The Consignment (22 page)

Soon after we started out again, Rita dropped off to sleep. Henri levered back his seat, and soon he was out too. I didn’t want to sleep, but when the driver had the guard give me his jacket, I pillowed it between my head and the door. I couldn’t fight the tiredness forever, and the last thing I saw before I went out was the clock on the dash. Two
A.M.

When I woke, it was just past 5:00
A.M.
and we were still moving. I lifted my arm and felt the dull pain in my shoulder. The driver smiled at me in the rearview mirror. In back, our guard was sleeping like a baby. Rita’s head was cradled on my thigh, she felt me move and slowly came around. Morning time, I told her, and she sat up, massaging her neck.

After fifteen minutes the sky started to gray as dawn came on, and the driver nudged Henri awake. Henri rubbed his eyes, then cranked up his seat and turned to look at Rita.

“Ça va?”
Okay?

Rita rolled her eyes.

In the dim morning light I could make out the tin huts by the roadside, women carrying sticks for their fires, and children pumping water. Sometimes a skinny goat ran from the roadside into the undergrowth, and we passed several cows tethered outside huts, beneath sheltering trees. Smoke rose from many of the huts, and soon the horizon opened out in front of us, a clear African daybreak, a mother-of-pearl sky. In other circumstances, it would have been glorious.

Another fifteen minutes and we came to a roadblock. The soldiers manning it weren’t like the shakedown artists who’d stopped us outside the port the previous night, they were professional army. Henri sat up straight as he presented his papers to the senior officer. The guy looked in at Rita and me, then inspected the paperwork as he spoke to Henri in French. Henri looked disconcerted by what the guy told him. So did the driver. In back, our guard dropped the tailgate and lifted his gun. Finally satisfied, the soldier returned Henri’s papers and waved us on. Once we were on our way, I leaned forward.

“What’s up?”

“Kinshasa,” said Henri, nodding ahead. There was no real sign of the city yet, though the tin huts by the roadside were becoming more numerous. The outskirts of one of the city’s shantytowns.

“So what’s happening in Kinshasa?” I said.

Henri waved me back into my seat. The driver hunched over his wheel, his eyes darting left and right. The tarmac road widened, and as we swung north we saw several pillars of smoke rising ahead. Ten minutes later, we heard the first gunfire.

“Jesus Christ,” said Rita, pressing back in her seat. We were passing buildings now, mostly concrete shells, with plenty of rusty reinforced steel poking out of unfinished walls and floors. Then a column of women and children went by, walking away from the city. The women were fully laden, with babies on their backs and hips, and bundles of possessions piled high on their heads. It was a mini exodus. “You take us straight to the embassy,” Rita demanded firmly. “And you take us there now.”

Henri paid no attention. The gunfire outside was intensifying, getting louder the closer we got to the center. Henri unholstered his pistol and wound down his window. The driver took the small golden crucifix dangling from a chain around his neck and put it between his lips. He kept it there as he drove.

“Huddle down,” I told Rita, and we pressed down in the seat. I kept my eyes just high enough to look out.

It wasn’t like Mogadishu. There, the locals had gotten used to the fighting by the time our Ranger units arrived, the different clans had occupied different parts of the small city, and everyone knew where they could and couldn’t venture. Kinshasa was way different. It was more of an urban sprawl, and the fighting, from what I could see, wasn’t concentrated. We passed long stretches where everything looked normal except that there was no one around, but a hundred yards farther on, every shop was burned out. After a while Rita put her head up, but then she saw charred bodies lying at the roadside and she hunkered down again and covered her eyes.

I tried to get a fix on some landmarks, but it was nearly impossible. The concrete office blocks were featureless, almost indistinguishable, and we turned too often for me to have a clear idea of our direction at any given time. Our driver slowed down frequently to put his head out and listen for gunfire. It wasn’t high-tech, but it worked. He kept us clear of the fighting until at last we turned into a street and found ourselves confronted by a unit of the Congolese army. Half the unit was aiming weapons in our direction.

Our driver hit the brakes. Henri, his nerves stretched to breaking point, screamed at our guard in back, who immediately lowered his gun. Then Henri jumped out, waving his paperwork and talking fast. The officer of the unit came over, his men still sighting at us down their guns. Our driver, lips clamped on his golden crucifix, began to moan. But after a brief discussion with Henri and a check on the papers, the officer waved us through. We drove on two hundred yards, then stopped outside a nondescript low-rise office block. The sign outside was peeling.
SÉCURITÉ, RÉPUBLIQUE DÉMOCRATIQUE DU CONGO.

Henri came around and opened my door.

“Take us to the U.S. Embassy,” said Rita. “Both of us.”

Henri pointed his pistol casually at Rita. “You stay.” Then to me, he said, “You come.”

I faced Rita. “Brad’s at the Dujanka mine. Remember that. Dujanka.”

“Barchevsky Mining,” she said, repeating what I’d told her.

“Find Brad and get him out.” When Henri waved his pistol, Rita grabbed my arm. “Dujanka,” I said. “Barchevsky Mining.”

“Ned,” she said quietly, staring right past me.

I followed her gaze. Slumped against the gatehouse beside us was the body of a young white guy, he couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the words
AfricAid
stenciled across the chest. Flies had settled on his open eyes, and on the blood that had dried on his mouth and in his wispy beard. Henri jabbed at me with his pistol.

“Find Brad,” I told Rita, dry-mouthed. “Get him out of here.” Then I prised Rita’s fingers off my arm and climbed out. The Toyota door slammed closed, and Henri yanked on my cuffs and hauled me away. Rita stared out, her horrified gaze still fixed on the body. Both the kid’s arms were missing, severed like ripe fruit, clean at the shoulders.

CHAPTER 27

Henri took me down to the cells in the basement, the warder’s room was at the bottom of the stairs. Cell doors lined either side of a long corridor, the concrete floor was wet. While Henri signed some paperwork, I told him I wanted my cuffs removed. He gave the warder my cuff keys, the prick dropped them into his desk drawer. The paperwork all signed, Henri turned to leave.

“Have I been charged with something?” I called after him.

“It is not my affair.”

“It was your affair when you arrested me and brought me to this stinking hole.”

He turned up the stairs, past a slouching guard, and disappeared.

“Allez.”
The warder waved his keys toward the corridor.

I made a gesture, tipping my cuffed hands to my lips. Water, I said.

He came around his desk, calling to the guard on the stairs, and the guard hurried in, brandishing his AK47 like he wanted to use it.

I raised my hands. “Okay. Take it easy.”

I edged into the corridor. Three doors along, on the right, the warder opened an empty cell and shoved me in and locked the door. The cell was about six feet by twelve, the floor, walls, and ceiling were bare concrete. The only objects in there were a bucket in one corner and a naked lightbulb dangling from the center of the ceiling. There was a barred opening in the door, six inches by six, and I found I could see the three cell doors immediately across the corridor. I called for water a few times but nobody answered. Something stank. I looked in the bucket. It was full of urine and feces. Retreating to the far corner, I sat down.

The body of that young AfricAid guy, the severed arms, had shaken me. All the normal barriers of human restraint were clearly down, raw violence had bulldozed aside the fragile civil order of the country, forces were loose that had nothing to do with politics. Being a white man was no protection. Until the army or the rebels gained the upper hand, there’d be no safe place in the city for anyone. Out in the diamond fields it would be the same, maybe even worse.

I tried to cast my mind back to some courses I attended at Fort Bragg, instruction meant to prepare officers for the rigors of captivity. After several minutes’ reflection I regretfully concluded that most of it didn’t apply. I was a civilian, not a soldier, my value for the purposes of propaganda was virtually zero. There was no credible threat of retaliation against my captors if I was mistreated or harmed. I was merely John Doe, arms dealer, and as far as my fellow citizens were concerned, if they knew, probably getting what I deserved.

“Hey,” someone called, and I lifted my head. “Hey. You speak English?”

I got up and went to the peephole.

“Hey.” From the peephole opposite, two eyes looked out at me. A black face. “Hi. You speak English?”

“I can try.”

“Oh Jesus, man. You American?”

I strained to see along to the warder’s room. I couldn’t see a damn thing. “Yeah. You?”

“Detroit, man. Lovely, beautiful Detroit. Never gonna leave it again, long as I live.”

“How long you been in here?”

“Two days.”

I asked him his name.

“Jay.”

“How old are you, Jay?”

“Twenny-eight. They ain’t gonna let us out. These people, I swear, they ain’t like us, man. They’re killin’ people.”

“You alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone outside know you’re in here?”

“No. That’s bad, ain’t it. That’s real bad.”

I asked him his surname.

“Jones.”

“Jay Jones.”

“Right.”

“Birthday?” I said, but he didn’t respond. “Jay?”

“What kinda stupid question’s that, man? Shit. I look like I be throwin’ a party?”

“When I get out, I’ll give your name and date of birth to the embassy. It’ll give them a fix on you. It might just save your ass.”

He thought that over a moment, then finally told me his date of birth. I repeated it back to him, and he confirmed I had it right. Then I told him my name. I kept straining to see the warder, I could hear people talking down at his office. I asked Jay what he knew about the coup.

“Man, like against the government? That what they sayin’?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“Shit no. They bust in and arrested us like they was mad about somethin’. No one tol’ us for what.”

“I thought you said you were alone.”

“I am. They took Johnny somewheres else.”

“Johnny.”

“Johnny. The guy I brung the Bibles to at AfricAid. Hey,” he said, suddenly thinking of something. “You don’t s’pose they holdin’ us ’cause we Christians. What religion they all got here, anyways?”

Johnny. At AfricAid.

I asked Jay if this guy Johnny was a friend, but before he could answer we heard the warder coming from his office, and Jay backed away from his peephole, murmuring, “Duck and cover, man. Duck and cover.”

My cell door opened. The warder beckoned me out and I got up and followed him. At the foot of the stairs we stepped aside, and three manacled men were led down past us. They’d been beaten. Their faces were swollen and bruised, and their lips were bloody. The soldier pushing them along suddenly struck them with a wooden truncheon as he shoved them into a cell. The warder barked a command at another soldier by the stairs, who responded by jabbing his AK47 into my ribs. Halfway up the stairs, I heard one of the prisoners below give a scream like the cry of a mortally wounded animal, and the hairs on my neck stood rigid.

“I want to see Trevanian. Jack Trevanian. Take me to one of your officers.”

The warder ignored me. Up on the ground floor, there were more guys in manacles, about twenty of them with their hands cuffed behind their backs, seated on the floor. Internal Security men wandered among them delivering indiscriminate kicks and blows, which the prisoners took like abject cattle.

We went past into a rear foyer, then on outside, where there was a dirt yard with basketball hoops at either end and a twelve-foot-high stone wall all around, topped with broken glass and razor wire. There was a steel door in the wall, and an armed guard slouching on a chair. He eyed me as we neared, but didn’t bother to rise. He unhooked a large key from his belt and handed it to the warder. The warder opened the steel door and beckoned me. I balked. I had a bad feeling.

He beckoned again.
“Allez.”

“What’s in there?”

“Allez, allez.”

Now the guard roused himself from his chair and cocked his gun.
“Bon,”
he said, grinning. My bad feeling wasn’t getting any better. He put the barrel against my spine and his mouth up near my ear. “America dollar,
oui
?”

“Fuck off.”

The warder yanked on my cuffs and hauled me through the open doorway. I stumbled, and the steel door slammed shut behind me. I got up off my knees, waiting for the bullet, but when it didn’t come I looked back and saw that the guard had remained on the far side of the wall. The warder let go of my cuffs, then disappeared behind some banana palms up ahead, and that’s when I realized I was in a garden. An African version of a garden, trodden red earth instead of grass, but definitely a garden. There were banana palms, heavy-fronded greenery, and creepers going up frames of wrought iron and wood. A pungent sweet scent came from a stand of white flowers that looked like African cousins of the lily. I looked around me. The steel door was closed, and no gun barrels pointed down at me from the wall. I crouched, scanning beneath the nearby shrubs and bushes, but there was nothing. My uneasiness grew, I stood and walked on, brushing through the line of banana palms, calling to the warder, “You bring me out here for some reason, or you just getting your kicks?”

“They said you were thirsty.”

I stopped in my tracks. Ten yards in front of me was a garden bench nestled in a shaded arbor. On the bench, a pitcher and two glasses of water. Beside the glasses, Cecille Lagundi.