by Danny King
“What was that?” Captain Bolaji finally asked.
“His Most Excellent Majesty’s secret weapon, I reckon,” I told him.
Captain Bolaji looked at me in confusion.
“A nuclear bomb,” I clarified.
“A nuclear bomb? You mean a nuclear bomb? Like an Atomic Bomb?”
“Yeah. Bloody things,” I stewed, this not being my first run-in with one of Oppenheimer’s firecrackers you see.
“The Europeans?” he immediately clicked.
“Yeah, probably,” I confirmed.
“But why?”
“To destroy the mine,” I reasoned.
“Destroy it? But why?”
“Well we weren’t going to steal it, were we?” I laughed.
Captain Bolaji still looked confused, and I could’ve explained that by detonating a nuke on the site of a mine, we’d just dirtied the ground – and any diamonds dug out of it – for the next thousand years, rendering them worthless. Not an altogether disagreeable turn of events if you happened to own a stockpile of diamonds that were rapidly depreciating in value following the opening of a mine in Caia, but which had now recovered their original worth (and then some) thanks to the Special Army’s first and last heroic outing.
I could’ve explained this, but what would have been the point? I didn’t know any of it for a fact and what’s more, it didn’t make a jot of difference to either of our bank accounts so who really cared?
“Don’t ask me, mate,” I eventually abridged, quoting the Affiliate’s mantra. “I just work here.”
But the Captain wasn’t to be flannelled and asked me how I’d known about the bomb.
“I didn’t. But I suspected,” I told him.
“You suspected?”
“I had an idea.”
“But you didn’t tell anyone about it?”
“Tell anyone? Like who?”
“Like who? Like Mbandi? Kasanje? Jaga? The Colonel-General? They’re all dead,” he gesticulated.
I adjusted the bandana over my bad eye and retied the back to hold my face in place.
“Yes they are,” I confirmed when I was done. “But I didn’t kill them.”
Captain Bolaji’s face fell, so I asked him what he would’ve done had I troubled him with my suspicions. Off the top of his head Captain Bolaji reckoned he didn’t know, but his reticence was clouded by hindsight, so I suggested he might’ve reported me to His Most Excellent Majesty at the very least, which would’ve seen me – and him – sporting matching blindfold up against a wall to prevent us from spoiling the surprise for everyone else.
“Either way, the Special Army would’ve still wiped itself out at Caia. Nothing and nobody was going to stop that,” I said, though what I actually meant was nobody like me was going to stop it. Jack Tempest or Rip Dunbar might’ve had a crack at it had they been in my boots, but they’d clearly had more exciting missions on this week.
As much as it galled him, Captain Bolaji saw that I was right and tried to accept his sunny fortune with the good grace by which it had dropped in his lap. It still narked him something rotten that he was only alive by chance, but then again which of us wasn’t?
“How did you suspect?” he finally plumped to ask.
It was a fair question and one to which he had a right to know so I asked him a question in turn.
“Have you ever read The Fourth Protocol?”
Captain Bolaji hadn’t.
“Come on then, I’ll tell you about it on the way to the airport.”
12.
THE SOLACE OF THANKS
As you can imagine, the towns and villages all around Caia were in a state of pandemonium. Buildings were on fire, people were running about screaming, and on the horizon, to everyone’s horror, an enormous swirling mushroom cloud slowly rose towards the heavens. Me and Bolaji walked right out from underneath it and blended in.
We’d ditched what had remained of our Special Army uniforms and strolled into town wearing just our underpants and each other’s blood. Nobody paid us any attention, nobody even noticed us as we washed our burns in the town’s water pump, whipped a few clothes off a line and knocked out a local cop to take his jeep and weapons.
I urged Captain Bolaji to cut his losses and come with me to Harare, but the Captain was adamant about swinging by the compound to pay his final respects to His Most Excellent Majesty, so I agreed to go along for the ride.
