Читать книгу Warlord - James Steel, James Steel - Страница 19

Alex and his men walk up the hill towards their meeting with the politician who will lead their new country.

They cross a small stream at the foot of the hill and nod at an old man with a machete who stands guard outside a hut. He smiles uncertainly back at them.

They follow a muddy track as it curves up a large grassy hill. After winding around it comes out at the top into a farmyard of two large wooden barns and two cowsheds. A few farm workers stare at them, resting on their pitchforks. They cross over the muddy ground in the middle and walk towards the farmstead, a single-storey plank building with a wide veranda and lawn overlooking the valley they drove up. A hammock is slung between two trees on the lawn.

As they near the house Alex suddenly stops and listens. It is completely silent on the hilltop but he can hear the faint sound of a piano from inside; delicate, sparing notes that form a haunting tune.

‘That’s a Chopin nocturne?’ He looks at Arkady quizzically.

‘I don’t know, I’m Russian not Polish.’

Col shrugs. ‘I’ll take yer word for it.’

As they walk on towards the house, the music cuts off abruptly and a group of ten young children, scruffily-clad boys and girls, come scampering out of a door and run away, giggling and shouting ‘Muzungu!’ at them.

The men smile and Col calls back in Swahili, ‘Habari za mchana.’ They all know a little of the East African lingua franca and are used to having ‘Whiteman’ shouted at them in remote locations.

A tall, slim man in his mid-thirties comes out onto the veranda wearing traditional dress – a long white gown and white pointed leather slippers. He is smiling broadly and has a sensitive, fine-boned face.

‘I am sorry about the kids,’ he says in accented English. ‘I was just entertaining them a bit as we were waiting for you to arrive.’

He walks towards Alex with a dazzling white smile and shakes his hand firmly. Alex notes how his sharp facial features contrast with a shaved head and high forehead. He has long, fine fingers and his movements are neat and quick.

He shakes everyone’s hand warmly and says laughing, ‘Welcome to my humble abode. As you can see, I am just a simple farmer. Please come in.’

He shows them into a large low room with plank flooring and an old upright piano in one corner. They settle down around a white plastic garden table with white plastic chairs.

Rukuba sits at the head of the table and looks around at them, beaming. ‘Gentlemen, it is so exciting for me to meet you here today, I am so glad that you have come.’ There is an earnest pleasure in his voice and he sweeps his hand around as if he is speaking on behalf of the whole of Kivu.

‘Let me tell you about myself. Well, in the beginning I am a Kivuan, I am one of the people of Kivu. I am half Tutsi and half Nande, so I feel I represent both the Banyamulenge and the originaires.’ He presses his long-fingered hands to his chest and pauses for a moment.

His hands sweep outwards again and he continues with enthusiasm, ‘Our political organisation is the Kivu People’s Party. Unlike the militias and their political fronts we are deliberately non-ethnically aligned. We are a broad-based political group with a programme of pragmatic community activities, like building bridges or digging village fishponds, and we focus on raising awareness of issues such as sexual violence against women and livestock improvement. In so many ways we struggle to make the lives of the people of Kivu better.

‘But I am not judgemental; I talk to the leaders of all the main militias, I know the commanders of the FDLR very well. They are always giving me shopping tips for the best tailors in Paris – they tell me I should stop wearing these.’ He holds up his traditional robes and smiles at Alex’s surprised look. ‘The top commanders are very wealthy from their mines and they come and go to Europe a lot.

‘So, when I am not talking to them, I publicise our work through my radio broadcasts on UN Radio Okapi and through my music. I am so blessed by God to have a good voice and I love to play for the people in the churches – Catholic, Pentecostal, the bush cults, I don’t mind who. I play to bring the people of Kivu together, to try to heal our wounds and to bring peace at last to this land of such great beauty and yet such great pain.’

Alex finds himself being entranced by the man, his voice rising and falling, his hands sweeping back and forth like a magician’s and his face so sincere and expressive. He glances at the others and they are all staring at him.

He continues, ‘So, you will say, Dieudonné, all this sounds good, but you are not getting very far are you, my friend?’ He flashes his big smile at them. ‘Yes, I say, I regret that you are right. We have supporters throughout the country, I have good contacts with the charcoal traders, we know a lot of what is happening in Kivu, we have moral authority, we have soft power – but we have no real power, no hard power.’

He suddenly switches from a light tone to a fervent one and a vein begins to stand out on his temple. ‘So, as you can see, I live a simple life here in the heart of my country. Yet every day I feel its pain. When I travel around and I see the thugs manning the roadblocks, when I speak to so many women who tell me how they are dragged off and raped every day on the way to their fields, when I see the FDLR and the army brigades continue to grow rich on the mineral wealth of our land, oh my heart cries out! I long for something else … something else.’ A bright light of sincerity and conviction shines in his eyes as he looks round at them. ‘And that, gentlemen, is where you come in. That is why we are so grateful to you and my dear friend, Monsieur Wu, because together I believe that we have found a way at last, after long years of struggle, to solve the problems of Kivu.’

