accept the project he would just find another way – like his steel delivery in Port Sudan.
Alex wondered where did the business stop and the person start? The answer was nowhere. Fang was a money-making organism, unimpeded by morality or etiquette. He ate, slept and breathed money.
It wasn’t just the personality though. It’s the scale and audacity of the vision he presented that makes Alex feel old and out of date. He was talking about infrastructure projects to open up an entire continent. There was a tone of disdain in the way Fang talked about the Western view of Africa and how his was the new vision for the future.
And maybe he was right? Alex had done his best to trip him up but he hadn’t managed to even make him stumble; the businessman had it all covered.
But the idea was bonkers.
It was all very well being young and enthusiastic and having visions about new world orders, but Iraq and Afghanistan had shown very well how the law of unintended consequences came into play when you started naively messing around with other people’s countries.
Where was the exit strategy?
What the hell would the US and the UN say to it all?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Alex pauses in thought and then turns and makes his way through the oak-panelled library, the dogs following him. He goes into the medieval hall and then walks across its huge stone flags and into the large archway that leads up into the fortified tower. This is the original part of the house from the time when the area was the lawless Welsh Marches, prone to invasions and cattle rustling from Welsh bandits across the border.
The eighty-foot-high tower has thick stone walls and he walks up the spiral staircase, stepping in the groove worn into the stone by generations of his ancestors’ feet. He is feeling disconcerted and defensive and somehow the tower feels the right place to be.
He walks up to the top, opens the narrow wooden door and stands at the battlements. The dogs accompany him and sit smiling up at him uncertainly. The various roofs of the house are below him with their pointed gables and gargoyles, the gardens, parklands and outhouses all clearly visible.
But Alex stares out over them at the magnificent green hills beyond.
The captain glares at Sophie, his eyes wide and angry; white spittle flecks his upper lip. She stares at the black hole of his pistol muzzle. It’s 9mm across but looks much larger.
The soldier behind her pushes her in the back with his rifle and she stumbles forward onto her knees in front of him.
Sophie is terrified and starts babbling, ‘I’m sorry, terribly sorry, Captain. It’s all a mistake, a terrible mistake. Forgive me please!’
The door behind her opens and Nicolas slips into the room, speaking quietly and with a large fan of twenty-dollar bills in his outstretched hand. He has hurriedly fished them out of the emergency stock that he carries wrapped in a plastic bag in the petrol tank of the Land Cruiser.
‘Ah, Monsieur le Directeur, here is the payment for the permit à voyager, our sincere apologies for forgetting to buy one before we set out.’
He proffers them towards the captain, keeping his eyes and head down. The captain looks down at him. The intrusion has broken the violent tension in the room and the money is what he really wants. Somewhere in the back of his head he also knows that killing or injuring a white NGO worker would cause a fuss and could get him into trouble.
His ego has been assuaged by the grovelling of the woman on her knees in front of him; she looks pathetic. Nicolas is also in a suitably fawning posture and he takes the offer of a ladder to climb down. He grabs the money from his hand. ‘Get out of my office! Your paperwork will be issued in due course, when we are ready. Wait in your vehicle.’
Nicolas hustles Sophie out of the office and hurries her over to the Land Cruiser with his arm around her. Natalie is sitting on the backseat looking anxious.
‘What happened?’
Sophie gets into the backseat next to her, white as a sheet and shaking. The American goes to put her arm around her.
‘I’m fine!’ Sophie pushes her away, forcing herself to get a grip. ‘I’m fine! We just had some issues, that’s all, they’re sorting it out. We just have to wait a while.’
With that she shifts away from Natalie and stares out of the window. Natalie looks stunned and gazes out of the opposite window. Nicolas sits in the driver’s seat and waits patiently. The soldiers have their keys so they can’t go anywhere. Time is running out for the vaccines but there is nothing they can do. No one can even bring themselves to look at the building, they are too scared of it.
After ten minutes of strained silence Sophie says, ‘I’m just getting some air,’ slips out, walks away from the car and stands looking at the view, feeling the gentle breeze blow over her.
She stays like that for an age, in a numb trance of her own thoughts. Time ticks on and the sun suddenly drops out of the sky; they’re on the equator and there is only a short sunset. It gets chilly straightaway at six thousand feet and she goes back to the car to get her brightly coloured Kenyan shawl.
Eventually at seven o’clock the captain has judged that he has inconvenienced them enough and the sergeant walks back over to the car with their permit tucked back in its original place on the top of the folder. He hands the keys wordlessly back to Nicolas who accepts them with profuse gratitude.
They drive away from the shabby little station and some of the tension drains from them. Natalie mutters, ‘Thank the Lord,’ but otherwise they don’t talk – Nicolas because he is comfortable driving in silence, Natalie because she is afraid of Sophie and is now crying quietly on the backseat, and Sophie because she is shocked but also because she is furious.
She is furious at the soldiers for their pigheaded, money-grubbing wickedness and contempt for the people of their own country. The journey has been a complete waste, the vaccines are lukewarm and she will have to explain to the local field workers that she has wasted their time and effort and made them look stupid in front of the desperate people who are crying out for their help.
However, she is most furious with herself. She can hear a recording of her voice playing in her head pleading with the captain: ‘I’m sorry, terribly sorry, Captain. It’s all a mistake, a terrible mistake. Forgive me please!’
Pathetic! Utterly pathetic!
She rages at herself, staring into the night as the car headlights swing back and forth following the road down to the clinic at Tshabura. The indignity of it; Cecil-Blacks were not born to grovel. It goes against every fibre of her being. Her family would be ashamed of her if they knew. She is ashamed of herself.
Yet she did it. The memory of what happened in the grubby little office will stay locked up with her never to be revealed to anyone.
They finally arrive at the clinic at eight o’clock. The local workers run out anxiously holding up lanterns to greet them. Sophie immediately switches back into professional mode, addressing the circle. ‘I’m sorry we are late; we were stopped at a checkpoint. I’m sorry, the vaccines are …’ She shakes her head and looks round at the deflated faces in the lamplight.
She tries to be upbeat. ‘Look, we can try again next
