by James Steel
He was perturbed by the order as well – they had been told to scatter into the bush to avoid the UN forces but now they are being told to concentrate again. He was talking to another platoon commander on the phone who had had the same order.
The soldiers look glum but don’t say anything.
‘You will pack up your kit and be ready to leave in an hour; we will take the women as bearers. Corporal Habiyakare, go and get them ready!’
The corporal goes off with three men to where some women are tied up in a hut.
The lieutenant continues. ‘We have a journey of forty kilometres to get to Utiti.’ He points north. ‘We must wait there and they will send transport to collect us.’
One of the older men in the platoon asks from the back rank, ‘Lieutenant, why are we going?’
Karuta looks awkward. He hasn’t been told anything but doesn’t like showing that he is not in the command loop, so he just shrugs. ‘I don’t know, but there is a rumour from the government in Kinshasa that it will ask the UN to leave the province soon so I think the FDLR High Command want to concentrate our forces.’
He shrugs again and turns away.
The group of five men coming through arrivals at Kigali airport in Rwanda are an unlikely crowd.
There’s a tall, dark-haired man with a stern face, a serious-looking black man, a short balding man with a moustache and grim eyes, and a lanky Chinese businessman with a laptop case. The fifth man is middle aged and heavily built with a crewcut and a chunky gold necklace. He is pale-skinned and Slavic in appearance.
Arkady Voloshin is the other mainstay of Team Devereux. Formerly in the Russian Air Force he moved on to work for Victor Bout’s air transport company in the 1990s, running guns, diamonds, booze, cigarettes, TVs and hookers in and out of Africa. He is an experienced pilot of both fixed wing and rotary aircraft and has good contacts in the world of international arms dealers and aircraft leasing companies.
Since his last mission with the team he has bought himself a red Ferrari and been touring the south of France with some Serbian arms dealer friends. He spent a lot of time and money in Monte Carlo casinos where he took up with a French-Senegalese prostitute called Celeste who looks a bit like Naomi Campbell. She then ‘accidentally’ became pregnant and he now finds himself both married, a French citizen and a father of a baby girl called Anastasia. He’s not quite sure how it all happened but he does know that Celeste wants to remain in their nice apartment in Cannes and that she spends a lot of money.
Although the group in the airport look disparate, they are very at ease with each other and switched on, eyes scanning around the crowded arrivals area as they claim their luggage and move through the doorway into the large entrance hall in the 1970s airport.
It’s early May, a month after Alex’s initial meeting with Fang, and Team Devereux have spent the last two weeks holed up in Akerley brainstorming, planning the operation and writing their logistics wish list. They are here to see Rwandan staff officers to discuss this before heading over the border into Kivu to meet the local politician who will front the whole operation.
Alex spots a man holding a sign saying ‘Mr Jones’ in the line of people crowding along the rail awaiting the Sabena flight from Brussels and heads over towards him. He is a gloomy, dutiful-looking Rwandan in his mid-thirties, wearing casual trousers with a white shirt neatly belted in.
‘Good morning, Mr Devereux,’ he says in English and offers a soft handshake. He has a quiet voice with a heavy Rwandan accent and keeps his face still as he speaks. His eyes watch everyone very carefully as he shakes hands with the group.
‘I am Major Zacheus Bizimani of the Directorate of Military Intelligence; I will be your liaison officer for your visit. Please come this way.’
Like Congo, Rwanda is a former Belgian colony and French used to be the language of its educated classes. However, because of French support for the Hutus during the genocide, President Kagame cut diplomatic links with France, joined the Commonwealth and made English the alternative national language. All the signs in the airport are pointedly in English.
They push their luggage trolleys through and load into two unmarked minivans waiting outside with plain-clothes drivers. Any observer would say that they look like a group of businessmen arriving for a meeting.
