by Tony Park
‘Because of you. Because of that stupid photograph. It should never have been taken.’
‘Let me help you, I can –’
Menahe increased the hold on her throat and Liesl started seeing pinpricks of light in her peripheral vision as he dragged her out into the muddy laneway between the cell blocks. More men joined the procession, but others, perhaps not wanting to suffer the consequences if the colonel’s bid for freedom failed, sprinted ahead of the mob.
Liesl realised the colonel was going to use her as a hostage. She twisted in his embrace, to lessen the pressure on her neck and to look for Pierre. She saw him, blood streaming from his nose and from a cut on his forehead, being carried barely conscious between two other inmates, also armed with shivs, homemade prison knives.
‘Who would kill you?’ she asked the colonel again, coughing as the words caught in her bruised neck.
‘If you don’t know then I am not going to tell you. Perhaps I’ll take you to him when I get out, in exchange for my life. Who else knows about the photograph?’
‘Go to hell,’ Liesl said. The colonel squeezed tighter and Liesl felt the point of the knife dig into her skin.
‘Colonel!’ yelled one of the men in the vanguard of the surging mob.
‘What is it?’
‘Another woman!’
Liesl looked past the scouts and saw Carmel Shang striding, alone, towards them. She held her hands up high.
‘Liesl!’
‘Carmel!’
Liesl’s call was silenced by yet more pressure and she felt herself start to grow dizzy in Menahe’s arms. She blinked and saw Carmel had started to run towards them.
‘Release her!’ Carmel shouted.
The colonel stopped and his entourage followed suit, a few at the rear bumping into those in front who were blocking their view ahead. ‘Colonel Jean-Baptiste Menahe,’ Carmel yelled, ‘my name is Carmel Shang. I am a prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. If you let that woman go I will see you are not mistreated.’
‘Pah! Your United Nations tribunal is a sham. I have committed no crime of genocide and have nothing to answer for. Get out of my way or I will take you with me as well.’
‘You’re committing the crime of kidnapping now. You will stay in prison whatever the result of your appeal.’
Liesl felt Menahe’s grip loosen a little. ‘Get out of my way,’ he said.
‘I need to talk to you, Colonel. I need to know who the white man in the photograph is.’
The colonel started to walk forward again and his men, impatient for their freedom, started moving with him. ‘I will tell you who he is. He is the devil. Grab her!’
Four of Menahe’s men broke from their ranks and moved to grab Carmel. She reached behind her and pulled out the guard’s pistol from the waistband of her jeans. She brought it up in front of her in a two-handed grip. The inmates sent to grab her stopped and backed away, but the colonel kept walking, dragging a pale-faced Liesl with him.
‘Hah! You dare to pull a gun on me, woman.’
‘Stop right there and let her go,’ Carmel said.
Menahe laughed as he kept walking, slowly closing the gap between them as he talked. ‘You are a woman, and a lawyer. Even the court you serve is too soft to impose the death penalty. You people know nothing of my country, of my people, of my Africa. You are soft. You will not shoot me.’
Carmel tightened her grip on the pistol to still her shaking hands. She had shot one man today already, possibly killing him. The army had taught her to shoot, and to aim for the centre mass of a target around the stomach and chest to ensure the best chance of a hit. Shooting guns out of people’s hands or wounding them in the leg was the stuff of action movies.
‘Stop!’ she shouted once more.
He shook his head. ‘No. You will give me the gun and you will become my second hostage. I will walk out of here with both of you and give you to the devil as a peace offering.’
‘Stop or I’ll shoot.’ The siren continued its mournful wail from the gatehouse.
He mocked her again with his laugh, then stopped, ten metres from her. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to take you hostage, woman, I’m going to gut you. You put down your pistol and kick it to me or I’m going to kill this one now, in front of you.’
Carmel sneered back at him. ‘Do what you want to her. It’s you I want now.’
Menahe chuckled. ‘One of you has to die now. Take her!’ He let go of Liesl and pushed her into the arms of another prisoner armed with a shiv before she had a chance to run. The colonel advanced on Carmel, his knife up and ready to strike.
