by Angel Wedge
But the more I looked into the details, the more this scheme looked like something John would have come up with. The new hospital would be “church sponsored”, except that existing local hospitals would be expected to subsidise it over the coming years. The church wouldn’t be making a profit on the place, but they could take all the funding from the Benedictean healthcare industry, and force local people to convert to their faith if they wanted treatment. The missionaries would be able to use the new hospital as a staging post before they went to visit local tribes, but they’d have to pay for the privilege.
Of course, there were safeguards to make sure that the mission money went back into improving the hospital. But somewhere between the columns in the ledgers, someone would forget to notice that the missionaries were funding equipment that was also being paid for by a fledgling state healthcare system in one of the local countries, and the extra money would disappear into the cracks. There were also companies who would legitimately make a fortune off the enterprise. There was only one publishing house who had Bibles in most of the local languages of the area, and there was only one freight company with the capacity to ship out the large volumes of drugs and equipment that a new high-tech hospital would need. That was where the profit was, in the hauliers and printers, and local cooperatives that could supply processed food in the quantities this new facility would require. Most of the profit there would go to to the foreign shell companies that owned them, and who seemed to be ahead of the game in preparing for a market they’d never expected. As usual, if you followed the money it went right into John’s collection plate.
He needed my support. For all his planning, he didn’t have anyone on the ground, and he didn’t have any real evidence to suggest the Lucretia Falls site was even suitable to become a hospital. If it couldn’t, of course, the programme would fail within a year, the governments and the scientists would be in the same position again, and all the money he’d siphoned out of local doctors would be safely lodged with the construction companies. For him it was a win-win situation, but I think he’d be much happier if he could make his hospital in the third world a reality. That would be a major PR coup, as well as a stream of income for years to come.
Maybe my work would help him, I didn’t know. But I was an investigative journalist, not a spin doctor, and I would report the truth whatever impact it might have on my brothers. My main priority now was to report the truth so that the people running the lab couldn’t keep on torturing animals.
That had been my perspective back when I was on the plane to get here. Around a week later, hiding in the room of a little girl who I had to assume was dead now, I still didn’t know. There would be winners and losers when I managed to get my report out, but the situation had changed so much that I no longer had any idea which side of that line my family would be on.
* * *
The plane onwards from Oimbawa was a little smaller than the one that had brought me there, but not quite so old. By then my full attention was on the folders of notes in front of me, trying to squeeze all the details into my head like a late-night revision session. I didn't pay much attention to the scenery.
It wasn’t until I’d read all three folders at least once that I turned to look out of the window and saw the rainforest from the air. Back then it looked like nothing more than a massive green blanket spread out across the land. It wasn’t until you got beneath it that you get any impression of scale. I’d cast my eye over the rolling green and then ignored it, peering out in search of the city of Sante Benedicté in the distance. The plane here was an old two-engine, six-seat affair that seemed to be pretty common for flights between the many tiny cities of the region.
I was surprised when the city came into view. All I knew about it really was from Paul’s folder of notes, as the others didn’t go deeply into the politics of the region. He’d described it as the de-facto capital city for the region, though technically it was considered part of a thinly spread post-colonial nation that extended from a centre several hundred miles away, and that might also include the lab at Lucretia Falls. It didn’t surprise me to learn that another tiny kingdom also laid claim to Sante Benedicté, but hadn’t made any moves recently to take control of the place. It surprised me even less to find serious discrepancies between Paul's notes and the few simple pages of research that my editors had prepared. I read that the nation the American diplomats were trying to negotiate with wasn’t the one that had effective control of the city and collected taxes. I learned that the Benedictean people had their own militia for the purpose of defence.
I had expected a city to be a city, as well. There was a big difference between what would qualify as a city in different parts of the world, whether it was the mix of old and new imposing buildings in England, or the dusty metropolis of Dubai. Here, the first thing I saw was a circular hole in the rainforest canopy. As the plane circled round, I pressed my face against the porthole to see more clearly. The whole city was brown; grey-brown dirt and dun-coloured mud making up the land around the city, with a smaller circle in the middle like a bullseye. Some of the important buildings right at the centre were stone, but most of the city was composed of single-storey creations of mud brick, as dull as the ground of the clearing. The most surprising detail, though, was that the whole city was surrounded by multiple rings of fencing.
The trees of the rainforest were cut back to stumps, leaving a brown hole like a crater amid the rich green canopy with occasional specks of colour from flowering vines. Roughly circular, it put me in mind of an egg frying on the overheated ground. The fence, then, surrounded the yolk at the centre. A few miles of prefabricated metal lattice sections, standing in identical concrete blocks and held together with chains. Having spent most of the last week in England, the first thought in my mind was that it made the whole place look like a construction site. There were three gates in this recently-added ring of security: one at the edge of the airfield, with two guards standing boredly beside it, and two with a steady stream of people coming in and out from the market district. Some shoppers were laden with sacks of produce, or unidentifiable brightly coloured bundles that first made me wonder if the natives around here had taken to wrapping their shopping up in rugs.
