The Big Killing (26 page)

'I was asked to look out for Ron Collins. Make sure he didn't get into trouble.'

'Well, you fogged that up a treat.'

'My footwork's not fancy enough to take on three armed soldiers and be sure of winning.'

'How fancy is it?'

'I can get across the road without falling over ... most of the time.'

Malahide chuckled.

'You'll do,' he said. 'You'll do.'

Which was the same noise as the mosquitoes were making as they gave me a savage going-over. Malahide was exuding something powerful enough to keep them on my side of the table—
Animosité pour homme.
The maid came back with kebabs and salad and two cold beers. Malahide ate and ran beer and Bushmills neck and neck. The pace was fierce, but I kept up. We finished and sat back.

'It's a lawless world we live in,' he said. 'A lawless fogging world.'

'"
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
",' I quoted. 'You've read a spot of the great Irishman?'

'A little.'

'"
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
"—that's what's happening over there,' he said, pointing towards Liberia. 'I'll talk to them for you, Bruce. See if they've got yer man. That's all. If there's any exchange to be done, you're on your own. And I'm telling you—you'd better be careful, it's gone to fogging hell over there. You'll see.'

'Will you talk to them tonight?'

'I'll try them. They'll want to see you if they're going to do business with you. That means over there. I've some business to do myself. Perhaps we could make a trip of it. I'll call you later at Les Cascades. But get some sleep, because if we go it'll be at three or four in the morning and you'd better be sharp for those bastards.'

He stood up and walked back into the low light of the living room and this time through I saw it behind one of the wooden support pillars. Hanging off a rough piece of hewn wood that was on its way to being a carving of sorts was a full leopard skin with leather straps for human wear.

'The leopard,' said Malahide. 'A very important animal for the Dan people around here. They believe it makes the wearer invisible so that he can wander about the place and see the evil'—Malahide finished his tumbler of Bushmills in a gulp—'and the good, if there's any fogging left in the world.'

'And what does he do when he finds the evil?'

'He rips it out.'

Malahide put an arm around my shoulder and steered me towards the steps, and, rather than human warmth, I felt something cold creep up my spine and tug at the strange nerve endings attached to the hairs at the back of my neck and the cap of my scalp.

'Is that it?' asked Bagado.

'Not quite; as I got into the car he stood on the steps, stared up at the sky and said:

"A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is;
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins."'

'Is he insane?'

'Not because he quotes Yeats.'

'
Because
by night he drinks whisky and spouts poetry at the heavens and by day he decimates the African rain-forest, pays money to people so that they fight their wars and ... is there a Gordon's in there?'

I tossed him a miniature from the mini-bar and handed him a glass with a can of tonic in it.

'What else?' I asked.

'He's shipping arms to Ireland. Nothing serious, more of a gesture. He takes a truckload off the consignments coming across from Burkina. They offload it in the bush into jeeps and pick-ups, he takes it into the compound and packs them in the lining of containers of furniture and ships them out of San Pedro to Cork.'

'Who told you that?'

'I talked to the owner of that food stall across the road from the compound. Four workers were given the sack last month. I tracked them down. The one with six children under the age of eight told me everything I needed to know. I gave him fifty thousand, if that's all right?'

The phone went and Malahide's voice started without introduction.

'You know La Prudence?'

'Yes.'

'Go there and wait.' He clicked off. 'He's enjoying this.'

'I don't like it.'

'What's the worst-case scenario?'

'You get killed.'

'Why kill me?'

'You know things. You've got your nose in their business.'

'It's only a discussion of terms and conditions.'

'You trust Malahide and his puppet leopard?'

'He needs me.'

'I've heard women who've been battered to pulp say the same thing of their lovers.'

It was a hot walk, but not lonely. Business was brisk outside the hospital, with girls selling mangoes and bananas through the windows. There was already a stream of people going into the stadium, where a leaflet told me there was a political rally before the Sunday elections.

