Warlord

by James Steel

  The induction session is happening on one side of the main hallway of the single-storey hospital building. A woman patient who is leaning against the wall chips in, ‘Yes, look at my hair. My husband won’t recognise me when I get back. Mama Jeanne did it for me.’ She touches her elaborately plaited hair and they both giggle with glee.

  Eve is sitting on a bench with three other girls who also arrived that day. They all have the smell of stale urine hanging around them and one of them is pregnant. Eve has been feeling very nervous and awkward and so far has only talked quietly to one girl called Miriam, but the typical Congolese banter is beginning to cheer her up and she smiles nervously.

  It’s just what Eve needs to get her out of her shell-shocked, stigmatised mood. The taxi driver who brought her to Bukavu initially didn’t want her in his minivan and demanded extra payment because she was unlucky. He made a big fuss about getting plastic sacks put on the seat so she didn’t leak urine on it and no one sat next to her the whole journey.

  But when the security guard shut the hospital gate behind her and she was inside the compound, Eve suddenly felt safe. It is the first time in years that she has had the feeling of being protected from the men with guns.

  Mama Riziki is pleased with the girls’ smiles and beams back at them.

  ‘OK, so when you are under the care of your Mamas here you will do lots of things. You will help with cooking and cleaning in the hospital and we will keep you busy, oh very busy, with lots of courses. You can do bookkeeping or tailoring …’

  ‘Yes, and cooking with me …’

  ‘And I’ll do medicine and hygiene.’

  The courses help to keep the women busy and heal the psychological wounds of the rape as the surgeons stitch up the tears and gunshot wounds in their genito-urinary tracts to stop them urinating and defecating uncontrollably.

  ‘We will always make sure you leave here healed and ready to go back to your families. Sometimes it does take one or two or maybe three operations before the tears heal but we will always be with you. Praise God for your arrival here today!’ Panzi is a Pentecostal-funded hospital and Mama Riziki prays over them.

  Eve bows her head and prays hard. She knows her family doesn’t have the money to let her stay for more than one operation.

  ‘Yamba, hi, it’s Alex.’

  A guffaw of delighted laughter comes down the line.

  ‘What?’

  The cackling continues in such an infectious way that Alex starts laughing as well. Eventually, they both draw breath.

  ‘Alex Devereux,’ Yamba says his name and hoots again.

  Alex grins and waits.

  ‘It’s good to hear from you.’

  ‘It’s good to hear you too.’

  There was a pause as they both absorbed the pleasure of hearing an old friend’s voice after a long time. They have had only sporadic email contact since the end of the last mission.

  Yamba is someone Alex feels at home with. It is an odd combination – public school cavalry officers aren’t often seen with Angolan mercenaries – but the two of them have been through a lot together. More important than shared experience are their shared values: a fierce, self-reliant professionalism offset by a black sense of humour.

  ‘How are you, man?’ Alex asks.

  ‘Yees, OK …’ Yamba says, smiling and nodding thoughtfully. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  ‘How is your hut?’

  ‘My hut? Oh, yeah, it’s good, thanks,’ Alex says, looking around at his house. ‘It’s got a new roof.’

  ‘Oh? Like a thatched roof or maybe some tin, yes?’

  Alex laughs again. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I got a piece of tin from the market, fits really well.’

  ‘And have you got yourself a wife yet?’

  Alex guffaws. ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, you are behind the curve,’ Yamba says with relish; he loves using new idioms that he has picked up.

  ‘I know, I haven’t even got divorced yet. What about you, have you got a bird?’

  ‘No,’ Yamba laughs. ‘I have taken up cooking and most African women think I am gay when I tell them I cook,’ he cackles. ‘But I have a little lady friend who I visit in Luanda every now and then.’

  ‘A la-dy …’ Alex says in a ridiculously suggestive tone.

  Yamba laughs.

  ‘And how are the poor and sick of Angola?’

  ‘Oh, they keep dying on me.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Yes, I shout at them and tell them not to but they just don’t listen to me.’

