by James Steel
It’s late afternoon and they have just touched down on the helipads after the battle at Violo. Alex walked her back up the hill to the cluster of NGO workers’ houses that look out over the lake on one side of the peninsula and they are standing on the little veranda outside her white plastic front door.
‘Look, I’m sorry about what happened.’
‘No, no, that’s fine. It’s not your fault.’
‘It is really.’ He looks annoyed at himself. ‘We’ll have an after-action review now and try to work out how it happened.’
He looks away. He doesn’t want to discuss military details with her but he is thinking hard, wondering how the hell the Kudu Noir knew they were going to be in the valley at that time. They had obviously come in force determined to ambush and kill them. If it hadn’t been for the tactical drone spotting them then they would have been caught between the different forces in the floor of the valley and shot to pieces. Someone in the village must have leaked the information but he can’t think why. No one else outside of his headquarters knew they were coming. Maybe the militia didn’t want to disarm and allied with the Kudu Noir?
‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shakes her head, looks down and sees her watch. ‘I can’t believe it’s only four o’clock, it feels like I’ve had another life. I just feel … numb really. But also part of it all …’ She nods towards the helipads where the troops have disembarked, rushing the casualties over to the hospital tent.
‘Is Sergeant Hooper …?’
Alex shakes his head. Hooper was lying next to him on the floor of the Mi-17 as the medics struggled to save him. They had the tourniquet on his arm and a drip in him but couldn’t get at the abdominal bleed from the shrapnel and his lifeblood leaked away on the floor of the chopper.
‘Kazcmarek should be OK though, they got a chest drain in him and stopped his lung collapsing so they should be able to stabilise him now. He’s bought himself a ticket to Kigali though – it’ll be a while till he’s right.’
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe how they get through it.’
Alex nods in agreement. ‘Hmm, Two Platoon is pretty shaken up about S’arnt Hooper but we’ve taken quite a few casualties now and we seem to be able to get over it. Adversity acts like a bond that pulls us all tighter together.’
Col has been typically robust about the whole thing, saying he is going to put the kudu head up over his desk in the ops room as a trophy.
Alex looks at her, trying to gauge how she will deal with the shock.
‘Look, all the lads think you did a great job getting stuck in and helping with the casualties. For your first firefight that was a bloody good effort, they’re impressed. I’m impressed.’
She smiles. ‘Thanks.’
Alex looks at her in a new light and thinks, ‘I like you a lot more now than I did when I first met you.’
‘OK, I better take those.’
‘Oh yes.’ She hands him her bloodstained flak jacket and helmet.
‘Well done, see you.’
‘Yeah, thanks, see you.’
He walks off and she goes next door. Natalie is out. She unlocks her front door, washes her face and curls up on her bed staring at the wall. Every ounce of energy has been burned out of her body by the adrenaline rush. She falls into a black pit of sleep.
‘Come on! Come on! It’s time!’
Simon jiggles his arm and Joseph pushes him away. ‘OK, I’m doing it!’
‘It’s 93.5 FM.’
‘I know.’
He tunes in the radio and the reception weaves through the static and eventually locks onto Radio Okapi, the old UN radio network that President Rukuba has taken over.
It’s 15th June and they are desperate to hear the first semi-final of Kivu Anthem Idol. President Rukuba himself will host this two-hour show from eight o’clock and the whole province is glued to their radios. The competition has been running for the last month and has caught the national imagination. In bars, in the streets, in villages across the country, people are waiting to hear their favourite singers perform their newly written national anthems.
Posters of the President are everywhere, beaming down from the roadside hoardings in his trademark white robes. He is smiling his electric smile and pointing outwards with the slogan ‘Papa Rukuba wants you!’ running over his head. In front of him is a stack of one million US dollars in prize money. Joseph stood and stared at the poster when he first saw it: he has hardly ever seen a dollar bill in his life, let alone that many of them in one place.
The final will be in two weeks’ time on 30th June, Congo’s old independence day from Belgium, except that President Rukuba has pronounced that from now on it will be Kivu’s independence day from Congo.
