Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

  They rolled out of the compound, the local rent-a-cops at the gate staring at them while the hydraulic gate came up as if they had just arrived from Saturn. Djalik’s friend kept reading a map on the steering wheel; after twenty minutes he handed the map back. Alan looked at the route that somebody had drawn in grease pencil—well, at least there had been that much planning.

  Nobody had told him where the meeting was to be. Now he saw that it was well out along the river, and he saw, too, that they were going to be late. He kept his silence and continued to pretend to himself that these people knew what they were doing.

  Around them on the dirty, crowded streets, crowds moved with purpose. The car drove by an army unit doing some sort of PE, strong, tall men, running smoothly through the streets.

  Finally, they cleared the city. Badly paved streets gave way to a badly paved road. Shanties pressed against one side, and, on the other, tiny plots of tilled ground and small teashops, mostly built from crates, started where the broken macadam gave way to dust. Whenever the traffic stopped them, small boys waving bottles of Coca-Cola approached the car. Ignoring Thorn’s disapproval, Alan rolled down his window and bought four bottles. A cleaner Africa entered as the air-conditioning escaped.

  The Coke was too sweet. Thorn refused to drink it, anyway. No doubt Thorn, bringing the siege mentality of the embassy with him, believed that the local version came right out of the nearest gutter.

  Then they got stuck facing a wall of what he took to be refugees streaming down the road from Kanindi. They still had ten miles to go.

  “We’re late.” There, he had said it.

  Thorn didn’t even turn his head. “They have to know their place.”

  Alan didn’t quite know how to react to this. Place? Did he—could he—mean place, as in, knowing your place? “What place is that, Thorn?”

  “They don’t represent a country, or a recognized negotiating platform. This is not an official meeting. They need to know that we aren’t following their schedule.” Thorn’s fears were muted in his voice, but very much present. Alan thought he was parroting instructions.

  “Why?”

  Thorn turned his head and looked at Alan with adolescent scorn.

  “You have no function with these people except to ID your buddy, and I don’t believe you know what the stakes are here, and I’m fully briefed. Don’t interfere. I’m in charge.”

  That’s what parents spend their money for at places like Choate and Andover—for people to teach their kids to speak with utterly convincing authority, even when they’re scared witless and hardly out of diapers and don’t know shit from shinola about what they’re saying. It was an ability that kept the British Empire going for half a century after it should have fallen down.

  Alan smiled back—pleasantly, at least to anybody who didn’t know him very well. “Please tell me if I can help in any way.”

  The silence that seemed to follow Alan around Africa filled the car.

  They were more than an hour late when the car emerged from the stream of people at a bridge, passed through a Zairian Army checkpoint where the young soldiers seemed to have given up hope, and turned right up a smaller, redearth road. Alan figured that they traveled a mile before they saw the building. It was large, made of corrugated iron, and it, like Zaire, had seen better days. Two men in fatigues were smoking outside. Alan was relieved that they weren’t wearing hoods.

  Thorn rolled down his window, and a blast of afternoon Zaire entered, completely replacing the dry cool air of officialdom that had filled the car. Alan could smell wood smoke and vegetation.

  “Mr Hatusis sent me,” Thorn called out. The two men looked at each other. One went inside and the other stood without reply.

  Djalik and Arnie had seemed like different men since they had left the city. Their eyes moved constantly, little movements, economical but thorough. Djalik spoke without moving his head.

  “Guys in the grass on the left.”

  “Got ’em. Ain’t friendly.”

  A whistle sounded, dimmed through the auto glass. Men stood up around the car. Many were dressed in rags. Most had guns. Alan noted with some relief that many of the guns were AK-47s with no magazine in the receiver. Still, enough seemed to have magazines to kill all of them several times over.

  One man approached the car. He was small, round-headed, balding, seemingly embarrassed, but he wore a suit and a tie, and he had shoes on his feet.

  “Which of you is Ralph, please?” he said in very clear, if accented English.

