by Sam Powers
But it wasn’t just the weather. Africa smelled different, to an outsider. The combination of local living conditions, local diet and the effect of constant heat on organic material led to a strange mixture of sweat, garbage and decay in the air. At first it was as unpleasant as it sounded. But he knew it wouldn’t take long before he wasn’t even noticing it. Brennan imagined New York or Washington probably smelled just as strange to someone from Africa.
The passengers filed down the stairs, the majority local but a fair smattering of foreigners among them. Angola’s rich oil, gold and diamond deposits had turned it into the latest kleptocratic former communist nation, with eighty-five percent of the population in abject poverty while the remainder cut deals with multinational conglomerates to fleece the country dry. They’d even begun developing a southern satellite city to the capital, Luanda, replete with North American-style housing subdivisions, so that the foreigners could live near the nicest beaches, at Kilometer Seventeen and the Mussolo Peninsula, and not have to watch the local children and their malnourished, swollen stomachs as they starved to death.
At the bottom of the plane’s stairs, a standard city transit-style bus was painted in garish, multi-shaded blue advertising colors, hocking a Portuguese soft drink with peacock subtlety. If it hadn’t been daylight still, and he hadn’t known better, Brennan might have been fooled into thinking Angola was stable, and normal. From overhead, looking out the tiny airplane window, he’d seen the huge Mussaque – or slum – that bordered the airport, and the many that dotted the city’s landscape, wedged between blocks of old colonial homes and the friends of the government who’d commandeered them.
Across the city, corrugated tin-shack favelas told the real story; they were mostly one-room huts, with no sanitation, no running water, garbage, filth and vermin everywhere. The walls were muddled together from old packing crates, shipping containers, scrap metal, mud and wire mesh. And they were home to most of the nation’s population of twenty-two million.
In 1972, Walter’s briefing had noted, Angola had become known as the “Paris of Africa” or even “the Pearl of Africa”, a land of abundant natural resources, beautiful weather, centuries-old Colonial architecture, astonishing beaches and African wildlife. Unfortunately, the local residents were treated like just another natural resource, and forced into indentured servitude by the Portuguese for generations. Even in the last few decades of Portuguese rule, they were prevented by law from learning skilled trades or taking jobs in those areas away from Portuguese settlers.
When the inevitable glorious people’s revolution came – as it had in most of post-Colonial Africa – the Portuguese fled and left Angolans, segmented socially by tribes, fighting amongst themselves; ostensibly they each represented a modern political ideology, although in fact it continued feuds that went back five centuries, to when the Queen of one major tribe began enslaving the others and selling them to Europeans.
The civil war raged for twenty-six years, ravaging the population and leaving up to eighty percent missing at least one limb from a landmine explosion; in fact, there were estimates that landmines covered an eighth of the country, which was one of Africa’s largest.
It only ended with the death of the UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in 2002. A former Pan-African Socialist, Savimbi had “transformed” into a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist conservative by the time of his death … because that was a requirement of the millions in aide he received from the U.S. His opponents, in Jose Eduardo Dos Santos’ MPLA party, eventually turned to democratic reform anyway, due to the near-global collapse of Marxism… along with its money supply from the defunct Soviet Union.
The money vacuum that supplied and controlled the local power elite was filled by multinational corporations, intent on massively ramping up the country’s oil production, already among the world leaders, and taking advantage of a vast mineral base. The Jesuit-trained former communist leader, Dos Santos, became a corrupt oligarch, extending his terms over and over, enriching his family and friends with hundreds of millions of dollars in patronage and business advantage. Like so many African leaders, the power he wielded within his nations border had given him a sense of superhuman ego, a complete loss of empathy, and the delusion of right-by-association. The country had a Gross Domestic Product of more than a hundred and twenty billion dollars, and yet per capita income was just shy of six thousand.