Joseph and his new friend Simon took up Gabriel’s offer of joining the KPP youth wing and got fast-tracked into the training and reintegration programme. Neither of them can read so they didn’t get on any business courses but were given a toleka each, a heavy-framed, Chinese-made bicycle with a wide seat on a reinforced pannier at the back to use as a taxi. After a quick maintenance course they were released and taken to a new KPP youth wing accommodation block on the outskirts of Bukavu. The prefab building had only just been put up by Chinese work gangs.
They are both very happy with their new lives. They have a roof over their heads, they have the means of earning a living and spend their days cycling up and down Bukavu’s hills lugging shoppers and their bags around the town.
They have just brought two women back from Supermarché la Beauté out on the main promontory into Lake Kivu. They pedalled hard and dropped them off on Avenue Lumumba where they parked their bikes and are now sitting on the kerbside with a second-hand radio that Joseph bought especially to listen to the show. Simon has bought an old mobile phone so they can vote by text. The kerb is strewn with bits of litter, half-eaten chicken legs and cola nut husks and their only light is what little spills out of shop fronts and the bar across the street.
The whole show is run by the Lebanese media company that organised the Arab Pop Idol competition that brought the Middle East to a standstill when it was on.
In this semi-final they are both rooting for a girl calling herself Diamante who sings a power ballad with trite lyrics entitled, ‘I love you Kivu’. The other songs in this round are much more upbeat Congolese-style dance tunes but there’s something about the plaintive, gentle nature of the girl’s voice and the simple longing in the lyrics that makes Joseph cry every time he hears it.
All around them the city is falling silent. Cars park hurriedly, no one walks on the streets, the only people not inside are clustered around radios on the street like them. A group of ragged urchins sees them and gathers round to listen; Joseph glares at them and makes a quiet gesture but allows them to press in close.
The upbeat theme tune comes on, the announcer does a big build-up in Swahili and then says, ‘And now, live from his humble farm at Mukungu in the hills of Kivu, we bring you, your very own Pres-i-deeent Rukuba!’
A huge cheer comes from the bar across the street and everyone in the group shouts, ‘Rukuba!’
Joseph and Simon yell along with them and grin at each other.
‘Hello, my people!’
‘Hello, Papa Rukuba!’ the live crowd up at Mukungu yell and Joseph’s group and people all over the province join in. This is the sort of government you can enjoy.
‘It’s Friday night and what are we gonna do?’
‘Have fun!’
They know the shouts by now.
‘Yeah, let’s have some fun, I’m gonna play you a favourite dance number of mine and guess who my special guests are this week?’
‘Who? Who?’
‘Yes, none other than System Wemba Wemba!’
‘Oh my God!’ Joseph screams; he cannot believe that the band are live on stage in Kivu with the President. How does this man do it?
They are the biggest dance band in Congo at the moment,
notorious for their fast and raunchy soukous ndombolo songs. How has the man managed to bring them to such a backwater as Kivu? He is a genius.
Rukuba has a chat with the lead singer and they banter away. The President is good at this knockabout humour and has everyone laughing. The singer then takes his place on stage and adds, ‘Joining us for our first number on keyboards and vocals will be President Rukuba,’ and counts them in.
The whole street goes mad and Joseph dances a soukous ndombolo with a young street girl. His moves are fast and the two really blow everyone away. Dancing is free and it’s one of the few things in his life he takes pride in.
The show rolls on with Rukuba skilfully building up the tempo to the first contestant’s dance song and then slowing things down to do an interview with a woman from a village in north Kivu. His voice suddenly becomes sorrowful. ‘So, my people, we know we are going through the process of building a new nation. We know that we have to confront the pain of our past.’
He talks the woman through her experience as she explains how she was attacked and raped by a militia. The street party stops and everyone stares at the radio crying openly along with the woman as she sobs on Rukuba’s arm and he comforts her.
Joseph sits on the kerb wracked with tears, reliving his guilt as he listens to the woman. The girl he was dancing with cannot understand his emotion and puts her arm around him.
