The Constant Gardener

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Captain McKenzie and his copilot Edsard sit in the Buffalo's cockpit, and the cockpit is a raised platform in the nose of the Buffalo's fuselage, with no dividing doors to shield the crew from their cargo — or the cargo, for that matter, from the crew. And directly below the platform, one step down from it, some thoughtful soul has provided a low russet-colored Victorian armchair of the sort an elderly family retainer might pull up before the kitchen fire on a winter's evening, and clamped its feet to the deck by means of improvised iron shoes. And that is where Justin sits, with a headset over his ears and frayed nylon ribbons like a child's walking harness round his belly, while he receives the wisdom of Captain McKenzie and Edsard and occasionally removes his headset to take questions from a white Zimbabwean girl called Jamie who has made herself comfortable amid a tethered mountain of brown packing cases. Justin has tried to offer her his chair but McKenzie has stopped him with a firm, "You're here." At the tail end of the fuselage, six Sudanese women in robes crouch in varying attitudes of stoicism or stark terror. One of them is vomiting into a plastic bucket kept handy for the purpose. Quilted panels of shiny gray line the plane's roof, red launch lines dangle from a cable beneath them, their metal-lined tips dancing to the thunder of the engines. The fuselage grunts and heaves like an old iron horse dragged back for one more war. There is no sign of air-conditioning or parachute. A blistered red cross on a wall panel indicates medical supplies. Below it runs a line of jerry cans marked "Kerosene" and tied together with twine. This is the journey Tessa and Arnold made and this is the man who flew them. This is their last journey before their last journey.

"So you're Ghita's friend," McKenzie had observed, when Sudan Sarah brought Justin to his tukul back in Loki and left them alone together.

"Yes."

"Sarah tells me you had a travel document issued to you by the South Sudanese office in Nairobi, but you've mislaid it. That right?"

"Yes."

"Mind if I take a look at your passport?"

"Not at all." Justin hands him his Atkinson passport.

"What's your line of country, Mr. Atkinson?"

"Journalist. The London Telegraph. I'm writing a piece on the U.N.'s Operation Lifeline Sudan."

"That's a real pity just when OLS needs all the publicity it can get. Seems silly to let a little piece of paper stand in the way. Know where you lost it?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"We're ferrying mostly cases of soya oil today. Plus a few care packages for the boys and girls in the field. Pretty much the normal milk round, if you're interested."

"I am."

"Do you object to sitting on the floor of a jeep under a pile of blankets for an hour or two?"

"Not in the least."

"Then I think we're in business, Mr. Atkinson."

And thereafter McKenzie has clung doggedly to this fiction. On the plane, as he might for any journalist, he describes the workings of what he proudly calls the most expensive anti-starvation operation ever mounted in the history of mankind. His information comes in metallic bursts that do not always rise above the din of the engines.

"In South Sudan we have calorie rich, calorie middle, calorie poor and plain destitute, Mr. Atkinson. Loki's job is to measure the hunger gaps. Every metric ton we drop costs the U.N. thirteen hundred U.S. dollars. In civil wars, the wealthy die first. That's because, if someone steals their cattle they can't adjust. The poor stay pretty much the way they were. For a group to survive, the land around it has to be safe to plant. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of safe land around. Am I going too fast for you?"

"You're doing admirably, thank you."

"So Loki has to assess the crops and measure where the hunger gaps will appear. Right now, we're on the verge of a new gap. But you've got to get the timing right. Drop food when they're due to harvest, you mess with their economy. Drop it too late, they're already dying. Air's the only answer, by the way. Transport the food by road, it gets hijacked, often by the driver."

"Right. I see. Yes."

"Don't you want to take notes?"

If you're a journalist, behave like one, he is saying. Justin opens his notebook as Edsard takes over the lecture. His subject is security.

"We have four levels of security at the food stations, Mr. Atkinson. Level four means abort. Level three is red alert, level two fair. We got no zero-risk areas in South Sudan. OK?"

"OK. Understood."

McKenzie comes back. "The monitor will tell you when you arrive at the station what level they've got today. If there's an emergency, do what he tells you. The station you're visiting is in territory technically controlled by General Garang, who gave you the visa you lost. But it's under regular attack from the north as well as rival tribes from the south. Don't think this is just a north-south thing. The tribal groupings change overnight and they'd as soon fight one another as fight Muslims. Still with me?"

"Absolutely."

"Country of Sudan is basically a fantasy of the colonial cartographer. In the south we've got Africa, green fields, oil and animist Christians. In the north we've got Arabia and sand and a bunch of Muslim extremists intent on introducing shariah law. Know what that is?"

"More or less," says Justin who in another life has written papers on the subject.

