'They said there was a reason they couldn't release it.'
'Kurt Nielsen was in that car waiting to pick up a package for the attention of M. Kantari, Korhogo. He'd been secured to the head rest with a piece of wire and his guts torn out. Not nice on the upholstery.'
'What are you suggesting...?'
'You're not stupid, M. Kantari.'
'I haven't been out of Korhogo for two weeks.'
'Not personally.'
'How, pray?'
'Eugene Amos Gilbert?'
'Is that one man or three?'
'He's a Liberian hit man who likes to call himself Red.'
'A Liberian?' He thought about it. 'How do you know all this, dear boy?'
'I had Fat Paul's package. I saw the dead man. I saw what Red did to Fat Paul the following day and I had dealings with Red myself.'
'You think that I sent Red to kill Mr Nielsen and pick up the package?'
'And kill me.'
'Why did I report my Land Cruiser stolen?'
'Nielsen wasn't back by morning. Covered yourself.'
'Do you have the package?'
'Not on me.'
'Have you seen the film?'
'A film.'
'One thing. This Red fellow is a Liberian. Black, I presume?'
'Yes.'
'My agreement with Fat Paul was that the exchange should be between two whites. Why would I send Red Gilbert when I have Corporal Clegg who could have killed Nielsen, and, being white, not troubled your suspicious mind when you handed over the package?'
'He might start thinking with all those muscles instead of just doing,' I said. 'Why should Fat Paul send you a pornographic video?'
'I can't think,' he said, his face as dead as a poker player's with a huge hand.
I sipped the Laphroaig and its peaty bite gave me a stab of nostalgia and a longing not to be in front of this dyed queen and his ugly hangers-on.
'You're in the film business as well,' I said.
'As well?'
'As well as Abracadabra Video.'
'For my own amusement,' he said. 'I did a lot, professionally, when I lived in Beirut, before the troubles.'
'How do you make a living now?'
'I trade, like everybody else in Africa.'
'What in?'
'It's true, I've had to learn some new things.'
'Not an answer.'
'Because I don't have to. It's my business.'
'Pornography?'
'It amuses me.'
'I had you down as a little-boy merchant...'
'You're being distasteful now.'
'Four people have been killed, five if you include James Wilson. Abracadabra's offices have been firebombed and Fat Paul's house searched. If you didn't have Nielsen done then whoever did is serious. More serious than Clegg could ever be. They know about you. They know about me. They know about the film.'
'I thought you said it was pornography.'
'Not that one. There's another one in Abidjan.'
'Ah-ha.'
'That's the film Fat Paul gave me, saying he'd get back to me with the instructions. You should have seen what they did to him. Snipped off his fingers. Scooped out his genitals...'
'What do you propose to do with this film?'
'Sell it.'
'You've said something intelligent at last.'
'But to who? That I don't know.'
'You appear to have only one buyer. All you know about your other bidders is what they'll do to you if they catch up. I suggest you sell and get out before the value of your stock drops further.'
My second sip of the Laphroaig finished it. I stood and put the empty glass on the table.
'If you knew something was going on, as Fat Paul did, then why didn't you use Clegg? He looks as if he could have chewed up Red and flossed him out.'
Kantari opened his hands, revealing three feet of nothingness.
'Nielsen was expendable?' I asked. Kantari shrugged. 'Why did Nielsen do it for you?'
'The same reason anybody does anything for somebody else.'
'How did they know where he was going to be? How did they know about the drop?' Silence. 'They followed him from here?' I asked. 'They must be watching you.'
'And you.'
'Possibly.'
'Divest yourself of the problem, Mr Medway.'
'What about James Wilson?'
'Who's he?'
'Come on, M. Kantari, play the game.'
'You're holding cards. I'm holding cards.'
