Deadly Diamonds (37 page)

“Here's the bottom line, Johnny. In addition to those diamonds you started with, Seamus and I will set up an account in your name for the additional million euros. They'll be at your disposal. That should cover whatever you have in mind.”

Johnny was frozen to the chair as if he could not move a muscle. He just looked from one of us to the other. No words could get around what he was feeling, so nothing was coming out. For some reason, it started the rest of us laughing. It was just a letting out of
the best feeling we'd had, perhaps in a lifetime. At some point, Johnny joined in the senseless laughter and the waterworks started all over again.

It was about eleven that morning when we did adjourn to the Brazen Head and took a quiet booth in the back of the pub. On the walk there, Johnny was slowly able to get his mind around the reality that his dream, his plan, was now full steam ahead. It was like watching a virtual cadaver come bounding back to life. It was hard to get him to stop pouring out his gratitude and focus on what he intended to do. Once he did, he got down to details. The more he talked, the more details he laid out for us, and the more the details gelled into a plan.

It was a wild plan. It was like nothing I'd ever imagined being a part of in my life, but I wanted very much to be a part of it. It was right up Seamus's alley. I could see him signing on almost from the beginning of the telling.

It was dark outside when we left the Brazen Head with a solid Irish dinner under our belts and a fairly concrete idea of what the four of us would be jumping into when the next sun came up.

The following morning, Johnny, Seamus, and I were at the airport to board a flight for Freeport, Sierra Leone. Johnny had telephoned his brother, Sinda, at the Mammy Yoko Hotel the previous evening. They had apparently shared the first moment of the sheer joy of optimism they had experienced since they were children together in their village.

Johnny filled us in on Sinda's previous life with the RUF. His familiarity with the lay of the land in Sierra Leone made him the right choice for the piece of the plan that Johnny placed completely in his hands.

When the plane landed at the Lungi Airport, I could see a subtle change come over Johnny. Before we passed through customs, he reintroduced himself to Seamus and myself in his real identity and in his real name, Bantu.

The cab ride from the airport into Freetown was a wrenching shock in a number of ways. The blast of over one-hundred-degree heat and sky-high humidity was the least jarring. The most unnerving jolt was the hammering realization that such extreme poverty could exist in any country, let alone one salted with the potential wealth of Sierra Leone's diamonds. The blatantly clear misfortune was that rampant greed and corruption had turned that wealth into the curse of constant fighting and deprivation for its people. I had read about a United Nations report that ranked Sierra Leone at about the bottom of its list of poverty-plagued countries. That was just words on a page. This was numbing reality.

The dregs of beggars of all stripes, including amputees who had fallen victim to the rebel RUF boy soldiers, littered more than populated the streets on that first drive through the heart of the city. By the time we reached the address Bantu gave the driver, I was deep in doubt that any amount of money or effort by us could lift any part of the squalor surrounding us to anything tolerable for human beings. I marveled at Bantu's optimism.

The three of us checked into a nondescript hotel in the center of Freetown. When we left the taxi, Bantu directed the driver to pick up another passenger staying at the Mammy Yoko Hotel and bring him to us. Bantu used no names, but I knew it was his brother, Sinda.

Our little group, now four, gathered at Bantu's room within half an hour. Bantu waved us in. He was on the phone. I could hear his side of the conversation with someone named Jimbo. He was apparently someone Bantu trusted who had contacts like an army master sergeant to acquire anything manufactured on this planet for a price.

I could hear Bantu relaying a shopping list that had my mind spinning even though I had a fair idea of the plan. The last words of the conversation were to set up a meeting between Jimbo and Bantu that evening in the bar of the hotel.

Bantu introduced us to Sinda, and the talk got serious. I realized that Sinda had taken on a part of the operation that was totally separate from ours, and time was crucial. He needed access to the funds in the account we had set up in both his and Bantu's name. We gave
him the necessary information, and after some heartfelt wishes of success, he left and blended into the night.

Bantu relayed to Seamus and me what he had learned from Sinda. Apparently, the government forces had been successful in driving the RUF rebels back and retaking many of the diamond pits in the eastern part of the country. The RUF still held a few pits in the northeast, including one large one where they now concentrated their boy-soldier force. This was where they kept the bulk of their store of weapons, and to our particular interest, where they held most of the slaves as pit workers and mules to smuggle the diamonds across the Liberian border.

I asked Bantu if that was where his father was being held. The best answer Sinda had been able to give him was “most likely.”

Sinda could, however, give with assurance the one piece of information we needed immediately. The RUF general in charge of acquiring the two most basic needs of the RUF—weapons and drugs—had his headquarters in a bar in Freetown exclusively occupied by RUF troops.

Bantu huddled with Seamus and me to lay out strategy for the opening move. “We need to make a deal with this general. We need to sell him a large supply of new AK-47s and cases of ammunition. We'll make the price attractive. Delivery on-site for payment in three days. That'll give Jimbo a chance to contact the arms dealers in town and put a shipment together.”

“Good. When do you see this general?”

He put his hand on my shoulder and for the first time looked tentative. “I don't. You and Seamus may not like this. You can always say no. It has to be done by a white man. The big arms dealers in Sierra Leone are generally white. I can't ask you to do it. But if you volunteer? I can only promise it will be dangerous.”

He looked at me, and I looked at my Irish freedom fighter. There was no hesitation written on his face. I had no desire to die in Sierra Leone, but I had to match his grit.

“When and where?”

“Tonight. There's a bar in town. Get some rest. I'll send word to the general you'll be there at ten to do business.”

