by Wilbur Smith
Mum said, ‘I’m sure you’re doing your bit,’ in a voice that told me she wasn’t sure of that at all.
She was probably right, I thought, and before I could stop myself I stirred the pot by saying, ‘You guys should go and see for yourself.’
‘Not a great idea,’ said Uncle Langdon. ‘The bush is a dangerous place.’
Mum said, ‘We’ve a lot on our plates as it is. And the thing is, although I’m sure you’re mining sustainably, without proper legislation, passed and enforced by the government, there’s no guarantee others will follow suit.’
Uncle Langdon, who had drained his champagne flute, refilled it without offering anyone else a top-up. ‘Even if you get this vote passed, relying on the powers that be to enforce it is laughable,’ he went on. ‘This mob couldn’t police a shopping centre, much less the jungle. A load of red tape is just an opportunity for already corrupt officials to make things much, much worse.’
Mum sat back. Dad sighed, but obviously felt he had to chip in. ‘We take your point, Langdon, but a two-pronged attack by government and industry is generally considered to be the best way.’
Langdon did some earnest nodding, while conveying ‘Yeah, right, I don’t think so’ from every pore.
Mum bristled, but Dad’s this-is-exactly-what-I’d-expect-from-you-Langdon expression lacked bite. Ordinarily disagreements between the two escalate into proper arguments – they actually squared up to each other over a business deal that went wrong a couple of Christmases ago – but today Dad seemed content to let Langdon’s condescension go.
Since Uncle Langdon’s mouth was full of champagne, Caleb took the opportunity to chip in. ‘Dad’s point about corruption is key. Nothing gets done here unless the right people are paid.’
He shook his shaved head very man-of-the-world-wearily. It made me want to ask him how many bribes he – personally – had paid, but I bit my tongue. Instead I sat and listened to his phoney I’m-such-an-adult questions, sipping my drink, waiting for Mum to do what she always does, which is try to push us together. Sure enough, when Uncle Langdon started ribbing Dad for having given up his real job in favour of helping questionable do-good causes, she said, ‘You and Caleb should go to join the others in the games room. You can take him on at ping-pong or something.’
‘Others?’ said Caleb.
‘Jack’s brought a couple of friends along for the safari,’ explained Mum.
‘That’s nice for you,’ he told me in a tone that made me want to punch him.
‘Why don’t you introduce him to Amelia and Xander?’ Mum, oblivious, went on.
It wasn’t actually a question of course. I did what I was told. I led Caleb through the marble lobby to the hotel’s games room, where we found Xander and Amelia playing pool. Amelia is all right at pool. She was leaning over the table with just one red ball and the black to dispatch, while Xander, whose yellows were still all over the place, watched. Amelia didn’t look up until she’d potted both balls.
‘Four nil,’ she said. ‘Another one?’
‘Nah, I’m good,’ said Xander.
‘Good? But you lost four times …’ Amelia trailed off as she noticed Caleb. He didn’t wait for me to say who he was, just launched right in, introduced himself, offered to play the next game. I didn’t say anything, but I knew that Caleb has his own pool table at home. He’s annoyingly good at it. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as Xander and I played table tennis. He let Amelia get ahead, then reeled her in, then snookered her again and again, drawing the game out. All the while he was chatting to her in a way that made my skin crawl, though I don’t know why. It’s not as if Amelia can’t look after herself: she’s as resilient as she is honest. I just didn’t like that my cousin was making me feel that she might have to watch her back.
8.
‘Well played,’ she said, when he eventually beat her. I was pleased when she added, ‘You made a bit of a meal of it, but won all the same.’
At this point two guys aged about eighteen walked in. One of them had dreadlocks; the other was wearing a vest top revealing tanned, bulging arms. He obviously worked out and was keen to let everyone know. ‘Mind if we use the table?’ the gym-built guy asked. He sounded American.
‘Actually, yes. We’ve not finished,’ said Caleb, puffing himself up.
Xander shot me a look.
‘But we have,’ Amelia pointed out.
