The South African tried to suppress a cry of pain and stumbled. Like an amphibian, Jericho glided through the pool of liquid, grabbed a bowl of finely chopped tomato and threw it at Vogelaar, then another, fruit salad relieved of gravity: mango, pineapple and kiwi in free fall. For a few seconds his adversary was busy with dodging manoeuvres, giving him enough time to gain a metre of distance before the giant attacked again. Jericho fled around the workbench, grabbed the struts of a high cabinet, bringing pots, tins, bowls and sifters, pans, casserole dishes and cutlery drawers crashing down to the floor. Vogelaar sprang back, away from the avalanche. In no time, half of the kitchen was blocked. There was only one route left, along the opposite side of the workbench.
But Vogelaar was closer to the swing doors.
You idiot, Jericho cursed to himself. You’ve backed yourself right into the trap.
The South African bared his teeth sneeringly. He seemed to be thinking exactly the same thing, except that Jericho’s predicament was visibly cheering him. Eyeing each other, they paused, each clasping their end of the workbench. In the flicker of the neon light Jericho had the opportunity to get a good look at the man for the first time. His short-term memory simultaneously unearthed the birth date of the former mercenary, and he suddenly realised that his opponent was long past sixty. A fighting machine of pensionable age, against which the privilege of youth withered away, a farce. Vogelaar didn’t seem in the slightest bit tired, while he was puffing like a steam engine. He saw the man’s eyes light up, reflecting the flicker of the neon light. Then, without any warning, it went dark.
The light had given up the ghost. Vogelaar faded into a silhouette, a black mass emitting a low, triumphant laugh. Jericho narrowed his eyes. The only light still coming in was through the gaps in the swing doors, just enough to see the only remaining escape route. Like a crab, he shuffled out from the protection of his cover. As if mirroring his movements, the silhouette of the South African set itself in motion too. An illusion. He wouldn’t get to the doors fast enough. Perhaps a little conversation was advisable.
‘Hey, let’s cut the crap, shall we?’
Silence.
‘We won’t achieve anything like this. We should talk.’
The disheartened tremolo in his voice wasn’t good at all. Jericho took a deep breath and tried again.
‘This is a misunderstanding.’ That was better. ‘I’m not your enemy.’
‘How stupid do you think I am?’
An answer, at least, albeit croaky and threatening and not exactly emanating a desire for understanding. The silhouette came closer. Jericho backed off, grappled behind him, got hold of something jagged and heavy and closed his fingers around it in the hope that it was suitable as a weapon.
With a dry bang, the lights sprang back on.
Vogelaar stormed over, swinging a worryingly long kitchen knife, and Jericho was paralysed by a déjà vu. Shenzhen. Ma Liping, the paradise of the little emperors. At the very last second, he pulled up what he was holding in his hand. The knife sliced the radish in two, whizzed through the air and missed him by a hair. Jericho stumbled backwards. The giant chased him around the table towards the upturned cabinet. On a wing and a prayer, he reached into the pile of kitchen utensils that had poured out from it, grabbed hold of a baking sheet and held it in front of him like a shield. Clanging steel screeched over aluminium. He wouldn’t be able to fend off Vogelaar’s enraged attacks for long, so he grabbed the tray with both hands and went on the attack, swinging it around wildly and landing an audible hit. Vogelaar swayed. Jericho threw the tray at his head, fell to the floor, rolled under the table through to the other side, sprang to his feet and started to run. Vogelaar would have to go around the table—
Vogelaar went over the table.
Just centimetres before the door he felt himself get grabbed and pulled back with such force that he lost his footing. Effortlessly, Vogelaar spun him around and knocked him down. He crashed against something hard, making him lose his hearing and sight, then realised that the South African was holding his head against the meat slicing machine. The next moment, the blade began to rotate. Jericho wriggled, trying to break free. Vogelaar turned his arm behind his back until it made a cracking sound. The blade sped up.
‘Who are you?’
