Dieudonne: For catching the plague?

Haj: For fighting another useless war, man. (dancing up and down the steps) s.h.i.t. d.a.m.n, (more low-key expletives) This no-name Syndicate wants your a.r.s.e, know that? (garbled) The Banyamulenge have got the best warriors, discipline, motivation, the best minerals .. . gold and colt an on the plateau .. . and you don't even mine them, you love your f.u.c.king cows too much! .. .

Dieudonne: (through his coughs, dead calm) Then we shall dictate terms. We shall go to the Mw.a.n.gaza and say: first you must give us all you have promised, or we will not fight for you. We will fight against you. We will say that.

Haj: The Mw.a.n.gaza? You think the Mw.a.n.gaza is running this thing? What a hero he is! What a world-cla.s.s enlightened .. . What a selfless friend of the poor! That guy owns the poorest ten-million-dollar villa in Spain you ever saw. Ask my dad .. . plasma television screens in every toilet .. . (violent tattoo of crocs, speech very garbled, then clears. Softly, in counterpoint to din that preceded it) Dieudonne. Pay attention to me. You're a good man. I love you.

Dieudonne: (unintelligible) Haj: You will not die. I do not want you to die. Okay? Deal? Not you, not the Banyamulenge. Not again. Not of war, not of hunger, not of after-war, not of the plague. If you've got to die at all, die of beer. Promise?

Dieudonne: (grim laugh) Beer and anti-retrovirals.

Haj: I mean, I do not want any f.u.c.ker to die anywhere in the Congo for a very long time, except quietly and peacefully, of beer. You're sweating like a wh.o.r.e. Sit down.

Reception improves. Anton reports via Sam that Dieudonne has settled on a stone bench under a beech tree beneath the gazebo. Haj is jiggling round him in a radius of eight to ten feet. But I am there beside them.

Haj: .. . the Rwandans are stronger than we are, know that? .. . stronger than the .. . Banyamulenge, stronger than the Mau Mau knuckle-draggers {making ape noises) .. . stronger than the whole of.. . Kivu put together .. . Okay? Admit it.

Dieudonne: It is possible.

Haj: It's a f.u.c.king certainty and you know it. Listen to me {returns to Dieudonne and speaks intensely close to his ear twenty-twenty reception, presumably from mike in overhead branches of beech tree) ... I love my father. I'm an African. I honour him. You got a father still? .. . Okay, so that means you honour his spirit. You talk to his spirit, you obey his spirit, you're guided by it. Mine's alive, okay? Three wives and all the hookers he can eat. Owns a slice of Goma and fifty-one per cent of me, and the Rwandans are stealing his business, or he thinks they are.

Anton reports via Sam that Haj keeps darting behind the beech tree and reappearing. The in-and-out reception confirms.

Haj: Couple of months ago he calls me in, okay? .. . solemn occasion, humph, humph .. . office, not home .. . doesn't want his ... wives listening at the f.u.c.king keyhole .. . tells me about this great New Deal for Kivu he's involved in, how his old pal the Mw.a.n.gaza is going to get in ahead of elections which are a recipe for civil war, throw out everybody he doesn't like and make everybody he likes rich, and the People rich too, because he's got this fine philanthropic Syndicate behind him, and they've got all this money, and these good intentions, and the guns, and the ammunition. Sounds great, I tell him. Sounds just like King Leopold when he came to Congo. Which naturally drove him ape. So I wait till he cools down, which is next day .. . {breaks up, returns) .. . meantime something bad. Really bad ... I consult some very evil people I know ... in Kinshasa .. . guys my dad would kill me for knowing, guys it pays to be polite to if you don't want to wake up dead in the morning .. . (very garbled now) .. . what they told me, these guys? .. . under a pledge of total secrecy which I am now dishonouring? Kinshasa is part of the deal. Kinshasa has a piece of the action .. . the absolute worst piece .. .

Perfect sound. Sam advises that Haj and Dieudonne are sitting side by side on the bench with a mike six feet above them and no breeze to disturb it.

