‘Are you perhaps South African?’
The other nodded so hard his beard gave off a breeze. ‘Born and bred and proud of it.’
‘My countryman!’ Jimfish embraced him. ‘One of us!’
The other extricated himself and gave Jimfish a careful look. ‘Up to a point, maybe.’
‘Where exactly are you from?’ Jimfish asked eagerly.
‘From little Port Pallid, on the Indian Ocean,’ said the soldier.
Jimfish knew suddenly who he was and his heart blazed with happiness.
‘What blessed luck! You’re Deon Arlow, brother of Lunamiel.’
The other nodded. ‘Commandant Arlow, if you don’t mind. And now that I cast my mind back, aren’t you the fellow who was sitting, or even lying, on a red picnic rug in my father’s orchard, entangled with my sister?’
‘That’s right!’ Jimfish was overjoyed, after being so long so lost in the world, to meet a fellow countryman.
‘My dad got so damn furious he tried to shoot you.’ Deon Arlow laughed at the memory. ‘It’s only natural. But you got away scot-free. Isn’t that so, hey?’
So overwhelmed with delight at meeting another of his own kind was Jimfish that he found himself nodding. After all, shooting people was what Sergeant Arlow did for a living. It was nothing personal. In fact, Jimfish felt a tiny twinge of remorse at having deprived Sergeant Arlow of doing what came so naturally. As he sat and sipped his brandy and Coke he felt a surge of South African camaraderie so strong he almost apologized to Deon Arlow for having got away scot-free.
CHAPTER 22
Deon Arlow poured Jimfish another brandy and Coke.
‘I’m the first to say those were mad times. Race, colour, blood and tribe drove us crazy. But that’s all behind us now. I’m so proud that my sister Lunamiel was at the forefront of this push into Africa.’
‘As I remember,’ said Jimfish, ‘you traded her for mineral rights in Zaire.’
‘Exactly. A brave move at the time, I can tell you. Who says white guys can’t adapt and reach out to our African brothers? Commerce not conflict is the way to go. Since we embedded my sister in Zairean high society I’ve opened branches in Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with more deals to come.’
‘And what’s the name of this excellent example of commercial outreach?’ Jimfish asked.
‘Superior Solutions,’ came the reply.
Jimfish remembered Brigadier Bare-Butt’s warm greeting when they met behind the line of burnt-out army trucks during the battle for Monrovia.
‘You mean you fight other people’s wars — for money?’
Deon Arlow shook his head so violently his beard swung to and fro beneath his chin like a bushy pendulum.
‘Not just money. We take gold, oil, dollars, platinum, rare earths, uranium yellow cake — in this case’ — he pulled out a linen bag very like the one John Doe had been carrying — ‘it’s diamonds.’
‘But then, surely, you must be mercenaries?’ Jimfish was appalled.
The Commandant smiled at his naiveté. ‘Mercenaries are medieval. Then came conscripts, when the worst of the fighting fell to lowly private soldiers. But the willingness to die in numbers is not what it was. The old cannon-fodder model is kaput. Replaced by the contractor paradigm. Think of us as management consultants sans frontières. Businessmen, not brigands. We consult, confer, clobber, console. In return, we are paid in whatever currency the dominant warlord prefers.’
Jimfish was confused by this talk of models and paradigms. ‘Then who does the killing?’
The Commandant shook his head. ‘Not a word we use. We contain, counter, stabilize, neutralize, pulverize. We contract to downsize the bad guys or maximize the weak. Sometimes we save innocents from being hacked to pieces by lawless soldiery. We can peacekeep or we can plaster enemy guts all over the bloody place. Outsourcing assets. More and more countries are seeing the light. The Great Leopard in Zaire, he headhunts Croat and Serb snipers to put down local uprisings at home. Makes an internal market, because Serbs and Croats hate each other and so they compete on kill-rates.’
The Commandant walked over to the map of Africa on the wall and tapped Pretoria. ‘Here’s the question I asked myself when I started out: why look abroad for talents we’ve got at home? For decades our own government spent buckets of blood and bags of treasure fighting black terrorists — and most whites were pretty damn happy with that. Then, just last year, without a word of warning, our new President caves in, signs a peace treaty and tells us to jump into bed with the enemy. Where does that leave lots of young guys — white and black — who’ve never known anything but war and more war? If they can’t kick it, eat it, shoot it or screw it they haven’t a clue what to do. That’s when I saw a gap in the market. Our rulers may have thrown in the towel and settled for peace, but plenty of other rogue regimes — all over Africa — are in the market, looking to do what we did so well. Only they don’t have our skills or our arms industry.’
The Commandant marched Jimfish to the window and pointed to the white soldiers who had escorted him from the chopper, now grabbing a bit of shut-eye in the shade.
‘I said to myself: “Deon, my boy, there must be a rich niche for a mobile fighting force with terrific weapons and a civilizing mission.” I started in a small way over in Angola, cleaning out rebel strongholds. And now I have more work than I can handle. You want a coup backed — or bust? You want your current dictator safe — or dead? You need the folks over the hill to be conclusively terminated? Look no further. Superior Solutions has the plan to suit your treasury. Right now, I’m fixing a deal with interested parties, right here in Freetown.’ He poured Jimfish another large brandy and Coke and raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Superior Solutions: a proudly South African company.’
Jimfish felt it was only polite to join in the toast, before asking Deon Arlow a question of vital importance.
‘And what can you tell me of your sister Lunamiel?’
The Commandant shrugged: ‘I hear she’s been grabbed by that demented Liberian mystic Brigadier Bare-Butt. I’m no racist. All’s fair in love and war, etcetera. But between you and me I’d love to whizz across the border into Liberia and nail the brigadier’s ugly backside to a baobab.’
‘I’ll come with you!’ cried Jimfish. ‘We can take the helicopter and rescue my Lunamiel and then we’ll get married.’
‘Hold it right there!’ Deon Arlow was furious. ‘What did you just say? My sister is a white girl, one hundred and fifty per cent pure-as-snow European and proud of it. Back home in Port Pallid my late father made me swear I would never ever let his daughter — an Aryan to the nth degree — marry a black man.’
‘You hold it right there!’ Jimfish was himself suddenly so angry he quite surprised himself. ‘Didn’t you lease-lend Lunamiel on a timeshare contract to the Zairean Minister of Education?’
‘That was business,’ said Deon Arlow. ‘Constructive engagement. It is not the same as letting my sister marry a black man.’
‘Who says I’m black?’ demanded Jimfish.
Deon Arlow looked him over and what he saw puzzled him, because Jimfish really didn’t look quite human. He was pale and pink in some lights or eerily ice-white or tan, but then again, at times, his skin showed a light blue tint.
‘Whatever you are, you’re not the right white,’ he said. ‘And nowadays, since we don’t do the old apartheid talk any more, back in Port Pallid anyone not strictly white — and that goes for Asians, Chinese, Thais, Libyans and mixed-race guys — are formally black.’
Jimfish stood up. ‘The days of dividing people by colour are over. You said so yourself. If my old teacher Soviet Malala is right about anything, he’s right when he says that those who keep up the struggle will land on the right side of history. I love Lunamiel, she loves me and we want to get married.’