The American Mission (28 page)

“I'm so sorry, Marie. What about the smelter?” Alex knew how important that building was to Marie's plans for the future.

“It survived. And we guard it very closely now. Come. I am staying in a house just up the road from here. Jean-Baptiste, why don't you go settle down the guard. We don't want the boys to start shooting at shadows.”

With her home destroyed, Marie had moved into the second largest house in the village. The family that lived there had insisted on moving in with relatives so Marie could have the house to herself. Although sizable by village standards, the house was still only a single room with four sleeping pads on an elevated platform covered by mosquito nets.
Near the door there was a kitchen area with a wood-burning stove that vented directly through the wall. A table made of rough-hewn planks and some empty crates served as both a living and dining area. A pair of oil lamps cast enough light to read by. Alex sat in one of the chairs while Marie poured him a generous glass of palm wine. The wine was too sweet and violently strong and exactly what he wanted.

“How is your arm?” Marie asked in her South African–inflected English. Alex liked that she had chosen to speak to him in his own language.

“Pretty banged up,” he admitted.

“Let me see it.”

Alex hesitated.

“It's either me or the traditional healer in the next village. I think you would call him a . . . what's the word . . . witch doctor? For a few francs he'll mix up a poultice of cow dung and bloodwort that he guarantees will work. For a few dollars he'll break the wing of a chicken and then wring its neck. It's supposed to be powerful magic. So what do you say? Your friends at Consolidated Mining have given me the finest first-aid training available in a five-day course.”

Alex unclipped his belly bag and carefully stripped off his jumpsuit. He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of tan pants made of some rip-proof but breathable synthetic fabric that Keeler had given him. Zippers along the legs of the jumpsuit made it possible for him to take it off without removing his heavy boots. His rib cage protested the effort and his arm was throbbing by the time he was finished. Marie's touch was gentle and it was clear to Alex that she knew what she was doing. She checked for range of motion and probed his forearm to see how far up the pain went.

“There's no way to be certain without an X-ray, but I don't think it's broken. It is at least sprained, and we should splint it up and maybe put it in a sling for a while.”

She put a simple splint on Alex's wrist and gave him a few non-
narcotic painkillers from the small stock of medicines she kept in her rebuilt first-aid kit.

“Now let me take a look at your ribs,” she said.

“I'm okay. Really. I just got the wind knocked out of me.”

“We'll see about that.”

She had to help Alex remove his shirt. Very gently, she explored the muscles and bones along his side with the tips of her fingers until she found a spot that made him flinch.

“I think you may have cracked at least one rib and you're going to have a very large bruise. But it doesn't look serious.”

Ignoring the screaming protest from his ribs, Alex struggled back into his shirt. He was still feeling a little light-headed as he sat back at the table. Marie poured herself a glass of the home-brewed palm wine from a plastic bottle that still bore the label of a popular cooking oil.

“Thanks, Doc. I'm glad someone's still making house calls.”

“It's not every day that a representative of the all-powerful United States government parachutes into our village in the middle of the night. Onto our village, really, if you think about it.”

“I'm afraid that I no longer represent the U.S. government. I'm here on my own.”

Marie raised an eyebrow. “What happened?” she asked. “Did you kill someone?”

“Not yet, but I'm seriously considering it.”

Alex told her what had happened and about his suspicions regarding Consolidated Mining and Henri Saillard. He told her about his dissent channel message, being framed as a spy and a diamond smuggler, his escape, and the murder of his friend Antoine. He explained what Jonah Keeler had told him about the shadowy Africa Working Group. And finally he told her about what he had found in Spence's safe—the epitaph for Busu-Mouli. Marie asked no questions, but when he described Antoine's death she reached across the table to take his hand in her own.

There was a brief hint of fear in her eyes when he told her about the contract with Executive Solutions that was quickly replaced by a look of grim determination. Marie Tsiolo was a Luba chief from a long line of chiefs, and her people needed a leader.

Her first question took him by surprise.

“Do you want to tell me about the scar on your chest? The circular one. My father had one just like it.”

“I know. He gave me this.” Alex touched his chest where Marie's father had carved the ritual symbol. “He also made me a citizen of Busu-Mouli and a member of the Luba tribe, which I suppose makes you my chief now.”

“So he brought you into his little club, did he? He and Katanga were very secretive about it. What do they call it? The Brotherhood?”

“That's what I understand. You probably know more about this than I do, even though I'm guessing that there are no women in that particular club, chief or otherwise. For one thing, they'd have to change the name and that would mean getting new stationery.”

Marie smiled at that, and Alex felt the pain in his side ease as her evident pleasure released a few endorphins into his system.

“You'd be right about that, although I think my father was thinking about making me an exception to the rule.” She pointed at his chest. “Is that the reason you wrote that message to Washington, the one that got you in trouble?”

