Recoil (10 page)

I dumped the moped next to a big blacked-out BMW parked right outside the front door and stormed into the house.

I half ran down the hall. Stefan was back in the sitting room with a whisky, but he was no longer alone. Two Chinese guys, both very formal in grey suits and ties, were standing with him by a desk, poring over maps and papers. Cigarettes dangled from their mouths.

He saw me, excused himself and started into the hallway. There was no need. I gave him the middle finger and a cutaway sign before I headed for Silky’s room.

What the fuck did she think she was playing at? This was grown-up stuff. It wasn’t a party. She couldn’t just phone a cab home if she got bored.

As I paced her floor, I stared at the twelve-digit number for so long I could have recited it. I wanted to call, but I resisted. What was the point? Even if the flight got in tomorrow morning, it would take them days to get there. The roads were shit – when there were roads.

What time
would
they land?

I Googled Kinshasa airport. There was a contact number, and the time difference was only one or two hours from GMT, depending.

I dialled. The line crackled, and there was a distant ring tone. I got a faint voice over background mush. It sounded like the airport was at the bottom of an ocean. I struggled with my French and the guy struggled with his English, but we established between us that the plane from Geneva was arriving at six thirty in the morning. I thanked Jacques Cousteau and hung up.

It would take them ages to get landside. African bureaucracy had to be experienced to be believed. They might not even be granted visas.

They? Was she travelling with other volunteers? I hadn’t asked Étienne. Did they already have visas? Something else I’d forgotten. There was so much I didn’t know.

They might be turned away. They might not even get landside
.

That was the first positive thought I’d had. If Silky was denied entry, she’d be put straight back on the plane. If not, there’d be a window of maybe an hour or two, from about ten a.m. local time, when I might get through to her mobile. If she’d taken it with her, and if it was switched on. And assuming there was coverage in the city . . . What the fuck did I know?

I got back on the keyboard. KLM flew there from Milan, about an hour’s drive south, but not every day. And all their flights seemed to go through South Africa. To get to Kinshasa direct on a scheduled airline, you had to fly via Brussels.

Even assuming I got on to a flight, if these guys could have problems getting visas, what chance did I stand? Democratic Republic of the Congo wasn’t exactly a tourist Mecca. How was I going to bluff my way in? I was beginning to feel like a snowball rolling down a hill.

I Googled for DRC consulates or embassies, to try to find out if I could get a visa before I left. Some of the websites wouldn’t open, and those that did had none of the information I needed.

I binned it.

It wasn’t as if I had to get to Kinshasa before the convoy headed out. She was going into the lion’s den, but at least I knew where the lion’s den was.

I looked up Ituri province on the border with Rwanda and tried to find this fucking village, Nuka. I might not be able to get there at the speed of light, but I knew a man who could help me. And if he didn’t, he’d wish he hadn’t been born.

It was scarcely first light when I wandered down to the basement. The chef wasn’t up yet, but Giuseppe was. In fact, he looked like I wasn’t the only one to have sat up all night.

‘Mr Stefan is leaving for China later today. He’s told me to offer you a car and driver to take you to the railway station or the airport as soon as convenient – but in any event by lunchtime.’ He couldn’t quite meet my eye. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Nick.’

‘No problem, Giuseppe. I knew the fun couldn’t last.’

He followed me out to the moped with a small package in his hand. ‘For your journey,’ he said. His breath smelled of whisky.

I rode to the airport with my PVC holdall on my lap. Abandoning the moped outside the terminal was immature, but it gave me some kind of satisfaction. It was bound to be Stefan’s. He owned everything.

Then, as I checked in, with not so much as a second pair of shoes to my name, let alone a pair of wheels, I had a thought. Everything
I
owned was in my holdall: a bit of washing and shaving kit, a sleeping bag I’d nicked from Silky’s room, two spare T-shirts and lots of underwear.

I didn’t have a home, not even a camper van or a tent. I had nothing in the world except a cheap ring and a beautiful German girl, and maybe I didn’t even have her any more.

