It was still early by Kinshasa’s standards. Even so, there was a pretty good crowd at the Ibiza, including a handful of Westerners. The four-piece ensemble on the stage at the far end of the room was covering Joseph Kabasele’s “Indépendence Cha Cha.”
Alex took a seat at the bar and ordered a Stella Artois on draft and a plate of gambas, freshwater shrimp from the Congo River grilled and served with garlic and chili paste. The beer was cold, the shrimp were fresh and succulent, and the music was sublimely beautiful. In a moment of clarity, he realized that there was simply no way he could justify reporting what he knew about the collection of weapons in Albert Ilunga’s basement. Something was happening in Congolese politics that needed an opportunity to evolve. Alex would not take responsibility for crushing it. There had really never been another choice.
The band launched into a Miles Davis arrangement of “On Green Dolphin Street.” The saxophonist was pretty good, Alex thought, and the keyboard player was exceptional. He closed his eyes and let the music wash through him, draining the tension out of his body. When he opened his eyes, Jonah Keeler was sitting on the stool next to him, eating one of the shrimp from his plate.
“Good band,” he said.
“Not bad. Not the most adventurous playlist, but they’re pretty tight.”
Keeler raised a finger to get the attention of the bartender.
“Jack and Coke, please.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
The band wrapped up “On Green Dolphin Street” and started on Abdullah Ibrahim’s “African Suite.” The bartender brought Keeler his drink.
“I don’t suppose this is . . . what are the kids calling it these days . . . a coincidence?” Alex asked.
“Nope.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Please. We spend billions of dollars a year on intelligence. Now admittedly, all that money can’t seem to find bin Laden. But it sure as shit can find you.”
“What are you interested in? Music lessons?”
“There’s something I’d like to show you.”
“Something we couldn’t talk about in the office.”
“Most definitely.”
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“I’d rather show you.”
“When?”
“You gonna finish those shrimp?”
• • •
Keeler put two five-thousand-franc notes on the bar to cover the bill. He left his drink untouched. When they got outside, Keeler gave Alex his instructions.
“Go home. Park in your normal spot. Go inside and wait for one hour. Then leave by the back door. Walk two blocks south to Batatela Street. I’ll meet you at the northwest corner by the kiosk. Wear comfortable clothes.”
“What is this about?”
“Tradecraft.”
Alex followed his instructions and by ten o’clock he was standing on the corner of Batatela and Rue Ouganda. The kiosk sold newspapers, magazines, snacks, soda, and, if you knew to ask for it, locally grown cannabis. This late, the kiosk was closed. A plywood shutter was locked shut to protect the dusty Fantas and a few ounces of low-grade pot. There was little traffic on the street.
A black Honda CR-V pulled up to the corner. Alex noticed that it had regular Kinshasa license plates rather than the corps diplomatique plates that identified Embassy vehicles.
“Get in,” Keeler said, from behind the wheel.
“Nice wheels,” Alex said, when they were under way. “I thought you drove a Beemer, though.”
“I do. This is a Company car. Tonight, we’re on Company business.” Alex could hear the capital letter in Company. The CIA.
For about twenty minutes Keeler drove in a seemingly random pattern around the city, circling blocks, doubling back on his route, and keeping as much as possible to the smaller side streets.
“More tradecraft?” Alex asked.
“Nah, I’m just lost. But I’m too much of a man to stop and ask for directions,” Keeler replied.
“Who are you afraid is following us, our side or the bad guys?”
“Are you absolutely sure there’s a difference?”
• • •
When Keeler was satisfied that they were on their own, he took a sharp turn without signaling onto the on-ramp for the N1 and they drove south for about forty-five minutes to Dibulu. There were a few other cars on the highway, but traffic was moving swiftly. Right outside Dibulu was an exit with a sign that read AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. VIOLATORS ARE SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION. For the less literate drivers, there was a picture underneath the warning of a guard with a rifle shooting an intruder in the back. Keeler did not take that exit, but he did turn onto an unmarked gravel road about two miles farther on that curved back in the direction of the threatening road sign.
“I don’t suppose that we constitute an authorized vehicle,” Alex commented.
“Probably not. Although you never know what you can talk your way out of until you have to.”
Keeler killed the headlights. For a moment everything outside was dark, and Alex was sure that they were about to drive into the ditch by the side of the road. Suddenly the windshield came to life, projecting an image of the road ahead in which objects were outlined in eerie green light. A yellow line ran down the middle of the road. Other than that, it looked almost like driving in the day. The techie part of Alex’s personality loved it.
“Very cool. How do you do that?”
“Heads-up display with a fourth-generation active night-vision system. I told you, it’s a Company car.”
“You guys get much cooler toys than we do. The State Department gave me a laptop.”
“Does it come with a death ray?”
“Does Windows Vista count?”
“Well, it sure sucks the life out of you.”
They drove slowly down the gravel road for about fifteen minutes. Then the yellow line veered off the road into the scrub-covered hills. Keeler followed the line. “GPS,” he explained. After a short, bumpy ride, the yellow line ended with an icon of a red flag projected onto the windshield.