Black market dollars continued to dominate the local currency, leaving the population in poverty while their political leaders enriched themselves and built idyllic suburbs. Fourteen years after the ceasefire, as 2016 was about to begin, Luanda was the most expensive capital on the planet, due to the outrageous boom-town prices charged to foreigners to live and work there. And yet still, the locals starved. The city remained covered in the signs of utter poverty, services were near-non-existent even for the wealthy, oil-backed expats; crime was staggeringly high. A machine gun cost less than a good steak while a case of cola could set you back three hundred bucks.
To Brennan, the place reeked of the worst of human nature; power-hungry leaders, a cowed and terrified populace, foreign elements – including many American companies – more than willing to take what Angola had to offer and leave nothing behind for those who lived there. How was it allowed to go on? Even after all of his years of service, he never ceased to be struck by how people could treat one another, all in the name of personal gain.
He got on the bus to the airport terminal, which looked as though it had been upgraded from Walter’s description and modernized. He muttered a quiet resolution to himself to stay on point, to follow up the story of the missing nuke and Khalidi’s missing money man. He wasn’t in Angola to save the local people, and he grimly reminded himself that in that part of the world, that attitude was par for the course.
The trip through customs was monotonous, dull, time-consuming. Liberalization hadn’t decreased the airport graft, and one of the customs workers took a bottle of whiskey from Brennan’s bag – which he’d expected; he’d brought two for just such purposes. His bag search was done by hand after he’d filed around a cordon with about two hundred other tired travelers, a mix of black and white, old and young, male and female, some families with young kids, some older kids alone, some single working men. Everyone was dressed for the heat, with short sleeves, shorts, sandals.
After the search they filtered through to a row of steel-and-rubber baggage carousels then waited nearly an hour for their stuff to be unloaded. Brennan ignored the odd soldier in olive drab, the local police in two shades of blue, their white dress gloves stark against dark African skin. He walked the short distance from the carousel to the front doors and out into the city afternoon, the whirr of the cicadas a dull roar in the background and the circular road that front the terminal packed with traffic. It was hot and dusty, ninety degrees in the shade, with the stifling humidity weighing his clothing down, pinning it to his skin with damp gravity. Past the road ahead was a vast parking lot; but to his right was a taxi stand, and only one taxi. He made a beeline for it, getting there before anyone else intervened.
The driver, Rucca, was a Portuguese expat who’d married a local.
“I warn you in advance,” he said. “The fares here are kind of crazy.”
Brennan knew the background, the stratospheric local prices; he’d emptied his only remaining contingency account in Europe to finance the trip. “Just keep the route as short as it needs to be, okay?” he replied. “I tip better when I feel like I’ve been well-treated.”
The driver smiled while looking back into the rearview mirror at his passenger and nodded. “Just remember that once you’ve been in the local traffic for a few minutes; remember that I’m on your side,” he said. He chuckled slightly at the end in the knowing manner of someone who has just warned a greenhorn off of eating the hottest local peppers.
The driver headed towards downtown, where old Portuguese colonial office buildings, homes and shops were slowly being dwarfed by new glass offi
ce towers, guest lodgings and condo apartments. There were plenty of signs that capitalism was beginning to lift local conditions despite all the corruption; but the poverty among those being left behind was staggering. Kids with swollen bellies walking barefoot beside his car, trying to catch up to beg for food and money; men in their thirties who looked sixty, their arms and legs thin as sinewy pipe cleaners; young teenage girls with bellies so swollen from malnourishment they could be mistaken for pregnant. They didn’t dominate the sidewalks of the capital, its white plaster architecture reminiscent of Barcelona; but they could be seen amongst the crowds, down alleys, in front of shops begging for food.
The taxi cut through the downtown to the waterfront, where the newest hotels vied with the mid-sixties last generation colonial offerings. Then it followed the waterfront road, affording a view of the tankers in the bay, to the Hotel Panorama, where he booked in as Tom Smith, a geologist.