Well, that wasn’t completely true. I had the cheese and Branston sarnie Giuseppe had given me. And the small bottle of water he’d emptied and refilled with what looked suspiciously like thirty-year-old malt.

6

Friday, 9 June 2006

The seatbelt light flickered on and the crew collected our empty coffee cups. The pilot came on the intercom and thanked us for flying Darwin Air from Lugano, and reminded us that the time in London was nine fifteen a.m. Not that anyone was listening. They were all too busy powering down their laptops and putting their shoes back on. I was the only one aboard not using one, and the only one wearing jeans and a leather bomber jacket.

The last time I’d flown in a prop-driven aircraft, it had been taking me to war. This smart new Saab was a world away from a cramped, noisy Hercules, but I was feeling every bit as uneasy.

Last night’s Google had come up with some scary reading. There were about 17,000 UN troops in DRC – the world’s biggest peacekeeping mission – but, even so, they were stretched. Eight Guatemalan soldiers had just been killed in a clash with the Lord’s Resistance Army. That didn’t worry me too much, but what did was reading on and discovering why the UN were so crap at their job in the eastern part of the country. It wasn’t only the rebels kicking their arse, it was the terrain. Swamps, savannah, lava plains, all covered with impervious rainforest and high mountain peaks. The rebels had mastered it better than the peacekeepers. That didn’t worry me. It was the thought of trying to navigate over that terrain and get there before anything happened to her.

We descended through cloud. The outskirts of London were worn out and grey, but then we did our approach over the sci-fi film set they called Docklands. There were so many cranes, they looked like wheat in a field.

I didn’t want to power up my mobile again. That blank screen was starting to get to me.

7

I drove west. I wanted to cross London, get on to the M40 to Oxford, then off towards Hereford. There had been no call from Silky, and it had taken a lot longer than I’d wanted to get hold of the little Corsa 1200. The problem was, my Virginia driver’s licence carried my old address in Crystal City, just outside Washington DC, and my credit card had the Swiss address. I’d done the switch when Silky and I had moved from Australia so there was somewhere to send my bills. I’d stood my ground while the computer stood its own: I told the woman behind the counter that it wasn’t going to process my details because they didn’t fit the software. At last she accepted my ‘I’ve just moved over there to work’ excuse. The final receipt would be sent to Lugano.

I knew I should have taken the M25 orbital, but it felt more immediate to cut directly through the city. I just wanted to keep moving in the right direction.

Big mistake, as I realized within twenty minutes when I crept from traffic light to traffic light in Silvertown. Then I hit a faster stretch of road and got flashed by three consecutive cameras that had sprung up like weeds since the last time I was here.

I couldn’t help but think about the row we’d had yesterday. Maybe it was me who’d sparked this whole thing off . . .

I’d just got away from another lot of traffic lights and was stuck between two trucks when the mobile rang.

At last
.

I picked it up but didn’t see the twelve digits I was hoping for. It was the Swiss prefix instead.

‘Nick?’

‘Étienne . . .’

‘Just calling to say still no news. Come in for a coffee if you want. It’s fresh on.’

‘Thanks, mate, but I’ll have to take a raincheck on that. I’m on my way to a mug of tea.’

8

It took far longer than it should have to get to Hereford. It was bucketing with rain all the way, and everyone drove like it was the first time they’d seen the stuff.

I came down Aylestone Hill into the city centre, and passed the railway station. Four and a half hours was still quicker than a train would have been, by the time I’d trekked from Docklands to Paddington. In any event, I needed wheels. He didn’t know it yet, but Crazy Dave was going to find me a contact in-country and buy me a ticket – fast. As soon as I’d read him his horoscope, I wanted to be heading for an airport.

