The Twain Maxim

by Clem Chambers

  Not surprisingly Pierre wasn’t bothered by the stifling atmosphere, and Jim was thinking idly how strong the boy must be in comparison to himself, when Pierre caught his arm. Something whistled past his ear, and then Pierre was dragging him and he was running behind the boy.

  Pierre was fast and Jim was having trouble keeping up, his wounds jarring as he stumbled over hidden tussocks.

  Eventually Pierre pulled him behind a tree and, panting, started to rustle in his bag. He pulled out a pink piece of cloth, covered with large white and yellow flowers, and tugged it over his head. It was a dress. He grabbed bullets from his bandolier and started to thread them quickly through his tight curls. “Let’s go,” he said jumping up and grasping Jim’s hand again.

  They were running downhill as fast as Jim could manage until they burst through another bush and Pierre hauled him behind another tree.

  “Pygmies,” Pierre said. “They warned us off.”

  Jim was looking at Pierre, the dress and the shiny brass shells in his hair.

  Pierre returned his stare defiantly. “This battle dress saved me many times,” he said. “Now listen.” He closed his eyes to concentrate on the jungle sounds. After a few minutes he said, “Let’s go further away.”

  Jim was just getting his breath back. He took a look at the GPS and pointed in the general direction of the camp.

  Pierre nodded. “I think so.”

  Dog Bites Man, child soldier, Congolese insurgent, hardened killer, was wearing a little pink dress. He was the most frightening thing Jim had ever seen.

  An enemy would gun down a kid with a Kalashnikov, but the second’s hesitation that a girl with spangles in her hair caused was all the time Dog Bites Man needed to blow you away. This was real-time evolution, Jim thought, forced on souls clinging to the edge of an abyss.

  His side was aching badly now. They were not going to find Kitson and the sooner he could get out of the jungle and back to civilisation the better.

  “Pierre,” he said on impulse.

  Pierre stopped and turned.

  “Thanks for saving me back there.”

  “No problem.”

  Jim shuffled in his pocket. “I’ve got a present for you,” he said, and held out the giant uncut diamond. He handed it to him. “It’s yours.”

  Pierre was mesmerised by the stone. “I don’t think the little men wanted to hurt us,” he said vaguely. “If they’d wanted to they could have hit us with their arrows for sure.”

  “It’s yours anyway.” Jim smiled.

  “This is big money,” said Pierre.

  “Yes,” said Jim, “and that’s why I’m giving it to you. It’s the Étoile Pierre – étoile is star in French, right?”

  “Yes,” said Pierre, holding it up to a ray of light that had punctured the canopy above them. “Étoile Pierre.” He laughed. “You’re crazy.” He put it into his pocket. “Let’s go, Jim, before the pygmies change their minds.”

  31

  Jim switched on the sat phone and called Baz.

  “Hi, Jim, have you found him?”

  “No,” said Jim.

  “Shame,” said Baz. “Didn’t think you would, though.”

  “Can you come and pick us up tomorrow at about midday?”

  “No, mate,” said Baz. “The chopper’s out of commission.”

  “Really?” Jim was appalled.

  “Yeah, you’ll have to come out on foot.”

  “That’s about eight miles!”

  “Shouldn’t take you more than a day or so.” Baz sounded as though he was grinning. “Just walk downhill and you’ll pop out by the camp. You’ve got GPS so you won’t get lost.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Jim. “I’ve had about enough already.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty harsh in there, isn’t it?” he said. There was a slurping noise. Jim guessed he was sipping a cold beer and was overcome by the desire to join him. “Don’t worry there’ll be a nice reception laid on for you when you get back.”

  Baz wanted to laugh. With luck the insurgents would hack Jim to pieces and a nice RNS to the market would crash the stock. Then he would pick up his lovely mine for pennies in the pound.

  *

  “I guess I’ll see you in a couple of days,” said Jim.

  “Mind how you go.”

