Displaced (24 page)

The flight departing Bunia was delayed and
Horst was forced to sit in the small terminal building with the
overloud television constantly running waiting for the turboprop to
arrive from Arusha that would then turn around and ferry him to
Entebbe, Uganda. Horst had flown to the region over the objections
of his supervisor, who questioned the merit of the trip, after Alex
had insisted that every effort be made to locate and interview the
daughter of their original witness. He had met with Jean the day
before and they had managed a small convoy to the sight of the
Negusse home, which had been largely set in order since the
calamity it had suffered. Their calls to the Uncle went unanswered
and when they showed up unannounced with an armed UN escort at his
house, they were met with hostility. “Showing up here like this,
why don’t you just paint a bullseye on my back,” the man identified
as Mukadi told them. Their attempt to interview him never recovered
from this start and he only told them that the girl, Nicole, had
fled and was probably in Europe. He refused to answer more
questions saying he had nothing more to tell them and closed the
iron gate covering his front door. He asked them to please leave
and not come back.

Because the flight from Bunia was late, he
arrived at the airport in Entebbe after dark. The Ugandan in the
arrival terminal had his name on a piece of cardboard and anxiously
took his luggage and showed him to the van marked for the Grand
Hotel. Horst didn’t know that bandits occasionally stopped vehicles
on the Entebbe-Kampala road at night and held onto the interior of
the van as the driver sped over the deserted roadway, concentrating
on the way ahead and checking his mirrors for headlights from
behind. The driver became visibly more relaxed as he approached the
edge of Kampala and eased off the accelerator to Horst’s
relief.

The next morning Horst met with the staff of
the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who regrettably had no
information about the whereabouts of one Nicole Negusse. But
although her name was not registered with the agency, they were
able to refer him to a Catholic Priest, a Father Boniface, who was
well connected with the local Congolese community in Kampala. “If
anyone knows where this woman is, it will be Father Boniface,”
Samuel, a UNHCR official, told him.

Before he could track down the Priest, Horst
was scheduled to make the short flight to Gulu in the North of
Uganda to check with Red Cross officials at the displaced persons
camp. He arrived at midday and walked the camp with his guide not
knowing exactly what he was looking for and thinking he’d more
likely be struck by lightning than encounter and recognize the
young woman in the camp’s population assuming she was there. The
Red Cross staff couldn’t identify her and pointed out that she
could be at any one of a number of displaced persons camps in the
North.

He returned to Kampala and when he met Father
Boniface, the Priest invited him in and offered him a beer which he
declined. Initially, he was impressed by the large black man, who
showed interest in Horst and his work.

“Her father was scheduled to provide
testimony in a case before the Court,” Horst explained. “We think
she might have some information that could be helpful and in any
event, we feel an obligation and want to make sure that she is
safe.”

“I see,” the Priest responded gravely. “It’s
quite good of you to follow up like this and look after this young
woman. And what is this case before the Court, who does it
involve?”

“It’s the prosecution of Jean Pierre
Bembe.”

“Ah Jean Pierre Bembe, I once met the man,”
he said. “This was back in the days when Mobutu was still around
and Bembe was quite young,” the Priest said and began a detailed
history of the circumstances, Bembe’s father and Eastern Congo
during the days of Mobutu. Horst felt obliged to listen if the man
was going to help him. And although the priest was effusive in his
discussion of the Congo and knowledgeable, he was reticent when it
came to Horst’s real interest, the whereabouts of Nicole Negusse.
Father Boniface stated that he did not know the woman and did not
know where she could be, which was a lie. Horst showed him a
picture but he did not recognize the woman. The Priest shook his
head seriously, but Horst thought he detected a note of bemusement
in the man’s demeanor as if he was putting him on and feigning
interest in the Court. He had expected some reaction about the UN’s
inability to protect the young woman’s father, but the Priest
seemed unsurprised and reacted placidly to the information. Horst
couldn’t help but feel that the Priest was humoring him just a
little.

