The American Mission (21 page)

For a moment it looked like the Rwandans might break. They were killers but not real soldiers. The
genocidaires
preferred their targets helpless and unarmed. Then one of the Rwandan teams managed to make it around the far side of one of the houses on the right flank of the defenders' line. When the guardsmen realized that they were being shot at from behind, they panicked and broke cover.
Genocidaire
guerillas flowed through the gap in the lines. Busu-Mouli was on the verge of being lost.

Suddenly, Tsiolo leaped off the porch, shouting a piercing and incomprehensible war cry. Marie, Mputu, and the others followed, racing to keep pace with their much older chief.

“Luba, to your king,” Tsiolo cried, as he closed in on the gap in the lines.

One Rwandan attacker turned to face this new threat just in time to have his face blown off by a blast from Tsiolo's shotgun. The Chief shot a second attacker in the back. Without any time to reload, he swung the now useless gun like club, catching a third attacker across the bridge of the nose and driving him to his knees.

Marie and the others were only a few paces behind, firing from the hip to keep the attackers back from their chief. But Tsiolo had gotten too far out in front and a burst of fire from an AK-47 hit him in the shoulder and the belly. The Principal Chief of Busu-Mouli fell to the ground and lay still.

“Papa!” Marie screamed. She tossed her rifle aside and ran to her stricken father. Mputu led his sons in a countercharge that pushed the Rwandans back. The defenders had seen their chief fall and attacked the
genocidaires
with a previously unknown ferocity. Now it was the Rwandans' turn to run, and they broke for the jungle pursued by the citizen soldiers of Busu-Mouli hell-bent on vengeance.

Marie knelt in the dust, cradling her father's head in her lap.

“Don't die, Papa,” she pleaded, as tears streamed down her cheeks. “You can't die.” She choked back a sob.

“Kikaya,” she called. “Get the red medical bag from my house. Hurry.”

Mputu's oldest son leaped to obey. Within moments, he was helping her unpack the limited stock of basic medical supplies from the first-aid kit. There was no doctor in Busu-Mouli, and the traditional healers with their herbal remedies and sympathetic magic would be of little use in treating gunshot wounds. Most did as much damage to their patients as the conditions they were supposed to be treating. Marie's basic
first-aid training with Consolidated Mining had made her probably the most accomplished medical professional in a hundred-mile radius.

She did what she could, but Marie was painfully aware of the limitations of both her skills and the contents of her medical kit. Mercifully, the bullets had passed in and out. There was a pair of clamps in the first-aid bag, but she did not relish the idea of poking around inside her father's body, hunting for pieces of a spent bullet. The most important thing was to control the bleeding. She directed Kiyala to hold a clean pad of gauze firmly against the wound in her father's shoulder while she did the same for his abdomen. The shoulder injury was of tangential concern. It was the wound in the abdomen that she knew was life-threatening.

“Do not worry, daughter,” her father said, and she could hear the pain in the strain of his voice. “Your Uncle Katanga hit me harder than this when he caught me kissing your mother in the manioc field before we were married. I hit him back too. Just as hard. I'll bet your mother never told you that story.”

“Yes, she did. I believe it ended with her grabbing you both by the ears until you shook hands.”

The Chief closed his eyes.

“I think I'm going to rest for a few minutes,” he said.

“Yes, Papa. Get some rest.”

Slowly, they got the bleeding under control. Mputu and his sons carried the Chief into the house, where Marie made him as comfortable as possible with clean sheets on the bed and a traditional herbal concoction that she knew from experience actually did help manage pain. The bleeding had stopped. There was no way of knowing, however, what kind of internal damage the bullet might have done. As a precaution, she had started her father on a course of amoxicillin. The drugs in her medical kit were all well past their expiration dates, but they were all she had.

Her father slept for fourteen hours, and Marie had begun to fear
that he had slipped into a coma until he awoke and asked to see Katanga.