‘Owen Jericho,’ he wheezed, his heart in his throat. ‘Restaurant critic.’
‘And what do you want here?’
‘Nothing, nothing at all. Donner, to speak to Donner—’
‘Andre Donner?’
‘Yes. Yes!’
‘About a restaurant review?’
‘Yes, damn it!’
‘With a gun?’
‘I—’
‘Wrong answer.’ The South African pressed his head against the metal and pushed it towards the racing blade. ‘And a wrong answer costs an ear.’
‘No!’
Jericho gave a howl. Burning pain shot through his outer ear. In fear and panic, he kicked his feet out and heard a muffled blow. The pressure on his shoulder suddenly gave way. Vogelaar slumped over him. He pulled himself to his feet, saw his torturer stagger and rammed his elbow into his face. The other man sank his fingers into his belt, then toppled over. Jericho held onto the edge of the table to avoid being dragged down with him. Something big and dark landed on the back of Vogelaar’s head. The man collapsed and didn’t move again.
Yoyo was staring at him, both hands clasped around the bones of the frozen antelope leg.
‘My God, Owen! Who is this arsehole?’
Dazed, Jericho felt behind his ear and touched raw, ripped-open flesh. When he looked at his finger, it was red with blood.
‘Jan Kees Vogelaar,’ he mumbled.
‘Damn it! And Donner?’
‘No idea.’ He drew air into his lungs. Then he crouched down next to the motionless body. ‘Quick, we have to turn him over.’
Without asking any more questions, Yoyo threw the antelope leg aside and helped him. With combined effort, they managed to roll Vogelaar onto his back.
‘You’re bleeding,’ she said, casually.
‘I know.’ He opened Vogelaar’s belt buckle and pulled it out of the loops. ‘Is there any of my ear left?’
‘Hard to say. It doesn’t really look like an ear any more.’
‘That’s what I was afraid of. Back on his stomach.’
The same sweat-inducing process. He bent Vogelaar’s lower arms behind him and tied them tightly together. The unconscious man breathed heavily and groaned. His fingers twitched.
‘Clobber him again if necessary,’ said Jericho, looking around. ‘We’ll manoeuvre him over to the fridge over there. The one next to the microwave.’
Together, they gripped the heavy body under the arms, dragged it across the tiles and lifted it up. Vogelaar weighed around a hundred kilos, but his groaning and blinking suggested that he wasn’t far from regaining consciousness. Hastily, Jericho whipped his own belt off and tied him to the fridge door handle with it. Sitting upright and with his head dangling down, the South African now had a martyred look about him. The flickering of the neon light became a constant, sterile brightness. Yoyo had found the light switch. Jericho crept over the kitchen floor, spotted his Glock and his opponent’s pistol and seized both.
‘Bastard,’ spluttered Vogelaar, as if he were spitting snot into the gutter.
Jericho handed Yoyo the pistol and fixed his gaze on the restrained man.
‘You should choose your words more carefully. I might be offended. I could, for example, think about the fact that my ear hurts, and who I have to thank for that.’
The South African stared at him, with a look full of hate. Suddenly, he began to tear at his shackles like mad. The fridge moved forward a centimetre. Jericho released the safety-catch on the Glock and pressed it against Vogelaar’s nose.
‘Wrong reaction,’ he said.
‘Kiss my ass!’
‘And a wrong reaction will cost you the tip of your nose. Do you want to go
through life without a nose, Vogelaar? Do you want to look like an idiot?’
Vogelaar ground his jaw, but stopped his attempts to free himself. Clearly the idea of a noseless existence bothered him more than the threat of losing his life.
‘Why all the fuss?’ he asked sullenly. ‘I mean, you’re going to shoot me anyway.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Why?’ Vogelaar laughed with disbelief. ‘Man, don’t bother messing around.’
His healthy eye wandered over to Yoyo. The glass eye stared straight ahead. ‘What’s with you guys anyway? I thought Kenny would insist on finishing off the job himself.’
