Also sheltering there was a small man with a large pistol at his waist. Even without taking into account his crew cut, his military fatigues and his very good dental work, Jimfish knew instantly this must be the American assassin sent to hunt him down. He was on the point of reaching for his revolver in its python-skin holster when the other man held out his hand in the friendliest way and introduced himself.
‘Privileged to make your acquaintance, Mr Jimfish, sir. Can’t tell you my real name. If I did, I’d have to shoot you. Why don’t you call me John Doe? No relation to the man holed up over there.’ He nodded his chin towards the port buildings, where the fighting was most intense. Seeing the puzzlement on Jimfish’s face, he patted his arm soothingly. ‘You thought I was here to conclude your career conclusively, as we call such assignments back at the office. Right you are. I won’t deny we considered that option. We were sure real mad at you when you popped our guy in the palace of the Great Leopard down Gbadolite way. Our man had the job of funnelling arms, along with bushels of bucks, to Marshal Mobutu, as well as fixing visits for our politicians who fancied a bit of R&R in the court of the King of the Congo. But looking at your record, we got to wondering – who exactly is this guy? How is it that, sure as shooting, wherever Jimfish shows up everything falls apart?’
Jimfish blushed at compliments so far from the truth. If the really serious question in life was how to arrive on the right side of history, then he felt further than ever from finding an answer. All he had learnt so far had been that those who claimed to have reached that blessed destination had got there by wading through blood.
Jimfish pointed to the orderly, uniformed troops, who, despite being attacked by all sides, were not firing back. ‘Whose forces are those?’
‘Peacekeepers,’ John Doe said. ‘Troops from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Guinea. They’re supposed to stop the fighting.’
‘They don’t seem to be making much difference.’ Jimfish was more puzzled than ever.
‘No peace to keep,’ said John Doe. ‘Basically, they take note of the slaughter, about which they can do zilch. They go through the motions, so the worldwide, bleeding-heart, Something-Must-Be-Done brigade feels a bit better. But the fighters who back Charles Taylor or Prince Johnson or Brigadier Bare-Butt are all in a race, see? Whoever gets to bump off the present leader, President Doe, also gets to run Liberia. Fair enough, you might say. Leave it to the market, and may the best warlord win. But it’s not that easy. We also have a dog in this fight. After all, who was it who founded this goddam country? Settled it with our freed slaves, named it and gave it American values? The rule’s always been you don’t get to be Numero Uno round here without our say-so. When Master Sergeant Samuel Doe blew away President Tolbert ten years back it took us ages to make Liberia safe for American interests once again. If Samuel Doe now goes and gets his career conclusively concluded, by one warlord or another, our years of hard work go down the tubes. So I need President Doe alive and in one piece. We’ve got too much riding on this for him to let the side down now.’
‘But how will you find him?’ Jimfish asked.
The American pointed to the port buildings. ‘Over there is the peacekeepers’ HQ. Word has it Sam Doe ducked into those buildings early today to talk about a truce.’
‘Then he’s safe.’ Jimfish was relieved.
The American shook his head. ‘Alive, maybe. Safe, no. And neither for very long unless we find him first.’
When the fighting slackened, the American signalled to Jimfish and together they made a run for the port buildings.
CHAPTER 20
Moving from room to room, they found scattered cartridge casings and puddles of blood, which John Doe studied as a skilled tracker checks the spoor of the game he is hunting. These traces led to the first floor, where they came across the bodies of several smartly dressed men.
‘Doe’s cabinet ministers,’ said John Doe.
Jimfish stared at the bodies. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘They follow a pattern, these coups – and I can read the signs real easy. God knows we’ve backed enough of them.’ With a casual toe the American turned over the victims. ‘See their thousand-dollar suits and Italian shoes? The sparkly stuff – Rolexes, rings, ear-studs – that’s been stripped. I’d say all government people are being wasted. That tells me they’re at stage two of the coup.’
‘More bloodshed?’ Jimfish wondered.
‘Blood’s done. Next comes electioneering,’ said John Doe. ‘Coups get legal heft by calling out the voters. Turns the killing kosher. Let’s head for Party Headquarters. Have you noticed: the fighting’s stopped?’