Marie waited in the front room while her uncle and father spoke for nearly two hours. When Katanga emerged from the Chief's room, he looked grim. There was a determined set to his jaw, as if he were a man who had just shouldered a heavy burden.

“What did you do to poor Katanga?” Marie asked her father, as she changed his bandages.

“I gave him a job. A difficult job, but one I am sure he is up to.”

“Do I want to know what it is?”

“You do not.” Her father tensed abruptly as a sudden stab of pain made him draw a deep breath. The area around the hole in his belly was tender and swollen, and his skin felt hot to her touch. Marie feared that despite the antibiotics, infection had already set in.

“Marie,” the Chief continued, after the pain had subsided. “When I am gone . . .”

“Stop that, Papa,” she interrupted. “You are not going to die. I won't allow it.” Marie could hear the fierce urgency in her own voice as she blinked back tears. “We need you. I need you.”

The next day, Katanga brought a visitor to see the Chief. Mbusa Lamala was one of the major subchiefs, and the Lamalas had an alliance with the Tsiolos that stretched back generations. Mbusa was one of her father's strongest supporters on the tribal council. Marie was excluded from the conversation, but she had no doubt what the three were discussing: succession to the position of Principal Chief. Over the next several days, Katanga brought three more subchiefs to the house to call on Chief Tsiolo. Marie knew them all well. She had known them since she was a girl. It did not escape her notice that those summoned to see the Chief were among the most powerful personalities on the council.

Despite Marie's best efforts, her father's condition continued to worsen. He developed a fever that neither the limited supply of Western medicines in her kit nor the traditional healers' best herbal remedies
could control. The wound in his belly began leaking a mixture of pus and blood. Her father was dying before her eyes, and there was nothing Marie could do to help him.

On the fourth day after the
genocidaires
had attacked Busu-Mouli, Marie sat at her father's bedside, holding his hand and telling him stories about the exploits of legendary Luba warriors, the same stories that he had told her when she was a young girl. It was nearly midnight when the fever broke and her father looked at her lucidly.

“Daughter, I am dying.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Katanga will need your help for what I have asked him to do.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“You are quick to promise. What will be asked of you is not easy.”

Tsiolo took Marie's hand and pressed it against the raised circular scar on his chest.

“When the time comes, remember this. Trust this.”

Marie grasped his wrist lightly with her fingers, and she could feel his pulse, weak and thready.

“I love you, Marie.”

“I love you, Papa.” She laid her hand across his chest.

Chief Tsiolo, the last male in his line, coughed once, closed his eyes, and died.

•   •   •

M
arie buried her father in the family plot next to her mother. There were two days of mourning in the village, followed by a feast. On the third day, the subchiefs from the surrounding villages who had sworn fealty to her father gathered in Busu-Mouli to choose a new principal chief.

Katanga served as the host of the tribal council, acting in his late brother-in-law's stead. He sat in Tsiolo's traditional seat at the long dining table in the Chief's house. Marie's house now. Jean-Baptiste sat on
his left. Marie sat on Katanga's right, studiously ignoring the mutterings of those who believed that women did not belong at a tribal council. There were about a dozen subchiefs present or represented by proxy, most of those by their eldest sons.

“Good afternoon, chiefs of the Luba people,” Katanga began. “We gather today in the wake of a tragedy, the untimely death of our principal chief. This is a difficult time. We are all of us under siege and none of us more so than Busu-Mouli. But we cannot wait to choose a new leader. Who among us is fit to lead?”

The bargaining began in earnest. One by one, the most ambitious of the subchiefs put forward their candidacy. One by one, their rivals shot them down. Food and copious amounts of alcohol were served as the afternoon stretched into the evening.