As they drive into Kigali, the team scan around with interest trying to get a feel of the country that they will be working for. It is mid-morning and the sun is already high in the bright blue sky, the fierce light washing out the colour in the red soil of the hills around them, each one capped with a little white cloud. As with the whole Rift Valley, the area is at five thousand feet so the temperature is in the mid-twenties with a pleasantly fresh feel to the air.
‘All looks very neat, don’t it?’ Col says to Alex.
Major Bizimani is keen to reassure them that Rwanda is an organised country that will be able to cope with a complex military logistical operation and leans back from the front passenger seat. ‘Plastic bags are banned in Rwanda and every citizen has to do compulsory community work each week. President Kagame is following the Singapore model of development. It is all part of our Vision 2020 development plan for the country.’
‘Right ho,’ Col nods, looking impressed.
The road weaves between the crowded hills of the city and they arrive at the Top Tower Hotel with its ultra-modern entrance foyer and efficient red-suited staff. Yamba nods at a sign as they walk into the foyer and chuckles. ‘Five star. Better than we usually get in Africa, eh?’
They check into their five rooms, all on the top floor with views out over the golf course on the hill opposite, before getting out their laptops and briefcases and heading up to the Ministry of Defence building on a hill on the other side of the hotel.
Zacheus checks the vans through the heavily fortified gatehouse at the bottom of the hill and points to a soldier on guard with his rifle held rigidly in front of him. He indicates the soldier’s rifle.
‘You see the stencilled number there?’ Alex looks at the yellow lettering. ‘We know the number and location of every rifle in Rwanda. In Congo they don’t even know how many soldiers they have in the army. The government estimates between one hundred and one hundred and sixty thousand.’
The vans park in two reserved places in the car park at the top of the hill and the major then leads them through the manicured gardens and into the large complex of low-rise offices. Everything has an understated air of quiet efficiency and smartly dressed officers and suited civil servants move about purposefully.
Zacheus continues his propaganda. ‘President Kagame is the only African leader to have a Diploma of Management from the Open University in Britain. He is very opposed to corruption and it is punished very severely. All government employees must be at their desks ready to start work by seven o’clock in the morning.’
He shows them into a large meeting room and directs them to one side of a table; they settle in and get their laptops out. A minute later and seven Rwandan staff officers walk into the room; they are all middle-aged, reserved and wear crisply ironed dress uniforms.
Their leader, an austere man in his late forties, introduces himself in perfect English. ‘My name is Colonel Rutaremara and this is my Directorate of Logistics planning team.’
Colonel Rutaremara and his men take their time opening their briefcases on the table, carefully setting out laptops and piles of notes and aligning them squarely. Team Devereux sit and watch this slow process with interest.
The colonel eventually moves to stand in front of the large screen at the head of the table and fusses about with his laptop getting the PowerPoint slides correct. Finally he looks up and clears his throat.
‘My team and I began logistics work in the DRC during our first invasion of Congo in 1997 when we marched an army through fourteen hundred miles of bush, right the way across the continent and took Kinshasa, ending Mobutu’s twenty-seven years of rule. We believe we are practised in supplying armies in the f
ield in Congo.’
Alex and his men nod appreciatively: it was one of the greatest feats of arms ever achieved in African history.
‘We then occupied Kivu for six years from 1997 to 2003 and have been engaged in military operations there since then. Our Directorate of Military Intelligence have maintained an excellent secret intelligence network in the province. A lot of this is using agents that are part of the charcoal trading network that crosses the forests along the border.’
Chapter Eleven
Eve is lying on her back on a gynaecological examination bench with her legs up in the air in stirrups.
Dr Bangana is sitting on a stool between her legs doing a preliminary examination. There is a cloth screen between him and her but she can see the top of his head over it. His short curly hair is speckled with pepper and salt. He trained as a gynaecologist in Paris, building up a healthy practice there and learning a lot. But he had to come back to his homeland because he also learned that he had a conscience. Now his voice is grave from years of dealing with terrible damage like that inflicted on Eve.
