Kimbela laughs at this. It’s clear he’s lapping up Rundle’s unease, his humiliation. But as before, he stops quite abruptly. ‘Very well, my friend. The Chinese, yes? They want to build a network here, a spider’s web of railroads and highways going out from Congo through Angola and Zambia and Tanzania to ports on either side of the continent. And you know why?’ He makes a snorting sound. ‘Of course you do. So they can come here, extract every mineral they can find from under the ground and cut down every tree in every forest and ship it all back to China.’ He holds up a finger. ‘But in exchange they will give us banks and soccer stadiums. Oh, and hospitals, too, and universities. And a functioning sewage system. And they want to do it all themselves, with imported labour, Chinese engineers, Chinese technicians, all living in temporary compounds, speaking Mandarin and eating chow mein. And no talk of human rights, either. None of that paternalistic bullshit we routinely get from you people about political transparency and fighting corruption.’ He stops and smiles. ‘Sounds good, yeah? Sweet? Tempting?’ The smile quickly fades. ‘If you’re in Kinshasa, maybe. If you’re already in the fucking government. But not for someone like me. Out here. In the hills.’ He thumps his chest. ‘In this brave new world, there’s no place for someone like me.’
This is shouted.
Rundle flinches.
‘You Americans?’ Kimbela goes on. ‘You have no real policy for Africa. The politburo in Beijing, they’re thinking one hundred years into the future. But what are you doing? Setting up AFRICOM? With its headquarters in Stuttgart? Is that meant to be some kind of a joke? No, you’ve got nothing to offer us but bureaucracy and aid and inefficiency and…’ – he drags the words out – ‘spectacular ignorance. But you know what? It’s fine. I love it. Plus ça change.’
Rundle isn’t too sure what point Kimbela is trying to make here. He’s beginning to understand how J.J. felt, and it obviously shows in his face.
‘Look,’ Kimbela says, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘what I’m telling you is, this thing, this arrangement we have.’ He waves a hand back and forth between them. ‘It suits me very well. I don’t want it to change.’ There is a long pause, during which his smile slowly returns. ‘And that, my friend, is what I told your brother.’
‘Yes, but…’ Jimmy looks around this spectral hotel lobby. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to sit. The place is empty. Are they just going to stand here? He looks back at Conway. ‘Protect you from what?’
‘My part in what happened. Not that Phil Sweeney actually knows what happened. He doesn’t. Which is something, by the way, you should get straight in your head right now.’
Jimmy nods.
Conway then seems to brace himself. He picks a spot on the dusty concrete floor to stare at, and starts talking. ‘I’d been trying to sell First Continental for years. It was one of my old man’s early companies and originally consisted of five copper mines spread out over various parts of eastern Congo, but with what was going on there, the unrest, the war, he lost most of the concessions and when he died there was just one left, near a place called Buenke, but even that hadn’t been operational for about five or six years. I tried to sell it, couldn’t and then more or less forgot about it.’ He looks up at Jimmy for a moment and a flicker of doubt crosses his face. ‘You do know what I’m talking about, right? My father? Conway & Co.? I’m assuming you’ve got background on all of this. You actually are a journalist?’
Jimmy nods. ‘Yeah, of course I am.’
Conway narrows his eyes. ‘Right. Anyway, I get this offer, out of the blue, for First Continental and the mine at Buenke. It’s from BRX and is decent enough, I suppose, but I’m thinking, they’re a huge company, interests everywhere, always expanding, maybe they’ll shell out a little more.’ He shrugs, half apologetically. ‘Look, I’m a businessman. You don’t just accept an initial offer without…’ He hesitates, then waves the point away. ‘So. It turns out that Clark Rundle, the CEO of BRX, is coming to Ireland to attend some conference and he suggests that we meet up to discuss the offer. Now at the time, I’ll be honest with you, I thought this was pretty weird. A guy like him? Of his stature? Negotiating the sale of an old copper mine?’ He pauses. ‘But what was I going to do? Not go?’ He pauses again. ‘It was a weekend thing, at Drumcoolie Castle in Tipperary, corporate ethics in the age of globalisation, some crap like that. Anyway, I meet Rundle on the Friday evening, with a couple of his cronies, and we get on pretty well. At first, he seems like a bit of a stuffed shirt, but then he loosens up. I’m flattered too by all the attention I’m receiving, and then doubly so – more, in fact – when I realise just who one of the guys with him is, an old guy, James Vaughan. Of the Oberon Capital Group. Who I’m now looking at and thinking, what’s he doing here? He isn’t listed as one of the delegates – I checked up on it later. Nevertheless, he seems to be paying very close attention to everything that’s happening, and in particular to the conversation Rundle and I are having. Strange thing is, as the evening progresses, and although they don’t say anything about it explicitly, I get the impression from both of them that they’re excited, giddy almost, at the prospect of acquiring this shitty little copper mine in the middle of nowhere.’ He pauses. ‘Now why would that be, I find myself asking. There’s also something arrogant about them, in their attitude to me, like I’m stupid and won’t notice what’s going on. Needless to say, that rankles.’ He stops and takes a deep breath. ‘Jesus. I can’t believe I’m doing this.’
Jimmy doesn’t move a muscle.
‘OK.’ Conway takes another deep breath. ‘You know, when I look back at it now, at that evening – we were in the main lounge, the Angler’s it’s called – I can see that everything was in place for what happened afterwards. We were there. Gianni Bonacci was there. He was a couple of tables over, with some of the Nike people. And Susie Monaghan was there, up at the bar with Niall Feeley. It’s like a… a tableau.’ He pauses to visualise it.
Jimmy tries to visualise it, too. Lounge of a big country hotel? Mahogany-panelled walls? Red leather armchairs? Fine art prints of hunting and angling scenes?
He looks at Conway, who seems lost in reverie. Jimmy has some questions here, needs certain things clarified, but does he ask now, or wait? He waits about two seconds. ‘How did you know them all?’
Conway looks at him. ‘Dublin. Everyone knows everyone. I knew Niall from years back, and of course I knew Susie. Who didn’t?’ He sighs. ‘And for some reason Bonacci stuck out. He didn’t have that executive look.’ He pauses again, his eyes busy, as though he’s trying to work out how much he’s said so far and if there’s any chance he might be able to just cut loose at this point and stop.
Jimmy jumps in. ‘So, what then?’
‘Well, later on, I got talking to Niall and Susie at the bar, and somehow Gianni Bonacci ended up joining us. You know how it is, people come, people go, but at the same time I think he was mesmerised by Susie. He kept staring at her from his table and eventually just came over and wormed his way in. He started talking to Niall and within ten minutes had got himself invited to go on this big, all-bloke trip Niall and Ted Walker were organising for Sunday. They’d hired a helicopter and were going to be scouring the Donegal coastline for good spots where they could go paragliding later in the summer. Anyway, after a while I got talking to him myself and before I realised he was a UN inspector I was telling him about the mine at Buenke and how I was in the process of selling it to Clark Rundle. I mean, why not? It wasn’t a state secret or anything. I didn’t go into any of the details, but he seemed very interested and after another couple of drinks started asking me if I knew what was going on in that part of the DRC and if I’d ever heard of Arnold Kimbela. I said of course I had.’ He pauses. ‘Even though I hadn’t.’