McFaul was already unpacking his bag, getting the camcorder ready, wondering whether Katilo had bothered to warn these two men that their conversation would be taped. The American had already got up and drawn Katilo aside, and the pair were deep in conversation on the other side of the room. It was raining hard now, the city a blur beyond the big picture windows, and McFaul saw Katilo frowning and shaking his head, emphatic denials, listening to the American. Mr Lawrence was wearing a dark three-piece suit, exquisitely cut, and he had an almost courtly manner, using his hands a lot when he talked, sealing each point with yet another smile.
At length the two men returned, the American guiding Katilo by the elbow, the gentlest touch. Katilo looked a little crestfallen, gesturing at the low glass table in front of the sofa. For the first time, McFaul saw the diamonds. They were laid out on a square of black velvet behind the tray of coffee. Sarkis reached forward, poking the diamonds with his forefinger, selecting one of the smaller gemstones. He produced a magnifying lens and pouched it in one eye, inspecting the diamond in the light from the window.
McFaul glanced at Katilo, asking him whether he wanted him to tape. Katilo looked at the American.
‘Mr Lawrence …’ he began.
Lawrence put his hand on Katilo’s arm, taking over. He spoke in a slow southern drawl, a deep voice, beautifully modulated.
‘The colonel has told me about your film,’ he said at once. ‘It sounds an exciting project. I’d love to help you all I can but we have ourselves a problem here. You’ll appreciate these conversations …’ He gestured loosely towards the pile of diamonds. ‘It could be sensitive.’
McFaul said he’d do what everyone wanted. Katilo came up with an idea. Before the real business began McFaul would shoot the three of them just talking. That way, the audience would get to see the other side of Katilo’s work without having to share any secrets. The American was smiling again.
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘go ahead. Only leave me out.’
‘You mean that?’
‘I’m afraid I do.’
Katilo looked briefly annoyed, then shrugged. Sarkis had finished with the diamonds. He, too, was less than interested in appearing in Katilo’s video, not bothering to hide his irritation.
‘Why didn’t you mention this already?’
‘I thought it was no problem.’
‘No problem?’ Sarkis squinted up at him. ‘You kidding?’
The American sat down again, reaching for his coffee. Katilo, robbed of his video sequence, was eyeing them both, visibly frustrated. Watching him, McFaul began to sense the limits of his authority. In the bush, Katilo could play the emperor. Here, it wasn’t quite so clear-cut.
Finally, Katilo walked across to the wardrobe, telling McFaul to have the camcorder ready. McFaul did what he was told, pressing the record button as Katilo stooped to pull out a big cardboard box. He beckoned McFaul closer, opening the flaps on top of the box. Inside, nestling amongst little shells of polystyrene packing, were dozens of antipersonnel mines. Katilo selected one, weighing it in his hand for a moment or two, musing aloud about the shape of the deal. He’d come to Kinshasa for resupplies. There were friends here who would give him anything he needed. Samples were delivered to his hotel room. The rest would go straight to the airport for onward shipment.
Katilo looked up. His eyes narrowed.
‘Right, Sarkis?’
McFaul put the camcorder down, glancing round towards the sofa. Sarkis was shovelling the diamonds into a small leather bag, ignoring the question. Lawrence, the American, was staring out of the window. Katilo shrugged again, then tossed the mine to McFaul. McFaul caught it in his left hand, hearing Katilo’s low chuckle.
‘For you, my friend,’ he murmured, ‘souvenir from Kinshasa.’
McFaul took the mine back to his hotel room. It was one of the PMNs, circular, the size of an ashtray, and McFaul could tell at once from the weight that it was a dud, a demo that salesmen used to secure a contract. Soviet-made, the real thing had claimed more victims than any other mine in the world.
McFaul went to the window, gazing out. The rain had stopped again and one of the Brazzaville ferries was nosing out into the river. It lay low in the water, slightly lopsided, the decks crowded with passengers. There were more of them on the roof, a riot of colour, and gouts of greasy brown smoke from the funnel drifted away on the wind as the ferry set course for the distant smudge of Brazzaville.
