Black Reef

by Nick Elliott

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘She was my hero when I was training, a highly intelligent woman. She had friends in high places and she used these people – politicians and all sorts – to get things done. She was a little obsessive you could say.’

  We talked and sometimes dozed fitfully when and where we could throughout the long day. No one had eaten and water supplies were rationed, with the injured getting priority.

  The baby died in the late afternoon but its mother still cradled its shrunken little body in her arms, and stared fixedly ahead. We didn’t stop and by ten that evening, helped by the downstream current, we had moored at the village where we’d left the Land Rover and transferred the injured onto the bank. We said farewell to the launch skipper before he headed back up to Kintani, then helped Mariana prepare the wounded survivors for the five-hour road trip back to Kazunda City. Marco drove, this time with Grant and myself alongside him. Mariana squeezed into the back with the injured.

  It was a hell of a journey and we stopped frequently so she could attend to her patients but the old man died when we were close to the city. We reached the hospital on the city’s eastern outskirts at six the following morning, but any sense of relief was short-lived. The place was crowded with victims of the fighting that was raging across the city. The entrance, reception area and corridors were choked with people, many of them men in uniform seeking medical attention. The staff, clearly overwhelmed, were doing what they could. Grant and I waited by the Land Rover with our own little group of Kintani patients while Marco and Mariana went inside to get help.

  I discovered a crate of water in plastic bottles round the back of the building and carried an armful of back share between our patients. Eventually Marco and Mariana returned with a doctor and nurse and two assistants pushing stretchers on trolleys. The medics both looked exhausted but were carrying first aid kits and set about attending to our patients out there in the open.

  ‘They will take care of them now, as best they can,’ said Mariana. She looked even more spent than the medics.

  ‘What’s going on in the city?’ Grant asked.

  ‘There is still widespread fighting between troops loyal to Loma and those who joined the mercenaries of Mendesa,’ Marco replied. ‘He promised them each a thousand-dollar bonus and better pay and conditions if they sided with him. And there are rumours that Loma is dead. Others say he is barricaded inside the Black Reef palace. No one knows for sure. Also I asked one soldier, an officer here who had been shot in the leg, why Mendesa would want to abduct Nzinga. He thought it was because he did not want to fight on two fronts. He was worried Nzinga would rally the people from the countryside behind her and march on the city before he had gained a grip on power. I don’t know whether this is the only reason but that’s what he thought was happening.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘He didn’t know what they’ve done with her. We asked about Cordeiro too but again he knew nothing.’

  ‘So who’s controlling the TV and radio stations?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Mendesa. He is broadcasting constantly saying he is in control of the city and that he will take the whole country within the next forty-eight hours.’

  ‘And is he in control of the city?’

  ‘The coastal strip and that northern flank around the police compound, yes. Now he is focused on dislodging the presidential guard from the palace. That’s where the fighting is heaviest. But the situation is very fluid and confused. Not all the presidential guard will be loyal to one side or another. They may split. No one knows for sure what is happening.’

  ‘Is the Portuguese Embassy accessible?’ Grant asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s in the southern part of the city so maybe it is.’

  ‘I want to get there. Mariana,’ he called over to where she was helping the medics and she came across.

  ‘Come with me. You’ll be safer at the Embassy and we can find out what’s happening. I need to establish some kind of official link with the outside world and the Portuguese are our best bet.’

  ‘I have decided it is better I stay here with these people. They are my patients now.’

  ‘I thought you were handing them over to the medics here. You can do more good from the Embassy. Come with me now and you can return here later.’

  ‘No, I’ve changed my mind. I will stay here now. What about you, Angus?’ she asked deflecting attention away from herself.

  ‘I need Marco to help me.’

  Grant interjected: ‘Help you do what? We need to stay together. Come to the Embassy with me.’

  ‘Best if you go, Grant and do what you have to do. You don’t need me there too.’

  ‘What are you planning? Mount your own private assault on the palace? From the Embassy we can call up military assistance from the Portuguese. They will have forces in the region.’

