Genocide of One: A Thriller (5 page)

The soldiers listened without expression. Meyers stood and pointed to the map of the
Congo on the screen. “The eastern region of the Congo, where we’re going, is surrounded
by Ebola hot zones, including those along the western part of the Ebola River and
the border with southern Sudan, to the northeast. Kenya and Uganda, to the east, have
also seen substrains of Ebola.”

Yeager raised his hand. “What’s the treatment?”

“There isn’t any. Once infected, all you can do is pray.”

“You said the mortality rate is ninety percent,” Garrett said. “What about the remaining
ten percent?”

“Their immune system somehow stands up to it, and they’re able to survive.”

“Hmm,” Garrett responded softly.

“You’ll be operating outside of the endemic area,” Singleton said. “But you’ll still
need to take precautions. There’s a high possibility that bats can carry the disease,
so make sure you don’t get bitten or come in contact with their droppings. Also, other
primates can be infected, so stay clear of chimpanzees, gorillas, and small monkeys.”

“If you get infected, what are the symptoms?” Yeager asked.

“Fever, vomiting, and other symptoms resembling malaria. But Ebola particularly affects
the eyes and testicles.”

The men grimaced for the first time.

“So if your eyes turn red, that could be a sign you’re infected.”

“I’d rather not have to check out anybody’s balls,” Meyers said, and everyone laughed.

Mick, who’d been silent until now, spoke up in his halting English. “Why doesn’t that
disease…spread all over the world? Like HIV?”

“That’s a good question, Mick,” Meyers said. “The virus’s incubation period is too
short. Once infected, you start showing symptoms in about seven days. Which means
most patients die before they’re able to infect others.”

“I see.”

“So you understand how frightening Ebola is now?”

The four men nodded. Though they didn’t verbalize it, all of them had one question
that they answered for themselves. If one of the team got infected during the operation,
what was the protocol? There wouldn’t be a rescue helicopter. They’d have to give
him a needle and some morphine and leave him behind in the jungle. This was the fate
of a mercenary in battle. In exchange for the good pay, they were expendable.

“I’d like to turn to the main topic today: the situation in the place you’ll infiltrate,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Singleton called up the next slide. The men
were unprepared for the gruesome scene on the screen, a muddy road littered with bodies.
Young people, old people, men, women. Some of them had their hands tied behind their
backs, others were headless torsos.

“Genocide,” Singleton intoned. “Right now the Congo is experiencing a large-scale
conflict, one that’s been dubbed the Great War in Africa. It’s responsible for the
highest number of dead since the Second World War—four million. Cease-fires have been
broken over and over, and there’s no end in sight.”

As if reading the doubt in the men’s expressions, Singleton went on. “This is really
happening, believe me. It’s just that the newspapers and TV aren’t reporting it. Discrimination
on the part of the media, you could say. The mass media in industrialized countries
doesn’t care how many Africans die. The genocide that occurs all the time there gets
less coverage than when seven gorillas are killed. Of course Africans aren’t an endangered
species.” Singleton smiled coldly.

“The root cause of the problems in the Congo can be traced back to colonial times.
When Belgium controlled the country they pitted the two main tribes—the Tutsi and
the Hutu, which up until then had gotten along peacefully—against each other. They
arbitrarily gave preferential treatment to the Tutsi, which provoked resentment on
the part of the Hutu. This tribal hatred festered until it broke out in genocide in
Rwanda.”

Yeager knew all about this conflict. The Hutu president’s plane was shot down, and
this caused the Hutu to start slaughtering the Tutsi. The state radio fanned the flames
of the massacre, and thousands of ordinary citizens took up hatchets and cudgels and
began murdering their neighbors. They aimed their attack at women and children in
order to annihilate the Tutsi for all time. Murderous bands quickly sprang up, fueled
not just by tribal hatred but also by the fear that if you didn’t participate in the
killing you’d be killed yourself, even if you were Hutu, and by the false rumor that
anyone murdering a Tutsi would get his farmland. The slaughter became fierce, with
victims paying their attackers to shoot them in the head instead of cutting them up
with dull knives and leaving them to bleed to death. In the chaos many Hutu were mistaken
for Tutsi and butchered.

A hundred days after the genocide began, a Tutsi-led military force was organized
outside the country. They counterattacked, and finally the situation calmed down.
But not before 10 percent of the population had been killed—some eight hundred thousand
people.

“Rwanda became a Tutsi-controlled government, and peace returned, but so did historical
revisionism, the claim that the genocide had never happened.” Singleton smiled coldly
again as he continued the briefing. “And that’s it, as far as the rest of the world
is concerned. But the tragedy has continued. That genocide touched off the Great War
in Africa.”

The PowerPoint slide changed to an enlarged view of the Congo region. Singleton’s
laser pointer flitted back and forth between Rwanda to the east and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo to the west.

“One faction of the Hutu ringleaders of the Rwandan massacre escaped into the DRC
and are still mounting cross-border attacks from there. The Congo government has turned
a blind eye to this, which has enraged Rwanda. The conflict evolved into one between
Rwanda and the Congo. Rwanda, in partnership with Uganda, also a Tutsi-led government,
moved to overthrow the Congo dictatorship. They gave support to antigovernment guerrillas
in eastern Congo, which began a rebel insurgency. Their plan was a great success.
The rebel forces quickly moved west, overran the capital, drove out the dictator,
and established a new regime. The new president was the leader of the rebel army supported
by Rwanda. You’d think that would settle things, but that’s when the situation turned
into even more of a quagmire.”

The slide changed to one that showed three maps, each tracing the power shifts among
insurgent groups in the various regions of the Congo.

“The new president wanted to make it look like he wasn’t a puppet of Rwanda, so he
betrayed his Tutsi supporters and joined forces with the remaining Hutu armed groups
in the east. Needless to say, this upset Rwanda, which, in concert with Uganda and
Burundi, attacked in an attempt to overthrow him. The new government had its back
to the wall, so it sought aid from outside and allied itself with Chad and other neighboring
countries. That’s how this massive war started, in 1998, with more than ten countries
involved.”

As Singleton finished, Yeager raised his hand. “Do the countries involved in the conflict
have the financial resources to sustain such a huge war?” he asked.

A cold smile again came to Singleton’s lips. “They all have their sponsors. Once the
war began the real goal became clear—control of the resources that lie beneath the
soil of the Congo. Diamonds, gold, oil, and rare earth metals used in computer components.
The forces fighting in the Congo are keeping up this bloody conflict because of mineral
resources, and more than a hundred European and Asian corporations have a financial
stake in the outcome. Mining companies give military aid to the forces that plunder
the resources and take their share from what’s left over. Rwanda exports more minerals
than they mine within their borders, and developed countries buy this up, even though
they know it’s been stolen. Hundreds of thousands of Congolese have died to supply
the coltan used in cell phones. And superpowers like the United States and Russia
support the Congolese government, while behind the scenes they also help fund Rwanda
and Uganda—playing both sides so they can ensure that, no matter who wins, they protect
their interest in Congo’s mineral resources. If you consider all the funding that’s
coming into the conflict, most of the major powers are involved, and it’s become a
world war.”

“What about human resources?” Garrett asked. “How do they maintain that many soldiers?”

“At first they drafted the unemployed, then the poor. If you’re in the army, at least
you get fed. But they still needed more troops, so they started kidnapping children.
I want to emphasize that this is no longer a war between states. The majority of Congolese
do not support this idiotic conflict. A handful of evil men—some two hundred in an
armed group—have, for instance, created a ten-thousand-person army. And the Congolese
government forces are no better. They attack their own country’s villages, plunder
everything in sight, and massacre the people.” Singleton returned to the map. “Right
now Congolese government forces control the west and south, but the northern and eastern
regions are in chaos. Rwanda and Uganda, which are supposed to be allies, have split
over who gets to control the mineral resources, and things have spun out of control.
The eastern region, where you’ll be going, has seen continuous war for more than twenty
years, and it’s reached the point where you can’t tell friend from foe anymore. On
top of this, racial hatred has festered, and you have genocide everywhere you turn.
The UN has dispatched a peacekeeping force, but they can’t keep an eye on this whole
jungle region. It’s just too huge.”

“So whose side are we fighting on?” Yeager asked. “The UN?”

“You’re not on any side. You’ll infiltrate the jungle without any of the insurgent
groups noticing your presence and carry out a mission that’s not part of what’s going
on in this war.”

“What, specifically?”

“I’m not at liberty to provide more details yet. For the time being, just focus on
your training.”

Yeager was reminded of his time in the army.
Don’t question anything
was the rule drummed into the heads of all new recruits.

“In the Congo you won’t find any cool new weapons; no pinpoint bombing tactics. No
cause or ideology or patriotism behind all this. It’s naked war, a power grab stripped
of any pretense. It’s a bloody struggle over minerals and racial hatred, in which
people slaughter each other with machetes and small arms.” Singleton’s expression
was stiff and unreadable again. He ended the briefing with these words:

“After you infiltrate the region, if you want to avoid seeing hell, don’t go near
any people.”

Kento waited until
Sunday before venturing to his parents’ home in Atsugi. He was surprised at how still
and quiet the house had become in the days since he’d last been there.

His mother, Kaori, looked gaunt, but having her own parents there was keeping her
occupied.

Kento briefly chatted with them in the living room, then made his way upstairs. There
were three rooms on the second floor; the smallest of them had been his father’s study.
Bookcases lined three of the walls, and a desk stood in the middle of the room.

The room had his father’s smell. Before he could get too sentimental, though, his
curiosity won out—the desire to know what was in the book he’d
dropped
a Popsicle on
. Kento scanned the bookcases and found it, on the lowest shelf of the middle bookcase.
Chemistry Commentaries
, volume 1.

He opened the book and found that the pages had been neatly scooped out. Hidden inside
was an envelope, folded in two.

Kento picked up the envelope and stared at it intently. On the outside were the words
To Kento
in his father’s handwriting. Inside was an ATM card and a one-page memo:

Kento opened the drawer and found a black tablet-size laptop. He took it out and tried
to power it up, but the blue screen came on and the operating system did not boot
up. Something must be wrong with it, he thought. He did a force quit and went back
to the memo.

Kento stared in surprise at the ATM card, which was issued by a major bank.

The name on the card was Yoshinobu Suzuki. As his father had said, it was a name he’d
never heard of.

Poppy was a papillon puppy that they had when Kento was a child. From the depths of
a far-off memory, Kento was able to recall the puppy’s birthday—the one day a year
when they gave him some special treats. December 6. The number 1206 had to be the
PIN.

If the account really had five million yen in it, that would be his father’s estate.
Wouldn’t he have to pay inheritance tax on it? Did his father leave him this large
amount of money to cover his tuition and board?

Kento read on.

The memo ended there.

Kento frowned at this final instruction, which struck him as paranoid. Putting the
memo in a book that only Kento would know about also reflected his father’s fear that
his mail was being read. Apart from the physical condition that brought on his death,
had his father been suffering from mental problems, too?

“What are you doing?”

Startled at the voice behind him, Kento leaped up. His mother was standing at the
door.

“I made lunch. Would you like some?”

“Okay,” Kento said vacantly, his mind racing. Should he tell his mother, Kaori, about
the memo? But what about his father’s instructions?

“I need to check on something, and then I’ll eat,” Kento replied, furtively closing
the book and the memo.

Kaori went back downstairs, seemingly unsuspecting.

Kento reread the memo and decided he had to visit the Machida apartment. From Atsugi
he’d be able to stop at his apartment in Kinshi-cho on the way. It was like a strange
role-playing game, but it didn’t feel like he had a choice. He pocketed the memo and
ATM card and, carrying the book and small laptop under his arm, went downstairs.

In the room that served as both kitchen and dining area, a single lunch was laid out,
and he sat down. “Where’s Grandpa and everybody?” he asked.

“They went for a walk and said they’d do some shopping, too, while they’re out,” his
mother said listlessly. Her normally plump face was drawn.

Kento started eating. “Was anything unusual going on with Dad recently?” He tried
to make it sound like a casual question.

He looked up and found his mother staring at him in surprise, her mouth open. Kento
finally understood. Something more than a sense of loss was weighing on her. Could
it have something to do with the memo?

“So you noticed, too?” she asked.

“Noticed what?”

She looked from side to side to make sure no one else was around. “I had a bad premonition.
Your father had been acting strange for the last few months.”

“Strange? How so?”

“He was really busy, and he came home late all the time.”

“Maybe he was just busy at work.” That might have been the cause of his early death,
Kento mused. “The doctor said that he might have died of overwork.”

“That’s not all. I asked him about it once. What are you doing out so late? I asked
him. And where have you been? And do you know what he said?” His mother stopped.

“What?”

“He said a friend from the university has a child who’s refusing to leave the house,
and he was tutoring him.”

This had to be a lie. Typical of his father, Kento thought, to come up with such a
transparent excuse. No university professor was going to be doing a part-time job
like that, tutoring a child in his home. His father was covering up for something.

“Didn’t he collapse at Mitaka station?” Kento asked.

“That’s right. That doesn’t make sense, either.”

Kento recalled the events of ten days ago. When he heard the news that his father
had collapsed he’d raced out of his lab, but it wasn’t back to his home in Atsugi
or to his father’s university in Tama but to an emergency hospital in Mitaka. This
was an hour away from their home by train and well off his father’s normal commuting
route. From what the policeman and ER doctor at the hospital had told him, his father
had been waiting for a train on the platform of Mitaka station when his aneurysm had
burst. He’d been rushed to the nearest hospital, but by then it was too late. But
why Mitaka? What was he doing so far off the beaten track? Kento decided that something
work-related had taken him there. But now he wasn’t so sure.

Kento remembered the paranoid memo and was struck by a chill of fear. Could his father
have been murdered? Whoa—don’t jump to conclusions, he told himself. There was nothing
suspicious about his death. At the hospital the attending physician had said a CT
scan had clearly revealed a burst aneurysm in his thoracic aorta. As a pharmacology
student, Kento knew there was no poison that could have caused these symptoms. His
father had died of natural causes.

Still, Kento couldn’t dismiss the e-mail that had arrived after his father’s death.
His father had written it knowing he would be disappearing for a while. Even if he
didn’t suspect he would die, he was certainly anticipating some trouble coming his
way.

“There’s one other thing,” his mother went on. “I wanted to thank the person who called
the ambulance, but I don’t know who it was. I heard your father was with a woman,
but she left the station right away.”

His father with a woman? News to him. “What kind of woman?”

“They said she was about forty, slim, with hair down to her shoulders.”

It finally struck Kento what his mother had been imagining. “So what you’re saying
is…”

Kaori nodded, a trace of anxiety in her eyes.

“Wait a second,” Kento stammered. “Y-you’re saying Dad was…”

That was impossible. This university professor in his worn suit, chronically short
of research funds? This small man so full of grievances and complaints? Maybe it was
one final fling before he turned sixty. That seemed unlikely, yet it was much more
probable than that he’d been deliberately murdered. Kento was disappointed at this
sordid ending. Is that what his father was now asking him to do in this role-playing
game? Clean up the traces of his affair?

“Let’s not start imagining things,” Kento said. “That woman was probably just somebody
who happened to be there.”

“I hope you’re right,” his mother said, and sighed.

On the train to Machida, Kento’s mind wavered. His life had been turned upside down
so quickly. For the first time ever he was seeing his parents as more than just his
parents. He was seeing them as a married couple.

Until yesterday he’d thought he was already an adult, but these recent experiences
probably marked the true end of adolescence. For better or for worse, it was through
their deaths that parents taught their children their most important lessons.

Kento got off at the Machida station and headed for a bank. He was familiar with the
area, which was about twenty minutes from his home. In high school he’d often gone
there to buy books or see a movie. It was exactly halfway along his father’s normal
route to work. Where he’d rented an apartment, no doubt to rendezvous secretly with
his lover.

The bank that had issued the ATM card had a branch next to a trendy shopping plaza.
Kento went to the ATM, inserted the card into the machine, and punched in 1206. And
sure enough, the balance was five million yen.

Kento was shocked. So his father did have hidden assets, secret savings he’d tucked
away. The amount was so huge Kento was afraid to do anything other than confirm the
balance. One more piece of evidence that his father had been having an affair.

Kento walked back to the station and checked the address his father had given him
on a map of the area. Morikawa was on the other side of the railroad tracks, across
from a bustling shopping and entertainment district.

As he made his way past office buildings and condos, he came upon a narrow alley.
The building should be at the end of that. On the right side of the alley, which looked
like a private road, was a concrete wall; on the left was a fence surrounding a gravel-topped
parking area. Away from the activity of the shopping district, the place was quiet.

Kento made his way down the alley and found the building he was looking for. He came
to a halt and gazed at the two-story wood-and-mortar apartment building.

The outside walls were cracked, the wooden window frames out of kilter, the outside
staircase rusty.

The building was an antique, something left over from the previous century. The narrow
ground around it was overgrown with weeds, as if the structure were ringed by a moat.
Surrounded on both sides by taller, more modern buildings, it looked forlorn, forgotten,
and alone, left behind by the wave of development in the neighborhood. It was a perfect
place for keeping out of sight, but it was a little too eerie to bring a lover to.
To put it crudely, the place was like a haunted house. In fact, Kento didn’t sense
the presence of another soul around him.

Gathering his courage, he walked across the weed-covered ground and up to the building.
Judging from the number of windows, he figured there must be three apartments on each
of the two floors. His father’s memo had said it was apartment 202. Kento checked
the mailboxes, but not a single one had a resident’s name.

He went over to the outside staircase and, feeling like a thief, stuck his hand under
the bottom step.

There was some tape there, and not just in one place. He ripped off the strips of
tape and found a total of three keys. The almost morbid cautiousness his father had
displayed only deepened the bad feeling Kento was getting.

He quietly went up the stairs. On the second-floor hallway were three doors in a row.
Kento went to the middle one, apartment 202. There was no nameplate on the door, but
there was a shiny new lock that looked recently installed. He tried each key in turn,
looking for the right one, and finally was able to unlock the door.

The entranceway was tiny, barely large enough for one person to stand in. On the immediate
right was a sink with a separate small water heater; on the left was a wooden door
to what had to be the lavatory. Kento slipped off his shoes and stepped inside. At
the end of a short hallway was a sliding door, behind which Kento, in his fevered
imagination, pictured a double bed with gaudy sheets.

The room was pitch dark and unexpectedly warm. Kento could hear the faint hum of air
from a heater. He fumbled for the switch and turned on the light. As the cheerless
fluorescent light blinked into life, Kento stared in amazement at the sight before
him.

This was no trysting place for lovers. It was a typical apartment-size room, and blackout
curtains on the window blocked any outside light.

The middle of the room was taken up by a large dining table covered with lab equipment.
On top was a white laptop and a bookshelf on which were stored chemical reagents,
pipettes, Erlenmeyer flasks, a rotary evaporator, and an ultraviolet light. The refrigerator
alongside one wall, too, wasn’t a typical home fridge but the kind used in chemical
experiments. The equipment was familiar, the type Kento used in his lab work. The
lab was outfitted for experiments in Kento’s own field, organic synthesis.

All this equipment must have cost a lot. On the floor lay a sleeping bag and a toothbrush-and-toothpaste
set. Kento knew that whatever task awaited him here, he’d be staying over.

Just then he heard something rustle behind him, and he stiffened. On the wall opposite
the window was a closet he hadn’t noticed before, on the top shelf of which were a
series of large, clear plastic cases. Cages for animals used in experiments, fitted
out with a ventilation system and automatic feeders. Altogether he found forty mice,
in four groups of ten each. The mice had apparently been living all this time in the
closet of this run-down apartment. The twenty mice on the right-hand side looked weak.
Kento wanted to help them, but never having done animal experiments himself, he wasn’t
sure how to proceed. The water feeders were empty, and he was going to fill them with
water from the tap, but then he wondered whether he should used distilled water instead.
He weighed what to do and in the end decided he’d buy some mineral water at a convenience
store before he went back home.