  “I am Mr Thorn.” Thorn sounded piqued, as if someone at Mummy’s party had failed to recognize him.

  “Please, then, get out of the car, Mr Thorn. We have to take a small trip.”

  “No trip! The meeting is to take place here.”

  “Yes, yes—trip. Small trip.”

  “What trip? Where? Show me on the map.”

  “I am sorry, sorry Mr Thorn. But—no. Please get out of your car now, please.” The guns were steady, whether they had magazines or not. Alan could see that Thorn’s neck was trembling.

  Alan got out of the car. So did Djalik. His friend Arnie did not, because two men were leaning against his door. The DS guy appeared relaxed behind the wheel, nonetheless, as if he was just in there because he meant to take a nap and not because two tough ones were holding the door shut with their buns. Alan wondered then if he was armed, remembered the ambassador’s orders, wondered again if the guy was either so obedient or so butt-stupid he wasn’t packing. Some security.

  Somebody came up to Alan from behind and ran a hand down his back and between his legs. Alan felt a gun barrel in his back. Very real. Little Big Horn. Another man stood in front of him and pulled open the helmet bag and looked in; seeing the cigarettes, he grinned. He pulled at the bag; Alan pulled back; he swung his AK up.

  Thorn emerged from the car, still bitching.

  The small man who spoke English hurried over to Alan and struck down the AK, said something to the soldier, the words coming rat-a-tat, and the man let go of the bag; the small one took it from Alan and said with what seemed to be sincerity, “I will take care of this. It will be given back to you afterward—no question. No problem.”

  Right.

  Djalik was being searched by a soldier who knew his business better than the one who had run his hands down Alan’s back. This guy found the H & K in the back of Djalik’s shorts in about two seconds. He said something and another man laughed, and the small one came over, holding Alan’s helmet bag open as if he was collecting for the needy, and the H & K disappeared into it. “No need,” the man said to Djalik. “No need whatsoever. Unwise.” He took Djalik’s medical kit and opened it and walked away, studying the contents.

  Alan looked at Djalik. Did he shrug? And if he did, what did it mean—nice try? Better luck next time? C’est la goddam vie?

  He began to look around him. He noted two other cars, an ancient Citroën and a slightly less old Land-Rover. There were at least twenty soldiers—FAZ—Zairian Army, he thought, not Hutu militia.

  Thorn was unhappy and got strident when the man who spoke English put a bag over his head. Cloth, maybe once a pillowcase, ancient stripes now faded to gray. Thorn tried to take it off, and another man held his wrists the way Africans hold the wrists of an out-of-control child, not chastising, keeping it from hurting itself or somebody else.

  Alan looked at Djalik. Djalik looked serenely back.

  The English speaker approached them.

  “We are going to take you to the meeting now, please. You are also from the embassy?”

  Alan took the plunge. “I am here to identify the man who is to be exchanged.”

  The man turned to Djalik. “You are medical?”

  “I’m all they got,” Djalik growled. Alan thought that it was the best half-truth he had ever heard. Behind him, somebody was climbing into the Blazer from the passenger’s side with a gun pointing at the DS man’s head. The two who had been leaning against the door had got ou
t of the way and were looking on with interest, one of them apparently getting ready to crawl into the back. It looked as if Arnie was going for a ride. Alan looked at Djalik. Djalik made one of those ambiguous faces: He can take care of himself, I guess.

  “I have to blind you, please. Not long.” Alan thought the blinding was a good sign. It suggested that they were not going to be killed. Or did it make killing them easier?

  They moved toward the Citroën.

  The car seemed to go very fast, and the potholes were thick, and they bounced, whacking down to the bottom of the springs, then up so that once he hit his head on the roof. Alan began to be able to see through the thin black cloth, just a little light and not much more. He wondered where Thorn was, why he was in a different car. It didn’t matter.

  Time passes differently when you are deprived of sight. He had no idea how long they drove, and he thought he might have dozed off. He wasn’t sure. Not likely. Djalik was snoring deeply—real or fake? At any rate, the ride was a lot longer than “not long,” and he figured they might have come thirty or forty miles—that maybe it had been an hour, over bad roads, at an unwise speed.

