by Asa Larsson
“Would we? How?”
“Infrastructure. Schools. Building communities. Jobs. Income tax.”
“Really? During the three years you were running the company, it didn’t turn over any profit. So there was no income from taxes.”
“We had this discussion at the time! In the beginning you have to invest. Obviously you can’t expect profits for the first five years.”
“So we get nothing. You get the lot. And now you’ve got problems, you come to us wanting help from the military to protect your company. What I’m saying to you is: let the state come in as part owner of the company. It would be much easier for me to find the resources to protect a company we have an interest in.”
Mauri nods and appears to be considering this.
“Then perhaps we might be able to get some help with one or two other difficulties. Suddenly our discharge concession was no longer valid. And we were having a lot of problems with the union toward the end. Perhaps the president could also honor the commitments he made in our earlier agreement. When we acquired the mine, he promised to build a power station at the Albert Nile.”
“Think about my offer.”
“Which is?”
“The state will buy fifty percent of the shares in Kilembe Gold.”
“How much?”
“Oh, I’m sure we can come to some agreement. At the moment the president is concentrating on health care and education about AIDS. We are an example to neighboring countries. We could leave any future profits until the payment has been made.”
The minister’s tone is relaxed, as if they were old friends.
Despite the sharpness of his words, Mauri’s tone is as always in the no-man’s-land between expressionless and friendly.
Inna usually manages to lighten the atmosphere, but can’t bring herself to do it this time. Beneath their friendly, relaxed voices she can hear the clash of weapons.
Mauri and Inna drink several whiskies in the hotel bar. There’s a ceiling fan and a really terrible pianist. Too many staff, too few guests. Westerners who know the prices are three times as high as in other bars in town, but tell themselves they don’t care. It’s still a fraction of what you’d pay at home.
At the same time, there’s an undercurrent of fury. A feeling of constantly being fleeced. Of always paying too much. Just because you’re white. A constant haggling over prices, if you have the energy. And you still end up being conned.
And you’re barely conscious of how irritating it is that one of the waiters is standing there flirting with one of the barmaids. Who is it who’s here to enjoy themselves? The staff or the guests? Who’s paying, and who’s being paid?
Mauri drinks to make everything stop whirling around inside him. It’s like muddy water in there. Something black and flaky that keeps being whipped up to the surface. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He wants it to settle down. He wants to sleep, and think about all this tomorrow.
If only Inna hadn’t been beaten up just then. Then perhaps everything would have been different. Then perhaps they would have talked this over together. She would have been able to get him to lighten up. She might even have been able to make him laugh and think: Oh well, swings and roundabouts.
But she hasn’t the strength. She’s drinking to ease the nagging ache in her face. And she’s wondering whether she’s going to get an infection in the cut on her lip or under her eye. They haven’t healed yet, and could turn into tropic sores that won’t heal.
She’s been subdued since it happened. Not really herself. For a number of reasons, as will become apparent.
And Mauri is woken at night by the whirlpools, the black layers breaking away from the edges.
The air-conditioning has broken. He opens the window to the blackness of the night, but there is no coolness, only the constant chirping of the crickets and the sound of the fire-bellied toads.
How could he explain this to anyone? How would anyone understand?
When Inna comes dancing along and proudly shows him the cover of Business Week. And he sees his own face.
He doesn’t share their happiness. Pride? Nothing could be further from the truth. The shame impales his body upon a spike.
He’s everybody’s bum boy. Could just as well be the challenge cup at a high-security jail.
When Swedish Industry and the Association of Employers invite him to give a lecture, and take a fee of thirty thousand from each participant, and he fills the place—he’s nothing but their whore.
They hold him up as proof that everybody has the same opportunity. Everybody can succeed. Everybody can get to the top if they really want to, just look at Mauri Kallis.
Thanks to Mauri, all the boys and girls in Tensta and Botkyrka, all those loafers in Norrland, they can all blame themselves. Stop their benefits, make it worthwhile working. Give people an incentive to be like Mauri Kallis.
And they pat him on the back and squeeze his hand and he’ll never be one of them. They have a surname that counts, they have families and old money.
Mauri is and will always be an upstart with no style.
He remembers the first time he met Ebba’s mother. Invited to their fine manor house. It was of course incredibly impressive, until the day he saw the books and realized they ran conferences there so they could afford to hang on to the place, and not, as her mother had said in an interview in Homes & Gardens, because there was a cultural heritage there that belonged to everyone.
Anyway, that first time Mauri had turned up with a bunch of flowers and a box of Aladdin chocolates. A suit, despite the heat of the summer; it was the middle of July. He hadn’t known what else to put on when he’d been invited to visit someone who owned a place like that. It was like a palace.
Ebba’s mother had smiled when he handed over the flowers and the chocolates. An indulgent and somewhat amused smile. The cheap chocolates were put out with the coffee. Lay there half-melting in their box. Nobody took a single one. The whole garden was full of roses and other flowers. There were magnificent arrangements in huge vases. He had no idea where his little bunch of flowers went. Presumably straight on the compost heap.