Inside Jericho’s brain, cogs interlocked, circuits loaded up, and the Department for Astonishing Developments and Incomprehensible Activities started its working day.
‘You know Kenny?’
Vogelaar blinked, confused. ‘Of course I know him.’
‘Now listen here,’ said Jericho, crouching down. ‘We have a document, only fragmentary admittedly, but I’d have to be a real idiot not to realise that you’re here to kill Andre Donner. So, first things first. Let’s start with Donner, okay? Where is he?’
Something in Vogelaar’s gaze changed. His rage gave way to pure, complete confusion.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘You’d have to be a complete idiot to believe that I’m here to do that.’
‘Where in God’s name is Andre Donner?’
‘Are you completely stupid, or what? I’m—’
‘For the last time!’ screamed Jericho. ‘Where is he?’
‘Look!’ the man tied to the fridge screamed back at him. ‘Open your eyes.’
Well, said the manager of the Department for Astonishing Developments and Incomprehensible Activities, it looks like we’ll miss out on the award for lateral thinking again.
‘I don’t understand—’
‘He’s sitting in front of you! I – am – Andre – Donner!’
Mercenary
The wars of the modern age, explicitly the First and Second World Wars, are regarded as international conflicts, established on the basis of the laws of war and executed by state-owned forces. In many parts of the world, this has led to the mistaken notion that soldiers have in actual fact always been armed civil servants, who earn money even when there is no one to attack and nothing to defend. It’s unimaginable that divisions of the US Army, the Royal Air Force, the forces armées or the Bundeswehr would rampage through their own country plundering and raping. The introduction of compulsory military service actually seemed to herald the end of the forces which had decisively shaped warfare until then. King David’s Kerethites and Pelethites, the Greek hoplites in Persia’s army, the marauding hordes of late mediaeval Brabants and Armagnacs, mercenaries in the Thirty Years War and private armies in colonialist Africa: they all served whoever happened to be the most generous master at the time. They were paid for fighting, not for sitting around in barracks.
In the twentieth century, the retreat of the colonial powers lured many mercenaries into the turmoil of post-independence Africa, where persecution and expulsion, coups and genocide were the order of the day under the new, ethnically disunited rulers. Ordered not to intervene, the West began to secure its interests with the help of private troops rather than on an official level – for example their efforts to oppose the establishment of communism on African soil. The communists’ approach was no different. States like South Africa also got themselves paramilitary task forces like Koevoet, and procured lucrative long-term positions for the contract soldiers. The old-style mercenary seemed to have found his niche in amongst the dictators and rebels.
Then everything changed.
With a sigh from history, the Soviet empire collapsed; without a whimper, banal and irretrievable. East Germany ceased to exist. London’s U-turn called the IRA into question, apartheid came to an end on the Cape, the Cold War was declared over, Great Britain and the USA reduced their troops, and political change in South America discredited thousands in the armed forces. All over the world, soldiers, policemen, Secret Service workers, resistance fighters and terrorists lost their jobs and their raison d’être. That was nothing new. Years before, unemployed Vietnam War veterans had founded private military and security services in the USA, ones that ventured where Washington didn’t dare get caught. Serving the CIA, these firms hunted unpleasant rulers out of power, trafficked weapons and drugs and, incidentally, also relieved the strain on the defence budget. Now, though, the market was collapsing under a surplus of trained fighters fighting each other for the last crisis zones in the era of Nelson Mandela and Russian–American chumminess. The remaining despots could only do so much to encroach on human rights; there simply wasn’t enough for everyone.
And then the curtain rose on a new act.