****

Matanda listened with the use of earphones as
witness “63” testified to rapes committed by Bembe’s troops in
Ituri. He could not see the man, who sat behind a screen and
testified with the use of voice distortion technology, but the
witness was emphatic that abuses had occurred after Bembe had
visited his militia in the region. From his position in the
visitor’s gallery, Matanda could only see the side of Bembe’s head,
which he looked to from time to time for evidence of reaction to
the testimony offered. Bembe was perhaps most demonstrative when he
began to nod off during the testimony of one of his accusers, and
Matanda was relieved when his client caught himself and shifted
positions to stay awake.

He watched the tall Scottish lawyer deftly
take the witness through his narrative, confirming that the militia
soldiers were under no compulsion from their commanders to limit
abuses against noncombatants. To the contrary, the command and
control structure was premised on the looting and abuse of the
civilian population. Matanda was not overly concerned though, the
witness presented something of an outlier. Other witnesses on cross
examination had been forced to admit that abuses had decreased when
Bembe visited his troops in the field.

When Matanda visited Bembe that evening, he
could at least present the case so far in a positive light. He
tired of listening to his friend’s complaints. His mood changes and
unpredictable nature that made him a standout leader in the bush
did not serve him well in the methodical proceedings of the Court.
Matanda found him exhausting. He walked out the door of the
visitor’s gallery into the corridor to the elevator that would take
him to the lobby of the Court building. He had taken up residence
in a nearby hotel and this would be his new routine for at least
the next few months. From his new flat he would commute to London
whenever there was a break in the proceedings. The Court, he knew,
was largely designed to convict and he would see the matter through
to the end.

****

That Jennifer felt compelled to return to the
office early Saturday morning when she knew nobody would be around
reflected intuitively her sense of shame. She knew she had been
wrong and now she was sneaking around, which only highlighted the
point. Yet logically, when she tried to square her feelings with
the circumstances, a part of her still felt she had been right.

She brought a cardboard box with her and when
the elevator opened onto her floor of the Hart building, it did so
with a resonant “ding” that seemed to echo through the empty
structure in defiance of her wish for secrecy. Her pass key still
worked on the front door to reception signaling that her treachery
remained as of yet undiscovered. Empty box in hand she sat down at
her desk for a last time and leaned back and put her feet up on the
table top and looked around trying to create a picture for her
memory. She nearly jumped out of her seat when she heard Dave’s
voice from behind calling to her. “Hey Jennifer, I didn’t expect to
see you here this morning.”

Shoot, she thought and tried to regain her
balance and come up with a reason why she should be in the office.
She paused for a moment and then turned around and looked at David
who was standing in the doorway smiling.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he
said.

“No, no, I just didn’t think anyone else was
in.”

“The Senator called me last night and asked
me to pick up a few things. What’s with the box,” he said.

“Nothing, I wanted to straighten up my office
a bit.”

“You’ve got all next week to do that.”

“I know, but I left in such a hurry
yesterday, I wanted to pick up a few things, I wanted to take my
plant home with me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to pick up a few
things,” she said, trying to be relaxed.

“You’re so full of it Gruning.”

“Full of what?”

“I read you like a book. When were you going
to tell me, were you just going to leave a note?”

“Tell you what?” she asked feigning surprise
but figuring that she had been found out.

“After you left last night, I called Bill in
the committee office and guess what, the Senator had a change of
heart. I read you like a book Gruning,” he said again. “I thought
you were acting a little squirrelly so I called Bill and changed
the language back. You kill me, you really think it’s worth losing
your job over this?”

She was embarrassed and then became indignant
over the tone of his comments. “You didn’t have to do me any
favors. I’d just as soon left it the way it was.”

“Oh please, it’s a silly thing that probably
won’t make any difference in the end.”

“I think it makes a difference.”