Haj: So I go back to my dad and I say to him: Father, I love you and I am grateful that you paid for me to grow a f.u.c.king brain, and I respect your good motives regarding the Mw.a.n.gaza and the Eastern Congo. Therefore allow me to tell you that on the basis of my professional expertise as a problem-solver that you are a very serious a.r.s.e hole on two counts. You and the Mw.a.n.gaza have in my estimation undersold yourselves to this no-b.a.l.l.s Syndicate by approximately one thousand per cent. Count Two, and forgive my impertinence, but who needs another f.u.c.king war? You and I are totally dependent on Rwanda for our trade. They send our goods out into the world for us. For everybody except the Congolese, this would be the basis of a profitable and friendly trading partnership. It would not be a reason for slaughtering each other's wives and children, or installing a geriatric, untried leader who, however much you love him, is pledged to kicking everything that smells of Rwanda out of Congo. Do I tell him about my bad friends in Kinshasa? Do I f.u.c.k. But I do tell him about my good friend Marius, a fat Dutch f.u.c.ker I happened to study with in Paris.

Reception temporarily ceases. Sam's team reports the couple making slow progress over gra.s.s on the other side of the gazebo. Reception very poor.

Haj: .. . forty years old .. . (two seconds garbled) .. . mountain of inst.i.tutional money .. . African [?] vice president of.. . (seven seconds garbled) ... So I told my dad .. . (four seconds garbled) listened to me .. . told me I was the biggest failure of his life .. . disgrace to our ancestors .. . then asked me where could he find this Marius so that he could .. . tell him how sealing the Rwandan border with Congo was the only sane solution to the world's problems, which is how my dad talks when he doesn't want you to know he's changing his mind.

Shriek of metal, sigh of foam cushions, clarity restored. Sam reports that the two men are seated in a wind shelter looking out to sea. Haj's voice is urgent, almost reckless.

Haj: So my dad gets in his plane and goes to see Marius in Nairobi. Luc likes Nairobi. Knows a great hooker there. And he likes Marius. Smokes a couple of cigars with him. And Marius likes Luc. And Marius tells him what an a.r.s.e hole he is. "You are everything your p.i.s.sant of a son says you are. A wise, fine man. And you and your Mw.a.n.gaza want to throw the Rwandans out of Kivu so that they can no longer exploit you, which is a great idea except for one thing. Are you seriously suggesting they won't come and kick the living s.h.i.t out of you, pay back with interest what you took away from them? Isn't that what they do every time? So why not be really smart and do the unthinkable for once in your life? Instead of throwing the Rwandans out, look at yourself in the mirror, put on your biggest smile, and act like you love them? You're in business with them whether you like it or not, so try liking it. Then maybe my company will stake you or buy you out, and we'll get some bright young guys like your p.i.s.sant son on board, make sweet with Kinshasa, and instead of three million people dying we'll get some peaceful coexistence going."

Dieudonne: [after long thought) Is your father in alliance with this man?

Haj: He's Luc, for f.u.c.k's sake. Best poker player in Goma. But you know what? The fat Dutch f.u.c.ker was right. Because when the Rwandans do come back, who are they going to bring with them? The whole f.u.c.king catastrophe. Like last time round, but worse. The Angolans, the Zimbabweans and anybody else who hates our guts and wants what we've got. And when that happens, forget the peace process, forget international pressure, forget the elections, because you poor Banyamulenge b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are going to die like flies, which is what you do best. But not me. I'll be back in Paris, laughing my head off.

Stay exactly where you are, Brian dear. Help is on its way to you now.

"That Pitman's, old boy? Looks more like a roll of barbed wire to me."

Maxie is leaning over me, Bogey-style, his hands on the arms of my hot-seat as he peers at what Mr. Anderson likes to call my Babylonian cuneiform. Spider has disappeared, sent packing by Maxie. Philip in pink shirt and red braces is standing in the doorway leading to the corridor. I feel dirty and don't know why. It's as if I'd made love to Penelope after she's come back from one of her weekend seminars.

"My home brew, Skipper," I reply. "A bit of speed writing a bit of shorthand, and a large chunk of me' which is what I say to all my clients, because if there's one thing I've learned, it's never let them think your notebook is a doc.u.ment of record or you'll end up in court or worse.

"Read it for us again, old boy, will you."

I read it again to them as ordered. In English, from my notes as before, omitting no detail however slight, et cetera. Maxie and Philip are annoying me, although I'm careful not to let it show. I've already told them that without Mr. Anderson's sophisticated sound-enhancer we could go on all night, but that doesn't deter them, oh no. They need to listen to the actual sound on my headphones, which strikes me as rather irrational, given that neither of them speaks a word of my below-the-line languages. The pa.s.sage they are obsessing about is the seven garbled seconds just after the first reference to the big cigar-smoking Dutchman, and if I can't make head or tail of it, why on earth should they suppose they can?

I hand Philip my headphones, thinking they might like an ear each, but Philip hogs them both. He hears it once, he hears it three times. And each time he hears it, he gives Maxie this knowing nod. Then he hands Maxie the headphones and orders me to play the pa.s.sage yet again and finally Maxie gives him a knowing nod back, which only confirms what I've been suspecting all along: they know what they're listening for and they haven't told me. And there is nothing makes a top interpreter look sillier, and more useless, than not being fully briefed by his employers. Furthermore it's my tape, not theirs. It's my trophy.

It was me who wrested it from Haj's grasp, not them, I fought Haj for it, it was our duel.

"Great stuff, old boy," Maxie a.s.sures me.

"My pleasure, Skipper," I reply, which is only polite. But what I'm thinking is: don't pat me on the back, thank you, I don't need it, not even from you.

"Totally brilliant," Philip purrs.

Then both of them have gone, though I only hear the one pair of footsteps bounding up the cellar stairs because Philip is this soundless consultant, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had no shadow either.

For what seems a long time after their departure, I did nothing. I took off my headset, wiped my face with my handkerchief, put my headset back on and, having sat with my chin in my fist for a while, played myself the seven-second splurge for the tenth time. What had Maxie and Philip heard that I wasn't to be trusted with? I slow-motioned, I fast-forwarded, and I was none the wiser: three to four beats with a u at the beginning, a three- or four-syllable word with -ere or -aire at the end, and I could think of a dozen words straight off with an ending that would fit: debonnaire, legionnaire, militaire, any air you liked to play. And after it, a splurge ak, such as attaque.

I removed my headset yet again, buried my face in my hands and whispered into the darkness. My actual words elude me to this day. To say I had feelings of actual betrayal is premature. The most I will admit to is a sense of dismay creeping over me, the origins of which I was determined not to examine. In the anticlimactic aftermath of my single combat with Haj, I was wiped out and flat on the deck. I even wondered whether our duel was a fantasy I had cooked up in my imagination, until I remembered how surveillance-conscious Haj had been from the moment he arrived in the guest suite. I was not, however -contrary to anything Penelope's bosom friend Paula would maintain in denial. I hadn't even begun to work out what it was I was denying. If I had a sense of letting anyone down, it was turned inward. I had let me down, which is how I described my condition over the ether to Hannah, in what I now regard as the lowest point in my graph of that momentous day.

Sam? It's me. Brian. What's cooking?

Nothing is cooking. Sam is not at her post. I was counting on a bit of womanly sympathy, but all I'm hearing over my headset is background male chatter. She hasn't even bothered to switch her mike off, which I consider somewhat careless and insecure. I glance at Aunt Imelda's watch. The recess is running into overtime. Haj's inconclusive account of his father's flirtation with a rival outfit run by a fat Dutch f.u.c.ker who smokes cigars seems to have put the cat among the pigeons in a big way. Serves him right for calling me zebra. Spider still hasn't come back from wherever he went. There's too much about the geography of this house that n.o.body tells me. Like where the ops room is. Or where Anton's surveillance team keeps its lookouts. Where Jasper is hiding away. Where Benny is. But I don't need to know, do I? I'm just the interpreter. Everybody needs to know except me.