The new players were Saddam Hussein, arrogant and voracious, and Slobodan Milošević, delirious with nationalism. Perfect antagonists of an otherwise peace-loving humanity, one which yet again speedily agrees to permit war as a continuation of politics, but this time with other means. Foolishly, a few soldiers too many had been laid off in the frenzy of reconciliation. The mercenaries were on the march again. Authorised by the United Nations, they polish up their tarnished image by helping to conquer the lunatic in the Gulf and the monster of the Balkans, and secure peace. Then, one day, two passenger jets fly into the Twin Towers and send the final remains of the pacifist mindset up in flames. Determined to bring the axis of evil to its knees, George W. Bush, otherwise known as the biggest political bankruptcy in American history, bestows on the USA thousands of dead GIs and a fiscal hole the size of a lunar crater. Practically all its allies are forced to learn how terribly expensive war is and how much more expensive it is to win peace, especially with the employment of regular armies. But on the other hand, given that the way war is led is no longer up for debate, commission after commission goes to the efficient and discreet private security firms.
Fittingly, Africa uses its raw materials to enter the playing field of globalisation. Wounds that were long believed healed burst open, petrodollars split whole nations, and the gravitational forces of East and West pull at everything. Somalia becomes synonymous with blood and tears. Millions of people die during the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Barely recovered from the wrangling between the government and liberation armies, the Sudan staggers into the Darfur conflict, the pull of which grips the whole of central Africa. With France as a silent partner, Chad’s dictator invests trillions of oil money in arms purchases and destabilises the region in his own special way. The parties of the north and south are smashing each other’s head in on the Ivory Coast, while violence is rampant in oil-rich South Nigeria. Senegal, Congo-Brazzaville, Burundi and Uganda top the scale of inhumane acts. Even supposedly stable nations like Kenya sink into chaos in just a short time. Almost everything that was supposed to improve just gets worse.
The only people things improve for are the likes of Jan Kees Vogelaar.
At the beginning of the millennium, his Mamba supports the peace troop of the African Union in Darfur, reduces the popularity of the Arabic Sudanese in the guerrilla camps and takes on lucrative mandates in Kenya and Nigeria. After the foundation of African Protection Services, Vogelaar is able to expand his activities to more crisis areas. APS develops for Africa in a similar manner to how Blackwater developed for Iraq. By 2016, the group of companies makes a name for itself in the safeguarding of oil plants and transport routes for raw materials, the conduct of negotiations with hostage-takers and the exploration of exotic locations for Western, Asian and multinational companies, which are increasingly acquiring a taste for hiring private armies.
But it remains a painstaking business, and Vogelaar gets tired of changing sides again and again. After years of instability on all fronts he begins to long for something more lasting and solid, for that one, ultimate commission.
And then it comes.
* * *
‘In the form of Kenny
Xin,’ said Vogelaar. ‘Or rather Kenny’s company, which practically handed me the future on a silver platter.’
‘Xin,’ echoed Yoyo. ‘The name doesn’t exactly suit him.’ Jericho knew what she meant. Xin was the Chinese word for heart.
‘And who’s behind the company?’ he asked.
‘Back then, it was the Chinese Secret Service.’ The South African rubbed his wrists, which were marked by the welts of the belt. ‘But as time went on I started to have my doubts about that.’
* * *
The revelation of Donner’s identity had thrown everything off-kilter. Adjusting to the new situation, Jericho had first seized the opportunity to take a quick look at his ear in the toilet mirror. It looked awful, drenched in scarlet; the blood had run down his neck in streaks and into the neckline of his T-shirt, where it had congealed and was now encrusted. Bleeding, drenched with fish stock and covered in the remains of squashed root vegetables, he was a wretched sight. After he’d washed the blood away, though, things looked a little better. Instead of finding himself faced with a problem of van Gogh proportions, he discovered he had actually only lost a carpaccio-thin slice of ear muscle. Yoyo, directed by Vogelaar to the kitchen’s first aid box, had bandaged him up. It had felt as if her touch was much more tender than the task required; if he were a dog, one might have referred to it as petting, but he wasn’t a dog, and Yoyo was probably just doing her job. Vogelaar had watched them, suddenly looking very tired, as if he had years of sleep to catch up on.
‘If you’re not here to kill me, then what in God’s name are you here for?’