by Larry Johns
“Ian” was a tallish character. Definitely ex-something or other. He wore a suit that had experienced desk work and an expression that had seen some hard times. The other man, as yet unaddressed by name, might have been a wrestler. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand and kept looking up at a clock on the wall. The passage of time was definitely an element in this man’s thinking.
Brown nodded and made another pencil alteration in the file. “Shama,” he repeated. Then he came back to me. “In due course you are to lead this force over the border and into Zaire...”
There it was again. The heavy stress on the word are.
“...where you will locate an area know to locals and - “Another glance at me. “ - persons of your calling, as Camp-One. Kanyamifuta...”
“Mifupa, sir.” said Ian.
“Hmm?”
“It’s Kanyamifupa sir. Translates as - “
“I know what it translates as, Ian,” breathed Brown testily, “It’s written here. Damned theatrical, if you ask me. Place of bones, indeed! What a lot of nonsense!”
“Right,” I put in, “What a lot of nonsense.”
Brown shot me a look that wondered if I was taking the rise. Whatever his conclusion, he returned to the file. “Then -” To me now. “ - at a given signal from the Chinese, you were to have mobilized this force against president Aaron Motanga.” He closed the file with a snap. “Win or lose, the attempt itself would have been sufficient to allow the Chinese to jump to the aid of a government in some considerable confusion. Right, colonel?”
Then I had it, courtesy of his shift in emphasis. I did not attempt a bluff. It would have been useless. They knew the lot. I said, “All of which leads me to smell a counter proposal.”
Brown nodded and smiled happily and the file was pushed to one side. “Well, whatever else you may be, you’re a realist. I’ll grant you that. And you are correct. Instead of adhering to the Chinese schedule of times and targets, you will adhere to ours.”
“Meaning who?”
Brown tossed that question away as if it were a piece of fluff. “Let me rephrase that. You will adhere to mine.”
“I see.” I said, relaxing back into the chair they had given me, certain now that I was amongst contemporaries. This was not the first time I had been asked to play a dual role. Though, to accept it, would definitely have been a first. The big difference here was who was doing the asking, and how. Western governments normally keep well clear of mercenary operations; which is not to say that they do not utilize them, direct them. They normally do it via a long and confusing chain of intermediaries - the thin end of which would be some poor expendable soul who barely realizes what he’s into. Even the Chinese trod the same path, though they tended to be less subtle about it. These men had not said who they were or who they were acting for, but they had denied nothing either. Nor had they bothered to hide their oh-so British accents. This was part of my new puzzle, but not all of it. There was some stray end that I had yet to put a name to. I could sense it, feel it in the atmosphere, as tangible now as the clock ticking its message on the wall. I said, “And what are these schedules, Mister Brown?”
He leant forward onto the desk, hands clasped together. “You will lead your men into the Isanga Valley, colonel, where Aaron Motanga’s personal guard will dispose of them, utterly and completely.”
I had heard it, but I could not believe it. “Pardon?”
Brown grunted. “You heard every word, colonel. And you understood well enough.”
This was incredible, staggering. “Dispose of them?”
Brown nodded. “Quite. And in full view, so to speak, of the Zaire population. You personally, of course, will have made your own arrangements.” He sat back in his seat now. He appeared smugly satisfied with something or other. “Your remuneration, payable the moment we have an agreement in principle, will be five hundred thousand pounds. Which figure does not take into account the sum you have already received from the Chinese. A small fortune, colonel, for only a small deviation from your original brief.”
It was several seconds before I could weigh it all up in my mind. “Are you saying that you are after total annihilation?” The words sounded ridiculous even as I was saying them.
Brown’s nod was stony this time. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. A half a million pounds, plus what you have already been paid. For delivering your command into the hands of president Motanga.”
“Sweet Jesus Christ,” I breathed. These people did not want prisoners; men to pack some show-trial courtroom. They wanted bodies. By the ton! “You want me to -” I began. Then I was filled with a throat constricting revulsion. Over the next few seconds this died away, to be replaced by anger. “You know what gets up my nose more than anything else,” I said icily.