I glance at the Underground plan. Haj and Dieudonne have split up. Poor Dieudonne, all alone in the guest suite. Probably having a quick pray. Haj has taken himself back to the gazebo, the scene of his supposed triumph. If only he knew! I imagine him staring out to sea with his goggle eyes, congratulating himself on having queered the Mw.a.n.gaza's pitch for him. Franco's pin light is out. Still closeted with the Mw.a.n.gaza in the royal apartments, presumably. Out of bounds. Archive purposes only.

I need sound. I don't like the accusing voices that are starting to raise themselves inside my head, Hannah's foremost. I'm not here to be criticised. I did my best for my employers. What was I supposed to do? Pretend I hadn't heard Haj say what he said? Keep it to myself? I'm here to do a job and be paid for it. Cash. Even if it's a pittance compared with what they're paying Jasper. I'm an interpreter. They talk, I render. I don't stop rendering people when they say wrong things. I don't censor, edit, revise or invent, not the way certain of my colleagues do. I give it straight. If I didn't, I wouldn't be Mr. Anderson's favourite son. I wouldn't be a genius in my field. Legal or commercial, civil or military: I render everybody equally and impartially, regardless of colour, race and creed. I'm the bridge, Amen and out.

I try Sam again. Still away from her post. The background male babble in the ops room has stopped. Instead, thanks to Sam's carelessness, I hear Philip. Moreover, he is talking clearly enough for me to hear what he's saying. Who he's talking to is anybody's guess, and his voice is coming off at least one wall before it reaches Sam's mike, but that doesn't affect my hearing. I'm on such a low-high after my duel with Haj that if a fly coughed into my headset I could tell you its age and s.e.x. The surprise is that Philip's voice is so different from the high-gloss version I a.s.sociate with him that for the opening bars I'm actually chary of identifying him. He is talking to Mark, and to judge by Philip's imperious tone, Mark is an underling: Philip: I want who his doctor is, I want the diagnosis, what treatment the patient's getting if any, when they expect to discharge him if they do, who he's receiving at his bed of pain and who's with him apart from his wives, mistresses and bodyguards .. . No, I don't know which b.l.o.o.d.y hospital he's in, Mark, that's your job, it's what you're paid for, you're the man on the spot. Well, how many heart hospitals are there in Cape Town, for Christ's sake?

End of phone call. Top freelance consultants are too important to say goodbye. Philip needs to talk to Pat. He has dialled a new number and Pat is who he asks for when he gets through.

Philip: The name is Marius, he's Dutch, fat, fortyish, smokes cigars. He was recently in Nairobi and for all I know he's there now. He attended business school in Paris and he represents our old friend the Union Miniere des Grand Lacs. Who is he otherwise? (ninety seconds in which Philip intermittently indicates that yes he is listening and making notes, as I am. Finally) Thank you very much, Pat. Perfect. Exactly what I feared, but worse. Just what we didn't want to know. I'm very grateful. Goodbye.

So now we know. It wasn't debonnaire or legionnaire or militaire. It was Miniere and it wasn't attaque, it was Lacs. Haj was talking about a mining consortium of which the fat Dutchman was the African representative. I catch sight of Spider standing the other side of his Meccano grid, checking his turntables, switching tapes and marking up new ones. I lift an earpiece and smile in order to be sociable.

"Looks like we're going to have a busy lunchtime, then, Brian, thanks to you," says Spider with mysterious Welsh relish. "Quite a lot of activity planned, one way and another."

"What sort of activity?"

"Well that would be telling, now, wouldn't it? Never trade a secret, Mr. Anderson advises, remember? You'll always get the short end of the bargain."