  He called Stafford. “I’ll be stuck in the jungle for a couple of more days than expected. I’ll call you when I’m out. Out of batteries.”

  “Ri–”

  He hung up.

  The sat-phone screen advised, “Low batteries.” Fuck, he thought. “We’re going to have to walk out,” he said to Pierre.

  “Easy. You going home straight?” asked Pierre.

  “Yes,” said Jim. His companion was so much less terrifying out of his battle dress. “You want to come away from here?”

  “No,” said Pierre, “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” said Jim.

  “This is my fate.”

  “But don’t you want to go home too and be Pierre again?”

  “I can’t,” said Pierre.

  “You can’t leave?”

  Pierre looked down at the ground.

  “Can’t we change your fate together?”

  “No,” said Pierre, “not even a big man like you.”

  Pierre was out of the tent and making breakfast by the time Jim woke up and remembered with a jolt that he hadn’t switched the phone off. He rummaged for it among his clothes and pulled it out. He switched it on and it went live. Thank God for that, he thought. He had switched it off after all. Then it flashed and switched off again. Jim moaned. He hadn’t and now the battery was flat.

  They ate breakfast and broke camp, Jim loading his rucksack with all the clobber. It would be a long walk, even though it was all downhill. They would finish the day about two miles from the mine and Jim calculated they should get back by about midday the next day. He was longing for the air-conditioned cool of a five-star hotel. Wherever Kitson had fallen, it was unlikely anyone would ever find him.

  The terrain going down the mountainside seemed to change every few hundred metres. Even though he was weary of the jungle it was still a place of constant amazement to him. He saw a bird that looked like a vulture eating fruit from a tree while tiny birds flitted around him like flashing blue darts. All the time he could hear running water but, as they descended the mountain, the heat grew and the sun beat down through the canopy.

  Pierre seemed almost part of the forest, always alert but happy and relaxed, sauntering through the undergrowth as if it was his own garden. Jim was happy enough, chewing salty snacks and topping himself up with water. The rucksack was a formidable weight but he pushed on behind Pierre as the hot day dragged by. When they reached the four-mile point, they stopped for a breather. Pierre brewed some coffee and Jim wondered about pitching camp there. If they did, he thought, they’d have gone four miles with four more to go the next day, which would put back the glorious moment of arrival by several hours. Five down with three to go would feel much better than four down with four ahead.

  The distance ticked down slowly, a long stumbling ramble through increasingly challenging terrain. Pierre had no difficulty with it, but Jim’s pack got heavier and heavier and even felt wider as they wove in and out of the undergrowth.

  “Five miles,” he called to Pierre.

  “We camp over there.” Pierre gestured forwards to a point Jim couldn’t distinguish. He pressed on and followed Pierre to a tall, broad tree. It was a nice spot and Jim heaved off the pack, with a groan of relief, and slumped on to the ground. He drank some water and rubbed his forehead with his soaked sweatband.

  “I’ll put up the tent,” said Pierre.

  “Thanks,” said Jim. “I’m going to rest my bones for a few minutes.’ He checked his side with his hand. It was holding up fine. What an idiot he was coming out here with an injury, he thought. He’d got away with it, but only just.

  The tent exploded in Pierre’s hands and he shrieked with joy
. It would be a tight smelly shelter, but welcome for all that.

  Jim was on his last change of clothes and he stank, but by midday or thereabouts they’d be back at the camp and he could luxuriate under a shower, even if the water was warm. He examined the sores on his side. Remarkably they seemed to be healing faster. Maybe it was the heat – or maybe the months of antibiotics were finally finishing their work. Encouraged, he washed and dressed them.

  A couple of hours, and he’d be back at the mine. From there, he’d get a chopper to fly in from Goma – or a jeep or any kind of transport – and soon he’d be back in London, looking at the river.

