Old Lovers Don't Die (28 page)

“I’m sure that they know you are here. I spotted Kim and some of her assistants in the town this morning hoping obviously that I would lead them to Michelangelo.”

“Kim also knows that Michelangelo has a photographic memory; therefore they need both my iPhone and Michelangelo to ensure the Chinese government is not severely embarrassed.”

“I assume Chantal knows that you are here and let you in?”

“Yes she was wonderful. Put on the coffee and said that I could use the bedroom where Isabella was staying.”

“Do you have your iPhone?”

“It’s in my bag. I’ll go and get it!”

Cindy show Christian Notes on her phone where the Bump application had transferred the documents. The first document had a heading in English. It was titled
Acquisition and Control of Resources/ Congo
.
What followed was a list of large Chinese corporate companies linked to a holding company in Beijing called Dragons Lair and located at the National Defence Ministry. Another diagram showed that Dragons Lair was in turn was an extension of Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China. It was clearly official Chinese government business, the publication of which would be devastating.

The second document he opened outlined a strategy to provide direct access for Chinese companies to the resources of the Congo. A detailed plan included utilizing Rwandan support, both political and business. A list of prominent Rwandan executives and politicians was included in the first subsection. Humanitarian Aid was to be utilised as a front to boost China’s international image and facilitate the takeover of Northern Congo. An orphanage within half an hour of the Congolese border was to be acquired with the help of the Rwandans, and to be fully supported by the Chinese National Defence Ministry. It would also coordinate the distribution of arms to supportive militia. A subsection in the second document was titled: Military support for the killing of Kariba Offengowe. The killing was proposed at a meeting outside of Goma. Comptoirs Assad and Segal, who controlled the resources out of Congo, were to be present and were to be blamed for the killing. The power vacuum that would ensue would allow China and Rwanda, through Brutal Bosco, full access to all the Congo’s minerals.

A further document outlined the financial commitment of Chinese companies to the building in Rwanda of warehouses, factories to produce computers and mobile phones as well as repackaging centres for truckloads of ore. All resources would then be rebranded and sent to smelters, nominated by the Chinese National Defence Ministry. This document said it would avoid international approbation for extraction of mineral resources from the Congo utilising child and slave labor.

Christian looked up at Cindy once he had finished reading.

“Have you emailed this to someone you trust?”

“Yes, my brother in Wisconsin who is a judge.”

“Good, as long as someone has it, that may well be then a guarantee against anything happening to you or Michelangelo.”

“Can I see Michelangelo? I would love to give him a hug and just reassure him.”

“I’m sure we can arrange that tomorrow. We might need to get you some long flowing robes,” Christian said as Cindy gave him a puzzled look in return.

“Christian.”

Christian partly opened his eyes, and could see the small black silk surgical suture with which he had repaired the mosquito net. Beyond, he could see Emmanuel’s concerned face staring at him.

“Christian, are you awake?” Christian now also felt a gentle shake of his shoulder through the mosquito net.

Half asleep, Emmanuel’s question still struck him as one of those strange questions to ask someone, whether they were awake when you could clearly see that they were asleep.

“What is it?”

Christian opened his eyes fully, his brain starting to function. It must be something serious, as Emmanuel never came in to wake him up, only Chantal. That he was not smiling suggested something very significant.

“Is it Isabella?”

“No, get up and come through to the kitchen and I’ll tell you what has happened at the hospital overnight.”

“The friends of mine who arrived from South Africa, which I told you about last night, have medication for Matthew that we can start this morning,” Christian said as he pulled on his clothes. However, Emmanuel had already walked back into the kitchen.

Christian walked into the kitchen tightening his belt; at one end of the bench was a cup of coffee, steam gently drifting upwards. Emmanuel was sitting at the other end, an empty bread and butter plate with a few scattered crumbs from recent toast, next to his cup. Christian sat down on the spare stool, looked at the steam rising from his coffee, and decided it was too hot to drink. He looked across at Emmanuel. He had not moved from the time that Christian had come into the room, and his eyes remained fixed on his coffee. The way in which both hands encircled the cup suggested to Christian that the news was even worse than what he anticipated. Emmanuel felt Christian’s gaze and looked up.

“There is no easy way to say this; Matthew died last night.”

Christian felt the sickening feeling rise in his throat, and briefly wondered whether he would throw up. Matthew was dead; what hope was there now for Isabella?

“The only hope for Isabella is to try to get her back from Kariba. I think I should come and meet those friends of yours who arrived from South Africa last night. There is a small window of opportunity as Matthew’s mother left to go and look after one of her other sick children last night. She will not get the news of Matthew’s death until later this morning.”