  Yamba is known as a strict disciplinarian with the soldiers he commands. He joined 32 Battalion as a teenager after his family had been killed by the communists and rose to the rank of sergeant major in a vicious bush war. He always wanted to be a surgeon.

  He was educated at a Jesuit school as a boy – was head boy in fact – and the religious order’s disciplined morality has stayed with him. He admired Father Joao’s tough asceticism and still has him in his mind as the epitome of what a real man should be. It all shows in his appearance: six feet two, lean, shaven-headed. His face is as daunting as a dark cliff with lines like rivulets worn into it by exercise, self-denial and hardship.

  ‘How’s the clinic going?’

  ‘Oh, OK, you know. I bribe the right people in the Ministry of Health, I argue with the right people in the Ministry of Health and sometimes we get supplies and sometimes we don’t. We’re not going to save Africa but I am racking up God points big time.’

  Alex laughs. ‘Good works.’

  ‘Yes, good works. Isn’t Catholic guilt a marvellous thing?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  The laughter eases out of Alex’s voice as he gets to the point of the call. ‘Well, I have a good work in mind.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Yamba sounds amused.

  ‘Hmm, this is quite a big good work actually.’

  ‘Oh no, what are we doing this time? Haven’t we interfered with enough governments? You’re not on that again, are you?’

  Alex’s voice begins to sound more serious. ‘Well, this time we’re going to set up a new country.’

  Yamba stops laughing.

  Smoke drifts across the forest glade, catching in a shaft of lemony morning sunshine. Otherwise everything is still and silent.

  It’s just after dawn and the raucous chorus of birds has died down. The glade is surrounded by high trees and thick undergrowth, wet with dew. Two large mounds covered in earth, ten feet in diameter, burn gently and little streams of smoke emerge from cracks at the top like snakes and, in the absence of any wind, slide away down the slopes.

  The charcoal burner stirs from under his shelter of white plastic sheeting and pokes a long stick into the bottom of one of the piles, checking if it is ready. He is of indeterminate age – he is so black and wizened by his trade he could be middle-or old-aged. He reeks of smoke and his eyes are red and rheumy. His body is streaked with smears of sweat-congealed black charcoal powder.

  He’s been up all night tending to his two kilns. He has to heat the bundles of wood cut from the forest just enough to drive off the excess water – too much and it will turn to ash, too little and it produces unsaleable smoked wood. What he wants is that light, brittle residue that the women of Kivu use to fuel their cooking fires. The trade is worth thirty million dollars a year, wood in the deep bush is free and all he needs to do is to live in this isolated spot cutting trees and tending his kilns.

  Charcoal burning is not a job for every man. The skills are jealously guarded and kept within a secret community; he learned the trade from his father along with many other secrets about how to communicate with the spirits of the trees and the animals that live in the forest and how to make charms for all of life’s requirements.

  He picks up a spade and starts shovelling earth over the vents at the bottom of the heap to cut off the flow of air. The combustion inside the mound gradually dies off and the streamers of smoke emanating from it fade to wisps a
nd then stop. He makes himself a cup of black sweet tea, finds a sunny spot and settles back to wait for one of the traders he supplies.

  He dozes off but about midday a call from the bush on the slopes below him wakes him up and he hears the sound of a man breathing hard and the thud of his feet on the mud.

  A bare-chested man emerges through the bush heaving his tshkudu uphill. The lean fibres of his chest muscles stand out as he pushes on the handlebars.

  ‘Ah, Antoine, good to see you,’ the charcoal burner says quietly and offers him a drink from his yellow plastic jerrycan of water.

  Antoine smiles, takes grateful glugs, and then splashes his body and wipes off the sweat. He accepts a cup of tea and the burner asks, ‘So what’s going on in the world?’

  ‘Oh, did you hear about that riot up in Butembo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, Socozaki was playing Nyuki System. Nyuki were losing two–nil and so their goalkeeper walks up the pitch and tries to cast a spell on the other goal. So all the Nyuki players go mad and have a brawl on the pitch and when a policeman comes on to stop them he is pelted with stones by the spectators.’

