The American Mission (11 page)

“We have nearly thirty boys staying with us at the moment. Most
are orphans, a few have parents too poor or incapacitated to take care of them. A just society would not require parents to surrender their children because of penury. But there are more children who need our help than we have beds.”

“Where do the kids stay?” Alex asked.

“In the buildings behind the church. It's starting to get a little crowded, and I'd like to renovate what used to be the stables and turn it into a dormitory. That's a pretty big project, however.” Antoine sighed and looked up briefly. “God will provide in good time.”

He glanced slyly at Alex. “Maybe he already has.”

“Maybe.”

“I told you you'd end up paying for dinner.”

In truth, Alex had been hoping that Father Antoine would give him an excuse to strap on a tool belt and do some building. Diplomacy could be an extremely creative profession, but it was by nature somewhat abstract. Alex welcomed whatever opportunities came his way to descend from the ethereal world of statecraft and build real, physical things.

“Come, let me take you to the dormitories. You can meet the children.”

“Lead on.”

Alex surveyed the stables as they walked past. He could see right away that this was going to be a big job. The building would need plumbing and electricity as well as basic structural repairs, a new roof, new windows, and a real floor. Alex couldn't do it alone, and he knew from experience that Father Antoine would be no help. He hoped the kids were up to the job.

•   •   •

T
he blockhouse dormitories were crowded, but there wasn't the frenetic madness that Alex would have expected from a similarly large group of American kids packed together in a tight space. The house was two levels. Half of the downstairs was taken up by rows of
bunk beds with thin mattresses. The other half was dominated by a long table with wooden benches that was already set for dinner. The plates and cups were made of cheap, unbreakable plastic. A small lounge area in the back corner held a television set, a few books, even fewer toys, and a couple of wooden chairs. Some of the younger kids were watching what looked to Alex like a Mexican soap opera on the television. All of the children wore dark gray shorts and white, short-sleeved shirts with button-down fronts and an elaborate seal over the left breast.

A door off the side led to the kitchen, where Alex could see the older boys preparing the evening meal. The distinctive odor of boiling cassava root wafted from the room.

“Gentlemen, we have a guest.” Father Antoine drew himself up to his full height. He was, Alex suspected, quite an imposing figure to the young children, many of them fresh from the bush. One boy turned off the television set. All of the children stood up and faced the priest with their hands held behind their backs. A few of them stared at Alex in wide-eyed amazement. It was possible that he was the first white person they had seen other than on television. Alex noticed that Jean-Pierre had appeared at his side and stood very close, establishing a special claim on their guest.

“Mr. Alex is volunteering his time to help us rebuild the stables next door. It is my expectation that you will assist him in every way you can. If he asks you to do something, it is as though it were coming from me. Is that clear?”

The children all murmured their assent, with the exception of Jean-Pierre, who simply nodded in agreement. Alex was amused at how easily Father Antoine had transformed his “maybe” into a “yes.” He had not changed much since Goma.

“Mr. Alex, please join us. It's a simple meal, of course, but there is enough for all.”

“I would be honored,” Alex replied.

Over dinner, Alex had an idea that he shared with Father Antoine.
“Father, maybe we can start our repair work with that television. I can't imagine the kids really want to watch
Maria Loves Carlos
. How about we see if we can't find the cartoon channel on this thing.”

“I'm afraid that's not going to work,” the priest replied. “We don't have any satellite equipment. This old set is all we have. It only gets the one channel and that irregularly.”

“You may not have a satellite dish, but you do have a couple of cars in that lot out front.”

“With no engines,” Antoine observed, “they aren't worth very much.”

“I don't need an engine, Father. I only need a hood.”

J
UNE
28, 2009

K
INSHASA

A
lex's phone rang on the dot of 8:30 on Monday morning, the start of the Embassy's official workday.

“Hello, this is Alex Baines.”

The voice at the other end was abrasive and demanding. “This is Viggiano. I'd like to see you in my office right now.”

Calls like this from the Regional Security Officer were almost never good news.

“Actually, Rick, I'm working on the morning press summary for Spence. Can we do this at about ten?”

“No, I want to do this right now. It shouldn't take more than five minutes.”

“I'll be down in a minute.”

Although he had told Viggiano he would be right down, Alex took another fifteen minutes to finish summarizing the latest news on the domestic political front, including rumors of a cabinet reshuffle, a burgeoning feud between the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the
Interior, and the latest raft of corruption scandals in the Ministry of Communications. A fairly typical day. Having reached a convenient place to stop, he headed down the stairs to the security office, which was on the ground floor of the chancery next to Post One, the duty station manned twenty-four hours a day by one of the Marines from the Embassy's Marine Security Guard detachment. Alex waved hello to Sergeant Martinez on duty. Martinez saluted smartly.

Viggiano's door was open.

“What can I do for you, Rick?” Alex asked, as he sat down.

