by Wilbur Smith
63.
I resisted the temptation to speed us to the People’s Palace; Kinshasa’s streets, I’d noticed, are full of traffic police just looking for a reason to stop cars, motorbikes, even cyclists, and demand a payment. Better to make like a tortoise than a hare. That also gave Xander time to work out that chairman Mukwege would likely be arriving by car also, since the summit was taking place across town. When we spoke, on our arrival, he had a plan all worked out.
‘Get rid of the bike and act like a tourist; work your way as close to the entrance as you can and if – no, when – you see him, try shouting, “Cloudburst!”’
‘Why?’
‘It’s what I labelled the file.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Wish me luck.’
‘Make your own!’ he said, trying to buoy me up.
Amelia had been listening in. ‘Instead of talking about something that doesn’t exist, let’s get in position, shall we?’
Mercifully there were no big crowds of protestors, or indeed tourists, clogging up the front of the People’s Palace. The great oblong building sat flat on its enormous apron of tarmac beneath a felt-grey sky. A steady stream of cars was rolling up in front of the main steps to deposit important people, however, and there were guards stationed there. To get to that point the cars had to filter through a roadblock of sorts. It was Amelia’s idea to station ourselves there. Had Mukwege already arrived? I wondered. Hopefully not, since the summit he was apparently closing wasn’t due to end until roughly now. We sidled as close to the pinch point as we dared, and stood inspecting the cars as they came. It seemed a ridiculously long shot, and yet I knew Xander wouldn’t have suggested it without having done his best to research the chairman’s schedule and movements. Some of the cars had heavily tinted windows. They were agony to let pass. As more and more time ticked away I felt hope draining through the soles of my trainers into the warm tarmac. Twelve o’clock turned to twelve fifteen turned to half past.
‘He’s late if he’s coming this way at all,’ I muttered, turning to Amelia.
Her face was screwed up in concentration. ‘If I wasn’t here,’ she said, ‘you’d have given up and missed him.’
I snapped back to look at the next approaching car, and sure enough, behind the driver, was an enormous figure crowned with that distinctive shock of white hair. It had to be him. The car, a huge silver limo, with at least three rows of seats, was rolling along quite slowly. It just kept coming. I approached its side, waving at the driver to stop. In response the car eased forward faster. In desperation, I dashed to the front of the limo and slid across the bonnet: I had to put myself between it and the gate. To avoid running me over, the car had to jerk to a stop. Immediately the front passenger door flung open and a guy with a gun, screaming in French, took a step towards me with the barrel aimed straight at my face.
‘Non, arrêtez, non!’ shouted Amelia.
Her words had no effect; the man just kept coming. He had a crooked nose. Flattened, almost. He wouldn’t shoot me there and then, would he? That was a gamble I had to take. I moved towards him – and his open door – yelling, ‘Cloudburst, Cloudburst!’ at the top of my voice. The bodyguard got hold of me, tried to haul me away. I felt my T-shirt ripping as I struggled, still hollering, ‘Cloudburst!’ for everything I was worth, which, in that moment, felt like nothing at all. I had hold of the door frame somehow and wasn’t about to let go of it: the guy could rip my T-shirt clean off for all I cared.
Lazily, the rear window of the limo lowered, revealing a concerned broad face beneath a white cloud.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?’ he said gently, and in accented English, ‘What did you say?’
Amelia stepped in. With a showstopping smile and her perfect French she held the big man’s attention. I heard my parents’ names, the word enfants repeated, and a load of other stuff whose gist I could follow without understanding all the words. The bodyguard melted away. The chairman climbed out of the limo, towering above us both, six foot eight at least.
Offering us his hand the big man said, ‘Martin Mukwege,’ his voice velvet. We shook it and did what he said, which was simply, ‘Walk with me.’
In English and French, speaking one after the other, fighting to get everything out, we told our story. Our words poured into Mukwege as if into a vault: here was somebody we both had complete trust in, instantly. I pulled out my camera and thrust screen showing the photos I’d taken up at him. He waved it away, saying, ‘I received the email, don’t worry. Its contents are in circulation as we speak.’
