by Tony Park
Jason Clemenger had served with the Australian Army during the time Richard had been on exchange in Australia. Jason had been a radiographer, but had long since left the army. He’d been based in Townsville and Richard had known that he and his wife, Denise, had been talking about adopting a child. They’d had no luck conceiving by natural means and IVF had failed them. Jason had joked, when Richard had been deployed, that perhaps he could send them a baby back from Rwanda.
But it had been no joke. It had happened. Richard had smuggled Collette out of Kibeho by placing her on the floor of an Australian Army ambulance and covering her with blankets. It was just as well he’d hidden her, as the vehicle had been stopped by an RPA checkpoint. The soldiers had grudgingly let the vehicle through, filled as it was with seriously injured Hutus, but if they’d found the uninjured little girl it could have caused a serious incident. It was ridiculous, Richard thought, that the UN mission could be compromised because he’d chosen to rescue a child, but such were the rules under which they had operated. Richard had handed Collette on to a refugee agency that arranged for her to be taken out of Rwanda to an orphanage in Nairobi, and he’d followed her progress even after he’d returned to the UK. He’d put Jason and Denise in touch with the orphanage and they’d flown to Kenya and begun the process of adopting her. They’d wanted a baby or a small child, but when Richard had explained how he’d seen Collette’s father die, they’d decided to try to adopt her. Richard had planned on telling Carmel about Collette, the night after he returned from Kibeho, but their break-up had put paid to that. He’d glossed over mentioning Collette to the prosecutor, Ioannou, not wanting the man to find her and dredge up painful memories from her childhood.
‘Yes, my parents are fine,’ Collette said. ‘Richard, I don’t wish to seem rude, but why are you here, after all this time?’
He saw her discreetly checking her watch. He had done a good thing for her, all those years ago, but she must be asking herself why this bedraggled man had walked back into her life. Now it was time for him to do what he’d prevented Ioannou from doing.
Richard took another sip of coffee. ‘I need to talk to you about the camp at Kibeho, Collette, about the day we rescued you, about the day . . .’
She closed her eyes and lowered her head. ‘About the day my father died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I knew it would come back, that I would be forced to remember.’ She opened her eyes and stared at him. ‘But of course, I’ve never forgotten. I can’t forget.’
‘I know how you feel.’
She sat back in her chair and tilted her head, regarding him in a different light; perhaps as one adult to another for the first time. ‘Yes, I suspect you do. I don’t imagine it was easy for you peacekeepers, you soldiers, but I lost everything. My entire natural family was murdered.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know the worst thing about it, Richard? You know what tears me up inside every time I think about those days, every time an Australian teacher or a family friend or another schoolkid asked me about them as I was growing up?’
‘No. Tell me.’
‘They all think, all these good people here who wanted to care for the poor little refugee girl from tragic Rwanda, that I was an orphan of the genocide, that I was a Tutsi whose family was killed by evil Hutus. They want to think of me as the innocent victim, just as you and the other soldiers who saved me wanted to think of me like that.’
Richard knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but he hadn’t given too much thought for the trauma Collette would have carried all these years and, yes, perhaps the guilt. It made sense that Collette had wanted to hide her Hutu background; after all, despite the mass killings at Kibeho, the world’s perception after the 1994 genocide was that the Hutus were the perpetrators of evil. Many people didn’t want to acknowledge the bloodshed that the Tutsis had been responsible for with revenge killings once they’d taken back control. ‘So, you’re Hutu?’ he confirmed.
She looked away for a second and drew a breath before she could face him again. ‘You didn’t know? What do you think my father was doing hiding in that squalid camp in Kibeho, living among all that filth?’
Richard shrugged. ‘There were many Hutus in those camps who were there simply because they feared the wrath of the RPA when they swept through the country. It was on the local radio station, we’d been told. Radio-Television Libres Milles was telling all the Hutus that they’d be killed for being complicit in the genocide.’