‘That game, but not the next one,’ said Caleb, staring from one newcomer to the other.
A pause followed.
‘Whatever,’ said the guy with the arms, eventually. ‘We’ll come back later.’
‘But –’ Amelia began.
‘It’s not a problem,’ he said, and gave a little wave as he left.
‘Well, that was awkward,’ Amelia said. I love the way she spells things out.
‘Yeah, damn Yanks, so entitled. Not used to anyone standing their ground,’ said Caleb, who seemed not to understand that far from having impressed us he’d embarrassed himself.
For a second I thought Amelia might point that out too, and for some reason I found myself jumping in to head her off. ‘It has to be dinner time,’ I said.
‘Sure, let’s go and eat,’ said Caleb, and led the way back to the bar as if it had been his suggestion. When we passed the two Americans in the main lobby Caleb’s big-man walk turned into an actual swagger.
But if that episode was annoying, things got worse when we sat down in the hotel restaurant. Mum explained that she’d learned Caleb wasn’t due to start his work experience for another ten days. What that had to do with us I couldn’t guess at first. Uncle Langdon, who had ordered king prawns, paused as he was ripping the head off one to make things clear.
‘So, Caleb, to save you kicking your heels here in Kinshasa, I thought you might like to go with these guys, on their safari.’
‘What, as a chaperone?’ said Caleb.
Langdon shrugged. ‘If you like.’
Thankfully Mum corrected him. ‘There’s no need for that. We’ve sourced one of the most experienced safari guides in the country; he’s ex-military and heads a team that has a perfect record in keeping clients safe. They know the hotspots to avoid and how to defuse trouble in the unlikely event they run into it. There’s an element of risk in everything we do, heightened here in the DRC, I concede, but life is all about minimising risk to optimise outcomes. The outcome we want here is for you youngsters to come away inspired to defend the planet. You’re its inheritors after all.’
Mum can be a bit preachy at times, but you have to admire the fire in her eyes when she goes off on one. This safari she and Dad had organised for us, with all their precautionary research and risk assessment, well, it obviously mattered deeply to her, and Caleb’s, ‘Whatever you say. I don’t mind going along for the ride,’ set my teeth on edge.
Langdon made things worse by saying, ‘Obviously Caleb’s been on safari before. He can show you the ropes.’
Caleb, who was smiling at Amelia now, had definitely decided the plan wasn’t a bad one. If I hadn’t known how much it would disappoint Mum, I’d probably have chosen not to go at all rather than have him tagging along thinking he was remotely in charge. But the arrangement already had a sort of bike-crash inevitability. It felt like that split second when you lose control and time slows down to give you a chance to wonder, before you hit the ground, how much it’s going to hurt.
Langdon went on. ‘Yes, despite my reservations about your little eco-crusade –’ he looked from Mum to Dad and back to Caleb again – ‘it won’t do you any harm to see the flora and fauna everyone, including those of us who mine responsibly – in fact especially us, for the sake of business as well as the chimps and whatnot – wants to protect. You need to learn about the industry from all sides after all.’
The fire in Mum’s eyes had turned to ice. She looked away from Langdon. ‘This will be a chance for you boys to get to know each other better,’ she said hopefully. She could tell I wasn’t overjo
yed, I know, because now that she was focusing on me, her face wore the anxious expression that always makes me feel a bit sorry for her.
‘Sure,’ I said, and patted her hand.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Langdon. He added, ‘I’ll dock the cost of the safari from your first pay cheque, Caleb,’ and chomped down on another prawn.
9.
