'Lemme spik to him,' he said, as if he'd ever had to ask Mary permission for anything. He whumped into his chair and those terrible feet crashed on to the table. 'Where you bloddy hell!'
'Abidjan.'
'What you bloddy f-f-fool, what you doing darn dere? You supposed to be in Korhogo.'
'Kurt Nielsen was murdered on Monday night.'
'Get me cigarette!' he roared at Mary.
'Sah!' she shouted, from what sounded like her usual position just behind his right shoulder, where it was an effort for him to turn and see her.
'I donno ... dis ting,' he said, suddenly subdued and petulant. 'It ... bloddy hell ... matches? Tank you. He mordered. Bloddy f-f-fool. Is no surprisin', de man ... a uzeless man, neffer doin' what I tell him to do. He always goin' off an' doin' what he tinkin' an' now look. Morder-èd. De wife?'
'She's here with me to identify the body. She's all right.'
'De man, uzeless, he don't deserve de job. But morder-èd. Is locky I organize de replacemarn,' he said, dragging hard on his smoke.
'Where is he?'
'He comin' from Englarn.'
'Has he worked in Africa before?'
B.B. paused.
'No, he neffer wok in Africa before.'
'Does he speak French?'
B.B. rapped the arm of his chair with his knuckles.
'No.'
'Is he the right man for the job?'
'He ver' chip.'
'Sometimes cheap is expensive.'
'Sometimes, Bruise, you tinking correck.'
'I have things to do down here. I won't be in Korhogo for a few days. Kofi is processing the sheanut which Dotte brought in last night. Maybe you should rethink your employment policy.'
'Dis life,' said B.B., depressed down to his long yellow toenails, 'dis life is ver' long. It tekkin' too much time and monny. You get my point? Mebbe is time, you know, mebbe is time...' he trailed off, and the phone rattled into its cradle. B.B. was going to hate me by the end of this job, hate me so bad that I'd never work for him again.
The girl on the desk told me that Martin Fall had come through. I ran through Martin's checklist, finishing on Malahide and our planned trip to Man.
'There's a political situation your end, Bruce,' he said.
'Surprise me, Martin.'
'The Americans have been putting pressure on the Ivorians to stop Libyan weapons coming through Ivory Coast from Burkina-Faso to Samson Talbot in Liberia. Talbot holds the Liberian port of Buchanan which ECOWAS are trying, not very successfully, to blockade. They haven't, or rather they can't, stop the rebels' business empire operating out of the Ivorian port of San Pedro, near the Liberian border. The Ivorians maintain that they've frozen Talbot's assets in Ivory Coast and that they're working on preventing arms coming through, but there's no government will behind it, which means the rebels pay and they get their arms. I'd say that they're using Ron, not just for money, but to get concessions to move arms freely, which the Americans and ECOWAS don't like. We're talking to the Ivorians now. Still no news from the rebels or whoever's got Ron.'
I threw Trzinski's views into the pot and Martin scribbled while he asked me half a dozen more questions about how Trzinski fitted in. He told me to stay in the biggest hotel in Man called Les Cascades and he'd contact me there if necessary. I told him the water was getting deeper and hotter and it might be an idea to send somebody more qualified down here. He gave me a lifetime achievement's worth of flattery and we hung up.
I asked the girl at the desk to arrange the video facilities again and went out into the street to buy a blank tape, an identical jiffy bag to the one Fat Paul had given me and some sealing wax. I retrieved Fat Paul's package from behind the glove compartment. I saw Moses in the lobby and told him to bring the car around to the front in half an hour. I told Dotte to be ready to leave then.
Bagado and I took the package down to the conference room. I set up the television. Bagado cracked the seal on the envelope and took out the cassette which was wrapped in crepe paper. He shook out the envelope on to a blotter on a desk and then the crepe paper. Nothing. He looked over the cassette and handed it to me. It was a 180-minute tape. I recorded on to the blank tape at the same time.