Alex had to think about that. “Maybe in part. But mostly because of what's happening here. Because of what's happening to you and, if I'm honest about it, because of something I did in the past. I had to speak up.”

“Thank you for what you've done,” Marie said. “We owe you a debt. You have sacrificed a great deal for our village. Your chief . . . your people . . . will look after you. I would tell you that you can stay here for as long as you wish, but Busu-Mouli may not be here much longer. I don't see how Jean-Baptiste's village guard can stand up to helicopter gunships.”

“So what are you going to do . . . Chief?”

“Evacuate the town. If we can't find another place to settle, we may become refugees for a while. If I can hold our people together, we will survive, and when the mining company is done with our land, we will return.”

They both knew that what the mining company would leave behind would bear little resemblance to the lush green hills of Busu-Mouli. It would be a no-man's-land of broken rock and slurry with acid and poison leached deep into the soil. Nothing would grow here again for generations. Moreover, Alex had the additional perspective of having spent considerable time in a UN refugee camp, and he was not as sanguine that the Busu-Mouli community would emerge from that experience intact.

“There may be another way,” Alex suggested. He had not thrown himself out of an airplane simply to tell the Tsiolo family that their village was doomed.

“What are you thinking about?” Marie was curious but wary. “We don't have the training or weaponry to deal with the helicopters. Between the Afrikaners from Executive Solutions and Innocent Ngoca's killers, we'd be slaughtered.”

“You don't have the weapons, but we know somebody who does.”

“Who?”

There was a pause.

“Our friend Joseph Manamakimba.”

“He certainly knows something about burning villages.”

“He's no saint,” Alex agreed, “but you don't think the label he's been saddled with is true or fair any more than I do.”

Marie looked briefly down at her hands and then directly into Alex's eyes.

“No, I don't.”

“I think Manamakimba was on the wrong side of a smear campaign organized by Consolidated Mining. The company sees
Manamakimba as a convenient fall guy for some of the atrocities their own forces have committed.”

“Nothing that company does would surprise me,” Marie responded vehemently.

“According to your friendly neighborhood Central Intelligence Agency, Manamakimba has access to surface-to-air missiles, the portable kind that one man can fire from the shoulder. They're not great against jets, but they're death to helicopters.”

Marie was quiet for a while as she weighed the options.

“There's not enough time,” she observed, after at least five minutes of deep thought. “The attack is set for just four days from now. We don't even know where Manamakimba is.”

“No. But we do know how to reach him.” Alex pulled a somewhat tattered business card out of one of the deep side pockets of his pants and dropped it on the table in front of Marie.

“He gave us his card.”

J
ULY
20, 2009

B
USU
-M
OULI

P
redictably, Jean-Baptiste and some of the more headstrong members of the village guard were opposed to asking Manamakimba for help in defending the village, arguing that they could stand up to both Executive Solutions and the Rwandans without outside assistance. Katanga had been the one to bring Jean-Baptiste around. In his idealistic youth, Marie's uncle had spent some time with the armed wing of the African National Congress. He knew what the Afrikaners and their helicopters were capable of.

Only when Marie felt that she had built sufficient support for the idea among the subchiefs and other notables in the valley did she give Alex the go-ahead to call Manamakimba. This took most of a precious day, but Marie knew that there was no other way. She was Principal Chief, not an autocrat. The politics of decision-making in village councils were complex and could not be hurried easily.

Fortunately, the sat phone had survived Alex's hard landing without obvious damage. The phone required line-of-sight connectivity
with at least one of a number of satellites in low Earth orbit, however, and did not work well indoors. So Marie, Alex, and Katanga sat on cheap plastic chairs in front of Marie's new home for one final review of their approach to the Hammer of God.

“Are you sure that your spies will not be able to listen in on this conversation?” Marie asked. “In your movies, they seem to be able to do this pretty easily.”

“By now, Spence has to know that I have his phone,” Alex admitted. “It depends in part on how deep in the government the Working Group has penetrated. If he has people in the NSA . . . that's the Signals Intelligence Agency . . . they could track the location of the phone and tap into any calls. But a request to do that has to go through the Station Chief, the guy in charge of CIA operations in Kinshasa. That's my friend Jonah, and he's promised to misplace any trace requests that come in for this number.”

Alex hesitated. “There's one other thing.”

“What is it?” Marie asked.

“I've kept the batteries separate from the phone, but once I put them in, the NSA will be able to track it. Cell phones are not only vulnerable to interception, they are also potential targeting devices. Unmanned aircraft launching precision-guided missiles that home in on a specific cell or sat-phone signal are one of the U.S. government's favorite methods for targeting ‘Persons of Interest' in some of the wilder parts of the world. I doubt that the Working Group has access to those kinds of capabilities, but it's a risk.”

“Then let's keep this conversation short,” Marie said.

“Okay. Who's doing the talking, Chief? You or me.”

