Blue Gold (29 page)

“You said we can't outrun them!” came Olivier's reply.

“We can't outshoot them, either. Go!”

Abruptly, the shooting stopped. Sylvie heard the jeep rumbling closer, and the squeal of its brakes. She prayed for the truck to move, but the engine continued to idle. Marie, cradling Doctor Van de Velde, gave her a desperate look, while Lucie and Pascal huddled in terror with Mama behind them.

“What's happening?” mouthed Marie.

Sylvie lifted a corner of the canvas and saw Fiston with his hands in the air, his rifle on the ground. The scrawny fighter, the one Fiston called Arsène, was at the wheel of the jeep.

The man behind the machine gun kept the barrel aimed at Fiston as Arsène climbed out of the jeep and walked stealthily down the driver's side of the truck, tightly gripping his AK-47. As he came back into Sylvie's view, he dipped down, sweeping the barrel of his gun under the truck.

“Where did Olivier run to?” he said, relaxing a little as he turned to Fiston. “Decided to save himself, did he?” Arsène kicked the rifle out of Fiston's reach, taunting, “How much did they pay you, Fiston, to throw your life away?”

“Not enough,” said Fiston, trying to joke with him. But Sylvie could see he was sweating. “Let us go, Arsène. I'll make it worth your while.”

For a moment, Arsène seemed to consider Fiston's offer. Then he nodded to the man in the jeep. There was a burst of machine gun fire, and Fiston fell to the ground. Sylvie recoiled into the truck, sickened. In the next instant, Arsène threw back the canvas. He was pointing his AK-47 at them now, and the soldier in the jeep was directing the machine gun toward the truck, too. Sylvie heard Mama let out a cry, but she didn't dare turn to her.

Arsène looked them over, as though deciding who should die first. “You,” he said, waving his gun at Marie. “Get down here.” Marie didn't move. Arsène fired into the air, making all of them jump. Lucie was sobbing. “Now!” he commanded. He began undoing his belt.

Sylvie watched helplessly as Marie slid across the floor of the truck toward Arsène. When she got near enough, he grabbed hold of her ankle and pulled her the rest of the way, so that she went sprawling onto the ground. Laying the AK-47 in the dust, he got down on his knees and opened his pants, while the soldier in the jeep kept the machine gun trained on Sylvie and the others. Marie began crying. Doctor Van de Velde, bleeding and weak, looked away in horror.

Suddenly, there came a shot. The man behind the machine gun toppled. Arsène, caught off guard, grabbed for his AK-47, but when he looked up, Olivier had him locked in the sights of his own automatic rifle.

“No!” Arsène pleaded for his life, his pants down around his knees. Olivier waited while Marie, trembling, crawled out from under him, his aim unwavering. Sylvie jumped down from the truck to help her. “Please!” begged Arsène, “just go! I won't stop you!”

But Olivier had no mercy. As soon as Marie was clear he fired, bullets riddling Arsène's chest until he lay in the dust, wide-eyed and unseeing. Marie sobbed uncontrollably in Sylvie's arms. Holding her tight, Sylvie looked up into her brother's face. There was no emotion in his eyes, no remorse—not even relief.

“There'll be more coming,” he told her coldly. “Get her in the truck, and let's go.”

 

THEY REACHED THE CAMP GATES
ahead of Kayembe's men, in time to meet an arriving convoy of Tanzanian soldiers. By then, Marie had fashioned a bandage for Doctor Van de Velde from his bloodied shirt. The wound wasn't life-threatening—the Belgian opted to let the Tanzanians take him to the camp hospital to have it seen to, but he insisted that Marie go on to Dar es Salaam with Sylvie and her family.

“Your time here is done,” he said in his blunt fashion. “You've become a liability.”

Marie didn't argue with him.

 

FOR THREE DAYS
they drove across grasslands and high country, morning and night. Olivier taught Marie how to handle the truck so that she could spell him off at the wheel. They worried the whole way that Kayembe might follow them, but they found out later from Doctor Van de Velde that the Tanzanian troops succeeded in driving Kayembe and his forces out of Nyarugusu. The Zone 3 clinic burned to the ground, but the other clinics and the hospital were saved. According to the Belgian, now the UN was arguing with the Tanzanians about rebuilding the clinic that burned, since the Tanzanians would have been just as happy to shut the entire camp down.

Sylvie shed tears for Fiston, who had given his life trying to save them. He had known her father, and, like him, he died a good man—even if circumstances had made him choose to work for Kayembe. She prayed that his sacrifice had allowed his spirit to cross over, and that it wasn't still trapped in Nyarugusu.

When they reached Dar es Salaam, Marie had to argue with the staff at the Canadian embassy about letting them inside. At last she managed to convince the embassy officials that the family's lives were in danger from Kayembe and his men. Marie explained to Sylvie that the embassy was considered Canadian territory, and as long as the family stayed inside, they'd be safe from attack. But as wonderful as the embassy was—Mama was delighted with the indoor toilet, and Pascal and Lucie quickly became spoiled watching the TV that the staff provided in their living quarters—it soon began to feel to Sylvie like another refugee camp. Until the Canadian government, oceans away, decided what to do with them, they couldn't even go outside the embassy grounds for fear they wouldn't be allowed back in.

On the tenth day after they arrived in Dar es Salaam, Marie left them to fly to Montreal. She planned to do what she could from there to persuade her government that the family would never be safe from Kayembe, not so long as they remained in central Africa, and to let them come to Canada.