‘So you believe us?’
‘Of course. The pictures don’t lie. The coordinates don’t either.’
‘And it’ll do some good?’
‘If I have a say in things,’ he said with a smile.
I could have hugged him. With my parents missing, Langdon an enemy, Innocent dead, and distanced from pretty much every other adult I’d encountered on this miserable trip by my poor French, Mukwege seemed a god. There was something absolute about him. He believed us.
‘And you say your parents are being held against their will, that you know where they are, that you need help to secure their release?’
I blurted out the street name.
‘After the vote,’ he said, ‘I’ll be leaving the way I arrived. Wait for me.’
At that he shot his cuffs and checked the time on his watch. It was plastic and orange and massive, bright against his huge black wrist. He gave us both a friendly nod and strode toward the parliament building.
As Mukwege disappeared inside, taking our story with him, I suddenly felt very alone with Amelia. We stood facing each other before the massive facade of the People’s Palace. I felt lightheaded, dizzy with something more than relief and tiredness. Together, along with Xander, we’d achieved something. We may well have done some actual good.
64.
‘We need to get the bike back to the taxi guy,’ Amelia said.
‘Three o’clock, as the vote’s happening, is what we told him.’
‘You can buy me a Coke or something,’ she said. ‘While we wait.’
We rode the motorbike to a nearby drinks stand beneath the shade cast by a clutch of dusty trees, and hoovered up a couple of cold drinks each.
We called Xander, filled him in. He was as pleased as we were that his carefully put-together email of evidence had reached its target. After that we just sat and waited until eventually three o’clock wound round and we wheeled the bike to the front of the parliament building again. I wasn’t necessarily expecting its owner to show up: he might prefer to keep the deposit I’d given him. But at three on the dot there he was, with his brilliant-white teeth and this time wearing a pristine New York Mets cap. Once he’d looked the bike over and found it satisfactory, he took the hat off, pulled the cash from within and handed it over. I gave him our helmets too: he could always sell them.
‘Merci,’ we said in unison.
Once he’d gone there was nothing to wait for except Mukwege’s return. Now that three o’clock had passed he would be out soon, surely? And yet he didn’t appear. By four I began to have doubts. He’d seemed so genuine, surely he’d come? Four turned to four fifteen, four thirty, four forty-five …
‘You can’t wait, can you?’ Amelia sighed.
‘No.’
She picked up the phone to Xander and asked him to send Mukwege a message telling him we’d set off for the warehouse ourselves and asking him to follow on.
We hailed a cab, rode it to the spot where Amelia had waited all night and walked from there. My pulse was jumping as we approached the building. It looked so different in the early evening light, more boring, less sinister. I’d planned to stroll past it once and count the guards. They’d not seen either of us the night before so there could be nothing wrong with simply walking by. I doubted they’d do more than glance our way. The van from behind which I’d thrown the rock was still parked across the street. This time we walked in plain view on the other side of
it. My feet stopped moving as the full expanse of the warehouse forecourt, smashed floodlight and all, spread out before us. I couldn’t see any guards out front at all.
‘Weird,’ I said.
‘Where have they gone?’
‘No idea,’ I replied. Were they round the back, or inside? That wouldn’t make much sense. A nasty thought flashed past: had we spooked them last night, prompting them to up sticks with their prisoners and move on?
Before I knew it I was running across that forecourt, Amelia trailing behind me, making straight for the warehouse’s front door. What was the worst those guards could do to me if they were inside? Lock me up with my parents, if my suspicions were right. The big roller-shutter covering the door was down, secured with a padlock through two metal hoops, one in the bottom of the door, the other embedded in the concrete floor. I hammered on that metal shutter, yelling, ‘Hello! Hello! Is there anyone inside?’
Bang, bang, bang. Again and again. Until my hand hurt.
‘You should probably pause to listen for an answer,’ Amelia suggested.