There was a minute of white noise and then darkness and a confusion of voices. The screen changed between black, brown and dark green and the voices were shouting in an African language I didn't understand.
'They're arguing about who's going to hold the camera,' said Bagado.
There was a single imperative which silenced the screen and the camera whip-panned on to an impressive-looking man in army fatigues who was drinking Budweiser from a can and having his temples dabbed by a young woman.
'Jeremiah Finn,' said Bagado.
The camera pulled back to a wide shot, and, sitting on the floor in his underpants with his hands and arms tied behind his back and a small head wound trickling blood down the side of his face, was the late Liberian president. He was alert, his head making the jerky movements of a terrified man who didn't know where he was going to be hit next. The camera closed in on his shins, which had several bullet holes in them.
'US Embassy, sah. I got the US Embassy,' said another voice, and the camera moved to the radio operator and Finn, who was now standing there with an earphone held to his head. He moved the microphone around to his mouth and said: 'We got him. We got the President.'
There was a bang and the camera rocked and rolled on to the President, who was flat on his face, his head turned towards camera, the sweat pouring off him now, his neck muscles standing out. The air hissed between his teeth as they applied the rifle to the back of his other knee and, bang, his whole body jerked off the ground so that the soldier fell back into the men watching.
'What the hell's all this about?' I asked Bagado, who was screwed up in his mac.
'I've heard about this film,' he said. 'They tortured him for twelve hours before they killed him. What I don't understand is ... this is nothing new. Journalists have already seen this, or a version of it. Finn played it to them to show that he had American backing for the President's capture. Their reports showed that they weren't impressed by the quality of human rights on display. When they asked a US Embassy official in Sierra Leone about it he denied any US involvement. He said the tape proved nothing—"Finn must have been talking to his grandmother because he wasn't connected to the US Embassy." I think those were the man's words.'
'So how did Finn get the President?'
'I don't know. We'll have to find a journalist.'
'Where did you hide the money?' asked Finn's voice on the video.
'I am your brother,' said the President. 'Loosen me. I will talk.'
'Bring me his ear.'
One of the soldiers took out a bowie knife and straddled the President, who was sitting up now. He took hold of the man's ear and sawed it off and gave it to Finn, who asked for the other. With four or five cuts the other one was severed. Then Finn forced them into the President's mouth and told him to eat them. The President looked up, shit-scared, chewed. The blood from his ears leaked down his chin and the film turned to snow.
We unplaited ourselves. The snow continued for several minutes. I stopped the tapes, and after fast forwarding the original to check for any more film, rewound them. I handed the original to Bagado and slipped the recorded one into the envelope I'd just bought. Bagado took a penknife out of his sock and unscrewed the five cross-headed screws at the back of the cassette, opened it, lifted out the two spools of tape and checked the spools themselves, which were hollow. The cassette was empty. He put it back together again.
'The film has to be the clue,' he said. 'This is what it's all about.'
'That the Americans were involved?'
'That would be worth killing for, wouldn't you think?' said Bagado.
'I can feel the stakes getting higher.'
'But high stakes for what game? This is a handful of nothing. It looks like a bluff.'
'Then who are we
bluffing?'
We're not bluffing anybody, we're somebody else's bluff.'
'You think there's somebody out there who knows we've got a handful of nothing and we're running a diversion on their behalf?'
'Let's hope he doesn't fold his hand.'
Chapter 21
I asked reception to put the copy and the original in the hotel safe. Dotte sat in the lobby with her head resting against a wall and sunglasses down over her eyes. Katrina leaned on her. I introduced Bagado. We drove to the University Hospital. The cloud had dispersed now and the sun had dried out the roads, putting the humidity up there in the high thousands. We sat in silence and watched the sweat patches grow as we eased through the traffic out of Plateau.
A policeman, a medical examiner and a doctor met us at the door to the morgue. Dotte and I went into the cool room in which there were ten slabs but only one occupied. The doctor checked the toe tag and lifted off the sheet. Even from the murky photocopy B.B. had given me I could see it was a very still version of Kurt Nielsen. Dotte nodded and left the room. I eased the sheet back further and saw Nielsen's roughly stitched abdomen. The scratch marks from the metal leopard claws were still visible around the sternum where they'd grazed the skin before cutting through the soft flesh over the diaphragm.