‘If my father had been innocent – truly innocent – he would have voluntarily resettled us rather than staying in the camp months after the genocide was over. I’ve read a lot about those times, Richard. I know that what the RPA did that day, shooting and mortaring us, rounding us up like cattle, was wrong, but I also know there were many bad people hiding in the camp.’
Richard could feel himself losing control of the situation, and the last thing he wanted was for Collette to storm out on him. He reached into the inside pocket of the rumpled blue blazer he’d put on over his T-shirt and jeans for the meeting – to look somehow more respectable, more doctorly for her – and took out the copy of Liesl’s photograph of the picture Collette’s father had been holding. ‘Please, Collette, it doesn’t matter about your father, who he was or what he did, but I need you to look at this.’
She took the picture from him. He could see her eyes were rimmed red and her face set in a scowl as though she was angry at him for forcing her to dredge up these barely suppressed memories and emotions. ‘These are my father’s fingers, holding this, aren’t they?’
He nodded. She caressed the edges of the print, placing her fingers on her dead father’s, the tops of which showed at the edge of the shot where he was holding up the creased photo to the camera.
‘Do you know who any of the men are in this picture?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Well, there is my father.’
Richard thought she had misunderstood. ‘Well, yes, his fingers. But I meant the men in the picture he’s holding.’
She looked at him over the rim of the photograph and shook her head. ‘My father is one of the men in the picture.’
‘He is?’ That was news to him.
‘He’s the one with his back to the camera. You wouldn’t recognise him as you can’t see his face, and the beret is hiding his greying hair. But even all these years after his death, without having seen him, I know his bulk, his stance. There is no doubt that this is him.’
Richard nodded. His recollection was of a patient dying despite his best efforts, and of the man’s pleading words and the agony in his face as he fought to pass on what he thought was important information. ‘He’s in a camouflage uniform.’
Collette stared at the picture. ‘Yes. He was a colonel in the FAR – the Rwandan national army.’
‘What was his job in the army? Do you know?’
‘Military intelligence.’
That figured, Richard thought. ‘Do you know who the white man is in the picture?’
Collette chewed on her lower lip as she stared intently at the picture.
‘Or the other man?’ Richard prompted.
‘I was only twelve years old when my father died.’
Richard slumped in his seat and sipped his cooling coffee. ‘I know. I wouldn’t have come all this way if it wasn’t important, Collette.’
She set the picture down on the table. ‘I didn’t think you’d come just to see me.’
Richard closed his eyes and realised what an arse he’d made of himself. ‘Collette, I’m so . . .’
‘Forget it. I’m just being selfish. You gave me my life, Richard. You and your colleagues risked a great deal to get me out of Kibeho alive – I know that. And I am so very grateful to you for that, and for getting my parents to adopt me from the orphanage in Kenya. I’m being silly. It’s just that . . .’
He reached across the table and it was his turn to lay his hand on hers. ‘You are scared?’
Sh
e blinked. Once, twice, then used the back of her other hand to wipe her eyes. ‘All the time,’ she said in a small voice. ‘For years I was afraid they would come for me. I knew they wanted to kill me.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘But you are safe here in Australia. And in Kenya I had people I knew keeping watch on you, sending me messages.’
She nodded, but looked down at the table. ‘I know all that, but you don’t know what they are like, these people.’
Richard wondered if she was talking about the genocide and the revenge killings that followed it, or if she meant a particular group of people. ‘Were you worried about the men in the picture coming to get you?’
She stared at it again, then put it down and slid it back across the table to him. Collette looked up at him, straight in the eye this time. ‘No. I have no idea who the other men in this picture are.’
There was something about the way she said the words and her blank gaze. She was trying to meet his eyes, but actually looking through him. She was being evasive. He thought he understood why.
‘I should have visited you before this.’
‘I’m not your responsibility, Richard. For sure, there were times when I was growing up when I thought of you, often. I saw you coming to get me, to take me away from Jason and Denise – particularly when we were fighting, during my teenage years. But I love them very much, even though sometimes I wanted the man who rescued me to come save me again.’
