The Twain Maxim

by Clem Chambers

  Jim smiled. Night was falling faster than he’d ever experienced.

  The Huey touched down and Higgins pulled off his headset as he threw various switches on the control panels. “Great timing,” he said, as the noise faded. He was clearly relieved to have got down in one piece.

  The compound was lit and Jim noted the cordon of razor wire that protected it. The fence was high and wickedly topped with more razor. No one would get in without a lot of effort.

  They climbed out of the chopper and collected Jim’s luggage. Jim looked into the cargo hold. Somehow Kitson had opened the door and fallen out. What exactly had happened? He wanted to ask but decided to leave it – maybe it would come out naturally.

  Baz Mycock was walking towards them across the landing pad. “Wotcher, mate,” he said. “Have a good trip?”

  “Not bad,” said Jim.

  “He flew here in his Gulfstream,” said Higgins, smiling and nodding.

  “Nice,” laughed Baz, shaking Jim’s hand. “You’re a stylish fella. And apparently you own twenty-eight per cent of Barron now.” Baz’s eyes twinkled in the landing pad’s lights.

  “Really?” said Jim. “That didn’t take long.”

  “Maybe I should call you ‘bwana’.” Baz let out a quacking laugh. “Ker, ker, ker.”

  “If you like,” said Jim. He swung his rucksack on to his shoulder and sagged a little.

  “Anyway, you kept the price up nicely, thank you very much.” Baz managed a perfectly grateful smile, even though it was exactly opposite to how he felt. If only he could convince Higgins to let him push this one out of the chopper too, he’d be a happy man. “Let me take that,” he said, lifting the load off Jim’s shoulder in an easy sweep.

  “Thanks,” said Jim. “Had a bit of a rib removed.”

  “Nasty,” said Baz, as they turned for the gate. “Accident?”

  “Kind of,” said Jim.

  “You’ll have to lighten that up if you’re going trekking,” said Higgins.

  “I’ll be all right,” said Jim. “I just picked it up wrong.”

  “You can always ditch stuff,” said Baz, opening the gate. “No litter police up there,” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the volcanoes.

  They walked to a small bungalow among the low buildings.

  “It’s only cold water in the shower,” said Baz, putting down the rucksack, “and it’s not really cold but you get the idea. Electricity comes on at ten or eleven and stays on till midnight. Getting diesel up here’s a pain in the arse so we eke it out.”

  Higgins stood Jim’s flight case next to the rucksack. “Come outside and I’ll show you the lie of the land.”

  They went out to an open area in the centre of the camp. A road appeared to lead up to the far left end from the valley below.

  “In front of you to the left are the soldiers’ quarters.” Higgins pointed to some buildings that, now Jim studied them, looked like basic barracks. “I wouldn’t go down too close – they’re a rough lot. We pay the government a shit load for them but I doubt they see any of it. We bung them some extra, but let’s just say they aren’t the happiest bunnies ever to hop across the face of the earth. Over there on the right is where we house the Chinese crews. We’ve got just three looking after the camp at the moment – the rest are up country doing their thing. But you’re not interested in that, are you? You’re here for Terry, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Jim.

  “Right,” said Baz. “Anyway, the big bungalow next to this,” he pointed behind them, “is mine and Mark’s, and the one up top is like an office. It’s neat and tidy but nothing splendid.”

  Jim glanced at the barracks again. They were lit but seemed deserted. “I think I’ve got all that.”

  “When you’re sorted,” said Higgins, “come to our hut and we’ll have something to eat.”

  Jim opened his flight case and took out the satphone. He walked outside as he switched it on. It was still very hot and humid, but without the sun, it was significantly cooler than it had been earlier. There was a strong signal so he dialled home. Stafford replied.

  “I’m here,” Jim told him.

  “Very good,” said Stafford.

  “Obviously the phone works fine. Anything for me?”

  “No calls,” said Stafford. “All quiet on the home front.”

  “Great,” said Jim, “I’ll be in touch.” He looked at the handset, or “terminal”, as the manual called it. It was rather like his indoor wireless phone, oversized, clunky, with a fat, stubby antenna jutting from the top. Even so, however unfashionable it looked, he was very happy that it worked. It was his lifeline.