“I like you Jennifer, I consider you a friend
and think you’re smart, but this was particularly stupid,” he
said.

“I don’t think it’s stupid.”

“For what it’s worth, nobody knows, it’ll be
our secret.”

“You can’t want me to keep working here like
nothing happened.”

“Take your box, go home, think it over.”

“I don’t know how you can expect me to keep
working here or why you would want me to.”

“You know what your problem is, you think too
much. Go home already.”

“I’m going.”

“I’ll see you Monday morning,” he said by way
of confirmation, as he walked away and she picked up her box and
walked out the door.

Jennifer returned to the office on Monday,
but gave notice soon after. She explained that she was returning to
Ohio to be closer to her family and to her mother, who was sick.
The office threw her a going away party, which the Senator attended
and personally thanked her for all her hard work. David told her
that she was stubborn and that she would be missed.

On her last day, she was finally able to use
the box and filled it with three years worth of photos, letters,
bobbleheads and other keepsakes that had accumulated on her desk.
She threw out the majority of its contents and arranged it for her
successor and noted how easily three years of work could be reduced
in the course of a single afternoon. She didn’t reminisce long and
when the box was full, she carried it to the elevator and out the
door for the last trip to her apartment.

****

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean en route to
his disciplinary interview in New York, Jonathan decided to take
Father Boniface’s career advice. Instead of heading to the World
Food Program offices when he landed in New York, he went into town
and rented a room in a hotel near the Port Authority bus station.
He spent the day walking through Chinatown looking at the fish and
animal carcasses decorating the food markets and the junk gifts in
the gift shops. He ate a big lunch of wontons, spring rolls and
soup at a cheap restaurant and then walked up Park Avenue into the
village.

The next day he caught the bus to Montreal.
When he arrived in the evening, he took the metro towards San
Michel and walked the last distance from the station to his
father’s house. He surprised the old man in the kitchen. His
father, with white disheveled hair, wore an apron as he scrubbed a
pot in the sink. Jonathan let himself in and his father stood mute
holding the pot dripping water on the kitchen floor before laughing
at his son.

“I’ll be damned,” he said, “not a phone call
or nothing, you just show up here out of thin air is that it?”

“I guess so.”

“I thought you’d gone native,” he laughed.
“Well shoot, welcome home son,” he said approaching and embracing
Jonathan.

****

If Nicole thought that because the Judge was
a woman, she would be more sympathetic to Nicole’s claim, she was
wrong. In the Immigration Courtroom in Baltimore, MD, Nicole
testified that after arriving at Baltimore Washington International
airport, she told the immigration officer that she was Lucy
Babinaga, but when the officer didn’t believe her and she was taken
aside for additional questioning, she broke down and admitted that
her real name was Nicole Negusse, she was from the Congo, and her
passport was a fake. After some additional questioning about why
she left the Congo and her fear of returning, she was allowed to
enter the United States, paroled she was told, so that she could
apply for asylum. She explained all of this to the Judge and how
she was staying in Silver Spring, Maryland with her father’s
cousin, Vumilia, who was in the building and willing to testify
what she knew.

But the Judge didn’t believe the particulars
of Nicole’s story. She was skeptical that Nicole was from the Congo
and hinted that she was a Ugandan posing as Congolese in order to
get asylum. She wanted to know why Nicole didn’t identify herself
as Congolese when she first presented herself at the airport and
instead tried to enter the country as a Ugandan. The Judge
dismissed the testimony from her father’s cousin as self serving
and noted that the letter from her Uncle Mukadi was not properly
authenticated. Nicole tried to explain that she had told her lawyer
about Father Boniface, but her lawyer didn’t think it was important
to get a statement from the Priest. And when on cross examination,
Nicole testified about the second sexual assault she suffered in
Uganda, the Judge wanted to know why the incident was not included
in her written statement in support of her application. She had
told her lawyer, Nicole explained, but he didn’t think it was
relevant to her fear of return to the Congo.