He and Ebba strolled down to the old bathing hut to say hello to her father. The pennant was flying over the bathing hut. A signal that Daddy was bathing, and not to be disturbed. But this was Ebba’s boyfriend’s first visit, and Daddy had said they should come down. The heat made Mauri take off his jacket. It was hanging over his arm. His top shirt button was undone, his tie rolled up in his pocket. The others were wearing light summer clothes that looked casual, but expensive.
Ebba’s father was sitting on a sun lounger on the jetty. He got up and greeted them warmly. He was completely naked. Not bothered in the slightest. His little cock dangling limply.
But it was Mauri who was in the wrong.
Oh well, thinks Mauri as he stands there in the heat of the African night, with all of his life’s insults and humiliations crowding around him. That was the last time Ebba’s father appeared in front of him naked. Later on, when he came running along with his old friends wanting Mauri to invest their money, they were dressed in suits and inviting him to lunch at Riche.
He remembers the first time he flew over northern Uganda.
It was in a small Cessna; both Inna and Diddi were with him. Mauri had started negotiations with the Ugandan government about buying the mine in Kilembe.
They had exchanged glances as they boarded the plane. The pilot was clearly under the influence of drugs.
“Some people are already flying,” Inna said loudly.
But nobody understood Swedish.
They giggled as they climbed aboard. Clinging on to their lighthearted attitude. We laugh in the face of death.
At the beginning of the flight, Mauri was struggling with his fear. But then: he became completely enchanted.
Dense green rain forest covered the gentle curves of the mountains. And in the valleys between the mountains, freshwater rivers meandered. Shimmering green croco
diles were swimming in these rivers. And the mountains were full of red, fertile earth and gold that could feed everyone.
It was a spiritual experience. Mauri felt like a prince, spreading his arms wide and flying over his realm.
The noise of the plane’s engine saved him having to talk to his companions. The feeling flooded his body, the sense of being at one with all this.
Who would he ever be in Canada?
Not to mention Kiruna.
The LKAB mining company would always be the biggest player up there. Even if he started prospecting, started up a mine, he’d hardly be able to sell anything. The infrastructure was such a narrow sector. The railway line that transported the iron ore was fully occupied by LKAB, not even they could transport as much as they could sell. You’d end up standing there cap in hand all the time, putting up with being outmaneuvered.
But here. He’d become rich. Really rich. Whoever got in first here would make a fortune. And build towns, roads, railways, power stations.
Later he said to Diddi and Inna:
“The mine is actually nothing more than a muddy hole in the ground. They’ve got no equipment, they’re hacking away and digging by hand. And yet they’re still finding enough. There’s unimaginable riches down there.”
“And a load of trouble,” Diddi had chipped in.
“Of course,” said Mauri. “But if those problems hadn’t existed, all the nervous investors would have been here already. I want to be the first. The Congo is too crazy, but this! At least Uganda has signed international agreements protecting overseas investors—MIGA, OPIC…”
“Let’s hope they value the money they get through overseas aid.”
“They want a real mining industry here; they’re sitting on treasure, but they haven’t got the ability to get it out. Five years ago the Hema militia used dynamite in this very mine. They had a few poor geologists there who advised them against it, but nobody listened. And over a hundred people died like rats in a trap down there.”
“There’ll be trouble,” Diddi repeated gloomily.
“Certainly,” replied Mauri. “I’m expecting plenty. But that’s what we do.”
“You’re my master,” said Inna. “I think you ought to buy it.”
Inna is sleeping off the pain in her battered face. Mauri is standing by the window in his hotel room, listening to the fire-bellied toads in the Ugandan night.
Gerhart Sneyers was right all along, he thinks.
“They don’t have the capacity to extract their natural resources themselves,” Sneyers says inside Mauri’s head, tarring virtually all the African nations with one brush, “but they won’t be able to tolerate the fact that we can do it either, and when that happens they’re going to decide that the natural resources in their own country belong to them, of course. You can’t reason with them.”
At the time Mauri had found Sneyers’s attitude rather sickening; he’d thought it was prejudiced, and that Sneyers had completely forgotten Africa’s history of colonialism. Besides which, Sneyers didn’t shy away from words like “darkies,” and he called various states “backward.”
But as early as July, when the Belgian engineers were killed, Mauri realized that Uganda’s problems weren’t simply transitory. He mothballed the Kilembe project, took his western workforce home, and trained two hundred local men and women to guard the mining complex. One month later, he received reports saying they had left the mine to its fate.
In order to bring in other investors, Kallis Mining had promised a guaranteed minimum return on the project. These investors immediately contacted him, informing him of their imminent demands for payment.
After the meeting in Miami in May, Sneyers had set up an account for him and told him to put money aside to deposit there in the future.
“It mustn’t be traceable,” he’d said.