A couple of days later we flew from Kinshasa to a town called Goma, having spent most of the intervening time in the hotel games room or at the pool. Fun enough with Caleb out of the picture, but I kept asking to see something of the place, so eventually Mum organised for an armed hotel guard to ferry us out on one brief trip to the national museum. The place was tiny, and I mean that as a compliment. In standard-size museums I generally feel like lying down for a sleep before I’ve even started. Here I more or less made it to the end, though I was a bit vague about what we were looking at, since the signs were all in French. Xander did some translating. There were some tribal masks in the gallery, and a couple of statues outside. One was of an explorer called Stanley who discovered Congo. I’m pretty sure it was here before he found it, but still. Then Amelia gave us a fascinating – it actually was – lecture about another man made out of bronze, King Leopold II of Belgium. This guy was on a massive horse and had a huge, wedge-shaped beard. Needless to say, Amelia knew a load of dates about him, but all I can remember is that he helped put ‘Belgian’ before ‘Congo’ after Stanley ‘found’ it, declared the entire country was his, and ran the place for a while until they kicked him out.
‘Although by “ran” I really mean “looted”,’ said Amelia.
‘If you say so.’
‘Just as the West, and China, with the help of local warlords, continue to rob the country of its natural resources today. If you think about it, this country, the heart of Africa, has been pillaged pretty constantly for a hundred and fifty years. From King Leopold to your uncle Langdon, outsiders have always wanted to slice up the pie.’
She can get earnest pretty quickly, Amelia. A bit like Mum; they share an admirable passionate streak. But lumping Leopold, who declared the whole country his, in with Langdon, who on his word at any rate just wants to do sustainable business here, seemed a bit harsh. But whatever. I wasn’t about to defend him.
I looked over Amelia’s shoulder at the only truly impressive thing we saw that day, a view of the city spilling down to the river, which lay massive and brown in the distance. If the National History Museum in London makes the Kinshasa National Museum look like a shed, the Congo River makes the Thames look like a streak of dog wee. I unholstered my camera and took a few wide-angle shots before one of the museum staff told me I had to pay extra for the privilege.
Caleb joined us again for the trip to the airport, where Uncle Langdon, wearing a lime-green Hawaiian shirt today, made a big show of the fact that we’d be travelling east in one of his charter jets. Caleb got in on the act, telling Amelia, ‘This country has one of the worst air-safety records in the world: all its airlines are blacklisted in the developed world,’ loudly enough for other passengers in the terminal to hear.
She wasn’t impressed. ‘Statistically, flying here is still safer than riding a bicycle at home, by a factor of about ten.’
This should have put him in his place, but he just shrugged and said something else to her too quietly for me to hear. Annoyingly, whatever it was made her smile. She sat next to him on the plane. Just because a person knows a lot, doesn’t make them a good judge of character.
10.
It was only after we’d landed in Goma that I really started to think about what we were about to do there, namely trek into the jungle in search of chimpanzees and gorillas. I have to admit I was looking forward to it: I’d have the opportunity to take some good photos. Our safari guide picked us up from the airport with a placard that spelled ‘Courtny’ wrong, and introduced himself as Innocent.
Amelia said out loud what I was thinking: ‘Unusual name. French, I suppose.’
Thankfully he took no offence, just said, ‘That’s right,’ with a big smile, and led us to a battered Toyota Hilux among the sea of motorbikes and pickups parked haphazardly in front of the terminal. He was quite young, thirty at most, with thin stubble on his chin but not his cheeks. It was as if his face was saying this was all it could manage for now, beard-wise, but he moved quickly and authoritatively, which persuaded me he knew exactly what he was doing. This guy was a former soldier after all.
A small girl was leaning against the pickup’s tailgate. Instead of telling her to clear off, Innocent introduced her. ‘This is Patience, my daughter and right-hand man. She’ll be coming with us. She’s learning how to track and is already ten times better than I was at her age,’ he said proudly. This Patience only looked about ten, but she stepped forward with a confidence that made her seem much older. She had the biggest, steadiest eyes I’d ever seen, and she gazed at each of us in turn without blinking, the absolute opposite of being nervous to meet us. Caleb had put his pack on the floor. Without asking him, Patience – who couldn’t have weighed much more than the pack – swung it up into the back of the pickup in one clean movement and motioned for the rest of us to follow suit. We climbed in ourselves after our luggage, at Innocent’s instruction. Caleb tried to assert his authority by telling us – pointlessly – that all this was normal. He’d done something similar before, many times. What ‘all this’ was I don’t know. ‘Rest assured,’ he went on, ‘my dad’s people will have done thorough due diligence on this safari outfit.’