The policeman led us into an office. Sitting behind the desk was Leif Andersen, his hands clasped together as tight as his crossed legs—tense. We shook hands. Dotte was cooler than Nielsen on his slab. She took the sunglasses off for the first time and gave Leif Andersen the benefit of her blue eyes, which sat him up. He gave his best diplomatic condolences and got to work.
'The Danish police have informed me that Kurt Nielsen is in fact a Mr'Søren Tinning who had eighteen months to serve of a drug-smuggling sentence. Were you aware of this, Ms Wamberg?'
'He had told me, yes.'
'The Danish police also tell me you have an extensive criminal record yourself.'
'One conviction.'
'That is true,' he said, looking at papers on the desk that weren't his. 'I've spoken to the Danish police and under the circumstances...'
'Which are?'
'The fact that the prisoner is dead, that you are in Africa...'
'And they have no evidence?'
'This has contributed to their decision, yes, to let the matter of the Nielsen/Tinning escape rest. You will, however, be required to speak to the Abidjan police about the circumstances that led to your partner's murder.'
'Circumstances I know nothing about.'
'I must still ask you to accompany this officer to the'Sûreté.'
After that display of taut diplomacy we all stood. The creaking of Andersen's leather shoes was the only noise. We shook hands and left. When you expect trouble by the truckload it has a habit of discharging itself elsewhere.
I told Dotte to stay in the Novotel until we got back from Man. Bagado and I went to the airport where we caught our flight, which had been delayed by a politician who needed to get to Man for Sunday's elections. We took off at 1.30 p.m. and as soon as we'd flattened out and Bagado had released the arm rests from his white-knuckle grip, the questions started coming from over the blue collar of his mac.
'What did Heike have to say?'
'Why're you asking me that question now?'
'It's my question, I'll ask it when I want to.'
'She said that she was keeping herself occupied, that she was staying in Berlin and she was looking at a project in Tanzania.'
'Don't make me try, Bruce.'
'She said she missed Africa and me, too.'
'And you?'
'It's been better since I started working.' An interesting answer.'
'And true. I've thought about her every day almost all day, chasing my tail for three weeks. I've caught it a few times, gnawed it, it hasn't helped.'
'And now you've got a rabbit to chase.'
'What does that mean?'
'Dotte?'
'You're always there, Bagado, aren't you? Watching.'
'It's my job. What about Dotte?'
'She's got something.'
'Think of it as leprosy, it'll help.'
'You liked her.'
'It's not a question of like,' he said, looking down the aisle after a small girl who'd built up some momentum. 'Have you ever been afraid of the dark?'
'When I was as small as that,' I said. 'And you've given me a couple of scares standing in rooms during power cuts.'
'Remember that.'
'Bagado, you're talking in crossword clues again.'
'That woman is a dark person. She's learnt about the dark before the light and it's been from ugly experience. She has depth but it's nothing you can learn from. Leave her alone because she will never bring happiness with her. And don't listen to me, I'm just a silly old African "gumshoe",' he said, trying to get himself used to the word. 'I wish I had my father's voice. When he talked about these things he sounded like distant thunder and we believed everything.'
'You don't think I do.'
'I've never known another human being take advice in affairs of the heart. In fact, they always do the opposite, because they believe in their heart. If they feel something in it, it must be right. And there's no known quantity of talk that can shift that.'
'So you tell me these "dark" things and you dig yourself a hole at the same time.'
'I have to satisfy my conscience.'
'That you warned me. Don't worry, Bagado, she's warned me herself.'
'And she can do that because she knows it doesn't make any difference.'
'I'm not getting involved.'
'Those, my friend, sound like famous last words.'