McFaul looked at the mine again, fingering the ring pull on the side that armed it. He’d lifted hundreds of these in Afghanistan. There were factories all over the world turning out copies, and you could buy them by the dozen in Pakistan. He’d seen a boxful himself in the market in Miranshah. Six dollars each. No questions asked.
He went back to the bed, swamped by the memories. In Afghanistan, he’d often found the PMNs semi-exposed, protected by a summer’s growth of scrub and grass. In that situation, you were bloody careful, working slowly round the thing, using garden secateurs, snipping away the vegetation before lifting the mine out by its sides, like a surgeon removing a cyst. McFaul closed his eyes, back amongst the rocky hillsides. That’s where he’d found Mohammed, the little Afghan goat herd, the body curled amongst the rocks. That’s where his anger and his rage had first taken root.
McFaul’s hand closed around the mine. At this very moment, Katilo was probably buying thousands of the things, plus laying orders for any other mine that took his fancy. The diamonds on the table in the room downstairs would give him the pick of the stuff on the market. Type 72s. Valselas. SB-33s, Claymores. Anything he could load into Rademeyer’s Dove and fly south. More work for the surgeons. More limbless kids begging in the streets of Luanda.
McFaul sank onto the bed. He and Bennie had returned Mohammed’s body to his home village, the scruffy cluster of packed-earth dwellings on the road to Jeji. They’d wrapped the boy in a blanket and carried him down the hillside, trying to keep their footing in the loose scree. The kid was days dead, his body stiffened, the flesh eaten away where the wild dogs had been at him, and the journey had seemed endless. Afterwards in the village there were the parents to cope with. Oddly, their grief had been muted. Mines had narrowed the land, hemming them in, and they seemed to have done something similar to the people’s feelings. They were resigned. They were stoical. Their children were dying all the time. It was something you had to live with, like the implacable weather, and crop failure, and the fat Soviet helicopters that came chattering down the valley, scattering yet more mines.
McFaul rolled over, letting the PMN fall to the floor. They’d stayed the night in the village, sleeping in the Land Rover. Next morning, he’d shaken Mohammed’s father by the hand, not knowing quite what to say, the gruffest farewell. Driving back to Kabul, he’d told Bennie that simply clearing up wasn’t enough. Ridding Afghanistan of mines might take a hundred years. There had to be another way. Bennie had laughed, like he always did. The money was good. They were saving lives. What else could you do?
McFaul thought about the question now. The spilling of blood carried certain responsibilities. That’s what he’d wanted to say to Mohammed’s father. That’s what he’d tried to say to Celestina. An eye for an eye. A leg for a leg. A life for a life. He got to his feet again, looking at his watch, brooding.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sauna of the Intercontinental Hotel is on the ground floor, tucked between the changing rooms for the outdoor swimming pool and the line of squash courts that flank the building to the east. Molly left her clothes in a locker in the changing room, wrapping a towel round herself. The attendant beside the plunge pool assured her that the sauna was nearly empty. One or two guests at the most. No hassle. No sweat. Molly thanked him, smiling dutifully at the joke, pulling open the heavy pine door. A fat bubble of hot air enveloped her at once, and she lifted her face, savouring the smell of resin, knowing that this decision of hers had been right. Something to take her mind off Kinshasa. Something to stop her thinking about Katil
o, and the Chargé at the embassy, and the prospect of another night in this appalling city.
‘Hi …’
Molly looked round. The sauna was empty except for a man on the corner bench nearest the door. He had a yellow towel round his waist and one leg was missing below the knee, the stump dangling down over the edge of the wooden slats.
Molly reached at once for the door. McFaul looked amused.
‘Too hot for you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then stay.’ McFaul nodded at the empty benches. ‘No need to worry about me.’
‘It’s not that …’
‘No?’
‘No.’ Molly shook her head, still hesitating by the door. She eyed him a moment, then forced another smile, settling herself carefully on the adjacent bench. She liked McFaul but she didn’t understand him. The life he led seemed indescribably dangerous and the scars he carried slightly frightened her. McFaul was what happened when you got used to these awful mines. For him, they’d become a way of life.
