The American Mission

by Matthew Palmer

  “Morning, gentlemen.” Keeler had been reading L’Avenir, Congo’s paper of record. He folded up the paper and put it on the chair next to him to make room for Alex and Mark. “How’s everything on the political front?”

  “Not too bad,” Mark said.

  “I’ve been waiting eagerly for your report on our adventures last week, Alex,” said Keeler. “I haven’t seen anything in the traffic yet. What’s the holdup?”

  “Just got the word from the Front Office,” Alex replied. “Spence doesn’t want to report this front-channel. He’s going to send some e-mails, but otherwise I think we are going to play this like it never happened.” Alex was pleased that there was no hint of disappointment in his response.

  “Well, that’s a damn shame. You did a hell of a job out there, and any insights into Manamakimba’s thinking are worth sharing. If you’d like, I’d be happy to scavenge from your report and send it back in my channels. The trolls in the basement at Langley would eat that stuff up.”

  “Thanks for the offer, Jonah, but I think that’s exactly what Spence is looking to avoid.”

  “I can appreciate that, but I think it’s a mistake. Que será, será. Hey, did you happen to the check the score of the Georgetown-Temple game?” Keeler had graduated from Cornell, but he had grown up in Philadelphia and was a huge Temple fan.

  “Was there a game?” Alex asked innocently. In truth, he had checked the box scores that morning online and knew that Keeler’s Owls had upended the favored Hoyas on national television.

  They talked basketball for a few minutes, and then Mark Fong excused himself. He was on a deadline. He had also made clear on more than one occasion that he considered sports talk an indescribable form of torture that merited its own entry in the annual human rights report.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about since our trip last week,” Alex said when Mark had left.

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s about Marie Tsiolo. I think she could help me get a better handle on what’s going on in the east. Also, Manamakimba seemed to know an awful lot about her. There’s something going on that he hinted at, but he didn’t offer details. Something that involves Consolidated Mining. I’d like to know more about what it is.”

  All of this was true, but it was not, Alex admitted to himself, the whole truth. His interest in finding Marie was at least as much about her stunning brown eyes and her daunting aloofness.

  “Do you think you could help me track her down?” Alex continued. “There’s nothing in Consolidated’s records about what village she is from. I think she’s Luba, but I could easily be wrong about that.”

  “Why not just ask Spence’s new best friend, Henri Saillard, how to get ahold of her?”

  “I’d rather that Consolidated Mining not know I’m looking for her.” Alex somehow doubted that Marie had parted amicably from her employer.

  “So, you want the seventy-five-billion-dollar-a-year intelligence community to help you get a date for the prom?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Keeler replied.

  • • •

  That evening, Alex Skyped with Anah in Brunswick from the unclassified computer in his office. Internet connections in Kinshasa were spotty at best, even for the Embassy of the United States. The picture was a little jerky, but Anah’s voice came through clearly. She sounded happy, Alex thought. Brunswick was now her home as much as his.

  “I made a picture of you today, Daddy,” she said with a shy smile. “Gramma bought me a new art set and some big sheets of paper. Let me show it to you.

  “What do you think?” she asked, holding the picture up to the camera.

  It was a picture of the two of them walking hand in hand in what Alex supposed was a park. His daughter was well past the stick-figure stage. The people in the drawing were recognizably Alex and Anah. She had some real natural talent, he thought, even allowing for the blinders of parental pride. In the picture, they were holding hands, her dark brown fingers curled tightly around his peach-colored ones. The pastels smudged together in a way that felt more true than strict anatomical accuracy would have allowed for. In the drawings of her family that Anah brought home from her art classes at school, it was always the two of them together. Hers were invariably the smallest family portraits in her class. No mother, no brothers or sisters, not even any pets. Just Anah and her father.

  “That’s fantastic, sweetie. Will you save that one for me? I think it’s too good for the refrigerator. We can put it in a frame and I can hang it up in my office.”

  Anah’s smile broadened at the thought.

  “I’d like that,” she agreed.

  Instead of going home after the call, Alex headed across town in the red Toyota RAV4 that he had inherited from his deceased predecessor. It was a little unsettling to drive a dead man’s car, but Julian’s next of kin, a semi-estranged brother, had not wanted to hassle with shipping the vehicle back to the United States. Alex did his best to follow the map on the seat beside him. He had only the sketchiest directions from Leonard, and the neighborhoods he was driving through were gradually getting worse and worse.

  Half of the buildings in this part of town looked abandoned. Trash blew through the streets or accumulated in rotting piles. A lone, one-legged drunk tottered uneasily on his crutch, a plastic bottle of home brew in his free hand. Nina Simone Sings the Blues on the RAV’s stereo was the perfect accompaniment to the dismal scenery. Almost imperceptibly, Alex felt the black dog of depression creeping up on him. Quite likely, he recognized, this was a function of coming down off the high of the hostage talks. He fished a pill bottle out of the glove compartment and shook a single white tablet onto his palm. He washed it down with a quick swig from a bottle of water.