Jim was aware of the eerie silence. ‘That’s good.’
The American shook his head. ‘I like gunfire. That way I know what the bastards are up to.’
‘How do we find the President?’ Jimfish asked.
‘We follow the corpses,’ said John Doe.
The bodies of ministers in their fancy suits pointed the way like broken arrows. As they passed the headquarters of the opposing factions Jimfish was fascinated by the posters plastered on the walls touting election promises and platforms. Charles Taylor was running on his record and his message was simple: ‘I KILLED YOUR MA. I KILLED YOUR PA. VOTE FOR ME OR I’LL KILL YOU TOO!’ Brigadier Bare-Butt’s posters depicted the man himself, wearing only his signature boots and AK-47, above his election promise: ‘GIVE ME YOUR SON. GIVE ME YOUR DAUGHTER. I TURN THE ENEMY’S BULLETS TO WATER!’ Prince Johnson, by contrast, seemed refreshingly modest. He ran no posters, made no promises. But then he did not need to. In the street outside his headquarters, stripped naked on a steel bedstead and stretched out on his back, lay the body of President Samuel Doe. Both his ears were missing. Around him a ring of grinning soldiers, waving automatic weapons, were posing for photographs.
To Jimfish it was the quintessential portrait of the times: preening soldiers pointing bayonets at a dead man. He was struck by the need to record these things on film, to get your commemorative, take-home party snap while posing beside a human being you’d stripped, shot, mutilated and tortured. To frolic around a corpse in rollicking good spirits, as if you were at a party or a picnic. If this was what happened when the rage of the lumpenproletariat turned to rocket fuel, then Jimfish felt less and less sure he wanted any part of it.
Across the street from the earless, naked ex-President on the iron bedstead was a makeshift cinema fashioned from tarpaulin and corrugated iron; people were watching a movie that must have been shot earlier, because it showed Samuel Doe still very much alive, stark naked and in a state of some distress, which was not particularly surprising since his right ear was missing. Prince Johnson, the rebel commander gave an order and a soldier sawed off President Doe’s left ear, while a nurse from the warlord’s team, suspecting her chief might be under some strain, gently massaged Prince Johnson’s neck, while he sipped a beer. The audience loved the ear scene. Very much as the crowds in the Budapest Square had been transfixed by the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu, these lookers-on in a street cinema projected themselves into the movie of a murder and could not get enough of it.
But then, Jimfish asked himself, was he much better? Hadn’t he shot dead an American secret agent, as well as a Minister of Education, without so much as blinking? He longed to be able to talk to Soviet Malala and to ask him: ‘Isn’t it this joy, these wild good spirits we feel in cruelty, rather than rage or the dream of landing on the right side of history, that marks out our singular species for what we are: homicidal apes who kill their own kind with delight and afterwards write moral commandments? And which is more disgusting – the gleeful killer or the guilty sermonizer?’
‘I guess there’s a symmetry to this,’ his American friend remarked. ‘After all, when Samuel Doe rubbed out his predecessor President Tolbert he also felt he had to bump off everyone who had worked with Tolbert. Looks like history is repeating itself. Anyone close to that naked guy on the bed is for the chop.�
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But Jimfish did not want to hear about symmetry or history. He wanted Lunamiel back. He wanted to ask Soviet Malala what good anger served if it made people cut off the ears of their presidents, drop villagers down mine-shafts or toss a good man like Jagdish into the hell of the Chernobyl reactor.
In despair he closed his eyes. ‘Everything I touch crumbles. Everywhere I go, the worst happens.’
‘Don’t you believe it, boy, you’re a marvel,’ said his American friend. ‘Back at my office in the US we have a name for what happens when you turn up some place – we call it the Jimfish Effect. We ran your file and we were amazed.
‘Back six years ago, in 1984, you were just a fishy fellow in this little port on the coast of South Africa. Adopted, acquired, borrowed – who knows? – by some old fisherman. Next you get to meet your new President, Piet the Weapon, and wham-bam! there are bombs going off in churches and bars and supermarkets across your country and funerals all the time. Seems South Africa is set for a big fat race war.