Apart from cringing a bit – he’d said this right in front of Innocent and Patience – I didn’t react to this statement. The truth was, I didn’t know what ‘due diligence’ meant precisely. Amelia must have noticed, because she said, ‘He means Langdon’s done background checks on our guides, but we know your mum and dad did that before they booked us onto the trip, so I’m not exactly sure why he said it.’
‘Belt and braces,’ Caleb said, looking away.
Before we set off, Innocent introduced our driver, explaining that although he was brilliant at negotiating dirt roads he spoke no English. In the Toyota’s big wing mirror I saw the man had bloodshot eyes. He did speak French as well as the local language, but it seemed he did that grudgingly; after he’d fought the pickup through the weaving motorbikes to our hotel Xander offered him a ‘merci beaucoup’ and said something about the traffic and got just a grunt in reply.
I say hotel, but this place was nothing like where we had stayed in Kinshasa. That one was posh; this one was not. Like just about every other building I saw on our way into the incredibly busy town centre, it was low-rise with a corrugated roof, and bits of it hadn’t yet been built. Someone had put plastic flowers on the reception desk though, and the floor looked clean enough.
After we’d checked in, Amelia, Xander and I went to explore the hotel garden, which was also half finished. In the middle of an incomplete patio stood an empty fountain with rocks in the bottom. There being no chairs, we sat on the concrete lip, dangling our feet into what would have been water if the fountain had been full. It was late afternoon. In Kinshasa the heat had been constant and oppressive; Goma, today, was cool by comparison. The sky above us was the colour of a fresh bruise and there was a sulphurous rotten egg smell coming from somewhere. When she heard me mention it to Xander, Amelia said, ‘It’s because of the geography, not a lack of sanitation.’
‘Meaning?’ asked Xander.
‘We’re on the shore of Lake Kivu. Its depths are full of pressurised gas. Mostly carbon monoxide, which doesn’t smell, but there’s some methane down there too and that does. Both are lethal if released in large quantities.’
‘That’s all right then,’ said Xander.
‘But it could just be the volcano.’
From the look on our faces she could tell we didn’t know which volcano she was talking about.
‘Nyiragongo. It’s only twenty kilometres away. Hasn’t erupted since 2002, but when it
last did it took out half the city. It’s still active.’
‘Great,’ said Xander, but I could see he was impressed with how much she knew.
Amelia looked for a moment as if she might be about to correct him, but she stopped herself and instead went off in a different direction: ‘But that’s still quite a long way for a smell to blow, I think. Actually I don’t know: how far do smells carry? A strong wind can blow for thousands of miles, but surely if it was a real gale it would disperse the smell? You don’t ever hear of tornados carrying smells. Breezes do though. Wolves and bears can smell things wafted at them from miles away, but we’re not them, we’re humans. I’ve never thought about it much before, but what’s the furthest distance a human being can smell, do you reckon?’
Amelia’s monologues make me smile. But neither of us had an answer to her question. I was staring at the green plastic fence running round the edge of the garden, thinking, or at least pretending to, when a movement caught my eye. From behind what looked like a water butt in the corner of the garden a rat ambled into view. I hate rats. This one was large and grey and in no hurry. Xander saw it at the same time as me. Without saying anything, we both leaned forward and each picked up a rock from the pile at our feet. I expected the movement might make the rat scuttle away, but it just stopped and eyeballed us. The horrible thing was less than ten metres away. I drew my hand back slowly, preparing to unleash, and Xander did the same. But I hesitated. The shot hardly seemed fair. It wasn’t until Xander threw his stone and missed, startling the rat – it jumped high in the air – that my revulsion kicked in. I aimed at the gap between the water butt and the fence and hit the rat squarely as it fled. I’d thrown a fair-sized stone. I’m not sure if you’d call it instant, but by the time the three of us had crossed the patio to have a look, the twitching was over, the rat dead.
Innocent, Patience and Caleb came into the garden at that moment.