by John Case
“And …! Underwater restaurant! What you think?”
“Sounds uncomfortable,” Wilson told him. “Sounds like a fuckup.”
Belov frowned, then got the joke and laughed. As they entered the atrium, a mâitre d’ caught their eye and led them to a linen-covered table near the fountain. Palm trees rustled in a fake breeze as a column of water shot into the air, a hundred feet or more, and then fell back – only to erupt again and again. Children ran shrieking among the tables, shattering the decorum. The temperature was about sixty-five degrees. Despite the jacket he was wearing, Wilson shivered.
“Hey!” Belov exclaimed, pointing across the room, where an entourage of gangsta wannabes followed a muscular black man to the elevators. “Fifty Cent! I know! You want shake hand?”
“Maybe another time,” Wilson told him.
The Russian shrugged, then beckoned a waiter to their table. “Having tea for two.” The waiter closed his eyes, inclined his head, and backed away with a practiced smile.
Belov sat back in his chair, and regarded Wilson with a wry smile. “Halfway there,” he said.
“A little less.”
“Few miles, maybe. Who’s counting?”
“I hope someone is. I’d hate to come up short.” Wilson looked around. “Max …”
“What?”
“Why are we here?”
Belov shrugged. “I said! Refueling. Is long way, Congo.”
“I mean, here. In the Magic Kingdom, or whatever you call it.”
“Burj Al Arab. Everyone knows this place. Is famous!”
“So we’re, like … tourists?”
“Not tourist! Smelling roses. Is good.”
Wilson gave his head a little shake, as if to clear it. “How long does it take to refuel?”
“Half hour.”
Wilson looked at his watch.
Belov leaned in, and lowered his voice. “We don’t just take fuel.”
“No?”
The Russian shook his head.
“Then what?” Wilson asked.
“We paint.”
“Paint?”
Belov put his thumb and forefinger together. “Little bit. On tail. Where numbers are.” His voice dropped twenty decibels and an octave. “I tell you something confidential.”
“Okay …”
“Is two Antonovs in hangar.”
Wilson thought about it.
Belov continued: “So we paint. Then we change transponders. Number Two Antonov takes off for Almaty. You know Almaty?”
Wilson shook his head.
“Shit town. Not important,” Belov said. “But good decoy. Now comes dark, and Number One Antonov is flaps up.” He sat back with a worried glow, as if he’d just explained the general theory of relativity to the guy behind him in a supermarket line. “You understand?”
Before Wilson could reply, the waiter returned, wheeling a cart crowded with pots of hot water and plates of tiny sandwiches. A tea-caddy was produced, and they selected their teas – English Breakfast for Wilson, and an infusion of echinacea, palmetto berries, and nettle root for Belov. “For chakras,” he explained, looking a bit embarrassed.
“Excellent choice,” the waiter said, and slipped away.
Belov leaned in. “How much you know about Congo?”
Wilson shook his head. “AIDS and diamonds. Used to be Belgian. Lots of resources, lots of poverty.” He paused. Thought for a moment. “And they’re killing each other.”
Belov nodded. “Three million dead in five years.”
Wilson sampled one of the sandwiches, a mixture of cream cheese, apricot, and salmon on an equilateral triangle of Wonder Bread whose crusts had gone missing. Not bad, but it would take about ten of them to have an impact. He tried another: buttered pumpernickel with thinly sliced radishes. Even better.
“There’s gold,” Belov confided. “Also copper and … you name it. This place we’re going, Ituri province – it’s next to Uganda, okay? Beautiful, beautiful mountains …” He closed his eyes for a moment, then just as suddenly opened them. “But! This place, it’s death. Ten years, now, they’re fighting. I think it goes on forever.”
“Who’s behind it?” Wilson asked.
“You! Me! Them! Everybody!” Then he rattled off a string of acronyms.
Wilson wolfed down another sandwich. Tried to figure out what it was. Dijon mustard and cranberry sauce. Bits of turkey. “This guy we’re in business with –”
“Commander Ibrahim. He’s Ugandan, so … he’s having good English!”
Wilson looked puzzled. “What’s he doing in the Congo if he’s Ugandan?”