Before she left, Marie warned Sylvie not to tell anyone about Olivier shooting Arsène. If the Canadians found out he had killed someone, they might never let him into the country. As far as anyone was to know, Olivier was just a fourteen-year-old boy. But, watching him roam the embassy like a caged animal, Sylvie worried for him. She had seen the look on his face when he shot Arsène. How would he ever adjust to life in a place like Canada, where there were laws to be obeyed?

“It's so boring here,” he complained at the beginning of their third week at the embassy. “There's nothing to do.”

“Here,” said Sylvie, handing him a book about Canada, “learn something about where we're going.”

“If we ever get there.”

“We'll get there. Marie says thirty thousand people have signed the petition. She won't let us down.”

Sylvie taught herself to type on an old computer the embassy staff let her use—a skill that Marie told her, when they spoke on Skype, she would need once they finally arrived in Montreal and she started school. For the first time in her life, Sylvie had daily access to the Internet. She visited Alain's website frequently, and was heartened by the comments people wrote there—complete strangers wishing Sylvie and her family well and urging their government to let them into the country.

Encouraged by Marie and Alain, Sylvie began to post on the site, too. People had many questions for her about her family, and about their lives in North Kivu and in Nyarugusu. At first she was shy, but when other Congolese started sharing their stories about the murder, rape, and torture that went on there, she found the courage to tell her own story—how she and Mama were raped, and how the soldier cut her face with the machete.

“Please do not feel sorry for me,” she wrote. “I am one of the lucky ones.”

And she saw that she was. Soon, forty thousand people had signed the petition, then fifty thousand. Sylvie counted the hours and the days until the Canadian govern­ment, thousands of miles away, would decide their fate. Surely it wouldn't be long before they agreed to let them come.

FIONA HAD ONLY BEEN
in Vice-Principal Bains's office once before, when she was on the planning committee for last year's Artravaganza Night, the school's annual art show. She was a star student then. Seated in front of him now, she felt like some kind of criminal.

“Fiona, something has come to my attention,” he began ominously.

From the way he was avoiding looking at her, Fiona could guess what that something was. For the last two weeks, since the start of school, everything had been about the boob shot—from finding a hard copy of it taped to her locker on the first day of classes, to being snubbed by Megan and Brit when she saw them in homeroom. Fiona found out from Lacey—who was no longer speaking to Megan and Brit—that they'd been going around saying horrible things about her, calling her a slut, a skank, a whore. It seemed that, to them, she'd gone from being the girl they'd known all their lives to some completely different person, defined only by that picture. She thanked her lucky stars for Lacey and Rick, who had stuck by her, constantly reassuring her that, sooner or later, the whole mess would blow over—even if, right now, it just blowed.

“First, you should know that I have
not
seen this picture of you that's going around,” said Mr. Bains, leaning back in his chair as though he was trying to keep as much distance between them as he could manage. Everybody was used to the turban Mr. Bains wore with his usual chinos and open shirt, but right now, to Fiona, it seemed intimidating. She didn't want to imagine what Sikhs thought about girls who took nude photos of themselves. “I promise you I will never look at it,” he continued. Fiona struggled for something to say. She sat like a lump, gaze fixed on the floor. But from the corner of her eye, she saw him shrug helplessly. “To be honest, we've never had to deal with something like this at our school before.”

Fiona thought,
You mean you've never found out about it before!
Because she couldn't have been the only one.

“The implications are very serious,” he continued. “Technically, that photo is child pornography, and distributing it is a crime.”
Seriously?
“Anybody caught viewing it or sending it around could be arrested.” His gaze became intense. “Fiona, this is very important. Did anyone force you to pose for that picture?”

“No!” she exclaimed.

“Look, I know you're a good kid. I'm just trying to understand what happened, and whether I should be calling the police.”

“Don't call the police,” she half insisted, half pleaded. “Mr. Bains, please. I made a mistake, and I'm dealing with it.”

He studied her for a moment. “Fiona, if you took that photo of yourself and then sent it to somebody, you could be charged with distributing child porn.”

What?
“It's my private business,” she said, growing angry.

“It isn't private anymore,” he pointed out. “Do your parents know about it?”

“Yes.”

“What action are they taking?”

“They don't think it's such a big deal,” she said, which was at least true of her mom. “They're letting me handle it.”

He clicked his pen open and closed a couple of times, looking unconvinced. “Don't fool yourself,” he said. “This isn't going away. There's counseling available—you don't have to face this alone.”

He was being really nice, but Fiona found herself repeating something her mother had said to her. “If I act like a victim, then I become a victim.”

“I still have to report it to the police,” he said. “Maybe they can shut this thing down.”

“Please don't. There's nothing they can do.”

They both knew it was true—trying to stop a picture from circulating on the Internet was like trying to catch a shadow.

Mr. Bains chewed his lip. “So what's your plan? How are you going to deal with it?”

“One asshole at a time,” she told him, at which he raised an eyebrow. “Sorry,” she apologized. But as she got up to leave, an idea started to form, and she realized she might just have come up with the solution—somehow, she had to make all those people who were tearing her down see her for herself again. See her as Fiona.

 

WHEN SHE GOT HOME
, Fiona found her mom at work at the kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of research. The TV was on in the living room, which was unusual, since her mom didn't watch much TV. But ever since the news broke about that African girl being holed up in a Canadian embassy someplace, she'd been glued to it.

“How was school?” she asked, without looking up from the article she was writing.

“Okay, unless you count Mr. Bains accusing me of being child pornographer.”

Her mom stopped typing and looked up. “
What
?
”

“He found out about the photo,” she said. “He says he has to tell the cops, that I could be charged with distributing porn.”

“Oh, honey. That's ridiculous.” She got up to take her in her arms, and Fiona let her. She needed a hug. “What's going to happen to Ryan?” her mom asked. “He's the one who sent it around.”