  Back inside, he stripped off and went into the bathroom, which smelt of disinfectant. He ran the shower – thankfully the water was only tepid – washed quickly, and then dried himself on the towels provided. The bungalow was pretty basic but it covered the basics and met the case: the air-con was blowing cold, the bed against the wall was enclosed in a white gauzy mosquito net and there was a low table at the foot. He put his flight case on the low table and opened it, took out fresh clothes and got dressed. Stafford had done well – the linen felt good against his skin in the humidity, seeming to absorb the moisture like blotting-paper. He turned reluctantly to the rucksack, picked it up and slung it on to his shoulders. He paced around the room, flexing his muscles. It didn’t feel too bad now but what about when he’d had it on for an hour or two? Perhaps he could strip out some of the contents. For a start he wasn’t going to need ten days’ rations. He dropped it back on to the floor, slipped the sat phone into his pocket and went out.

  The door to Baz and Higgins’s bungalow stood open, although the insect screen was closed. He pushed it and went in. He found himself in a large lounge with a kitchen table plonked in the middle and four mouldering armchairs. The floor was made of unglazed red brick. There was a little bar with a stock of bottles and glasses in the far corner and a large map of Congo on the end wall, roughly framed with unvarnished wood.

  Higgins was sitting at the table with a beer. “You set?” he said, as Jim came in.

  “All sorted.”

  “Good.”

  Baz sauntered in. “There you are, bwana,” he said, then shouted over his shoulder, “Oi, MBD, how’s it coming?”

  “Soon,” an African voice responded.

  “Food’ll be up shortly,” said Baz. “Beer?”

  “Thanks,” said Jim.

  Baz went to the bar and opened a fridge, took out two bottles of Primus beer and opened them. He walked over to the table and handed one to Jim. “Here’s to Barron,” he said, clicking his bottle against Jim’s.

  Higgins waved his by the neck in a token gesture.

  “Cheers,” said Jim, and sat down.

  “We’ve got a bit of a problem with your journey into the hinterland looking for Terry,” Baz began.

  “What is it?”

  “Well… how can I put it?” He coughed. “I’m not going with you and neither is Mark.”

  “OK,” said Jim.

  “And the Chinese won’t take you, not that I can spare them even if they wanted to. Then there’s the soldiers and, trust me, you wouldn’t want to go with them – even if they were falling over themselves at the prospect. So, it’s ticklish.”

  “What about the drilling crews?” asked Jim.

  “They’re up country and they aren’t breaking off for anyone. They’re contractors, paid by the day and by the hole.”

  “What’s your solution?”

  “My solution?” Baz laughed. “It wasn’t my idea for you to come out and start wandering around in the jungle, mate.”

  “You’re right,” said Jim, putting his beer down. ‘I should have held off for a couple of days and got a dozen ex-SAS down here.” He pulled out the sat phone and got up. “I’ll get on to it.”

  “Wait,” said Baz – a bit terse, Jim thought. “That’ll cost a fucking fortune.”

  “Not really,” said Jim. “A couple of mi
l maybe. But the wait for them to arrive might cost Terence his life.”

  Higgins was giving Baz the hairy eyeball.

  “Hold on a minute, let me think,” said Baz. “MBD!” he called. “Come in here.”

  A Congolese boy of about fifteen came into the room, dressed incongruously in a green pinafore. He scanned the room, bug-eyed. “Yes?” he said. His voice was guttural, but with a French intonation.

  “MBD, I might have a job for you.” Baz looked at Jim. “This kid practically runs the place. He’s in and out of the fucking jungle every day, bringing bush meat for us and the soldiers. He’s our Mr Fix-it. If you want to go walkies, he’s as good a guide as anyone.”

  “Is his name really MBD?” asked Jim.

  “Yes,” said Higgins.

  “No,” said the boy. “it’s Man Bites Dog.”

  Jim saw Higgins wince.

  “So we call him MBD,” said Baz.

  “Hi, Man Bites Dog, I’m Jim. Can you take me into the jungle to look for my friend?”

  “You want to look for the man that fell?” said Man Bites Dog. “Forget it – he’s dead.”

