Devil’s Harvest (20 page)

But, having made the effort to get to the UN offices on time, he was irritated to find that Ms Preston was nowhere to be seen. He was left sitting on a battered bench under a mango tree, old pips scattered underfoot like smoothed river stones. Gabriel picked one up, surprised at how light it was and tossed it across the entranceway. The sound echoed throughout the compound and he picked up another, and another, watching as they skipped across the stone.

Finally, Ms Preston emerged and walked over to talk to him; clearly the conversation did not justify sitting down in her office.

‘Good morning, Mr Cockburn. The person I mentioned will be here shortly. You can discuss things with her further then.’ Ms Preston looked even grumpier than before, her rash of freckles more austere in the morning light.

‘The person … she’s a woman?’ Gabriel asked, realising his tautology too late.

‘Yes, Mr Cockburn, Alek is a woman. As am I. As is everyone else around here who gets things done, in case you hadn’t noticed. While the men sit around drinking tea, cleaning their AK-47s and swinging their dicks in the air.’

Frosty wasn’t the word. Ms Preston did not wait for his response before turning back towards her office. Gabriel continued throwing mango pips listlessly about, his aim more determined as his frustration grew. A woman to guide him about this infernal country, he mused, and one lacking in punctuality at that. He picked up a larger pip and sent it skipping across the ground; it knocked into the opened metal gate with a clang. Only then did he notice the small figure watching him, a little girl in a simple dress, barefoot and with her fingers in her mouth, peering into the compound from the gateway. They stared at each other for a moment, before Gabriel lifted his hand to wave. She hesitated and then turned and ran out of sight.

He followed her, more to stretch his legs than from any curiosity. There was an empty plot opposite the compound, overrun with castor-oil plants and tall weeds. Rubbish clogged the overgrowth along the small paths that snaked away from the road. The little girl disappeared down one trail, swallowed up by the wilting plants. A wisp of smoke rose from the centre. Gabriel crossed the bumpy earth road and stared over the wall of weeds.

The field was not in fact empty; it was filled with temporary structures, mostly made from cut saplings bent over one another and lashed together with twine, some with pieces of metal and plastic attached to the sides like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle. It was like some toy town put together for a school camp-out, but for the foul smell of baking excrement and the few torn UNHCR tarpaulins pulled over some homes. The little girl had run into the middle of a stick structure with low walls. A small shawl had been pinned to the top in a pathetic attempt at shelter. The figure of an elderly woman, skin hugging her bones, huddled in the tiny square of shade. Two younger women sat in the dirt beside her, the full brunt of the sun on their bodies. The little girl scuttled behind them.

Gabriel didn’t know why, but he lifted his camera to take a photograph. Perhaps it was because he’d never seen anything like it, the abject hopelessness of the gathering. One of the women looked up. There was something in her eyes, or perhaps the absence of something, that made him change his mind, and his hand fell limply to his side. He nodded his head towards her in greeting and turned back towards the compound.

A tall woman, thin to the point of being scrawny, her features almost cadaverous, was standing at the gate. ‘They tell me you need a guide,’ she said. ‘Yet you keep me waiting.’

Alek.

‘But you could only just have got here,’ he protested.

‘So your time is more valuable than mine?’

It wasn’t a good start. He could not quite define what unsettled him about her, fearing that it would come down to the deep, matt blackness of her skin or the assertive way in which she presented herself. Her hair, a mesh of closely curled strands, seemed only partially under control. There was a haughtiness to her that in one instance raised a visceral dislike and at the same time a consciousness of his innate racism.

‘Are you a journalist?’ Her stare was unrelenting, as if she was observing something tiresome but necessary. ‘You need a permit to take photographs. They’re not giving permits at the moment. We’ll not get far.’

This is what it would be like to face a firing squad, Gabriel thought – a machine-gun blast of negativity. He felt overcome with weariness. His ambivalence towards the journey left him with little motivation or urgency, and every excuse to call the expedition off looked inviting. But he also sensed a strength in this unlikeable woman that gave him some hope.