Not that there’d be much point. I knew the plan, and I knew the tactics. I’d been here before.
As expected, there was nothing left of our old command headquarters but for a few burnt out buildings and a scattering of bullet-riddled corpses surrounded by 9-mm shell casings. A Special Forces unit had dropped in for tea. All His Most Excellent Majesty’s troops that had been left behind to guard the place had either been downed in position or marched out into the centre of the parade ground and dispatched there.
The adjutant had not escaped the clean-up operation either and lay dead in the grass fifty yards behind the main building looking none too happy about it. He still had his wallet (and his passport rather interestingly) so we spent a few minutes harvesting the rest of the bodies for petrol money and anything else we could find before Captain Bolaji found His Most Excellent Majesty’s battered and bruised body curled up behind the Royal outhouse.
He called to me and for several seconds we stared down at our former Commander-in-Chief’s swollen arse before Captain Bolaji planted a boot up the middle of it, causing His Most Excellent Majesty to suddenly wake with a start and begin wailing with fear.
“Why didn’t they kill him too?” Captain Bolaji asked, as we watched our magnificent leader cry his eyes out.
“I don’t know, I guess it was just more fun to leave him alive,” I said over the sounds of weeping.
“Brigadier Jones?” His Most Excellent Majesty finally saw through his tears. “Captain Bolaji? You came back?”
“Yes, didn’t we just,” Captain Bolaji scowled.
“Quick, get me some clothes,” His Most Excellent Majesty ordered, spectacularly misjudging the mood of his men.
Captain Bolaji put a second boot up his arse to remind him of recent events and I cocked my gun theatrically to echo the point. His Most Excellent Majesty yelped in pain, then screwed up his face and began bawling his eyes out all over again.
It was hard to tell what he was saying, as so often is the case with crying children, but if I’d had to guess I would’ve said it sounded something like “please don’t hurt me” and “I just want to go home. I want my mamma” etc.
Captain Bolaji looked at me and sucked his teeth. I’d already holstered my weapon and rage and was now just feeling like shit. Eventually the Captain let out a sigh of frustration, then tugged a bloodstained jacket off a nearby sentry and threw it at His Most Excellent Majesty’s feet.
“Put that on,” he told him.
His Most Excellent Majesty studied the jacket and managed to stop crying long enough to pull it on, but his sleeves were too long for his arms and the breasts were riddled with bullet holes and this just seemed to set him off again.
“Stop crying Kimbo, or I’ll give you something to cry about?” Captain Bolaji barked, comically dismissing His Most Excellent Majesty’s recent run of luck as something less than a clip round the ear.
“Kimbo?” I asked.
“Kimbo Banja, it is his name,” Captain Bolaji told me.
“Oh,” I replied, relieved that I didn’t have to keep on referring to this snivelling little kid as His Most Excellent Majesty any more, though it had helped with the word count over the last couple of chapters.
“Come on, let’s go,” Captain Bolaji said.
We gathered up a few final bits and pieces that we’d need for the journey then climbed into our jeep and bugged out. Kimbo didn’t say much at first. I guess he had a few things on his little mind, but when he did it was clear he’d known less about the operation than we had. He’d been patronised and pandered to by the Euro
boys, but when all the grown-ups had started to talk Sissiki had put him to bed. All he’d been told was that he was going to throw some crooked diamond miners out of his country and that when we were done, he’d be celebrated and revered, worshipped and rewarded, and big mates with David Beckham. He didn’t have the first idea about the nuclear bomb and started crying his eyes out all over again when we told him about it.
The Europeans had been there with them, apparently to pop the cork on the Special Army’s success, but the moment they got a radio call from their spotter on the ground, the mood had changed and their soldiers had started killing everyone. Nobody was spared, not even the wives of his senior officers, and Kimbo thought he was going to die too, but instead all they did was parade him around in his birthday suit and tan his arse with their belts, before flying off into the sunset with laughs wobbling their bellies.