Brown said nothing. He focused his eyes on a point midway between me and the wall behind me and just sat there.
I went on, “It’s that you think I’m your man.”
Brown spoke then. “Will you do it?”
My laugh was more a short bark of incredulity. “You’re giving me a choice?”
Brown and Ian exchanged glances. What that meant I did not know. “Well, mister bloody British intelligence,” I spat, “you can stuff your schedule of times and targets! And you can wipe your arse on the small fortune. I’m a mercenary soldier, not a goddamned mass murderer!”
Ian addressed himself to me personally for the first time. “Is there really that much difference, colonel?”
Had I obeyed my first instinct I would have dived at his throat. Was there a difference! Jesus! I felt stale. Did they really believe that all mercenaries were like that?
The third man’s W/T crackled into life then and the air of tension was frozen.
“Position one,” stuttered the handset.
The man lifted it to his head. “Yes, one?”
“About a third through,” said the metallic voice. “You’ve got about twenty minutes. Questions are being asked here, but as yet no-one’s getting desperate.”
“Okay. Keep us posted.” The man allowed the handset to fall to his lap, his eyes fixed firmly on Brown.
To me, Brown said, “Twenty minutes, colonel. That is as long we have to reach agreement. If you are not with the other passengers when they finally enter the main concourse, where your Chinese friends are waiting, then the cat, as they say, will be out of its bag. And the one and only way you get to leave this room, minus handcuffs and the promise of a million years behind bars is for us to be agreed in principal. If this proves impossible, then your arrest will become official by Congolese standards.”
I laughed again, but this also was not a laugh. “On what charges, for Christ’s sake!”
“Oh,” said Brown, pulling a concerned face, “Didn’t I tell you? You are a gun-runner, colonel.” He turned to Ian. “What is it he will be carrying, Ian?”
Ian said, “Two sub machine guns. A quantity of plastic explosive. Half a dozen hand grenades, and photographs of half the members of the National Assembly.”
My anger compressed itself into a small, hard knot somewhere in the pit of my stomach, as Brown swung his eyes back to me. “Tut tut, colonel,“ he said, shaking his head in pseudo admonishment. “Now that’s naughty. It’s also a capital offense here in the Congo.” His wry smile and raised eyebrows said: Check, I think!
I looked at him and he looked at me. I turned and looked at Ian, who looked away. And the man with the W/T was suddenly interested in the wallpaper. For several seconds I did not have a single positive thought in my head. I felt out-gunned and didn’t like it. In a sudden rush of something or other I dropped the cigarette onto the carpet and heeled it to death.
Brown’s steely gaze dropped to the floor for an instant. He might have smiled thinly, but it could also have been a grimace. He lifted a shoulder. “If it makes you feel any easier, colonel, we did not single you out for this assignment. Not in the way you imply. It is quite simply that you were the man the Chinese dragged in.
Had they persuaded the Pope’s brother to work for them, it would be he sitting here now and not you.”
“Then get him,” I said dully; because that was how I felt; dull, edgeless and impotent.
“Who?” asked Brown seriously, missing my lame attempt at sarcasm.
“The Pope’s brother.”
His expression slid into one of exasperated patience. “Understand this, colonel. The Chinese cannot be allowed a foothold in Central Africa. Such an event would be tantamount to disaster for the west. And we are willing, nay, more than willing, to countenance any action, however distasteful, to prevent it.”
Dull I may have been, but I had Brown and his cronies pegged. I said, “West schmest! This has sod-all to do with your paranoid fear of a communist resurgence. This is dollars and cents, it always is with you cloak and dagger merchants. You’ve made a scratch-my-back deal with Motanga. Any third year student could tell you that unless he can get a vote-catcher come next year’s elections, he’s washed up. That same student will also tell you that of all the possible candidates for the Zaire hot-seat, Motanga is the white man’s best bet, your best bet! He’s the devil you already know. And what was the deal? Mining concessions? It usually is.” With the bit between my teeth now, as opposed to rammed down my gullet, I went on, “You don’t need me; not for this threat of yours. If that was your angle you could end it here and now. You profess to know so goddam much about the set-up. Okay - throw the spanner in now! Before anyone gets into Zaire!”