  Once he’d got back to base he’d ask Pierre again if he wanted a hand out of his predicament. He had so much money and so little to do with it: why not try a few good deeds? In fact, helping just a few people seemed suddenly like a pretty pitiful gesture.

  He would ask Davas about philanthropy. The old man was certain to know what to do and how to do it. Congo’s poverty had shocked him; it was almost too terrible to contemplate.

  The Garmin GPS was a magic piece of equipment. Its simple black LCD display told him where to go, and it had lasted on a couple of AA batteries the whole three days. Without Pierre or the GPS he would have been in terrible trouble. The screen said they had about three miles to go.

  32

  Jalbinyo sighed loudly down the telephone. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, too, Laurent. But I need you to get these people off my mine.”

  “If only,” said Jalbinyo.

  “You’ll have to try,” said Baz. “I don’t need it to happen right away, but you have to fix it so that they leave when I say they must.”

  “It is out of my hands.”

  “Why?” said Baz.

  “Because I didn’t put them there.”

  “I’m not asking you to put them somewhere. I’m asking you to arrange for them to move on in a little while.”

  “I didn’t put them there but my boss did.”

  “Your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your boss has invaded my mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is now worth so much he wants to protect it.”

  “From what?”

  “You, I should think.”

  “Fuck!” said Baz. “That’s not on. What are you going to do about it?”

  Jalbinyo sighed again. “What can I do?”

  “For a start you can stop collecting the money I send you.”

  “I mean, what I can do for you?”

  “Set up a meeting for me with your boss.”

  “That will be hard.”

  “Sorry, Laurent, I can’t hear you – it must be the pain in my cheque-writing hand distracting me.”

  “It will be hard.”

  “Well, tell him to see me in a hurry or I walk and he can keep his bloody friends sitting in the jungle until hell freezes over. I’m not hanging around in this shithole to be fucked about over a worthless plot of jungle.” Baz laughed. “You’ve got twenty-four hours and then I’m off back to London, where I’ll make sure that that plot of land is blighted for the next century.”

  “Why would you walk from such a valuable mine?”

  “Laurent, excuse me, but you know fuck-all about mining, right?”

  “I am not an expert.”

  “What we’ve got here are deposits. Deposits like these need large-scale investment. You can’t fucking dig it up with a spade, you need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars just to get the first load out. You need a power station, you need dams and you need equipment the size of the Empire State Building to dig. You can’t build that kind of mine if every time you start digging a bunch of armed fuckers shows up and holds you to ransom. No one is going to put a dime into a project that has a whiff of those kinds of problems.”

  There was silence at the end of the phone.

  “So if I can’t talk to the top man, and quick, I’m walking and that’s curtains for Barron.”

  “I will do all I can but I’m not sure he will see you so quick.”

  “Laurent, I’ve got the world to play with and I’ve had it up to my back teeth with this little corner of it.” He stabbed his mobile off with his thumb.

  He picked up his whisky and took a big mouthful. He should be selling out of the mine right now, rather than trying to resurrect the situation. He could make an enormous killing if he did – the price was hitting ten quid. Fuck it, he thought, fuck the diamonds, fuck everything.

  He called Ralph. “Ralphy, close me out, close the lot.”

  “What?” said Ralph.

  “Close me out of all the Barron – sell as many of my positions as you can into this buying.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of stock,” Ralph quavered. He sounded as if he’d gone into shock.

  “I know. Do it as best you can. Sell it down right to the bid offer price, but get as much as you can.”

  “What about the diamonds? Is that a red herring?”

  “No, mate, they’re there by the sackful, but I’ve had it.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “I’ve had bad news,” said Baz, “and just when I’ve hit it big.”

  “What bad news?”

  “I’ve got throat cancer.”

  “Oh, God…”

  “I’ve been getting these bad throats for a few months now,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve just got back from the American clinic here and they say it looks pretty clear cut.”

  “You need to head for the States – they’ve got the latest stuff.”