It was Richard’s turn to stare at the table. He felt as though he had wasted the trip to Australia and once again disappointed someone who had cared for him. He slid the picture back around so he could look at it, for the hundredth time. ‘There’s nothing more you can tell me?’
‘Richard, I have an appointment, a client.’ She checked her watch for emphasis. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, Collette. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.’ He stood for her, took her hand and kissed her cheek. ‘Goodbye.’
He watched her walk out of the coffee shop and out of his life again. He picked up the photograph and paid the bill and wondered what on earth he should do.
*
‘Do we follow the man or the woman?’ Nguyen asked his cousin, Tran. They were seated in a low-slung Subaru WR-X.
‘Buggered if I know.’ Tran scratched his scalp in between his heavily gelled spikes of hair. ‘All I know is Uncle Minh told us to stick with this guy after he got off the flight from Africa and report what he does and who he sees.’
The men were of Vietnamese origin but both spoke English with the nasal twang of southwestern Sydney. Nguyen said, ‘I vote we stay with the black chick. She’s hot. I’d like to give her one.’
‘This guy gets around, man. He was supposed to be single and then he ends up in a cab with a white woman, and now this one. He’s the target,’ Tran said. Tran van Duong was Nguyen van Lo’s elder by four years. At the age of twenty-two he had already done six months in Long Bay Jail for assault occasioning grievous bodily harm after he’d beaten the shit out of a senior member of a rival Vietnamese gang. Tran considered himself lucky, as the police didn’t know that it was him who had killed the Lebanese boy in the drive-by in Lakemba a year earlier.
His boss, Nguyen’s father Minh, knew Tran was lucky too. Uncle Minh had given him this important job – it was a favour to a supplier from Africa – and he had entrusted Nguyen into his care. Tran was worried about fucking up. Nguyen was a hothead with a big mouth. Tran had seen the inside of prison and while it had made him stronger, he didn’t want to go back. Tran took out his iPhone and scrolled to Uncle Minh’s number and called him on Viber, so there would be no record of the call on his bill.
‘Yes?’ his uncle said.
‘Hurry, he’s leaving now,’ Nguyen whispered.
Tran held up a hand to silence his cousin. ‘He met a black woman. They talked for half an hour, then she left. She’s on foot. He was in a taxi.’
‘I will report back to our supplier,’ his uncle said. ‘What do you think you should do?’
Tran thought about it. His uncle was putting him on the spot. He knew that with his form he was being considered for higher things in the organisation. He had proven his strength, by delivering punishment to his rival, and his will, by killing the Leb, but his uncle wanted to know if he had brains as well. ‘The man has no luggage with him, so he will have to return to his hotel sometime soon. The room is in the name of the woman he met on the plane, and she has only booked for one night. Assuming check-out from the hotel is ten or eleven, then he will be heading back there pretty much straightaway.’
‘Good, so you know where he is going.’
‘And our instructions were to see who he met.’
‘And who did he meet?’
‘A black – Ah, I see. Yes, Uncle. We need to know who she is.’
‘Precisely,’ Minh said.
‘I will send Nguyen to the hotel, to wait and watch the man, and I will follow the woman and find out who she is.’
‘Very good. I’ll text you when I have further instructions and you will call me then.’
‘Yes, Uncle.’ Tran ended the call.
‘I could hear,’ Nguyen said. He frowned. ‘How come I get the dude and you get the hot chick?’
‘Rank has its privileges, Cuz.’
*
It was after midnight in Kigali and the Indian restaurant was empty but for Liesl, Henri, a waiter, and a tired-looking manager.
Liesl was shattered, but buzzing from the alcohol. She’d felt like this many times before – overtired but cruising on her reserve tanks. It was sometimes the most fun, just before a crash. She was trying to figure out the Frenchman. She lit another cigarette. She was nearing the end of the packet, partly thanks to Henri who had bummed three since Miss Prissy had left to go to bed.
