The Mission Song Read online

  Am I truly the last person in the room to realise that the answer to the People's prayer was lounging at the head of the table with his scuffed suede boots stuck out in front of him? Evidently I am, for the Mwangaza's next words jolt me out of my reverie so fast that Haj swings round and peers at me with his comedian's bubbly eyes.

  “No name, my friends?” the Mwangaza is yelling at us indignandy. “This strange Syndicate that has dragged us here today has no name? Oh, this is very bad! Where can they have put it? This is all very fishy and mysterious! Maybe we should put on our spectacles and help them look for it! Why on earth should honest folk conceal their names? What have they to hide? Why don't they come out with it straight and say who they are and what they want?”

  Start slow, Pere Andre. Start low and slow. You have a long way to rise. But the Mwangaza is an old hand.

  “Well now, my dear friends,” he confides, in a weary tone that makes you want to help him over the stile. “I have spoken to these no-name gentlemen long and hard, I want to tell you.” He points at Philip without turning to look at him. “Oh yes. We have had many tough talks together. From the going down of the sun and up again, I would say. Very tough talks indeed, and so they should be. Tell us what you want, Mwangaza, the no-names said to me. Tell it without adornment or evasion, please. And then we will tell you what we want. And from this we shall establish whether we can do business, or whether we shall shake hands and say sorry and goodbye, which is normal commercial discourse. So I replied to them in the same coin” absently fondling his gold slave collar, and thereby reminding us that he is not for sale — “ ‘Gentlemen, it is very well known what I want. Peace, prosperity and inclusiveness for all Kivu. Free elections, but only when stability is established. But peace, gentlemen, it is also well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword. For peace to be a reality, we must coordinate our forces, repossess our mines and cities, drive out the foreigners and install an interim government of all Kivu that will lay down the foundations of a true, enduring, democratic welfare state. But how can we do that for ourselves, gentlemen? We are crippled by discord. Our neighbours are more powerful than we are, and more cunning.’ ”

  He is glowering at Franco and Dieudonne, willing them to draw closer to each other while he continues his commercial discourse with the no-name gentlemen.

  “ ‘For our cause to prevail, we need your organisation, gentlemen. We need your equipment and your expertise. Without them, the peace of my beloved Kivu will forever be an illusion.’ That is what I said to the no-names. Those were my words. And the no-names, they listened to me carefully, as you would suppose. And finally one speaks for all, and I must not tell you his name even today, but I assure you he is not in this room although he is a proven lover of our nation. And this is what he says. ‘What you propose is well and good, Mwangaza. We may be men of commerce, but we are not without souls. The risk is high, the cost also. If we support your cause, how can we be sure that at the end of the day we shall not go away with empty pockets and a bloody nose?’ And we on our side reply, ‘Those who join our great enterprise will join in its rewards.’ ”

  His voice drops even lower, but it can afford to. So does mine. I could whisper into my hand and they would hear me.

  “The Devil, we are told, has many names, my friends, and by now we Congolese know most of them. But this Syndicate has none. It is not called the Belgian Empire, or the Spanish Empire, or the Portuguese Empire, or the British Empire, or the French Empire, or the Dutch Empire, or the American Empire, or even the Chinese Empire. This Syndicate is called Nothing. It is Nothing Incorporated. No name means no flag. No name will help to make us rich and united, but it will not own us or our people. With no name, Kivu will for the first time own itself. And when that day dawns, we shall go to the fatcats of Kinshasa and we shall say to them: ‘Good morning, fatcats. How are you today? You have all got hangovers as usual, I suppose!’ ”

  Not a laugh or a smile. He has us.

  “Well, fatcats, we have some good news for you. Kivu has freed itself of foreign invaders and exploiters. The good citizens of Bukavu and Goma have risen up against the oppressor and received us with open arms. The surrogate armies of Rwanda have fled and the genocidaires with them. Kivu has taken back its mines and put them into public ownership where they belong. Our means of production, distribution and supply are under one hat, and that is the hat of the people. We no longer export everything to the east. We have found alternative trade routes.

