Jimfish (10 page)

C
HAPTER
21

Sierra Leone, 1992

The helicopter lifted
into the powder-blue, empty African sky, en route to Somalia. His American friend carried a linen bag on his lap, occasionally patting it soothingly as if it were a baby. He was very cheerful.

‘Lovely little bird, this Blackhawk. Some really gorgeous killing features. Nothing flying today is quite like it. We're going to make one stop on our way. I need to see a man about a war going on right next door in Sierra Leone. Just a hop and a skip away.'

He opened the white linen bag and showed Jimfish what looked like a heap of grubby stones or chips of gravel.

‘Rough diamonds. In this neck of the woods diamonds are the fuel everything runs on.'

‘Rocket fuel?' Jimfish wondered.

‘Any kind of fuel you care to name,' said John Doe. ‘That's the beauty of these babies. The war in Sierra Leone is paid for with these dirty little stones that polish up real neat, look good in candlelight. They change hands amongst guys who often don't have any hands, because
slicing them off is a big thing for fighters on all sides.'

Jimfish was horrified. ‘That's a crime, surely?'

John Doe nodded. ‘Worse, it's dumb. If you want a good conflict currency, why not go for something grown-up like the dollar? But in West Africa diamonds are a warlord's best friend. Everyone wants to get their hands on these babies. Even if they've got no hands.'

A couple of hours later the Blackhawk put down in Freetown and a jeep with driver and an escort of white soldiers met the chopper.

‘My, but we're honoured,' said John Doe. ‘Seems the Commandant has sent his own jeep for us. What gives? Let me have a little one-to-one with the driver.'

When he came back to Jimfish he was shaking his head in amazement.

‘Apparently the Commandant's a hard-nosed bastard, all neck and no brains, but the driver says he wants to meet you. Alone.'

‘Who are these white soldiers?' Jimfish asked as they drove into Freetown.

John Doe urged him to watch his language. ‘Civil contractors is what we call them. Or security consultants. Or enhanced assets. Or strategic suppliers.
Never
soldiers.'

As they reached the town, John Doe hopped out of the jeep. ‘So long, Jimfish. Good luck!'

Jimfish was uneasy at being left alone. ‘Where are you going?'

‘The Commandant wants to see you on your own. I'll be talking loot with a local warlord.'

‘You talk to warlords?' Jimfish was shocked.

‘Constructive engagement,' said John Doe. ‘You have a good day now. Meet you back at the Commandant's office.'

Have a good day! How could he do that when he remembered Lunamiel, abandoned in Liberia, the plaything of Brigadier Bare-Butt. The more he saw of the world, the less he understood. Worse still, what he did understand was so crazy, so cruel, that none of the lessons of his old teacher Soviet Malala seemed to apply; not rage nor the many sides of history, neither the lumpenproletariat, nor the settler entity. Never had he felt so confused. And the menacing silence of the white soldiers escorting him – when he asked them their names or their reasons for being in Sierra Leone – made him even more miserable. Soon he would be heading to Somalia, another country he did not know, on a humanitarian intervention he did not understand, on a mission he did not like the sound of – not one little bit. And what, for heaven's sake, was a harbinger of hope?

The jeep dropped Jimfish at the door of a large hotel which had been badly damaged by rocket fire, like so many of the buildings in Freetown. He was led into what was once the manager's office and there sat a man in military khaki, wearing a cap laced with gold braid and large sunglasses, who sported a bushy beard as broad as a shovel. The armed escort saluted their chief, who returned the salute, and this went on for some time before the escort was dismissed.

Jimfish felt more wretched than ever, faced by the man in the gold braid. What was he to say to this imposing personage? As John Doe had warned, he did look all neck; it
was as broad as a baobab trunk, climbing from his tunic collar up into his heavily gold-encrusted cap. But when the Commandant pulled a bottle out of the desk drawer and asked him if he'd like a brandy and Coke, Jimfish's heart leaped. It was such a stroke of luck he hardly dared to believe what he had heard, but the man's accent was unmistakeable.

‘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.

C
HAPTER
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
n
th 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.'

‘Over my dead body!' Deon Arlow went for his revolver, but, like his father, he was a slow, clumsy man and Jimfish beat him to the draw, pulled his pistol from its python-skin holster and calmly shot the Commandant of Superior Solutions through the heart.

It was only when the Commandant slumped to the floor that Jimfish – faced by the ghastly truth that not only was he as violent as any other man but he had really rather enjoyed it – broke into wails of despair.

‘What have I done? I hate brutality and murder! But I've already killed a government minister and an American secret agent! Now I've shot my future brother-in-law!'

Luckily, his sobs alerted John Doe, who had returned from a useful meeting with local warlords. He took one look at the scene and, being trained for this sort of thing, he knew what to do: he began stripping the dead man.

‘Take off your clothes,' he instructed Jimfish, handing him the Commandant's uniform, finishing with his cap and dark glasses. Then very neatly he scissored off Deon Arlow's great beard and fixed it to Jimfish's chin with duct tape.

‘This is what we do next.' He handed Jimfish the dead man's bag of diamonds, assuring him they would come in useful. ‘I'll fetch the Commandant's jeep and you jump in the back. Soon as they see you, the Commandant's men will snap to attention and salute. You salute in return and while all this saluting is going on, we drive away. We'll be airborne in the Blackhawk and heading for Somalia before they know what's happened.'

And so it was that Jimfish escaped from Sierra Leone, laden with diamonds, but with a heavy heart, knowing that he had once again failed to land on the right side of history.