tennis which Grace is teaching her, and Hannah who hates to deceive is pleading a headache.
Perhaps they're saying their prayers, Sam.
But who to, Brian?
Perhaps Sam doesn't know her Africa, for the answer could well be the obvious one: to the Christian G.o.d, or their versions of Him. The Banyamulenge so beloved of my dear late father are famous for talking to G.o.d at all times, directly or through their prophets. Dieudonne, I have no doubt, will be praying whenever he is moved to pray. And since the Mau Mau look to G.o.d for protection in battle and not a lot else, Franco's concerns are more likely to be fixed on how much is in it for him. A witch doctor will probably have provided him with leaves from a teke tree, squashed up and rubbed on his body so that he can ingest its power. Who Haj prays to is anyone's guess. Perhaps Luc, his ailing father.
Why has n.o.body spoken? And why amid the creaks and shuffles and background clatter that I expect to hear why do I sense a mounting tension in the room, as if somebody is holding a gun to our delegates' heads?
Speak, someone, for Heaven's sake!
I'm reasoning with them in my head, pleading with them. Look. All right. I understand. Back there in the conference room you felt overawed, patronised, resentful of the white faces round the table. The Mw.a.n.gaza talked down to you, but that's who he is, he's a pulpit man, they're all the same. Plus you've got your responsibilities to consider, I accept that too. Wives, clans, tribes, spirits, augurs, soothsayers, witch doctors, stuff we can't know about. But please, for the Alliance's sake, for Hannah's, for all our sakes speak!
Brian?
Sam.
I'm beginning to wonder whether we're the ones who should be praying.
The same awful thought has occurred to me: we're rumbled. One of our delegates I'm suspecting Haj has put a finger to his lips, and with his other hand the little smart-a.r.s.e has pointed at the walls or the telephone or the TV set, or rolled his bulging eyes at the chandelier. And what he's telling them is: ”Fellows, I've been out there, I know the wicked world, and believe you me, we're bugged.” If so, one of several things will now happen, depending on who the Subjects are or as Maxie had it, Targets and whether they're feeling conspiratorial or conspired against today. The best scenario has them saying, ”To h.e.l.l with it, let's go on talking anyway,” which is your average rational man's response, because like most of us he simply hasn't the time or patience to be bugged. But this isn't an average situation. And what is driving us both to the brink of dementia, me and Sam, is that our three delegates, if they would only have the wit to realise it, have a perfectly good remedy in their hands, which is why I'm sitting here waiting for them to use it.
Don't you wish you could just scream at them, Brian?
Yes, Sam, indeed I do, but a far worse fear is taking root in my mind. It's not Spider's microphones that have been rumbled: it's me, Salvo. My timely rescue by Philip didn't rescue me after all. By the time Franco fired his set speech at the wrong man in the wrong language, Haj had seen me do a double-take, which is what his long, goggle-eyed stares are all about. He saw me open my stupid mouth to reply, then shut it and try to look blank instead.
I am still mortifying my soul with these thoughts when, like a message of redemption, comes the ba.s.s voice of old Franco speaking, not Bembe, but his prison-acquired Kinyarwanda. And this time I'm allowed to understand him instead of doing a double-take!
The fruits of eavesdropping, Mr. Anderson never tires of reminding his disciples, are by nature incoherent rubbish and endlessly frustrating. The patience of job is not sufficient, in Mr. Anderson's judgment, to separate the occasional nugget from the sea of dross in which it swims. In this regard, the opening exchanges of our three delegates in no way diverged from the norm, being the antic.i.p.ated mix of scatological expressions of relief and, only rarely, sighting shots for the battles yet to be joined.
Franco: {scathingly enunciating a Congolese proverb) Fine words don't feed a cow. Dieudonne: {capping Franco's proverb with another) The teeth are smiling, but is the heart? Haj: Holy s.h.i.+t! My dad warned me the old boy was heavy duty, but this is something else. Aw, aw, aw. Why does he talk Swahili like a Tanzanian with a pawpaw up his a.r.s.e? I thought he was a home-grown s.h.i.+.
n.o.body bothers to answer him, which is what happens every time you put three men in a room together. The biggest mouth takes over and the two people you want to listen to go mute.
Haj: {continued) Who's the pretty zebra anyway? {Mystified silence, echoing my own) The interpreter guy in the linoleum jacket? Who the f.u.c.k is he?
Haj is calling me a zebra? Fve been called most things in my time. At Mission school I was a metis, a cafe au lait, a shaven pig. At the Sanctuary I was anything from a fuzzipeg to a golliwog. But zebra was a brand-new insult to me, and I could only suppose that it was of Haj's personal manufacture.
Haj: {continued) I knew a guy like him once. Maybe they're related. A book-keeper. Fiddled the accounts for my dad. Screwed every girl in town till some angry husband shot his a.r.s.e off. Vump! Wasn't me though. I'm not married and I don't kill guys. We've killed enough of ourselves. f.u.c.k us. Never again. Cigarette?
Haj has a gold cigarette case. In the conference room, I saw it peeking from the mustard silk lining of his Zegna. Now I hear its clunk as he snaps it open. Franco lights up and is seized by a gravedigger's cough.
What on earth was that about, Brian?
They're speculating about my ethnicity.
Is that normal?
Pretty much.
Dieudonne, having first declined, mutters a fatalistic ”Why not?” and lights up also.
Haj: You sick or something? Dieudonne: Something.