  The driver ground the gears going into reverse. Alan heard him set the emergency brake and get out, then the English voice telling them to get out. As Alan emerged, someone took his shoulder and turned him, steadied him, and then lifted the hood away. The light made him blink, even the beautiful pre-evening light of equatorial Africa.

  They were by a river. The grass was brown. That was what he saw first. A baboon was screaming in a tree across the river. Doves were cooing close by. He looked around.

  They were parked by a tiny airstrip—a line of red dirt angled at the river. He saw a small, two-engined plane on the field, recognized it as an ASTRA Nomad, the all-purpose African workhorse. A man was tinkering with one engine. As Alan watched, the man turned and watched as another car, the green Land-Rover, pulled up and Thorn was led out. Their Blazer was pulling in behind. Alan and Djalik headed that way, nobody trying to stop them. In fact, everybody seemed focused on Thorn. They think he’s the Agency guy, poor bastard. Better him than me.

  The new lot of soldiers here looked very different from the last, good uniforms and boots, every man with a weapon and clips, several with side arms. Hutu Interahamwe.

  The man who spoke English said, “We will now all board the aircraft, please?”

  Thorn looked at him, his mouth slightly open. He shook his head. “Where is the American—O’Neill?”

  “We take you to him.”

  “Bring him here.”

  “That is not the arrangement.”

  Thorn turned on Alan. “Turn around and start walking back to the car. Ours is the last in line.”

  Alan looked at the plane. He watched a bird, off beyond the runway, circling slowly in the still air of the evening. He leaned past Thorn and directed his question to the man in the suit. “Where are you taking us?”

  “Nowhere!” hissed Thorn. “We are walking away.”

  “Vicinity Kisangani,” said the officer. “Long flight, but—” He looked at the aircraft, made a face. “Not too uncomfortable.” Pronouncing it uncomfort-able and then giggling.

  “These people have no diplomatic standing!” Thorn said. His voice was going up. “I don’t have clearance to travel out of Kinshasa, and I won’t!” He started to walk away. No one moved to stop him, and Alan guessed that nobody had instructions for this behavior. They were here to take the Americans to get the CIA man, period; if the Americans didn’t want to come—well, if the French were pushing them into this, they’d have done their part, even if the Americans hadn’t, right?

  Djalik had one eyebrow raised in question. Alan supposed that the Hutus wanted to turn O’Neill over in their own territory, up where there was no danger of retaliation. Maybe stage some kind of minor tantrum to show that they couldn’t be pushed around. Kisangani was where the bulk of Mobutu’s defense forces and all of his Hutu allies were, as well as half a million Hutu refugees who had been swept ahead of the soldiers as they retreated westward. He thought about this, tried to put himself into the Hutus’ place.

  “Djalik, I’m going. You go back.”

  Djalik wiped his face with his whole left hand, a habit Alan was learning indicated frustration. Djalik shook his head, then looked beyond Alan at the two Americans climbing into the Blazer. He scratched at his crotch.

  “Sir, my ass is grass if I leave you here.”

  “I’ll make it an order. Give me something I can write on—”

  Djalik turned and stood very close to Alan. Alan could feel his breath on his face, smell it—slightly sour. “You get in that aircraft with those ape-faces, you’re dead meat. Sir.”

  “Djalik, he’s my friend and I can’t leave him. You can.” He was patting his pockets, looking for a piece of paper. “For you, it’s just duty. For me, it’s my best friend. And duty comes second to friends.” Alan was surprised by his own words. He meant them, but he hadn’t measured them before they came out. “Give me some paper, I’ll write you orders. The COD will be in tonight; you can still get on it. Tell the Jackson I’ll communicate after I get O’Neill.”

  The small man in the suit looked at him and then at the Chevy Blazer, where Thorn and Arnie were already sitting, and he gestured with his chin toward it. “That man?”