'James Wilson was an aide to the late Liberian president. He was found strangled and torn open in the lagoon in Treichville last week. I think he was killed because he had a tape or something that fits inside a tape and Fat Paul knew you'd be in the market for it. When they caught up with James Wilson he'd already sold out, but they got it out of him about Fat Paul. They torched his office, searched his house, but they couldn't find him. So what do they do? The trail's gone cold. Somebody, somewhere, tells them about the drop and where one half of it is coming from. How did they know to follow Kurt Nielsen from here? Why did you and Fat Paul set up a dummy run, and why don't they take you out of the game?'
'I've never had what they want, Mr Medway. You have. It strikes me that you should be a very worried man. The dummy run occurred precisely because I've developed the level of concern that you haven't and was proved correct. How they knew about the dummy run, or how they knew to follow Nielsen from here is a mystery which I doubt you will survive long enough to solve.'
'You seem pretty broken up about Nielsen. Did you tell him he was headed for a meat grinder?'
'If you send someone to make an exchange and offer them five hundred thousand CFA to do it they know what they're getting themselves into.'
'Did you pay upfront?'
'Half.'
'Why Nielsen?'
'The right man at the right time.'
'He needed the cash?'
'Amongst other things.'
'What about his wife?'
'I'm not sure that husband and wife would have clearly defined the status of their relationship at the time. Kurt had a liking for African girls.'
'Perhaps we should talk about money.'
'Yes. It's a pity you didn't bring the goods with you. As time goes on, situations change, circumstances materialize ... prices go down.'
'And up. What's the offer?'
'Let me see. Five hundred thousand was the delivery charge, I believe.'
'That was the messenger's fee, and anyway, it was a million.'
'Yes, well, you'd never have seen a million from Fat Paul. You met Kwabena? He always handled the rendering of accounts and as you probably realized, his gift was not that of an accountant.'
'Kwabena's dead and if you're threatening me with Clegg, don't. And remember, I'm not the messenger any more, I'm the principal.'
'A principal who doesn't know what he's selling.'
'Not yet.'
'When you're ready, come and see me.'
'I will. Thanks for the whisky. It was a delight.'
Chapter 17
Trzinski stood out in the Le Mont Korhogo Hotel bar as the only possible American in the joint. His body was as deep as it was wide and the arms coming out of his cream short-sleeve shirt had, at the very least, wrestled bullocks to the ground. His head was hard enough to be loaded into a howitzer and was covered in a brown fuzz of crew-cut hair which he liked stroking. His nose had taken a thump or two, and had been stupid enough to come back for more, and he had light blue-grey eyes made for looking out over large expanses of sheet ice or tundra. He folded the Ivoire Soir he'd been reading and gave me a professional smile with some teeth he hadn't been born with.
'Al Trzinski,' he said, shaking my hand. 'Pleased to meet you.'
I was slow with the handshake and paid for it, so that I was flexing my fingers for the rest of the meeting. I sat and fascinated myself with the width of his forehead and the way his eyebrows bossed out on ridges.
'You
're English?' he asked. 'Where you from?'
'London. You?'
'Omaha, Nebraska. That's beef country, if you didn't know it, Bruce. Beef and the birthplace of Marlon Brando. I think that covers it.'
At that moment I didn't see Al Trzinski as a business consultant. I saw him clearly, wearing a white coat in a cold store full of skinned carcasses hanging off hooks—the man as big as a beef cow himself.
We small-talked about Africa until the waiter came to the table and Trzinski unnerved me by ordering cold milk. I had a beer.
'Foley says you want to talk to me about diamonds,' he said.
'I'd like to talk about your particular interest in diamonds in the Ivory Coast and how you came to know about Mr Rademakers.'
'Why's that?' he asked in such a sweet-natured way I was tempted to kick him to the floor. Instead I gave him an undramatic account of Ron Collins's kidnap. He was very interested. He leaned forward, occupying most of the table and a great deal of light.
'That's a terrible thing, Bruce. It surely is,' he said. 'Such lawlessness. It'll have to be in my report, you understand.'
'Who's that report going to?' I asked, and he ignored it.
'One thing I'm not clear about,' he said, rubbing his head, trying to buff some clarity in there, 'is where you fit in. What is your role, exactly? You and Mr Collins were in business together?'