Are they sitting or standing? Listen carefully, you get the uneven squeak of lame Franco's track shoes while Haj prances around the hard floor in his slime-green crocs. Keep listening, you hear a grunt of pain and the puff of a foam cus.h.i.+on as Dieudonne eases himself into an armchair. That's how good we sound-thieves become under Mr. Anderson's tutelage.
Haj: Tell you one thing for openers, pal.
Dieudonne: {wary at being addressed so warmly) What?
Haj: People in Kivu are a whole lot more interested in peace and reconciliation than those p.r.i.c.ks in Kinshasa, {affects a rabble-rouser's voice) Kill 'em all. Gouge their Rwandan eyes out. We're right behind you, man. Like two thousand kilometres behind you, mostly jungle. {Waits, I suspect for a reaction, but gets none. Slap of crocs resumes) And this old boy he goes along with all that s.h.i.+t {mimicking the Mw.a.n.gaza, quite well): Let us cleanse our fine green land of these pestilential c.o.c.kroaches, my friends. Oh yes. Let us restore our homeland to our beloved countrymen! I agree with that. Don't we all? {Waits. Mo response) Motion carried unanimously. Chuck 'em out, I say. Vumpf Pow! f.u.c.k off! (No response) Just non-violently. (rattle of crocs) Problem is, where do you stop? I mean, what about the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who came over in '94? Do we sling them out too? Do we sling out Dieudonne here? Take your kids with you but leave your cows behind?
Haj is turning out to be the wrecker I feared when he was upstairs. In a casual yet subversive manner he has contrived to bring the conversation round within minutes to the most divisive issue before us: the unresolved status of the Banya-mulenge people and Dieudonne's eligibility as an ally in our enterprise.
Franco: (yet another proverb, this time spat out in challenge) A log may remain ten years in the water. It will never become a crocodile! (Long, tense pause) Dieudonne: Franco!
The screech in my headphones has nearly pitched me out of my hot-seat. In his fury, Dieudonne has shoved his chair across the stone floor. I imagine his hands clawing at its arms, and his sweated head lifting to Franco in pa.s.sionate appeal.
Dieudonne: When is this ever going to end, Franco? You and us? The Banyamulenge may be Tutsis, but we are not Rwandans! (His breathing gets him, but he keeps fighting) We are Congolese, Franco, as Congolese as the Mau Mau! Yes! (shouting down Franco's derision) The Mw.a.n.gaza understands that and sometimes so do you! (and in French, to ram it home): Nous sommes tous airois! Remember what they taught us to sing at school in Mobutu's time? So why can't we sing it now? Nous sommes tous Congolais!
No, Dieudonne, not all of us, I mentally correct him. I too was taught to sing those words at school in proud unison with my cla.s.smates, until the day they poked their fingers at the secret child and screamed: Pas Salvo, pas le metis! Pas le co chon rase!
Dieudonne: {continuing his tirade) In the '64 rebellion, my father, a Munyamulenge, fought alongside your father, a Simba {rasp as he reaches for breath) and you as a young man fought alongside both of them. Did that make you our allies'? {rasp) Our friends? {rasp) No, it did not. {he breaks angrily into French) C'etait une alliance cont re la nature! The Simba continued to kill us and steal our cattle for their troops, just as the Mau Mau kills us and steals our cattle today. When we retaliate, you call us Banyamulenge sc.u.m. When we restrain ourselves, you call us Banyamulenge cowards {drowninggulps now). But if we can join together under this {rasp) stop the killing, and the hating {rasp) stop avenging our dead ones and our mutilated ones if we can stop ourselves and unite under this leader or any other .. .
He breaks off. His wheezing is so bad it reminds me of Jean-Pierre in the hospital, minus tubes. I wait on the edge of my hot-seat for Franco's rejoinder, but must once more listen impotently to Haj.
Haj: Allies in what, for f.u.c.k's sake? To achieve what? A united Kivu? North and south? My friends. Let us seize hold of our resources and thereby control our destiny. Humph humph. They've been seized, a.r.s.e hole By a bunch of Rwandan crazies who are armed to the eyeb.a.l.l.s and raping our women in their spare time! Those interahamwe guys up there are so well dug in, the f.u.c.king UN doesn't dare to fly over them without asking their permission first.
Dieudonne: {contemptuous laugh) The UN? If we wait for the UN to bring us peace we shall wait until our children are dead, and our grandchildren too.
Franco: Then maybe you should take your children and grandchildren back to Rwanda now and leave us in peace.
Haj: {interceding fast in French, presumably to head off the argument) Us? I heard us? (veritable fusillade of croc-slapping, followed by dead silence) You seriously think this is about us? This old guy doesn't want us, he wants power. He wants his place in history before he croaks, and to get it he's prepared to sell us out to this weirdo syndicate and bring the whole f.u.c.king roof down on us.
I have barely finished rendering these heresies before Philip's hand bell summons us to round two.
And here I must recount an incident that at the time of its occurrence made little impact on my overburdened mind, but in the light of later events merits closer examination. Philip's bell sounds, I detach my headset. I rise to my feet and, with a wink at Spider in reply to his, ascend the cellar staircase. Reaching the top, I give the pre-arranged signal: three short taps to the iron door, which Anton opens part-way and closes behind me, unfortunately with a loud clang. Without a word pa.s.sing between us Anton steers me round the corner of the house to the eastern end of the covered walkway, leaving me only a short distance to the gaming room, all again according to plan. But with one difference: neither of us had reckoned with the sunlight, which is s.h.i.+ning straight into my eyes and temporarily un sighting me.