  “He says he can’t exceed his instructions. He can’t go. Mine were different. I’m an officer in the US Navy and I will come with you. Do you have a sheet of paper?”

  The question flustered him, but he went into his pockets and came out with a folded, not very clean piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. He scratched out some words at the top of the paper.

  “And your companion?”

  Alan was writing, using Djalik’s back as a desk. You are ordered to proceed immediately to Kinshasa embassy—“I felt it better that he return to the embassy. I am writing his orders.”

  The soldiers were getting on the aircraft. Alan had to raise his voice to be heard over the engines. He handed Djalik the paper and, grasping the elbow of the small black man, started toward the plane.

  When he turned back at the entry hatch, Djalik was boarding behind him.

  25

  Late November

  Zaire.

  “Why’d you come, Djalik?”

  “You need a keeper.”

  “No, Dave, I don’t. I’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  “Yeah? Me too. A little more often. And sir, with respect, you strike me as a dangerous glory hound. Someone without enough training to be in this shit.”

  They were crammed in the back end of the plane. Two of the soldiers sat facing them. Nobody seemed to care that they were talking, or that their position was anomalous—not well-treated guests, but not prisoners, either.

  “Dave, I’m going for my friend. That’s all.”

  “I got a wife and two kids, sir. And don’t call me ‘Dave’ when it suits you. I got out of this business so that I could look my wife in the eye and tell her that I’d come back. And I don’t give two shits about your friend! My family comes first. You’re going for friendship! Great! Tell my wife about it. Because I have to come with you. Hear me? If you scrape through this and get another medal, and you leave me face-down in goddam Africa, go tell my wife it was for your friend. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  It was the most he’d ever heard Djalik say. Outside, true night fell.

  After three hours, they were blindfolded. Even with a full moon, the night was so black that they might have been flying over water, and Alan knew he would never have been able to pick up a landmark, anyway.

  Then he thought that they flew for another hour before he heard the flaps move and knew they were beginning an approach. The plane turned twice, both times to the left, and then began a sharp descent. He felt them go through some invisible barrier where the ground could be sensed, where the air had moisture and taste, even inside the black sack. Then the wheels hit and they were dow
n.

  When the plane stopped taxiing, he heard scrambling from the soldiers and then he was grabbed and forced to his feet and marched out to the hatch and down the ladder. He heard other airplane motors and what sounded like the whine of helicopter turbines. He could smell wood smoke, strong, acrid. Then he was pushed into a vehicle. Something bumped his head.

  They didn’t drive for more than a minute before the vehicle stopped. Again, hands grabbed him and propelled him through a door that he hit with his shoulder. He was pushed into a chair, his hands left free. He decided to try removing his blindfold. Nobody stopped him. He and Djalik were seated in a small room. Battered folding chairs leaned against the walls. They looked at each other. “Here we are,” Alan said. “Wherever ‘here’ is.”

  The door opened and a small, very black man in buttonless green fatigues entered with a tray. He gave them both coffee, then shuffled out in sandals made from old tires.

  “Coffee’s not bad,” said Djalik.

  “You didn’t have to come.” Alan sounded more aggressive than he had intended.

  “Belay that.” Djalik sounded serious, but no longer angry. “What’s going down, you think?”

  He thought they were in some small airfield building, maybe a hangar, because the voices from the other side of the wall echoed. Beyond the voices were the sounds of aircraft, the high whine of the helicopters continuing, as if they were waiting but staying ready to lift off. Beyond the aircraft sounds were distant pops of small arms, intermittent and impossible to read, but in the middle of the night, people up here didn’t shoot for fun. The powerful wood smoke smell meant that they were in the midst of the refugees, whose fires were probably visible from the air, the reason they had been blindfolded. He told Djalik all these things. “I think they mean to turn him over. They wouldn’t bring us this far just to dick us; the word is they have to get rid of him. So I think we play it straight, probably listen to a harangue, keep our mouths shut. This is one area where I know more than you, okay? If there’s talking to be done, let me do it. I don’t want any—”