Cali gave him a wary look. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m not positive. We need to talk to the villagers. Someone old preferably. Come on.”
“Can you give me a minute,” Cali asked. “I need to powder my nose.”
“Powder your — Oh, sorry. Sure.”
He stayed at the trench while Cali meandered into the jungle. He called to her. “Don’t go out of earshot.”
“Peeing fetish,” she called back. “Like to listen, do you?”
Mercer could tell she was teasing. “Watch usually.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going any farther than decorum requires.”
After five minutes Mercer called her name.
“A minute,” she answered, her voice strained. “Jesus, what do they call Montezuma’s Revenge in this part of the world?”
Mercer kept the instant concern from his voice. “In India I’ve heard it called Hindu Tush. Egypt it’s Tut’s Curse or Pharaoh’s Fanny. I don’t think Central Africa has its own nom de poop.”
“Cute.” Her voice sounded a bit stronger. A minute later she emerged from the jungle. She looked none the worse for her troubles.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Fortunately when I get the, ah, Congo River Runs, it passes quickly. No pun intended.”
“Want me to carry your bag?”
Cali tightened the strap over on her shoulder. “No. I’m fine.”
The village sat atop the bluff with a commanding view of the river below. Ten or so acres of jungle had been cleared to raise crops, manioc mostly. Several near-feral dogs roamed the round huts while a pair of staked goats watched Mercer and Cali’s approach with disinterest, their bodies as scraggly as their beards. It wasn’t until they reached what passed as the village square that the first person came out to greet them, a child of about six wearing an overly large Manchester United T-shirt that fell past her knees. A woman in a print dress dashed from her rondavel and rushed the child back inside. A moment later an old woman emerged from the same hut. Her face was perfectly round and so deeply wrinkled that the only way to see her eyes was by the light reflecting off them. She leaned on a cane made of a tree root and wore a shapeless dress that completely covered her ample figure. She said something in a dialect Mercer didn’t know, an accusatory question by the tone. Her voice was a force of nature that startled birds into flight and sent one of the dogs slinking with its tail curled under its belly.
“Pardon, madam,” Mercer said in French. “Parlezvous Français?”
She stood as silent as a statue for a moment, appraising the two white people, then grunted something into the hut. The child’s mother emerged with the toddler clinging to her shoulder.
“I speak English,” the young woman said haltingly.
“Better and better.” Mercer gave her his best smile. “We’re American.”
The matron said something else to the younger woman. She lowered her child to the ground and went back into her hut. When she reemerged she carried a low stool and set it on the ground behind whom Mercer assumed was her mother, or maybe grandmother. With a groan the old woman lowered herself onto the stool. Mercer half expected the chair to collapse as the woman’s generous backside enveloped the seat.
Mercer and Cali approached a few paces and hunched down near the woman’s bare feet. She smelled of wood smoke and animal dung. In the doorways of other huts Mercer could see eyes watching them — most of them female and all of them older.
“Where are all the young people?” Cali asked.
“Gone into the jungle,” Mercer said bitterly. “I’ve seen this happen before. Other places, other wars. With Dayce on the move, everyone who can takes off, leaving those too old or infirm behind.”
“My God that’s…”
“I know.” The young mother must have stayed behind to care for her elder, though Mercer couldn’t understand why someone didn’t take her baby when they fled. He looked more carefully at the child and understood why. She had a tumor on her neck the size of an orange, an angry reddish mass that if left untreated would soon choke off her breathing. Cancer. Why would someone slow themselves down with a child who would die soon anyway?
“You are very brave to stay,” Mercer said slowly.
The woman said nothing, but her wide eyes filled with tears.
“I have a truck near the ferryboat that crosses the Chinko River. I can take you all with me to Rafai.” As quickly as the tears welled, they subsided and the woman’s stoic expression exploded with a smile. “Tell the others to prepare,” he added. “We can leave in a few minutes.”
“You are from the government?”
Mercer didn’t want to explain to her that her government had pretty much abandoned everyone north of Kivu. “Yes.”
The woman shouted out to the villagers, many of whom had stepped from their mud and thatch huts. In seconds they ducked back into their homes to collect anything of value the younger people hadn’t already taken when they ran away.
“What do you know of the mine on the bluff overlooking the river?” She didn’t respond, so Mercer said, “The holes dug into the hill. Do you know who did it?”
She spoke to the old woman, who in turn gave a lengthy reply punctuated by a wet cough. “A white man came when my grandmother was a child.” That put the time frame right in Mercer’s mind. “He paid the men to dig many holes; then he left with crates of dirt. Some time passed and then more men came. They forced the men of our village to dig more holes and they took away even more dirt.”
“Soon after, did the people of your village get sick?” Mercer touched his neck in the same spot where the little girl had her tumor.
The young mother clutched her daughter’s hand. “That is what my grandmother says. Many children die and many are born with…” She didn’t have the words to describe the horrors of newborns deformed by the ravages of acute radiation poisoning, many of whom probably never took a breath.
Mercer turned to Cali. “I think this is where the United States mined pitchblende during World War Two.”
“I thought that came from the Congo,” Cali said quickly, then stammered, “That is the stuff used in the atomic bomb, right? I saw a special on the History Channel about the Manhattan Project a month ago. I could have sworn they said we got our uranium ore from the Congo.”
“I’m not sure,” Mercer replied. “But someone mined something from here, and judging by the woman’s age I’d guess around the Second World War. Then a short time later the villagers begin suffering what sounds like radiation poisoning. Then it’s discovered this place has the highest cancer rate in the world. The guy who did the initial medical survey probably thought the mine was irrigation canals or something and never put the pieces together. Usually pitchblende isn’t dangerous. It needs to be refined before radiation concentrations are high enough to cause illness. But not here apparently. The natural concentration of uranium 235 was high enough to cause birth defects and cancer.”
The old woman spoke to her granddaughter. She went back into her hut and returned with something in her hands. It slipped when she handed it to Mercer. He picked it up from the ground. It was a metal canteen with a waterproofed canvas cover. The olive-drab canvas was frayed and brittle but remarkably intact. The metal was still bright. It looked government-issue to Mercer. He slid the canteen out of its cover and a scrap of paper fell to the ground. Written on it were the words “Property of Chester Bowie.”
He showed it to Cali. “That’s an American name if there ever was one. I think the History Channel got it wrong.”
The daughter translated what her grandmother was saying. “The first man. He gave this to my grandfather’s father.” The old woman pulled something from around her neck, a leather thong she wore as a necklace. Hanging from it was a small copper object fastened to the leather by a tiny wire cage. “The second men, the ones who came later, gave her this.”