Finally, Mbusa Lamala rose to speak. “I propose that Katanga be appointed Chief of Busu-Mouli and elevated to Principal Chief. He has proven his leadership abilities in his oversight of the mining operation that his brother-in-law championed to such great effect. The young men look up to him and they will, I believe, follow him willingly.” Mbusa sat, and there was a generally positive buzz among the subchiefs. The choice of Katanga seemed popular. This is what Marie had been expecting. A tribal council, her father had once explained to her, was an elaborate stage play. If the leader was wise and capable, the outcome was known in advance, not to all, of course, but to those whom the Principal Chief could count on to make it so. Her father had done his usual thorough job in laying the groundwork for Katanga.

Katanga rose and raised one hand palm outward to ask for silence. “Chief Lamala, you honor me. But it is an honor of which I am not worthy. A man should know his limitations, and I am not meant to be Chief. Fortunately, there is one among the citizens of Busu-Mouli who, I believe, is ready for that responsibility. One who has demonstrated the skills and character of a true leader.”

This was not at all according to the script that Marie thought
Katanga and her father had written. She saw Jean-Baptiste straighten in his seat. He was evidently confident that Katanga was speaking of him. She felt a momentary flash of anger at the thought, but kept her face expressionless.
Could this be what her father meant when he told her that she would be asked to do something difficult?

“I would follow this person to hell,” Katanga continued. He paused as though for effect. “I speak, of course, of Chief Tsiolo's daughter, Marie.”

Jean-Baptiste scowled and looked fiercely at Katanga, but he bit his tongue. Marie simply looked startled.

The chiefs murmured among themselves angrily. One of the minor subchiefs blurted out, “A woman as Chief? It's an affront to the ancestors.” Some of the older and more conservative chiefs noisily agreed.

“Hold on a moment,” said Kabika Abo, the chief of the small village of Ikonongo and one of those who Katanga had brought to see her father before he died. “Have you forgotten the
vilie
, the first female spirit? Is she not the founder of the Luba clan? Is she not the guarantor of the fertility of our chiefs and the guardian of our lineage? I believe she is still with us. I believe she has been incarnated in Marie Tsiolo, who I know to be a true avenging angel.” Abo was not normally an especially eloquent speaker, and Marie was certain that he had practiced this speech many times before he delivered it. He spoke well, however, and it was an argument that would carry weight with the clan leaders.

“I realize that it is unusual,” Katanga said, “but these are unusual times. The outside world presses in upon us as never before in our history. Who among you knows this world? Didier?” he asked, pointing at the chief who had objected to Marie's gender. “Have you ever been as far as Kinshasa? Marie has studied at one of the finest universities in South Africa. She is a trained engineer and it is she—not I—who designed and built the mine and the smelter that represent the future of our people. Tsiolo himself wanted Marie to take his place. It is admittedly a modern
idea, but if we insist on clinging to our old ways, I assure you that the modern world will destroy us.”

Mbusa Lamala again took the floor. “Katanga is right,” he said. “And I recognize the wisdom in the words of Chief Abo. I am persuaded. This is the best course for our people. I second the call for Marie Tsiolo to be made Principal Chief and I exercise my right to demand a vote.”

Katanga and Lamala were moving quickly in lockstep. It was clear to Marie that the fix was in from the beginning. Lamala's original nomination of Katanga was a tactical ploy, a bit of misdirection. It was a classic move on the part of her father. She also understood why the Chief had kept her in the dark. She did not want her father's job, and both he and Katanga knew it.

“Chief Lamala has the right to call for a vote,” Katanga agreed. “The vote will be by secret ballot. Red stones for yes, black for no.”

Most of the chiefs were illiterate, making written ballots problematic. The Luba tradition was to cast secret ballots with colored stones. One at a time, each chief rose and approached a simple wooden box on the table in front of Katanga. One at a time, each chief put a pebble into the box. Katanga held eye contact with each as they voted. Finally Katanga cast his vote as Tsiolo's proxy.

Jean-Baptiste counted the stones. There were eight red stones and five black stones in the box.

One at a time, the subchiefs came forward to greet their new leader and pledge their loyalty. Marie Tsiolo was the new Principal Chief of Busu-Mouli.

Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
she wondered.

J
ULY
13, 2009

K
INSHASA

A
ntoine's enthusiasm was infectious. It always had been. Now he was pitching Alex on Albert Ilunga as a possible savior for the Congo. He argued with both passion and logic, and Alex thought that the priest had missed his calling. He should have been a Jesuit. Despite the cane, or perhaps because of it, Antoine enjoyed walking, even in Kinshasa's tropical heat. Ilunga's house, a comfortable villa that was all he had left of a once-considerable family fortune, was in the Kintambo district, not too far from the church. Antoine had insisted they walk.

The streets were crowded with cars, motorcycles, and just about every other conceivable form of wheeled transportation. Even the sidewalks had their own frenetic energy. Stalls on the side of the road hawked everything from Coca-Cola to dried bonobo penises, which were marketed rather literally for their alleged “medicinal” properties. Women in bright print dresses with matching head scarves badgered them to buy fruit from wicker or plastic containers piled high with
guava, bananas, pineapple, and grapes. Victims of the Congo's wars, many missing arms or legs, begged for spare change. Antoine gave a handful of francs to one young boy whose left leg had been amputated below the knee. The boy had a crutch made from a forked tree branch. A strip of car tire was tied to the fork for the boy's armpit to rest on, and a stick bound to the branch with thick twine served as a handgrip.

“Land mine?” he asked the boy.

“Yes, Father.”

Antoine tapped his leg and showed the boy his cane.

“Me too,” the priest said softly.

The boy nodded his empathy for their shared plight and pocketed the priest's money.

“I'm still not sold on this idea,” Alex said, picking up the conversation where they had left off. “I accept that Ilunga is an admirable man. He tried to lead his country in a different direction. And he paid a price for it. But Ilunga has been out of politics for more than six years. How can he lead the Congo out of this mess?”

“There are many who still look on him as the legitimate ruler of a truly democratic Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are many who believe we wouldn't be in this predicament if Ilunga had been allowed to take the office that he won in a fair election.”

“But that's exactly the point. The army didn't let him do that. Instead, they arrested Ilunga, sent him off to Makala Prison, and that moment was lost. He spent three years in solitary confinement. As long as Silwamba retains the loyalty of the security services, I don't see why that wouldn't simply happen again. Silwamba may not be popular, but he has the guns. That still counts for too much in this country.”

“The people are with Ilunga. All that is needed is a spark and they will rally to his cause.”

“What kind of spark are we talking about?”

“The Lord will provide,” Antoine responded with assurance.

“I wish I could be certain of that.”

“Me too.”

Antoine stopped abruptly.

“Here we are,” he said.

Kintambo was a relatively green and leafy part of the city. Mature shade trees planted along the sidewalk offered a welcome break from the heat. Ilunga's villa was larger than Alex had expected, with a two-story house and a couple of smaller outbuildings visible from the street. It had, however, seen better days, and Alex hoped that the villa's faded glories did not represent an ill omen for Ilunga's political future. The house was set back from the street behind a tall stucco wall with a single gate. Shards of broken glass set in concrete on top of the wall were meant to discourage unwelcome evening visitors. In case that was not enough, a guard sat to one side of the gate on a low stool in the shade of a mahogany tree. As Alex and Antoine approached, the guard looked up from the magazine he was reading. Although he was unarmed, it would have taken an exceptionally brave thief to challenge him. The man would have looked right at home guarding the gates to hell. The right side of the guard's face was a mass of scar tissue, and he had only one eye. He seemed to be expecting Antoine, however, because he nodded and returned to his magazine.

There was no sign on the building, just a small bronze plaque by the gate that gave the address as
36
RUE LUKENGU
and then in slightly smaller letters
HEADQUAR
TERS OF THE CONGOLES
E FREEDOM COALITION
. Underneath those words was a perfect circle about two inches in diameter. Alex touched his chest and rubbed his finger over the scar that had healed as a raised ridge of flesh.

“Is this really the headquarters for the Freedom Party? I thought the party was outlawed? It seems kind of dangerous to advertise it this way.”

“The Freedom Coalition isn't a political party,” Antoine explained. “It's a civic organization that offers vocational training and job placement to wounded veterans, whether they fought with the regular army
or the militia. The house is all Ilunga has left. The government seized all of his other assets. But he still has some well-off supporters and they provide him with some resources to run this center. Ilunga lives here, but he has also offered lodging to some of the veterans. As long as he stays out of the public spotlight and away from active politics, the regime tolerates him.”

Antoine opened the wrought-iron gate and ushered Alex through. A slightly built man came out of the main house to greet them. When Alex had been a Peace Corps volunteer, Albert Ilunga had been an up-and-coming political leader looking to challenge Silwamba's leadership. Alex had left the Congo some years before the election that had resulted in Ilunga's arrest, but the man's face was familiar to Alex from television and newspaper accounts at the time. Even so, had he not been expecting to meet him, Alex would not have recognized the man walking down the front steps. Ilunga looked to have aged twenty years in the last six. He wore his gray hair cut short and his face was lined by both the sun and his years in the jungle prison. He was dressed simply in a short-sleeved white dress shirt and gray slacks. His shoes were inexpensive and in need of a polishing. There was something about him that bespoke a deep humility. Alex wondered just how an unjust prison sentence changed a man, particularly when most of the time was spent in solitary confinement.

His greeting was warm and welcoming, and Ilunga clasped his left hand onto Antoine's shoulder as they shook their hellos. Then he turned and looked at Alex. “So this is the young man you were telling me about. I am pleased you brought him here.

“Hello, brother,” Ilunga said, extending his hand. “Welcome to my home.” His grip was firm and his handshake emphatic.

“My pleasure, Mr. Ilunga. I just learned that this is also your office.”

“Call me Albert, please. Yes. This is where the Freedom Coalition does its work. It's a terrible thing to work and live in the same place, you
know. It's more like living in your office than working in your home. Plus, I can't seem to stay out of the refrigerator. I'm afraid I've been putting on weight.” Ilunga could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds.

“Well, you have the satisfaction of doing important work.”

“It's mostly social work, but I do agree that it is of some value. The veterans need help, and most of the international aid agencies don't want to have anything to do with ex-militia. The Freedom Coalition helps them find productive work, teaches them skills. More importantly, we try to convince them that their lives have value.”

“The men live here with you?”

“Some do, but most come and go. Some tell me where they go. Others choose not to, and I don't ask. All I offer is an opportunity. Come, let me show you.”

Ilunga led Alex and Antoine into the building. He walked with exaggerated care, and Alex remembered reading somewhere that the prison guards had beaten him so badly that he suffered from chronic back pain and could no longer raise his arms above his shoulders.

The first floor of the main building was divided into classrooms. Most were in use. As far as Alex could tell, the students were all men, but there were a few female instructors. In one room the students were learning about HIV/AIDS. War had killed millions in the Congo over the last decade, but AIDS had proven an even more efficient instrument of death. The instructor was an older woman in a yellow cotton dress wearing heavy stone jewelry. She was slipping a condom over a banana with the ease of considerable practice and trading ribald comments with the men.

“Do you carry those in a larger size?” one of the students asked.

The instructor held the banana up in front of her face.

“If you have more to offer than my little friend here, I'll marry you right now,” she said to riotous laughter from the class.

Next door, a middle-aged man was teaching three other middle-aged men to read from a dog-eared copy of a Honda Accord repair manual. Across the hall, a group of mostly younger men were learning computer skills. There were five ancient-looking computers set up in the room, but they were connected to the Internet and the instructor clearly knew what he was doing. A blackboard along one wall was filled with charts and diagrams and symbols. It looked to Alex like the students were learning to design websites and code in HTML.

