Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  Apart from Beijing, that is.

  What happened next was so surprising, both for Obiang and Mayé, that even weeks later they were still convinced it was a bad dream. On the day when office was to be handed over, a boldly soldered-together alliance of Bubi and Fang, including members of the armed forces, simultaneously stormed numerous police stations in Malabo as well as the seat of government, taking the dictator and his designated successor prisoner. They drove them to the Cameroon border and threw them out of the country without any further ado. America’s investment had paid off: practically every key position in government circles had been bought. This even turned out to be to Obiang’s advantage, because America refused to tolerate any cases of lynch justice for the logistic and strategic support of the coup.

  For the next few hours, the country seemed to have no leader.

  Then Severo Moto’s successor emerged from an aeroplane, a university-educated economist by the name of Juan Aristide Ndongo, from the Bubi clan. He had once been forced to reside in Black Beach for a number of years for his criticism of the regime, and for that reason had gained the trust of a large proportion of the population. Ndongo was known to be clever, friendly and weak, the ideal Manchurian candidate. The Fang and Bubi agreed on him in advance with the USA, Great Britain and Spain, expecting to be able to spoon-feed good old Ndongo to their heart’s desire, but he surprised them by having his own plans. The speedy dissolution of parliament is followed by the equally speedy formation of a new government, in which the Bubi and Fang are equally represented. Ndongo promises to create the long overdue infrastructure, a pulsing educational system, to reinvigorate the economy and to provide healthcare and prosperity for everyone. But, above all, he rails against China’s bloodsucking vampire capitalism, which he sees as having destroyed Equatorial Guinea in collaboration with Obiang’s recklessness. He also puts a stop to Beijing’s licence treaties and puts the American ones back in force, without forgetting – with wise foresight – the Spanish, British, French and Germans.

  But reality catches up with Ndongo like a pack of hungry dogs. His attempts to put his plans into action aggravate the Fang elite, who hadn’t reckoned with his political survival instinct. He puts oil income into trust funds instead of transferring it to private accounts, and by doing so keeps the money out of the reach of corruption. He keeps to his promise and builds streets and hospitals, kick-starts the wood trade, and relaxes censorship. In doing so, he provokes the hate of the Obiang clique who, they now realise, let themselves be bought without taking into consideration that the preaching Bubi politician intended to take the lead. Within the first year after the coup, the hard-liners move over to the opposition. Ndongo’s successes just feed their hatred, so they try to sabotage him wherever possible, denouncing his inability to rid the world of ethnic resentment and stirring it up in the process. They claim that Ndongo is just another Obiang, a puppet of the USA, and that he will discriminate against the Fang. Many bravely initiated projects grind to a halt. Aids grows rampant, crime is rife, and Ndongo’s parliament proves itself to be just as corrupt as his predecessor’s, while the president, hobbling around defiantly on the crutches of legality, begins to lose touch.

  In the second year under Ndongo’s rule, radical Esangui-Fang launch attacks on American and European oil institutions. Bubi and Fang go for each other’s necks as they have since time immemorial, terrorist cells thwart every attempt at political stabilisation, and Ndongo’s idea of a better world collapses with a crash. He has gone too far for his opponents, but not far enough for his friends. In a painful act of self-denial, Ndongo takes a harsher stance, carries out mass arrests and loses what was once his only capital overnight: integrity.

  Meanwhile, Mayé is warming up on the sidelines in Cameroon.

  * * *

  ‘From the outside,’ said Yoyo, ‘it looked like this: Obiang, sick and bitter, hangs around in the neighbouring country and pressures Mayé to force Ndongo out of office at the next available opportunity. But the old man doesn’t want Mayé himself to rule, but rather to prepare the ground for Teodorin and Gabriel, who have sunk sobbing into one another’s arms at the mere thought of Ndongo. Rivalry is no longer the issue. The country is destabilised and Ndongo is for it. All Mayé would really need to do is travel in and say Boo! Aside from the fact that he can’t enter the country of course.’

