‘I remember. We were planning to do some research about Equatorial Guinea back then. When we were still interested in foreign politics.’
‘Why aren’t you now?’
Yoyo shrugged. ‘What else can you do when the rubbish is piling up in front of your own door? You walk through the streets and see the migrant workers sleeping on the building sites the way they always have, the same place where they fuck, breed and kick the bucket. You see the illegal immigrants without papers, without work permits, without health insurance. The filth in Quyu. The queues in front of the appeal offices, the government-hired thugs who turn up at night and beat them black and blue until they’ve forgotten what they wanted to complain about. And all the while Reporters Without Borders announces that freedom of opinion has demonstrably improved in China. I know it sounds cynical, but after a while the problems of exploited Africans don’t even register on your radar.’
Chen lowered his gaze, painfully moved.
‘Let’s stick with Vogelaar for now,’ decided Tu. ‘What else can you tell us about him?’
Jericho projected a chart onto the wall. ‘I’ve investigated him as much as I could. Born in South Africa in 1962 as the son of a Dutch immigrant, he did military service, studied at the military academy, and then in 1983, aged twenty-one, he signed up as an NCO with the notorious Koevoet.’
‘I’ve never heard of them,’ said Yoyo.
‘Koevoet was a paramilitary unit of the South African police formed to combat SWAPO, a guerrilla troop fighting for the independence of South-West Africa, now Namibia. Back then, the South African Union refused to retreat from the area despite a UN resolution, and instead built up Koevoet, which, by the way, is the Dutch word for crowbar. Quite a rough bunch. Predominantly native tribal warriors and trackers. Exclusively white officers. They hunted down the SWAPO rebels in armoured cars and killed many thousands of people. They were said to have tortured and raped too. Vogelaar even became an officer, but by the end of the eighties the group had come to an end and was disbanded.’
‘How do you know all that?’ asked Tu in amazement.
‘I looked it up. I just wanted to know who we’re dealing with here. And it’s very interesting by the way. Koevoet is one of the causes of the South African mercenary problem: at any rate, the troop included three thousand men who found themselves unemployed after the end of apartheid. Most of them, including Vogelaar, found jobs with private mercenary firms. After the suppression of Koevoet at the end of the eighties, he got into the arms trade, working as a military advisor in conflict areas. Then, in 1995, he went to Executive Outcomes, a privately run security company and meeting place for a large proportion of the former military elite. By the time Vogelaar joined, the outfit was already playing a leading role in the worldwide mercenary trade, after initially being content with infiltrating the ANC. By the mid-nineties, Executive Outcomes had built up perfect connections. A network of military service companies, oil and mining firms: one which headed lucrative contract wars and was very happy to profit from the petroleum industry. They ended the civil war in Somalia in the interest of American oil companies, and in Sierra Leone they recaptured diamond mines which had fallen into the hands of the rebels. Vogelaar built up excellent contacts there. Four years later he transferred to Outcomes’ offshoot Sandline International, but it drew unwanted attention through bodged operations and ended up abandoning all activities in 2004. He eventually founded Mamba, his own security company, which operated predominantly in Nigeria and Kenya. And Kenya is where we lose all trace of him, sometime during the unrest after the 2007 elections.’ Jericho looked at them apologetically. ‘Or, let’s say that’s where I lose trace of him. In any case, he appears again in 2017, at Mayé’s side, whose security apparatus he led from then on.’
‘A gap of ten years,’ commented Tu.
‘Didn’t Mayé take power by military coup himself?’ asked Yoyo. ‘Vogelaar may have helped him with that.’
‘It’s possible.’ Tu grimaced. ‘Africa and its regicides. Stabbing everyone in the back. After a while you lose perspective. It just surprises me that they still have a clue what’s going on.’
Chen cleared his throat. ‘May I, erm, contribute something?’
‘Hongbing, of course! We’re all ears. Go ahead.’
‘Well.’ Chen looked at Jericho. ‘You said that the whole clique of this Mayé guy got killed in the coup, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘And I’m translating clique in the broadest sense of the word as government.’
‘Also correct.’
‘Well, a coup without any fatalities at all would be unusual, to say the least.’ Suddenly, Chen seemed jovial and analytical. ‘Or, let’s say, when weapons come into play, collateral damage is par for the course. But if the entire government clique was killed – then it can hardly be described as collateral damage, can it?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘That the coup wasn’t so much about forcing Mayé and his people out of office, but more about exterminating them. Every single one of them. It was planned that way from the start, or that’s how it looks to me at any rate. It wasn’t just a coup. It was planned mass murder.’
‘Oh, Father,’ sighed Yoyo softly. ‘What a Guardian you would have made.’
‘Hongbing is right,’ said Tu quickly, before Chen could splutter at Yoyo’s observation. ‘And as we’re clearly not afraid to poke around in the dark, we may as well jump straight to assuming the worst. The dragon has already feasted. Our country brought about this atrocity, or at least helped with it.’ He sank his double chin down onto his right palm, where it rested plumply. ‘On the other hand, what reason would Beijing have for annihilating an entire West African kleptocracy?’
Yoyo opened her eyes wide in disbelief. ‘You don’t think they’re capable of it? Hey, what’s wrong with you?’
‘Calm down, child, I think they’re capable of anything. I’d just like to know why.’
‘This’ – Chen’s right hand made vague grasping motions – ‘what was he called again, the mercenary?’
‘Vogelaar. Jan Kees Vogelaar.’
‘Well, he would know.’
‘That’s true, he—’
They all looked at one another.
And suddenly it dawned on Jericho: of course! If Chen was right and the Mayé government really had been the victim of an assassination, then there could only be two reasons. One, public anger had boiled over. It wouldn’t be the first time an enraged mob had lynched its former tormentors, but something like that usually happened spontaneously, and moreover used different methods of execution: dismembering by machete, a burning car tyre around the neck, clubbing to death. In the short time available, Jericho hadn’t been able to find out much about relationships in the crisis-torn West African state, but Mayé’s fall still seemed like the result of a perfectly planned, simultaneously realised operation. Within just a few hours, all the members of the close circle around the dictator were dead. As if the plan had been to silence the entire set-up. Mayé and six of his ministers had died in an explosion caused by a long-range missile, while a further ten ministers and generals had been shot.
But one of them had got away. Jan Kees Vogelaar.
Why? Had Vogelaar been playing both sides? A coup of this calibre was only possible with connections on the inside. Was Mayé’s security boss a traitor? Assuming that this was true, then—
‘—Andre Donner is a witness,’ murmured Jericho.
‘Sorry?’ asked Tu.
Jericho was staring into space.
—Donner be liquidated—