McFaul reached for the scoop, splashing more water on the hot coals, and Molly felt the temperature rise at once, a thick woolly blanket of air, tightening around her. She was sweating already, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, avoiding contact with the wall. McFaul had settled again. His forearms were dark from exposure to the sun but the pale white skin of the rest of his body was yellowed with bruising. The bruises were everywhere, down his ribcage, across the small of his back, and there were graze marks too, as if he’d been dragged across rough ground.
McFaul was cleaning the dirt from his fingernails. The silence between them unnerved Molly.
‘Those cassettes you’ve got,’ she said lightly. ‘What happens to them now?’
‘We take them back to the UK.’
‘We?’
‘Me,’ he glanced up, wiping his face with the back of his hand, ‘and you. If you’re interested.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘There’s a programme to make. You could be part of all that.’
‘You mean Alma?’
McFaul shrugged.
‘Sure. Or whoever else.’
Molly looked at him a moment, uncertain. The film had begun with Todd Llewelyn. At Robbie’s invitation, Alma Bradley had stepped in. Now, McFaul was evidently thinking of a third party.
‘Who do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not an expert. Television? You tell me.’
‘But you want to see it through? This film? Whatever it is?’
‘Absolutely. No question.’
‘And Alma? The woman I told you about? In Luanda?’
‘She’s welcome. More than welcome. As long as—’ He broke off, frowning, studying his hands again.
‘As long as what?’
‘As long as she sees it the way we saw it, the way it happened. No more bullshit. No more dressing up. Katilo thinks we’re making some kind of PR film. Llewelyn wanted his name in fairy lights. And maybe your Alma friend’s got some angle too. I don’t want that, don’t need it. The stuff’s there, you’ve seen it, most of it, first-hand. Why don’t we just cut it all together? Tell it the way it was? Eh? I’m no film director but I don’t think we’re short of material, do you?’ He looked up, staring at her, the sweat pouring from his hairline, the veins in his temples raised and throbbing, and for the first time she realised that McFaul was no more immune to what had happened than she’d been. The last two weeks must have touched him, she thought. Deeply.
‘Not at all. I think you’ve been extraordinary. Doing what you’ve done.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’ Molly nodded. ‘That night in Muengo when we went to the bonfire. The night they slaughtered the cow. I don’t know how you did it, watched it. I just …’ She shook her head, one hand tightening the knot that secured the towel at the top of her breasts.
McFaul reached for the scoop again. The water hissed on the coals, evaporating immediately.
‘You have to,’ he said savagely, ‘there’s no choice. It got us out of Muengo. That’s one thing. But I’d have done it anyway if I’d thought hard enough. People don’t know. They don’t have a clue. They think Africa’s one big basket case. They think they can solve it with raffles and rock concerts and appeals on telly. It never occurs to anyone there might be a reason these people are starving. You know about Angola? How rich it could be?’ He paused. ‘And you know where most of the money goes? Anyone ever tell you?’
Molly nodded. Rademeyer had told her on the plane, that first flight down to Muengo.
‘Arms?’ she suggested.
‘Yeah.’ McFaul was staring at her. ‘Guns, shells, mines, you name it. Both sides. Katilo’s lot. The government. They’re both at it. You know how much those clowns in Luanda spent last year? Buying stuff in?’ Molly frowned, trying to remember the figure. McFaul beat her to it. ‘Two billion dollars. Two billion. That’s money spent by a government that can’t feed its own people. A government that chops its kids off at the knees.’
Molly reached out for him, hearing the rage in his voice. His head was down again, his hands tightly knotted together, the bands of muscle in his forearms standing out. She’d rarely seen anyone so tense. No wonder he’d come for a sauna. A question had been nagging at her for days. She’d tried to think of ways of softening it but she knew now that there was no point.
‘Your own injuries,’ she said quietly. ‘What happened to your leg and your face. Is that why you’re so angry?’
McFaul’s head came up. He looked at her for a moment or two, a speculative expression on his face, as if he’d never considered the question before.
‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘not at all.’
‘Your friend told me about it. Bennie.’
‘Did he? Kuwait? All that?’
‘Yes. It must have been dreadful, ghastly.’
McFaul shrugged.
‘We were well paid. We knew the odds. It wasn’t the same at all. It wasn’t like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like here. Angola. Muengo …’ He paused. ‘Innocent people, decent people. Blokes like Domingos.’
‘Or James?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded, ‘or James.’
Molly said nothing. It was the first time McFaul had betrayed the slightest sympathy for her dead son and she risked a smile, a small expression of gratitude. McFaul ducked his head, embarrassed. After a while, he looked up again. His voice was lower, contemplative, much of the anger gone. He sounded, if anything, resigned.
‘Do it commercially,’ he said, ‘and you lose your judgement. It’s like any other deal. Contracts. Deadlines. Penalty payments. You’re so keen on the money, you stop thinking. That’s why …’ He gestured at the remains of his leg, not bothering to finish the sentence.
Molly wanted to ask another question. There were parts of McFaul it was possible to touch. Just.
‘Does that make it easier?’
‘What?’
‘Knowing it was your fault? Or partly your fault?’
‘Sure,’ he nodded, ‘it was a mistake. And you only make it once. Either it kills you, or you end up like me.’ He looked down at his leg again. The stump was puckered, like the top of a peeled orange.
There was a long silence.
‘Bennie told me you were covering for someone else. He said it was his fault. Not yours.’
‘Makes no difference. With most blokes, it’s greed. That’s a weakness. I was just soft in the head. I should have shopped the guy, turned him in. That’s a weakness, too.’
‘Compassion?’
‘Bad judgement. The guy was a dickhead.’ He eyed her a moment. ‘I’m hopeless with people. Always get it wrong. Always have. Always will. Bennie tell you that, too?’
‘Yes,’ Molly smiled, ‘he did.’
‘Well, then …’ He ducked his head again, desperate to change the subject. There were firms working in Africa, he said, who were clearing minefields commercially. Same deal as Kuwa
it.
‘You mean in Angola?’
‘Not so far. Mozambique mainly.’
‘But isn’t that OK? Aren’t they the experts? The ones who’d know best?’
‘Oh sure, sure. But there’s a twist. Some of these firms are in the mines business already. They deal at both ends. They make the stuff, flog it, and then pop back a couple of years later and clean it all up. Isn’t that neat? Getting paid twice? Once for killing people? Maiming them? And then again when they’ve had enough?’ He shook his head, picking at a shred of loose skin on one of his fingers. ‘This game stinks, stinks. That’s why I’m keen on doing some kind of film. People should see for themselves. People should know.’
‘Will they ever show it?’
‘God knows. I hope so.’
‘And is that enough? Will people take any notice?’
McFaul was staring at her again, anger and surprise.
‘You think they won’t?’
‘I’m just asking the question.’ Molly frowned. ‘People get to see a lot nowadays.’
‘But you think it needs something else?’
‘I don’t know.’ Molly was looking at his leg again. ‘What else can you do?’
After the sauna, McFaul slept. When he awoke, it was nearly dark, the last of the sunset mirrored on the broad sweep of the Zaire river below the hotel window. He dressed slowly, pensive. When he descended in the lift to the hotel lobby, a note awaited him from Katilo. He was to take the camcorder up to his room. He was to leave it there with a note explaining how to make the thing work. The colonel’s plans for the evening had changed. He’d be back in the hotel by nine.
McFaul collected the camcorder and found his way to Katilo’s room. The room had been cleaned since the midday meeting. There was fresh fruit in a bowl on the coffee table, and a vase of flowers in an alcove above the long crescent of sofa. The curtains had been drawn over the tall picture windows and the top cover on the bed had been folded carefully down. Three champagne glasses stood on a silver tray beside the bed, and McFaul looked at them a moment. A note on the tray directed Katilo to the mini-bar, and McFaul opened it, finding three bottles of Krug nestling in buckets of ice-cubes. He closed the door, looking at the bed again. Three glasses. A bottle each.
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