  Antoine shakes his head. ‘So then the police fire tear gas and the crowd stampedes. Eleven people were crushed to death. What can you do?’

  ‘Eh,’ the burner agrees, ‘the goalkeeper should have been more crafty.’

  ‘Hmm. So how much for the bags?’ Antoine jerks his head towards the pile of grubby sacks.

  The burner names his price and Antoine looks disappointed. Then he pauses and a sly look creeps onto his face. ‘Ah, but I have a present for you from the Kudu Noir.’

  The charcoal burner sits up. ‘Show me.’

  The trader gets up and pulls a bundle out of a plastic sack on his tshkudu; it’s about a foot long and carefully wrapped up. ‘Have a look, it’s the real thing.’

  The burner opens it, looks inside and smiles slyly. ‘A girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The burner nods with satisfaction. ‘That’s good, female spirits are more powerful. I’ll make the powder; the Kudus will be pleased with this. OK, so now we can trade.’ He also gets up, goes over to his shelter and pulls out a small packet of grey powder in a clear plastic bag.

  The trader looks at it with bright eyes. ‘The real thing?’

  ‘Yes. It’s pure albino bone. Sprinkle it in a mine and the gold will come rushing to you.’

  He rubs his jaw. ‘OK, what’s your price?’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘You are joking, Devereux! You are joking! You’ve lost it, mate …Oh my God.’ Col rubs his forehead and draws his hand down the side of his face in disbelief. ‘Who d’ya think we are, the UN? We’re mercenaries, mate, not … whatever … nation builders or summat, you know the Red Cross, like.’

  Alex looks back at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘Col, I’m not asking you to put on a nurse’s uniform.’

  Col and Yamba are both in the drawing room at Akerley. Alex didn’t tell Col the plan beforehand: he knew this would be his response and is prepared to ride out the storm.

  Col is five foot six and balding with his remaining hair shaved down to grey bristles. He has grim eyes, a small moustache stained with nicotine and tattoos of the Parachute Regiment on one forearm and Blackburn Rovers on the other.

  Alex sits in the armchair and waits for the tide of scorn to abate; his expression is as calm and patient as Fang’s was the week before.

  Col eventually sees this. ‘You’re not joking, are you? Oh Jesus.’ He rubs his face before trying again. ‘It’ll be just the same as when they went into Iraq and Afghanistan. You just don’t know what chain reaction you are going to set off. Better to leave well alone, let ’em stew in their own juice. If they want to fooking kill each other and run shitty countries then let ’em. People get the governments they deserve. All Africans are fooking mad, you know that!’

  He looks at Yamba who keeps his face pointedly blank. This is a favourite topic of Col’s for riling him and he is not going to rise to the bait that easily.

  Despite appearances, the three of them actually get on well together because they are all exiles from their social backgrounds, united by their sense of professionalism and dedication to each other. Alex’s troubled upbringing makes him loathe the rigid mental straitjacket of county society. Yamba was forced out of his homeland as a boy and has only been grudgingly let back in recently. Col should just be a Northern hard man but his quick mind was bored rigid by its staid culture and he sought escape in the army. He speaks good French (with a strong Lancashire accent) and travels widely in Africa to see his favourite bands. Despite his attempts to appear to the contrary, he is actually a book lover. He only learned to read when he joined the army aged seventeen, but since then he has devoured books. As a ferociously self-reliant man he likes the fact that he is never alone with one.

  He points at Alex. ‘Mixing soldiers and civilians is bad news. You and I have both been in Northern Ireland and you remember what a bag a shite that was.’

  Alex thinks back to his days as a junior officer on foot patrol with his men, slogging round council estates with bored youths taunting them and throwing bottles and bricks.

  ‘It takes very disciplined troops to do that work and I’m not sure we could get them in a mercenary unit. And you look at what happens when it goes wrong – Bloody Sunday, My Lai, Haditha where those marines raped that girl and shot her.’