  After a few wrong turns, Alex found the place he was looking for, a church with unadorned concrete walls and a tile roof. A sign in front identified the church, rather grandly he thought, as ST. MARY’S OF THE ASSUMPTION. This was definitely the place.

  Alex’s second impression wasn’t much better. He drove through the gate and parked. There were two other cars in the lot. Both were up on blocks and neither had an engine. They seemed to have been built primarily out of rust. The church was actually located inside a small compound enclosed by a crumbling brick wall. In addition to the church, the compound included two blockhouse-style buildings and a stone and wood structure that looked like it might once have been a barn or a stable.

  Alex locked the car and went into the church.

  Inside, the church was well lit and pleasantly clean. A young boy was sweeping the aisle with a broom made of rough straw. An enormous plasticine Christ smiled down on him from the cross hanging on one of the side walls.

  “Hello. Can you tell me where I can find Father Antoine?”

  The boy nodded. He took Alex’s hand and led him to a door at the back of the church, near the altar. Alex knocked.

  “Entrez.”

  Father Antoine was sitting at an ancient wooden desk piled with books and papers, and he was running a finger down a column in an oversize ledger bound in red leather. He was wearing a white cassock and a matching skull cap. A pair of bifocals perched at the end of his nose.

  “Hello, Father.”

  The priest got up from the desk and embraced Alex, kissing him on both cheeks.

  “Kill the fatted calf,” he said, pulling back from the hug and clapping Alex on the shoulder. “For the prodigal son has returned. Welcome home, my dear friend, it’s been . . .”

  “Eight years,” Alex finished.

  “Too long,” Father Antoine agreed.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, Father. No excuses. But I’ve tried to keep up with things, and I heard that you had moved from Goma to Kinshasa. It didn’t take long for me to find you. Everyone in town seems to know about this
place. It looks like you’re doing good work. The kind of work that you always talked about.”

  “We are doing the Lord’s work. My flock is growing and we take in children—war orphans and AIDS orphans mostly—who have nowhere else to go. The facilities are still a bit rough, mind you. We could use the services of a good carpenter.”

  “If I meet any good ones, I’ll be sure to give them your card.”

  It was an old joke. Alex and Father Antoine had worked together on numerous Peace Corps–sponsored construction projects in the Goma area. They had quickly discovered that the priest and power tools were a potentially lethal combination, and Antoine had contented himself with offering a steady stream of encouragement and unsolicited, and usually erroneous, advice.

  “So, are you back on a visit? I understand that tourists are getting some terrific deals at Kinshasa’s finest hotels.”

  “More than a visit, actually. I’m working at the U.S. Embassy. I should be in town for the next two years at least.”

  “Well, that should certainly give us plenty of time to get caught up.”

  “And enough time to wear out my welcome, I expect.”

  “Come, let me show you around. I know it’s supposed to be a sin, even if only a venial one, but I’m really quite proud of this place. I get few chances to show it off. And then I hope I can persuade you to join us for dinner. The children would love to meet you.”

  “That would be nice. I have an adopted daughter myself that I’m hoping you’ll get to meet soon. Her name is Anah and she’s nine. Plus, I’m never one to pass up a free meal.”

  “Oh, it won’t be free, I assure you. But you’ll pay for it later. Congratulations on becoming a father. It’s a weighty title, more important than king or ambassador or even”—his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper—“pope. But please don’t tell Rome.”

  Father Antoine turned and retrieved a wooden cane next to his desk chair.

  “Land mine,” Antoine explained, when he saw Alex looking at the cane. “It happened only a couple of months after you left. I was lucky, actually. I got to keep my leg. Many others aren’t so fortunate.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said. “Land mines are evil things. Bury one and it’ll wait patiently for years for the opportunity to hurt someone.”

  “That’s the truth of it. I have no idea whose weapon it was, or even which war it was from. We’ve had so many.”

  Inside the church, Antoine motioned to the young boy still sweeping the floors to join them.

  “Jean-Pierre,” he said, “go back to the house and get ready for dinner. Make sure the house is in order. We have company. We’ll be by in a few minutes.”

  Jean-Pierre nodded but did not reply.

  “He’s a good child,” Antoine said, after the boy had run off, “but he won’t speak. He hasn’t said a word since he came here two years ago. He was a soldier for one of the rebel groups, I can’t remember which one now. Before they took him, they murdered his family in front of him—his father, his mother, and his two sisters. As far as I know, he hasn’t spoken since then. I’m quite concerned for him. Since he can’t speak, he can’t confess; and unless he confesses, he cannot be absolved.

  “We have nearly thirty boys staying with us at the moment. Most are orphans, a few have parents too poor or incapacitated to take care of them. A just society would not require parents to surrender their children because of penury. But there are more children who need our help than we have beds.”

  “Where do the kids stay?” Alex asked.

  “In the buildings behind the church. It’s starting to get a little crowded, and I’d like to renovate what used to be the stables and turn it into a dormitory. That’s a pretty big project, however.” Antoine sighed and looked up briefly. “God will provide in good time.”

  He glanced slyly at Alex. “Maybe he already has.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I told you you’d end up paying for dinner.”