‘So, you’re here to bring back a chimp?’
‘Yes, as I said before. I think. That was two bottles ago.’
She laughed. ‘I think there’s more to you, Monsieur Bousson.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps this is it. What you see. What do you hope to find here?’
Their talk had been of travels in Africa, of their respective jobs, of their upbringings. Both were children of Africa, restless, kindred, and they had seen their share of sorrow. Henri had asked her about Afghanistan, and she’d told him, candidly, about her breakdown.
‘You know how it is – people are always bemoaning the state of Africa, but tribalism, civil war, corruption, senseless killing aren’t the sole preserve of Africa.’ He’d nodded and she’d wondered what demons he had lurking in his head. They’d been dancing around the real reasons for their being in Rwanda, but the alcohol was loosening Liesl’s tongue and she hoped it would have the same effect on him.
‘So you are not just here to take pictures of the mountain gorillas?’
She smiled. ‘I’d be lying if I said I was. The truth is, I don’t know where to start looking, but there’s a story in all of this. If there is someone, or some group of people who are prepared to carry out multiple assassinations in three countries to stop people finding out what the significance of my photograph is, then it has to be because of something pretty big and something pretty secret.’
‘Such as?’
‘You’ve seen the picture. You’ve been around. The men in that photo are posing with a Russian-made surface-to-air missile launcher – the kind of weapon that was used to shoot down the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi back in 1994. There’s been a lot of conjecture as to which side – the Hutus or the Tutsis – fired that missile. And there’s a white man in the picture, which makes me think there’s some credence to rumours that there was a western country involved in the killing.’
Henri scoffed. ‘You media people are always good at finding conspiracy theories, yes?’
‘Well you only have to google this one to find plenty of them. There’s the most popular theory that even though President Juvenal Habyarimana was a Hutu, and several of his senior Hutu military
staff were on board the aircraft, it was other Hutus that shot down his plane.’
‘Yes,’ Henri agreed, waving a hand in the air as though he’d heard it all before. ‘There is strong evidence that the more radical Hutus, the ones behind Hutu Power and the Interahamwe militia, were concerned that Habyarimana was about to agree to the Arusha Peace Accords which would pave the way for all the Tutsis who’d been living outside the country to move back. That was at odds with Hutu Power’s stated aim of wiping out all the Tutsis in Rwanda.’
‘Yes, and then there’s the theory that it was actually Habyarimana’s wife who was behind the killing. She was apparently the grande dame of an ultra-extremist faction of Hutu Power called the Akazu. Some people say that she had given up on her husband, considering him a moderate and a sell-out.’ Liesl had learned about the Akazu, which meant ‘little house’, when she was in Rwanda. This close-knit band of relatives and supporters of the late president had been unable to countenance a deal with Paul Kagame and the Tutsis under any circumstances. She wondered at the callousness – or was it conviction – of a woman who could have her husband murdered in the name of racial politics.
‘Of course,’ Henri continued, ‘there is also the possibility that Kagame, or some element in his Tutsi RPA, shot down the president’s aircraft. After all, the RPA had been at war with Rwanda’s army for years. Perhaps General Paul Kagame or his subordinates were secretly as worried about the prospect of peace as Habyarimana’s extremists supporters.’
Liesl shrugged and drained the last of her red wine from her glass. ‘Possible. Kagame was winning the war and the RPA actually had forces billeted in Kigali in the lead-up to the signing of the peace accords. They were a whisker away from military victory. Habyarimana’s death was the spark that reignited the war – a war that Kagame and the RPA eventually won.’
Henri looked dubious. ‘Yes, but what a price to pay. Shooting down that aircraft was the spark that ignited the genocide and led to the deaths of nearly a million people.’
Liesl was happy to continue as the devil’s advocate. ‘Yes, but perhaps Kagame didn’t expect the Interahamwe and the FAR to go as far as they did . . . perhaps a few pogroms, some isolated killings . . .’