‘Stop, Colonel. For God’s sake, don’t make me kill you.’
‘I have been responsible for more deaths than you can possibly imagine. And I have killed with my bare hands. You will not shoot me.’
He ran at her and Carmel squeezed the trigger twice, in the double tap she’d practised at the firing range. The bullets knocked the colonel backwards. Carmel swung and aimed at the head of the man who held Liesl. He let go of her and turned and ran, as did the now fragmented crowd that had been following the colonel. From the gate they heard more gunshots and the pop of exploding tear-gas canisters.
Carmel ignored Liesl, who fell to her knees and started dry-heaving as the shock of her ordeal began to sink in. Carmel knelt beside the wounded colonel. Blood frothed and gurgled from a hole in his chest. The other bullet looked like it had grazed his rib cage. ‘Talk to me,’ she said.
He wheezed as he tried to speak. ‘No . . . you must kill me now. Quickly.’
‘Why should I give you an easy way out? Did you kill President Habyarimana with the missile launcher in the picture? Were you part of Hutu Power, or the Akazu elite?’
‘It . . . it was him . . . he is the devil . . .’
‘Who, the white man? What is his name?’
‘Devil.’
‘Who did he work for? The president’s wife and her supporters in the Akazu?’
‘He . . .’
‘Kagame? Did the Tutsis do it?’
‘Kill . . . me . . .’
‘No, damn you. I’ll get you witness protection. I’ll save you.’
‘You cannot save me. I am damned. All of us . . .’
‘For God’s sake!’
‘Yes. Maybe . . . maybe neither.’
Colonel Menahe raised his right hand and Carmel dodged quickly out of the way, thinking he was trying to slash her with his knife. Instead, the colonel raised his torso a little, wincing with pain, and stabbed the shiv into his own throat and drew it across his jugular vein.
‘No!’ The spray of blood hit Carmel in the face and she wrestled with him as he used his ebbing strength to fend her off. Carmel reached for the gory wound and tried to get her fingers onto his artery as he grabbed her wrist to prevent her. ‘Help me!’
Liesl kneeled by her side and started coughing as the tear gas made its way up the alleyway. Carmel, too, started coughing as the blinding chemicals stung her nose and eyes. The colonel’s strength ebbed away, and Carmel knew she was too late. The flow of blood was reducing with each final beat of his heart.
Liesl felt rough hands grabbing her and looked up through her streaming tears to see two warders in gasmasks, armed with shotguns. More uniformed men fanned out past them, firing shots into the air and tossing tear-gas grenades ahead of them.
‘Leave this man,’ she heard a warder say to Carmel, his voice muffled by the rubber mask.
‘No. You have to get an ambulance. We must revive him.’
Liesl looked down at Menahe’s body and remembered the point of the knife and his choking grip. She glared at Carmel. ‘You would have let him kill me.’
Carmel got up and they both started walking back towards the gate, under the escort of the warders. Two other prison officers had retrieved a groggy Pierre and were helping him walk. ‘No,’ Carmel said.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Liesl said, wiping her eyes.
; Carmel shrugged. ‘Well, maybe.’
Liesl reluctantly smiled, and so did Carmel.
Other prisoners, who had not taken part in the mini riot, cowered down muddy laneways and back into their cell blocks to escape the noxious gas, and the very real possibility of guilt by association. Teams of riot-squad guards were darting into the crowds that had gathered and dispersing it with shouts and by thrashing batons if they detected the merest hint of resistance.
Liesl and Carmel let the phalanx of armed officers escort them back to the gate, coughing and dry-retching from the after-effects of the gas. Liesl felt groggy and light-headed, as though recovering from an anaesthetic or just waking from a confusing dream. She needed a cigarette and a brandy and Coke as soon as was humanly possible. She looked at Carmel, her stride long, head up, dark eyes darting from side to side. She seemed unfazed by the ordeal they’d just been through, and by the act of killing a man. No matter what their differences were, Liesl had to admit she was gutsy.