I passed the cattle market and headed for the other side of town. Huge estates had sprung up like mushrooms in the eighties. Bobblestock had been among the first of the new breed. The houses were all made from machined bricks and were uniformly ugly. Then they had given the roads names like Chancel View and Rectory Close, even though there wasn’t a single old church in sight. With two point four children inside, a Mondeo on the drive and front lawns small enough to cut with scissors, these places had about as much individual character as a room in a Holiday Inn. No wonder it was Crazy Dave’s manor.

The only crazy thing about Dave was that he’d earned his name because he wasn’t: he was about as zany as a teacup. He was the kind of guy who analysed a joke before saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I get it. That’s funny.’

There had always been a broker knocking around Hereford. He had to be ex-Regiment because he had to know the people – who was in, who was getting out – and if he didn’t, he had to know a man who did. Crazy Dave had set up in business when he was invalided out of the Regiment after a truck driver from Estonia bounced him off his Suzuki on the M4 and forced him to take the scenic route. He’d done a tour of the central reservation, then checked out a fair amount of the opposite carriageway. His legs were still useless and he was in and out of hospital like a yo-yo. I’d felt sorry for him when I met up with him last year. Now I thought two fucked-up legs weren’t enough.

Only a few months ago, a friend of mine from Regiment days had gone to Crazy Dave for work. He was in the early stages of motor neurone disease, and wanted one last big pay-off so his wife would have a pension. So far so good, but Crazy Dave had found out and taken advantage. Charlie was so desperate, he accepted only a fraction of what the job was worth, and Dave had pocketed the rest.

I pulled up outside a brick rectangle with a garage extension that might have been assembled from a flat-pack. There was a brand new green Peugeot van on the drive. No lights on in the house, no sign of life.

I locked my hire car, and as I walked past his Popemobile I could see through the side windows that the whole thing was rigged and ramped for his disability, even down to levers and stuff instead of pedals. It must have cost a fortune. Where there’s war there’s brass.

As I walked up the concrete ramp that had replaced the front steps, I rehearsed what to say. I hadn’t called to let him know I was coming. I was probably the last man on earth Crazy Dave wanted to see and I didn’t want the fucker wheeling it for the hills.

At the same time, I knew from my last visit that his office was a fortress. He could drop the firearms-standard shutters and that would be that. I could pretend to be a delivery man, but he might tell me to leave it on the doorstep. Or I could say I was one of the guys from the camp, but nobody would come here without an appointment.

The decision was made for me. There was a camera in the porch, new since my last visit. No point bluffing. I pressed the buzzer. ‘Dave, mate. It’s Nick Stone. Just passing, thought I’d say hi.’

There was no reply but the door buzzed open. I walked inside. Nothing had changed. There was still a stairlift parked at the bottom of the stairs, and at the top, enough climbing frames for Dave to move about on to keep a whole troop of baboons happy. The only thing different was a few framed pictures on the wall, of a girl in her twenties with Dave’s big bulbous nose. She was holding a baby, who luckily took after its dad.

I walked into a no-frills living room. Laminate flooring, three-piece suite, a large TV and that was about it. The rest was open space so he could rattle about in his wheelchair.

French windows opened on to the garden, accessed via another ramp. I followed a narrow path of B&Q fake Cotswold stone that led up to a pair of doors set into a wall. The garage had been converted into an office. There was a stud wall where the up-and-over door had once been, and no windows.

Crazy Dave was waiting for me behind his desk. Balding, with a moustache like a seventies porn star, the only thing about him that had changed was the expression on his face. Last time I was there he was all smiles. Now he looked tense. Just here to say hi, my arse. He knew there’d be more to it than that, but couldn’t fight his basic greed. I might be here with a million-dollar contract, or a caseful of Iraqi oil bonds with no idea how to sell them on.

9

On the desk in front of him, next to a telephone and an open laptop, sat the two most important assets his business possessed: a pair of small plastic boxes stuffed with index cards containing the names and details of more than a hundred former members of special forces. No wonder the garage had drop-down steel shutters and weapons-grade security: to people wanting to know which companies were doing which jobs, those cards would have been worth more than a containership full of RPGs.