  Alex responds calmly. ‘We’re not going to be doing patrols in urban areas, it will be proper war fighting against the FDLR in the bush.’

  ‘Well, the UN is going to hate us; you know what they think about white mercenaries. They’ll get the ICC onto us or summat.’

  ‘We will be legitimate employees of the new state. Besides, we won’t be on show – the whole thing will be fronted by local politicians.’

  Yamba sits and watches the exchange; he is wary of the scheme but open to discussing the issues. He is passionate about African politics and can see that the idea could improve Kivu and set up a new model for developing countries. However, what he is worried about is the look in Alex’s eye. He has seen that slightly fanatical gleam before – a cocksure, knowing look that concerns him. He sometimes wonders what makes Alex such a compelling commander, what gives him the mystical charisma that makes men follow him into battle. He’s not sure what it is but it works.

  He looks at Alex now and asks cautiously, ‘Are you sure this isn’t so much about establishing the Republic of Kivu as the Republic of Devereux?’

  ‘You mean, is this just a monumental egotistical folly?’

  ‘Yes, is this just a toy country to play with, to set up a perfect world, the one we are always talking about?’

  Alex looks away for a moment. ‘I know what you mean and we should be wary of that, but on a practical level I think it is actually a lot more doable than it first looks and I think it would benefit the people. Executive Outcomes ended the war in Angola as did the Paras in Sierra Leone; I think we can do the same.’

  Yamba nods. Executive Outcomes was a small South-African-led mercenary army that had a huge impact in ending the long-running war in his homeland simply by being very professional and imposing order on anarchy.

  Alex continues. ‘The UN has shown it can’t impose order in Kivu and the world community likes to talk about it but doesn’t actually do anything. They let five million people die in the main Congo war and no one really noticed.’

  Col looks at the two of them and can see that Yamba is warming to the idea. What he hasn’t told either of them is that last week he was horrified to find himself opening a can of beer at breakfast. After his large payoff he has found himself living the life of luxury he always dreamed of, sinking into sloth sitting on the sofa in front of his huge home cinema screen, drinking Thwaites Original.

  When he realised what he was doing he threw the beer can out of the window, ran upstairs, got on his running kit and went for a ten miler out on the moors.

  He can se
e now that Alex has got ‘that look’ in his eyes and is committed to the plan; he doesn’t want to hear whatever objections Col has to it.

  Col drops the scornful tone and slumps back on the sofa. ‘Look – I’ll do it, course I will, you know I’ll back you, lad. I just think we need to be careful, that’s all I’m saying.’

  Joseph stands to attention and thrusts out his chest.

  He is carrying a short-handled digging hoe in one hand and rests it on his shoulder in what he thinks is a military fashion. He is wearing shorts and is covered in mud and ash from burning and clearing a new field that morning.

  His platoon is drawn up in three ranks of ten men in the centre of the village; they have just come back in from the fields and look a mess.

  His platoon commander, Lieutenant Karuta, has also been working and stands in his wellies and shorts and a tee shirt in front of them. He paces around, looking annoyed, and thinking hard.

  The soldiers stand to attention and eye him nervously; when he’s in a bad mood he can be a right bastard.

  He turns to them and shouts in his most commanding voice, ‘I have had an urgent message from FDLR High Command.’

  He takes hold of the bulky satellite phone on a strap over his shoulder and holds it in the air to emphasise the importance of the message. He’s worried about the order he has to give and is trying to emphasise that it hasn’t come from him.

  ‘We have been instructed to pack up and fall back to base in the Lubonga valley.’

  A groan goes through the ranks of the thirty men. Karuta had told them that they would be staying in Lolo for months and they were looking forward to some easy times. They have spent the last week clearing and burning the bush to make fields and hoeing the land ready to plant extra crops. It’s been backbreaking work and now it seems it was all for nothing.

  ‘Hey, shut up!’ Lieutenant Karuta snaps and glares at them. They all drop their eyes. ‘I’m not asking your opinion! We have been given an order – a direct order! By High Command! We will obey!’