The Marco Effect

26

Boy had been hiding in the dug-out tree trunk for more than sixty hours before Mammy’s boys found him.

They gave him a choice. It was simple. Either they chopped off his arms and split him open, or else he joined them and became one of Mammy’s boys.

Some choice. The corpses of his entire family lay bloated in the underbrush. Everything he knew had been razed to the ground.

Within four weeks Boy was a child soldier like the others. Primitive and callous, afraid of nothing apart from being stabbed in the back by one of their own.

Their own! Boys like the ones who had murdered his beloved family, cut the throat of his dog, and deprived him of all his humanity.

And while Hutus and Tutsis, Mobuto, Kabila, and sundry bloodsuckers from half the continent did their utmost to wipe out national boundaries and one another, Boy learned to sleep with a Kalashnikov in his arms and dream about all the blood he had unhesitatingly drained from his so-called enemies.

Had it not been for Mammy and her personal project, the day would undoubtedly have come when the knife would have been used against him as well.

She selected her elite with great care, the boys who formed a ring around her and protected her from the outside world. No one could turn a situation to their own advantage like Mammy, and once she had the advantage, so did her bodyguards. It was how she kept them on her side.

When what was supposed to resemble peace finally came to Congo in 1999, Mammy had more than thirty full-fledged killers in her service, and with that kind of raw material, peace was not exactly what she wished for most. What on earth could she use these wanton boys for if killing were no longer part of the agenda?

But Mammy was not easily discouraged. In the wake of Africa’s conflicts, interesting people always appeared who believed peace had not given them what they’d been expecting. People who’d once enjoyed considerable incomes they had now lost. It was in relations with people like these that she saw a future for herself and her boys.

So Mammy was the one to approach when someone had to be killed, and that was how Boy came to meet Brage-Schmidt.

No one had told Boy why Brage-Schmidt wanted to be rid of five French businessmen from Bois de Boqueteau, but he didn’t need to know. Without asking questions he tracked the Frenchmen to the border of Namibia, where he cut off their heads one by one as they slept.

Brage-Schmidt was satisfied and paid Mammy a bonus of a hundred thousand dollars, then asked if he could take on Boy as his permanent problem solver for a further hundred thousand. Mammy hesitated, for Boy was her favorite. But when the man promised to treat him as his own son, make sure he received dental treatment to replace the teeth he’d had knocked out in combat, and furthermore provide him with an education and make sure he learned new languages, plus all kinds of other benefits, she eventually acceded after yet another round of negotiations.

For that, Boy was forever grateful to the both of them, and since then he had not taken a single life.

At least, not personally.

–

Boy had torn Zola apart on the phone after the failed break-in at Eriksen’s home. Now he sat for a moment, considering the entire situation.

Mammy and two of her best boys were on their way. She would be phoning within minutes, provided their flight had landed on time in Copenhagen. Mammy always kept her appointments.

He’d only just looked at his watch when his mobile rang.

“Brief me, honey,” she said, her voice husky and deep.

“How much time can you and your boys spend here, have you decided?” he asked.

“Around fifty-eight hours. We need to be in Brussels by Saturday morning at the latest for another job.”

“OK. I know how good you and the boys are, so that ought to be time enough. I should warn you, though, that the kid we’re looking for is a cunning one. Finding him won’t be easy.”

“I’ve got the description and his photo here. What makes him so special?”

“If you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d been brought up in the bush. I hid in a hollow log as a last resort, but this one thinks ahead, otherwise his family would have tracked him down long ago. He is the rat in the sewer, Mammy. The bird on the roof.”

She laughed. “But you we found, Boy. Both his clan and a lot of Eastern Europeans are out searching for him, you say?”

“Yes, and they’ve spotted him on a couple of occasions.”

“OK. In half an hour we’ll be at the Square Hotel. Come in an hour and show us what you’ve got.”

–

The room was on the small side, but the view was good. Mammy was reclining on a patterned sofa, filling up most of its space. Her reserves were greater than ever before, she liked to say of herself with a certain kind of pride.

Boy nodded to the two jet-black Africans in basketball jerseys who were lounging on the bed watching the NBC news. He took them to be in their twenties, and yet their faces seemed in glimpses to be ancient and lined, their eyes filled with skepticism as to all the things normal people coveted. Boy knew what it was like. For them, happiness was a good, long night’s sleep and fucking their brains out. And, of course, the hunt itself.

“We went for a little walk outside this evening,” Mammy said. “You were right in what you wrote about the Danes. They don’t even see us. As long as we don’t walk together they won’t condescend to look at us. This is good, Boy.”

She patted him on the thigh. Long time no see.

“You’re looking good, Boy. Almost thirty years of age now. How many of your old comrades have got that far?” She leaned back and looked across at her two bloodhounds on the bed. “Hey, you two. Take a look at this one. You can be like him too if you make Mammy happy, OK?”

“OK, Mammy,” they replied in unison. And then slipped back into limbo again.

Boy smiled, handing her maps of the areas in Copenhagen where Marco had been seen, where they reckoned he’d previously been hiding out, and where they thought he could be now.

Mammy nodded. Her time-worn, shrewd eyes glided over the maps’ main thoroughfares, the side streets, the S-train stations, and all the small, open green areas. It was astonishing once more to see how quickly she could absorb unfamiliar topography.

When they had finished she assured him the boy was already as good as dead, and that it had always been a pleasure working for him and Brage-Schmidt.

Boy nodded. Thanks that came seldom were the best.

“Catch the boy and everyone’s happy,” he said, turning to the young men on the bed. “He’s a snake, but you can spear him, I know you can.”

They sat up on their elbows. Like all soldiers, they took their briefing seriously. Sometimes it was their only defense against ambush and sudden death. Here in Copenhagen it was imprisonment and unfamiliar reaction patterns they were up against.

So they listened intently.

“Stay close to Zola’s men and those working with him.”

He tossed two sheets of paper with photos of Zola’s people on the bed. The snakelike eyes of Mammy’s boys began processing them immediately. There was no doubt these boys had been carefully selected.

“Once Zola or some of the others have encircled the boy, be ready to take over. Don’t take it for granted that they will inform you, so stay close and keep your eyes open.”

They nodded.

A net too widely meshed never caught a bird.