"Result is, we've got everything we need for pretty much perpetual famine. What the droughts don't achieve, civil wars do and vice versa. But Khartoum's still the legal government. Ultimately, whatever deals the U.N. cuts in the south, it's still got to pay its dues to Khartoum. So what we've got here, Mr. Atkinson, we've got a unique triangular pact between the U.N., the boys in Khartoum and the rebels they're beating the living daylights out of. Follow me?"

"You going up to Camp Seven!" Jamie the white Zimbabwean girl bellows in his ear, crouching becomingly beside him in her brown denims and bush hat and cupping her hands to her mouth.

Justin nods.

"Seven's the hot one right now! Girlfriend of mine got hit by a level four up there just a couple of weeks ago! Had to trek eleven hours through marshland, then wait another six hours without her pants for the pickup plane!"

"What happened to her pants?" Justin yells back at her.

"You have to take them off! Boys and girls! It's the chafing! Wet hot steaming trousers! It's unbearable!" She rests for a while then returns her hands to his ear. "When you hear cattle moving out of a village — run. When the women follow them — run faster. We had a guy once ran fourteen hours on no water. Lost eight pounds. Carabino was after him."

"Carabino?"

"Carabino was a good guy till he joined the northerners. Now he's apologized and come back to us. Everybody's very pleased. Nobody asks him where he's been. This your first time?"

Another nod.

"Listen. Statistically, actuarially, you should be pretty safe. Don't worry. And Brandt's a real character."

"Who's Brandt?"

"The food monitor at Camp Seven. A great guy. Everybody loves him. Crazy as a bedbug. Big God man."

"Where does he come from?"

She shrugs. "Calls himself a washed-up mongrel like the rest of us. Nobody has a past up here. It's practically a rule."

"How long's he been there?" Justin yells, and has to repeat himself.

"Six months, I guess! Six months in the field nonstop is a lifetime, believe me! Won't come down to Loki even for a couple of days R and R!" she ends regretfully, and flops back exhausted by her yelling.

Justin unbuckles himself and goes to the window. This is the journey you made. This is the spiel they gave you. This is what you saw. Below him lies emerald Nile swamp, misted by heat, pierced with Jigsaw-shaped black holes of water. On higher ground cellular cattle pens are packed tight with animals.

"Tribesmen never tell you how many cattle they've got!" Jamie is standing at his shoulder, yelling in his ear. "The food monitors' job is to find out! Goats and sheep get the center of the pen, cows outside, calves next to them! Dogs go in with the cows! At night they burn the cow dung in their little houses in the perimeter! Wards off the predators, keeps the cows warm and gives them God-awful coughs! Sometimes they put the women and kids in there as well! Girls get good food in Sudan! If they're well fed, they fetch a better marriage price!" She pats her stomach, grinning. "A man can have as many wives as he can afford. There's this incredible dance they do — I mean honestly," she exclaims, and puts her hand over her mouth as she bursts out laughing.

"Are you a food monitor?"

"Assistant."

"How did you get the job?"

"Went to the right nightclub in Nairobi! Want to hear a riddle?"

"Of course."

"We drop grain here, right?"

"Right."

"Because of the north-south war, right?"

"Go on."

"Big part of the grain we drop is grown in North Sudan. That's whatever the U.S. grain farmers don't dump on us from surplus. Work it out. The aid agencies' money buys Khartoum's grain. Khartoum uses the money to buy arms for the war against the south. The planes that bring the grain to Loki use the same airport that Khartoum's bombers use to bomb the South Sudanese villages."

"So what's the riddle?"

"Why is the U.N. financing the bombing of South Sudan and feeding the victims at the same time?"

"Pass."

"You going back to Loki after this?"

Justin shakes his head.

"Pity," she says, and winks.

Jamie returns to her seat among the soya oil boxes. Justin stays at the window, watching the gold sunspot of the plane's reflection flitting over the twinkling marshes. There is no horizon. After a distance, the ground colors merge into mist, tinting the window with deeper and deeper tones of mauve. We could fly for all our lives, he tells her, and we'd never reach the earth's hard edge. With no warning the Buffalo begins its slow descent. The swamp turns brown, hard ground rises above the water level. Single trees appear like green cauliflowers as the plane's sunspot whips across them. Edsard has taken the controls. Captain McKenzie is studying a brochure of camping equipment. He turns and gives Justin a thumbs-up. Justin returns to his seat, buckles up and glances at his watch. They have been flying three hours. Edsard banks the plane steeply. Boxes of toilet paper, fly spray and chocolate shoot down the steel deck and thump against the raised dais of the cockpit close to Justin's feet. A cluster of rush-roofed huts appears at the end of the wingtip. Justin's headset is full of atmospherics like classical music being played at the wrong speed. Out of the cacophony he selects a gruff Germanic voice giving details of the state of the ground. He makes out the words "firm and easy." The plane starts to vibrate wildly. Rising in his harness Justin looks through the cockpit window at a strip of red earth running across a green field. Lines of white sacks serve as markers. More sacks are strewn over one corner of the field. The plane straightens and the sun hits the back of Justin's neck like a douche of scalding water. He sits down sharply. The Germanic voice becomes loud and clear.