'No, I'm not in the diamond business. I'm in sheanut.'
'And what, may I ask, is that?'
'It's a nut that grows wild at this latitude. The locals pick it and dry it, we ship it and factories crush it and put it in chocolate.'
'That's very interesting,' he said, 'but I'm still confused.'
I clarified it for him and he asked who I was working for. I asked him who he was sending his report to. We smiled at each other for some time.
'What about Rademakers?' I asked.
'The Chamber of Commerce in Antwerp gave me his name, Bruce.'
'You went to see him when? Last Thursday the twenty-fourth?'
'That's right, Bruce. I can understand your concern. You're doing the right thing. Check me and Foley out. You gotta do it.' He sat back. 'Lemme see. Mr Collins was kidnapped Wednesday. I was here. Foley was at the Abidjan Hilton. But that doesn't prove a thing, does it?'
He sipped some milk, smiled and left me looking for another question, which I didn't have.
'You read this?' he asked, pointing at the Ivoire Soir.
'On the plane.'
He leafed through the paper and stopped at a piece about the ceasefire Samson Talbot had just rejected because no Libyan troops were allowed on the peace-keeping force.
'You think Mr Collins was taken by the rebels. Take a look at that,' he said. 'Do those guys think we're dumb or what? Nobody's gonna let a buncha towelheads in there. The guns're pouring out of Trip-O-lee faster than he can use 'em and he thinks the international community are gonna put them on the peace-keeping force? Give us a break.'
'What's your point?'
'If I was Samson Talbot I wouldn't wanna ceasefire, that's for sure, so I'd come up with cockamamie suggestions like Gaddafis on the peace-keeping force while I built up a stock of arms. But I'd need some money to do that. Right? You see where I'm coming from. You see how Mr Collins is fitting into the scenario. What I don't like is the way it's done, Bruce. No respect. No respect for the US of A. It gets me mad.'
'I thought Samson Talbot had a lot of Americo-Liberian support? They send him money, don't they?'
'The Liberian president's been killed,' he said. 'That was the main thing the A-Ls wanted, the President outa the game. They got it. Their money's dried up. The problem now is that Jeremiah Finn took the President out, not Samson Talbot. Finn's in Monrovia, Talbot's not. Finn's getting financial support, Talbot's out there in the marketplace. Geddit?'
'Have you got a personal interest in this war?' I asked, and Trzinski gave me the full force of his long-distance eyes. 'You seem to know what's going on.'
'When I do a report for a client who's going to put maybe fifty million bucks of investment into a country, I check out all the angles and that means ugly political situations in neighbouring countries.'
'Where've you been so far?' I asked, and something like amusement passed behind Trzinski's eyes.
'In Ghana we went to the Birin basin and Akwatia, here I'm due to go down to Tortiya, then I go on to Sierra to Panguma and Yengema but I don't hold out much hope—Talbot's gonna be across that western border by the end of the year.'
'Have you got any military experience, Al?' I asked, the look of the man and the way he talked still bothering me.
'As a matter of fact, I have,' he said. 'You ever been in a war yourself, Bruce?'
'Nothing more than street violence.'
'I was in Nam,' he said.
'How did that leave things with you?'
'Things?'
'I imagine you have a different perspective on life after you've been through a war like that.'
'Yea-a-h,' he said slowly and folded his arms. He stared at his milk. I looked over the lvoire Soir and sipped my beer.
'Nam,' said Trzinski, surprising me after a long ruminative silence, the milk going through his nine stomachs. 'Nam left me with the belief that there is no greater evil on this earth than war. That everything should be done to prevent it. And if you can't prevent it, everything should be done to stop it.'
'Laudable thinking, Al; you'll go down in history.'
'All that time I was in Nam, I never got hit. Not even a graze. I saw men lose their legs, arms, have their heads blown off, their guts torn out but l never got more'n a scratch from a thorn bush. And, you know, I came back to the States and I sat there right in the middle of the US. That's where Omaha, Nebraska is, if you didn't know it, Bruce. And I had nothing inside of me. It was like everything had been blown out ... and then,' he said, and this was the first time I realized what was coming. I should have seen this herd of beef cattle coming from a lot further off, well before it was on top of me. 'And then, I found Him.'
'Who?' I asked, thinking Trzinski might have wrong-footed me after all.
'The Lord, Bruce. I found the Lord.'
'And He told you to get into business consultancy.'
'I'm being serious,' he said, the irony stripped out from behind his eyes.
Al, this is very personal...'
'Yeah, Bruce, it is, but I don't mind telling you about it.'
'No, I mean it's personal to me. I don't want to hear about your experiences with the Lord. It doesn't mean I don't believe. It means I don't want to talk about it.' Hard and firm, it's something I've learned.
'OK. I respect that,' he said, and sucked on his milk while I wrestled with the three facets of his personality he'd thrown at me in the last half hour.
'You went to Tortiya with Mr Collins?' he asked.
'That's where he bought the diamonds that were taken with him in the kidnap. We had some trouble. Spent a night in jail there.'
'That kinda place,' said Trzinski, nodding.
'Some advice for you, Al—even if you're just looking, go and see the police first and be nice to them.'
'Thanks for that, Bruce,' he said, his manner changing, getting more urbane. 'You know anybody there who could help me, like I said, just to look around?'
I gave him Borema's name, he slotted it into his memory and glanced at his watch. I stood and he asked where he could contact me if anything valuable should come to mind. I gave him the compound number and told him where it was.
'One thing, Al,' I said, 'you've been here a long time and not gone down to Tortiya...'
'There're people who handle diamonds here. They've been filling me in on the scene.'
'And they don't have a contact name for you down in Tortiya?'
'Not the same as yours.'
'Who are they, if you don't mind me asking?'
'A French guy called François Marin, and a Lebanese called Kantari.'
'It's always useful to know na
mes in Africa, Al.'
'It surely is, Bruce. It surely is.'
Chapter 18
The taxi dropped me off at the compound around 5.00 p.m. Kofi, one of B.B.'s Ghanaian boys, was sleeping by the gate but he woke up to show me around. He explained that 'sistah Dotte' was out collecting sheanut but she'd be coming back because the police had been looking for her since yesterday.
The compound was massive, maybe sixty or seventy yards long, with corrugated-iron awnings on three sides and some unpainted grey and brown accommodation with red dirt spattered up the walls on the fourth side. In the middle were two huge black iron vats which looked as if they'd been used for boiling tar but were now filled with water to boil sheanut. They were surrounded by scaffolding and a walkway of planks. In between the vats was a primitive crane for lifting the cages of sheanut into the water.
Next to the vats was a pile of rusted engine parts and three glassless truck cabs which had been torn from their chassis. Goats nosed about in the interiors, stripping off the plastic door panelling. In front of all the awnings were the old truck chassis with boards on their backs and sheanut drying in the sun.
We walked up on to the concrete verandah of the accommodation block. Kofi showed me the bathroom, which was outside, and took me into a hot, oppressive room with a bed in it where I could wait for Dotte. Kofi was uneasy in the house and left as soon as he could. I checked the other rooms which were all locked, except the one next to mine which was strangely cool without air conditioning or fan, just with the windows curtained off.
It had an identical bed, a chest supported by three hardbacks under one corner and a doorless wardrobe with some musty male clothing in it. I flicked through the clothes in the chest and found some stuff that you'd expect to see from emptied pockets. Kurt Nielsen's cholera vaccination was in there, some gutted biros, an old packet of Marlboro with two left. I opened up a book of matches from Le Mont Korhogo Hotel which had no telephone numbers inside but some doodling from a brain floating on a toke of weed, of which there was a little baggy and some super-long Rizlas.
I looked over the room, under the chest, the wardrobe and the bed—plenty of dust, not much else. I lifted the mattress and saw it immediately, up at the head end—a juju. It was made out of reddish-blond hair and some sort of bone and feathers tied round with twine. I dropped the mattress back down on it.