“Where are we?”
“A small military airfield near Kasangulu. It’s a secondary field, rarely used by the DRC Air Force. I have a reason to believe that it’s going to be used tonight.”
“By whom?”
“Patience. You’ll see.”
Keeler opened the back of the CR-V. He pulled out something heavy and handed it to Alex. It was a black flak jacket. Alex put it on and Keeler helped him cinch it tight. It weighed about twenty pounds. The Station Chief donned a similar vest and slung a black duffel bag over his shoulder.
“Jonah, what the fuck are we doing?”
“We’re going for a look-see. Don’t worry. We’re not going to get close, and we aren’t going to do anything but look. I think you need to see for yourself what I believe is about to go down.”
“And the guards?”
“They mostly don’t bother. Remember, this is a reserve airfield. They don’t use it on a regular basis.”
There was enough moonlight to navigate by. It seemed to Alex that Keeler had been here before as he threaded his way confidently between the hills. A ten-minute walk brought them to a chain-link fence with three strips of barbed wire at the top. Keeler pulled a large set of clippers out of the duffel bag and cut a man-size hole in the fence in less than a minute.
“In you go, lad. Keep low.”
Alex crawled through the hole and kept himself flat on the ground. A moment later, Keeler was beside him. He looked at his watch, cupping his hand over it before pressing the button that illuminated the time.
“Fifteen minutes,” he whispered.
They waited.
Alex heard it before he saw it. It was the insistent drone of a turboprop. He looked up, but he could not see the lights o
f an incoming aircraft.
“They’re landing without lights,” Keeler explained, when he saw Alex look up. “Really not terribly safe, you know. Let’s go take a look. Keep right next to me. Do what I tell you. Don’t stand up unless somebody’s shooting at you. Got that?”
“Let’s go back to that somebody-shooting-at-me part.”
“Follow me.”
Keeler led Alex up to the top of a small rise. There were a few sizable rocks at the top that they used for cover. From the top of the rise, they had a view of the airfield below. In the moonlight, Alex saw a large twin-engine aircraft land and pull up alongside two trucks and a car parked by what had to be the control tower. The Station Chief pulled some equipment out of the duffel and set it up on top of one of the rocks. It looked to Alex like a telescope with a parabolic dish on the end.
“Is that a microphone?”
“Best in the world. We’re gonna see if we can both look and listen. This thing is a little temperamental. Next time, I’m buying Japanese.” He handed Alex a large pair of binoculars and took one for himself.
“Moon’s so damn bright we almost don’t need the night vision, but I want to get a good clear look at this.”
Through the binoculars, they watched the crew lower the rear door of the cargo aircraft and begin removing large crates strapped to wooden pallets. They worked carefully and efficiently. A group of six African men stood by the trucks. Two of them were carrying rifles.
“That’s an Antonov An-26,” Keeler said. “No tail number. No registry. It’s a ghost aircraft. There will be no record that it was ever in this country.” Keeler trained the parabolic mike on the scene below them and plugged two earphones into a splitter on the back of the device. He handed one to Alex, who slipped the single earpiece over his right ear.
A man in a suit stepped out of the back of the sedan and walked over to the crates. He was noticeably shorter than the others, and although his back was turned to them, Alex was quite sure that this was Henri Saillard.
Sure enough, Saillard turned and looked almost straight at them. Alex ducked instinctively.
“Don’t worry,” Keeler assured him. “We’re too far away to be spotted without night-vision equipment and high-quality optics. We can see him, but he can’t see us. Why, I do believe that that is your new friend, Henry. Hello, Henry.”
“I wouldn’t have thought this was his scene. He seemed more like a take-a-meeting-then-lunch-at-the-club kind of guy.”
“Don’t let him fool you. He’s one tough bastard. I’ve done a little spadework on him. Before getting into the mining business, he flew attack helicopters for the French Foreign Legion. He saw action in the Balkans and in the wars in West Africa in the nineties. Won the Legion of Honor for heroism under fire in Chad.”
Without warning, Alex heard Saillard’s voice in his ear. He was speaking in English. “Right on time as always, gentlemen. It’s a pleasure doing business with professionals.”
“Good.” The accent of the crew chief was Slavic of some sort. “We want to unload quickly and turn around. We need to be back home and under cover before light.”
“Of course. Do you mind if we inspect the goods?”
“Please, but do it quickly.”
Alex saw the crew chief nod at one of the other Europeans, who used a crowbar to remove the lids from the dozen crates parked on the tarmac. Through his earpiece, Alex could hear the sound of the wood splitting. The CIA microphone was really a remarkable piece of technology.
Saillard motioned to the men by the truck, who took their time sauntering over. Their deliberate pace seemed intended to send a message: We are not under your orders. The African men reached into the crates and pulled out samples of the contents. Alex was not surprised to see that they were weapons. Some crates held standard assault rifles that looked like AK-47s. Other crates held more exotic weapons, including something that Alex was pretty certain was a surface-to-air missile. He pointed it out to Keeler.