‘But you’ve moved on. It’s 1985, you’re in Zimbabwe where Bob Mugabe is the liberator, redeemer and dear leader. Except, that is, in Matabeleland, where Bob’s boys, taught to kill by Kim Il-sung, are shooting the locals at a steady rate and dropping them down mineshafts.
‘A year later, 1986, you hit Uganda and, just as you steam into town, President Milton Obote is on his way out. Second time around. He got booted out by Idi Amin first time round. Then he came back when Big Dada got the chop, but now Milt’s headed south again. Only this time he takes every last cent in the Ugandan treasury with him.
‘On you zip to Ukraine, where the Chernobyl nuclear plant blows up and the Soviets go damn near broke putting a lid on it. All this in the same year! Then Moscow packs you off to a Siberian prison camp for being an American spy. If only! Our agents were predicting Soviet power still had decades to go when the place was actually on its last legs.
‘After a few years in the gulag, the Russians send you to East Berlin. Bad move. It’s November, 1989 – and guess what? When Jimfish flies in, the Berlin Wall falls down. Job done, you head for Romania and before you can say “the Genius of the Carpathians” Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu get their careers conclusively concluded.
‘Do you stop there? Not a damn. In 1990 it’s Zaire, where you blow away the Minister of Education, along with one of our guys for good measure. You scoot pretty fast, but your effect lingers. The Great Leopard suddenly turns democrat. And it’s all down to how you helped him see things, when the Ceauşescus got it in the neck. Instead of killing his opponents, Marshal Mobutu suddenly lets opposition parties set up shop. Everyone gets to vote, one party replaces the other, but it makes next to no damn difference in the end because the Great Leopard takes all. We’ve tried for years to get him to learn that trick.
‘And now, here you are in Liberia. And what’s happening? President Doe and his ministers are toast, and crazy civil war is tearing the place to bits. How do you do it, Jimfish? You’re a force of history. A one-man weapon of mass destruction. Why not work for us? We could use a little of whatever it is you’ve got.’
Jimfish said, politely but firmly, that he was done with history, with blood and violence.
But John Doe would not take no for an answer. ‘Not sure history is done with you. President Doe is dead. The hunt is on for those close to him. You could be next.’
‘I never knew him,’ said Jimfish.
‘It’s who you hang out with,’ said John Doe. ‘Samuel Doe always pushed and promoted his own Krahn tribe. You’ve been an honoured guest in his village. Get out fast or you’re dead meat.’
‘Where can I go?’ Jimfish asked. ‘There are no ships in the harbour and the roads are full of soldiers.’
His American friend nodded. ‘Why not spend time in our embassy compound? Safe enough. See it this way – the Soviets are down the tube, we’re the only superpower still standing. The world’s a dangerous place. Help us in our mission to spread democracy and dignity around the globe.’
Jimfish was very wary. ‘How would I do that?’
‘We’re planning a small operation in Somalia very soon,’ said the other.
The prospect made Jimfish feel quite weak. ‘Thank you, but no,’ he said. ‘It sounds like an invasion.’
‘This time it’s going to be different,’ John Doe promised. ‘We will march into Mogadishu with the stars and stripes flying high and the Somali people will cheer us as liberators.’
‘What are you liberating them from?’ Jimfish asked.
‘From themselves, from poverty, hunger, Communism,’ said John Doe. ‘Somalia had the usual dictator who killed his people in the usual way. But he hopped into a tank the other day and headed south, taking along much of the loot from the national bank. They used to be funded by the Soviets, but they got divorced and now they have nothing. Somalia’s a basket case.’
‘Then what can you do?’ Jimfish was increasingly puzzled.
‘It’s a basket case with big advantages,’ his American friend explained. ‘In Liberia and Sierra Leone different factions and tribal groups fight each other to the death. But Somalis are the same stock, follow one religion, speak the same language. They’re one big family and they really ought to get along just fine.’
‘Then maybe you should leave them alone?’
