'Shit. The police say they got him in Abidjan. It says so in the fucking newspapers. Can't believe the fuck you read these days. Journalists,' he tutted.
'I've got a tape I want you to listen to.'
'You're looking kinda morose, you guys. D'it all fuck up for you last night?'
I gave him a long, steady look.
'Guess so,' he said and the three of us went into the room. I took out the dictaphone and checked the tape. 'Did you get the names?'
'Yeah, I did. You want 'em?'
'Listen to this first.' I clicked on the machine. 'The guy wearing the wire is James Wilson. Who's he talking to?'
Corben listened, irritated by the sound quality, telling James Wilson, the stupid fuck, to sit still and say the guy's name.
'Rewind,' he said. 'I wanna hear when the dumb bastard sits down again.'
Then a few minutes later: 'Truelove, I know her. Legs right up to her can.'
Corben was leaning so far forward now his head was nearly between his knees. He was nodding though, not pained. We were nearly at the end of Wilson's meeting. Truelove had gone. We'd had the bit about 'a part of history' and then the last line and Corben sat up.
'Got him,' he said. '"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." That's Al Trzinski.'
Chapter 29
Howard Corben took a folded sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to me. There were two lists of names.
'The guys on the left: the first eight are the West African policy unit responding directly to the Oval Office, OK? Underneath them are four more names. They're military advisors seconded to the policy unit—tell 'em which way the guns are pointing. The first three are straight military guys. My friends in Washington tell me that the last one, Big Al, or Colonel Al as he's called, even though he's never made full colonel, has been with the Agency.'
'Why call him colonel if he isn't?'
'It gets him real pissed. The list on the right are nongovernment and non-military and have nothing to do with the Agency, as far as my friends know, but they help out. They do business. They offer specialized advice on shit the policy unit think they need to know about, so they can fuck up their decisions.'
'You've got a guy called François Marin on this list. You got anything on him?'
Corben flicked through his notebook.
'Shit. He's a trader from the north. That's it.'
'What's this line connecting Trzinski on one list to Godwin Patterson on the other?'
'Patterson is the Americo-Liberian I was tellin' you about, the friend of the late president. Right? The one who put Wilson close to his old buddy. Patterson and Trzinski are close personal friends, if you know what I mean?'
'They kiss and hug and hate each other's guts.'
'I'd pay ringside to see it, believe me, 'cause Patterson's blacker than a coalminer's asshole and Big Al has a red strip across the back of his neck a mile wide.'
'How'd you know it was Trzinski on the tape?'
'I interviewed him yesterday in a refugee camp outside Danané and his last words to me were: "Blessed are those fucking peacemakers: 'cos those assholes shall be called the children of God."'
'He was in Danané yesterday?'
'That's what I said, Bruce. I wanted to interview him today after we'd had our pow-wow but he said he had to get back. Affairs of state and all that shit.'
'Did he say where he was going?'
'No, he didn't. We didn't get on, Al and I, did not see eye to eye, asshole to asshole. He thinks I'm a pinko which, given that he can't stand journ-O-listas, puts me stratospheric on his shit list.'
'Did you ask him what he was doing here?'
'I sure did, Bruce, and he told me to quit bein' an asshole and ask some proper questions. Been to media school. The big fuck.'
'It's time I was getting out of here,' I said.
'You gotta spill your guts first, Brucey. The deal. We had one. Remember you're English—fair play and all that shit. Come on, let's have the tiffin or whatever you fuckers call it.'
'You've got the tape, Howard. Trzinski is the Leopard. You're going to tell the world.'
'Is somebody going to tell me what's going on?' asked Martin.
'Al Trzinski,' I said, 'has some very strong views about war. He thinks war should be stopped in any way possible. I don't believe he is the kind of man to discuss his ideas with people in authority, he just gets out there and does what he thinks is best.
