The Secret Chamber (11 page)

It had taken over a week for them to travel to the Congo in a succession of dusty vehicles and decrepit aircraft. During almost the entire journey, Luca had remained silent, lost in his own thoughts. Only at the mention of Joshua’s name would he snap out of his trance, becoming animated and even, at times, emotional. He would talk for hours about Joshua as if no one else existed on the planet, then just as suddenly lapse back into silence. The duality was exhausting, and René found his initial doubts only worsening with each new hour they spent together. It was like travelling with a schizophrenic.

René had promised himself that he would keep a very close eye on Luca, but at that exact moment he was having problems of his own. Perched on top of the motorbike just ahead, he was trying to keep his balance as the entire bike listed backwards from his weight, forcing the driver to lean almost directly over the handlebars in order to steer. René had begun the journey by swearing loudly at each near collision, berating his driver and pointing out some of the more immediate dangers. Now, he had his eyes screwed shut and had somehow managed to light a cigarette, puffing away on it with almost otherworldly calm.

The two bikes sped further out of town, past kilometres of shanty towns with their patchwork corrugated roofing and creaking wooden doors. The huts stretched for mile after mile, some broken and forgotten, as if their owners had left them only half-built, while others had people visible within, tending to cooking fires or minding children. Occasionally a figure sat curled against the wall outside, elbows and knees jutting out at angles. They were all simply there, waiting.

As they passed the last of the huts, they saw the still waters of Lake Kivu breaking through the foliage on their left-hand side. The lake looked sombre, with heavy cloud reaching all the way down to the surface of the water. Rain threatened with each soft roll of thunder. It hadn’t started yet, but when it came the roads would be awash with mud and grit.

René’s motorbike suddenly veered off the road and on to a dust track, with Emmanuel nimbly following, past a deep run of potholes. Several supply trucks were crawling along the road ahead of them, belching out great plumes of diesel, while beside them ran half-naked men, pushing rickety wooden scooters stacked high with bags of charcoal. The men’s bodies were lithe and muscular, their black skin gleaming with sweat as they heaved their loads forward. They laboured without a break, only stopping to refit one of their plastic flip-flops when it caught in the tar-black mud.

As the motorbikes crested a rise, columns and columns of white canvas tents came into view. They stretched as far as the eye could see, fanning out across the hillside in every direction before eventually being lost under the distant cloud. As they drew closer, they could see the letters ‘UNHCR’
stamped
boldly across each one, with old rope zigzagging across the top, weighted down by slabs of black volcanic rock.

‘Kibati,’ Emmanuel said, raising his hand from the throttle. Luca had heard of the refugee camp before. Jack Milton had said it was the last place Joshua had been working with
Médecins Sans Frontières
before he had headed north and disappeared.

There was a small hut at the entrance with a sign reading ‘Gendarmes’, but the door was firmly locked and no policeman was in sight. As Emmanuel and his companion went off to try and find one of the MSF doctors, Luca and René stood by the motorbikes, with Rene smiling awkwardly at the few people who bothered to notice them. A small child, dragging a filthy plastic tray, walked past them returning from some errand. He wore a ripped T-shirt and flip-flops of different sizes.

‘
Bonbons? Stylo?
’ he asked, raising a hand towards Luca. He looked to René for a translation.

‘He wants a sweet or a pen,’ René said, patting his pockets. He took out one of his cigarettes and gave it to the boy, gently rubbing the top of his head like a sympathetic father.

‘René, for Christ’s sake, he’s about five years old,’ Luca protested. ‘He can’t smoke that.’

‘I don’t have any sweets and he’ll trade that smoke with one of the older kids. This is the Congo, my boy, and here, everything is worth something.’

Pulling another from the pack and lighting it, he inhaled deeply, letting his eyes scan across the sea of faded white tarpaulin.