Rukuba lets the woman finish and then leads neatly into his point. ‘So, my people, we must be strong now as we build up our new nation. We must learn to stand on our own two feet. For too long Kivu has lived on her knees but now Kivu has stood up!
‘I think it’s the right time to move on to our second contestant tonight. Please welcome onstage … Diamante.’
A warm but more muted reception greets the young singer as she walks on. Joseph sits up and wipes his eyes.
The lyrics are simple but in combination with her powerful and dignified voice they encapsulate the pain and the hope of the new nation. The group of grubby children standing on the dingy, rubbish-strewn kerbside in Bukavu all sing along to the chorus with tears in their eyes: ‘I love you Kivu!’
Chapter Forty-Two
A week after the battle at Violo, on 21st June, Alex is again standing on the veranda of Sophie’s bungalow, but this time the atmosphere is a great deal more positive.
He looks her up and down and cannot help but look impressed. ‘OK. You look …’ he fishes for the right word, trying not to sound like he is taking too personal an interest in her ‘…tremendous.’
She’s pleased and grins mockingly. ‘Standards, Devereux, standards. Even in the wilds of Africa one must have one’s little black number at hand. Never know when it will come in handy.’
She is wearing a sheer black sleeveless dress, her hair coiled up behind her head. In her elegant heels she’s nearly as tall as Alex. She looks leggy, slim and stunning.
‘I think this must be the first time I’ve seen you not wearing jeans.’
‘Well, I’m not just a sandal-wearing peacenik, you know.’ She looks him up and down critically. ‘Hmm … I think you should take your tie off; the Lebanese are never that smart. Come on.’
She clicks her fingers and waits as he undoes his tie and hands it over. ‘Is that Guards?’ She eyes the red and blue stripes.
‘Well, Household Cav, yes. Same thing.’
‘God, you really are genuinely pompous, aren’t you? I cannot believe you are going out to a Lebanese party in Kivu in a pinstriped suit and a blooming Guards tie.’
‘Well …’ Alex laughs, ‘I don’t have any other suits.’
She chucks it inside her front door, locks it and says, ‘Come along then, chop chop,’ and sets off to the helipad.
Alex follows and they walk down the road to the flight line.
‘So who is this Fadoul chap again?’ Sophie asks.
‘He’s the guy who supplies all our food here – you know the trucks with the Arabic logo on them?’
‘Oh yes, of course. Why on earth does he want you to come to a party?’ she says disdainfully.
‘I don’t know really. Fang says he’s been asking to meet me for ages. Apparently he’s got some sort of big coming-of-age bash for one of his sons, he’s having all the local Lebanese over and asked me to come with someone.’
‘Oh, right. Well, it will make a nice change from all this war business, I suppose.’ She continues with overdone enthusiasm, ‘In fact, I think it will be tremendous fun. Come on, let’s go, I haven’t been to a party for ages!’
Alex hasn’t seen the fun side of her character much before; he’s had suspicions that it is there and is relieved to see that it does actually exist.
They walk down to the helipads where Col is waiting with a close protection squad of four men, who are dressed in their combat gear with flak jackets, rifles and a light machine gun.
‘Evening, ma’am, evening, Colonel. Luvly evening for a jaunt down the lake, eh?’
Sophie is getting on better with Col these days. ‘Hi, S’arnt Major.’ But she looks at the soldiers in disbelief and turns to Alex. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’
Alex is forced on the defensive. ‘Look, I can’t take any chances. I am the commanding officer and there are a lot of people out there who don’t like me. We have no idea how good this guy’s security is. You know after all that Violo trouble we had …’
Sophie rolls her eyes and shrugs. ‘OK, OK.’
‘Look, don’t worry, they’ll stay with the helicopter – they’re not coming on the dance floor.’
She laughs and they walk over towards where a camouflage-green Mi-24 gunship is winding up its engines, looking angry and spiky with rocket pods and cannon.
‘Oo, me hair,’ she says in a joke accent as they near the rotor wash, and pulls her cashmere shawl over her head.