When they reached the gates they were opened for them, just wide enough to let them out, and Liesl saw a line of armed police and soldiers waiting outside in case any rioters suddenly poured out. Liesl saw the Frenchman, Henri Bousson, dart through the traffic that had slowed to ogle the smoke above the prison, despite the barked orders of police to move on. Henri came to them.
‘Carmel . . .’
Liesl saw Carmel’s resolve start to crumble as soon as she spotted him, and felt a sudden pang of jealousy. He spread his arms and she moved to him. Liesl stopped as Henri enfolded Carmel in an embrace. They didn’t kiss, but she buried her face in his neck.
‘My God,’ he said, ‘I just heard. The guards told me.’ He held Carmel back out at arm’s length. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, but Liesl saw her lip start to tremble. Henri wrapped her in a bear hug again, and Liesl felt lonelier than she had in a very long time.
‘I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if anything had happened to you,’ Henri said to her. ‘The man you were seeking is dead?’
‘Yes,’ Carmel said. ‘And he told us nothing.’
25
‘What do you think the colonel meant by maybe neither the Hutus nor the Tutsis killed the Rwandan president?’ Liesl asked. She took a big gulp of her wine. They sat around a table by the pool at the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
Carmel stirred her Coke with her straw, trying to make it last. The way she felt after the business at the prison, she could have killed for the numbing buzz of a double gin and tonic or two. ‘A third force, a foreign power, perhaps?’
‘The stuff of conspiracy theories,’ Henri ventured. Carmel noticed he was sticking with sparkling water tonight. She doubted he was doing it out of politeness to her, but she was pleased he was staying sober while they tried to work this thing out.
‘I’m not so sure,’ Carmel said. ‘There were several international powers with an interest in the outcome of the Arusha Peace Accords in Rwanda.’
‘Like who?’ Liesl asked.
‘Belgium, as the former colonial power in Rwanda, had always had an influence in who was in power. The Belgians still have a strong business presence here. They supported the Tutsis initially, then switched that support to the Hutus after the country gained its independence, in a ham-fisted attempt to atone for some colonial guilt. That resulted in the rise of Hutu Power. Then there’s the French, of course.’
‘Who like to assert their power just because they can, I suppose you’re going to say?’ Henri said, tossing his nose in the air.
‘Don’t take it personally, Henri,’ Liesl said.
‘I don’t.’
‘But the French did supply the Rwandan government with arms before the genocide, and their Operation Turquoise, in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, did proclaim safe zones that allowed hundreds of thousands of Hutus, including many génocidaires, to escape to Zaire and avoid prosecution,’ Carmel said.
Henri waved a hand as though swatting an imaginary fly. ‘To say the French government would protect mass murderers is insulting.’
‘Well, they did,’ Carmel pointed out, ‘even if it was unintentional.’
‘And what good would it do France to foment genocide by shooting down President Habyarimana’s aircraft? Carmel, that jet was a Dassault Falcon 50, French-made and a gift to the Rwandan government from President Jacques Chirac.’
‘Yes,’ Carmel continued, playing devil’s advocate, ‘but Habyarimana had agreed to implement the Arusha Accords, which would have allowed Paul Kagame and the RPA back into Rwanda, along with the return of a million English-speaking Tutsis. Rwanda would be at risk of becoming an Anglophile country instead of a Francophile one, and the return of the Tutsis would have paved the way for more American involvement in Rwanda.’
‘America?’ Liesl said. ‘Why would America have been interested in a little country like Rwanda back in 1994?’ Liesl beckoned the waiter over and ordered another glass of wine.
‘It mightn’t have seemed likely at the time, but the history of the region since the genocide has given some weight to this theory.’
Henri shook his head. ‘I’m not convinced.’
‘Let her talk, Henri,’ Liesl said. ‘I’m interested in this.’
Carmel continued: ‘Paul Kagame, who went on to become president, received his military training in the Ugandan Army. He was studying as an exchange officer at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas, in 1990 when the RPA first invaded Rwanda. When the invasion began, Kagame returned home immediately, resigned his commission and went to fight with the RPA. He had close links with the Americans, and after the RPA took over Rwanda and Kagame became president and head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the American presence in Rwanda increased.’