The hotel was a gem from a distance, a piece of rectangular 1960s modernist architecture with the name in giant letters across its roof, Luanda’s own Hollywood sign. It sat on a peninsula called the Ilha that overlooked the water. It was built in white concrete, and the street level was open-air, with gigantic concrete columns supporting the rest of the hotel.
Up close, time and neglect told the tale. The concrete was cracking, the plastic chipped, dirty and stained. The once-red balcony railings that overlooked the water were faded to a light pink. The rooms were like something out of a youth hostel in a bad Moscow neighborhood. The bed was hard and smelled musty, the light bulb swung free of a shade and the toilet didn’t work. When he threw his bag down onto the stained, time-worn desk along one wall, a handful of cockroaches the size of his thumb scurried across the floor and under the bed.
It was a good place to keep a low profile; he knew from Walter’s file that the odd expatriate event was still held in the conference room and ballroom on its main floor; but none of the moneyed and corrupt stayed at the Panorama anymore; they were at the $500-per-night Hotel Baia Luanda.
A white Citroen, bug-like and unwashed, had been behind the taxi all the way from the airport, and it was still parked outside the hotel when Brennan looked out his south-facing balcony, towards the rest of the peninsula. Angola only had about a half-dozen decent hotels, and the Panorama wasn’t really one of them; it hadn’t been for more than two decades. The car had local plates, too, which suggested it wasn’t a tail.
But he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t think they’d had anything close to the technology at the airport to spot his passport as fraudulent, as it was doubtless based on a real person, long dead. On a one-in-a million shot, he could have been recognized by someone in intelligence at the airport; Angola was probably still pretty busy in that regard. But he’d been a careful man his entire career and had never blown a cover, so it seemed the odds were at least that long.
The only person who knew he was in Angola was Walter, and Brennan knew he wouldn’t crack for any reason.
Night was falling. Brennan opened his suitcase on the dresser, taking out his bathroom travel bag. Along the bottom of its lining, he found the tucked-in zipper and slid its bottom compartment open, revealing the two thin ceramic knives, each perfectly balanced, double-edged and razor sharp – and undetectable to an airport metal detector. He reached down and pulled up each pant-leg in turn, sliding the knives into their sheaths, out of sight. Turning back to the suitcase, he picked up a pair of thick, web-like belts, each containing a series of pockets in which to hide his cash. He hadn’t bothered with the local currency, the Kwanza. Everyone in Angola would accept dollars; it was how the economy really ran. He strapped one belt on under his light shirt then placed the other inside the waterproof plastic bag he’d brought for the purpose. Then he hid it just inside the top of the toilet tank, where it was unlikely to be discovered by prying eyes or light-fingered staff.
He carried the other bottle of Cutty Sark with him as he left the room, locked the door behind him, and took stairs down four floors to the lobby. He’d made a mental note on arriving to never trust the creaking, ancient elevator.
In the lobby, a single night staff member was standing behind the chipped and aging marble-tile counter, looking bored. “Can I help you sir?” he asked Brennan in Portuguese.
“I need to find a taxi,” Brennan said in English.
“It is Saturday, sir,” the man answered back, also in English, his accent heavy. “There are no Taxis available in Luanda on weekends, except to and from the airport.”
Perfect. “Then I need to rent a car.”
“There are no car rental firms available in the evening,” the man said, looking genuinely sorry. “But I can help; my brother has a car that you can hire. He is very reasonable: only five hundred dollars each day.”
Brennan smiled back, just as friendly. Nothing was ever straightforward in places like Luanda. “That is a fine offer, my friend,” he said, “but it is a bit too rich for me. I am just a geologist, not an engineer. Will he accept one hundred? That is truly all that I can afford.”
He looked unshaken. “I think he might consider it,” he said, “if we were able to talk about a sum more in keeping with the state of the economy. Perhaps for three hundred and fifty he might be able to get away from his work and help.”
