‘I am asking you as a favour to expose the ones who did this to my boy. I do not care about the others, but no one, not even the UN, touches one of Haran’s. I will not have it said that I cannot protect my own.’
‘You want me to do a report on institutional corruption in the United Nations forces.’
‘Listen well, Gaby McAslan. This is what I want. I want the men who did this to my man exposed and humiliated in every nation on Earth. I want their own sisters and mothers to close their doors to them when they go back to their homes; I want their fathers and brothers to turn away and spit when they pass for the shame they have brought their families.’
Sip your coffee, Gaby McAslan. Do not let this smooth bastard see the value of this thing he is giving you, for he has the eyes of a Shanghai jade-seller, who sets his price by the dilation of his buyer’s pupils. Already, she was listing the Must Knows and the Must Never Knows, the Faithfuls and the Faithlesses. Tembo and Faraway; she would take them, they knew the country, they knew their job, they knew discretion. They would not tell the troll bitch-queen from hell Santini, or T.P., who would give it straight to golden boy Jake. No, she would keep it secret until the moment she rolled it for Thomas Pronsias Costello in his little glass office and when syndication deals lit up the East African teleport like a stained glass window, then she would see who was talking Junior East African satellite news correspondent. Already she was rehearsing the little doxology:
‘This does me as much of a favour as it does you,’ she said.
‘Is this not then the most excellent way to do business?’ Haran said. ‘This way, I know I can trust you to do what I ask. I will have one of my boys deliver details of the unit in question and their current location. I presume you will be at the Sondhai woman’s for the foreseeable future?’
‘For the foreseeable future.’
‘Good. I have detained you long enough. I would not want to make trouble for you with your employers, when I am in need of their good graces. I am most glad you can do this little favour for me.’
He extended a gloved hand. Gaby did not take it.
‘Haran. I need to ask a favour in return of you.’
‘You are aware that what I have asked you to do is in repayment for the favour I did you in the Independence Day thing. This will be a fresh account.’
‘I am aware of that.’
Haran folded his hands in his lap, like a priest awaiting a confession.
‘What is it you would ask me?’
‘Peter Werther.’
‘I gave you him as a token of our relationship.’
‘Dr Daniel Oloitip says he’s disappeared.’
‘One does well not to pay too much attention to what Dr Oloitip says.’
‘He says he hasn’t so much disappeared as been disappeared. By the UN. A joint US/Canadian airborne force hit the What the Sun Said community up at Lake Naivasha and took him.’
Haran studied the outspread fingertips of his gloves.
‘These are serious allegations Dr Oloitip is making.’
‘Haran, I want you to find out if this is true, and if so, where Peter Werther is.’
‘Are you asking me as a favour?’
He was looking right at her. She had never seen his eyes so clearly. They were like two spheres of lead.
‘I am asking you as a favour.’
‘Finding out and finding where are two favours.’
‘Then I am asking you as a favour, twice. And I will owe you, twice.’
Haran snapped his hands shut. The lemon-yellow leather gloves made a soft, rustling snapping, like a lizard trapping an insect.
‘I shall do what I can. I can promise no more than that. You understand that things are not so simple with the UN, or I would not have had to ask you the favour I have. My boys must be discreet if they are not to be discovered. It may be that they will find nothing. But you will still owe me the favour. Two favours.’
‘Haran, I knew from the moment I met you I would always be owing you.’
He smiled. Like his lead eyes, she had never seen him smile before. She wished she had not seen him smile now.
‘I shall have one of my boys escort you back to SkyNet. The streets are no longer as safe for visitors as they were, especially for white women. I am afraid there are thieves and conmen on every street corner.’
Gaby got up from the table. Mombi’s handsome envoy had returned with fresh coffee. Haran gently ran his gloved right hand along the possegirl’s jawline. Gaby shuddered.
20
‘Ten years ago this dusty, rutted dirt road would have been nose-to-tail with tour buses heading to the game lodges of West Tsavo National Park. Now the only vehicles that move along it are United Nations truck convoys. I counted fifty go past me ten minutes ago. Their dust still hangs in the air. And the place to which they are headed, where once Masai cattle and wild animals existed peacefully together, has turned into something from the Old Testament: an entire nation of refugees.
‘In the last census two years ago, the town of Merueshi had a population of three thousand. Today UNHCR estimates there are over one hundred thousand people camped out around Merueshi. In those two years, the Chaga has come. Terminum is just two kilometres to the south of us, ten minutes’ walk, and that, the UN says, is close enough. Everyone, and everything, is to be moved, down to the last cow and goat, the last stick of furniture.
‘From fifty kilometres around, the people have come to Merueshi to be evacuated. Some have their own transport, others were brought in by truck and bus, most have walked carrying all their worldly possessions. Now they wait to be taken north, and they wonder if the UN trucks will reach them before the Chaga does, and if they do make it out of here, what kind of life can they expect in the townships?
‘To be forced away from everything you have ever known is hard. What is intolerable is then to have even those few, precious things you have managed to salvage taken from you.
‘I’ve come to Merueshi, to the very edge of the Chaga and this scene of near-Biblical desolation, to investigate reports of widespread looting and extortion of refugees’ property. Not by criminals or gangs of bandits, those certainly exist, or even by profiteers selling space on their own truck trains, but by the very United Nations soldiers who are meant to be protecting them. I have received evidence of black marketeering in stolen goods by one particular unit of Azerbaijani soldiers under the flag of the United Nations.
‘And cut it.’
‘We’re still running,’ Faraway said behind the camera. ‘You can say it if you want to.’
‘Oh, all right then. You can edit this later. I’ll give you a mark.’ Gaby made a chopping motion with her right hand across the camera’s field of vision. ‘Gaby McAslan, SkyNet News, Merueshi, Kenya.’
‘And we are out.’
‘Did it look good? Is this sleeveless denim thing all right? No sweat stains under the armpits? If you made my ass look fat I will hang you by your balls. God, was my nose too shiny?’
Faraway doubled over with laughter.
‘You bitch just like Jake. You looked fine. You always look fine to me, Gaby. Mighty fine indeed. Two things, if you please. One, don’t swipe at flies with your hand, and two, your hair was blowing across your face. It might be a good idea to shoot it again.’
‘Jesus, Faraway. That bastard helicopter will come back. I know it. And I’m never as fresh the fourth time.’
She could see that Faraway was considering a sexual riposte, but instead he said, ‘Jake would do it again.’
‘Fuck Jake.’