‘So, I know this is difficult but did they use an object?’
Eve can’t bring herself to reply and just sniffs but Miriam, her new friend who is holding her hand, whispers, ‘A gun.’
Dr Bangana nods and sighs, he wishes he could get the yobs that do this and make them come and see the results of their ‘fun’. But he knows he has no power to do so and that no one else in Kivu does either so he just forces himself to focus on repairing some of the consequences of the problem. He can do nothing to affect its causes. He continues examining her and Eve flinches as she feels the cold instruments poking around inside her.
Eventually he sits back and looks up at her. ‘OK, your wounds are stable for the moment; I will put you on the waiting list for a procedure. I’m afraid it could take weeks – we have a lot of casualties coming in every day from all over South Kivu and some of them require emergency treatment. The wall of the bladder is a very thin membrane and after the operation it will take a couple of weeks to see if the sutures hold and the tissue is able to heal.’
Eve and Miriam go out into the courtyard between some of the low hospital blocks and sit on the grass in the sun. Miriam gets out her knitting – they sit around a lot killing time – and they talk quietly.
‘So have you heard from Gabriel?’
‘Hmm, he passed a message through the watermelon seller at the gate.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He says he is leaving soon for the mines and hopes to make good money and that he will come and see me when he has paid off his family.’
‘Do you think he loves you?’
Eve pauses. Panzi is a wonderful peaceful environment to live in and she loves all the Mamas and Miriam but her other experiences have taught her to be circumspect about anything positive.
She shrugs. ‘He says he does. I don’t know if he will come, I’ll just have to see.’
A week after the meeting in Kigali, two Land Cruisers pull up in a meadow and Alex and the others get out. The jeep doors slam shut in quick succession and he is conscious that there is then absolutely no noise.
The group wander away from the cars stretching their legs and getting the feeling of carsickness out of their heads. It’s been a long drive up here from Goma – six hours to cover thirty miles as the crow flies.
Everyone stands still staring at their surroundings. They are in a sea of grass with an almost luminous green glow in the sunshine and everywhere they look beyond that are lines of rugged hills stretching away into the distance, each one more muted than the previous, all under a perfect blue sky, polka-dotted with white clouds.
Col wanders over to him. ‘It’s beautiful, reminds me of the Lakes in the summer,’ he says wistfully.
Zacheus says, ‘I’ll go and check they are ready for us,’ and walks off through the thick wet grass towards a hut by the stream.
They are in phase two of their reconnaissance mission in Kivu, and about to meet the local politician they will be working with in setting up the new state, although Fang has stayed in Kigali for more meetings. They have had a week of intense discussions. The Rwandans really do start work at 7am and seem to think it was normal that their partners should as well. They have made a lot of progress planning weapons, ammunition, supply bases next to the border, recruitment and training and getting the latest Rwandan intelligence on the distribution of the FDLR forces and the best way to tackle them. Evenings have been spent in team meetings in their hotel rooms preparing for the next day’s schedule and emailing contacts to get plans rolling around the world.
So it came as a relief when they could pack a rucksack and drive three hours west to the border with Kivu. The roads were all brand new and smooth; Zacheus pointed out the British Department for International Development signs on the roadside with his usual pride.
They went over the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo on tourist visas with Zacheus posing as their local Congolese guide. He dealt very efficiently in Swahili with the border police, bribing them only a part of what they were asking and quietly talking his way through the rest of their obstreperousness.
Going into the DRC was certainly a big change; from the land of dour but efficient Rwandans to the lively freewheeling chaos of Goma. ‘There is a lot of money in Goma but not much law and order,’ was Zacheus’s disdainful comment. ‘I was actually born in Kivu, I am Banyamulenge – that’s a Tutsi living in Kivu – but I think I prefer Rwanda,’ he said, with the first inkling of a smile they had seen all week.