“Is everyone dead?” he swallowed in disbelief.
I looked over my shoulder from the passenger seat and nodded. Kimbo’s eyes fell to his feet and he went quiet. Where once was a cock-sure, energetic young despot, all that remained was a fragile and scared little boy. All his authority was gone. All his confidence, his innocence and his pluck, all had been taken from him. Would he ever fully understand what had happened? What his part in it had been? How he’d been used? Would he ever come to terms with this?
Maybe. Maybe not. But then again this was Africa. And bad things happened to little boys in Africa every day. What was one more traumatised toy soldier on a continent full of them?
After a few moments Kimbo looked up and thanked us for coming back for him. I glanced over at Captain Bolaji, and he duly lifted an eyebrow, but left the home truths where they lay.
“I knew you would, Brigadier Jones,” Kimbo continued. “Just like you said you would. Just like you saved your other commander, you saved me.”
Kimbo leaned over the passenger seat and wrapped his arms around me in gratitude. His little body trembled against mine and soon he was in tears again. I let him cry it out for a few seconds before peeling his arms from my neck and putting him back in his seat. I fixed Kimbo with my remaining eye, gave him my steeliest look and then brought my hand smartly up to my brow to crack off the salute to end all salutes.
“It was my pleasure, Your Most Excellent Majesty,” I told him, finally jogging a smile out of the nicest little super-villain it’s ever been my privilege to serve.
Just outside Harare, there’s an orphanage for children of war. It was set up by a nice old stick called Father Anthony who’d been working out in Africa since before Bob Geldof was in short trousers. The orphanage plays home to boys and girls who’d either lost everything through war or who’d been conscripted and put through the grinder themselves. Victims and former soldiers bedded and boarded together. They read, wrote, played, worked through their traumas and day-by-day learned to become children again.
A new boy now resided there. To Father Anthony and the other pupils he was simply Kimbo Banja. But I would always remember him as His Most Excellent Majesty, Supreme Ruler and Commander-in-Chief of the First – and hopefully last – Lumbala Special Army.
13.
NONE BUT THINE EYE
“Mr Jones, I’ve come to remove your bandages. Please sit up.”
I recognised her sweet aroma before I recognised her sweet voice and smiled accordingly.
“Sarah Jessica Parker,” I deduced.
“You remembered?”
“Of course, how could I forget?” I replied, moving to one side to make room for Nurse Parker as she perched on the bed beside me. “Lovely,” I added.
Of course, this wasn’t really Sarah Jessica Parker, but it’s how I’d come to know and recognise her since I’d been here in the hospital so I saw no reason to stop with the sexy pseudonyms any time soon.
The sight in my left eye was gone. In fact, the whole of my left eye was gone, but worse still was the infection that had spread to the right, threatening to rob me of daylight completely. It had been a scary few days, but the doctors seemed confident that they’d caught it in time. Here and now we’d find out.
Nurse Parker began to unwind my bandages.
Sarah Jessica Parker was, and as far as I’m aware still is, an American actress, one of the girls in that show, Sex and the City. I’d never actually seen it myself, but I remembered who she was when I asked the nurse what perfume she was wearing and she told me, Sarah Jessica Parker, so this was how I came to imagine her throughout my time in bandages.
“Keep your eyes closed, Mr Jones.”
Sarah Jessica Parker carried on unwinding the bandages and daubed my eye with a crystal cold solution, wiping away the crust that had built up over the last two weeks in preparation for me seeing again.
Two weeks. That’s how long I’d been here. Fourteen nights. That’s how long my eyes had been bandaged.
Just over two weeks earlier, I’d arrived in Harare with Captain Bolaji after forty-eight hours on the road and practically fell out of the jeep. With no money, no passport and no strength, I’d been an unmarked grave waiting to be dug. Captain Bolaji had wanted to take me to the city’s central hospital, but no offence to Harare, I would have stood a better chance doing the work myself. Plus, the authorities might’ve wanted to know where I’d picked up my injuries and why I was making their Geiger Counter sound like Flipper and his mates.