‘Why?’ Liesl asked.
‘As it turned out, after stabilising his own country, Kagame turned his eyes on Zaire, where ethnic Tutsis were being persecuted by the Zairean military and by Hutus who’d escaped from Rwanda. The Americans had previously supported the Zairean president, Mobutu Sese Seko, but he’d become a madman by this stage, and an embarrassment to the Americans. There were vast mineral resources there that America and the west was worried about losing. Mobutu had outlived his usefulness and the Rwandans were arming and supporting a viable opposition army led by Laurent Kabila. The Americans decided to help Kabila through Kagame. I was back here in Rwanda in 1996 when the civil war in Zaire was hotting up. The American Club – the Indian restaurant where we ate the other night – was full of CIA people and US special forces soldiers who were using Rwanda as a jumping-off point for Zaire. In the end, Kabila’s forces were victorious over Mobutu and the country became the Democratic Republic of Congo, largely thanks to Rwanda’s help.’
‘So,’ Liesl said, nodding, ‘it’s possible the Americans were secretly backing Kagame so that he could eventually help bring about a regime change in Zaire.’
‘Yes.’
Liesl frowned. ‘But killing Habyarimana sparked the genocide. Do you think the Americans would have been cynical or foolish enough to back an assassination if they thought that might happen?’
Carmel just looked at her.
*
Aston sat at the bar of the Hôtel des Mille Collines nursing a dewy half-litre glass of Primus beer. He looked at the knot of white people, the man and the two women, sitting at a circular table on the far side. The other patrons, high-heeled prostitutes fluttering about Belgian and French businessmen, were drinking and laughing, but the trio sat away from the Thursday-night happy-hour merriment.
Aston took another sip of beer, got off his seat and walked around. ‘Aha, we meet again,’ he said to Liesl Nel.
‘Oh, howzit,’ she said after a short pause.
That was good, Aston thought, that she had not automatically recognised him. He had been tailing them at a distance, but it had been made impossible when the two women had gone their separate ways. He had stayed with the Nel woman a
nd waited outside the prison to see what happened. He hadn’t been surprised to see Carmel Shang and the Frenchman arrive a short time later.
It had been logical that they would find their way to the colonel. He’d heard the prison siren and seen the commotion among the warders as they turned away the queue of inmates’ relatives and shut the gates. He’d seen the riot-squad officers arrive and toss their smoke grenades, and heard the crackle of muted gunfire from deep inside the prison, and he’d dared to hope that this muddled situation had sorted itself out within the prison walls.
‘I am fine, and you?’
Liesl shrugged.
‘Hello, my name is Henri Bousson,’ the white man said, sliding off his bar stool and offering a hand.
‘Aston Mutale.’
‘Can I help you with something? The ladies have had rather a trying day, I’m afraid.’
‘No, nothing in particular. I met Liesl at the airport in Johannesburg. I am a fan of her photographic work.’
‘I see,’ Bousson said, staring at him. Clearly Bousson did not want him hanging around. Aston knew that to push further to join them in their drinks might arouse suspicion. Aston had heard on the local radio that Colonel Jean Baptiste Menahe had been shot during an escape attempt from Kigali Central Prison. What Aston didn’t know, but needed to know, was if the colonel had provided the women with any salient information before he died. Somehow, Aston doubted it. ‘Well, nice to see you again, and enjoy your drinks.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Liesl said as he turned to leave. ‘You said you had a wide network of business contacts in Rwanda in the import-export business.’
‘I did, and I do,’ Aston said.
‘Does that extend to arms deals?’ Shang interrupted.
Aston pursed his lips. ‘I can assure you, madam, that I am involved in nothing illegal. I deal in legitimate business only.’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ Carmel said.
‘No offence taken. However, while I operate above the law, my visits to Rwanda have, occasionally – how shall I put this – brought me into contact with certain people who are not so scrupulous. Why, if I may ask, are you interested in illegal arms deals?’