Viggiano got right to the point. “Did you make contact on Friday evening with a Catholic priest named Antoine Mitifu?”

“Yes. I know Father Antoine from my Peace Corps days. He and I are friends and I'm going to do some work with him sprucing up the orphanage he runs at St. Mary's.”

“I want you to stay away from Mitifu.”

“Why?”

“He's a known communist agitator.”

“A what? Do we even use that phrase anymore? It seems so sixties.”

“You heard me, Baines. He's a commie. You may remember them. The enemies of freedom and democracy.”

“What makes you think he's a communist? For that matter, how do you know that I even met with him? Are you following him . . . or are you following me?”

“It doesn't matter how I know. What matters is that you are associating with a known communist.” With visible effort, Viggiano tried to shift to a more conciliatory tack. His smile, however, looked more like a snarl. “Look, Alex, you just got your clearances back, interim clearances at that. I'd hate to see you put that at risk.”

Alex knew this was the RSO's idea of the soft sell, but it still came across as an outrageous and naked threat.

“Just so I understand. Is this in the category of friendly advice, or is this an order from the Ambassador?”

“For now, let's just call it friendly advice.”

“Thanks, Rick. I'll keep that in mind.”

•   •   •

T
hat afternoon, Alex received a last-minute summons to join the Ambassador for a meeting in the Bubble. Peggy could not tell him the subject of the meeting, but she made it clear that it was a command performance.

The secure conference room—really a room within a room—was on the fourth floor of the chancery, down the corridor from the Front Office behind an inconspicuous unmarked door with its own cipher lock. At the appointed hour, Alex keyed in the combination, one of a dozen or so that he had had to commit to memory. A second door, this one steel rather than wood, led to a large room. A small set of steps led up to the hatch of the Bubble, a self-contained conference room suspended six inches off the floor by thick bands of an elastic composite to reduce vibrations. It was the only place in the Embassy, in the whole country, for that matter, where it was possible to talk openly at a Top Secret level.

The room holding the Bubble throbbed with the combined sound of the chillers and the white-noise generators. Alex lifted the heavy arm bar that locked the hatch shut and stepped across the Bubble's raised threshold. The space inside was surprisingly small, an indication of the thickness of the walls. A long conference table filled the room. There was just enough space to squeeze between the chair backs and the side walls to make it down to the far end. The walls were lined with noise-reducing foam panels. With the hatch closed and locked, the ambient noise was reduced to a tolerable level.

Jonah Keeler was already there, along with Bob Jeffries, Colonel Fessler, Viggiano, and the Embassy's Economic and Commercial Counselor, Angela Constantinos. The ECON office was responsible both for reporting on the economic situation in the Congo and for advocating on
behalf of American business. In the DRC, that meant primarily resource-extraction industries: oil and gas, mining, and logging. Outside of that, the country really didn't have much of an economy to speak of.

Alex nodded hello to the group at the table and took his seat immediately to the right of the DCM. Although the only assigned seat was the Ambassador's, which was at the head of the table, the country team in just about every embassy developed its own informal seating chart. Alex had not only inherited Julian Wells's office, house, and car, he had also inherited his seat at the conference table. In bureaucratic terms, it was a good chair, reflecting Alex's relatively senior position within the mission hierarchy.

“Anyone know what we are talking about?” Alex asked the group. Most of them shook their heads. Viggiano ignored him. Jeffries was conspicuously silent.

“Haven't got the foggiest,” said Deborah Fessler. “I suppose we'll find out when the Ambassador gets here.”

The arm bar on the hatch made a sharp clapping sound as it snapped up. Ambassador Spencer strode in, followed by the diminutive Henri Saillard, looking natty in a lightweight charcoal gray suit. His pocket square matched the yellow and blue squares on his expensive-looking tie. Saillard was carrying a three-foot-long mailing tube. Everyone at the table stood up when the Ambassador entered the room. This was long-standing State Department protocol. No one at the table seemed particularly surprised or unhappy at the appearance of Saillard. No one without a security clearance was supposed to be inside the Bubble. No one without a clearance was even supposed to know that there
was
a Bubble. This was Viggiano's patch, however, not Alex's. He wouldn't want the RSO analyzing election results, and Alex had no intention of playing security officer.

Saillard sat to Spence's left, a seat that ordinarily would have gone to the head of the public affairs section, had she been present. It was a desirable chair.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Spence began. “And I apologize for the secrecy. Henri and I have had a couple of meetings this morning about a potentially significant development that I have only just learned about. I want to get your input and develop an action plan. Henri, why don't you bring the team up to date.”

Saillard pulled the cap off one end of the mailing tube and pulled out a map, which he unrolled on the conference table. Weighted corners held the map flat.

“Our survey teams have recently identified an extraordinarily rich deposit of copper ore in the Mongala River Valley region. There are also preliminary indications of exploitable quantities of rubidium and tungsten.” Saillard pointed to a spot on the map not far from the confluence of the Mongala and the Congo Rivers. “We estimate that full production at the Mongala site could produce approximately one hundred thousand tons of refined copper annually. That's nearly half a billion dollars at current market prices.