  ‘Possibly, but it will take days to get political approval and prepare an offensive on a sovereign nation even if it was once their colony. They’d need a UN resolution before they could send their own troops in. We don’t have time. If Mendesa’s on the verge of taking power we need to stop him, and we need to find Nzinga. That’s what I’m going to do, with help from Marco here.’

  I knew the odds were against us. If Loma was really dead it was only a matter of time before his regime and the infrastructure around it collapsed. Mendesa already had control of the TV and radio stations and his forces stood at the gates of the Black Reef palace. Meanwhile, he’d abducted Nzinga, and Cordeiro had disappeared.

  ‘You’re mad. I’m ordering you, Gus. Come with me.’

  ‘You know me well enough, Grant. I’ll be in touch.’

  Chapter 20

  ‘It will not be easy.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would be, Marco. But do you know how I can get in or not? I was thinking from the seaward side? What do you reckon?’

  Over the past few days Marco had frequently demonstrated his resourcefulness. He was more than Mariana’s sidekick, more than just a fixer. He had initiative and didn’t wait to be told what to do. And I’d noticed how he’d grown into this role as each calamitous event followed the last. He was short, broad and physically tough; and above all Marco was a Kazundan patriot eager to see his country return to the peace and order he remembered from his youth, when Mariana's family had employed his parents in the family home and the two had been childhood playmates. I’d spent a lot of time thinking how I could influence the outcome of these events which were largely out of our control and I’d concluded that I couldn’t do a thing without Marco’s help. But Marco wasn’t a fool – and I knew that what I was planning was bordering on the reckless. He wouldn’t be easily persuaded.

  ‘They say there is a small harbour cut out of the rocks on the reef, and from there an entrance to the old fort, and to the palace itself,’ he said. ‘But it will be guarded of course. It would be very dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous but not impossible. I’m going to try it but I need your help. I need a few things.’

  ‘Of course, you have my help. Tell me.’

  I reeled off a list and he laughed. ‘That is a long list! How do you expect me to find all this? And a gun too?’

  ‘Marco, this man Mendesa, he’s bad, really bad. You must have heard the stories about him. He’ll wreak chaos and destruction on your country. He’ll drain the nation’s coffers and the people will starve. Worse than Loma even. Is that what you want? If we can find Nzinga, help to instate her and undermine or remove Mendesa, then we have a chance to bring some stability to the country.’

  ‘You make it sound straightforward. I think your boss was right, you are mad. Even if you find her she’s as big a threat to Mendesa as she was to Loma. He’ll never negotiate with her. Mr Douglas is seeing the ambassador. Perhaps he can help.’

  ‘How can he? It’s like I said, the Portuguese will never intervene militarily. They have a history of bad experiences in their African colonies made worse by their failed milit
ary campaigns. So how? Diplomatic intervention? The UN? Come on.’

  ‘Mr Douglas told me the Americans, the CIA, would help overthrow Mendesa.’

  ‘Well that didn’t work out, did it? Mendesa and his friends blew the CIA’s offshore base to hell. Anyway, we don’t have time to stand here arguing. Can you find me the items on this list or not?’

  ‘Okay, if you are so determined I will see what I can do. I’ll need a few hours. Meet me here at nine o’clock tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, Marco,’ I said as he headed off towards the Land Rover. Then he stopped and turned back to me, grinning. ‘Let’s make it happen, Mr Gus!’

  There wasn’t much I could do before then so I went into the hospital to find Mariana and offer what help I could.

  ***

  It took us three hours to drive from the hospital. The city was in a state of chaos. Crowds jammed the streets and the white Land Rover with its UN markings attracted unwanted attention. At one point we were stopped at a police cordon. A fierce argument ensued which Marco was determined to win and in the end they let us through.

  ‘We’re UN personnel, right?’ he said to me. Then we saw why the police hadn’t wanted us to pass. A few hundred yards ahead was a crowd of young men armed with stones, sticks, Molotov cocktails and the odd machete. They’d formed themselves into a loose line and were heading towards the police barricade. And we were in between the two.