“I was going to meet them for breakfast at 7 AM; I’ll just let Cindy know what we are doing.”

Emmanuel and Christian walked the 1 km to the Lakeside Hotel in silence. Christian had given Cindy Mohammed’s phone number and suggested that she text him after the morning prayers. He would, Christian knew, work out a way to get Cindy to see Michelangelo. The Lakeside Hotel car park was lined with old Victorian style lights, another reminder of the homesick Belgian colonials. The antique lights contrasted vividly with many sparkling new four-wheel drive vehicles parked side-by-side, the United Nations logo loudly emblazoned on their doors.

The young girl behind the reception desk smiled broadly as they walked in and welcomed Emmanuel as a friend. After a few minutes of chatting, Emmanuel turned and said to Christian,

“Your friends are waiting for us out on the deck next to the pool. Follow me.”

A sliding door led out onto a large wooden deck on which were half a dozen round tables. Each had shelter provided by a large green canvas umbrella. An enormous kidney-shaped swimming pool stretched beyond the deck towards the lake. At the third table to the left, as they walked out through the sliding door, he could see Mike McMahon and Galela. When he had visited Cape Town immediately before doing medicine, Mike and his wife Sian had looked after him. They had also helped in the search for information on his father, Jannie de Villiers. Mike, in addition, had also been the anaesthetist and coordinator of his father’s liver transplant program. Mike and Sian had then introduced him to Sibokwe, his father’s first successful child liver transplant recipient. Sibokwe was now Minister of Health in South Africa. Galela at the time was the only black operative in the white apartheid Bureau of State Security [B.O.S.S.]. He had never established whether Galela had another name. He had always just known him as Galela. Mike and Galela had rescued both he and Isabella from the mine where a white supremacist group had held them hostage. Both had become firm friends with his mother and he knew they remained in regular email contact.

As he looked across to where they both sat, the familiar tousled hair and profile of Mike was reassuring to see. He looked as fit and as athletic as when he had last seen him in Cape Town. Mike was casually dressed in a light blue polo neck shirt, short sleeves displaying the muscular forearms related to his long-term interest in the martial arts. Galela with his back to him was still instantly recognizable. Broad shoulders, a thick muscular neck, and a height of 193 cm still suggested great physical power and dominance—a power which had been instrumental in saving Christian’s life.

Mike immediately stood up on seeing them walk out through the sliding door and called out.

“Christian, great to see you!” before closing the space between them with two big strides, grinning broadly and then taking Christian in a firm embrace.

“Great to see you too, Mike. It doesn’t seem like nine years; you look as fit and healthy as when I last saw you in Cape Town,” Christian said, before turning to introduce Emmanuel.

Galela pushed his chair back from the table and waited for Christian to disentangle himself from Mike before grasping Christian’s hand and with a knowing smile, saying:

“Good to see you, young man. You have turned out to be the spitting image of your dad. Come and sit down; we have got lots to talk about and not much time, I think.”

The large green umbrella shaded the table from the early morning sun, but not the dazzling glare from the crystal-clear swimming pool. Christian positioned himself with his back to the swimming pool to reduce the glare, while Mike and Galela reached for their sunglasses. It was, Christian felt, a little surreal, almost like a scene from some spy movie, two genuine spooks in sunglasses, he with information for the next mission.

“Would you like coffee or breakfast?” Mike said as he pulled out a long sealed cardboard tube from a brown leather bag next to his chair.

“I will have bacon and eggs and sausages,” Emmanuel quickly replied, scanning the menu, while Mike extracted what appeared to be a map from the cardboard tube.

“Nothing for me,” Christian said to the waiter who was now taking Emmanuel’s order.

Christian watched Mike straighten out the rolled up paper. He placed the pepper grinder on one corner, then the saltshaker on the other, and finally the sugar bowl at the bottom edge to prevent the paper curling up. Christian moved a little closer to see what had been unfurled. It was, from the markings, a satellite map on which a line had been drawn indicating the Congolese and Rwandan borders. On the Congolese side was marked North and South Kivu, and in the northern part of the map, there were three distinct triangles; one was circled. All were approximately fifteen to twenty kilometres inside the Congo, he estimated according to the scale on the side of the map. Christian wanted to ask how they had satellite maps when South Africa had no satellites. Mike, reading his mind, pointed at the bottom of the map where it was stamped
International Intelligence Community.

“Those are the three locations where we think Isabella might be held,” Galela said. “We have asked our friends in IIC to monitor that region and they have narrowed it down to that site there which has been circled, which also is the closest to one of the largest mining operations at Mount Golgotha and has a fully functional airport next to it for the export of ore to Goma. This is the magnified version of that circled area.”