  In truth, Alex had been hoping that Father Antoine would give him an excuse to strap on a tool belt and do some building. Diplomacy could be an extremely creative profession, but it was by nature somewhat abstract. Alex welcomed whatever opportunities came his way to descend from the ethereal world of statecraft and build real, physical things.

  “Come, let me take you to the dormitories. You can meet the children.”

  “Lead on.”

  Alex surveyed the stables as they walked past. He could see right away that this was going to be a big job. The building would need plumbing and electricity as well as basic structural repairs, a new roof, new windows, and a real floor. Alex couldn’t do it alone, and he knew from experience that Father Antoine would be no help. He hoped the kids were up to the job.

  • • •

  The blockhouse dormitories were crowded, but there wasn’t the frenetic madness that Alex would have expected from a similarly large group of American kids packed together in a tight space. The house was two levels. Half of the downstairs was taken up by rows of bunk beds with thin mattresses. The other half was dominated by a long table with wooden benches that was already set for dinner. The plates and cups were made of cheap, unbreakable plastic. A small lounge area in the back corner held a television set, a few books, even fewer toys, and a couple of wooden chairs. Some of the younger kids were watching what looked to Alex like a Mexican soap opera on the television. All of the children wore dark gray shorts and white, short-sleeved shirts with button-down fronts and an elaborate seal over the left breast.

  A door off the side led to the kitchen, where Alex could see the older boys preparing the evening meal. The distinctive odor of boiling cassava root wafted from the room.

  “Gentlemen, we have a guest.” Father Antoine drew himself up to his full height. He was, Alex suspected, quite an imposing figure to the young children, many of them fresh from the bush. One boy turned off the television set. All of the children stood up and faced the priest with their hands held behind their backs. A few of them stared at Alex in wide-eyed amazement. It was possible that he was the first white person they had seen other than on television. Alex noticed that Jean-Pierre had appeared at his side and stood very close, establishing a special claim on their guest.

  “Mr. Alex is volunteering his time to help us rebuild the stables next door. It is my expectation that you will assist him in every way you can. If he asks you to do something, it is as though it were coming from me. Is that clear?”

  The children all murmured their assent, with the exception of Jean-Pierre, who simply nodded in agreement. Alex was amused at how easily Father Antoine had transformed his “maybe” into a “yes.” He had not changed much since Goma.

  “Mr. Alex, please join us. It’s a simple meal, of course, but there is enough for all.”

  “I would be honored,” Alex replied.

  Over dinner, Alex had an idea that he shared with Father Antoine. “Father, maybe we can start our repair work with that television. I can’t imagine the kids really want to watch Maria Loves Carlos. How about we see if we can’t find the cartoon channel on this thing.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to work,” the priest replied. “We don’t have any satellite equipment. This old set is all we have. It only gets the one channel and that irregularly.”

  “You may not have a satellite dish, but you do have a couple of cars in that lot out front.”

  “With no engines,” Antoine observed, “they aren’t worth very much.”

  “I don’t need an engine, Father. I only need a hood.”

  10

  JUNE 28, 2009

  KINSHASA

  Alex’s phone rang on the dot of 8:30 on Monday morning, the start of the Embassy’s official workday.

  “Hello, this is Alex Baines.”

  The voice at the other end was abrasive and demanding. “This is Viggiano. I’d like to s
ee you in my office right now.”

  Calls like this from the Regional Security Officer were almost never good news.

  “Actually, Rick, I’m working on the morning press summary for Spence. Can we do this at about ten?”

  “No, I want to do this right now. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Although he had told Viggiano he would be right down, Alex took another fifteen minutes to finish summarizing the latest news on the domestic political front, including rumors of a cabinet reshuffle, a burgeoning feud between the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the Interior, and the latest raft of corruption scandals in the Ministry of Communications. A fairly typical day. Having reached a convenient place to stop, he headed down the stairs to the security office, which was on the ground floor of the chancery next to Post One, the duty station manned twenty-four hours a day by one of the Marines from the Embassy’s Marine Security Guard detachment. Alex waved hello to Sergeant Martinez on duty. Martinez saluted smartly.

  Viggiano’s door was open.

  “What can I do for you, Rick?” Alex asked, as he sat down.

  Viggiano got right to the point. “Did you make contact on Friday evening with a Catholic priest named Antoine Mitifu?”

  “Yes. I know Father Antoine from my Peace Corps days. He and I are friends and I’m going to do some work with him sprucing up the orphanage he runs at St. Mary’s.”

  “I want you to stay away from Mitifu.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a known communist agitator.”

  “A what? Do we even use that phrase anymore? It seems so sixties.”

  “You heard me, Baines. He’s a commie. You may remember them. The enemies of freedom and democracy.”

  “What makes you think he’s a communist? For that matter, how do you know that I even met with him? Are you following him . . . or are you following me?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is that you are associating with a known communist.” With visible effort, Viggiano tried to shift to a more conciliatory tack. His smile, however, looked more like a snarl. “Look, Alex, you just got your clearances back, interim clearances at that. I’d hate to see you put that at risk.”