The Twain Maxim

by Clem Chambers

  Man Bites Dog came in with a large plate of fruit. There was sliced pineapple, bananas, oranges, melon and, unexpectedly, two avocados. He trotted out with the dirty plates and came back with some clean ones.

  “Now there’s one good thing about this place,” said Higgins. “The fruit’s great.”

  “Yeah,” sniggered Baz, “so long as you’ve got someone like MBD to get it for you.”

  Jim bit into the pineapple. It was like he had never eaten it before. It was so sweet and soft and wholesome. He wiped the juice from his chin with his shirt cuff for want of anything else. “Amazing,” he said.

  Man Bites Dog was watching them from a corner of the room. This time when Jim met the boy’s gaze he didn’t disappear.

  “People always wonder why Africa’s such a shit hole,” Baz observed, “and you know why it is?”

  “No idea,” said Jim, now gnawing a slice of melon.

  “It’s classic mercantilism.”

  Jim shrugged. “I don’t know what that is,” he said.

  “In a nutshell, industrial nations keep these guys in a vicious circle of poverty and war.”

  “I’m not an economist,” said Jim.

  “It’s salt,” said Higgins. “There’s no fucking salt here. No salt, no civilisation, full stop.”

  What the hell had he got himself into? Jim wondered. He finished his beer. “Well, guys, I’m going to get some shut-eye. It’s going to be a big one tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” said Baz.

  The air was heavy and full of the sounds of night creatures. He felt a tinge of excitement, this place really was something. He walked into his bungalow.

  There was a girl in his bed.

  25

  In his bedroom the mosquito net was open and she was asleep. She looked adult yet childlike. She had a boyish face and her curly hair was cut short, a beaded tuft poking out at one side. Her shoulders were those of an adult, sturdy and toned. He thought for a second, then closed the door behind him. He coughed, hoping to wake her. She didn’t stir.

  “Excuse me,” he said. When there was no response he repeated it, louder this time.

  The girl made no move.

  He walked to the bed and touched her arm. “Excuse me.”

  She rolled over, wide awake now, and regarded him silently.

  She seemed about the same age as Man Bites Dog and he knew exactly why she was lying naked in his bed. He stood back, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I think you’d better get dressed and leave.”

  She smiled at him pleadingly.

  “No,” he said. “You’d better go.”

  She said something in her own language, then lay back and turned on to her side.

  This was Mycock’s idea. Jim scratched his head. What to do? He could stalk into Mycock’s bungalow and tell him to get the girl out of his room, but that might get her into some kind of trouble. He decided to strip down his rucksack and then, if she hadn’t got the message, he’d ask her again to go away. It didn’t seem like much of a plan but he was stumped for anything better.

  He laid out the rucksack’s contents on the floor and went through the inventory printout. All of a sudden everything seemed potentially useful. Forty cigarettes had struck him as unnecessary when he was on the plane but now, with his upcoming jungle adventure, he remembered that cigarettes were a kind of international currency that might come in useful. He thought about the ten days’ worth of rations: might he need them, after all? He studied the packing diagram, which showed the order of things inside the pack. It made perfect sense – but would his body stand the weight? He looked at the list again. It would take him ages to break it down and he might end up with roughly the same stuff but in a different order.

  What was he going to do with the girl?

  He got up and went over to the bed. He tapped her arm. She rolled over. He pointed at the door. “You have to leave,” he said. He waved his arm commandingly. “Go.” He held her shoulder gently and pointed at the door.

  She began to babble at him, looking scared.

  “Christ,” he muttered, stepping back. He looked at the bare chair. Sleeping in that would be hard. Sleeping on the floor would be hard too, but there was a bed roll in the rucksack and a blanket. She fell back on to the bed and turned away from him.

  He could confront Mycock, but he could see the bastard’s laughing face. “Don’t you like girls?” he’d say, and Jim would want to punch his lights out. He could sleep on the floor and feel like crap in the morning when he had to be rested.