We landed somewhere and took off again. We drank beer and dozed until, maybe for the benefit of the politician on board, we circled the mountains of Man and looked down on the rain-forested ridges surrounding the grid and sprawl of the town before heading south and landing in hot sunshine at just after 3.30 p.m.
We took a taxi and checked into the Hotel Les Cascades, which overlooked the town. Bagado called the Armenian, Ajamian, who said he could see us at 5.00 p.m. We walked into town and ate some chicken in the Restaurant La Prudence in the Quartier Commercial and then took another short walk to Ajamian's office, which looked as if it had been recently shelled.
Ajamian was a large, dark and hairy man who didn't bother to explain why he was working in a room where the rubble from a destroyed wall still remained in a pile in one corner. His office furniture was draped in sheets which he threw off for us to sit on. He poured us a whisky without going through any unnecessary formalities and sat down, putting his feet up on his sheet-covered desk. He fitted an oval-shaped Turkish cigarette into a small bamboo cane holder, lit it and through a very heavy, broom-bristle moustache, asked us, in French, if he could be of assistance. Bagado gave him Dr Felix Bost's card and started to explain about Malahide. Ajamian smoked and looked down his cheeks at the card and the hair sprouting through the gaps of his shirt buttons, raising his eyebrows every so often as if he'd spotted an insect or some birdlife nesting in there.
'Felix doesn't like Sean,' he said, getting himself started. 'Do you?' I asked.
'Sean is very boring when he is drunk and when he has that Irish poet on his mind. Up to eleven and between four and six, after his siesta, he can be very charming. The rest...' His arm floated away with the smoke from his nostrils and ended up behind his chair.
'Dr Bost said he's in the logging business.'
'Sean's been in Africa a long time. He's run down the Ivorian rainforest almost single-handed and he and the Lebanese did a very good job in Ghana too. He goes where the business is, and the business is in Liberia and has been, for his kind of operation, for a year or more. He buys logs from Samson Talbot who controls this end of Liberia, and he ships them ex San Pedro in the Ivory Coast up to Europe, mainly France and the UK. As far as I know, the money for the logs is deposited in dollars in accounts held in Ouagadougou, the Burkina-Faso capital, but he also keeps
money in CFA here ... so I am told.'
'The money comes direct from European buyers?'
'I think from Sean's offshore European accounts.'
'You know a lot about Malahide's business.'
'If I want to sit at the table I have to know my opponents.'
And the rebels use the money to buy arms?'
'Yes. The arms come from Libya. They ship them across the Ivory Coast. Some come direct from Tripoli into Buchanan and soon he'll be flying them in when M. Talbot finishes lengthening the runway at his headquarters in Gbarnga, two hundred kilometres north east of Monrovia. M. Talbot has promised to become a good Libyan socialist when he wins.'
'Is Malahide involved in any of these arms deals?'
Ajamian looked at me with coal-black eyes buried deep in their nests. Smoke snaggled on the tufts of nasal hair as he sucked and breathed the bamboo cane cigarette holder. He played with one of the oval-shaped cigarettes he'd taken from the box on his desk.
'Perhaps now you should tell me what your inquiries are about,' he said. 'Now that we know we are not engaged in idle gossip.'
I told Ajamian about the kidnap, the Liberian connection, Malahide's knowledge of Rademakers's office and the nature of Ron's business. When the word 'diamonds' came up, Ajamian didn't stiffen but he became very still.
'Is there something wrong, M. Ajamian?' asked Bagado.
Ajamian ran his hand over the burnt stubble on his chin and checked his palm.
'One of the things that the Ivorians have done to keep the Americans sweet is to make it more difficult to move large sums of money out of the country. It's not easy at the best of times. There's a limit. Now it's impossible without outside help. A way round this is to use CFA made in the Ivory Coast to buy diamonds. Moving diamonds is easier than suitcases of cash. This is all very inconvenient. The rebels would like to have more flexibility. It would seem logical that your client has been kidnapped to secure such flexibility and to turn a profit from their work. It will be interesting to see what they ask for in exchange.'