“Diamond mines,” Belov said. “Near Bafwasende.”
“Which is where?”
“Lindi River. Maybe thirty klicks from airstrip.” Belov grinned. “This is pygmy place. My advice: Don’t fuck with them.”
Wilson sat back in his chair. He was thinking, It’s going to happen. He glanced around, and tried to imagine it. A place like this, multiplied by a million … The systems break down, and it’s lights out! The fountain dies, the heat builds up. But, wait a second, what’s that? The generators! We’re saved! The lights flicker back to life, and everyone sighs in relief. There’s a rush of laughter and small talk, and then – uh-oh! – the generators die. Food begins to spoil, and the place begins to stink. And maybe, just maybe, they can’t get out. The doors are automatic, and they look like they weigh a ton. If you couldn’t get out – if you were locked in – after a couple of days, it would be like a George Romero film. The idea made him laugh. Talk about “cannon fodder”! All these people, the waiters and sheiks, businessmen and brats, sweltering in this bell jar of a hotel – entertained, perhaps, by 50 Cent. (We can only hope.)
“What is funny?” Belov asked.
Wilson shook his head. “Nothing, I was just … So what’s the drill, once we get there?”
Belov shrugged. “Drive to Bafwasende. Meet Commander Ibrahim, so we have chitchat. If hunky-dory, you get paid. Then, I think, you go to Kampala next day.”
“What’s in Kampala?” Wilson asked.
“Airport. Is gateway to world.”
“And you’re where?”
“I’m back to Sharjah.”
Wilson sipped his tea. It occurred to him that once Belov left, he’d be on his own – except for Zero and Khalid – and he’d be carrying four million dollars in diamonds. “Tell me something,” he said.
“What?”
“This guy, Ibrahim, he’s pretty tight with Hakim, right?”
Belov nodded.
“So what happens if I go missing?”
Belov frowned. After a moment, he said, “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Diamonds. If you go missing, is sad! We have tears in Sharjah, Beirut, but … we move on. Unless diamonds go missing, too. Then, I think, we have big problem. For everybody. Colonel Ibrahim, too.” With a grin, the Russian tapped his temple with his forefinger. “I see wheels turning, but … don’t worry. Many times, Hakim sends people to Congo. We don’t lose no one yet!”
Wilson nodded, but he didn’t look happy. He was thinking about Bobojon’s e-mail from the night before. “What about Hakim? What happens if he goes missing?”
Belov’s cheeks swelled up like a blowfish. He sat like that for a few seconds, then slowly exhaled. Finally, he said, “Is end of world.”
Sixteen
Congo | March 5, 2005
HIGHER WAS SAFER. Higher was smoother.
Leaving Sharjah just after midnight, they’d climbed to thirty-five thousand feet over the Empty Quarter, and stayed at that altitude until Ethiopia was behind them. Somewhere over the southern Sudan, they began their descent, dropping lower and lower as they approached Uganda’s border with the Congo. As the plane sank gently into a sea of clouds, the moon winked out and the wings began to shiver, and then they began to bounce.
“Seat belt,” Belov said.
The cockpit was quiet and dark, the instrument panel glowin
g softly, the fuselage creaking. Belov and the navigator talked softly in Russian, while the pilot made adjustments to the controls.
Wilson buckled up. A flash of lightning, and everything went nova – the sky, the cockpit, the men’s faces. And then it was night again. Through the window, Wilson saw a wall of thunderheads flickering in the dark.
The plane yawed.
“Better get down quick,” Belov said.
“Yeah, that lightning –”
“Fuck lightning! Is bad neighborhood. Stingers, Strelas – a real mess!”
Wilson looked at the arms dealer. “Whose fault is that?” he asked, as the plane fell through a hole in the night, eliciting a yelp from the passenger cabin.
Belov chuckled.
The altimeter was turning counterclockwise and the fuselage was rattling, hard, when a dinner service crashed to the floor in the galley behind them. Wilson kicked a cup away and searched the ground for lights, an airport – anything.
“Weather like this, I think: Dag Hammarskjold,” Belov confessed. “You know? Big UN guy. Went down over Katanga. Long time ago.”