  He walked out of the bungalow. In the distance a shadow stood up. It was Man Bites Dog. Jim went over to him. “Want anything?” said the boy.

  “What are you doing there?” Jim muttered, aware that if he spoke any louder his voice might carry straight to Mycock and Higgins.

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “In case you need things.” Man Bites Dog seemed to be staring at him as if he presented some kind of challenge.

  “You speak really good English,” said Jim, trying to be friendly.

  “Yes,” said Man Bites Dog.

  “Where did you learn it?”

  “When I was little,” said the boy.

  “OK,” said Jim, “right.” He looked over his shoulder. “I’ve got this problem, and maybe you can help me.”

  “I try.”

  “There’s this girl in my room and I need to get some sleep. Can you get her to leave?”

  “No,” said Man Bites Dog.

  “No?” said Jim.

  “No,” said Man Bites Dog.

  “Why not?”

  “Because she is a present from the army over there.” He gestured to the dim lights of the barracks.

  “Why would they give me a present?”

  “Because Mr Baz will have paid them to give you a present.”

  “I don’t want the present.”

  “She is better with you than with them. Maybe she can run away tomorrow.”

  “Run away where?”

  “Home.”

  “Where would home be?”

  “No home.” He cocked his head. “You shouldn’t turn down a virgin. That’s special money.” He looked Jim up and down. “You must be a big man.”

  Jim took a deep breath. “Let me ask you something. If I was the biggest man in the world, what would I do?”

  Man Bites Dog squatted and picked at the earth. He looked up at Jim, the whites of his eyes glittering in the darkness. He stood up. “Send her to America.”

  That would be easy, Jim thought. It would cost him a grain of sand from the desert of his money. “OK,” he said, “I’ll do that, but you’ll have to explain I don’t want to have sex with her and what I’m going to do.”

  “You don’t lie?”

  “I don’t lie.”

  “See,” said Man Bites Dog, pointing to his right eye, “I look and I listen. I see everything, I know everything. Show weakness here, only once, and you will die.” He stared right into Jim’s soul. “You understand?”

  Jim nodded. He held out his hand and the boy shook it. “What’s your real name?” he asked.

  “Dog Bites Man,” said the boy.

  Jim hesitated. “Right. I’ll stick with Man Bites Dog for now.”

  “Let’s talk with the girl.”

  “Wait,” said Jim pulling out his sat phone. “Let me make a call.” He went back to his bungalow and sat on the floor of the rough wooden veranda. The boy squatted down by him. He rang Stafford.

  “Everything all right?” said Stafford, before Jim could say anything.

  “Fine,” said Jim. “Got a young girl here in a spot of bother. I want her taken care of.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “I can get her to Goma, but we need someone to meet her at the airport early tomorrow morning and take her out of town somewhere.”

  “As it happens, I’ve managed to arrange an agent for us in Goma, in case you needed things done – a lawyer chap. I’ll
arrange for the jet to be there in the morning to pick her up. Failing that, our man will be waiting for her. I’ll email details.”

  “Great.”

  “Does she have a passport?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “May I suggest we fly her to Kinshasa and look after her there?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Apart from that, how are things?”

  “Grim.”

  “And are you safe and well?”

  “I’m not sure of the percentages. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Jolly good.”

  Jim hung up. “Man Bites Dog, this is what we’re going to do. In the morning, I’m going to get Higgins to fly the girl to Goma in the helicopter. Someone will meet her at the airport and fly her to Kinshasa. We’ll look after her there for a bit. I’ll take care of the rest once I’m finished here.”

  “And you send her to America?”

  He wanted to say something vague, like, “We’ll see” or “It depends”, but Man Bites Dog’s comment about weakness was in the front of his mind. “Yes.” He stood up. “Now you’re going to have to explain to her what’s going to happen and get her to agree to it.”

  “Yes,” said Man Bites Dog.