Brown rattled off a short parradiddle on the desk top with the fingers of his right hand. “You are wrong, colonel. We cannot move against your future command here in the Congo, much as we’d like to...and before you jump in with both feet, the we I use here includes several other interested parties I could, but will not, name. And we cannot do it, for the very simple reason that the Congolese administration refuses to admit to its presence within its borders.” He shrugged hugely. “Oh, they cooperated with us for the purposes of this little charade, certainly. But this is as far as they are prepared to venture. You see, they are in the proverbial cleft stick. The Bank of China - in parenthesis, of course - releases a very great deal of money into their economy. Cleverly-placed money. Crucial money. Life blood, so to speak.” He smiled a taut smile. “It’s the old Nelson syndrome, colonel - the convenient blind eye. We all suffer from it now and again. All of which means that eventually, whether you are in command, or someone else is, that small army of mercenaries will find its dangerous way into Zaire. Perhaps not to this - this Camp-One - because I am told that very few of you people know the key to its exact whereabouts - but into the country certainly. And, as a man well schooled in the art of jungle fighting, you will know that no normal ambush, and certainly no normal action, can hope to be one hundred percent successful. A percentage, greater or smaller, will survive to regroup, to fight again. What we, the west - sneer if you like...”
I had sneered.
“...what we need is an eradication of the Chinese threat, once and for all time. You are sitting there simply because conditions, at this precise moment in time, are ripe for it.” He hunched a shoulder. “The fact that we also stand to gain certain...yes, certain mining concessions from it, is neither here nor there, believe it or not. A certain icing on the cake. A deal has been made, yes. But it is secondary to the real issue.”
I sneered again. “Like hell it is! What - ” Then I suddenly had another thought. “Incidentally,” I changed tack, “What’s to stop me agreeing to what you ask, then disappearing into the wild, blue yonder? Better yet, what’s to stop me doing a triple, with the Chinese? The minute I leave this - “
“Your daughter,” Brown cut in smoothly, stifling a sigh, “Karen, I think her name is. Currently studying to be a nurse at the Saint Joan Nursing College in Johannesburg. A lovely young thing, so I’m led to believe. And very promising; as a student nurse, that is.”
Rarely have I experienced moments like that; once when I was watching a horror movie as a kid; again in Vietnam when the slants decapitated a very close friend right alongside me; again in Angola when I saw the remains of a man who had been crucified then systematically skinned alive. And then, when Karen’s name appeared on the lips of that man. The sap, almost as a physical thing, drained out of my upper body and seemed to bloat my legs. I managed to croak, “What has Karen got to do with any of this?” But I really did not want to know.
Part of my shock was that hardly anyone knew I even had a daughter, let alone what her name was and what she was doing, and where. A few close friends was all - I thought!
Brown sucked in a long breath, his expression nondescript. “At present? Nothing. I hope it suffices to say that we know she exists.”
“Meaning what?” I demanded shakily.
Brown met my glare. “As I say, hopefully absolutely nothing.” But his eyes told a very different story. I was later to wonder why it was I hadn’t felt the urge to jump for his throat, as I had when Ian rammed a personal barb into me. Any other father would have done that, I’m certain. Why didn’t I? I just felt numb.
“You’ll have to go the whole hog, Brown,” I said at last. “You’ll have to tell me what will happen to Karen if I don’t play along.”
They told me.
Checkmate!
TWO
I stepped out of the door marked “Visas” as the crowd was siphoning through the immigrations barrier to the customs hall. No-one noticed me. No-one so much as looked at me. Everyone was in varying degrees of dishevelment. I loosened my tie and lifted one wing of my collar. Then, as the queue slowed to negotiate the customs bottleneck, I did what they all seemed to be doing; I started to straighten myself up again.