“I'll do it,” Marie said. “I have something he wants.”

“What's that?”

“You'll see.”

Alex inserted the batteries and punched in the eleven-digit number. He set the phone on a stump that served as a kind of table and activated
the speakerphone function so that he and Katanga could listen in. There was nearly a minute of dead air before they heard the phone ring on the other end.

A familiar voice answered.

“Hello, Ambassador Spencer,” said Joseph Manamakimba. “It's been a long time.”

Marie raised an eyebrow and looked at Alex.

“Mr. Manamakimba, this is Marie Tsiolo. I'm using the Ambassador's phone, although I must confess that it is with neither his knowledge nor his permission.” There was a nearly two-second delay between each exchange as the signals bounced back and forth across a constellation of satellites.

“Of course. Excuse me. This number is in my memory and it was the Ambassador's name that flashed on my screen. I should not have assumed it was him. How are you, Ms. Tsiolo? And thank you again for your assistance in arranging medical care for my many children.”

“I'm glad that worked out. Our mutual friend from that conversation, Alex Baines, is joining us on this call.”

“I'm so pleased. Mr. Baines, I'm afraid that you'll have to tell your Ambassador that I remain uninterested in his proposition.”

“What proposition is that?” Alex asked.

“You really don't know?” Even through the tinny speakers Manamakimba's amusement was plain.

“I'm afraid not.”

“Now that's interesting. Maybe you are as naïve as you seem.”

“Almost certainly. So what was the proposition?”

“To take over the enforcer role from the Rwandans. It seems they've started to negotiate for more than what Consolidated Mining considers the market rate for industrial murder.”

“The Ambassador and I have parted ways over this very issue,” Alex said.

“I see. Congratulations, Mr. Baines. Welcome to the real civilized world. Where are you calling me from? Kinshasa?”

“Busu-Mouli,” Marie replied.

“So your employers have not yet stripped your valley to bedrock? That's good news.”

Marie was again struck by Manamakimba's powerful intelligence and the depth of information he possessed. The guerilla leader had a network of informants that any clandestine service in the world would have been proud of.

“Not yet, but that may well happen in the near future. My people are in grave danger. I think you know that. I think you have known that for some time.” Marie paused. What she had to say next was not easy to say, although she knew it was necessary. “Joseph, we need your help.”

The Hammer of God laughed.

“Of course you do, Marie, more than you realize. I would be happy to discuss this matter with you, but not over the phone.” It seemed that Joseph Manamakimba shared Alex's reservations about satellite phones.

“Can we meet somewhere in person then? I'm afraid that we are under some time pressure.”

“As luck would have it, I'm not far from Busu-Mouli. No more than half a day upriver.”

“We can be there tomorrow.”

Manamakimba gave Marie the exact coordinates. The fancy GPS unit that Keeler had given Alex converted the coordinates into a location on a map almost instantly. Marie knew the place. By the expansive standards of the Congo, it was right next door.

•   •   •

T
hree boats left Busu-Mouli well before dawn for the trip upriver to Manamakimba's camp. If all went well, they would be coming back with full loads of men and equipment. Marie and Alex were in the lead
vessel, a thirty-foot converted tugboat that was named
Nkongolo
after the first mythical Luba king. The other two vessels in the flotilla were essentially barges with motors mounted awkwardly on the sterns. They steered like wallowing pigs. The only thing that kept them from running aground repeatedly was their captains' knowledge of the river, its shifting sandbanks, and the idiosyncrasies of its currents.

Marie stood alongside Alex in the bow of the
Nkongolo
drinking strong black tea sweetened with honey. The early morning sun was just beginning to burn away the swirling mist that all but obscured the river. As the boat rounded a bend, Alex nudged her gently in the ribs and pointed to the near bank.

A black panther stood immobile on the shore of the river. Its fur glistened in the morning light. The big cat betrayed no fear, and Marie suspected that it might never before have seen a human being. This was the deep jungle. Humans made no more mark on the jungle here than the
Nkongolo
made on the river. Within moments of their passage, the Congo, both river and jungle, erased any memory of their ever having been there.

“It's an omen,” Marie decided.

“Good or bad?”

“Good. Very, very good.”

“I hope you're right.”

•   •   •

T
he
Nkongolo
and its escort of lumbering barges plied the waters of the Congo for another eleven hours. They passed a few settlements along the way, but nothing that could reasonably be considered a town. Marie saw a fifteen-foot crocodile slide from the riverbank into the water. About noon, she watched a lone figure pole a pirogue loaded with trade goods of some sort downriver. She could only guess how long the boatman had been traveling and how far he still had to go.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached their destination.
Manamakimba and the Hammer of God had taken over an abandoned village on a spit of land where the Congo was joined by another of its countless minor tributaries. The
Nkongolo
tied up alongside a pier made of floating logs with boards nailed across them to make a rough walkway. Marie and Alex hopped out of the boat and onto the pier. Their weight immediately sank the logs below the level of the river. They waded ashore through muddy water that rose to their knees accompanied by two of Jean-Baptiste's guardsmen.