"Come on down here, Edsard, man! We made a fine goat stew for lunch today! You got that layabout McKenzie up there?"

Edsard is not so easily wooed. "What are those bags doing out in the corner there, Brandt? Has someone made a drop just recently? Are we sharing space with another plane up here?"

"That's just empty bags, Edsard. You ignore those bags and come on down here, you hear me? You got that hotshot journalist with you?"

McKenzie this time, laconically. "We got him, Brandt."

"Who else you got?"

"Me!" yells Jamie cheerfully above the roar.

"One journalist, one nymphomaniac, six returning delegates," McKenzie intones as calmly as before.

"What's he like, man? The hotshot?"

"You tell me," says McKenzie.

Rich laughter in the cockpit, shared by the faceless foreign voice from the ground.

"Why's he nervous?" Justin asks.

"They're all nervous down there. It's the end of the line. When we touch down, Mr. Atkinson, you stay with me, please. Protocol requires I introduce you to the Commissioner ahead of everybody else."

The airstrip is an elongated clay tennis court, part overgrown. Dogs and villagers are emerging from a clump of forest and heading toward it. The huts are rush-roofed and conical. Edsard makes a low pass while McKenzie scans the bush to either side.

"No bad guys?" Edsard asks.

"No bad guys," McKenzie confirms.

The Buffalo banks, levels out and rushes forward. The airstrip hits it like a rocket. Clouds of flaming red dust envelop the windows. The fuselage sags left, then farther left, the cargo howls in its moorings. The engines scream, the plane shudders, scrapes something, moans and bucks. The engines die. The dust subsides. They have arrived. Justin is staring through the falling dust at an approaching delegation of African dignitaries, children, and a couple of white women in grubby jeans, dreadlocks and bracelets. At their center, clad in a brown homburg hat, ancient khaki shorts and very worn suede shoes, strides the beaming, bulbous, gingery and undeniably majestic figure of Markus Lorbeer without his stethoscope.

* * *

The Sudanese women clamber from the plane and rejoin a chanting cluster of their people. Jamie the Zimbabwean is hugging her companions to whoops of mutual pleasure and amazement, and hugging Lorbeer also, stroking his face and pulling off his homburg and smoothing his red hair for him while Lorbeer beams and pats her bottom and chortles like a schoolboy on his birthday. Dinka porters swarm into the rear of the fuselage and unload to Edsard's instructions. But Justin must remain in his seat until Captain McKenzie beckons him down the steps and leads him away from the festivities, across the airstrip, up a small mound to where a cluster of Dinka elders in black trousers and white shirts sit in a half circle of kitchenchairs under a shade tree. At their center sits Arthur the Commissioner, a shriveled, gray-haired man with a hewn face and intense, sagacious eyes. He wears a red baseball cap with Paris embroidered on it in gold.

"So you are a man of the pen, Mr. Atkinson," says Arthur, in faultless archaic English, when McKenzie has made the introductions.

"That's correct, sir."

"What journal or publication, if I may make so bold, is fortunate enough to retain your services?"

"The Telegraph of London."

"Sunday Telegraph?"

"Mostly the daily."

"Both are excellent newspapers," Arthur declares.

"Arthur was a sergeant in the Sudanese Defense Force during the British mandate," McKenzie explains.

"Tell me, sir. Would I be correct in saying you are here to nourish your mind?"

"And the minds of my readers, too, I hope," says Justin, with diplomatic unction, as out of the corner of his eye he sees Lorbeer and his delegation advancing across the runway.

"Then, sir, I pray that you may also nourish the minds of my people by sending us English books. The United Nations provides for our bodies but too seldom for our minds. Our preferred authors are the English master storytellers of the nineteenth century. Perhaps your newspaper would consider subsidizing such a venture."

"I'll certainly propose it to them," says Justin. Over his right shoulder, Lorbeer and his group are approaching the mound.

"You are most welcome, sir. For how long shall we have the pleasure of your distinguished company?"

McKenzie answers on Justin's behalf. Below them, Lorbeer and his group have come to a halt at the foot of the mound and are waiting for McKenzie and Justin to descend.

"Until this time tomorrow, Arthur," says McKenzie.

"But no longer, please," says Arthur, with a sideways glance at his courtiers. "Do not forget us when you leave here, Mr. Atkinson. We shall be waiting for your books."

"Hot day," McKenzie observes as they descend the mound. "Must be around forty-two and rising. Still, that's the Garden of Eden for you. Same time tomorrow, OK? Hi, Brandt. Here's your hotshot."