Then the cabin pitched dramatically, and the brown brick bullseye in a brown dartboard was replaced by an angry, dark grey sky with occasional patches of dull blue-black. I turned my eyes back to the information packets, skimming all three of them one more time to jog my memory while the tiny plane waited for clearance to land. I’d tried this technique before to give my mind something to focus on during landing, in the hope I could avoid motion sickness if I wasn’t looking at the landscape. This particular landing was a roller-coaster ride as the pilot tried to line up with the narrow runway and avoid the too-close tree canopy on approach, and my little tricks didn’t help me to feel any better.
Chapter 11 — Welcoming Committee
As the few passengers walked down the steps from the plane, I got the impression most of the others had disembarked here before. Their eyes went straight to the damp concrete on the ground, not taking in the double line of fences around the taxiway, the unrealistically young guard pointing his rifle in our vague direction, or the six more experienced soldiers in a whole range of skintones by the arrivals building. This wasn’t a tourist town this year, the increased army presence had seen to that. The only people who had reason to travel here were businessmen, and in an area like this any kind of business meant building relationships with your clients and suppliers. The dozen cynical travellers on this plane represented a substantial proportion of those who had a reason to be here. There were the other reporters coming to this presentation at the lab, of course, but I’d been sneaked onto the guest list at the last minute and the others had probably been here for a day already.
The black-uniformed figure standing beside the plane as we disembarked, I immediately thought of as ‘the private’. I didn’t know what this place called its mil
itary ranks, but every army had a role for people too young and idealistic to really understand what they were fighting for. He saw me looking at him, and shifted his grip on his weapon slightly. Barely more than a child, he probably didn’t understand why it was deemed necessary to intimidate foreign visitors. But standing around the airport pointing a gun at foreigners, that was what soldiers did.
The other group wore different uniforms. Some of them were noticeably older than the private, but all of them were certainly more experienced. These were the guys who knew that brandishing a weapon wasn’t necessarily a sign of authority. They had rifles over their shoulders, or sidearms on their belts, but they weren’t pointing them at the disembarking travellers. Their hands were empty though, no signs of fidgeting or fiddling with anything, and they were careful to ensure that their clothes didn’t obstruct easy access to their weapons. Their bodies were ready for action, their eyes alert. They weren’t pointing their weapons yet because they didn’t see us as a threat, but I could be sure that if they did, they would go from pointing to firing in an instant. If they had hands on their weapons, it was already too late to fight, talk, or run.
Their uniforms were simple olive fatigues, contrasting sharply with the young private’s tan-and-black dress uniform. If that was a sign they were present for action, rather than to show the colours, that was already a bad sign. If they were from some different branch of the military, that could be bad too, because it meant they were on alert for some reason. Or it could even be the first sign of a coup, some change in authority that had started while I was on the plane or was ready to erupt at any moment. I knew there could be perfectly peaceful reasons for it too, but in my experience two uniforms on one side is usually an early sign of trouble for someone.
I eyed the soldiers curiously as the movement of my group brought me closer. I cast my eyes down to the ground before I was close enough for them to follow my gaze, though. As a foreigner, a journalist, and (more importantly right now) an American, I really didn’t want to catch the attention of anyone with guns.
“Mister Jenner,” one man stepped out to block my path as I approached the terminal building. The second thing I noticed that his gloved hand was now resting calmly on his gun, an immediate threat without being too blatant about it. The other passengers diplomatically pretended not to notice, and walked past on both sides without looking at me or the soldiers. So much for staying out of trouble. But before I even looked at him, I had noticed that he pronounced my name correctly, which was quite uncommon in this part of the world. He had a strong accent, but the stress was in the right place. He hadn’t just seen my name on a passenger manifest, these people knew who I was and had been expecting me. Were they the official welcoming committee? The notes in the file had said I would be met outside the airport by representatives of the Lucretia Falls Oversight Committee. If they were able to get to me before customs, then the balance of power between the committee and local authorities must have shifted dramatically.
“That’s me,” I answered, forestalling further speculation about what they wanted in case they took offense at the time I spent thinking. “Is there a problem?” While I waited for him to respond, I tried to look at the men around me, gather as many details as I could without them realising I was paying attention. The one who’d spoken was maybe even paler than me, and the skin of his face peeling just a little. Over the top of his spectacles, I could see unusually pale green eyes. The others were all darker than me, skin within a few shades of their uniform, but none of the deep red-black tones I’d seen in a few pictures of the native employees at the lab. The young man must be an albino, I thought, and wondered if he’d seen any of the various studies on the many complications that came with those genetic markers. I never realised just how important that fact would end up being.
“We require the documents with that Meester Jenner provided you,” the man at my other elbow said, an incredibly deep voice with a strong accent I couldn’t place. He was a muscular giant, a careful poker face hiding any trace of aggression, but I still felt intimidated enough that I couldn’t bring myself to correct his English grammar. He was probably the darkest of the men in the group, and also the largest. I wondered whether that could be a cultural link, whether people with more recent ancestors in the jungle tribes felt more of a need to honour their traditions by proving themselves with feats of strength.
“We cannot allow Jenner’s information packet to be discovered by the Bardjuso,” the first man interjected. It took me a second to realise that the word wasn’t an insult, but an acronym I’d only seen written down up to this point. BJDS, the local customs and taxation office, was certainly more of a mouthful if you didn’t swap the letters around. “There is a lot of public feeling aligned against Americans at the present, and if the President General’s opponents find out the depth of information he had made available to your brother, it could lead to a major shift in support.”
I nodded, and opened my hand luggage. The albino man took Paul’s folder from me, and held it under his arm. “Thank you, Mister Jenner. I hope that someday, this kind of subterfuge will not be necessary, and scientific advancement will be welcome in our country.”
They handed me a thinner file, in the same style as the one they’d taken. Presumably, this was a version of the press release without all the additional information that Paul wasn’t supposed to have. I made a note to look through it again if I had time. It would undoubtedly be less accurate, but I could still learn something from it. Information about the jungle and the area's geography might even be less valuable than information about what different groups – the local government; Paul’s people; the committee; or the rebels – thought was acceptable for me to know. But the differences between the two files could tell me so much about the political state of the area, which seemed to have a bearing on the situation at the base but was never directly mentioned in any of the documents I’d been given.
“What about those?” A wiry, coffee coloured man jerked his thumb at the other folders in my bag.
“My own research,” I explained, “News reports on Dr Faulkner’s activities, and extracts from tourist guidebooks mostly. If the customs inspectors – the BJDS? – are expecting me, they’ll expect a journalist to have some kind of background reading.” There was a rapid debate between the men, which I couldn’t follow. I knew a few words of the official language, but not enough to pick up anything from such fast dialogue. When I’d given up on trying to follow their conversation, I started mentally planning how I’d describe this scene when I came to write up my story. I realised with some dismay that the only descriptive details I’d noticed for the soldiers were their differing skin colours and a vague sense of build. I chided myself for that, and resolved to notice other details in future, but then they had finished their discussion and there was no time.
“You should keep those,” a spry older man eventually voiced the decision. It wasn’t quite clear if that was his opinion, or the consensus of the group, but nobody challenged him. Then as quickly as they’d approached, they all marched off across the airfield, leaving me to enter the building alone. Almost as an afterthought, I faintly heard the unexpectedly eloquent albino man calling a wish for good luck.
The line inside the building was short, a queue curving off to one side in an effort to avoid standing in the direct light of the high windows. The floor was tiled with grey stone, and the waiting area was just a box with steel panel walls on three sides, one of them broken by a couple of archways through which tourists could be admitted one by one, and a modernist sheet of chrome and glass stretching all the way up to the ceiling in the direction we’d come from. The area was decorated with nine red-painted steel girders stretching up to support the ceiling, and a ring of chairs facing outwards at the foot of each. Towards the top, the pillars were linked by a network of steel rafters like the web of an artistic, industrial-age spider.
At ground level, the building was like any arrivals lounge in an
y airport around the world. The main difference was the light, illuminating every detail so brightly that you had to squint to make out the signs for the customs desk. I stood in line anxiously, wondering just how seriously to take worries about the black-uniformed BJDS employee’s political affiliations. She looked to be in her early thirties, with the skin tone that always seems to be described as ‘olive’, though less green than any olive I ever tasted. She was well groomed, makeup carefully and symmetrically arranged, and black hair tied back in a tight bun just below the edge of her regulation peaked cap. Businesslike, efficient, maybe a little officious, but I couldn’t see her as a traitor to her country.
Then again, most people accused of treason have been in positions of trust at one point in their lives. I was left worrying about what was going to happen next for quite a few moments.
“Next please!” the woman eventually called. My heart was in my mouth as I stepped forward, holding my passport, visa, declaration, press pass, and UN visitor’s permit in one hand. No matter how many times I went through this, I was always nervous coming into a new country. At least this time, the letter from the UN should give me a little more political weight and grease some of the wheels to get me through. Though I’m most known as a reporter, I was here officially as a scientific observer. Thank God for Paul’s apparently endless reach.
The official – R. Kaeon according to the nameplate on her desk – quickly skimmed through my letters. “Mister Jenner,” she said, though it sounded a lot more like “Mister Gehenna.”
“I trust everything is in order?”
“I’m afraid your visa has been revoked. We are on instructions no longer to accept credentials provided from the American United Nations without a security screening by our own specialists.”