Star of Africa

Chapter 43

‘He is your son,’ Khosa repeated slowly, as if enjoying the sound of the words. ‘Tell me it is not so.’

Ben felt the muscles in his face tighten as if steel hooks, cables and pulleys were reeling them in.

Khosa smiled. ‘I know I am right. He has your eyes, soldier. But I see deeper than this. It is what we can see behind the eyes that counts, for that is where we find the essence of a man. He is young, but he has much spirit. Like his father. Come, no more lies. Do not deny it. I can already tell the answer from your expression.’

Ben said nothing.

‘It is as I thought,’ Khosa said, pleased with himself. ‘I told you, nothing can escape me. He is a fine young man. Of course you wish for him to stay alive. There is nothing you would not do to save him.’

‘You want to talk,’ Ben said, ‘then let’s talk. You have the diamond. I don’t know where it came from, or who that guy Pender took it from, or what kind of crimes he committed to obtain it from them. Whatever the case, none of it was legitimate. Which makes that diamond stolen goods, and means you’ll be lucky if you get one percent of its value from whatever fence you try to sell it to. But even one percent of what that thing is worth is enough to make you a very rich man. What can you possibly stand to gain from me that you don’t already have or that you can’t buy? Why are you doing this?’

Khosa didn’t answer immediately. He turned away from Ben and began pacing around the room, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed in deep thought, like a philosopher in search of inspiration while contemplating some abstruse concept of metaphysics. But the greatest inspiration for Khosa at that moment happened to be nestling in his jacket pocket. He paused mid-stride to take out the leather pouch. He drew open the string fastener and rolled the diamond out onto his palm. The light was slowly fading outside, and the interior of the windowless building was growing darker. But the diamond seemed to shine like a lantern on Khosa’s hand.

‘You ask why I am doing this,’ he said, turning back towards Ben. ‘The answer is clear. Because when fate smiles on Jean-Pierre Khosa, he takes everything she has to offer. You say I am wealthy, and you are right. Before I had this, I was already a rich man. Now that it is mine, I will be the richest. It is true, I cannot sell it on the open market. But that is not your concern, soldier. I am a businessman with many connections. I will be meeting an associate and arranging the sale at a very good price, once we have returned home to my kingdom.’

Ben looked at him. ‘Your kingdom.’

Khosa swept his arm towards the south and west. ‘You heard me correctly, soldier. My kingdom. It lies a long way away from this worthless desert. There is nothing here but rocks and sand, scorpions and goats. My kingdom is filled with beauty and rivers and forests and mountains. Its soil is fertile, its mines are the richest in the world and its territory is bigger than England, France and Germany all put together. It is a paradise. One that you will see soon, I can assure you. We will cross the Somali border westwards into Kenya. Then across Kenya into Uganda. Then across Uganda into Rwanda. My kingdom lies to the west of there. The beating heart of Africa.’

Ben scanned the map of the continent in his mind. Twenty percent of the planet’s total land area, some thirty million square kilometres, home to nearly a billion people and some of the last great wildernesses on earth, divided into countries of a size that many of them made major European states look like tiny principalities. He pictured the journey that Khosa was describing, like a thin red line tracking roughly south-westwards across the map from Somalia across four borders. Skirting the southern edge of Ethiopia before passing through the Great Lakes regions, leaving behind the arid, dusty yellow-scorched plains for the equatorial humidity of dense grasslands and jungle. It was an enormous distance to travel, half the width of Africa, the equivalent of crossing almost the whole of Europe. Closer to two thousand miles than one. Like driving from Le Val to Budapest.

And the journey’s end was a place that Ben had been to before. Back when he had made his first unofficial military excursions into Africa the country had gone by its former name Zaire, until the civil war and mass genocide that had spilled over from neighbouring Rwanda finally tore that nation apart in 1997. It was one of the most notoriously unstable, corrupt and violently blood-soaked regions of Africa, with vast tracts that were still generally seen as no-go areas and carefully avoided by anyone not motivated by a deathwish.

The DRC. Democratic Republic of Congo. It was when a country took special pains to include the word ‘democratic’ in its name that you knew it was anything but.

A paradise, for sure.

‘The Congo,’ Ben said. ‘That’s where you’re taking us? That’s what you call your kingdom?’

‘Because it belongs to me,’ Khosa said grandly. ‘All of it. Or I should say, soldier,’ he added, clasping the diamond tightly in his fist, ‘it will belong to me. And you are going to help me to gain the power that is rightfully mine.’ Khosa paused, thought, shifted gears and then added with a sly smile, ‘You see, I knew you would come to me. I saw you in a vision. I have been waiting for you, Ben Hope.’

Ben stared at him, but could see nothing but plain earnestness in his eyes. The man was being completely serious.

Khosa’s disfigured face was lit up with triumphant joy as he went on, ‘And now you have been brought to me, as this diamond has been brought to me. All these things that have happened — that fool Pender and his lies. You and your men, appearing like a vision from the sea. My defeat, and your mercy towards me. The storm that sank your ship and made it possible for me to find you again. You do not see it, because you do not have my gift. But I, Jean-Pierre Khosa, I now understand that these things were meant to happen.’

Ben went on staring, not saying anything.

Khosa held the diamond out in front of him like a trophy, and shook it in his fist with a fierce grin. ‘And now, with this power that has been given to me, you and I together are going to reclaim what is mine. You and Dekker and Tuesday from Jamaica are going to train my army into such a force that it cannot be defeated by any enemy. Then nothing can stop me from achieving my destiny.’