The centre of Goma was scruffy and packed with rubbish and traffic, mainly motorbike taxis and flashy SUVs belonging to comptoirs, the middlemen who process and export the minerals. They threaded their way through the town and out along the shore of Lake Kivu, gleaming a glorious blue in the afternoon sunshine. They drove past many comptoir villas along the lake, swanky places with swimming pools and satellite TV dishes, shut away behind high security gates, until they came to the total tranquillity of Hotel Bruxelles, a large, elegant colonial era building newly renovated and with grounds overlooking the lake.
It was late afternoon when they checked in and only then did Zacheus finally tell them the name of the politician they would be seeing the following day. An intelligence agent by nature, he was under strict orders from Fang not to reveal the information until the last minute. ‘Dieudonné Rukuba.’ He said the name quietly. None of them had heard of the man.
In a quick meeting after dinner Alex issued a terse order. ‘Have a look on the net, make any calls you can tonight to contacts, get anything you can on his background. If we are going to build a country with this guy we have got to find out if he’s trustworthy. The British government thought Idi Amin was just the sort of chap they needed to sort out Uganda when they put him in power and we don’t want to repeat that cockup.’
In the morning, they left early and headed down the N2 main road, south along the western shore of Lake Kivu. That was the easy bit. It started getting tricky when they turned west off the road and headed up a track into the steep hills. After that it was up hill and down dale. Their two drivers, both Directorate of Military Intelligence agents living in Kivu, threaded their way expertly along the narrow muddy lane twisting through upland meadows and woods.
Having gone up over six thousand feet, they came down into a valley with a fast-flowing stream and drove through the village of Mukungu, a primitive and rustic place with wooden huts and cowsheds. The residents stared at the jeeps and white men as they passed; none had ever been seen before in such a remote rural location.
After the village they turned up another small valley into a plateau area of lush meadows where brown cattle grazed quietly.
Now, standing in the meadow, Alex knows they haven’t got long before Zacheus returns. ‘Anybody find out anything last night?’ he asks.
Yamba shrugs. ‘Only that he is a local Kivuan and runs a political party called the Kivu People’s P
arty.’
‘Ah well, I’m one up on you there,’ says Col knowingly. ‘While you were all tapping away on t’internet, I were in the bar and had a beer with this South African bloke. He were a Parabat and saw me tatt when I were leaning on the bar, see? Crap tatts, can’t beat ’em.’ He holds up his forearm with his Parachute Regiment tattoo to Yamba, who rolls his eyes. Parabat is the South African army’s Parachute Battalion, originally founded from the British army Parachute Regiment.
‘He’s been doing security work for a comptoir in Goma for the last few years, so we gets chatting and I says who’s this Rukuba bloke then? Turns out he’s quite a well-known figure in the province but no real power. Runs a sorta non-militia-based mutual aid society or summat. Does a lot a music with church groups. This bloke says he’s a good politician and seems to get on with most people, which sounds like an achievement in Kivu. Although he said he thinks he’s a slimy bastard and he doesn’t trust ’im. Apparently there’s some rumour that he was involved with something called the Kudu Noir when he started out in politics.’
Alex looks at him askance. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘Don’t know, some sorta bush cult, animist whatever, to do with the spirit of the land in Kivu. You know, all that usual bollocks.’
Zacheus was heading back towards them, taking long steps over the grass. Alex looks round his men guardedly. ‘Well, let’s see what’s he like.’
Gabriel squats down next to the broken moped at the side of the road. He’s on his way to the mines and met its owner while he was walking along.
‘Have you tried the fuel line?’
‘No, where’s that?’
‘It’s here, look.’ Gabriel pulls the clear plastic tube off the engine of the battered blue 49cc Peugeot Mobylette and sucks the petrol out of it; he’s always been good at fixing things.
He spits out the fuel and tastes some grit in his mouth. He tinkers with the carburettor and then says, ‘It’s just grit in the fuel, should be OK now. Give it another go.’