* * *

Justin has not reckoned with such overwhelming good nature. The gingery eyes that in the Uhuru Hospital refused to see him radiate spontaneous delight. The baby face, scalded by the daily sun, is one broad, infectious grin. The guttural voice that sent its nervous mutterings into the rafters of Tessa's ward is vibrant and commanding. The two men are shaking hands while Lorbeer speaks, Justin's one hand to Lorbeer's two. His grasp is friendly and confiding.

"Did they brief you down there in Loki, Mr. Atkinson, or did they leave the hard work to me?"

"I'm afraid I didn't have much time for briefings," Justin replies, smiling in return.

"Why are journalists always in such a hurry, Mr. Atkinson?" Lorbeer complains cheerfully, releasing Justin's hand only to clap him on the shoulder as he guides him back toward the airstrip. "Does the truth change so fast these days? My father always taught me: if something is true, it is eternal."

"I wish he'd tell my editor that," says Justin.

"But maybe your editor does not believe in eternity," Lorbeer warns, swinging round on Justin and raising a finger in his face.

"Maybe he doesn't," Justin concedes.

"Do you?" The clown's eyebrows are hooped in priestly inquisition.

Justin's brain is for a moment numb. What am I pretending to be? This is Markus Lorbeer, your betrayer.

"I think I'll live awhile before I answer that one," he replies awkwardly, at which Lorbeer lets out a roar of honest laughter.

"But not too long, man! Otherwise eternity come and get you! You ever see a food drop before?" A sudden lowering of the voice as he grabs Justin's arm.

"I'm afraid not."

"Then I show you one, man. And then you will believe in eternity, I promise. We get four drops a day here and it's God's miracle every time."

"You're very kind."

Lorbeer is about to deliver a set piece. The diplomat in Justin, the fellow sophist, hears it coming.

"We try to be efficient here, Mr. Atkinson. We try to get food into the right mouths. Maybe we oversupply. When customers are starving, I never saw that as a crime. Maybe they lie to us a little, how many they got in their villages, how many are dying. Maybe we make a few millionaires in the black market in Aweil. Too bad, I say. OK?"

"OK."

Jamie has appeared at Lorbeer's shoulder, accompanied by a group of African women bearing clipboards.

"Maybe the food-stall keepers don't love us too much for screwing up their trade. Maybe the poor spearmen and witch doctors in the bush say we do them out of business with our Western medicines. Maybe with our food drops we create a dependency. OK?"

"OK."

A gigantic smile dismisses all these imperfections. "Listen, Mr. Atkinson. Tell this to your readers. Tell it to the U.N. fat-arses in Geneva and Nairobi. Every time my food station gets one spoonful of our porridge into the mouth of one starving kid, I've done my job. I sleep in God's bosom that night. I earned my reason to be born. You tell them that?"

"I'll try."

"You got a first name?"

"Peter."

"Brandt."

They shake hands again, for longer than before.

"Ask anything you want, OK, Peter? I got no secrets from God. You got something special you want to ask me?"

"Not yet. Maybe later, when I've had a chance to get the hang of things."

"That's good. You take your time. What's true is eternal, OK?"

"OK."

* * *

It is prayer time.

It is Holy Communion time.

It is miracle time.

It is time to share the Host with all mankind.

Or so Lorbeer is pronouncing, and so Justin affects to write in his notebook, in a vain effort to escape the oppressive good spirits of his guide. It is time to watch "the mystery of man's humanity correcting the effects of man's evil," which is another of Lorbeer's disconcerting sound bites, delivered while his gingery eyes squint devoutly into the burning heaven, and the great smile beckons down God's benison, and Justin feels the shoulder of his wife's betrayer nudge affectionately against his own. A line of spectators is drawn up. Jamie the Zimbabwean and Arthur the Commissioner and his courtiers are the closest. Dogs, groups of tribesmen in red robes and a subdued crowd of naked children arrange themselves around the airstrip's edge.

"Four hundred and sixteen families we feed today, Peter. For a family you got to multiply by six. The Commissioner over there, I give him five percent of everything we drop. That's off the record. You're a decent guy so I tell you. Listen to the Commissioner, you'd think the population of Sudan was a hundred million. Another problem we got, that's rumor. Takes one guy to say he saw a horseman with a gun and ten thousand people run like hell, leave their crops and villages."

He stops dead. At his side, Jamie is pointing one arm to heaven while her spare hand discovers Lorbeer's and gives it a covert squeeze. The Commissioner and his retinue have also heard it, and their response is to raise their heads, half close their eyes and stretch their lips in tense and sunny smiles. Justin catches the far rumble of an engine and makes out a black spot lost in a burnished sky. Slowly the spot becomes another Buffalo like the one that flew him here, white and brave and solitary as God's own cavalry, clearing the treetops by a hand's breadth, flickering and bobbing as it jockeys for line and height. Then vanishes, never to return. But Lorbeer's congregation does not lose faith. Heads remain lifted, willing it back. And here it comes again, low and straight and purposeful. A lump rises in Justin's throat and tears start to his eyes as the first white shower of food bags, like a trail of soap flakes, issues from the plane's tail. At first they drift playfully, then gather speed and spatter onto the drop zone in a wet tattoo of machine-gun fire. The plane circles to repeat the maneuver.

