The Mission Song

by John le Carré

  I glance at the Underground plan. Haj and Dieudonne have split up. Poor Dieudonne, all alone in the guest suite. Probably having a quick pray. Haj has taken himself back to the gazebo, the scene of his supposed triumph. If only he knew! I imagine him staring out to sea with his goggle eyes, congratulating himself on having queered the Mwangaza's pitch for him. Franco's pinlight is out. Still closeted with the Mwangaza in the royal apartments, presumably. Out of bounds. Archive purposes only. I need sound. I don't like the accusing voices that are starting to raise themselves inside my head, Hannah's foremost. I'm not here to be criticised. I did my best for my employers. What was I supposed to do? Pretend I hadn't heard Haj say what he said? Keep it to myself? I'm here to do a job and be paid for it. Cash. Even if it's a pittance compared with what they're paying Jasper. I'm an interpreter. They talk, I render. I don't stop rendering people when they say wrong things. I don't censor, edit, revise or invent, not the way certain of my colleagues do. I give it straight. If I didn't, I wouldn't be Mr Anderson's favourite son. I wouldn't be a genius in my field.

  Legal or commercial, civil or military: I render everybody equally and impartially, regardless of colour, race and creed.

  I'm the bridge, Amen and out.

  I try Sam again. Still away from her post. The background male babble in the ops room has stopped. Instead, thanks to Sam's carelessness, I hear Philip. Moreover, he is talking clearly enough for me to hear what he's saying. Who he's talking to is anybody's guess, and his voice is coming off at least one wall before it reaches Sam's mike, but that doesn't affect my hearing. I'm on such a low-high after my duel with Haj that if a fly coughed into my headset I could tell you its age and sex. The surprise is that Philip's voice is so different from the high-gloss version I associate with him that for the opening bars I'm actually chary of identifying him. He is talking to Mark, and to judge by Philip's imperious tone, Mark is an underling:

  Philip: I want who his doctor is, I want the diagnosis, what treatment the patient's getting if any, when they expect to discharge him if they do, who he's receiving at his bed of pain and who's with him apart from his wives, mistresses and bodyguards . . . No, I don't know which bloody hospital he's in, Mark, that's your job, it's what you're paid for, you're the man on the spot. Well, how many heart hospitals are there in Cape Town, for Christ's sake?

  End of phone call. Top freelance consultants are too important to say goodbye. Philip needs to talk to Pat. He has dialled a new number and Pat is who he asks for when he gets through.

  Philip: The name is Marius, he's Dutch, fat, fortyish, smokes cigars. He was recently in Nairobi and for all I know he's there now. He attended business school in Paris and he represents our old friend the Union Miniere des Grand Lacs. Who is he otherwise? (ninety seconds in which Philip intermittently indicates that yes he is listening and making notes, as I am. Finally)

  Thank you very much, Pat. Perfect. Exactly what I feared, but worse. Just what we didn't want to know. I'm very grateful. Goodbye.

  So now we know. It wasn't debonnaire or legionnaire or militaire. It was Miniere and it wasn't attaque, it was Lacs. Haj was talking about a mining consortium of which the fat Dutchman was the African representative. I catch sight of Spider standing the other side of his Meccano grid, checking his turntables, switching tapes and marking up new ones. I lift an earpiece and smile in order to be sociable.

  “Looks like we're going to have a busy lunchtime, then, Brian, thanks to you,” says Spider with mysterious Welsh relish. “Quite a lot of activity planned, one way and another.”

  “What sort of activity?”

  “Well that would be telling, now, wouldn't it? Never trade a secret, Mr Anderson advises, remember? You'll always get the short end of the bargain.”

  I replace my headset and take a longer look at the Underground plan. The Mwangaza's mauve pinlight is taunting me like a brothel invitation. Come on, Salvo. What's stopping you? School rules? Out of bounds unless Philip personally tells you otherwise. Archival, not operational. We record but don't listen. Not if we're zebra interpreters. So if I'm not cleared to listen, who is?

