Star of Africa

Chapter 62

Afterwards, the dark clouds that had been gathering like battlefield smog in the air finally burst, as if a giant knife had reached up to the heavens and slashed their guts open. The rainstorm came down in solid sheets, lashing and pounding the ground. It washed the blood into the earth, and washed the earth into rivers of purple mud. But nothing would ever wash the stench of death from this place.

A dismal hush fell over the remaining prisoners as they let themselves be herded into the Mercedes box truck. They moved slowly through the rain. Their clothes and hair were soaked, but they didn’t care. The soldiers barked and shoved and jabbed. They didn’t care about them, either.

Soon afterwards, the heavily laden trucks were bumping and lurching away in tandem from the silent village, down the muddied track towards the dirt road. Heading west, big tyres crashing through flooded potholes, headlights poking beams through the deluge, wipers slapping back and forth as fast as they could bat the rain aside. Khosa had made Ben ride with him in the lead vehicle. The General lounged in the front of the Land Rover with one elbow crooked on the door sill, laughing at his own jokes and smoking and talking away happily.

Khosa, the victor. Khosa, the king. The unquestioned lord of all he surveyed, wherever he went. With the diamond in his pocket, a gigantic fortune at his fingertips. And nothing to stop him.

Ben sat still, silent and numb. He felt as though his heart had broken, for Jude, for the villagers, for Hercules, for all of them. It was as if all his strength had left him and would never return. A feeling he’d never experienced with such overwhelming intensity before. He played back in his mind things that had happened in the course of his life. The grief of losing loved ones. The bitter wrench of failure. The worst times he’d come through.

He’d thought he’d known what it felt like to be swallowed up in absolute black despair.

He’d been wrong.

He’d had no idea what it felt like. Not until this moment.

The trucks rumbled on through the rain, and then through the night, and on through the first glimmers of morning when the sunrise turned the light the colour of blood. Deeper and deeper into a different world. One in which human life was cheaper than dirt. Where a man with absolute power and the ruthlessness to wield it could do anything he liked, unchecked.

This was not Ben’s world any more.

Ben was in Khosa’s world now.

Later that day, they crossed from Rwanda into the Congo, over a flimsy river bridge at a point on the border where there were no checks, no stops, no authorities within fifty miles. Soon after that, as they rumbled along an arrow-straight dirt highway that shot ahead to infinity through a vista of rolling green plains and faraway hazy mountains, they were met by a contingent of Khosa’s forces that had been contacted by radio to rendezvous with them.

They appeared at first like a shape-shifting spectrum of colour through a heat shimmer where the road met the sky, moving fast at the heart of a great swirling dust cloud that resembled an approaching sandstorm. Moving fast, detail falling into focus as they sped closer and closer. The dull glint of sunlight on matt-painted bodywork and bull bars and dusty windscreens. Big brutal tyres crunching the road surface. The line stretched out far behind the lead vehicle. There must have been thirty or forty of them. It was a whole fleet of what irregular armies called ‘technicals’, which were civilian pickup trucks modified for warfare. Most of them crudely spray-painted in splodges of green and brown camouflage. Several were equipped with half-inch-calibre American Browning heavy machine guns or Russian-made anti-aircraft cannons fixed on swivel mounts behind the cab. The kind of firepower that could level a forest or decimate a whole town. They were the only vehicles in sight, as if they owned the road. Perhaps they did own it. Nobody, not even regular government troops, would have stood in their way in any case.

The approaching convoy blasted a symphony of honking horns as they recognised their leader. Khosa had the Land Rover pull off the road, followed by the Mercedes box truck, and moments later they were surrounded by a roaring, bouncing mass of vehicles that skidded to a halt on the rough ground and spewed scores of Khosa’s militia fighters all running to greet and welcome him like a returning hero. The force of thirty that had travelled from Somalia had now swelled to over two hundred heavily armed soldiers. Ben hadn’t seen this many guns all together in one place in a long time.

Then the final vehicle at the tail end of the convoy came into view, still far off, a speeding black dot trailing a dust cloud and gradually growing larger. As he stepped down from the Land Rover and tried to spot Jude, Jeff and the others among the crowd disembarking from the box truck, Ben detected a palpable sense of excitement among the soldiers and heard exclamations of ‘Here he comes!’ and ‘Masango is coming!’

The car wasn’t an armoured pickup, nor a four-wheel-drive of any description, but a long Mercedes limousine, shiny black coachwork stained with the dirt of a long drive on unmade roads. It slowed as it reached the mass gathering of vehicles and pulled gently off the road, wallowing and rocking on its soft suspension. Its windows were a smoky tint just short of black, and Ben could make out no more than dark shapes in the front seats and nothing at all in the rear.

The limousine rolled to a halt. The driver stayed where he was and kept the engine purring while the front-seat passenger got out. He looked like a bodyguard. A tough, burly African, incongruously well dressed in the midst of all the military khaki. Italian silk draped over planes of sculpted muscle. Dark glasses. Stubby Uzi submachine pistol. He stalked around to the rear door and opened it, and out stepped a tall, thin and elegant black man with silvering hair and an expensive light grey suit.

This would be Masango, Ben thought. But who was he?