I gave another bang, bang, bang and waited.
Nothing. Then, from far away, a distant thump, thump, thump.
We looked at one another.
Bang, bang, bang.
Thump, thump, thump.
‘Mum? Dad!’
Silence.
Then, from so far away, ‘Jack!’
In a frenzy I tore around the building looking for a way in. There were definitely no guards: the place was deserted. There were no windows either, and the only other door, at the rear, was also made of metal and locked shut. While I was circling the warehouse, searching high and low, Amelia considered the situation her way, and when I next jogged past she pointed at the security light that I’d smashed, at the top of its long metal pole, and said, ‘That?’
‘What about it?’
‘Let’s rip it down and use it smash the lock.’
It took us a good half an hour. The pole snapped off its stand easily enough, but the only way through the lock at the foot of the roller door was to chip and stab and gouge the concrete from around the fixing. Eventually we loosened it enough to prise up the bottom of the door, and when the lock gave, the door, counterbalanced from inside, shot up in a clattering rush.
‘Mum, Dad!’ I yelled again.
And this time Mum’s response was louder. It was coming from behind a partition wall, in the middle of which sat another locked door. I was yelling at her in delight, shouting, ‘Stand back,’ and about to attack that door with the metal pole too, when Amelia pointed to a key hanging on a nail in the adjacent wall. I couldn’t get it into that lock fast enough: my fingers were a jittery mess. But eventually I did, and the door swung open to reveal my parents. Mum was right in front of me, crying with excitement. Dad was standing with a hand to his forehead, his face as grey as the breeze-block wall.
65.
I didn’t know where to begin, started talking in a frenzy, gabbling on about Innocent and the mines and Langdon and the safari and Caleb and motorbikes and canoes and child slaves and national parks and photographs and evidence all in a great rush. Were they all right? Had they been here all this time? Did they know what day it was? Had they any clue who had done this to them and why? They wouldn’t believe it! Did they know what I meant about the evidence, and chairman Mukwege, and –
Amelia put one finger on my forearm and said, ‘What Jack’s trying to tell you is this. Our safari ended in disaster. We returned to find you missing, reported it to the police and eventually paid the kidnappers’ ransom. When that didn’t work, we went looking for you ourselves at Langdon’s mine and beyond, worked out his business is corrupt, that he was responsible for your kidnapping – presumably to stop you finding out the truth and presenting it at the summit – and followed him here. We had no luck getting in last night, but we delivered evidence to the chairman of the Mining and Conservation Committee on your behalf ahead of today’s vote and returned just now to find the guards gone. You’re free. I think that’s the bones of it.’ Turning to me, she asked, ‘Anything to add?’
I just wanted to know they were OK. Scanning the room, I saw two camp beds, a fridge, a sink, and an open door leading to a little bathroom. They both looked healthy enough, if a bit pale.
‘Langdon responsible?’ Dad said with a laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Believe me, he is.’
‘You’ve done fantastically finding us,’ Dad said. ‘I’m in awe. So grateful. Proud. Come here.’
I went to him and put my head on his shoulder. He hugged me stiffly. Behind him, on the floor next to the fridge, stood the cool box, its lid ajar.
‘That’s his cool box,’ I said.
‘Langdon’s?’ Dad released me.
‘Yes. He delivered it to the guards last night. I saw him.’
Dad smiled and shook his head and said, ‘This must be some kind of mistake.’
I felt sorry for him. Though they didn’t exactly see eye to eye, this was his brother we were accusing. Perhaps we shouldn’t have hit him with the truth straight away. Who knew what state he and mum were actually in after all this time cooped up? Best not to press the point, not now, I thought.
But Amelia said, ‘It’s no mistake. The proof is incontrovertible, I’m afraid. He kidnapped you, his brother. And he also hits his son.’
‘Ease up with the allegations,’ said Dad evenly.
‘Nicholas …’ said Mum.
‘The thing to do,’ said Amelia, ‘is confront Langdon immediately. You’ll see then.’