  Mr Anderson, who doesn't speak a word of anything but north country English? Or how about the no-balls Syndicate, as Haj called them: do they listen? As a diversion perhaps. Over the port and Havanas in their Channel Island fastness.

  Am I really thinking like this? Has Haj's sedition got under my skin without my noticing? Is my African heart beating more loudly than it's letting on? Is Hannah's? If not, why is my right hand moving with the same deliberation with which it fed Penelope's coq au vin into the waste-disposal unit? I hesitate, but not because of any last-minute pangs of conscience. If I press the switch, will sirens go off all over the house? Will the mauve pinlight on the Underground plan flash out a distress signal? Will Anton's anoraks come thundering down the cellar steps to get me?

  I press it anyway, and enter the DRAWING ROOM of the forbidden royal apartments. Franco is speaking Swahili. Reception perfect, no echoes or noises off. I imagine thick carpets, curtains, soft furniture. Franco relaxed. Perhaps they've given him a whisky. Why do I think whisky? Franco is a whisky man. The conversation is between Franco and the Dolphin. There is no firm evidence as yet of the Mwangaza's presence, although something in their voices tells me he's not far away.

  Franco: We have heard that in this war many aircraft will be used.

  Dolphin: That is true.

  Franco: I have a brother. I have many brothers.

  Dolphin: You are blessed.

  Franco: My best brother is a good fighter, but to his shame has only daughters. Four wives, five daughters.

  Dolphin: (a proverb) No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come.

  Franco: Of these daughters, the eldest has a cyst on her neck which hampers her prospects of marriage. (Grunts of exertion confuse me until I realise that Franco is reaching for the same spot on his own lame body) If the Mwangaza will fly my brother's daughter to Johannesburg for confidential treatment, my brother will have good feelings towards the Middle Path.

  Dolphin: Our Enlightener is a devoted husband and the father of many children. Transport will be arranged.

  A clinking of glass seals the promise. Mutual expressions of esteem.

  Franco: This brother is a man of ability, popular among his men. When the Mwangaza is Governor of South Kivu, he will be well advised to select my brother as his Chief of Police for all the region.

  Dolphin: In the new democracy, all appointments will be the result of transparent consultation.

  Franco: My brother will pay one hundred cows and fifty thousand dollars cash for a three-year appointment.

  Dolphin: The offer will be considered democratically.

  From the other side of his Meccano grid, Spider is peering at me, hooped eyebrows raised. I lift an earpiece. “Something wrong?” I enquire.

  “Not that I know of, boy.”

  “Then why are you staring at me?”

  “Bell's gone, that's why. You were too busy listening to hear it.”

  12

  “Three bases, gentlemen! Each base open-cast, minimally exploited, and a vital key to Kivu's revival.”

  Maxie, billiards cue in hand, is once more haranguing us from the head of the table. The airport is ours, the Mwangaza is installed. Soon the Syndicate will control all South Kivu's mines but in the meantime here are three to be getting along with. They are out-of-the-way, with no official concession-holders to be dealt with. Re-entering the conference room, I have the sensation that its occupants have undergone a theatrical transformation. Haj and Dieudonne, who minutes ago were partners to a highly seditious conversation, are behaving as if they had never set eyes on one another. Haj is humming tra-las to himself and smirking into the middle distance. Dieudonne is meditatively drawing out the strands of his beard with his bony fingertips. Looming between them sits Franco, his gnarled face a mask of righteousness. Who would have imagined that minutes previously he had been attempting to bribe the
seraphic Dolphin? And surely Philip is not now and never has been the author of certain peremptory commands barked over the sat-phone? His plump hands are linked across his shirt-front in parsonical tranquillity. Does he comb his waved white hair between acts? Coax up the little curls behind the ears? Tabizi alone seems unable to contain whatever unruly thoughts are seething in him. He may have the rest of his body under control, but the vengeful glint in his oil-dark eyes is inextinguishable.