‘You know, this is all a hangover from Rwanda,’ he said softly. ‘These camps were originally set up when all the Hutus came across the border after they’d massacred the Tutsis. There were nearly a million of them right here, all trying to escape RPF reprisals. Now, it’s mainly displaced Congolese people, driven out of their farms by all these bloody warring militias.’

René exhaled a huge plume of smoke, eyes taking in the desolation afresh. ‘It’s just never-ending. All these different groups fighting each other … until they forget the bloody reason for fighting in the first place. It’s the biggest damn’ mess on the planet and these are the people who suffer. Nearly six million dead in the last eight years and barely a person outside Africa knows anything about it.’

Luca followed his gaze towards a small group of men sheltering under an open-sided tent. The boy was already there, trading his cigarette. In the distance, there was a roll of thunder and the black skies looked full to bursting.

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ he said.

René shrugged.

‘You forget, I’m Belgian. This used to be one of our colonies, and I tell you, Luca, we were no better. Back then it was all rubber and ivory. The story of Africa – white man grabbing everything he could. Now, it’s just a bit more complex. But one thing never changes – the number of dead.’

He paused, eyes glassing over as he scanned the innumerable rooftops of tents.

‘First it was us, then thirty years of that bastard
kleptomaniac
Mobutu, and now an endless mess of militia groups slaughtering everything in sight. What you are looking at here, Luca, are people who have been fucked over for the better part of a century.’ A grim smile appeared on René’s lips. ‘It’s like the devil came up to the Congo one day and decided he’d stay.’

There was a loud whistle; they turned to see Emmanuel gesturing at them. Leaving the bikes, they followed him down the lines of shoddy tents, picking their way carefully over guy ropes and across the rocky ground. Luca followed at the back of the procession, eyes glancing sideways and in at the open doors of the tents they passed. Occasionally people stared back, their eyes locking with his for the briefest of moments. Some were proud, some broken, some just old, but as he passed one after the other, he realised that they all told stories he could never truly understand.

They were led up to a central clearing with a huge medical tent dominating one side of it. A long line of people sheltered under a canvas awning as they patiently waited their turn to enter. By the entrance stood a white man smoking a cigarette. He wore a doctor’s lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck, and stared into the middle distance with an air of exhausted indifference. René and Luca were standing almost directly in front of him before he seemed to register their presence.

‘My name’s René, and this is Luca. Have you got a minute?’ the Belgian said, offering his hand.

‘Doctor Sabian,’ the man said automatically, more resting his hand in René’s than shaking it. ‘Christophe Sabian.’ He
looked
towards Luca, who had his eyes turned towards the ground.

‘And you have all of my attention … until I finish this cigarette,’ Christophe continued, raising the half-smoked butt in front of his face. ‘There was another massacre out by Bunia this morning. So my diary’s kind of full.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ René said.

‘What the hell for? You didn’t do it.’

‘Look, I know this is a bad time … but we really need some information.’ As René drew a small notepad from his pocket, Christophe’s expression suddenly darkened.

‘Great,’ he hissed, ‘more bloody reporters.’ Before René could protest, he raised a finger towards him in warning. ‘Just don’t think you’re going to start interviewing the women again. The last fucking story chaser from Reuters might as well have hung a sign out to the husbands as to which one of them had been raped.’ Anger coloured his cheeks as he flicked the cigarette down into the mud. ‘You know the men don’t take them back again, don’t you? Once they’ve been raped, I mean. The women are cast out of the camps and have to take their children with them.’

Nodding towards the dying glow of the cigarette, Christophe shook his head in disgust.

‘Time’s up,’ he said, but before he could take a step further, Luca suddenly pushed past René, grabbing the lapel of the doctor’s white coat and shunting him back against the side of the tent.

‘What the hell do you think …’ Christophe began, but as he looked into Luca’s eyes for the first time, he fell silent.

‘We’re not reporters,’ Luca hissed. ‘We want information about a man named Kofi. Joshua Kofi.’