  “I’d like to try to find him. Recovering his body would mean something.”

  The boy’s eyes swivelled to Baz and Higgins. “I’ll take you, but we will find nothing.”

  “Thanks,” said Jim.

  “Must look to the food.” Man Bites Dog’s eyes swept the room and he bounded out.

  “‘Man Bites Dog’?” said Jim to Baz and Higgins.

  “Filthy war name,” said Higgins.

  “The kids picked them up during the Mai-Mai conflicts so that if they ever get to go home they can revert to their old ones and no one will know what they’ve done.”

  “Is he a soldier?”

  “Around here everyone’s been a soldier,” said Higgins. “Every village and tribe broke up into little armed groups. If you want to know what ‘anarchy’ really means, this place has had it taped.”

  “Now he’s just a camp follower,” said Baz. “Poor kid’s probably got nothing to go back to.”

  “But he’s solid,” said Higgins, “worth more than our entire flea-bitten platoon put together.”

  Baz agreed: “Yup, he’s a good boy, which is why we don’t call him by his war name.”

  “He needs to drop it,” said Higgins.

  “Right,” said Jim. “Well, I’ll go with him. If there’s a chance that Terry’s still alive it must be shrinking fast. We’ll need to set off tomorrow.”

  “He can’t be alive,” said Baz. “You can’t fall a thousand feet from a helicopter and live.” An image of the chopper, maybe only fifty feet above the tree-line, flashed into Baz’s mind, with the impression of what might have been Kitson in the canopy.

  “I mean,” said Baz, “has anyone fallen that far and survived? It’d be a one in a million chance.”

  “Well,” said Jim, “he’s got a family and right now they’d probably like to bury him, if nothing else. I’m not going to leave him there to be eaten by wild animals because no one can be bothered to find his body.”

  Baz shook his head. “It’s a fucking jungle out there, mate. You could be standing three feet away from his body and never know it was there. We can’t even spot our drilling rigs from the air, bloody great lumps of metal they are, bigger than a fourteen-wheeler. Chances of finding a body are next to nothing. We tried, you know – we have a pretty good idea of where he went out of the chopper. I was sat right next to the bloody idiot. You’ve heard the expression ‘impenetrable jungle’? Well, there it is,’ he jabbed a finger at the map on the wall, “fucking miles of it.”

  Jim sighed. “At least I’ll be able to say I did my best.”

  “Yeah,” said Baz, “and I respect you for that, I really do, but you have to remember that this is Africa. Miracles don’t happen here.”

  Man Bites Dog came in with a big dish of rice and vegetables, then disappeared and returned with a bowl of steaming stew and a pile of plates. He put the bowl to one side and spread out the plates then disappeared again. He came back this time with knives and forks.

  To Jim the stew smelt tasty but unfamiliar, rather like a curry he had never come across before.

  “Man Bites Dog, what is this?” asked Jim, as the boy brought three beers to the table.

  “Stew.”

  “I guessed that, but what’s in it?”

  Man Bites Dog rolled his eyes. “Porcupine.”

  “Rat,” said Higgins.

  “Really?” Jim felt a little shaken.

  “Porcupine,” reiterated Man Bites Dog, his chin jutting forwards.

  “Monkey,” said Baz.

  “Maybe,” said Man Bites Dog. “Maybe Porcupine.”

  “Great. Ebola casserole again,” said Higgins, spooning some on to his vegetable rice. “Bloody tasty, though, I bet,” he said.

  Jim forked up a small piece of meat and sniffed. It smelt hearty. He tasted it. “Pretty good rat,” he said.

  Baz had filled his plate. “Maybe it is porcupine.”

  Jim helped himself and began to eat.

  “We’ll take you up on to the kimberlite in the chopper – it’s less than a mile to where Terry fell. If you don’t find him in a couple of days, you never will. We’ll come and pick you up when you’re done or, failing that, MBD’ll walk you out. Just head downhill and you’ll come out somewhere you can get back to us.”

  “Uphill bad, downhill good,” said Higgins, with his mouth full.

  “I’ve got GPS,” said Jim.