  ‘Keep driving,’ I said. ‘They’ll move out of the way.’ And they did, but only after a lot of shouting and banging on the windows of the Land Rover. Two of them climbed onto the roof. It was a flashpoint waiting to explode and we were lucky to get through. Our route was less charged after that and Marco would stop and talk to small clusters of people to find out what he could about the situation in the city, which was rapidly descending into anarchy.

  Marco had found what he could from my list and, despite my efforts to dissuade him, insisted on coming with me. But he had news: ‘I have spoken to a friend, Hugo. He is a junior officer in the presidential guard. They are supposed to be an elite unit but they haven’t been paid for six months. He says there is much discontent among the officers and other ranks. He has offered to help us.’

  ‘Discontent with whom? Loma, Mendesa …?’

  ‘Both. He says he and his colleagues are all sick of the nepotism, the corruption. It’s not what they trained for, serving these dictators.’

  ‘Can we trust him?’

  ‘Yes, we can trust him, I am sure of that, and it was he who gave me the gun and ammunition.’

  It was approaching midnight by the time we waded into the water from a beach to the north of Black Reef. We were wearing snorkels, masks, fins and black wetsuits that had belonged to a couple of surfers Marco knew. They were old, the rubber was worn and had lost much of its elasticity after years of exposure to sun and seawater, but they were black and would provide some protection from the sharp basalt of the reef. And we carried waterproof bags with dry clothing and, in mine, the gun.

  The water wasn’t cold but I could see in the distance there was a heavy swell breaking over the reef. We swam some way out to sea then arced in towards the reef and the white surf. The harbour lay ahead of us now and as I crested each wave I could see it was well protected by breakwaters either side of the entrance. And as we got closer I saw a large boat moored alongside the quay inside the harbour.

  Using our snorkels now we swam as far as the breakwaters and, taking our time, peered round into the harbour. It looked deserted and we swam on in. Marco found an iron ladder attached to the harbour wall and we climbed up onto the quayside. The boat was more than just a gin palace. I’d seen these things in the hands of shipowners and oligarchs cruising around the Aegean. It was a forty-metre motor yacht designed to look like a small naval warship, its grey hull and superstructure giving it an intentionally menacing appearance.

  I looked at the waterproof watch Marco had acquired. We were seven minutes early for our rendezvous with Hugo so had time for a look around. The harbour had been hewn out of the basalt rock; it would have been a gruelling task, and it didn’t look like it had been done recently. The boat itself was moving lightly against its heavy-duty fenders. I could see from the satcom domes, radomes and antennae sprouting from the mast that it was equipped for long-distance voyages. It was moored facing seaward, for a speedy getaway I mused, and looked well-maintained, its chrome fittings shining in the gloom.

  ‘Was this one of Loma’s toys or has Mendesa brought it with him?’ I asked Marco.

  ‘It must be Loma’s, but I don’t know where he got it from.’

  We found the entrance to the fort, a watertight door set into the rock face. Pushing the dog handle up I pulled it open and waited, gun in hand. Hugo appeared dressed in military fatigues and looking anxious. He was young, tall and skinny.

  ‘Come, quickly,’ he said.

  We headed inside. Ahead of us was a long corridor with a flight of steps at the end. It was a damp place. The once-white plaster was flaking from the rock walls and water dripped from the ceiling. At the foot of the steps Hugo halted. ‘I will go first. Then if all is okay I will flash my torch down at you – three times, like this,’ he said, demonstrating.

  He turned and headed up the steps. He’d assured us it was safe to enter the fort this way and that the presidential household and the guards who were on duty in the palace were holed up in the eastern wing on the landward side of the fort. It seemed a long wait, but after ten minutes we saw the flashes from his torch. He left it switched on then so we could see our way. At the top of the steps we went through another steel door and along another corridor. At the end of this one, we passed through yet another door into the kitchens, and beyond that up more stairs, which led into a huge dining hall.