John Doe patted him on the shoulder. ‘Somalia needs us, Jimfish. In go the marines, followed by the aid agencies. We’ll supply food, medicine, movies and love.’
‘It still sounds like an invasion,’ said Jimfish.
‘“Intervention” is the word. Humanitarian. Surgical. Brief. Targeted at the starving, the sick and all who yearn for democracy. And you have a very special role to play.’
There was something about this cheery reassurance that worried Jimfish.
‘What will that be?’
The American became quite choked up. ‘We’re calling our mission “Operation Restore Hope”. Hope needs a harbinger . . .’
Jimfish had no idea what ‘harbinger’ meant, but it had a good ring to it. And so did ‘hope’. After having been a one-man weapon of mass destruction, whose arrival in half a dozen countries, though it may not have caused, had certainly coincided with sadness and savagery, it would be a relief – Jimfish felt – to be a harbinger of hope.
CHAPTER 21
Sierra Leone, 1992
The helicopter lifted into the powder-blue, empty African sky, en route to Somalia. His American friend carried a linen bag on his lap, occasionally patting it soothingly as if it were a baby. He was very cheerful.
‘Lovely little bird, this Blackhawk. Some really gorgeous killing features. Nothing flying today is quite like it. We’re going to make one stop on our way. I need to see a man about a war going on right next door in Sierra Leone. Just a hop and a skip away.’
He opened the white linen bag and showed Jimfish what looked like a heap of grubby stones or chips of gravel.
‘Rough diamonds. In this neck of the woods diamonds are the fuel everything runs on.’
‘Rocket fuel?’ Jimfish wondered.
‘Any kind of fuel you care to name,’ said John Doe. ‘That’s the beauty of these babies. The war in Sierra Leone is paid for with these dirty little stones that polish up real neat, look good in candlelight. They change hands amongst guys who often don’t have any hands, because slicing them off is a big thing for fighters on all sides.’
Jimfish was horrified. ‘That’s a crime, surely?’
John Doe nodded. ‘Worse, it’s dumb. If you want a good conflict currency, why not go for something grown-up like the dollar? But in West Africa diamonds are a warlord’s best friend. Everyone wants to get their hands on these babies. Even if they’ve got no hands.’
A couple of hours later the Blackhawk put down in Freetown and a jeep with driver and an escort of white soldiers met the chopper.
‘My, but we’re honoured,’ said John Doe. ‘Seems the Commandant has sent his own jeep for us. What give
s? Let me have a little one-to-one with the driver.’
When he came back to Jimfish he was shaking his head in amazement.
‘Apparently the Commandant’s a hard-nosed bastard, all neck and no brains, but the driver says he wants to meet you. Alone.’
‘Who are these white soldiers?’ Jimfish asked as they drove into Freetown.
John Doe urged him to watch his language. ‘Civil contractors is what we call them. Or security consultants. Or enhanced assets. Or strategic suppliers. Never soldiers.’
As they reached the town, John Doe hopped out of the jeep. ‘So long, Jimfish. Good luck!’
Jimfish was uneasy at being left alone. ‘Where are you going?’
‘The Commandant wants to see you on your own. I’ll be talking loot with a local warlord.’
‘You talk to warlords?’ Jimfish was shocked.
‘Constructive engagement,’ said John Doe. ‘You have a good day now. Meet you back at the Commandant’s office.’
Have a good day! How could he do that when he remembered Lunamiel, abandoned in Liberia, the plaything of Brigadier Bare-Butt. The more he saw of the world, the less he understood. Worse still, what he did understand was so crazy, so cruel, that none of the lessons of his old teacher Soviet Malala seemed to apply; not rage nor the many sides of history, neither the lumpenproletariat, nor the settler entity. Never had he felt so confused. And the menacing silence of the white soldiers escorting him – when he asked them their names or their reasons for being in Sierra Leone – made him even more miserable. Soon he would be heading to Somalia, another country he did not know, on a humanitarian intervention he did not understand, on a mission he did not like the sound of – not one little bit. And what, for heaven’s sake, was a harbinger of hope?
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