Col slides back the door to the troop bay and they step up and settle into the line of four bucket seats back-to-back down the centre line of the aircraft. There are knowing glances between the four men sitting on the other side with their backs to them.
Sophie turns to Alex and laughs, ‘This is the most ridiculous mode of transport ever. I cannot believe I am going to a party in a gunship.’ He grins in response.
They take off and cruise the twenty-five miles north along Lake Kivu. The engine noise prevents any talk and Alex leaves the sliding door open so that they can both sit and stare at the spectacular view, framed like a cinema screen by the door, of rugged green hills plunging down to the lake, which shimmers in the low evening sun. The rays light the clouds from underneath making them burn like red flames in the sky.
They land on a large estate five miles outside Goma on the lakeside. As they come in they can see a high fence around the whole area with armed guards patrolling it. Alex is reassured to see that the man takes his security seriously.
The main villa is set in the middle of the grounds. It is a huge white affair with red tiled roofs and numerous verandas, balconies and terraces. Bougainvillea grows up the walls amidst palm trees and neatly manicured gardens. The large front driveway is packed with BMWs, Mercedes and Lexus SUVs.
They land on a wide lawn that slopes down to the lake. Two Mi-17s painted in the Fadoul company livery and three smaller executive helicopters are already there. They duck out of the troop bay, the engines wind down and Alex stands and issues instructions. ‘Right, aircrew, stay here. S’arnt Major Thwaites and the squad will come with us up to the house and do a recce, we’ll take it from there.’
Sophie listens to the briefing, then looks at the men, puts her hand on Alex’s arm and says facetiously to him, ‘Do try to relax, dear.’
Col and the other men burst out laughing. Alex realises he is overdoing it and laughs, points at her and says, ‘Look, you will stay in the bloody helicopter if you don’t behave.’
They set off up the slope to the house and hear the noise of a large, chattering crowd ahead on the main terrace; there’s at least a hundred people there already
. The smell of roasting lamb drifts down towards them and the terrace is decorated with fairy lights. A stage with a disco mirror ball over it is set up at one end. It’s a family gathering of all ages, from toddlers to grandparents.
‘Think we’ll stay with the cab, sir, or we might spoil the atmosphere,’ Col says.
Alex nods. ‘I think you’re right, looks like quite a party.’ He glances at Sophie. ‘Ready then, dear?’
She grins and waves at Col and the soldiers. ‘See you later, S’arnt Major.’
‘See you later, ma’am,’ Col says with a grin, casting a glance over her svelte figure as she walks away. Still not my cup of tea but not bad.
They make their way up onto the terrace and through the crowd, which consists mainly of local Lebanese but also includes a few Congolese businessmen and their glossy wives. Everyone seems to know each other and greet with three kisses on the cheeks. People stand around in groups chatting happily; a few glances follow the tall European couple as they go past.
Alex and Sophie both use their height to peer around over the crowd to try and find Mr Fadoul. ‘I think that looks like someone’s holding court over there.’ Sophie nods towards the back of the terrace and Alex spots a large table with lots of people gathered around it.
He leads the way, squeezing past Lebanese wives with big blonde hairdos, monster heels and spray-on dresses. Sophie notices a teenage daughter in a very short pink chiffon dress eye up Alex as he goes past.
They get to the table, which is surrounded by people. A girl of six in a white party frock is having a silver plastic tiara fixed in her hair by her mother, who is dressed in a black and gold leather dress.
Mr Fadoul glances at his wife and then sees them and jumps up, all smiles and bonhomie. He’s fifty, short and bald on top with black hair round the side of his head; his thick-set shoulders crease the arms of his cream linen suit jacket.
He reaches out a hand to Alex and greets him effusively in French. ‘Ah, Colonel Devereux, how good to see you. Yes, thank you for coming to my son’s party, Hazem is sixteen.’ He nods adoringly towards a gawky-looking boy standing next to the table with some friends, wearing an oversized black suit, white shirt, black string tie and trainers. He glances at Sophie. ‘Ah, and you are?’