  ‘But because putschists don’t need a visa—’

  ‘—he agrees and sets off. It’s common knowledge by then that Mayé has already made contact with a private mercenary firm, African Protection Services, APS for short. And they’ – Yoyo paused for a short, dramatic moment – ‘are of interest to us!’

  ‘Let me guess. This is where Vogelaar comes back into the picture.’

  Yoyo smiled smugly. ‘I’ve found the missing years. Does the name ArmourGroup ring any bells with you?’

  ‘It does. It’s a London security giant.’

  ‘In 2008 ArmourGroup took on a mandate in Kenya. Around that time, a smaller company, Armed African Services, went through a de-merger. Vogelaar’s Mamba was operating in the same crisis area. They crossed paths, perhaps one of them approached the other and borrowed some ammunition or something, but to cut a long story short they took a liking to one another and formed APS in 2010, with Vogelaar at management level. Do you see?’

  ‘I do. So Mayé overthrew Ndongo with the help of APS. But who paid APS?’

  ‘That’s exactly the point. Mayé was incredibly friendly with China.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘I mean that we assumed the whole time that the coup attempt discussed in the text fragment was the one from last year. But Beijing would have had far more reason to pull the strings in 2017.’

  ‘And how did Mayé’s coup go?’

  ‘Without a hitch. As a precaution, Ndongo was out of the country. But no one seemed particularly surprised by it. No resistance, no fatalities. The only one who was shocked was Obiang. Mayé had numerous opposition members imprisoned, including Obiang’s closest confidants, Teodorin supporters, Gabrielists—’

  ‘Because he had no intention of stepping down.’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘And Vogelaar became his security boss.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Is there proof that China was tied up in it?’

  ‘Owen, what’s wrong with you?’ Yoyo reprimanded him. ‘There’s never proof, you know that. But on the other hand you would have to be a zombie to overlook the fact that Exxon, Marathon and Co. got the chop immediately after the putsch, whereas the Chinese company Sinopec was suddenly swimming in oil from Equatorial Guinea. Then there’s Mayé’s speeches: they owed the Chinese their gratitude, China had always been a brother, blah blah blah. When it came down to it, he wholeheartedly agreed to his country being sold out to China.’

  Jericho nodded. It was obvious that Yoyo was right: Mayé had taken power with the help of the Chinese and, as agreed, hadn’t forgotten to reward them. But then why did they later want to kill him?’

  ‘And if it wasn’t the Chinese …’ said Yoyo, as if she had read his thoughts. ‘Last year, I mean.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘Is it that hard to guess? Mayé doesn’t miss a single opportunity to snub the Americans. He has their representatives imprisoned, breaks all contracts, aids and abets terrorist attacks on American institutions, even though he denies it outright in diplomatic circles. In any case, it was enough that Washington was threatening him with sanctions and invasion.’

  ‘It sounds like sabre-rattling.’

  ‘That’s precisely the question.’

  ‘So what then? The guy ruled for seven years. What happened in that time?’

  ‘He held his hand out. Finished the economy off. Made opposition members disappear, had them tortured, beheaded, who knows what else. Before long, Obiang looked like a philanthropist compared with Mayé, but now they had him by the neck. Mayé didn’t get involved with cannibalism, witchcraft and the whole black magic sce
ne, but he was certainly developing considerable delusions of grandeur. He built skyscrapers that no one moved into, but he didn’t care, the important thing was how the skyline looked. He planned Equatorial Guinea’s own version of Las Vegas and wanted to set up an opera house in the sea. The final straw was when he announced that Equatorial Guinea was promoting itself to become a Space nation, to which end, and in all seriousness, he had a launching pad built in the middle of the jungle.’

  ‘Wait a second—’ It slowly dawned on Jericho that he had read something about it at the time. An African dictator who had built a space-rocket launch base and bragged to the rest of the world that his country would be sending astronauts to the Moon. ‘Wasn’t that—?’