Seamus and I picked up a couple of white cotton, prewrinkled suits. By the time we wore them through the day in hundred-degree heat, they were flavored like any other dealer in scurrilous merchandise in that community. I figured our accents may be out of sync with the trade, but at least our wardrobe would blend.

At about ten fifteen that evening, just late enough to show a confident contempt for the general's time, Seamus and I strode slowly into the bar. As predicted, it looked like a biker's bar for a band of degenerates. I was prepared for that, but not for the teen and subteen ages of the inhabitants.

There wasn't an eye in the bar that wasn't glued to these white creatures from the cast of
Star Wars
. I noticed some of them hoisting their ubiquitous AK-47s from the tables to a ready position. As I'd learned in the past, and as Seamus was born knowing, we never made eye contact with any of them.

The second protocol was to take a direct route to the man with the information, the bartender, and walk at a slow, unconcerned pace. It also helped not to move my lips while I prayed.

Thank God, practically everyone in Sierra Leone speaks some form of English, that being the official national language. I told the bartender the general was expecting us. He looked doubtful, but he knocked on the door behind him and said something unintelligible. There was some small outburst from the room behind him. When it subsided, he waved us in.

We walked in. The door closed behind us. The first thing I saw across the room against the wall was a massive couch that looked like a Goodwill reject. Seated pompously in the center with a barely teenage girl on either side was the smoldering figure of what I assumed was the general.

My second awareness once inside was of four boy soldiers, none
of them over fifteen years from the look of it. Each of them had a weapon slung over his shoulder. One was beside the couch and the other three were lined up behind us.

More than all the rest of it, what had my nerves strung tight were the two girls. I knew the whole dynamic would be askew if the general was playing tough for the benefit of the girls. That could double the unpredictability. The second assault on rationality was that the eyes of the four boy soldiers showed the intense agitation of drugs.

“You late!”

The general's bark jolted the soldiers around us. I expected it, and so did Seamus. We just cruised on. I stopped about five feet in front of the general. Seamus stood between me and the boys behind us with his hand on the back of a wooden chair.

“We were detained. Shall we do business?”

“You got guns to sell? New guns?”

“Dozens of them. Cases of ammunition to go with them.”

The general grinned with a side-glance at the girl on his right. “Then, we do business. We do business my way.”

“Meaning?”

The grin broadened. “Meaning you my prisoners.” He pointed to a phone on the wall. “You call now. You have guns brought here. When I see guns, I may be generous. You get to leave with your lives. You hear me?”

The words,
Up shit's creek
, and many like it rolled like subtitles across my mind. Over it all, I kept saying to myself
Hold it together!

I dropped my voice out of the soprano that would have come out. “Seamus, we have a situation. What shall we do about these people?”

Seamus appeared as cool as if he were watching a rugby match in Dublin. He looked at the juveniles glaring at us. “Oh, for the love of all the saints, Michael, what's your pleasure? Do you want me to blow their noses or wipe their little arses?”

That did it. The soldier beside the general grabbed the rifle strap and swung the weapon into firing position. The hyped-up look in his eyes meant business.

The gun barely rose to shoulder level. Seamus's massive fist
clenched on the wooden chair beside him. He moved faster than my eyes could see. He hurled the chair from the floor in a direct line at the soldier beside the general. One leg caught him square on the forehead. Another doubled him up in the stomach. The gun flew in the air, and the boy was on the ground out cold as a mackerel.

It was a ballet. In the instant Seamus's hand was jetting the chair forward, a thrust of his left foot caught the soldier behind him in a doubling-up crunch to the groin. The other two against the wall pulled their rifles into position, but the shock of it all caused them to lose a critical fraction of a second. In that instant, Seamus pulled a pistol from inside his jacket and fired two rounds into the legs of each of them that sent them sprawling and cursing.

The general was on his feet and just gaping. The girls were on the floor covering their heads. My most immediate concern now was a rush into the room, guns blazing, by the dozen soldiers in the bar. I just froze. At first, I could only hear the groaning of the two with leg wounds. The seconds passed. No one came through the door.

Then I heard it. Roars of laughter from the bar. I thanked God when I realized that they must have thought it was the two white dudes who were getting their asses mauled by the brave RUF troops. So be it.

If ever a situation needed immediate seizing, it was then—the next step of Bantu's plan needed accomplishing.

“Sit down, General. I came to do business. Guns. Bullets. Remember? Now we do it my way. The price is ten thousand euros. No bargaining. You can pay in diamonds on delivery. Yes or no. I don't give a damn. I already have an offer from the Kamajors.”

The boy general was still recovering from the small massacre around him. What pulled him back to the conversation was the mention of the tribal force that had always fought the RUF with just machetes and spears. AK-47s could change the balance.

“I'll have an answer, General. While we're still young.”

He looked at me, but nothing came out. I turned and started toward the door.

“Come on, Seamus. No one home here.”

A voice that was ineffectively trying to regain steam stopped me. “Wait. When?”

“Delivery in three days. By my trucks. You pay me then. Yes or no?”

“All right. We do business.”

“Where do we deliver them?”

“Never mind where. I send man to meet you here. He go with you. Show you where.”

“Done. One last item, General. Look around you.” I nodded at the strewn bodies. “Don't disappoint me. Now get your ass off that couch and walk us out of here. You go first. Remember, Rambo here'll be right behind you.”

Seamus and I hit the still-sweltering air outside and kept walking. We covered a few streets in several different directions to lose any would-be followers on the way back to the hotel.

Bantu was waiting at the door. I could see the anxiety in his eyes. “How did it go?”

I was about to elaborate, but Seamus summed it up.

“Piece of cake.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN