black charcoal powder.
He’s been up all night tending to his two kilns. He has to heat the bundles of wood cut from the forest just enough to drive off the excess water – too much and it will turn to ash, too little and it produces unsaleable smoked wood. What he wants is that light, brittle residue that the women of Kivu use to fuel their cooking fires. The trade is worth thirty million dollars a year, wood in the deep bush is free and all he needs to do is to live in this isolated spot cutting trees and tending his kilns.
Charcoal burning is not a job for every man. The skills are jealously guarded and kept within a secret community; he learned the trade from his father along with many other secrets about how to communicate with the spirits of the trees and the animals that live in the forest and how to make charms for all of life’s requirements.
He picks up a spade and starts shovelling earth over the vents at the bottom of the heap to cut off the flow of air. The combustion inside the mound gradually dies off and the streamers of smoke emanating from it fade to wisps and then stop. He makes himself a cup of black sweet tea, finds a sunny spot and settles back to wait for one of the traders he supplies.
He dozes off but about midday a call from the bush on the slopes below him wakes him up and he hears the sound of a man breathing hard and the thud of his feet on the mud.
A bare-chested man emerges through the bush heaving his tshkudu uphill. The lean fibres of his chest muscles stand out as he pushes on the handlebars.
‘Ah, Antoine, good to see you,’ the charcoal burner says quietly and offers him a drink from his yellow plastic jerrycan of water.
Antoine smiles, takes grateful glugs, and then splashes his body and wipes off the sweat. He accepts a cup of tea and the burner asks, ‘So what’s going on in the world?’
‘Oh, did you hear about that riot up in Butembo?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, Socozaki was playing Nyuki System. Nyuki were losing two–nil and so their goalkeeper walks up the pitch and tries to cast a spell on the other goal. So all the Nyuki players go mad and have a brawl on the pitch and when a policeman comes on to stop them he is pelted with stones by the spectators.’
Antoine shakes his head. ‘So then the police fire tear gas and the crowd stampedes. Eleven people were crushed to death. What can you do?’
‘Eh,’ the burner agrees, ‘the goalkeeper should have been more crafty.’
‘Hmm. So how much for the bags?’ Antoine jerks his head towards the pile of grubby sacks.
The burner names his price and Antoine looks disappointed. Then he pauses and a sly look creeps onto his face. ‘Ah, but I have a present for you from the Kudu Noir.’
The charcoal burner sits up. ‘Show me.’
The trader gets up and pulls a bundle out of a plastic sack on his tshkudu; it’s about a foot long and carefully wrapped up. ‘Have a look, it’s the real thing.’
The burner opens it, looks inside and smiles slyly. ‘A girl?’
‘Yes.’
The burner nods with satisfaction. ‘That’s good, female spirits are more powerful. I’ll make the powder; the Kudus will be pleased with this. OK, so now we can trade.’ He also gets up, goes over to his shelter and pulls out a small packet of grey powder in a clear plastic bag.
The trader looks at it with bright eyes. ‘The real thing?’
‘Yes. It’s pure albino bone. Sprinkle it in a mine and the gold will come rushing to you.’
He rubs his jaw. ‘OK, what’s your price?’
Chapter Ten
‘You are joking, Devereux! You are joking! You’ve lost it, mate …Oh my God.’ Col rubs his forehead and draws his hand down the side of his face in disbelief. ‘Who d’ya think we are, the UN? We’re mercenaries, mate, not … whatever … nation builders or summat, you know the Red Cross, like.’
Alex looks back at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘Col, I’m not asking you to put on a nurse’s uniform.’
Col and Yamba are both in the drawing room at Akerley. Alex didn’t tell Col the plan beforehand: he knew this would be his response and is prepared to ride out the storm.
Col is five foot six and balding with his remaining hair shaved down to grey bristles. He has grim eyes, a small moustache stained with nicotine and tattoos of the Parachute Regiment on one forearm and Blackburn Rovers on the other.
Alex sits in the armchair and waits for the tide of scorn to abate; his expression is as calm and patient as Fang’s was the week before.
Col eventually sees this. ‘You’re not joking, are you? Oh Jesus.’ He rubs his face before trying again. ‘It’ll be just the same as when they went into Iraq and Afghanistan. You just don’t know what chain reaction you are going to set off. Better to leave well alone, let ’em stew in their own juice. If they want to fooking kill each other and run shitty countries then let ’em. People get the governments they deserve. All Africans are fooking mad, you know that!’
He looks at Yamba who keeps his face pointedly blank. This is a favourite topic of Col’s for riling him and he is not going to rise to the bait that easily.
Despite appearances, the three of them actually get on well together because they are all exiles from their social backgrounds, united by their sense of professionalism and dedication to each other. Alex’s troubled upbringing makes him loathe the rigid mental straitjacket of county society. Yamba was forced out of his homeland as a boy and has only been grudgingly let back in recently. Col should just be a Northern hard man but his quick mind was bored rigid by its staid culture and he sought escape in the army. He speaks good French (with a strong Lancashire accent) and travels widely in Africa to see his favourite bands. Despite his attempts to appear to the contrary, he is actually a book lover. He only learned to read when he joined the army aged seventeen, but since then he has devoured books. As a ferociously self-reliant man he likes the fact that he is never alone with one.
He points at Alex. ‘Mixing soldiers and civilians is bad news. You and I have both been in Northern Ireland and you remember what a bag a shite that was.’
Alex thinks back to his days as a junior officer on foot patrol with his men, slogging round council estates with bored youths taunting them and throwing bottles and bricks.
‘It takes very disciplined troops to do that work and I’m not sure we could get them in a mercenary unit. And you look at what happens when it goes wrong – Bloody Sunday, My Lai, Haditha where those marines raped that girl and shot her.’
Alex responds calmly. ‘We’re not going to be doing patrols in urban areas, it will be proper war fighting against the FDLR in the bush.’
‘Well, the UN is going to hate us; you know what they think about white mercenaries. They’ll get the ICC onto us or summat.’
‘We will be legitimate employees of the new state. Besides, we won’t be on show – the whole thing will be fronted by local politicians.’
Yamba sits and watches the exchange; he is wary