  “Tell her I don’t want to sleep with her and that I’m going to look after her away from this place.”

  Man Bites Dog’s head tilted back and he looked at the canopy of stars above as they appeared between the clouds. “She won’t believe but I will make her,” he said.

  The girl was still lying in the bed but sat up clasping the blanket when they came into the room.

  Man Bites Dog started shouting at her in a kind of speechmaking way. Jim had no idea what he was saying. The boy was waving his arms, his words bubbling out in a deep, pounding rap.

  The girl shouted back at him, clasping the sheet with one hand and waving her right arm to punctuate her sentences. She didn’t seem that happy.

  Jim sat down on the chair.

  Man Bites Dog was being very adamant.

  “What’s she saying?” asked Jim

  “She is scared.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’m trying to make her understand.”

  “What’s her name?” said Jim.

  “Hélène.” Man Bites Dog pointed at Jim with one hand, at her with the other and broke into more protestations.

  Suddenly the girl seemed happier. She gabbled incomprehensibly back at Man Bites Dog, who was underlining what she said with gestures and exclamations. He smiled. “I’ve lied something, “he said. “I told her you need a maid, and she likes that but she still thinks she has to sleep with you or she will be in big trouble.” Then he twitched, as if an idea had flown through his head from left to right. He was shouting again. He seemed to quell the last embers of resistance in her. “I told her she would be in bigger trouble if she tried. I’ve told her to sleep on the floor.”

  “What did she say about that?”

  Man Bites Dog looked at him as if he was a cretin. “Better the floor than with soldiers. If you like she can sleep in the toilet.”

  “No,” said Jim, “in here’s fine. I might need to go in there.” He got up, fished in his trouser pocket and pulled out a bundle of money. He peeled off a couple of hundred-dollar bills and gave them to Man Bites Dog.

  Man Bites Dog looked at the money and then at Jim. He gave a short high-pitched chuckle and stuffed the money into a small pocket on the arm of his shirt. “I’m going,” he said, with a broad smile.

  As soon as Man Bites Dog had loped out of the room, the girl got out of bed and went to get dressed. Jim had an idea. He went to his pack and pulled out the inventory with its map of contents. He unzipped the top, fished halfway down and retrieved a little orange plastic packet. He dropped it on to the floor and dug down for the all-weather blanket.

  The girl was dressed now and stood like a statue, watching him. He took the pack, about the size of a paperback, opened it and shook out the inflatable mattress. Then he blew it up, closed the valve and laid it on the floor at the end of the bed. He pulled the blanket out of its pouch and laid it on top of the mattress.

  He should sleep on the mattress, he thought, then imagined the confusion that would ensue. He pointed at her and it. The girl stripped off again, to her underwear this time, and climbed under the blanket. He turned off the main light, took off his trousers and socks and got under the sheet. The bed had an earthy perfume. He switched off the bedside light, the glow from outside illuminating the room.

  There was a rustle from the foot of the bed and the girl stood up, outlined in the shadow. Oh dear – what now? He thought he knew.

  She walked up to the side of the bed and reached forwards. He didn’t move. She took the mosquito net and pulled it closed around the bed, then went back to her mattress.

  With a bit of messing around he set his alarm for six on the sat phone. He wanted to be up at first light to download Stafford’s arrangements. What a freaky day, he thought.

  26

  He sat on the veranda with his notebook. He was wearing linen combat pants, a linen shirt and a light combat jacket. All the pockets made sense now. He stuffed them with things he might need from the rucksack, like maps, a pocket knife, his GPS, an old-fashioned compass, painkillers, the fire-lighting kit, his phone and some money. He put a sweatband on his left wrist, where his Rolex Cosmonaut had been, for when the sweat on his forehead was running into his eyes.