“Missile?”
Belov shook his head. “No! Was shit weather, so … they’re flying on instruments, okay? Bad guys hijacked beam – sent plane into mountain. No more Hammarskjold!”
Wilson shuddered, his eyes straining in their sockets. He could imagine what it would be like, roaring out of the clouds into a wall of rocks and trees. At least it would be quick. A glimpse of the end, and then The End. But if a bomb went off inside the plane, or if a missile hit them … Maybe the fuel tanks would explode, and it would be over in an instant. But what if the plane broke up slowly, piece by piece? What if the passengers fell through the air like birds with a virus, like suicides – or like those people who stepped off the World Trade Center’s roof?
Lights flickered under the wings as the Antonov shredded the clouds at twelve hundred feet. The pilot leveled off in the direction of what had to be the airstrip, a rectangle of lights embedded in the darkness ahead.
They were all business now, jabbering in Russian as the plane sank toward the runway. The landing gear dropped with a terrifying thump, and for a moment, Wilson was sure they’d been hit – though by what or by whom he had no idea. Pressing his forehead against the window, he could see the exhaust pouring over the wing, the ailerons fluttering, and, up ahead, a handful of trucks and military vehicles standing in a field, headlights beaming the way.
The plane could not have been at rest for more than thirty seconds when the cargo door began to lower. By then, Zero and Khalid were at the ready, duffel bags in one hand, H.K.’s in the other. The Diadora bags were left where they were, on the floor of the plane. They wouldn’t be needed in Africa, and the guns could not be taken to Antwerp.
Belov led them down the ramp, where they were blinded by the lights of trucks and military vehicles parked on the verge of the airstrip. Wilson took a deep breath, inhaling Africa for the first time.
“Max!” A giant loomed in the headlights, came forward and embraced the Russian with a rumbling chuckle. By Wilson’s estimate, he would not have been out of place in the forecourt of the San Antonio Spurs, and looked to be about Wilson’s own age. He had ritual scars on each of his cheeks and a large diamond in the lobe of his left ear. Dressed in combat boots and taupe fatigues, he wore a double-barreled shoulder rig with a Glock hanging, half-cocked, in each of his armpits. One step behind him, and on either side, was a cherubic-looking twelve-year-old with a Kalashnikov.
“Commander Ibrahim, permit me, I introduce Mr. Frank,” Belov announced.
Commander Ibrahim crushed Wilson’s hand in his own, all smiles, then stepped back with a look of exaggerated suspicion. “American?”
Wilson nodded.
Belov, looking nervous, said, “Mr. Frank is Mr. Hakim’s good friend. We do good business together.”
Commander Ibrahim nodded thoughtfully. Finally, he said, “Takoma Park.”
The African’s voice was deep, with a British accent. But Wilson had no idea what he was talking about. “Excuse me?”
“Takoma Park! Do? You? Know it!”
Wilson glanced at Belov, but the Russian looked away, as if to say, You’re on your own. “You mean, the suburb – the one in Maryland?”
“And D.C. – part of it’s in Dee Cee.”
Wilson nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been there once or twice.”
Commander Ibrahim thumped his chest with his fist, then pointed a finger at Wilson. “Well, I was there two fucking years!”
Wilson didn’t know what to say. Said: “Hunh!”
Commander Ibrahim turned to the boy-soldier on his right. “That’s my homey,” he declared.
The kid laughed.
The drive to the mining camp near Bafwasende was about fifty kilometers along a dirt track that, to Wilson’s surprise, was in decent condition. They rode in a sleek Mercedes sedan, with Commander Ibrahim in the front beside the driver, smoking a spliff. Wilson availed himself of the foldaway wet bar to nurse a tumbler of Glenmorangie, neat, and Belov did the same. For Wilson, it was a narcissistic moment, but for Belov, it was just another day at the office.
Their escorts, front to back, were an armored personnel carrier and a “technical.” The latter was a Jeep Grand Cherokee whose roof had been sawn off to accommodate a light machine gun where the rear seat had been. Flat-black with primer, the defrocked SUV had improvised armor, as well as a constellation of bullet holes in the front left fender. An effort to putty them over with epoxy had been unsuccessful, and cosmetically insane.