I replace my headset and take a longer look at the Underground plan. The Mw.a.n.gaza's mauve pin light is taunting me like a brothel invitation. Come on, Salvo. What's stopping you? School rules? Out of bounds unless Philip personally tells you otherwise. Archival, not operational. We record but don't listen. Not if we're zebra interpreters. So if I'm not cleared to listen, who is?

Mr. Anderson, who doesn't speak a word of anything but north country English? Or how about the no-b.a.l.l.s Syndicate, as Haj called them: do they listen? As a diversion perhaps. Over the port and Havanas in their Channel Island fastness.

Am I really thinking like this? Has Haj's sedition got under my skin without my noticing? Is my African heart beating more loudly than it's letting on? Is Hannah's? If not, why is my right hand moving with the same deliberation with which it fed Penelope's coq au vin into the waste-disposal unit? I hesitate, but not because of any last-minute pangs of conscience. If I press the switch, will sirens go off all over the house? Will the mauve pin light on the Underground plan flash out a distress signal? Will Anton's anoraks come thundering down the cellar steps to get me?

I press it anyway, and enter the drawing room of the forbidden royal apartments. Franco is speaking Swahili. Reception perfect, no echoes or noises off. I imagine thick carpets, curtains, soft furniture. Franco relaxed. Perhaps they've given him a whisky. Why do I think whisky? Franco is a whisky man. The conversation is between Franco and the Dolphin. There is no firm evidence as yet of the Mw.a.n.gaza's presence, although something in their voices tells me he's not far away.

Franco: We have heard that in this war many aircraft will be used. Dolphin: That is true.

Franco: I have a brother. I have many brothers. Dolphin: You are blessed. Franco: My best brother is a good fighter, but to his shame has only daughters. Four wives, five daughters. Dolphin: {a proverb) No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come. Franco: Of these daughters, the eldest has a cyst on her neck which hampers her prospects of marriage. {Grunts of exertion confuse me until I realise that Franco is reaching for the same spot on his own lame body) If the Mw.a.n.gaza will fly my brother's daughter to Johannesburg for confidential treatment, my brother will have good feelings towards the Middle Path. Dolphin: Our Enlightener is a devoted husband and the father of many children. Transport will be arranged.

A clinking of gla.s.s seals the promise. Mutual expressions of esteem.

Franco: This brother is a man of ability, popular among his men. When the Mw.a.n.gaza is Governor of South Kivu, he will be well advised to select my brother as his Chief of Police for all the region.

Dolphin: In the new democracy, all appointments will be the result of transparent consultation.

Franco: My brother will pay one hundred cows and fifty thousand dollars cash for a three-year appointment.

Dolphin: The offer will be considered democratically.

From the other side of his Meccano grid, Spider is peering at me, hooped eyebrows raised. I lift an earpiece.

"Something wrong?" I enquire.

"Not that I know of, boy."

"Then why are you staring at me?"

"Bell's gone, that's why. You were too busy listening to hear it."

12.

"Three bases, gentlemen! Each base open-cast, minimally exploited, and a vital key to Kivu's revival."

Maxie, billiards cue in hand, is once more haranguing us from the head of the table. The airport is ours, the Mw.a.n.gaza is installed. Soon the Syndicate will control all South Kivu's mines but in the meantime here are three to be getting along with. They are out-of-the-way, with no official concession-holders to be dealt with. Re-entering the conference room, I have the sensation that its occupants have undergone a theatrical transformation. Haj and Dieudonne, who minutes ago were partners to a highly seditious conversation, are behaving as if they had never set eyes on one another. Haj is humming tra-las to himself and smirking into the middle distance. Dieudonne is meditatively drawing out the strands of his beard with his bony fingertips. Looming between them sits Franco, his gnarled face a mask of righteousness. Who would have imagined that minutes previously he had been attempting to bribe the seraphic Dolphin? And surely Philip is not now and never has been the author of certain peremptory commands barked over the sat-phone? His plump hands are linked across his shirt-front in parsonical tranquillity. Does he comb his waved white hair between acts? Coax up the little curls behind the ears? Tabizi alone seems unable to contain whatever unruly thoughts are seething in him. He may have the rest of his body under control, but the vengeful glint in his oil-dark eyes is inextinguishable.