As early as July Mauri had begun putting money into the account. Selling here and there. If nothing else, he might need the money in order to pay off future demands from the Kilembe investors. He can’t start panic selling in order to release capital then, that would seriously damage the reputation of the Kallis group on the market. And everybody would back off. He’s also used some money to help build up Kadaga’s forces in the northern part of the country. Kadaga has secured the areas around Kilembe, and around some other mines. But, Gerhart Sneyers had said to Mauri Kallis, this is not a long-term solution. Kadaga can sort out the mines, but not the infrastructure. So it’s impossible to transport anything out of the mines safely. Besides which, mining at the present moment would be illegal for Mauri Kallis. The necessary permits from the authorities are no longer valid.
Today’s meeting with the Minister for Industry has finally resolved the situation. Mauri may have been hesitating before, but not any longer. He has tried to be honest in a totally corrupt country. But he’s had enough of being so naive.
Gerhart Sneyers is right. Museveni is a dead end.
Besides which, Museveni is a dictator and an oppressor. He ought to be court-martialed. Getting rid of him is beginning to seem more and more like the only moral thing to do.
Mauri intends to protect his property. He has no intention of going under.
Rebecka Martinsson was going through the files that had been on Örjan Bylund’s computer. She was sitting in bed with the computer on her knee. She’d put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth, even though it was only seven o’clock. Boxer was investigating every nook and cranny in the room, coming back to Rebecka from time to time specifically to walk all over the keyboard.
“Listen, you,” said Rebecka, lifting her down. “If you don’t behave, I’ll have to tell Sven-Erik.”
She’d lit a fire in the stove. It had caught well, and because she was burning fir, it sounded like a series of explosions. Boxer jumped every time, looking terrified and curious all at once.
What a monster, she seemed to be thinking. The fire glowed like a red eye through the half-open door of the stove.
What had Örjan Bylund been looking for? When Rebecka put Kallis Mining into Google, she got over 280,000 hits. She scrolled through Örjan Bylund’s cookie files to see which pages on Kallis Mining he’d looked at.
Kallis Mining was the main owner of the mining company Northern Explore Ltd., which had been floated on the stock market. In September the shares had gone up and down like a roller coaster. First of all the Canadian investment company Quebec Invest had sold their entire holding. This had created a sense of unease, and the share price had plummeted. Then came reports of positive test results from drilling outside Svappavaara. The share price had jumped for joy, shooting upward.
Who makes money on a share price roller coaster? she thought. The person who buys when the price is low and sells when it’s gone up, of course. Follow the money.
One article that Örjan Bylund had looked at was about the mining company’s new board, which had recruited an additional member since the Canadian company had sold its shares. A resident of Kiruna had been elected.
“Sven Israelsson on the Board of Northern Explore,” ran the headline.
She was interrupted by her cell phone, playing its little tune.
Måns Wenngren’s cell phone number on the display.
Her heart was going through an Olympic gymnastics routine in her breast.
“Hello, Martinsson,” he said with his usual slight drawl.
“Hello,” she said, trying to think of something else to say, but without success.
When she’d been thinking for an eternity, she came up with:
“How are things?”
“Fine, fine. We’re all at Arlanda, just checking in.”
“I see…cool.”
He laughed at the other end of the phone.
“Sometimes it’s so bloody difficult to talk to you, Martinsson! But I’m sure it will be cool. Although nature is best on TV. Are you coming up?”
“Maybe, but it’s a bit far.”
There was silence for a little while. Then Måns
said:
“Come up. I want you to.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to try and persuade you to come back to the office.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“That’s what you say now. But I haven’t even started trying to persuade you. We’ve booked a room for you from Saturday to Sunday. You can come up and show us how to ski.”
Rebecka laughed.
“I probably will come,” she said.
She realized with a sense of relief that it didn’t feel difficult to think of meeting people from the office. She’d see Måns. He wanted her to come. She couldn’t slalom, of course. They hadn’t been able to afford that when she was little. And who would have taken her to the slalom course in town? But that didn’t matter.
“Got to go,” said Måns. “Promise you’ll come?”
She promised. And he said in a deep, warm voice:
“Bye then, Martinsson. See you soon.”
And she purred:
“Bye then.”
Rebecka looked back at the computer screen. On an international level, Quebec Invest’s departure from Northern Explore had merited a small article in the English-language specialist publication Prospecting & Mining. The headline was “Chicken Race.” “We went too early,” said the vice president of Quebec Invest Inc., commenting on the fact that shortly after the Canadian investment company had sold its shares, Northern Explore had found both gold and copper. He added that deficiencies in the analyses of sample drillings had been far too great, and that as part owners of Northern Explore they had found it difficult to judge whether viable amounts were likely to be found. The vice president of Quebec Invest regarded it as “unlikely” that there would be any future cooperation between Kallis Mining and Quebec Invest.
Why? thought Rebecka. Surely they ought to be keen to get a second chance, particularly when Kallis Mining has shown itself to be successful again.
And who was Sven Israelsson, the new board member? Why had Örjan Bylund done so many searches on his name?