Khosa had been doing an exultant victory lap of his two-hundred-strong fighting force when he saw the limo pull up and broke away from his men to come striding to meet it. He and the tall man in the grey suit shook hands and patted each other’s shoulders like old friends.

As much as Ben wanted to go and find Jude and his friends, he wanted to know who this man Masango was. He walked around the front of the parked Land Rover and leaned on its square wing, watching and listening.

‘You had us worried, Jean-Pierre,’ the tall man was saying. ‘When I heard about the plane—’

‘It was nothing,’ Khosa laughed, brushing it off. ‘I decided to take the scenic route.’

The scenic route, Ben thought, and went on watching the two men in disgust as they laughed and backslapped and bantered some more. Khosa seemed to sense Ben’s eyes on them. He turned and guided the tall man by the elbow to meet him, as if doing polite introductions on the country club lawn at a society party.

‘Soldier, I want you to meet César Masango,’ Khosa said, curling an arm around Masango’s shoulders. ‘He is my political attaché. He is the man who is going to help put me into power one day very soon.’

Masango offered his hand to Ben. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mister—?’

Ben ignored the hand and didn’t move or speak.

‘The soldier is my military advisor, but sometimes does not say very much,’ Khosa said, flashing a look at Ben.

Masango shrugged, as if saying, if he doesn’t want to talk, fine, fuck him. They clearly had more important matters to discuss. ‘So, Jean-Pierre. Is it true? You have it?’

‘I have it,’ Khosa said with a slow smile that he couldn’t suppress, and took out the enormous diamond to show his colleague. Under the bright sunlight, the unreal fist-sized rock seemed to be filled with dancing fire.

Masango shook his head in awe. ‘May I hold it?’

‘Careful, or my men will shoot,’ Khosa said, and they both laughed.

Masango clenched the diamond in his hands, gaping. ‘With this,’ he said, ‘anything is possible.’

‘And everything is within our grasp,’ Khosa said with a fire dancing in his own eyes.

Masango asked, ‘Can I take it to show my wife? She will be amazed.’

‘Of course. Take it, take it. Just make sure that you bring it back in the morning.’ Khosa burst out laughing and punched Masango’s arm playfully. Just two guys messing around. What a double act.

‘And now,’ Khosa said, turning his attentions back towards Ben, ‘the time has come to say goodbye.’

Ben stared at him, not understanding.

Khosa snapped his fingers. Two soldiers immediately hurried off towards the box truck. They came hurrying back seconds later, now three. They had Jude by the arms. His wrists were cuffed in front of him.

Jolts of alarm shot through Ben. What was happening here? ‘Jude?’

‘Ben? I don’t know where they’re taking me.’

‘What’s this about, Khosa?’ Ben demanded.

‘Where we are going, you will too busy to look after your son,’ Khosa said. ‘So my friend César will be looking after him now.’

Ben’s heart was skipping beats and his hands were beginning to tremble. The sun was burning hot, but a chill like a freezing fog was descending over him. ‘Where are you taking him?’

‘Somewhere safe,’ Khosa said. Then he chuckled and added, ‘Safe from his father. Do not worry, soldier, we will not let him come to too much harm. He is there to protect our investment.’

‘Investment in what?’ Ben snapped.

Masango said, ‘In you, Mister Hope.’ The political attaché made a big show of checking his watch. ‘Now, we have a long drive back, so…’

‘Do not let me keep you, César,’ Khosa said warmly. ‘Safe journey. We will talk soon, hmm?’

The soldiers transferred Jude into the hands of the bodyguard with the Uzi. He held Jude’s arm in a pincer grip and began steering him towards the limo, but Ben blocked his way and ignored the nine-millimetre snout of the machine pistol pointing at his midriff.

‘Let it go, Ben,’ Jude said. ‘You’ll only make it worse.’

‘This isn’t over,’ Ben told him. ‘You hear me? This is not over. I’ll find you.’

‘Put him in the car,’ Khosa said.

‘I’ll come for you, Jude,’ Ben said. He couldn’t disguise the catch in his voice.

‘Dad—’

Dad.

And then Jude was being dragged towards the open back door of the limo. The man with the Uzi climbed in beside him, reached for the door handle and shut it with a soft clunk. Ben stared at the black-tinted rear window but could no longer see Jude inside.

César Masango gave Khosa a last wave and climbed into the other side of the limo’s rear. The car purred slowly off, bouncing and lurching over the rough ground until it reached the road, then accelerated smartly away.

Ben watched it go.

‘You will see him again, soldier. One day. Perhaps alive, too.’ Khosa walked away laughing.

Ben watched the limo shrink into the distance. He watched until all that could be seen was a tiny rooster-tail of dust on the horizon where the road melted hazily into the sky.

Then it was gone.

Jude was gone.

Ben closed his eyes and the ice wave of despair broke over him.

Then he opened them again. Said out loud, ‘No.’ Looked at his clenched fists and felt the power of his rage surging through him, as if it could boil his blood in his veins.

Khosa hadn’t won this thing yet. He just thought he had.

Ben pictured Khosa’s face in front of him, and made his promise to the man.

I will finish you. Sooner or later. No matter what. You’re a dead man walking. You might as well start digging your own grave.

And Ben didn’t know if he was imagining it or not, but from somewhere inside his mind he thought he could hear the echo of maniacal laughter.