  “But we are also patriots and we believe in the unity of one Congolese Democratic Republic within the legal borders of our Constitution. So here are our terms, fatcats — one, two, three, you can take them or leave them! Because we are not coming to you, fatcats. You are coming to us!”

  He sits down and closes his eyes. Pere Andre used to do the same. It made the afterglow of his words last longer. My rendering complete, I permit myself a discreet poll of our delegates' reactions. Powerful speeches can bring resentment in their wake. The more an audience has been carried away, the harder it struggles to get back to shore. The fidgety Haj has ceased to fidget, contenting himself with a series of grimaces. The bone-thin Dieudonne has his fingertips pressed to his brow in distracted meditation. Beads of sweat have formed at the fringes of his beard. Old Franco next to him is consulting something on his lap, I suspect a fetish.

  Philip breaks the spell. “Well now, who will do us the honour of speaking first?” A meaningful glance at the post-office clock, because time is after all short.

  All eyes on Franco, our senior member. He scowls at his great hands. He lifts his head.

  “When Mobutu's power failed, the soldiers of the Mai Mai stood in the breach with pangas, arrows and lances to protect our blessed territory,” he asserts in slow Swahili. He glares round the table lest anyone should presume to challenge him. No one does. He continues, “The Mai Mai has seen what has been. Now we shall see what comes. God will protect us.”

  Next in class order comes Dieudonne.

  “For the Banyamulenge to remain alive, we must be federalists,” he declares, speaking straight at his neighbour Franco. “When you take our cattle, we die. When you kill our sheep, we die. When you take our women, we die. When you take our land, we die. Why can we not own the highlands where we live and toil and pray? Why can we not have our own chieftaincies? Why must our lives be administered by the chieftaincies of distant tribes who deny us our status and keep us captive to their will?” He turns to the Mwangaza. “The Banyamulenge believe in peace as much as you do. But we will never renounce our land.”

  The Mwangaza's eyes remain closed while the sleek-faced Dolphin fields the implied question.

  “The Mwangaza is also a federalist,” he says softly. “The Mwangaza does not insist on integration. Under his proposed Constitution, the rights of the Banyamulenge people to their lands and chieftaincies will be recognised.”

  “And the Mulenge highlands will be declared a territory?”

  “They will.”

  “In the past, Kinshasa has refused to give us this just law.”

  “The Mwangaza is not of the past, but of the future. You will have your just law,” the astute Dolphin replies: at which old Franco emits what sounds like a snort of derision, but perhaps he is clearing his throat. In the same moment, Haj jerks himself bolt upright like a jack-in-the-box and rakes the table with his wild, exophthalmic gaze:

  “So it's a coup, right?” he demands, in the shrill, hectoring French of a Parisian sophisticate. “Peace, prosperity, inclusiveness. But when you strip away the bullshit, we're grabbing power. Bukavu today, Goma tomorrow, Rwandans out, screw the UN, and Kinshasa can kiss our arses.”

  A covert glance round the table confirms my suspicion that our conference is suffering from culture shock. It is as if the church elders had been sitting in solemn conclave when this urban heretic barges in from the street and demands to know what they're yacking about. />
  “I mean do we need all this?” Haj demands, dramatically spreading his open palms. “Goma has its problems, ask my dad. Goma's got the goods, the Rwandans have got the money and the muscle. Tough. But Bukavu isn't Goma. Ever since the soldiers mutinied last year, our Rwandans have kept their heads down in Bukavu. And our town's administrators hate the Rwandans worse than anybody.” He flings out his hands, palms upward, in a Gallic gesture of disengagement. “Just asking, that's all.”

  But Haj is not asking the Mwangaza, he's asking me. His bubbly gaze may tour the table or settle respectfully on the great man, but no sooner do I begin to render him than it shoots back to me, and stays on me after the last echo of my voice has died in my ears. I'm expecting the Mwangaza to take up the challenge, or failing him, the Dolphin. But once more it's my saviour Philip who sidles in from the wings and gets them off the hook.