"You see that, man?" Lorbeer is whispering. There are tears in his eyes also. Does he weep four times a day? Or only when he has an audience?

"I saw it," Justin confirms. As you saw it and like me, no doubt, became an instant member of his church.

"Listen, man. We need more airstrips. You put that in your article. More airstrips and closer to the villages. The walk's too long for them, too dangerous. They get raped, they get their throats cut. Their kids get stolen while they're away. And when they get here, they find they've screwed up. It's not the day for their village. So they go home again, and they're confused. A lot of them, they die of the confusion. Their kids too. You gonna write that?"

"I'll try."

"Loki says more airstrips means more monitoring. I say, OK, we have more monitoring. Loki says, where's the money? I say, spend it first, then find it. What the hell?"

A different silence grips the airstrip. It is the silence of apprehension. Are marauders lurking in the woods, waiting to steal God's gift and run? Lorbeer's great hand is again clutching Justin's upper arm.

"We got no guns here, man," he is explaining, in answer to the unspoken question in Justin's mind. "In the villages they've got Armalites and Kalashnikovs. Arthur the Commissioner over there, he buys them with his five percent and gives them to his people. But here in the food station, all we got is a radio and prayer."

The moment of crisis is judged to have passed. The first porters advance shyly onto the strip to stack the bags. Clipboards in hand, Jamie and the other assistants take up their positions among them, one to each heap. Some bags have burst. Women with brushes zealously sweep up the loose grain. Lorbeer clutches Justin's arm while he acquaints him with "the culture of the food bag." After God invented the food drop, he says with a rich laugh, he invented the food bag. Broken or whole, these white synthetic fiber bags stamped with the initials of the World Food Program are as much a staple commodity of South Sudan as the food they bring.

"See that wind sock? — see that fellow's moccasins? — see his head scarf? — I tell you, man, if ever I get married, I'm gonna dress my bride in food bags!"

From his other side Jamie lets out a hoot of laughter, which is quickly shared by those next along from her. The laughter is still running high as three columns of women emerge from different points along the treeline on the other side of the airstrip. They are Dinka tall — six feet is not exceptional. They have the stately African stride that is the impossible dream of every fashionable catwalk. Most are bare-breasted, others are in copper cotton dresses drawn strictly across the bosom. Their impassive gaze is fixed on the stacks of bags ahead of them. Their talk is soft and private to themselves. Each column knows its destination. Each assistant knows her customers. Justin steals a glance at Lorbeer as one by one each woman gives her name, grasps a bag by the throat, chucks it in the air and settles it delicately on her head. And he sees that Lorbeer's eyes are now filled with tragic disbelief, as if he were the author of the women's plight, not of their salvation.

"Is something wrong?" Justin asks.

"The women, they're the only hope of Africa, man," Lorbeer replies, still in a whisper while he continues to stare at them. Does he see Wanza among them? And all the other Wanzas? His small, pale eyes peer so guiltily from the black shadow of his homburg hat. "You write that down, man. We give food only to the women. The men, we don't trust those idiots across a road. No sir. They sell our porridge in the markets. They have their women make strong drink with it. They buy cigarettes, guns, girls. The men are bums. The women make the homes, the men make the wars. The whole of Africa, that's one big gender fight, man. Only the women do God's work around here. You write that down."

Justin obediently writes as he is asked. Needlessly, because he has heard the same message from Tessa every day. The women file silently back into the trees. Guilty dogs lick up the uncollected grains.

* * *

Jamie and the assistants have dispersed. Paddling himself on his tall staff, Lorbeer in his brown homburg has the authority of a spiritual teacher as he leads Justin across the airstrip, away from the hamlet of tukuls toward a blue line of forest. A dozen children vie with one another to stay on his heels. They tweak at the great man's hand. They take a finger each and swing on it, utter loud growls, kick their feet in the air like dancing elves.

"These kids think they're lions," Lorbeer confides to Justin indulgently as they pull and roar at him. "Last Sunday we are having Bible school and the lions gobble up Daniel so fast that God got no chance to save him. I tell the kids: no, no, you gotta let God save Daniel! That's in the Bible! But they say the lions are too damn hungry to wait. Let them eat up Daniel first, and afterward God can do his magic! They say otherwise, those lions die."