Christian and Emmanuel looked at the high-powered high-resolution photograph that Galela overlaid on the map. The detail was remarkable, almost as though someone had flown above it in a helicopter and photographed it from approximately eight hundred metres. It was a compound with one large multiform Weston style villa, surrounded on all sides by fences with one road leading to the main gate. All buildings were clearly visible, with fifteen or twenty small huts scattered throughout for security and some workers. There were sentry towers placed on each corner of the compound overseeing the airport. To Christian, it looked a formidable fortress.

“Isabella has her mobile phone with her,” Mike said more as a statement then a question.

“Yes, she does, but I don’t know whether it has been confiscated or switched off or disabled, as she hasn’t replied to any of my text messages.”

“That doesn’t matter; we have checked. Kariba has created his own telecommunications tower which means we were able to access her phone. We have confirmed that the circle is currently the place where she’s kept. The other places with silver triangles are where we have received other GPS coordinates. He obviously keeps moving her around.”

“How did you manage that if the phone was either switched off or flat?” Emmanuel asked.

“We remotely uploaded a program Plan B to her phone. Nadine, Isabella’s mother, found the details of her phone that she had purchased before going to London. We weren’t certain from your email whether she had her phone with her, but when we uploaded Plan B, it automatically switched on her GPS locator in the phone. We texted ‘locate’ to the phone and the GPS coordinates confirmed that was the main house.”

“You may only have a small window of opportunity to get her back,” Emmanuel interrupted. “Matthew’s mother will be returning to the hospital today and will find out that Matthew has died which will mean, given Kariba’s reputation, he will kill Isabella.”

“We need to move quickly then,” Mike said looking at Emmanuel. “Do you have a vehicle that we could use to get close to the compound where she is being held in North Kivu?”

“The old ambulance that we used to get the boys back from the Congo, could we use that?” Christian said.

“You can certainly use that. I will walk up to the hospital and send it to meet you as I would assume that you’re not going to go and try and rescue her empty-handed.”

“We have come prepared, thanks to our friends in the airline who know how to get weaponry through customs.”

“I want to come with you.”

“Christian, knowing your father and your mother as I do, I thought you might say that. But this is potentially dangerous and I do not want to risk your mother’s wrath again!”

“I know it’s dangerous, but I have done dangerous with you before, remember, and the priority is to get Isabella out. In addition, if we can get photographic evidence of the abuse, it might help shock the world out of its lethargy when it comes to child slavery. I have not told you about Michelangelo and the Chinese development yet, but I suspect that is all involved. Besides which, Isabella brought me a 500 mm telephoto lens as a birthday present from my mother, which means I could record images safely from four hundred metres while you did your thing.”

“Stubborn, just like your father was - and obviously with his gene to try and rectify wrongs in the world. All right, you can come with us but you are the driver. The deal is that you stay well back once we go to rescue Isabella. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“We are also fully aware of the Chinese involvement and the desire for exclusive access to the minerals.”

Within fifteen minutes John had arrived with the M.A.S.H. ambulance.

“Good luck,” he said as he handed the keys to Christian. “Emmanuel has put your camera and telephoto lens under the front seat.”

Mike and Galela quickly transferred two wooden boxes to the back of the ambulance from their four-wheel-drive, and then lashed them in place. Once secure, the combinations on the boxes were opened, and Christian could see that the first box contained first aid equipment: bandages, IV lines, and air splints. In the second were an assortment of weapons, some with telescopic sights, others short nosed machine pistols, and handguns.

“Let’s go,” Mike said, squeezing himself into the front seat alongside Galela, and closing the door. Both had on green and brown camouflage clothing with black leather gloves, the fingers of which had been cut out.

Christian headed out through the car park, turned right and up the hill past the hospital. The thought suddenly occurred to him that they would have to go through the main street and Kim might be watching. She might assume that they were going to rescue Michelangelo. He was clearly visible in the old truck, and pulling down the sunshade he knew would not fully obscure him from her view. The number of people streaming down the road meant he could not drive faster than first gear. If she was where she was the other day, she would certainly spot him. As they drew level with the balcony and window that she had been watching from the previous day, he quickly glanced up. Fortunately, there was no one in the window, no tell-tale splash of yellow from Kim’s jacket. He quickly glanced down the alleyway next to the building. No black Range Rover to be seen. Twenty minutes beyond the town, the stream of people started to decrease and Christian could speed up a little bit. With concentration easier, Christian told Mike and Galela about Michelangelo. Mike, who had been watching the GPS tracker said without looking up, “Let us deal with Isabella first, if and then, we can sort out Michelangelo, who appears to be safe with Mohammed.”