  The map Maxie is addressing is so large that Anton has to spread it like a counterpane over one end of the table. Like his skipper he has taken off his jacket. His bared arms are tattooed from elbow to wrist: a buffalo's head, a two-headed eagle clutching a globe and a skull on a star to commemorate the Escuadron de Helicopteros of Nicaragua. He bears a tray of little plastic toys: gunships with bent rotors, twin-engined aeroplanes with their propellers missing, howitzers hauling ammunition trailers, infantrymen charging with fixed bayonets or, more prudently, lying flat.

  Maxie marches down the table, cue at the ready. I am trying to avoid Haj's eye. Every time Maxie points with his cue, I glance up from my notepad and there's Haj waiting for me with his goggly stare. What's he trying to tell me? I've betrayed him? We never duelled with each other? We're bosom pals?

  “Little place called Lulingu,” Maxie is telling Franco, as the tip of his billiards cue affects to skewer it. “Heart of your Mai Mai territory. Le coeur du Mai Mai. Oui? D'accord? Good man.”

  He wheels round to me: “Suppose I asked him to put three hundred of his best chaps there, would he do that for me?”

  While Franco is pondering my offer, Maxie swings back to Dieudonne. Is he about to advise him to swallow a bottle of aspirin? — not to hang around at the back of the herd now his time's up?

  “Your area, right? Your people. Your pastures. Your cattle. Your plateau.”

  The cue wheels down the southern shores of Lake Tangan yika, stops halfway, veers left and stops again.

  “It is our area,” Dieudonne concedes.

  “Can you maintain a fortified base for me — here?”

  Dieudonne's face clouds. “For [?]jott?”

  “For the Banyamulenge. For a united Kivu. For peace, inclusiveness and prosperity for all the people.” The Mwangaza's mantras are evidently Maxie's own.

  “Who will supply us?”

  “We will. From the air. We'll drop you everything you need for as long as you need it.”

  Dieudonne lifts his gaze to Haj as if to plead with him, then sinks his face into his long thin hands and keeps it there, and for a split second I join him in his darkness. Has Haj persuaded him? If so, has he persuaded me? Dieudonne's head lifts. His expression is resolute, but in what cause is anybody's guess. He begins reasoning aloud in short, decisive sentences while he stares into the distance.

  “They invite us to join Kinshasa's army. But only in order to neutralise us. They offer us appointments that give the illusion of power. But in reality they are worthless. If an election comes, Kinshasa will draw borders that give the Banyamulenge no voice in Parliament. If we are slaughtered, Kinshasa will not lift a finger to save us. But the Rwandans will come to our protection. And that will be another disaster for Congo.” From between splayed fingers, he announces his conclusion. “My people cannot afford to reject this opportunity. We shall fight for the Mwangaza.”

  Haj stares wide-eyed at him, and emits a girlish laugh of disbelief. Maxie raps the tip of his cue on the foothills south-west of Bukavu.

  “And this very fine mine belongs to you, Haj? Is that correct? You and Luc?”

  “Nominally,” Haj concedes with an irritating shrug.

  “Well, if it's not yours, whose else is it?” — part joke and part challenge, which I do not attempt to moderate.

  “Our company has subcontracted it.”

  “Who to?”

  “Some business acquaintances of my father,” Haj retorts, and I wonder who else has heard the rebellious edge to his voice.

  “Rwandans?”

  “Rwandans who love Congo. Such people exist.”

  “And are loyal to him, presumably?”

  “In many circumstances they are loyal to him. In others, they are loyal to themselves, which is normal.”

  “If we tripled the mine's production and paid them a cut, would they be loyal to us?”

  “Us?”

  “The Syndicate. Assuming they are well armed and supplied against attack. Your father said they would fight for us to the last man.”