They are approaching a line of rectangular sheds at the far end of the airstrip. To each shed a rudimentary enclosure like a paddock. To each enclosure a miniature Hades of the desperately sick, the parched, crippled and dehydrated. Stooped women hunching stoically upon themselves in silent torment. Fly-laden babies too sick to cry. Old men comatose with vomiting and diarrhea. Battle-weary paramedics and doctors doing their best to cajole and gentle them into a crude assembly line. Nervous girls standing in a long queue, whispering and giggling to each other. Teenaged boys locked in frenzied combat while an elder whacks at them with a stick.

* * *

Followed at a distance by Arthur and his court, Lorbeer and Justin have reached a thatched dispensary like a country Cricket pavilion. Tenderly pushing his way through clamorous patients, Lorbeer leads Justin to a steel screen guarded by two stalwart African men in Medecins Sans Frontieres T-shirts. The screen is pulled open, Lorbeer darts inside, removes his homburg hat and hauls Justin after him. A white paramedic and three helpers are mixing and measuring behind a wooden counter. The atmosphere is of controlled but constant emergency. Seeing Lorbeer enter, the paramedic looks up quickly and grins.

"Hi, Brandt. Who's your handsome friend?" she asks, in a brisk Scots accent.

"Helen, meet Peter. He's a journalist and he's going to tell the world you're a lot of lazy layabouts."

"Hi, Peter."

"Hi."

"Helen's a nurse from Glasgow."

On the shelves, many-colored cartons and glass jars are packed roof high. Justin scans them, affecting a general curiosity, hunting for the familiar red and black box with its happy logo of three gold bees, not finding one. Lorbeer has placed himself before the display, assuming once more the role of lecturer. The paramedic and her assistants exchange raw smiles. Here we go again. Lorbeer is holding up an industrial jar of green pills.

"Peter," he intones gravely. "Now I show you the other lifeline of Africa."

Does he say this every day? To every visitor? Is this his daily act of contrition? Did he say it to Tessa too?

"Africa has eighty percent of the world's AIDS sufferers, Peter. That's a conservative estimate. Three-quarters of them receive no medication. For this we must thank the pharmaceutical companies and their servants, the U.S. State Department, who threaten with sanctions any country that dares produce its own cheap version of American-patented medicines. OK? Have you written that down?"

Justin gives Lorbeer a reassuring nod. "Keep going."

"The pills in this jar cost twenty U.S. dollars apiece in Nairobi, six in New York, eighteen in Manila. Any day now, India's going to manufacture the generic version and the same pill will cost sixty cents. Don't talk to me about the research and development costs. The pharmaceutical boys wrote them off ten years ago and a lot of their money comes from governments in the first place, so they're talking crap. What we got here is an amoral monopoly that costs human lives every day. OK?"

Lorbeer knows his exhibits so well he doesn't need to search for them. He replaces the jar in the shelves and grabs a large black and white box.

"These bastards have been peddling this same compound for thirty years already. What's it for? Malaria. Know why it's thirty years old, Peter? Maybe a few people in New York should get malaria one day, then you see if they don't find a cure pretty damn quick!" He selects another box. His hands, like his voice, are trembling with honest indignation. "This generous and philanthropic pharma in New Jersey made a donation of its product to the poor starving nations of the world, OK? The pharmas, they need to be loved. If they're not loved, they get scared and miserable."

And dangerous, Justin thinks, but not aloud.

"Why did the pharma donate this drug? I'll tell you. Because they have produced a better one. The old one is superfluous to stock. So they give Africa the old one with six months of life left in it, and they get a few million dollars' tax break for their generosity. Plus they are saving themselves a few more millions of warehousing costs and the costs of destroying old drugs they can't sell. Plus everybody says, look at them, what nice guys they are. Even the shareholders are saying it." He turns the box over and scowls contemptuously at its base. "This consignment sat in a customs house in Nairobi for three months while the customs guys waited for somebody to bribe them. A couple of years back the same pharma sent Africa hair restorer, smoking cures and cures for obesity, and collected a multimillion-dollar tax break for their philanthropy. Those bastards got no feeling for anything but the fat god Profit, and that's the truth."

But the full heat of his righteous anger is reserved for his own masters — those lazy bums in the aid community in Geneva who roll over for the big pharmas every time.

"Those guys who call themselves humanitarians!" he protests, amid more grins from the assistants, as he unconsciously evokes Tessa's hated H-word. "With their safe jobs and tax-free salaries, their pensions, nice cars, free international schools for their kids! Traveling all the time so they never get to spend their money! I seen them, man! In the fine Swiss restaurants, eating big meals with the pretty-boy lobbyists from the pharmas. Why should they stick their necks out for humanity? Geneva's got a spare few billion dollars to spend? Great! Spend it on the big pharmas and keep America happy!"

In the lull that follows this outburst, Justin ventures a question.

"In what capacity did you see them exactly, Brandt?"

Heads lift. All but Justin's. Nobody before, apparently, has thought to challenge the prophet in his wilderness. Lorbeer's gingery eyes widen. A hurt frown creases his reddened forehead.