The APC was a BTR-70, according to Belov (who’d sold it to Commander Ibrahim). It had coaxial machine guns and was totally amphibious. “Nice Russian car!” Belov bragged. “They make in Arzamas plant – in Nizhny Novgorod. But heavy! Ten tons, I think!”
“Eleven,” Ibrahim corrected.
Belov was about to disagree when their conversation was cut short by a burst of machine-gun fire from the technical.
Wilson saw a group of men scatter from the side of the road, scrambling into the bush.
Belov and Commander Ibrahim laughed.
“What the fuck was that?” Wilson asked.
Ibrahim chuckled. “Local people,” he said. “No worries.”
“Did we hit ’em?”
Ibrahim shrugged. “I don’t know.” The way he said it, he might as well have added, Like it matters?
Wilson glanced out the back window, saw the sky brightening in the east. “So where did they go?”
Belov snorted. “Nowhere! They’re back in five minutes. Like roaches!”
Ibrahim turned to Wilson. “You saw the rope?”
Wilson shook his head. He hadn’t seen anything but half a dozen men running for their lives.
“There was a rope across the road,” Ibrahim told him. “They tie it to a tree.”
“So?”
“When cars come, they raise the rope. This means you’re supposed to stop.”
“You didn’t stop,” Wilson said.
“I have an armored personnel carrier. Why the fuck would I stop?”
Belov chuckled. Ibrahim laughed.
“They call themselves ‘tax collectors,’” the commander said, his smile fading to black. “So I guess they think they’re the government. But I don’t think so. You ever see a tax collector sitting beside the road with a rope?”
Wilson shook his head.
“Well,” Ibrahim said, “I see it every day. And it pisses me off.”
They continued on their way for nearly an hour, until they arrived at a compound of prefabricated buildings, huddled together behind a concrete wall topped with razor wire and broken glass. Half a mile from the mining camp, the compound was Commander Ibrahim’s “executive offices and military headquarters.”
“You might as well get some sleep,” Ibrahim said, “while my friend and I go over the cargo. I’ll show you around this afternoon.”
This was fine with Wilson,
who was tired from the long flight. Trailed by Zero and Khalid, he followed a bare-chested pygmy up a staircase to the building’s second floor, where half a dozen rooms were set aside for visitors. The rooms were simple but well kept. Wilson’s came with an air conditioner that sounded like a truck with a thrown rod. Even so, it brought the temperature down to the eighties, and wrung a steady stream of moisture from the air.
Wilson kicked his shoes off, and lay down on the bed. As tired as he was, sleep was hard to come by. He felt a mosquito land on the hairs of his arm and, opening his eyes, watched as it began to feed. When it seemed to Wilson that the bug was engorged, he closed his fingers into a fist, and tightened the muscles in his arm. The mosquito was trapped, its proboscis pinned beneath the skin. Wilson’s veins stood out in low relief. His arm trembled. The insect popped.
It was one of the games he’d played in Supermax.
He closed his eyes again, then just as quickly opened them when he heard a quarrel in the hallway outside his room. Getting to his feet, Wilson stepped into his shoes, went to the door, and pulled it open.
Zero and Khalid were arguing with a pygmy who, fierce and terrified, was threatening them with a knife. A Ugandan soldier came pounding up the stairs, yelling at everyone to “Knock it off!”
Wilson pulled his bodyguards away, while the soldier did his best to calm the pygmy.
“What’s going on?” Wilson asked.
The soldier looked up. “He says your friends insulted him.”
Khalid scoffed.
The soldier turned to Khalid. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”
Khalid hefted his Heckler and Koch, as if to say, Not likely.
It was the soldier’s turn to scoff. “He would have filleted you.”
“Fuck that,” Wilson said. “What’s he talking about? How did they insult him?”
“He’s supposed to guard your room,” the soldier replied.
“So?”
“Your friends wouldn’t let him.”
“It’s our job,” Khalid insisted. “We sit outside – in a chair – with the H.K.’s. We take turns, you know?”