The night porter, hovering behind her in the little three-door lobby, said apologetically, ‘Miss Asov was insistent, and as she was dropped off by Colonel Kebila himself…’
‘That’s fine,’ said Richard. ‘You did the right thing. Come in Anastasia and tell me what’s on your mind. Did you know, by the way, that your father’s in the suite next door?’
‘My father?’ Anastasia almost scurried into Richard’s room. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she demanded, closing the door with her shoulders and glaring at him as though her father was his fault.
‘Trying to sell the government some massive hovercraft. And a brand new T80U main battle tank.’ Richard’s words were airily dismissive but his mind, like Kebila’s under similar circumstances, was racing. ‘You look dreadful,’ he continued cheerily. ‘You’d better tell me what’s going on. Coffee or tea?’
Unlike Kebila, Richard had no trouble in believing Anastasia. ‘It sounds as though Kebila will be able to get more intel on the smugglers,’ he said. ‘Especially as he has a suspect he can question. But it’s what’s going on along the north bank of the river and right in the heart of the delta that’s really worrying. And the fact that Robin’s in the middle of it now as well as Celine. I don’t know how President Chaka will react — he sent Robin up there to bring Celine back for a family reconciliation. He’s going to want to take action — and quickly. But he’s disbanded most of the late President Banda’s army. He’s kept some of his own men — like Kebila and Captain Caleb — and the T80 tanks that helped him win the presidency. He has the rump of an air force, some choppers — but nothing big. Nor any special forces he could get upriver in sufficient numbers to find and confront General Nlong and his army.’
He stopped speaking for a moment, his eyes narrow.
‘But I think I know a man who has,’ he said. He rose to his full height, strode into his bedroom, grabbed his dressing gown and swung it on as he stepped into his slippers. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered, and Anastasia didn’t dream of arguing.
Five minutes of knocking on Max Asov’s door finally elicited a response. A tousled, heavy-eyed, less than happy Max opened up. ‘Richard!’ he spat. ‘What—’ Then he saw his daughter who had been hiding behind his friend and stopped speaking, winded by surprise.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Max,’ said Richard cheerfully. ‘But it’s important.’
EIGHTEEN
Compound
Caleb Maina had no real intention of excluding the women from his plans, Robin thought. But now that the going was getting tough, he was focussing on the elements aboard he was certain he could rely on. He turned to Lieutenant Sanda, therefore, and Robin was vaguely surprised that he didn’t order her and Bonnie off the bridge while they talked.
‘To sum up,’ the captain said to his first lieutenant. ‘The latest intel suggests that what we have discovered on the south bank at Citematadi is almost irrelevant in the face of what has been happening on the north bank…’ He listed in terse militarese that strained Robin’s understanding of the Matadi dialect the details that had just come in from Naval headquarters, with the further information added by Colonel Kebila. ‘We have to decide our own priorities and report what action we propose,’ he summed up. ‘Keep HQ informed. But what should those priorities be?’
Sanda was a slow, methodical man, who weighed the odds and did not rush to judgement. ‘As I see it, we have two conflicting calls on us,’ he said. ‘HQ needs us to check on the situation downriver in Malebo — has everyone including the president’s daughter really vanished from the clinic there? If so, where have they gone? But HQ also wants us to see if we can find out what’s happening upriver. Has the Army of Christ the Infant really hit the church and orphanage compound up there? If so, what state are the survivors in — if there are any? And what can we do to help them?’
‘And where is the extremist army at the moment — and where is it headed next?’ Caleb concluded. He sighed. So many priorities, so little time. And the president’s daughter thrown in for good measure. Robin looked at the frowning man with lively sympathy. Then she thought that Richard dealt with conundrums like this on a regular basis and usually came out OK. Where was the bloody man when you really needed him?
In her husband’s almost wilful absence, Robin opened her mouth to give some advice, but Bonnie beat her to it. ‘This is my field of expertise,’ she said quietly. ‘My doctorate is not just on West African belief systems but also on social organization — including the phenomenon of armies such as the Army of Christ the Infant. Basically they are scavengers. They have such a high attrition rate that they need to keep topping themselves up constantly with new recruits, with supplies to feed them, with artefacts that let them keep their bank accounts full — even if they carry their currency around in trucks with them. They need to have enough wealth in barter goods, gold, blood diamonds or conflict minerals, as well as good hard cash to allow the purchase of transport, fuel, arms and ammunition, and drugs. They have to have drugs because that’s how they keep the kids in line. Drugs and magic — Obi. Crack and Ngoboi.
‘They isolate the kids they pick up from any hope of returning to their original adult communities by making them perform specifically targeted acts that look like random barbarism to us, but which are carefully designed to break the most basic… call them taboos. Once a kid has killed a relative, raped a cousin, eaten part of a body, they can never go back, even if there’s anything or anyone left alive to go back to. From that point on there is only the army, except for a very lucky few. Very lucky. Very few. But of course there are problems of guilt and fear; the kids have committed the most terrible sins and they know it. Added terror in the build-up to battles and so forth. That’s where the drugs come in. They dull a guilty conscience, stop the nightmares, give loads of Dutch courage as well as building dependency. Free sex with any of the girls they have along with them helps too of course; the soldiers are mostly teenage boys after all.
‘And Obi, like I say. Magic far beyond the simple Poro jungle societies that a good few of the older kids have been inducted into, in any case. You’ll all have read accounts of soldiers wearing wigs, make-up, outlandish costumes. They believe these make them bulletproof — because as often as not Ngoboi has told them so. But of course it’s all lies. The kids aren’t protected. They get killed and wounded. They get depressed and try to kill themselves. They get AIDS from the random sex. They get hurt in accidents. Whatever. But the drugs the army has are recreational, not medical. They don’t have doctors of their own — that’s why they’ve taken Malebo’s, I guess. They don’t look after their invalids like a regular army. Anyone who slows them down gets slaughtered and left behind — unless they get added to the food locker.’ She paused for breath.
‘So,’ concluded Caleb. ‘The army is like a shark. It keeps moving or it dies.’
‘Unless there are circumstances that conspire to stop it. But that would have to be something quite unusual, because it would put the continued existence of the army itself at risk. And I have to say that where the Army of Christ has been, there’s never anything left behind. Certainly no one needing any kind of help, apart from a decent burial.’
‘So, we check on Malebo. Sounds like we’d be wasting our time heading upriver…’
‘Not necessarily,’ interjected Robin. ‘Think it through. Who, apart from General Nlong or his men, would want to isolate Malebo and then take a clinic full of doctors, medical supplies and nurses? And why would they do that unless someone needed medical attention? Someone so powerful that they could command this to be done — someone so vital that they wouldn’t just be left to die because they’re slowing the others down, like Bonnie says.’