There were only two empty tables at La Prudence, which was full of foreigners that night. There was one long table of aid workers who'd been there some time judging from the empties on the table. I took a table next to four Germans who leaned over their huge guts and ate with concentration and precision, only pausing to apply mustard and sink a few inches of beer. They didn't speak. The waiter brought me a beer and five minutes later told me to come to the phone.

'I can't talk to you in that hotel of yours,' said Malahide. 'There's all sorts of bastards in there. It's on for tonight. I'll pick you up at two a.m. outside the PTT. Don't be late. I'll wait for two minutes only.' The line clicked dead.

Bagado didn't keep me up. He gave me a plastic bag and told me to take some clothes for Ron. I put a pack of playing cards in my pocket. I set the alarm for 1.30 a.m. and fell into some ragged sleep at around 11.00 p.m. I woke up sweating, the air conditioning not working in the room. It was just before 1.00 a.m.

I walked through the empty leaflet-strewn streets. There was only me and a ribby, snake-hipped dog out at this hour. I waited ten minutes at the PTT. Malahide was on time. It was a good hour's drive to Danané. The police post there waved us through without asking for papers and we headed south to Toulépleu on a rough road with thick vegetation on either side.

'They say Ronny's dad is a wealthy man,' said Malahide.

'He's been in diamonds a long time.'

'Since the war. Once he got out of Auschwitz.'

'You've done your homework, Sean.'

He shrugged and took a hip flask out of the seat pocket in front.

'Drop of Bushmills, Bruce, keep you steady.' I took a swig. 'You think the arrogant fogging bastard's worth it?'

'I didn't like him much either,' I said, Malahide grunted. 'You got a grudge in there you're honing?'

'I'm not anti-semitic, if that's what you mean.'

'Why all the Goldstein crap?'

'Just teasing,' he said. 'I always behave badly when I'm away from home.' He capped the hip flask. 'We'll keep the rest for coffee.'

We drove through two towns. Just before Toulépleu we came off the road and headed west to the Liberian border, which at that point was the river Nipoué.

It was 4.30 a.m. by the time Sean eased himself out of the car with a coffee Thermos dangling from a finger and we walked down to a landing stage made of wooden planking over lashed oil drums. Malahide checked his watch and sat down, resting his heels on the oil drums. He poured the coffee and laced it.

'We're ten minutes early,' he said. 'So we'll sit ourselves down by this little river here and, "
like the long-legged fly on the stream, let our minds move upon silence".
How's that, Bruce?'

'Very pretty, Sean,' I said. 'Who am I going to be talking to over there?'

'Well, you might meet the living cliché himself.'

'Cliché?'

'Samson Talbot. They had him in jail in the States, waiting to extradite him back here to face embezzlement charges. Somebody brought him a cake with a file in it and he sawed his way through the bars and let himself down on bedsheets. And that, I can assure you, doesn't happen very often. About as often as you'll see a cat amongst pigeons.'

'What do you think of him?'

'He's a bastard. He has to be. He's started a war with four hundred men against a proper army, and now he's got four thousand men and he's winning.'

'With a bit of help from his friends.'

'I've always been a great supporter of the underdog.'

'Not anti-semitic, but pro-Arab.'

'Now you're using it,' he said. 'Not anti-American, just pro-African.'

'Not anti-British, just pro-republican.'

'Not anti-British at all.'

And the Libyans?' I asked, hearing him listening.

'A very proud people, the Libyans. A very understanding people. A people with a very good understanding of the underdog, I'd say.' He checked his watch. 'By God, it's black out here. A man might think he was dead if it wasn't for the sound of the water.'

He had a sense of timing, did Malahide; timing and a rare talent for terminating an inquiry with maximum threat.

'History,' he said. 'The human race is always reinviting history on itself. We never learn. We keep going over it, again and again, and we'll keep at it until the end of time and there's nothing you or I can do about it.'

'We don't have to get involved.'

'I've always preferred playing to spectating,' he said, and clicked on the torch three times. A single light flashed on the opposite bank and Malahide clicked his torch back on and held it between his knees. 'Give them something to aim at,' he said, putting the Thermos back together. 'Time to cross the river Styx, Bruce, and give you a sight of hell!'