“Bloody liberty!” mumbled the man in front of me; to anyone he thought might be listening. He shot me a doleful glare.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
As the queue shuffled messily forward I began to think about Karen.
Everyone has periods of their life they wish they had handled differently, some self-styled event they occasionally have nightmares about. The “skeleton”. Mine, despite some of the horrors I have witnessed, even perpetrated, was how Karen came to be part of this world. Though I am certain that her nightmares are more horrific. I am also certain that she is about as proud of her father as it is possible not to be.
Karen was the innocent result of what, on my part at least, was a brief, inconsequential affair with an American nurse called Nancy Goulden; close to sixteen years ago in Durban. I had been wounded in a border action against nationalist insurgents and sent to Durban’s military hospital to have a bullet removed from my thigh. It was during the convalescent period after the operation that I met, and subsequently bedded the impressionable 23 year old Virginian, in Africa on a field mission for some stateside charity organization. It was a long time before I realized just how impressionable Nancy actually was. She had been a virgin which, at the time, had pleased my ego greatly. Some men are born thick and stupid; others have to work hard at it. Both were true of me.
When I returned to active service I had some pretty lewd tales to tell of my deft handling of my first virgin in years. And I told them. Reveling in it. And whilst I was telling them, Nancy was carrying Karen, and writing me daily letters which I would receive periodically by the bundle. I did not read many of them, but in those that I did glance through there was never a mention of her pregnancy. Eventually I did not even bother opening them. I did reply once, but only to tell her that she was wasting her time, and her life. I was a mercenary soldier, I told her, and would never be anything else. But the letters kept coming, even following me on up to Angola, my next country of employment. To my lasting shame those bundles of letters became a drag even to toss onto the nearest fire. As I say; some men have to work hard at being stupid.
Then, two years after Durban, and via a mutual acquaintance, I received a photograph. It was of a baby wrapped in a hand-crocheted shawl. Nancy had written the words Nancy McCann in one corner. Nothing
else. No letter. Nothing. And the man who had delivered it could tell me nothing either.
My first thoughts were, to say the least of it, uncharitable; the girl was trying it on. It was someone else’s baby. The real father had abandoned them and Nancy was merely looking for someone to name the baby after. And I waited for the crunch letter to arrive.
But no such letter did arrive. In fact, no more letters reached me at all. And that was when I began to brood. Could the child be mine? And, more to the point, did I give a damn?
Stupid doesn’t cover it.
Imbecilic comes closer to the mark.
I wrote Nancy’s last address; what the hell was it all about? I received no reply. I wrote again. Still no reply. I brooded on. A shade too late, to be sure, but I brooded.
Then, four years later, when I was stationed at the mercenary base at Kinshasa, they arrived at the gates, out of the blue, mother and child. In the middle of hell on wheels! It was an experience well outside my comprehension.
Nancy insisted she wanted nothing from me. She only wanted me to see our daughter in the flesh. They were on their way back to the States, where they were going to live with Nancy’s parents, and the stopover - stopover! - had not been hard to arrange. Don’t worry, she kept insisting, they were just passing through, “...but I had to let you see her, just once...”
At all events, in the four days they were there - I had arranged a room for them in the officer’s quarters - I came to realize the truth; that Karen was truly my own flesh and blood.
Fate has a hand in everything.
On the afternoon of that fourth day the Simbas attacked in force. The garrison held but was blasted to hell and back. Nancy was buried beneath several tons of rubble. Karen survived. In a nutshell, I resigned my commission for a year and took her back to South Africa. I tried to do it properly, as God’s my witness. But I just didn’t have it in me. I still don’t. Karen ended up in a foster home and I ended up back in the mercenary business. Eventually I managed to place her in a well known School for Young Ladies in Johannesburg. And, after that, the Saint Joan Nursing College.