'He arranged for Jeremiah Finn's troops to go into the port in Monrovia fully armed and take out the Liberian president who was supposed to be there for peace talks. He found out that his mole in the President's entourage, James Wilson, had covered his arse by making the tape of their conversation. He then went on a killing spree to try and get that tape, which he still hasn't succeeded in doing.
'I met Al in Korhogo; he said he was a consultant looking at diamond mining. My guess is that he was monitoring arms movements from Burkina-Faso across Ivory Coast to the rebels. The consultant cover was so that he could find the money source for the arms and who was delivering. He was also trying to find the James Wilson tape.
'He must have wet his pants when I came into the Le Mont Korhogo Hotel bar. The man with his tape comes to sit in his lap. Then I tell him about the Ron Collins kidnap. He decides I'm worth keeping alive, worth keeping an eye on. Remember, the guy wants to stop war at all costs. Any exchange of money for Ron Collins means money in rebel coffers to buy arms. According to the Trzinski anti-war policy this must not be allowed to happen. He has Ron Collins killed and screws up the deal.'
'I'm confused,' said Corben. I explained to him what happened last night.
'I'm still confused,' he said. 'Why kill Collins? Why not kill the guy bringing the diamonds? That's you, Bruce, in case you're as confused as I am. That way he stops the cash flow into rebel coffers, and the diamond guy gets maxed for non-payment of ransom. A nice clean piece of CIA business.'
'The man has a point,' said Martin.
'Unless,' said Corben, scratching at his beard, 'and this is not an unlikely scenario amongst American military folk, Trzinski or the men on the ground fucked it up.'
'He'd have to be clinically insane to fuck it up,' said Martin.
'We know he's that,' said Corben. 'What I'm saying is, maybe he missed Bruce going in with the diamonds and did the next best thing, which is shoot the guy coming out. That would blow one element of the arms deal, which is the free passage of weapons from Burkina trans Ivory Coast, and it would guarantee the freezing of rebel accounts held in the IC. Fuckload of good that is when they've already got their money out.'
'I'll clear it up with Al tonight,' I said, 'if you will just let me go to the airport and get my flight.'
Martin said he'd have to start work on retrieving Ron Collins's body and getting the paperwork together to airlift the body back to London. I said I'd call him from Korhogo. Corben and I went to the airport together. I asked him to do two things for me. The first was to find out when Malahide died and the second was Trzinski's movements in and around Danané after he interviewed him.
'How do you know you're going to see Trzinski tonight?'
'I know where he'll be looking for me.'
I didn't sleep on the way back to Korhogo, a ganglion of pain in my left knee made sure I didn't stop thinking about Trzinski. Flying north out of Bouaké we hit some turbulence and even after a 200-foot free fall during which a woman let out a scream loud enough to remind God he had a job on his hands, I didn't for one moment stop thinking about Colonel Al Trzinski.
In Korhogo I bought some heavy-duty painkillers and took four straight off so that by late afternoon I could walk across Kantari's compound without a limp. I had a single light-brown, red-wax-sealed package in my hand for all the world to see. It contained a video showing the torture of the late Liberian president but no audio tape. I went into the house. The door to the left was open. Inside was a large high room about thirty yards long. There
was a basic lighting grid in the roof with ladders going up to it. Below that were a number of free-standing lights around a set of a kitchen. The same crappy kitchen set from Fat Paul's porno film about plumbers. Someone slammed the door shut.
Before I knocked on the door upstairs I arranged one of the old heavy-duty telescopic light stands so that it was within easy reach. I went through the usual performance with Patrice, who, I could see when he opened the door a crack, was wearing a long blond wig. He let me in and showed me he knew how to walk in a short black leather skirt and high heels. 'Am I interrupting something?'
Patrice sat down on his bed and looked at himself in a hand mirror. I walked through to Kantari's office, shut the door and then opened it again when I saw Clegg coming out from behind the Chinese screen, drying his hands.
'Run along, Cleggy.'
'You and I are going to meet one night,' he said.
'Not unless I go to the same sleazy pick-up joints you do. Now go and be muscly somewhere else.'
