The Leopard

90
Marlon Brando

Harry was lying on his back, floating. floating away. Sinking into Lake Kivu while the blood, his and that of others, mingled with the lake’s, became one, disappeared in the universe’s great sleep, and the stars above him were extinguished in the cold, black water. Peace in the depths, silence, nothingness. Until he resurfaced in a bubble of methane gas, a night-blue corpse with Guinea worm-infected flesh that seethed and churned beneath the skin. And he had to get out of Lake Kivu to live. To wait.

Harry opened his eyes. He could see the hotel balcony above him. He rolled onto his side and swam the few metres to the shore. Rose from the water.

Soon dawn would break. Soon he would be sitting on the plane back to Oslo. Soon he would be in Gunnar Hagen’s office telling him it was over. That they were gone, gone for ever. That they had failed. So he, too, would try to be gone.

Trembling, Harry wrapped himself in the large white towel and walked towards the stairs up to his hotel room.

When the cloud passed, no one was standing by the edge of the crater.

Harry’s sights had automatically sought the marksman. Found him and he had been on the point of firing. But discovered he was looking at the man’s back, heading for the car. Then the Range Rover had started up, passed them and gone.

He had moved the sights back to where he had seen Kaja, Tony and Lene. Adjusted the optics. Seen the footprints. Three sets.

Then he had thrown down the rifle, jumped out of the car and run around the crater with his revolver held in front of him. Had run and prayed. Skidded onto his knees beside them. Already knowing he had lost before he focused.

Harry unlocked his hotel-room door. Went to the bathroom, removed the wet bandage around his head and applied a new one he had been given in reception. The temporary stitches held his cheek together; it was a different matter with his jaw. His bag was packed and ready by the bed. The clothes he would travel in hung over the chair. He took the cigarette pack out of his trouser pocket, went onto the balcony and sat down on one of the plastic chairs. The cold dulled the pain in his jaw and cheek. He looked out over the shimmering silver lake he would never see again as long as he lived.

She was dead. The lead bullet with a diameter of one and a half centimetres had pierced her right eye, taking with it the right half of her head, taking Tony Leike’s large white front teeth through his skull, opening a crater at the back and spreading everything over an area of a hundred square metres of volcanic rock.

Harry had spewed up. Spat green mucus on them and staggered backwards.

He flipped two cigarettes out of the packet. Put them between his lips and felt them bobbing up and down against his chattering teeth. The plane left in four hours. He had arranged to go to the airport with Saul. Harry was so exhausted he could hardly keep his eyes open, yet neither could nor wanted to sleep. The ghosts were refused admission for the first night.

‘Marlon Brando,’ she said.

‘What?’ Harry replied, lighting the cigarettes and passing her one.

‘The macho actor whose name I couldn’t remember. He has the most feminine voice of them all. Woman’s mouth, too. Have you noticed, by the way, that he lisps? It’s not that audible, but it’s there, like a kind of overtone the ear doesn’t perceive as a sound, but the brain registers anyway.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Harry said, inhaling and observing her.

She had been sprayed with blood, tissue, bone fragments and brain matter. It had taken a long time to cut the plastic ties binding her wrists; his fingers had simply not obeyed him. When she was finally free she had got to her feet, while he lay on all fours.

And he had done nothing to stop her grabbing Tony’s jacket collar and belt, and rolling the body off the edge into the crater. Harry had not heard a sound, only the whisper of the wind. He had watched her looking down into the volcano until she turned to him.

He nodded. She didn’t need to explain. That was how it had to be done.

She had cast an enquiring glance at the body of Lene Galtung. But Harry had shaken his head. He had weighed up the practical versus the moral considerations. The diplomatic consequences versus a mother having a grave to visit. The truth versus a lie that might have made life more liveable. Then he had got to his feet. Lifted Lene Galtung, almost collapsing under the weight of the slight, young woman. Stood on the edge of the abyss, closed his eyes, felt the longing, swayed for a second. And then let her go. Opened his eyes and watched her descent. She was already a dot. Then it was swallowed by the smoke.

‘People go missing in the Congo every single day,’ Kaja had said on the drive back from the volcano with Saul, and Harry had sat on the back seat holding her.

He knew it would be a short report. No traces. Vanished. They could be anywhere. And the answer to all the questions they would be asked would be this: people go missing in the Congo every single day. Even when she asked, the woman with the turquoise eyes. Because it would be simplest for them. No body, no internal inquiry, which was routine when officers had fired a shot. No embarrassing international incident. No dropping of the case, at least not at an official level, but the continued search for Leike would just be for appearances’ sake. Lene Galtung would be reported missing. She hadn’t had a plane ticket and the immigration authorities in the Congo hadn’t registered her entry into the country. It was for the best, Hagen would say. For all parties. At any rate, those parties which counted.

And the woman with the turquoise eyes would nod. Accept what she was told. But she might know anyway, if she listened to what he didn’t say. She could choose. Choose to hear him say her daughter was dead. That he had aimed between Lene’s eyes instead of what he assumed would be accurate, a bit further to the right. But he had wanted to be sure the bullet didn’t deviate so far to the right that he might shoot his colleague, the woman with whom he was working on this job. She could choose that or the lie that pushed sound waves up ahead, the ones that gave hope instead of a grave.

They changed planes in Kampala.

Sat in hard plastic chairs by the gate watching planes coming and going until Kaja fell asleep and her head slid down onto Harry’s shoulder.

She was woken by something happening. She didn’t know what, but something had changed. The room temperature. The rhythm of Harry’s heartbeat. Or the lines in his drained, pale face. She saw his hand putting the phone back in his jacket pocket.

‘Who was it?’ she asked.

‘Rikshospital,’ Harry said, his eyes going absent to her, slipping past her, disappearing out of the panoramic windows, to the horizon of the concrete runway and the dazzling, light blue sky.

‘He’s dead.’