The map Maxie is addressing is so large that Anton has to spread it like a counterpane over one end of the table. Like his skipper he has taken off his jacket. His bared arms are tattooed from elbow to wrist: a buffalo's head, a two-headed eagle clutching a globe and a skull on a star to commemorate the Escuadron de Helicopteros of Nicaragua. He bears a tray of little plastic toys: gunships with bent rotors, twin-engined aeroplanes with their propellers missing, howitzers hauling ammunition trailers, infantrymen charging with fixed bayonets or, more prudently, lying flat.

Maxie marches down the table, cue at the ready. I am trying to avoid Haj's eye. Every time Maxie points with his cue, I glance up from my notepad and there's Haj waiting for me with his goggly stare. What's he trying to tell me? I've betrayed him? We never duelled with each other? We're bosom pals?

"Little place called Lulingu," Maxie is telling Franco, as the tip of his billiards cue affects to skewer it. "Heart of your Mau Mau territory. Le coeur du Mau Mau. Oui? D'accord? Good man." He wheels round to me: "Suppose I asked him to put three hundred of his best chaps there, would he do that for me?"

While Franco is pondering my offer, Maxie swings back to Dieudonne. Is he about to advise him to swallow a bottle of aspirin? not to hang around at the back of the herd now his time's up?

"Your area, right? Your people. Your pastures. Your cattle. Your plateau."

The cue wheels down the southern sh.o.r.es of Lake Tanganyika, stops halfway, veers left and stops again.

"It is our area," Dieudonne concedes.

"Can you maintain a fortified base for me here?"

Dieudonne's face clouds. "Fovyou?"

"For the Banyamulenge. For a united Kivu. For peace, inclusiveness and prosperity for all the people." The Mwan-gaza's mantras are evidently Maxie's own.

"Who will supply us?"

"We will. From the air. We'll drop you everything you need for as long as you need it."

Dieudonne lifts his gaze to Haj as if to plead with him, then sinks his face into his long thin hands and keeps it there, and for a split second I join him in his darkness. Has Haj persuaded him? If so, has he persuaded me? Dieudonne's head lifts. His expression is resolute, but in what cause is anybody's guess. He begins reasoning aloud in short, decisive sentences while he stares into the distance.

"They invite us to join Kinshasa's army. But only in order to neutralise us. They offer us appointments that give the illusion of power. But in reality they are worthless. If an election comes, Kinshasa will draw borders that give the Banyamulenge no voice in Parliament. If we are slaughtered, Kinshasa will not lift a finger to save us. But the Rwandans will come to our protection. And that will be another disaster for Congo." From between splayed fingers, he announces his conclusion. "My people cannot afford to reject this opportunity. We shall fight for the Mw.a.n.gaza."

Haj stares wide-eyed at him, and emits a girlish laugh of disbelief. Maxie raps the tip of his cue on the foothills south-west of Bukavu.

"And this very fine mine belongs to you, Haj? Is that correct? You and Luc?"

"Nominally," Haj concedes with an irritating shrug.

"Well, if it's not yours, whose else is it?" part joke and part challenge, which I do not attempt to moderate.

"Our company has subcontracted it."

"Who to?"

"Some business acquaintances of my father," Haj retorts, and I wonder who else has heard the rebellious edge to his voice.

"Rwandans?"

"Rwandans who love Congo. Such people exist."

"And are loyal to him, presumably?"

"In many circ.u.mstances they are loyal to him. In others, they are loyal to themselves, which is normal."

"If we tripled the mine's production and paid them a cut, would they be loyal to us?"

"Us?"

"The Syndicate. a.s.suming they are well armed and supplied against attack. Your father said they would fight for us to the last man."

"If that is what my father said, then what my father says is true."