"I seen them, man, I tell you. With my eyes."

"I don't doubt you've seen them, Brandt. But my readers may. They'll be asking themselves, "Who was Brandt when he saw them?"' were you in the U.N.? were you a diner in the restaurant?" A small laugh to signal the unlikely circumstance. "Or were you working for the Forces of Darkness?"

Does Lorbeer sense the presence of an enemy? Do the Forces of Darkness sound threateningly familiar to him? Is the blur that was Justin in the hospital less of a blur? Lorbeer's face has become pitiful. The child light drains out of it, leaving a hurt old man without his hat. Don't do this to me, his expression is saying. You're my pal. But the conscientious journalist is too busy taking notes to be of assistance.

"You want to turn to God, you gotta be a sinner first," Lorbeer says huskily. "Everybody in this place is a convert to God's pity, man, believe me."

But the hurt has not left Lorbeer's face. Nor has the unease. It has settled over him like an intimation of bad news he is trying not to hear. On the walk back across the airstrip he ostentatiously prefers the company of Arthur the Commissioner. The two men walk Dinka-style, hand in hand, big Lorbeer in his homburg and Arthur a spindly scarecrow in a Paris hat.

* * *

A wooden stockade with a log boom for a gateway defines the domain of Brandt the food monitor and his assistants. The children fall away. Arthur and Lorbeer alone escort the distinguished visitor on a mandatory tour of the camp's facilities. The improvised shower cubicle has an overhead bucket with a string attached to tilt it. A rainwater tank is supplemented by a stone-age pump powered by a stone-age generator. All are the invention of the great Brandt.

"One day, I apply for the patent on this one!" Lorbeer vows, with a too-heavy wink that Arthur dutifully returns.

A solar panel lies on the ground at the center of a chicken run. The chickens use it as a trampoline.

"Lights the whole compound, just with the day's heat!" Lorbeer boasts. But the zest has gone out of his monologue.

The latrines are at the edge of the stockade, one for men, one for women. Lorbeer beats on the men's door, then flings it open to reveal a foul-smelling hole in the ground.

"The flies up here, they develop resistance for every disinfectant we throw at them!" he complains.

"Multi-resistant flies?" Justin suggests, smiling, and Lorbeer casts him a wild glance before he too manages a pained smile.

They cross the compound, pausing on their way to peer into a freshly dug grave twelve feet by four. A family of green and yellow snakes lies coiled in the red mud at its base.

"That's our air-raid shelter, man. The snakes in this camp, they got bites worse than the bombs," Lorbeer protests, continuing his lament against the cruelties of nature. Receiving no reaction from Justin, he turns to share the joke with Arthur. But Arthur has gone back to his own kind. Like a man desperate for friendship, Lorbeer flings an arm round Justin's shoulder and keeps it there while he marches him at light-infantry speed toward the central tukul.

"Now you gonna try our goat stew," he announces determinedly. "That old cook, he makes stew better than the restaurants in Geneva! Listen, you're a good fellow, OK, Peter? You're my friend!"

Who did you see down there in the grave among the snakes? he is asking Lorbeer. Was it Wanza again? Or did Tessa's cold hand reach out and touch you?

* * *

The floor space inside the tukul is no more than sixteen feet across. A family table has been banged together from wooden pallets. For seats there are unopened cases of beer and cooking oil. A rackety electric fan spins uselessly from the rush ceiling, the air stinks of soya and mosquito spray. Only Lorbeer the head of the family has a chair, which has been wrested from its place in front of the radio that sits in stacked units under a bookmaker's umbrella next to the gas stove. He perches in it very upright in his homburg hat, with Justin on one side of him and on the other Jamie, who seems to occupy this place by right. To Justin's other side is a ponytailed young male doctor from Florence; next to him sits Scottish Helen from the dispensary, and across from Helen a Nigerian nurse named Salvation.

Other members of Lorbeer's extended family have no time to linger. They help themselves to stew and eat it standing, or sit only long enough to gulp it down and leave again. Lorbeer spoons his stew voraciously, eyes flicking round the table as he eats and talks and talks. And though occasionally he targets a particular member of his audience, nobody doubts that the principal beneficiary of his wisdom is the journalist from London. Lorbeer's first topic of conversation is war. Not the tribal skirmishes raging all around them, but "this damn big war" that is raging in the Bentiu oil fields of the north and spreading daily southwards.

"Those bastards in Khartoum, they got tanks and gunships up there, Peter. They're tearing the poor Africans to pieces. You go up there, see for yourself, man. If the bombardments don't do the job, they got ground troops to go in and do it for them, no problem. Those troops rape and slaughter to their hearts' content. And who's helping them? Who's clapping from the touchlines? The multinational oil companies!"

His indignant voice is holding the floor. Conversations round him must compete or die and most are dying.