Ilunga led them through a side door into the garden and toward the largest outbuilding, a cinder-block structure about the size of a double-wide trailer.

“We're fortunate enough to have several skilled instructors in the computer courses,” Ilunga commented. “These are primarily for the younger veterans, however. They are still adaptable. Some of the older men have never so much as seen a computer. We have them learning more traditional vocational skills.”

Inside the cinder-block building, a group of some twenty former soldiers were practicing carpentry, metalworking, and other blue-collar trades. Most stopped working when they saw Ilunga enter. More than a few bowed their heads in silent thanks. Ilunga introduced Alex, and he shook hands with most of the men and asked them about their projects.

Lunch was served outside in the garden in the rear of the building. The three men sat at a small café table while students from Ilunga's school served them a simple but filling meal. Ilunga ate sparingly, mostly rice with a little beef and chili sauce. The lemonade was fresh and tasted incredibly good as the noonday sun pushed the heat index up well over one hundred. They kept the conversation light. Alex and Ilunga discovered a shared love of music, particularly African jazz. Antoine mostly listened, clearly pleased that his two friends seemed to be hitting it off.

When the meal was finished, Alex shifted the conversation in a more serious direction. “Do you ever think about getting back into politics? I expect that the work you are doing with the Freedom Coalition is personally pretty satisfying. But is that enough for you? I'm struck that the name of your operation here echoes the name of your political party. It feels a little bit like unfinished business.”

“You have a point,” Ilunga agreed, “although I don't know that I've ever thought about it in such explicit terms. I still have ambitions for political change in this country. The current regime is well entrenched but not invulnerable. Everywhere in the world, power has a structure. Power in the Congo is concentrated in only a few hands. That is a strength, but also a vulnerability. The fewer the players, the deeper the suspicions. The power centers in this country distrust each other. If they can be set against each other, the regime cannot stand.”

“The system runs deeper than a few people at the top. How do you keep the new people in power from taking over where the old ones left off?”

“The affairs of the Congo should be run by the people of the Congo. I would expel the soldiers of our neighbors. We have Rwandans, Ugandans, Zambians, and Burundians fighting on our soil. They must leave. I would ensure that the mineral wealth of my country benefits the people of my country. The big foreign firms would be welcome as partners but not as masters. And finally, I would ensure that the government speaks with the voice of the people, a real democracy with real representative government and checks on those in power.”

“Nothing important was ever accomplished by men who lacked ambition,” Alex replied. “But what about the mechanism for change? The elections, when they bother to have them, are rigged. Last time around, Silwamba dispensed with any opponent and extended his term in an up-or-down referendum in which he took . . . what . . . ninety-seven percent of the vote? The media is under the control of the
government. The security services are loyal to Silwamba. How do you bring about your vision of the future?”

“When the time for change comes, the Lord will show the way,” Ilunga replied, and Alex noticed that he touched his chest in the place where Antoine had told him the coalition leader carried a circular scar similar to his own.

“It's a little surprising to me that the government lets you do even this. They thought you were dangerous enough to lock you up for three years. You still have a popular following, even if you don't maintain a public presence. There haven't been any threats to shut you down?”

“I suppose I have managed to persuade them that I am harmless. In jail, I was something of a celebrity and a constant thorn in their side. Amnesty International wrote letters about me. Your Hollywood stars called for my release from prison. Now I am just an eccentric old man teaching other old men how to read and how to make furniture or repair motorcycles. It would cost more to oppress me than they stand to gain.”

•   •   •

T
hey had to walk through the main house to get to the front gate. Almost in the exact center of the building, Alex noticed one door that seemed oddly out of place. It was made of steel, where the other doors were wood, and it looked brand-new. A large dead-bolt lock set in the middle of the door marked it as guarding something of some importance.