So I’d made the call. Or rather, I’d had Captain Bolaji do it on my behest, which had proved something of revelation to him.
“An Agency looks after you?”
“Yes. It looks after all its people, which is more than I can say for half the bastards it rents us out to.”
Captain Bolaji thought for a while. “How do I join?”
“You don’t,” I told him.
“Well how did you join?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? You just said you did.”
“No, I didn’t join them, I was invited to join.”
“Invited?”
“Yes. You don’t choose to join The Agency, The Agency chooses you.”
Captain Bolaji thought some more on that. “Then how do I get invited?”
“That’s easy, keep me alive until the plane arrives and they’ll have a look at you,” I told him, before passing out on the grimy hotel bed.
The next few hours were a dreamy blur. I felt someone moving around the room and the swirl of the ceiling fan. I felt water on my lips and a cloth on my face, the ringing of a telephone, and eventually, the knock on the door. Voices, swabs and injections followed, along with a fast ride along a bumpy road, then a roar into the sky. More needles in my arm preceded stars in my mind but I no longer cared. I was too far gone. Too pumped full of drugs. Too pumped full of infection. Heat wrapped my body like a blanket and I finally succumbed again.
The next time I awoke, Sarah Jessica Parker was checking my blood pressure when a pair of shoes entered the room. Of course, it was an Agency Interviewer, here to take down my story. “Plenty of time to rest later. Let’s hear what happened first,” he invited.
When only one man survives a job – in this case Operation Solaris – the debriefing’s much more intense because there’s no one else to corroborate the facts with you. A polygraph is sometimes used, but not in this instance. My infections had messed with my system too much to render my readings useless, so instead I just went over and over the story of what happened with The Agency Interviewer, and all the whens, wheres, whos and hows that went with it. The Agency isn’t so much interested in the whys. That’s their job to figure them out. They’re the analysts, we’re just the foot soldiers so they like us to stick to the facts, make our reports objectively and leave any interpretations to them.
For eight days the Interviewer grilled me, at all times of the night and with increasing intensity as my recovery progressed. Eventually, after the eighth night he told me he was satisfied with my story (which they always do to allay your fears) and got me sign my statements – at
least, I’m assuming they were my statements, but what with my eyes bandaged I could just as well have been signing half a dozen blank cheques for him. I doubted it though. Trust’s very important at The Agency and it swings both ways.
“So now let us turn to the matter of the raid on the Caia diamond mine,” the Interviewer had suggested, opening a new folder and scanning the chip in my arm to begin the process all over again.
As exhausting as this was, the debrief for the Caia job wasn’t nearly as intense as it had been for the Soliman job because The Special Army hadn’t hired through The Agency, so technically, they’d had nothing to do with it. But their fingerprints were still on the job. The appearance of my old friend Mr Smith, when the bomb had been delivered, told me as much, so I knew there were wheels within wheels here and played along accordingly.
At least until the following question was put to me.
“And so what made you decide to abort the operation when your driver Savimbi was killed?”
Now, at this point I should have told him the truth. I should have. But I didn’t. Because Mr Smith had taken a chance for me. So weirdly I felt honour-bound to do the same for him. Hmm, a few book club rules we hadn’t discussed there.
Obviously I told the Interviewer that we’d encountered each other out in Africa and that we’d even talked. I told him that we’d said hello, that we’d previously been in a book club together and that we’d even discussed what we were currently reading. I’d had to tell him that much as The Agency’s computers would match us as having worked together on Operation Blowfish. They’d also put us on overlapping jobs, and they’d identify the fact that we’d both been in His Most Excellent Majesty’s compound when the bomb had been delivered, so unless we’d been wearing balaclavas or some sort of kooky head gear (which were some times required) then we would have definitely clocked each other.