  ‘In 2022,’ said Yoyo. ‘Two years before he was overthrown.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Well, do you see any Africans in space?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Exactly. He did send one thing up though. A news satellite.’

  ‘And what on earth did Mayé need a news satellite for?’

  Yoyo circled her finger over her temple. ‘Because he wasn’t all there, Owen. Why do men get penis extensions? They’re nothing but space-rocket launch bases on a smaller scale. But the whole thing became a mockery because the satellite broke down just a few weeks after the launch.’

  ‘But it was launched.’

  ‘Yes, without a hitch.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing really. Two years later, Mayé was liquidated, and Ndongo came back.’ Yoyo leaned back. Her entire posture said she was ready to call it a day and unwind. ‘You probably know more about that than I do. That was the part you researched.’

  ‘But I don’t know much about Ndongo.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Yoyo shrugged. ‘If you want to find out who footed the bill this time then you’ll need to take a close look at Ndongo’s oil politics. I’ve got no idea whether he has been as loyally devoted to China as Mayé was.’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You said yourself that he would have attacked China pretty heftily. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Ndongo was put in there by the USA and taken out by China.’

  ‘So who took Mayé out?’

  Jericho gnawed on his lower lip.

  statement coup Chinese government

  ‘Something in this story doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘In the text fragment it’s about a coup that China is tied up in, but they can’t mean the coup of 2017. For one thing, that’s eight years ago. And in any case, everyone suspects Beijing was involved in it anyway, so why would they be hunting us down because of that? And another thing, it was explicitly about Donner and Vogelaar. But Vogelaar only comes up in connection with Mayé.’

  ‘Or was placed there by Beijing back then. Maybe as a kind of guard for Mayé. A spy.’

  ‘And Donner?’

  ‘Think back, it wasn’t just a coup last year. It was an execution. A concerted effort to get rid of witnesses. Mayé must have known something, or rather, he and his staff must have. Something so explosive that someone was prepared to kill him for it.’

  ‘Something about China.’

  ‘Why else would China have cleared someone out of the way that they themselves put in power? Perhaps Mayé became a liability. And Donner was one of his staff.’

  ‘And Vogelaar was the one who had contact with Beijing. As security chief, he was closest to Mayé. So he recommends decapitating Mayé’s regime.’

  ‘And they do. Apart from Donner.’

  ‘He gets away.’

  ‘And now Vogelaar is supposed to find him and give him the same send-off he gave Mayé. That’s why they’re after us. Because we know that Donner’s cover has been blown. Because we could beat Vogelaar to it. Because we could warn Donner.’

  ‘And Kenny?’

  ‘He might be Vogelaar’s Chinese contact.’

  Jericho’s brain was throbbing. If the yarn they were spinning was actually true, then Donner’s life was hanging by a silk thread.

  No, there had to be more to it. It wasn’t just about them preventing Donner from being killed. That was part of it, certainly, but the real reason for the brutal hunt of the last twenty-four hours was something else. Someone was worried that they could find out what Donner knew.

  He stared out into the night and hoped they weren’t too late.

  Berlin, Germany

  A glowing circuit board. A mildewed spider’s web against a black background. Colonies of endlessly interwoven deep-sea organisms, the neuron landscape of an endlessly sprawling brain, a cosmos slipping away. At night, and seen from a great height, the world looks like anything but a globe illuminated only by streetlamps, neon signs, cars and house lights, by exhausted taxi drivers and shift workers, by the perpetual search for diversion and by worries which find their expression in sleeplessness and apartments lit up into the early hours. What – in the eyes of an extraterrestrial observer – might look like a coded message, actually means: Yes, we are alone in the universe, everyone for themselves and all for one, and we’re here in the dark wilderness too, except that we’re underdeveloped, poor and cut off from everything.