  Now I began to sense the atmosphere inside the palace itself. Here, little remained of the original Portuguese fort. Loma had converted this old citadel into every African despot’s idea of how to demonstrate his power and wealth while at the same time managing to make it look kitsch. And spread over it all was an atmosphere of decay. The salt air from the ocean had crept into the place, rotting away at concrete, mortar and fabrics. Even the light switches and electrical wiring were oxidising. But as we moved closer to the eastern wing the ambience changed to a more lived-in look; until we came to another hall, this one resembling a meeting room dominated by a long ebony table with matching chairs and a huge portrait of Eduardo Loma hanging at one end of the room. But that wasn’t what caught my eye, for directly beneath and to one side of the picture, spread across the wall, was a messy splatter of dried blood. And on the cheetah-skin rug beneath the painting was more blood, which had stained parts of the animal skin so dark as to be almost black.

  ‘Loma,’ whispered Hugo. ‘This is where they killed him – with machetes.’ He drew a finger across his throat. Throughout his thirty-two year reign as president Loma had both emulated and mocked his neighbour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. While Mobuto sported a leopard-skin hat, Loma chose one of cheetah skin, saying the cheetah ran at twice the speed of a leopard. Clearly, he’d carried the metaphor through to the palace furnishings. It seemed ironic that he should have fallen to his death on the very symbol he’d chosen to signify his power and supremacy.

  ‘Who killed him?’ I asked.

  ‘The presidential guard. It was the officers who did it.’

  ‘His death is no loss to our nation,’ Marco said. ‘Now we must find Mendesa, and Nzinga.’

  As he spoke, like a scene from a Victorian drawing-room drama, a figure appeared from a doorway in the far corner of the hall.

  ‘Welcome to Black Reef,’ said Carlos Cordeiro. ‘I might be able to help you there.’

  Chapter 21

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I asked, instinctively pointing the gun at his chest.

  ‘I could ask you the same question, Angus McKinnon. Come through and let’s have a drink.’ He gestured to the do
or through which he’d entered. ‘Your friends are welcome to stay althoug this isn’t the safest place in Kazunda right now.’

  I turned to Marco and Hugo. ‘Go now.’ I said. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’

  ‘Are you sure? Shouldn’t we wait here?’ he said, doubtfully.

  I turned to him and gripped his hand. ‘Marco, you’ve both been great. Now go, and watch out for yourselves.’ They didn’t need further persuasion.

  I followed Cordeiro into a lavishly furnished room. On the white marble floor was a huge golden silk rug on which was set a three-piece Chesterfield suite upholstered in a gold-effect faux leather. Around the room’s perimeter was set an assortment of reproduction Louis XIV tables and chairs. I didn’t bother to inspect the incongruous gilt-framed paintings of horses rearing up in long-forgotten battles, which hung around the walls. The room was lit by a huge chandelier which flickered with the erratic electricity supply, a metaphor for everything that was wrong with the place. The overall effect was of fading ostentation. Cordeiro poured us both whiskies from a crystal decanter. ‘Sit down,’ he said gesturing to the suite and handing me a glass. ‘Don’t mind the opulence.’

  I was still wearing the wetsuit, dripping seawater onto the silk rug. I took a long drink and sat down in one of the wing chairs. ‘I was hoping to find Mendesa,’ I said. ‘I didn’t expect you to be here.’

  ‘Find Mendesa and what? Shoot him with that antique you’re carrying? A Browning Hi-Power is it not? They are common in these parts. First adopted by Belgium for military service over eighty years ago; and that’s an early model. An original P-35 if I’m not wrong: one of the most influential pistols in the history of small arms. Did you know Colonel Gaddafi had one? They found it on him when they dragged him out of that drain a few years ago. But yours? Perhaps worth more at auction than what you might be using it for. I can find you something more effective if you’d like?’

  ‘I’m told it’s in good working order. Now just tell me what your part is in all this, Cordeiro.’