I shut the door after him, sat on the sofa and showed Kantari the sealed package.
'I don't suppose you have any of that Laphroaig left?'
'Teacher's only.'
'Blended for the big deal. You're kidding. Break open the single malt and let's have a dram. We're celebrating.'
'What, exactly?'
'You're getting your package. I'm getting four million for delivering it safe and sound.'
Kantari stuck the tip of his tongue out at me and poured me a glass of Teacher's.
'Think cheaper,' he said.
'Like?'
'The million Fat Paul was going to give you.'
'This isn't a question of greed, M. Kantari. Just need. It took me some time but now I know what I'm selling. The thing is, I can't put a value on political influence so let's talk about need rather than value. My need. I need four million and I think that's cheap.'
'Two,' said Kantari through the steepled point of his fingers at his mouth.
'Now you're being cheap.'
'You talk about need. I talk about risk. I'm taking a risk getting involved. We all read the newspapers, watch the television. I'm buying a big risk.'
'If you listen to the news they'll tell you they've caught the Leopard.'
'They're fools.'
'And anyway, risk improves value.'
'Three,' he said. 'That's my last offer. Three, or you can keep the damn thing.'
'Three it is. Now. Cash.'
Kantari opened a drawer in his desk and took out a carrier bag. He slid back a section of bookcase behind him and opened a safe. He took out three blocks of money and put them in the carrier bag. He held out his hand. I gave him the package. He checked the seal, put it in the safe, closed it and span the dial. I took the carrier bag.
'How did you and Fat Paul get to meet?' I asked.
'We have the same interests.'
'Porn, you mean?'
'Erotica is the technical term.'
'How did they know Kurt Nielsen wasn't just doing another porn deal with Fat Paul?'
'That is something I do not know.'
'Why did Fat Paul send the dummy with me?'
'Because they found James Wilson in the lagoon. He was playing safe.'
'Who're you going to sell the tape to?'
'The Libyans like this kind of thing.'
I picked up the light-green Chinese bowl on my way to the door.
'That wasn't in the deal,' said Kantari, holding on to himself.
'You're right,' I said, and lobbed the bowl back at him so that it would drop short of the desk. I opened the door, hearing Kantari squawk, and saw Clegg lying on the bed where Patrice was sitting. I opened the next door, ripping the key out, and got myself round the other side of it and locked it just as Clegg's shoulder thumped into it. I put the money on the floor and picked up the light stand. Clegg was through the door in a matter of seconds and I jabbed the six-foot length of the light stand into the washboard rack of his stomach. He folded. As he went down I clipped him across the back of the head with the foot of the stand and watched it bounce up off the floorboards. Patrice appeared in his whore's gear in the broken frame of the door. He took the scene in, clicked open his compact, and tugged at the fringe of his wig, concerned.
I told the cab driver to take me to the back of the Banque Société Genérale where I hammered on the door until the manager opened it in a pair of slippers and a dressing gown. I asked him if he would accept a deposit of two million CFA into B.B.'s company account. He wasn't thrilled but he did it.
Back at the compound I took a shower and sank a half tumbler of whisky with four more painkillers, just to see if the body could take it. I got into bed naked and slept like a fallen statue.
I woke up flailing at something that had run me to ground. I had no strength in my arms and my left knee had a G-clamp, but no pain, across it. Two hands held my wrists and pressed them to my chest. A face, Dotte's face, leaned over me.
'You were dreaming,' she said. 'Badly.'
'What now?' I asked, confused, my head all over the place, feeling drugged.
'I was watching you. You've been still as stone for quarter of an hour and then the last two minutes you started.'
I shook my head, which didn't shift the thick dullness, the strange distance.
'What time is it?'
'Nine o'clock.'
'At night? Where is everybody?'
'They haven't come back.'
'From where?'
She shrugged. 'Do you want a drink?'
'I don't know. Probably.'
'How was Man?'
'A disaster. I don't want to talk about it.'