He looks at them with such searching honesty that Alex for the first time really understands the pain of the people of Kivu. Up to now it has been a challenge for him, a fascinating experiment in international relations, a reassertion of the Devereuxs’ role in the world, but he hasn’t really connected to the six million people who will be affected by what he is going to do.

Cousin Vernon is an intelligent, weary-looking man in his forties with a neat moustache, short hair and a chewed yellow Bic biro tucked behind his right ear. He’s wearing a mudstained tracksuit and anorak.

‘OK, I need two more guys! Come on, good rates, I pay three dollars a kilo!’ he shouts to the crowd of men milling around. It’s 7 a.m. and he is recruiting for the morning shift in his tunnel, which he has named Versailles in a bid to attract labour.

The miners range in age from teens to thirties. They stand around dozily on the muddy track leading from the manoir, the village where they sleep, up the hillside to the Mabala mine. The manoir is at four thousand feet so it’s cold and misty.

Gabriel can feel a light rain begin to patter on the hood of his cheap nylon anorak. He shivers, wraps his arms tighter around himself and shuffles his feet in his Wellingtons. Next to him, Marcel does likewise; it’s their first day at work.

Other tunnel bosses are hawking for labour for the day, shouting rates and proclaiming the virtues of the different seams that they are chasing deeper into the mountainside.

On the edge of the crowd are some FDLR troops in dark green rain capes that reach down to their wellies at the front and back. They are part of the Gorilla Brigade under Colonel Etienne and several hundred of them live in a base on a hill overlooking the manoir.

One of the soldiers hears Vernon’s rate and discusses it quickly with a friend. They unhitch their rifles off their shoulders, hand them to another soldier and stroll down to Vernon. ‘OK, boss.’ Soldiers need extra cash like anyone else.

Vernon nods. ‘Names?’ He whips his biro out from behind his ear.

‘Robert.’

‘Patrice.’

‘OK.’ He scribbles down their names in a little pocket book that he pulls out of his anorak. ‘You got your own tools?’

They both nod and each pulls three bits of equipment out from under their rain slickers: a short-handled masonry hammer, chisel and torch with a rubber strap attached.

Vernon writes a symbol next to their names and points. ‘Over there.’

The soldiers come to stand with Gabriel and Marcel and the other six men. They grunt a greeting and then Vernon comes over and they follow him and trudge up the hillside.

The Mabala mine is a huge hill of red mud that looks like it has been attacked by an army of termites. The green forest all over it has been chopped down and the hillside is littered with tree trunks and uprooted stumps. In between the patches of mist and drifting rain Gabriel can see the small entrances to many tunnels: Fort Knox, ATM, Golden Goose. Outside each one is a cluster of men; the night shift is coming out and their produce is being weighed and bagged up.

Vernon leads his new team half a mile round the side of the hill to Versailles. His nightshift manager is wearily bagging up the produce and they talk briefly before Vernon takes tools and torches off some of the workers and gives them to Gabriel and Marcel. Two small portable pumps attached to hosepipes leading into the tunnel whirr noisily next to the entrance.

Gabriel eyes the men nervously. They are covered in mud that has dried to a light ochre colour. As one of them wipes his forehead with the back of his rain-wet hand, he cleans a streak of dark brown skin in it.

Vernon gives them new batteries for the torches – ‘I’ll charge you for those’ – and issues each of them with a plastic sack stained brown with mud. Gabriel pulls the strip of black tyre rubber attached to it round his head so that the torch sits above his left ear.

Clutching their sacks with their tools in them, the men duck down and follow Vernon into the narrow entrance. The tunnel is about four feet high so they have to stoop and proceed in an awkward slouching walk for fifty metres. It slopes down, water drips on Gabriel’s head and it gets very cold.

Vernon leads the way and the others follow the wobbling circle of his head torch as it illuminates the wet brown rock. He stops just as the tunnel turns a sharp right. ‘OK, this is the tricky bit. To get to the seam we have to go under this outcrop of hard rock.’ He thumps the rock with his hand. ‘The passage is very small but it’s worth it when you get to the other side, the ore is very high grade. OK, Pierre will lead the way, come up.’

They flatten themselves against the side and Pierre squeezes past to the front. Vernon then crabs along to the back, and checks his watch. ‘OK, I’ll see you at eight o’clock tonight. Bonne chance.’

Gabriel watches the white circle of light retreat back down the tunnel and glances at Marcel who has switched on his headlamp so that it silhouettes the side of his face. He sees him shrug.

‘OK, follow me. This is scary but it’s OK,’ Pierre says in an unreassuring way. He crawls over to a muddy hole in the floor just wide enough for a man to fit into. ‘You have to put your sack in front of you, push it forwards and then wriggle on a bit. It’s about six metres to the gallery and the tunnel bends a bit under the outcrop. There’s a kind of sump at the bottom where the water accumulates but don’t shit yourself – it’s fine. Just keep going.’