A few minutes later the
pirogue
bumped into the oil drums. We got in and they paddled us across to an open-topped jeep waiting on the other side. The driver, in army fatigues, drove with brutal efficiency, flicking through the gear changes, his face impassive, cheeks juddering over the rough road. We came into a village and joined a graded road which went north and then west. We ripped through a couple more villages, heading north again, and at first light we joined the main road.

'This'll take us into Gbarnga,' said Malahide.

The cloud was low after heavy rainfall and a mist hung over the wrecked terrain of dead and broken trees. There were acres of torn mud mashed with splintered wood and uprooted vegetation. Ragged gashes in the earth were filled with stagnant water and pigs scraped around upended tree stumps. After half an hour we slowed down for a checkpoint and the stench of rotting flesh was so strong it lodged itself in the back of the throat like an instant cancer.

Instead of sandbags, the checkpoint had been constructed out of bones and skulls, some with flesh and hair still attached, some being gnawed by rats and dogs which the soldiers ignored or didn't see. The men sat on stools, their eyes dead and unfocused, the smoking reefers dangling from limp fingers at their sides.

A boy soldier who couldn't have been more than twelve, wearing a T-shirt with a Rolling Stones tongue on it and rolled-up fatigues, was searching the car in front, prodding at things and people with his rifle which was only a couple of inches smaller than him. He laughed as he did it, showing a mouth of sharp white teeth which looked like splintered bone. He came to us and saw the white men and pointed the gun and blew us away with cinematic ease.

'I like to kill,' he whined, then more shrill laughter which, now that it was closer, broke in my head like a glass hangover. I was glad to be in an official jeep until I looked at the driver, who was more scared than we were. Malahide gave the boy a five-dollar note and he waved us through. We passed through the walls of human remains and watched a dog skittering off into the bush with a severed hand in its mouth.

There wasn't much traffic and we made good time until we got caught behind a truck with the slogan 'Here comes dead body trouble' painted on the back. It was filled with armed men dressed in pink towelling dressing gowns and day-glo tracksuits, some of them wearing blonde curly wigs, others with crash helmets on, some of them dancing, others hanging from the bare metal tarpaulin supports, passing joints to one another. We overtook them hitting a pothole which lifted Malahide clean out of his seat.

'As fine a bunch of fighting men as ever I've seen,' he shouted over his shoulder.

We made it to Gbarnga by 7.45 a.m. and drove through the streets filled with people starting the twelve-hour scavenge for food. There wasn't a piece of fruit in the town. There were leaves for sale, leaves and weeds. Dazed children with bloated bellies stood beside huge puddles in the road. Old people propped themselves up against destroyed buildings, their shattered faces staring out of rags, an empty plate in front of them as if they were guys and the kids were out collecting for them.

'They're selling water on the streets in Monrovia at ten dollars a litre,' said Malahide, as if it was a business we might get into.

We went to the police station and were shown into a room with a desk and a chair and a lakeside view of the empty compound. Malahide poured more coffee and heavier stiffeners and gave me another small flask for Ron. At 9.00 a.m. Malahide left for his meeting. An hour later I was taken to another office with three men in uniform with pips on their shoulders sitting behind a single desk. The middle one spoke, a pencil held in two hands, his eyes glancing down at a single sheet of paper on the desk.

'I am Colonel Joseph Aguma. I've been appointed by President Samson Talbot to negotiate on behalf of the Liberian Democratic Front. The terms for the release of the prisoner are as follows: The Ivory Coast government to unfreeze all LDF funds in Ivory Coast and allow free passage of arms from Burkina-Faso to Liberia. The equivalent of two million dollars in uncut diamonds with a value not less than forty thousand dollars per carat to be delivered to a prearranged location in Liberia where the prisoner will be exchanged. That is all.'

'You said "negotiate".'

'These are the terms.'

' "Negotiate" means we can discuss it.'

'No discussion.'

'In that case I want to see the prisoner.'

'Impossible,' said the officer on the left, which the other two weren't prepared for and they started to talk about it in Tui, so I joined in, silencing them.