‘Joshua? Why do you want to know about him?’

‘We’re looking for him.’

Christophe didn’t respond for a moment, then a flicker of recognition passed across his face. ‘Luca?’ he asked. ‘You’re his friend from England, right?’

As Luca released the front of his coat and stepped back, Christophe stared into his eyes. ‘Yeah, that’s right. He mentioned you a few times. You’re that climber.’

Luca didn’t respond.

Christophe slowly straightened the front of his white coat, smoothing out the fabric. He shook his head.

‘Look, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Josh is … gone.’ He looked skyward for a second. ‘Jesus, someone at the agency should have informed you. Why the hell they let you come all the way out here like this … Really, I’m sorry.’

Luca’s jaw clenched. ‘You knew him well?’ he asked.

Christophe shrugged. ‘Yes, I’d say quite well. We worked together for a couple of months right here in Kibati. But after that convoy got lost, he disappeared. Like all the rest of them.’

As he spoke, a huge Congolese man ducked his head under the entrance flap of the tent. He wore the same sort of stained white coat as Christophe, and had jet-black, pockmarked skin. Shoving the nearest of the line of patients out of his way with a rough swing of his arm, he stared up at the bruised sky for a moment before lighting a cigarette and turning towards them.

‘Break’s over, Sabian,’ he said, in a thick French accent.

Luca turned to him, his eyes narrowing, but before he said anything, René quickly interjected.

‘Could you give us a couple of minutes? This is important.’

The man’s eyes turned towards him, looking tired and bloodshot, the residue of decades of exhaustion and low-level alcoholism. After a moment, with a single eyebrow raised, he said, ‘There’s a boy waiting inside with a machete wound so deep that it nearly cut off his whole leg. And he’s the tenth child we’ve treated this morning.’ He paused, sniffing the air. ‘So I’m guessing what you’ve got to say must be pretty fucking important.’

He then gave a deep sigh. ‘I said, move it, Sabian.’

Christophe nodded, but as he turned towards the entrance, he motioned for Luca and René to follow.

‘We can talk more while I’m working.’

Following him into the medical tent, they passed a large area of low seating, packed with waiting people. They sat huddled together, their bodies pressed so close that their limbs seemed to meld together into a continuous line of broken forms. There was barely a movement from the entire group, as if a terrible apathy had infected every one of them.

Further back in the tent and stationed against one of the steel uprights was an operating table. On top of it lay a teenaged boy. He was rake-thin, with his shaved head bent low. His right hand clutched a bundle of gauze wrapped around his inner thigh, the fabric rust-coloured from dried blood.

‘How much morphine has he had?’ Christophe asked the assistant hovering outside the well of light.

‘Two point five mils.’

Christophe’s eyes widened in surprise. His assistant shrugged, both of them well aware of the lack of medical supplies. Donning a pair of plastic gloves, the doctor gently pushed the boy down flat on the table and peeled back the dirty bandages. A gaping wound ran right back into the underside of his leg. It was wide, the band of flesh raw and blotted with pools of new blood.

‘Staples aren’t going to work. We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Get me a needle and sutures.’ As he started swabbing the grit and congealed blood out of the wound, the boy cried out in pain. His eyes were screwed shut as he tried to stifle his tears.

‘They pack dirt into the cut as part of a traditional remedy,’ Christophe explained, running his finger down the centre of the wound. ‘Plays bloody havoc with infection.’

A sterilised needle was passed to him and Christophe paused for a moment.

‘
Désolé, mais ceci te fera grand mal
,’ he said. Sorry, but this will hurt a lot.

The boy only nodded, clenching his fists tight against the sides of the operating table.

‘You need to understand something,’ Christophe said over his shoulder, as he drew the needle through one side of the wound. ‘Things are different now. Joshua disappeared north of the Congo River, somewhere in the Ituri Forest. Nowadays, no one goes anywhere near there. I mean, no one. Not even MONUC patrol that area.’