  Jericho stared indecisively out of the window. Yoyo had dozed off in her seat, the jet was preparing for landing. Tu didn’t like engaging in conversation while he was at the controls. Left to his own devices, Jericho had tried for a while to wring information about Ndongo’s current time in office out of the internet, but the media interest in Equatorial Guinea seemed to have vanished with Mayé’s departure. He suddenly felt his motivation ebbing away. Yoyo’s light, melodic snoring had the air of a soliloquy to it. Her chest rose and sank, then she gave a start and her eyes rolled under her eyelids. Jericho watched her. It was almost as though the confusing moment of intimacy they had shared had never happened.

  He turned his head and let his gaze wander out over the ghost of light as it become steadily denser. At a height of ten kilometres, he had felt a gnawing loneliness, too far from the Earth, not close enough to the skies. He was grateful for every metre that the plane sank closer to the ground, allowing the strange pattern to form familiar pictures again. Buildings, streets and squares created the illusion of familiarity. Jericho had been in Berlin a number of times. He spoke German well, not perfectly, because he had never made the effort to learn it, but what he could say was accent-free. As soon as he put his mind to swotting up on a language he mastered it in a matter of weeks, and, in any case, just listening was enough to be able to understand.

  He fervently hoped that they would find Andre Donner still alive.

  At 04.14, they landed in Berlin Brandenburg airport. Tu set off to arrange a hire car. When he came back he was morosely waving an Audi stick.

  ‘I would have preferred another make,’ he moaned as they crossed the neon wasteland of the parking lot in search of their vehicle. Jericho trotted behind him with his rucksack slung over his shoulder, accompanied by a shuffling and sedated-looking Yoyo, whom they had barely managed to wake. Apart from Diane and some hardware, he had nothing else with him. Tu had refused to take him to Xintiandi before their departure so he could pack a few essentials. Not even Yoyo had been permitted to go back to her apartment, although she been bold enough to protest, making Tu see red.

  ‘No discussion!’ he had scolded her. ‘Kenny and his mob could be lying in wait. They’d either finish you off right on the spot or follow you to me.’

  ‘Then just send one of your people instead.’

  ‘They’d still follow them.’

  ‘Or just let me—’

  ‘Forget it!’

  ‘For God’s sake! I can’t just run around in the same smelly clothes for days on end! And nor can Owen, right? Or can you, Owen?’

  ‘Don’t try ganging up on me. I said no! Berlin is a civilised city; I hear they have socks, underwear, running water and even electricity there.’

  There was electricity; that muc
h was true. But beyond that a hot shower or the scent of fresh laundry seemed light years away in that deserted, car-packed hangar. Tu hurried past dozens of identical-looking metal and synthetic-fibre bodies, swinging his full to bursting travel bag, chivvied the others along and finally spotted the dark, discreet limousine.

  ‘The car’s not bad at all,’ Jericho dared to comment.

  ‘I would have preferred a Chinese make.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You don’t drive a Chinese car. Not even when you’re in China.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Tu, as the car read the data from the stick and obediently opened its doors. ‘Such a talented investigator, but in some respects you’re from the Stone Age. I drive a Jaguar, and Jaguar is a Chinese make.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since three years ago. We bought it from the Indians, just like we bought Bentley from the Germans. I would just as happily have taken a Bentley of course.’

  ‘Why not a Rolls?’

  ‘Under no circumstances! Rolls-Royce is Indian.’

  ‘You two are nuts,’ yawned Yoyo, and lay down across the back seat.

  ‘Listen,’ said Jericho, as he slid onto the passenger seat. ‘They don’t automatically become Chinese models just because you buy them. They’re English. People buy them because they like English cars, and that’s precisely why you buy them too.’

  ‘But they belong—’

  ‘—to the Chinese, I know. Sometimes the entire globalisation process just seems like one big misunderstanding.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Owen! Really!’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Comments like that didn’t have any punch even twenty years ago.’

  Tu steered the car in slalom through the aisles, whose uniformity was only outdone by the fact that they seemed so infinite in number. ‘I’d rather you told me whether you’ve found out anything else that might be of interest to us.’