‘Can we sit down somewhere and I’ll explain to you what I’m here for? When I’ve explained this to you properly, then you can decide. I’m just tired of people … making assumptions and not really listening to me. Can we just do that at least?’

It was pitiful, he knew, this mewling call for understanding, and the woman remained unimpressed. ‘Just know that I am not your
bamba
, your mistress to command,’ she said. ‘Just remember that. But, yes, I can sit and I will listen.’

Gabriel nodded encouragingly.

‘Then we will say goodbye.’ She smiled for the first time, a flash of humour and glint of skew teeth at his expense.

They walked out of the compound and soon found a small tea house. The intestines of an animal were being boiled up inside the hut and they sat outside on plastic chairs, some distance away from the sickly smell of tripe. Gabriel was grateful to Rasta that he at least knew enough now to order them tea and not to scald his mouth in front of his new acquaintance when it arrived. They sat silently for a moment, sipping at the edges of their milky potions.

‘So what do you want to tell me?’ Alek asked eventually.

Gabriel sighed. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said, unsure of how to present his mission in a way that would sound compelling, or quite frankly anything other than mad or indulgent. Should he bombard her with the impressive science, or simplify it all to the most basic of tenets? He couldn’t determine her level of intellect from their brief interaction. But Alek listened without interrupting, save to ask for clarification now and then. Her grasp of what he was saying seemed immediate and he ventured into more detailed explanations of his research. She listened without fidgeting or being distracted by passing traffic. She occasionally sipped her tea, but her eyes did not leave him as he spoke. He found it disconcerting to be the focus of such fierce attention and looked away repeatedly, only to find her gaze still levelled at him when he looked at her again.

When he had finished, she considered him coldly for a while, only the cicadas breaking the silence between them. ‘You’re not someone looking to save the world; I can see that. There is something else in this plant that keeps you interested.’

It was a fair assessment. There was of course a certain amount of personal ambition driving his quest, as well as his attempt to escape his intolerable domestic circumstances. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘there are many reasons, but ultimately this research is about botanical homeostasis. It’s my passion – the most beautiful of equations. The meaning of life. God itself.’

‘So you’re here to turn God into a formula? God is absent enough in Sudan without your help.’

‘
Vim promovet insitam
: “Learning promotes one’s innate power.” My university’s motto, taken from Horace. Not everything is about survival, Ms …’ The fact that he did not know her name made his defensiveness feel even more miserly, like some spiteful academic challenge.

Her response was vicious: ‘In Sudan we say: “Empty stomachs have no ears.” You may find learning hard to come by here.’ She hadn’t laughed at him, not even smiled, but he felt her scorn. ‘And here our proverbs do not come in Latin, Mr Gabriel. That one is Arabic.’

Despite her dismissive attitude, there lurked beneath the surface an engaging intellect that wished to spar, to challenge and understand. He couldn’t resist asking where she’d been educated.

‘Kampala and Nairobi,’ she said in a tone that allowed no further enquiry. ‘You’ve told me much about this plant – I will learn its name properly, perhaps. But first, what you have
not
told me is more important. You want to go up to Bahr el Ghazal. Do you have authorisation from NISS?’

‘NISS?’

‘The National Intelligence and Security Services?’

‘No. But I have a letter of introduction from Professor Ismail from the department of botany at the University of Khartoum.’

‘Khartoum?’ Alek looked at him with a mixture of contempt and ridicule. ‘Did someone give you this and tell you that it would help you in South Sudan? They’re making you a fool. Do you know what we think of Khartoum here? Bashir!’ She spat on the ground. ‘I think you know nothing, Mr Gabriel. You are a fool after all.’

She pushed her chair away and got up, walking away from him, striding a distance down the muddy road. Her ankles and calves seemed too thin to support her, sticks protruding from her dress, but she moved with strength nonetheless. He heard her castigating herself – hard, foreign words that seemed to bounce off the dirt like stones. She spent several minutes pacing up and down the road, engaged in some self-dialogue.

Gabriel tried not to cower when she returned.

‘I will take you,’ she announced, still glowering.

He stood up to shake her hand. ‘Good. I mean, thank you.’

‘You will pay for the vehicle. I will organise it. You will also pay for fuel. And also the driver. And for me.’

‘Yes, that’s fine.’

She turned to go, and he called after her. ‘Wait, why are you agreeing to do this?’

She shrugged. ‘I should get away for a while. The UN people, they’ve had enough of me and my questions.’

He nodded, although her explanation solved nothing.

‘Besides,’ she added, ‘you have something that is … useful.’

‘Money?’

‘A camera. You’re foreign, but you’re not UN. You’re not a journalist. You’re not military. Maybe they won’t know what to do with you. And because of that there is, perhaps, but only a small chance, that you’ll succeed.’

Gabriel elected not to ask anything further.

Chapter 12

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE, WHITEHALL, LONDON

Bartholomew paused to catch his breath under the statue of a Gurkha soldier on Horse Guards Avenue. The soldier bore his bayonetted rifle with stoicism, only the rakish angle of his wide-brimmed hat giving him any sense of individualism. The base showed traces of spraypaint attacks, the work of the anticolonial lobby protesting against the ‘idealisation’ of Britain’s history abroad. Like the abuse Vietnam soldiers faced on their return to America, to Bartholomew it seemed extraordinarily disloyal and misdirected. Now British troops were facing the same treatment on returning from Afghanistan, making a mockery of their honour and bravery. As if the podgy members of the public had any right to criticise their sterling contribution.

He had initially tried to set up an appointment to see the secretary of state in the defence ministry to inform him about the missing missile fragment, but he had been fobbed off to the parliamentary undersecretary of state for international security strategy. While the Foxley fraud scandal had provided a caution to ministerial involvement in weapons procurement programmes, it was the Chinook helicopter fiasco that really had the politicians running scared. All those associated with the debacle had been subject to searing media criticism and internal scrutiny. Demotions, resignations and dismissals had followed in a furious wave of self-righteous cleansing. The net result was that it had become almost impossible to get the leadership within the MoD to take any responsibility for the sensitive decisions around weapons procurement and tactical deployment. The honourable secretary’s evasion was nothing unusual. But the parliamentary undersecretary wasn’t sufficiently elevated to take the important decisions himself. This meant that Bartholomew was going to be locked into a cycle of referrals and avoidance. He realised that the involvement of the Saudi agent, Hussein, did nothing to settle their nerves. Nor the fact that the identity of the end-user was disclosed only to a select few. But the MoD’s inability to terminate the negotiations or seal the agreement smacked of the worst cowardice.

He wiped his hand across his brow and made his way to the northern access on Horse Guards Avenue. The entrance was flanked by the enormous Earth and Water figures sculpted out of Portland stone by Sir Charles Wheeler. Quite why the ministry desired a massive nude at its front door was a mystery, though Bartholomew was relieved that the defence budget cuts had precluded the plan to have the remaining ‘elements’ added to the collection. It was extraordinary what the government deemed worthy of funding. The parliamentary public accounts committee had commented on the purchase of the disastrous Chinook helicopters, concluding that ‘they might as well have bought eight turkeys’. That was about right, Bartholomew thought ruefully as he huffed his way up the stairs.

‘Air Marshal.’ An impeccably suited man with combed black hair and an upright manner appeared at his side. The man smelt of expensive and overly floral cologne. Bartholomew would’ve considered him to be homosexual, but he’d come to realise that such quick evaluations no longer held true. Even straight men apparently now used moisturiser and groomed their hair.

‘Unfortunately …’ the man continued, reaching for Bartholomew’s arm, ‘regrettably, Air Marshal, the undersecretary is engaged on another pressing matter and won’t be able to make the appointment. He’s asked me to convey his apologies to you. Personally. And to conduct the meeting with you in his absence. I’ve arranged for a meeting room, if you’d kindly follow me.’

Bartholomew pulled his arm away and allowed his irritation to show. ‘I’m sorry, that won’t do,’ he said. ‘This matter is for the highest levels of the MoD only. Good day.’

Bartholomew turned on his heel, but the man’s grip returned, fast and firm.

‘Air Marshal Bartholomew, I’m afraid I must insist you hear me out. Please come with me to the meeting room. I can’t discuss this matter with you further in the corridors.’