“Yep. That, my friend, is the Russian SA-16 Igla-1E man-portable air-defense system. Not top-of-the–line, mind you, but not too far back. I can also see what look like .50-caliber sniper rifles, RPG-7 grenade launchers, and a couple of machine guns. I’m not sure of the make on those from here. That is pretty serious firepower for the Congo.”
There was a new voice. “This is very good. It is certainly better equipment than what we have been working with. But it is not enough. We will need many more crates if we are to do what is expected of us.” Alex could see through the binoculars that one of the tall African men was speaking. He was dressed in camouflage pants and a light-colored shirt. It was hard to judge colors through the night-vision equipment. There was something about him that made clear he was used to command. Most strikingly, however, he spoke French with a distinct Rwandan accent.
“That guy isn’t Congolese,” Alex told Keeler.
The Station Chief did not seem surprised.
“There will be more shipments, I assure you,” Saillard said. “But this should be enough to take care of that little problem you have been having in the east, non?”
The Rwandan nodded. “Yes. This should be sufficient.”
“Do you recognize him?” Keeler asked Alex.
“No, I don’t. But I do know he’s Rwandan. Probably Hutu. Almost certainly one of the genocidaires.”
“Very good, Mr. Baines. That is the very poorly named Innocent Ngoca. He is the commander of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda. They go by the French initials FDLR. The locals call them the Front. I call them the rat bastards. These are the boys behind the Rwandan genocide. They killed 800,000 people in about three and a half weeks, mostly with machetes and farm tools. Then they got beat and ran into the jungle one step ahead of the vengeful mob. They’ve been plotting to get back in power in Rwanda ever since, but a girl’s gotta make a living and in the meantime the Front has been selling its services to the highest bidder in the Congo’s wars. We have a pretty thick file on this guy back in the office.”
“I hope it’s better than the file you had on Manamakimba.”
“Funny you should mention that. When Manamakimba didn’t turn out to be like his jacket says he should, I started digging into that a little more. Seems like your friend Joseph has been the victim of a well-orchestrated PR campaign designed to pin on him responsibility for very bad deeds that most properly belong to Mr. Ngoca down there.”
“Who’s behind that? It seems a bit sophisticated for a group of psychopaths holed up in the rain forest.”
“Sure does. And that’s a very interesting question.”
“You have something else for us?” Ngoca asked.
“But of course,” Saillard replied.
Saillard retrieved a briefcase from his car, opened it, and pulled out a leather bag. He emptied it inside the briefcase.
“Some is in cash and some in diamonds. The diamonds are concentrated value. Easy to carry around and they won’t rot in that forest home of yours. I trust you will know how to turn them into cash when necessary.”
Ngoca laughed.
“Yes. We have some experience in that.”
Saillard gave him the briefcase. The Africans and the aircrew began loading the crates into the back of the trucks.
“Wait a second,” Alex said to Keeler. “That doesn’t make any sense to me. Saillard is giving the arms to Ngoca. If he’s running guns, shouldn’t he be the one getting the money and diamonds in return? It’s like he’s paying him to take the weapons. Why is he doing that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
With only a moment’s reflection, Alex realized that Keeler was right.
“Ngoca works for Saillard. And it’s payday.”
The Station Chief nodded in agreement.
“Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?”
22
JULY 16, 2009
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BUSU-MOULI
Marie had never imagined that being Chief could be so tedious. Her father had made it look effortless, and her respect for him grew with each of the seemingly endless decisions that she was called on to make. Her people needed her to be strong and brave, but a large part of her wanted nothing more than to run away and hide and cry over the loss of her father. The official mourning ceremonies had done nothing to help her. She had been expected to lead the rituals, not to weep like a little orphan girl. Orphan. She was a grown woman, educated, and now a chief chosen by her people to lead them. But she was an orphan now as well. Alone in the world. No mother, no father, no brothers or sisters to share the pains and joys of life. No children of her own. She had known, but hadn’t truly understood, how much she had relied on her father’s strength. How close they had grown since they had lost her mother. His death had blown a hole in her life as large and deep as the mine Marie was carving into the mountainside. Filling that hole would take time, Marie realized.
For now, there was work to do. Her face would betray none of her internal turmoil. The rage and grief she would hide beneath a mask of calm and wisdom appropriate to a chief. She would bear this burden silently. Of this, she knew her father would be proud.
Today she was holding court. Village disputes that could not be resolved between neighbors were put before the chief for adjudication. Her word was absolute and there was no higher authority. Because she was Principal Chief, Marie had to hear the petty complaints and entreaties not only from the residents of Busu-Mouli but from neighboring Luba villages as well. She tried not to think about all of the work on the mine and smelter that was not getting done because she was listening to two village women contest the ownership of a goat.
But this dispute, she had to admit, was kind of interesting.
“This woman’s son stole my daughter’s virginity. She is a good girl, never any trouble. She was led astray by this devil. Now he must make amends by marrying her and paying a bride-price equal to what she would have been worth with her maidenhood intact.”
The American Mission Page 22