Dad gave her a hard stare.
‘Fresh air,’ I said. ‘Let’s get you outside.’
We all traipsed out through the yawning roller door and stood blinking in what was left of the sun. Mum held my hand. Quite tightly. She looked older in the light, tiny crow’s feet crowding her eyes. What had she been through in there? The atmosphere was strange, strained. I noticed neither Mum nor Dad had comforted the other yet, or reassured each other the ordeal was now over. Mark swam up within me for some reason. Why, in a moment that should have been happy, was I full of such aching sadness?
A car pulled onto the forecourt, stately and slow, silver and long. Martin Mukwege’s limo. He stepped out of it, unfolding himself to his full size. ‘Mr and Mrs Courtney,’ he said, presenting a hand, which they both shook automatically.
‘Who are you?’ asked Dad.
‘This is Mr Mukwege,’ Amelia answered, as if that should have been obvious. ‘He’s the chairman of the Mining and Conservation Committee, and he’s who we gave Jack’s evidence to.’
‘I told these … children to wait for me,’ he said, grinning broadly. ‘Possibly I should have guessed that, having demonstrated such resourcefulness, they might find it hard to wait around for help freeing you. So here I am, too late.’ To me he said, ‘You mentioned guards. What have you done with them?’
‘They’d gone.’ I shrugged.
‘How strange.’
‘Not really,’ said Amelia. ‘If the motive was to keep Nicholas and Janine away from the environmental summit until the conservation vote had passed, it makes sense to abandon the kidnapping about now.’
Mum was looking at Mukwege in open awe, while Dad’s face was closed, apparently in distaste. ‘This evidence of Jack’s,’ Mum said, ‘was it any help?’
Mukwege chose his words carefully, delivering them from on high: ‘It was profoundly influential, yes. I came as much to offer thanks as I did to help.’
‘So,’ said Mum tentatively, ‘the vote went the right way?’
‘It did.’
Mum gasped and took a little step sideways. I put an arm around her shoulders. She looked up at me.
‘By which you mean …?’ said Dad.
His voice molasses, Mukwege replied, ‘There will be a crackdown on mining in the country’s national parks, and a full investigation will be undertaken into the use of child labour in the
industry.’
We stood in silence for a moment. A noiseless plane, high above us, drew a pencil line across the fading sky.
At length Amelia, who’d been looking at Mukwege’s limo, said, ‘To Langdon’s then. Any chance of a lift?’
66.
We all climbed into that huge car. Mum and I were pretty squashed by Mr Mukwege, but so what – we were together again. The limo didn’t drive so much as float on the softest suspension imaginable; we drifted through the rush-hour chaos of stuttering buses and meandering motorbikes and laden-down pedestrians as if in a dream. On the way I messaged Xander to take a cab there straight away, but not let himself be seen. The rented apartment was closer than we were, so he was already there when we arrived at Langdon’s compound, skulking behind a whitewashed wall to one side of the entrance gate. As the car came to a gentle stop Mr Mukwege asked if he could be of any more assistance.
‘The lift’s fine,’ said Dad abruptly, adding, ‘Thanks.’
‘Well, you have my details,’ the big man said.
‘Sure,’ said Dad, climbing out slowly. He looked as if he was off to the dentist’s. That was understandable, I suppose. This was his brother we were talking about. What Amelia and I had told him had obviously sunk in. I would have felt more sorry for Dad in that moment if he hadn’t looked so accusingly at me.
He hung back from pressing the intercom. Amelia had no such qualms. She leaned on it for a good long time, rousing a barked, ‘Yes?’ from within.
‘Langdon, it’s me,’ said Dad. ‘Plus the family.’
Langdon’s response was a strange low laugh, before he buzzed us in.
We crossed a bare yard to the front door, Xander’s crutches clicking beside me. ‘Guess who called this morning?’ he murmured to me as we went.
‘Who?’
‘Caleb.’
A lurching sensation, of guilt and pity, swept through me. ‘Is he OK?’