She ran her hand through my hair, stroked my face—maternal. Then she pushed herself away from the bed and left the room, passing through the squares of light that were slapped up on the wall again from the light in the compound. I tried to squeeze some reality into my forehead, blink away the strange distance. Dotte came back with two glasses and put one on my chest. I sipped the whisky and felt instantly languid, the spirit slipping into my veins like a lethal injection.
Dotte was wearing a loose sleeveless cotton blouse with just a single button done up. I could tell from the way the material shifted that her breasts were hanging free underneath. She'd split her wrap open and brought her heel up on to the metal frame of the bed. Her chin rested on her knee and she rolled her whisky glass over her foot.
'I've been packing,' she said. 'Time to move on.'
'Do you know where you're going?'
'Not far on the money I've got.'
'I can stand you some.'
'You see, I told you you were a good man. Katrina's never wrong.'
'I've got a place you could stay, too. Until you get yourself organized.'
'In Cotonou?'
'There are worse places.'
'Lagos, Luanda, Kinshasa, Bangui ... Monrovia.'
'Abidjan, too. They're all going to hell.'
'And Cotonou isn't?'
'Best of the lot right now.'
She sipped the whisky and licked it off her lips. There was something different about her. She'd found some hope. The idea of moving on, getting out from under the shadow of things that had happened here. She turned to find me watching her. She smiled though, not annoyed to have my attention on her.
'A fresh start,' she said. 'I need a fresh start.' Something warm and prickly was moving in the lower part of my back. She put her whisky on the chair and leaned over me. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'You could use one.'
'I've had some in my time.'
'You're free,' I reminded her.
'That's a word to roll around with,' she said, and kissed me on the mouth; this time her lips were warm, pliant and wet. Her tongue played over mine.
'This hasn't happened to me before,' she said, stroking my chest.
'What?'
Silence. I felt the weight of her breasts on my chest. She collapsed on top of me and lay her head on my shoulder. I felt her th
in warm tears trickle off my skin on to the sheet. I rubbed the back of her neck. The cicadas filled in the rest.
'I never let go—never had anybody to let go with,' she said, standing up. 'I'll finish my packing.' She left the room.
I sat on the edge of the bed, looked at the door and thought that it might not have happened. I socked back the whisky left in the glass. A door clicked shut off in the house somewhere. I went to the window and looked out into the compound where flames flattened against the bottom of the boiling vats and steam joined the darkness. It wasn't the clichés that nagged. We, the movie generation, have rafts of them that we talk in all the time. No, it was me. Was I being 'a good man'? Nobody's that good. I put my forehead against the cool glass and steeled myself up again.
'Mummy doesn't love you, you know,' said a voice from the doorway, bristling the back of my neck with its shrillness. I whipped the sheet off the bed and covered myself. Katrina was leaning up against the doorjamb, giggling. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, she was wearing a pair of small white knickers and nothing else that I could see. Her head and a shoulder were in the squares of light on the wall. Her hands were up to her mouth, her arms covering her upper body.
'Why're you peeking at me?'
'I wasn't peeking," she said. 'I was looking.'
'Do you like peeking at people?'
'I wasn't peeking.'
'You should knock.'
She tapped the door cheekily, showing me her left breast, high and taut by her shoulder. She grinned.
'Go and put some clothes on, Katrina.'
'No,' she said, and dropped her other hand to her hip and gave me a 'dare you' look.
'Go on, get out of here.'
'She doesn't love you, you know. Just because you did it, doesn't mean she loves you.'
'We didn't do it,' I said, and she laughed. It fluttered her stomach and broke over my head like sheet glass. Silence and something ugly was in the room.
'Did she love Kurt?' I asked.
'No...' she said quickly, shaken by the question. 'Yes.'
'And you?'
'Sometimes.' She laughed again, high, shrill and penetrating, putting her hand back up to her mouth now. 'When he was being nice,' she said, misunderstanding my question and opening up a cold black hole in my stomach.