  He plugged the sat phone into his USB port. Windows 7 picked it up and opened a network connection. Jim’s email would take fourteen hours to download at the speed his phone could talk to the Internet so he went into it via a web interface. His old bank had insisted on sending him huge document files filled with market news and analysis, which were furring up his email. He ignored it and went to Stafford’s message.

  The plane would land at nine a.m. and the lawyer, Mr Benoît Mbangu, would arrive beforehand to resolve any issues that arose. He replied to Stafford:

  Her name is Hélène. I will call when she is on her way to the airport with more details. She is scared and confused and needs treating with kid gloves. As soon as this is sorted, I’m going into the jungle to look for Terence. It’s boiling here.

  He added the lawyer’s details.

  There was an email from St George: Jim was the beneficial owner of 28.9 per cent of Barron. St George noted that if he bought any more he would have to mount a full bid for the company. Jim also noted that shortly after he had left London the company’s price had shot up dramatically on the back of news that he had such a big holding. The markets loved rumours and his apparently wild buying spree had set off a blizzard of them.

  Jim wrote back to St George: “No takeover, thanks.”

  He replied to an email from Tulip. He told her how nice it was in Congo and not to worry. Sitting outside in the heat was a nuisance but the phone wouldn’t connect for the data in the bungalow.

  Jim couldn’t possibly log off without checking the markets so he logged on to his ed websites to find out what was going on. The pages loaded at a snail’s pace, if not slower – it took a minute just to get a new screen up. Time was flying past so he logged off and closed down his notebook. The phone’s batteries were more than half gone so he went inside to put it on charge.

  Hélène had tidied the bedroom and was sitting in the chair. She watched him inscrutably as he got his cables out of his flight bag. There seemed to be just one socket by the bedside table. He bent down to inspect it. “Bugger.” It was a strange semi-oval-shaped thing with three round holes. His adaptor wouldn’t fit. Maybe Mycock had one. If not whatever charge was left in his phone would have to do. He put his computer away and stuck the phone into his pocket. It was seven thirty.

  Jim walked to Mycock and Higgins’s bungalow, and found them inside having breakfast. “Morning, bwana,” said Mycock. He seemed disappointed to see Jim so early.

  Higgins nodded.

  “Thanks for the girl,” said
Jim.

  “Liked that, did you?” said Baz.

  Higgins looked at his boss – a flat expression Jim might have taken for contempt.

  “Yeah,” said Jim, “a lot. I want to fly her to the airport at Goma after breakfast. I’m going to add her to my collection.”

  “Collection?” asked Baz.

  “Of little helpers,” said Jim.

  Higgins looked at his plate and seemed to be taking a long, deep breath.

  “And you want us to fly her to the airport for you?” asked Baz

  “Yes,” said Jim, “after you’ve finished breakfast, of course. I own a third of the helicopter so I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “All right, I’ll get on to it,” said Higgins.

  “As soon as you get back you can drop me and Man Bites Dog off at the kimberlite.”

  “OK,” said Baz, a smirk on his face. “How big is your collection of little helpers?”

  “Very,” said Jim.

  “Nice,” said Baz.

  “If it flies, floats or fucks,” said Jim, “make sure you own it.”

  Man Bites Dog had appeared in the rear doorway. “As soon as Mr Higgins has finished his breakfast,” Jim said to him, “bring Hélène to the helicopter pad.”

  “Yes,” said Man Bites Dog.

  Jim took out of a pocket the piece of paper with the lawyer’s details written on it. He turned to Higgins. “My plane should be waiting but if it isn’t this man, Benoît Mbangu, will be there to take care of Hélène. Here’s my phone number if you need to call me.”

  “How do you know Mbangu?” said Higgins, his brow furrowed.

  Baz threw him a questioning look.

  Jim yawned. “Do I look like a muppet?” he said.

  Higgins didn’t reply.

  “Well, that’s settled, then,” said Baz. “Coffee, Jim?”

  “Sure,” said Jim, sitting down. “Black, no sugar. I hope it’s strong.”