  “Yeah,” said Baz. “So get me clean out as best you can. Let lucky Jim have the show.”

  “Are you sure?” said Ralph.

  “I haven’t got a lot of time to think about it.”

  “It’ll take me maybe a week if we want to avoid crashing the stock.”

  “That’s all right,” said Baz. “Get as much as you can.”

  “When are you back?

  “I’m on the next possible flight out,” said Baz. “I’m going to check into Harley Street and get a load of tests and take it one day at a time.”

  “Baz, if there’s anything I can do?”

  “No,” said Baz, “there’s nothing. Thanks.” He hung up. Claiming imminent death was as corny as cons came, but he’d never used that one, let alone on one of his trusted conspirators. With a bit of luck he’d pocket a hundred million and Ralph’s no doubt handsome profits would add to his joy over his friend’s swift recovery.

  Baz was filled with a wave of relief. Pretty soon he’d be back on the beach shagging lovely young whores. He grabbed his hotel-room key and walked to the door. The sooner he booked his ticket the sooner he’d be gone.

  33

  They were out of the forest and into the grass of the plateau, the mine compound fifty yards ahead. “We did it,” said Jim.

  Pierre didn’t respond. He was looking at the building and the two soldiers who were walking down towards them. Their combat pants bore light green patches. He turned to Jim. “Run! Run away!”

  Jim started.

  “If you want to live, run!”

  As Jim turned the soldiers started to shout and Pierre was running towards them yelling and waving his arms. There was a burst of gunfire but Jim couldn’t see what was going on because he was struggling up the hill and into the bushes. When he had reached cover, he spun round in time to see Pierre remonstrating with the soldiers. One knocked him down with the butt of his rifle. The other took his Kalashnikov and hauled him to his feet. Jim ran a little further along the trail but it wasn’t taking him upwards. Instead every time he took a turning that he thought would lead him further into the jungle it twisted back on itself and he was heading towards the mine. He was exhausted, his legs trembling and uncoordinated. He jerked to a standstill when he almost ran out of the trees and saw the soldiers dragging Pierre towards the camp. The boy was limp and staggering.

  Jim r
eversed himself into a stand of reedy plants that lay in front of a tall large-leafed bush. He crouched down, threw off the pack, pushed it into the bush’s hollow centre and climbed into the dark alongside it. Through a tiny gap in the dense vegetation he could see pretty much the whole camp. He might as well hide there, he thought, as anywhere.

  Pierre was groaning. His head was throbbing and his mind was only just coming back to him. He could see General Adash standing outside Mr Baz’s bungalow.

  “He let a miner get away,” shouted the soldier who had hit him. “He’s helping them.”

  Adash stepped off the veranda with two of his captains, who looked angry on their general’s behalf.

  “Dog Bites Man,” said Adash, “what have you done? I thought you would be loyal to me, but I see I was wrong.”

  The soldier let go of Pierre and he fell to the ground. “He’s a liar,” said Pierre, struggling to his feet. There was a large lump on his temple, which was bleeding.

  “Why would they lie?”

  Pierre hesitated. Adash slapped him across the face and he fell.

  Adash was pulling a machete from one of his captains’ belts and smiling down on him.

  “Kill me and kill my secret with me,” spat Pierre, blood trickling from his mouth.

  “I don’t need your English ‘secret’ any more,” said Adash, feeling the edge of the machete with his left thumb. “I have two other followers now who speak as well as you,” he sneered, “perhaps better.”

  “My secret is in my pocket, so kill me like you killed my family.” He scrambled up and the two soldiers grabbed his arms and shoulders.

  “I didn’t kill your family.” Adash pushed Pierre in the chest with the dull nose of the blade. “Now you have reminded me, I will.”

  “I don’t believe you – you kill everybody. They were dead the day you took me.”

  “So, Dog Bites Man, what have you got in your pocket?”

  “Let me go and I’ll show you.”

  “Let him go.”