“The Mongala River Valley lies outside the area of Consolidated Mining's current concession. Exploiting this deposit will require reaching agreement with the government to extend our exclusive mineral rights into this region. The initial outlay will be considerable and we can only do this if we can lock in an exclusive arrangement for at least the next fifteen years.”

“Have you done the research for the environmental impact statement?” Angela Constantinos asked. “That's now a World Trade Organization requirement.”

“Which can be waived by national governments,” Saillard replied. “We will be soliciting your help in getting Kinshasa to agree to waive the impact statement.”

“What kind of operation do you have in mind for this deposit?” Constantinos asked.

“Open-pit with on-site refining.”

Constantinos grimaced. “That means essentially chopping off the
tops of at least two of these peaks. That's going to produce considerable rubble as a by-product of operations. It's going to be hard to get an environmental waiver for something this big.”

“We are confident you will be able to carry this off,” Saillard replied. “Consolidated Mining will also be making its own approach to the government on this particular issue.” Alex knew that this “approach” would likely involve thick envelopes of cash. Nobody would say this out loud; it was a violation of U.S. as well as local law. But it was also de rigueur for big business deals in the region.

Alex took a hard look at the map. “I see at least half a dozen villages inside the zone you have blocked off for mining operations. How do you propose to handle that?”

“Three of the villages can be converted into work camps for the miners. Three of the villages will have to be relocated. Consolidated is prepared to assist in that admittedly painful process. The villages are not large. The largest village, I believe it is called Busu-Mouli, has maybe fifteen hundred residents. In total, we anticipate that no more than four or five thousand people will be affected by this.” Saillard was matter-of-fact about the need to uproot thousands of people to make room for the mine. It was clear that he had done this before.

“Of course,” he continued, “it will be easier if we can get the local authorities to recognize that it is ultimately in their own interest to cooperate with us. The mining operation will create jobs and opportunities. We can also help provide security against the activities of some of the more unpleasant paramilitary groups in the region.”

The Ambassador spoke up. “This will actually be your job, Alex. I'd like you to serve as the liaison with the local chiefs and convince them to support this project.”

Alex nodded, but didn't say anything. He understood the need to support U.S. business interests. It was one of the core missions of every embassy. But he hated what the mining company was planning to do.

The group spent the next thirty minutes analyzing the political,
economic, and security aspects of the deal. This was just a preliminary set of ideas. There were a thousand hoops to jump through before an agreement could be signed. But at the end of the session, they had fleshed out a rough strategy. One of the elements of their approach called for Alex to travel to the region to meet with the local chiefs and lay out the benefits of cooperating with Consolidated. Spence asked Angela to write up a synopsis of the agreed strategy and called an end to the meeting.

“Alex, would you stick around for a few minutes?” he asked, as the mission staff began to file out of the Bubble.

“Of course.”

After a moment, Spence and Alex were alone in the Bubble. With only the two of them in the room, the noise from the machinery was all the more noticeable.

“I just wanted to make sure that you understood the reasons why I elected not to send in your cable on the Manamakimba mission. You did an absolutely fantastic job, Alex, and it was an excellent cable. I decided to hold off sending the front-channel report only because I didn't want to raise too many red flags in Washington right now about mining company operations in the Congo. If this rises too high on the radar, it'll bring the White House and Commerce into the picture, and they'd almost certainly find a way to screw up the Consolidated deal. This is too big an opportunity to lose because of ham-fisted handling from Washington.”

“Thanks, Spence. I'm grateful for your confidence. This is your mission. Ultimately, it's your decision as to what we report. I have no problem with that.”

“Even so, it must be somewhat disappointing. I understand your desire to get back in the game, and I promise you that by the end of this, you are going to be back in the middle of things. I'm just about at the end of my string in any event. I expect to be looking for some cushy
academic job or consulting position when I'm done here. You have another thirty years ahead of you.”

“You make it sound like a sentence.”

Alex and Spence both laughed.

“In some ways, maybe it is.”

It was only after Alex got back to his office that he realized there was something odd about what Spence had said. He had told everyone at the strategy session that he had just learned about the Consolidated find. How could that have factored into his decision last week not to send Alex's report?

•   •   •

J
ust as Alex was closing up for the evening and sweeping his office for any stray classified documents that he might have forgotten to lock in his safe, Jonah Keeler stuck his head in.

“Hey, Alex. You got a minute?”

“Sure thing. What's up?”

“Well . . . I ran Marie Tsiolo's name by some friends in the local services. They found her for me.”

“Hey, that's excellent. Thank you.”

“Don't be so quick to thank me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alex. She's from Busu-Mouli. Your new friend, Saillard, wants to bury her village beneath a million tons of crushed rock.”

“Shit.”