‘So who made contact with whom? Mayé with the Chinese? Or the other way around?’
Vogelaar looked at her, debating his answer. Then he shrugged his shoulders and poured an almost overflowing glass of rum down his throat.
‘Your people approached Mayé, as far as I know.’
‘You mean the Chinese,’ Yoyo corrected him.
‘Your people,’ Vogelaar repeated mercilessly. ‘They came and knocked the doors down, doors that were already wide open. After all, the point was that Obiang had dramatically misjudged things with Mayé. He wanted someone he could direct from behind the scenes, but he picked the wrong guy. Without helium-3, Mayé would probably still be in Malabo.’
‘But he did end up being a puppet just recently.’
‘Sure, but for the Chinese, the buffoon of a ranking world power. That’s different from letting yourself be spoon-fed by a terminally ill ex-dictator. When Kenny turned up at my place, he had already done his research and decided that we were the best match. So I listened to him calmly – and then refused.’
‘Why?’ wondered Jericho.
‘So he would come down from his high horse. He was disappointed of course. And uneasy too, because he had opened up and made himself vulnerable. Then I told him that perhaps there was a chance after all. But for that he would have to throw more on the scales than the commission for a coup. I made it clear to him that I was tired of the trench warfare, this constant haggling for jobs, but that, on the other hand, I would bore myself to death if I went off to live in some villa somewhere. I was nearing some sort of retirement, but I didn’t want it to be of a retiring nature.’
‘So you asked for a position in Mayé’s government. That’s quite an unusual request for a mercenary.’
‘Kenny understood. A few days later we met with Mayé, who banged on at me for two long hours about his lousy family, and Kenny had to make all kinds of promises to him. There was no way there was a position in it for me too! He kept me in suspense for hours on end, then he switched sides, to cuddly old Uncle Mayé, and pulled the rabbit out of the hat.’
‘And offered you the position of security manager.’
‘The funny thing is that it was Kenny’s idea. But he buttered the old guy up so much he thought it was his own. So the deal was done. The rest was child’s play. I took care of the logistics, put commandos together, organised the weapons and helicopter, the usual rigmarole. You know the rest. The Chinese were adamant that the whole thing had to go off without any bloodshed and that Ndongo had to leave the country unscathed, and we managed all of that.’
‘Beijing didn’t seem to have that many concerns last year.’
‘There was much more to play for last year. In 2017 it was just about an adjustment to the power relationships.’
‘Just, sure.’
‘Oh, come on! Everyone knew that clever journalists would write clever articles sooner or later. Beijing’s role was clear just from the redistribution of the mining licences. And so what? People are used to “arranged” changes in government. But they’re less used to killings. Especially when you’re trying to clean up your image. The Party hadn’t forgotten the Olympic gauntlet-running of 2008. That’s also why the House of Saud got off so lightly in 2015 when the Islamists captured Riyadh. It was Beijing’s condition for financing the fun. Anyway, we advanced into Malabo, Mayé squeezed his fat ass into the seat of government, I built up EcuaSec, the Equatorial Guinea Secret Service, had the entire opposition imprisoned, and that was that.’
‘And that didn’t make you sick?’ asked Yoyo.
‘Sick?’ Vogelaar put the glass to his lips. ‘I only got sick once in my life. From rotten tuna.’
Jericho shot Yoyo a look like daggers. ‘And then what?’
‘As expected, Kenny landed on his feet shortly after we heaved Mayé into power and ended up with more authority. Equatorial Guinea became a playground to him. Every few weeks he would relax in the lobby of the Paraíso, a hotel for oil workers, where he treated himself to hookers and waited for my reports. We had agreed in Cameroon that I would keep an eye on Mayé—’
‘So that was the deal.’
‘Of course. As I said, it was Kenny’s idea. No one got as close to Mayé as I did. He accepted me as a close confidant.’
‘A confidant who also happened to be spying on him.’
‘Just in case the fatty escaped our leash. I was being watched too of course. That’s Kenny’s principle, how he builds up his clique: everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. But I always had one more pair of eyes than the others.’
‘Yes, made of glass,’ scoffed Yoyo.
‘I see more with one healthy one than you do with two,’ retorted Vogelaar. ‘I quickly found out who the moles were that Kenny had set on me. Half of EcuaSec was infiltrated. I didn’t let on that I knew of course. Instead, I began to watch Kenny myself; I wanted to find out more about him and his men.’
‘All I know is that he’s completely insane.’
‘Let’s just say he loves extremes. I found out that he lived in London for three years, assigned to the Chinese military attaché, and spent two years in Washington, specialising in conspiracy. Officially, he belonged to Zhong Chan Er Bu, the military news service, the second department of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army. Unfortunately my contacts there turned out to be scarce, but I did know a few people who had worked with Kenny in the past in the fifth office of the Guojia Anquan Bu, the ministry for state security. According to them he had outstanding analytical abilities and an instinct for how people’s minds work. They also commented that when it came to sabotage and contract killing, he handled things with quite a – well, uncompromising attitude.’
‘In other words, our friend was a killer.’
‘Which in itself isn’t any cause for alarm. But there was something else too.’
Vogelaar paused to light another cigar. He did it slowly and elaborately, switching from the spoken word to smoke signals and immersing himself in his own thoughts for a while.
‘They thought there was something monstrous about him,’ he continued. ‘Which my gut instinct had told me too, although I couldn’t really say why. So I tried to delve deeper into Kenny’s past. I found the usual military service, his studies, pilot training, arms certificate, all the normal stuff. I was just about to give up when I stumbled on a special unit with the beautiful name of Yü Shen—’
‘Lovely,’ said Yoyo sarcastically.
‘Yü Shen?’ Jericho wrinkled his forehead. ‘That rings a bell. It has something to do with eternal damnation, doesn’t it?’
‘Yü Shen is the Hell God,’ Yoyo explained to him. ‘A Taoist figure based on the old Chinese belief that hell is divided up into ten empires, deep inside the earth, each of which is ruled by a Hell King. The Hell God is the highest power. The dead have to answer to him and the judges of hell.’
‘So that means everyone goes to hell?’
‘To start with, yes. And everyone appears before a special court, according to his or her actions. The good ones are sent back to the surface and are reborn in a higher incarnation. The bad ones are reborn too, after they’ve served their time in hell, but as animals.’
Jericho looked at Vogelaar.
‘So what was Kenny Xin reborn as?’
‘Good question. A beast in human form?’
‘And what was he before?’
Vogelaar sucked at his cigar.