  “If that is what my father said, then what my father says is true.”

  In his frustration, Maxie rounds on Philip. “I understood all this was agreed in advance.”

  “But of course it's agreed, Maxie,” Philip replies soothingly. “It's a done deal, sealed and delivered. Luc signed up to all of it long ago.”

  The dispute being in English and of a private nature, I elect not to render it, which does not prevent Haj from rolling his head around and grinning like an imbecile, thereby incurring the silent rage of Felix Tabizi.

  “Three leaders, three independent enclaves,” Maxie forges on, addressing the conference at large. “Each with its own airstrip, disused, used or part used. Each supplied by heavy air transport out of Bukavu. Your whole problem of access, extraction and transportation solved in one throw. Unfindable and — without enemy air power — impregnable.”

  Enemy air power? The enemy being who precisely? Is this what Haj is wondering, or am I?

  “It's not every military operation where you can pay your men out of the ground you're camping on, for God's sake,” Maxie insists, in the tone of a man overcoming opposition. “And have the satisfaction of knowing you're doing your country a bit of good while you're at it. Tell 'em that too, will you, old boy. Hammer the social benefits. Each militia collaborating with local friendly chiefs, each chief making a buck, and why shouldn't he, provided he passes it on to his clan or tribe? Not a reason on earth, in the long term, why the bases shouldn't flourish as self-maintaining communities. Schools, shops, roads, medical centres, you name it.”

  Distraction while Anton sets a plastic toy airliner on Franco's jungle base and everybody watches. It's an Antonov-12, Maxie explains. Carrying a cargo of diggers, dump trucks, forklifts and engineers. The airstrip can handle it with room to spare. Whatever anyone needs, the Antonov can deliver it with bells on. But once again, Haj stops him in his tracks, this time by shooting his right arm in the air and holding it there in the manner of an obedient student waiting his turn.

  “Monsieur Philippe.”

  “Haj.”

  “Am I correct in assuming that under the proposed agreement the militias must occupy their bases for a minimum of six months?”

  “Indeed you are.”

  “And after six months?”

  “After six months the Mwangaza will be installed as the People's choice and the creation of an inclusive Kivu will be under way.”

  “But for those six months — before the mines pass into the People's hands — who controls them?”

  “The Syndicate, who else?”

  “The Syndicate will mine the ore?”

  “I certainly hope so.” Joke.

  “And ship it?”

  “Naturally. We explained all that to Luc.”

  “Will the Syndicate also be selling the ore?”

  “Marketing it, if that's what you mean.”

  “I said sell.”

  “And I said market,” Philip rejoins, with the smile of a fellow who enjoys a good set-to.

  “And keeping all profits to itself exclusively?”

  On the other side of the table, Tabizi is about to erupt, but nimble Philip is once more ahead of him.

  “The profits, Haj — revenue is a kinder word — will, as you rightly imply, for the first six months go towards defraying the Syndicate's up-front investment. This of course includes the high costs incurred by supporting the Mwangaza's accession to power.”

  Watched by all the room, Haj mulls this
over. “And these mines, these three bases your Syndicate has selected — one for each of us—” he resumes.

  “What about them?”

  “Well, they're not just any old mines, selected at random, are they? They may not look it, but these are highly specialised sites.”

  “I fear you're losing me, Haj. I am not a technical man at all.”

  “They have gold and diamonds, right?”

  “Oh, I sincerely hope so! Otherwise we've made a most terrible mistake. These mines are also dumps.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really. All round them there are hill-works of coltan ore. Ore extracted, stockpiled and abandoned while we were so busy dying we didn't get around to shifting it. All you have to do is crude-process it on site to reduce the weight, ship it out, and you've got a bonanza. You don't even need six months. Two will do fine.” At the edge of my screen, Tabizi is tenderly exploring the pockmarks on his jaw with the tips of his jewelled fingers, but to me it is Haj's jaw that he is thinking about.