Charlie, the young boy who had suffered from schistosomiasis, was waiting for them. He looked healthy. The rash that had covered the left side of his face was gone. His eyes, no longer yellow and jaundiced, sparkled with life. A short copper pipe hung around his neck from a leather cord as a talisman.

“You look good, Charlie,” Marie said in Lingala. The boy smiled broadly, clearly pleased that she remembered his name.

“The doctor gave me some pills,” he replied in the same language. “I feel much better now. So do the others.”

“Can you take us to Mr. Joseph?”

“Of course.”

The Hammer of God fighters were busy with the mundane tasks of camp life. Some men were cooking a communal meal over an open fire, while others gathered wood or fetched water from the river. Two men were trying to cut steaks from a forest deer that had apparently been killed by large-caliber machine-gun fire. Another man was smoking strips of what was euphemistically known as “bush meat,” a catchall term for primates of just about any type. The animal in question looked like a monkey, but it might have been a juvenile chimpanzee. It was hard to tell. Either way, Marie was glad they had brought their own food. There were a few elderly women helping out around the camp, but for the most part the Hammer of God was an all-male affair.

Manamakimba greeted them warmly, clapping Alex on the shoulder as though they were old friends and kissing Marie on the cheek.
With a nod and a gesture, he sent Charlie to join a group of boys playing soccer with a ball that had been patched so many times that Marie wondered if there was actually any leather underneath the duct tape.

“Welcome to the temporary home of the Hammer of God,” Manamakimba said with theatrical grandiosity.

“I love what you've done with the place,” Marie replied. Many of the buildings still bore the marks of recent violence, including bullet holes and scorch marks. Manamakimba ignored the implied criticism.

“You should have seen it when we arrived,” he said. “There were at least one hundred corpses rotting in the sun. It took my men almost two days to bury the bodies.”

“Genocidaires?”
Alex asked.

“Yes. One day they weren't here. The next they were everywhere. It's as though they were sent here.” Manamakimba gave Marie a keen look.

In village style, they sat on the ground on reed mats and drank bitter tea that Manamakimba himself prepared over a small fire. For a while they talked about nothing in particular, another important part of negotiating in Africa. After they had finished their tea, Manamakimba got to the point.

“So to what do I owe the pleasure of your company? How can I be of service to you two . . . and to Chief Tsiolo, of course?”

“I am Chief Tsiolo now,” Marie replied.

“I'm sorry,” Manamakimba said, understanding immediately what this meant. “People across the valley spoke highly of your father. They saw him as a man who would stand up to the Ngocas of the world. I have no doubt that his daughter has inherited his steel as well as his copper.”

“We'll find out,” Marie said grimly.

Alex briefed Manamakimba on what they knew about the impending attack by Innocent Ngoca and the Front and the anticipated air support to be provided courtesy of Consolidated Mining and the mercenaries at Executive Solutions. Marie explained their need for air
defenses and the CIA's understanding that Manamakimba and the Hammer of God had access to Russian-built SAMs.

“When we last met,” she added, “you told us about what the
genocidaires
did to your family, to your wife and your daughter. I am offering you the opportunity for a measure of revenge.”

“That will not bring them back.”

“No,” Marie agreed. “Revenge is not for the dead. It is for the living.”

Manamakimba made another pot of tea. He was quiet for some time, deep in thought.

“This is a nice village,” he said finally. It seemed something of a non sequitur, but Marie believed that she understood the direction the guerilla leader's thoughts were taking him. It was a thread that she had sensed running through the negotiations that had freed her and her mining company colleagues from captivity.

“It's a fine place,” Manamakimba continued, “but it can be no more than a temporary refuge for us. We have few women and most of us have no real skills beyond fighting. We are not farmers or carpenters or mechanics or doctors. My children deserve better than to live like nomads. We need a place where we can live in peace, a place where the people will embrace us and give my children a chance for a new beginning. Do you know of such a place, Ms. Tsiolo?”

This is what Marie had expected, what she had anticipated Manamakimba would ask in exchange for his support. The Hammer of God needed a home and Manamakimba wanted that home to be in Busu-Mouli. It would not be an easy thing, Marie knew, to integrate this band of warriors used to having its way through force into the more settled and structured village life. It was a gamble she was prepared to take, but not without conditions.

“Help us defend our village,” she said, “and we will share it with you. We will teach your men and boys to farm and fish and to mine copper ore from the hills. Your boys may court our girls and marry
them if they are willing. Provided,” and here her voice turned steely, “provided that you accept me as your chief and swear that you will use violence only in defense of our valley and only under my direction.”