  “That's today, Haj,” he explains, with the tolerance of his years. “It's not yesterday. And if history is anything to go by, it won't be tomorrow, will it? Must the Middle Path wait for post-electoral chaos and the next Rwandan incursion before creating the conditions for a strong and lasting peace? Or does the Mwangaza do better to pick his time and place, which is your respected father's view?”

  Haj shrugs, stretches out his arms, grins, shakes his head in disbelief. Philip grants him a moment to speak, but the moment is scarcely up before he lifts the handbell and gives it a little shake, announcing a brief recess while our delegates consider their positions.

  9

  I could never have imagined, as I stole down the cellar steps for the first time in my capacity as interpreter-below-thewaterline, that I would have the sensation of walking on air, but such was indeed the case. Haj's boorish intrusion aside, all was unfolding in the best possible manner. When, if ever, had such a voice of reason and moderation echoed across the lakes and jungles of our troubled Congo? When had two more capable professionals — Maxie the man of deeds, and Philip the rapier-witted negotiator — met together in the cause of an ailing people? What a shove to history we were giving! Even the case-hardened Spider, who on his own admission had not understood a syllable of what he was recording — nor, I suspected, the intricacies of our venture — was exhilarated by the positive atmosphere to date.

  “Sounds like they're getting a real talking-to, if you ask me,” he declared in his Welsh singsong, as he clapped the earphones on me, checked my mouthpiece and practically tucked me into my hot-seat. “Bang their heads together and maybe a bit of common sense will fall out, I say.”

  But of course it was Sam I was waiting to hear: Sam my coordinator, Sam who would tell me which mikes to concentrate on, who would brief and debrief me on a running basis. Had I met Sam? Was he too perchance a sound-thief, another former denizen of the Chat Room, about to step out of the shadows and display his special skills? All the greater my surprise, therefore, when the voice that announced itself in my headphones turned out to be a woman's, and a motherly one at that.

  Feeling good, Brian dear?

  Never better, Sam. Yourself?

  You did awfully well up there. Everyone's raving about you.

  Did I detect the merest tingle of a Scottish accent amid these matronly words of comfort? Where's home for you, Sam? I asked excitedly, because everything was still bright to me from upstairs.

  If I said Wandsworth, would that shock you terribly?

  Shock me? We're neighbours, for Heaven's sake! I do half my shopping in Wandsworth! Awkward silence. Too late, I remember once again that I am supposed to live in a post-office box.

  Then you and I will pass as trolleys in the night, Brian dear, Sam replies primly. We'll kick off with all the sevens, if you don't mind. Subjects approaching now.

  The sevens are the guest suite. Eyes on Spider's Underground plan while I follow the delegates down the corridor and wait for one of them to delve for his key and unlock their front door — clever Philip to entrust them with keys to increase their sense of security! Next comes the cannon-fire of feet on floorboards and the deluge of lavatory cisterns and taps. Vroom! Crash! et cetera. Now they're in the living room, pouring themselves soft drinks, honking, clanking, stretching and emitting nervous yawns.

  Their suite is as familiar to me today as the four dreary walls that presently enclose me, although I never saw it and never will, any more than I saw the inside of the Mwangaza's royal apartments, or Sam's ops room with its encrypted satellite phone for secure communications with the Syndicate and other persons unnamed — or so Spider informed me in one of our quick-fire opening exchanges, for Spider like many sound-thieves was garrulous, and Welsh with it. Asked what tasks he had performed during his days in the Chat Room, he replied that he was not an earwig — meaning linguist-transcriber — but a humble bugger, as the old joke runs, an installer of clandestine devices for the greater joy of Mr Anderson. But what he liked best was mayhem:

  “Nothing like it in the world, Brian. Never happier than when I'm flat on my face in shit with ordnance coming in from all sides, and a nice piece of sixty-millimetre mortar up my arse.”

  The stolen sound is coming over loud and clear, down to the ice cubes bursting into the tumblers, and a coffee machine that generates more bass-sound than a symphony orchestra. Spider, however many times he's been through this before, is as tense as I am, but there are no last-minute hitches, nothing has blown or fused or died on him, it's all systems go.

  Except it isn't, because we are in the delegates' living room and nobody's speaking. We have background, but no foreground. Grunts and groans, but not a word spoken. A crash, a belch, a squeak. Then far away the sound of someone muttering, but who, in whose ear, is anybody's guess. But still no real voices, or none to overhear. Has the Mwangaza's oratory robbed them of their tongues?

  I'm holding my breath. So's Spider. I'm lying mouse-still in Hannah's bed, pretending I'm not there while her friend Grace rattles the locked door, demanding to know why she didn't show up for tennis which Grace is teaching her, and Hannah who hates to deceive is pleading a headache.

  Perhaps they're saying their prayers, Sam.

  But who to, Brian?

  Perhaps Sam doesn't know her Africa, for the answer could well be the obvious one: to the Christian God, or their versions of Him. The Banyamulenge so beloved of my dear late father are famous for talking to God at all times, directly or through their prophets. Dieudonne, I have no doubt, will be praying whenever he is moved to pray. And since the Mai Mai look to God for protection in battle and not a lot else, Franco's concerns are more likely to be fixed on how much is in it for him. A witch doctor will probably have provided him with leaves from a teke tree, squashed up and rubbed on his body so that he can ingest its power. Who Haj prays to is anyone's guess. Perhaps Luc, his ailing father.

  Why has nobody spoken? And why — amid the creaks and shuffles and background clatter that I expect to hear — why do I sense a mounting tension in the room, as if somebody is holding a gun to our delegates' heads?

  Speak, someone, for Heaven's sake!

  I'm reasoning with them in my head, pleading with them.

  Look. All right. I understand. Back there in the conference room you felt overawed, patronised, resentful of the white faces round the table. The Mwangaza talked down to you, but that's who he is, he's a pulpit man, they're all the same. Plus you've got your responsibilities to consider, I accept that too. Wives, clans, tribes, spirits, augurs, soothsayers, witch doctors, stuff we can't know about. But please, for the Alliance's sake, for Hannah's, for all our sakes — speak!

  Brian?

  Sam.

  I'm beginning to wonder whether we're the ones who should be praying.

  The same awful thought has occurred to me: we're rumbled.

  One of our delegates — I'm suspecting Haj — has put a finger to his lips, and with his other hand the little smart-arse has pointed at the walls or the telephone or the TV set, or rolled his bulging eyes at the chandelier. And what he's telling them is: “Fellows, I'v
e been out there, I know the wicked world, and believe you me, we're bugged.” If so, one of several things will now happen, depending on who the Subjects are — or as Maxie had it, Targets — and whether they're feeling conspiratorial or conspired against today. The best scenario has them saying, “To hell with it, let's go on talking anyway,” which is your average rational man's response, because like most of us he simply hasn't the time or patience to be bugged. But this isn't an average situation. And what is driving us both to the brink of dementia, me and Sam, is that our three delegates, if they would only have the wit to realise it, have a perfectly good remedy in their hands, which is why I'm sitting here waiting for them to use it.

  Don't you wish you could just scream at them, Brian?

  Yes, Sam, indeed I do, but a far worse fear is taking root in my mind. It's not Spider's microphones that have been rumbled: it's me, Salvo. My timely rescue by Philip didn't rescue me after all. By the time Franco fired his set speech at the wrong man in the wrong language, Haj had seen me do a double-take, which is what his long, goggle-eyed stares are all about. He saw me open my stupid mouth to reply, then shut it and try to look blank instead.

  I am still mortifying my soul with these thoughts when, like a message of redemption, comes the bass voice of old Franco speaking, not Bembe, but his prison-acquired Kinyarwanda. And this time I'm allowed to understand him instead of doing a double-take!

  • • •