"The multis love Khartoum, man! "Boys," they say, "we respect your fine fundamentalist principles. A few public floggings, a few hands cut off, we admire that. We want to help you any which way we can. We want you to use our roads and our airstrips just as much as you like. Just don't you go letting those lazy African bums in the towns and villages stand in the way of the great god Profit! We want those African bums ethnically cleansed out of the way just as bad as you boys in Khartoum want it! So here's some nice oil revenues for you, boys. Go buy yourselves some more guns!" You hear that, Salvation? Peter, you writing this down?"

"Every word, thank you, Brandt," says Justin quietly to his notebook.

"The multis do the devil's work, I tell you, man! One day they will end up in hell where they belong, and they better believe it!" He cringes theatrically, his great hands shielding his face. He is acting the part of Multinational Man facing his Maker on the Day of Judgment. ""It wasn't me, Lord. I was only obeying orders. I was commanded by the great god Profit!" That Multinational Man, he's the one who gets you hooked on cigarettes, then sells you the cancer cure you can't afford to pay for!"

He's the one who sells us untried medicines too. He's the one who fast-streams clinical trials and uses the wretched of the earth as guinea pigs.

"You want coffee?"

"I'd love some. Thank you."

Lorbeer leaps to his feet, seizes Justin's soup mug and rinses it with hot water from a thermos as a prelude to filling it with coffee. Lorbeer's shirt is stuck to his back, revealing billows of trembling flesh. But he doesn't stop talking. He has developed a terror of silence.

"Did the boys down in Loki tell you about the train, Peter?" he yells, drying the mug with a piece of tissue plucked out of the rubbish bag beside him. "This damned old train that comes south at walking speed like three times a year?"

"I'm afraid not."

"It comes down the old railway that you British laid, OK? The train does. Like in the old movies. It's protected by wild horsemen from the north. This old train resupplies every Khartoum garrison on its route from north to south. OK?"

"OK."

Why is he sweating so? Why are his eyes so haunted and questing? What secret comparison is he making between the Arab train and his own sins?

"Man! That train! Right now it's stuck between Ariath and Aweil, two days' hike from here. We got to pray God to make sure the river stays flooded, then maybe the bastards don't come this way. They make Armageddon wherever they go, I tell you. They kill everyone. Nobody can stop them. They're too strong."

"Which bastards are we talking about here exactly, Brandt?" Justin asks, jotting again in his notebook. "I lost the plot there for a moment."

"The wild horsemen are the bastards, man! Do you think they get paid for protecting that train? Not a bean, man. Not a drachma. They do it for free, out of the goodness of their kind hearts! Their reward, that's the killing and the raping their way through the villages. It's the setting fire to them. It's kidnapping the young guys and girls to take back north when the train is empty! It's stealing every damn thing they don't burn."

"Ah. Got it."

But the train isn't enough for Lorbeer. Nothing is enough if it threatens to bring silence in its wake, and expose him to questions he dare not hear. His haunted eyes are already searching desperately for a sequel.

"They told you about the plane then? — the Russian-made plane, man, older than Noah's ark, the plane they keep down in Juba? Man, that's some story!"

"Not the train, not the plane, I'm afraid. As I said, they didn't have time to tell me anything."

And Justin waits once more, pen obediently poised, to be told about that old Russian-made plane they keep in Juba.

"Those crazy Muslims in Juba, they make dumb bombs like cannon balls. They take them up, then they roll them down the fuselage of that old plane and drop them on Christian villages, man! "Here you are, Christians! Here's a nice love letter from your Muslim brothers!" And these dumb bombs are very effective, you better believe me, Peter. Those boys have mastered the art of aiming them very straight. Oh yes! And those bombs are so volatile that the crew make damn sure they get rid of them before they land their old plane back in Juba!"

From beneath the bookmaker's umbrella the field radio is announcing the approach of another Buffalo. First comes the laconic voice of Loki, then the captain in the air, calling in for contact. Hunched to the set, Jamie reports good weather, firm ground and no security problems. The diners hastily depart but Lorbeer remains in his place. With a snap, Justin closes his notebook and under Lorbeer's gaze feeds it into his shirt pocket alongside his pens and reading spectacles.

"Well, Brandt. Lovely goat stew. I've a few special-interest questions, if that's all right by you. Is there somewhere we could sit for an hour without being interrupted?"

Like a man leading the way to his place of execution Lorbeer guides Justin across a patch of trodden grassland strewn with sleeping tents and washing lines. A bell-shaped tent is set apart from them. Hat in hand, Lorbeer holds back the flap for Justin and contrives a hideous grin of servility as he lets him go first. Justin stoops, their eyes meet and Justin sees in Lorbeer what he has seen already when they were in the tukul, but now with greater clarity: a man terrified by what he resolutely forbids himself to see.