Brennan had played the game before. He shook his head, looking disappointed. “No, I’m sorry. But thank you for your offer. I shall just have to make my way on foot. It’s fine; it’s not far. It’s a shame, though. I suppose I could have gone as high as one hundred and fifty.”
“For two hundred,” the man said, “he would be a guide of excellence. He knows the city like the back of his hand. Anything you need – anything, if you know what I am meaning, my friend.”
Brennan nodded. “Okay: two hundred a day, but he gets half up front, half when I check out in a few days. And you get a bottle of Cutty Sark.” He left the bottle on the counter.
The man beamed a smile as he took it. Given the necessity of graft in the local economy, he’d probably drink the contents or share it with friends, Brennan thought, then refill the bottle with cheap whisky from Benguela or Lobito, down the coast, where they made a decent variety. Then he’d screw the cap back on so that it required real tension to open, and sell it, probably for a fair chunk of coin.
“He will be happy to help. He has a good car, a Skoda. Built in Czechoslovakia, very dependable.”
“Where can I get something decent to eat around here?”
The man squinted unreadily, obviously not sure how to answer optimistically. “On the Ilha? There are some places but I am not sure you would think much of them. Perhaps you should have my brother take you to downtown, where there are some nice restaurants.”
“Give him a call,” Brennan said.
The man smiled and took out a cell phone. Brennan wasn’t surprised; the country’s landlines were undependable and likely bugged beyond belief. Now that there was a cell network, people didn’t bother with the old system as much as they once had.
He ended the call. “My brother says he will be here in twenty-five minutes, and he promises you will have an unforgettable trip. His name is Cristiano.”
“I’m hoping it will be unforgettably quiet and stress-free.”
His smile dimmed a little. There was probably less money in “quiet.” “Perhaps it would be wise to mention that to him, sir,” he said. “He is very enthusiastic about offering services.”
The driver’s rusted, patched-together white Skoda Favorit pulled up into the Panorama’s parking area exactly twenty-five minutes later, as advertised. It was old, probably from the late eighties, Brennan figured, a rectangular hunk of junk. The hatchback was missing completely and replaced with three bungee cords, strung across it to hold in anything it might be carrying. The rear body panel on the right hand side was pressed tin from some unknown source that had been crudely cut into a replacement of the original, then painted light blue, which Brennan just assumed was a natural conseque
nce of it being in Angola, where most of the locals had little to choose from. There was light blue paint available freely because of the number of old Volkswagen Beetles of that shade imported from Brazil in years prior. The rest of the little hatchback’s body was mottled with rust stains and, in a few places, actual holes going right through it.
When he saw Brennan, the driver honked the horn. It played the first eleven notes of ‘Dixie’, just like the General Lee from the seventies TV show the Dukes of Hazzard. Brennan opened the back door. “You’re Cristiano?”
He nodded. “My English is not bad,” he said, motioning with his hand that it wasn’t particularly good. “Parlez-Vous Francais?”
“Fala Portuguese?” Brennan asked.
The driver was happy to switch to the dominant local language. “I was worried, because it can be difficult to deal with the English,” he said. “It does not roll off of my tongue well. Now, where are we going tonight, my friend? And do you have my two hundred dollars?”
“I have the one hundred you get now,” Brennan said, handing him a c-note. “Can you get a few things together for me? There’s an extra hundred in it if everything goes smoothly.”
The man’s eyes brightened. “Of course, of course. What do you need?”
“I’m going to be going out into the country and I need some self-protection.”
The driver sounded most pleased. “Ah! In this area I know many suppliers. We have many weapons available from the war in perfect condition. What would you like?”
Really? Brennan thought. That easily? “What are you offering?”
The man’s face was a momentary mask of disappointment. “Do not worry my friend; if I was a police officer, I would have asked you for a bribe by now. But if it will ease your mind, I will tell you that the cheapest and easiest things to supply are the Makarov PM for a handgun and the AK47 for a machine gun. I will also note that the latter is the real thing, supplied by the Russians, and not the Chinese copies you find everywhere else.”