  “You’re sorted, then,” said Baz. “We’ll give you the coordinates of where we lost Terry. When you get there you’ll see what we mean. And if you haven’t had enough in a day or two you need your head examining.” The chances were that, in roughly eight hours, Jim Evans would be so fucking sick they’d have to air-ambulance him out of Goma to the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in London. He and Higgins had had years of eating native grub that would kill a normal Brit stone dead. The next morning Jim would be able to do nothing, except shit and puke. He wouldn’t be able to even stand, let alone go yomping around the jungle.

  He snapped himself out of his thoughts. “We’re pretty much fucked on the cobalt, so we’ll have to do another money raise, probably about another ten mil – deeply discounted, of course – thirty or forty p. Now you’ve pushed the price up to a hundred and ten we’ve got to make the most of the panic. You good for your three or four million of it?”

  Jim was chewing a stringy yet satisfying piece of meat. He swallowed before he spoke. “Sure,” he said, “no problem.”

  Baz laughed. “You must have a lot of fucking money.”

  “Yeah,” said Jim, “I do.”

  Baz fixed him with a cheeky stare. “How much?”

  “Enough,” said Jim.

  “Well, hats off to you” said Baz. He smiled again. He had been selling short Barron stock hard into the ridiculous rally that Jim had fired off and would cover his short in the rights issue for a thumping profit – another few million into the fuck-off-permanently fund. It wasn’t the way he’d planned it but a profit was a profit.

  Jim helped himself to more of the flavoursome rice and stew. He hoped it wasn’t a monkey he was eating – that would be really sad.

  “This isn’t monkey, it’s pygmy,” Baz declared. “Ker, ker, ker.”

  “Shut up, Baz,” said Higgins.

  Jim’s fork had arrested in the air. “Pygmy?”

  “They eat ’em here,” said Baz, with a cold glint in his eyes.

  “It’s not pygmy,” said Higgins, “but they do get eaten – well, they did. Or so they reckon.”

  “Fucking hell,” said Jim. “I thought that kind of thing was a myth.”

  “Maybe it is,” said Higgins, “but the militias have been said to kill and eat them because pygmies are magical people and by eating them you get their magic. They even complained to the UN. Didn’t read that one in your London newspapers, did you?”

  Baz was laughin
g – Jim couldn’t understand why. “That’s horrible,” he said.

  “There have been plenty of horrible things around here,” said Baz, suddenly serious.

  “That’s another thing about wandering around the jungle,” said Higgins. “The pygmies don’t take shit any more. If they get pissed off, they’ll have you – and I don’t blame them. There they are, happy chappies living in the Garden of Eden, and all these fuckers keep coming along to fuck them up. If it is not loggers, it’s militias. If it’s not militias, it’s farmers burning their forest down. If it’s not farmers its gorilla conservationists trying to boot them out because they might eat one occasionally.”

  Man Bites Dog was standing in the doorway and when Jim caught his eye he turned and vanished.

  “That’s why it’s so hard to bring a mine into line here. The country’s like a big bag of sharp rusty nails – you have to stick your hand in it and ferret around.”

  “So why are we here?” asked Jim.

  “Well,” said Baz, “there are three kimberlites jam-packed with diamonds out there – worth suffering a whole lot of shit for. Ker, ker, ker.” That awful quacking noise was beginning to irritate Jim. “For diamonds you can put up with almost anything.”

  A hill packed full of diamonds and the future Barron stock chart he had imagined suddenly fused in Jim’s mind. Suddenly it all made perfect sense. A diamond was just a piece of carbon crushed under a huge amount of pressure till it formed a clear crystal. Volcanoes did that and he was sitting next to the most amazing set of volcanoes imaginable. Diamonds were compressed wealth, tiny crystals of a valueless element that became the earth’s ultimate treasure. And Baz Mycock must indeed have located a major diamond deposit. What a tragedy that Kitson had had to come out to prove what Jim had already known from looking at the chart. The chart said that the Barron mining claim was worth a fortune and so it would be. The charts never lied to him – he had all the money in the world to prove that – so why hadn’t Kitson or Sebastian listened to him? Jim sighed. He was about to make a pile more money that he didn’t need. He started on his second beer.