Maybe Étienne had seen this before. Did I know anything about her?
‘Come on through. Let me get you some coffee.’
We walked past the battered sofa and coffee-table they called Reception and along a corridor into an open-plan area. One corner was piled with boxes. I perched on the edge of a desk. Appeal posters were pinned to the wall in front of me. The photographs and shoutlines gave me the same uncomfortable feeling I’d had earlier, by the lake, every time I saw them.
Over a close-up of a young girl’s face, her eyes staring and empty:Ester is 8 years old. Yesterday she walked 30 kmsto our clinic. For water? For food? For medicine?No, for rape counselling.
Over a similarly bleak shot of a young boy staring into the camera:Byron is 9 years old. Yesterday he had to kill twopeople in his own home. Burglars? Kidnappers?Armed intruders? No, his parents.
There were another couple of desks with telephones, and that was about it.
‘We run on a shoestring. We get the cash towhere it’s needed.’ Étienne lifted a jug from a coffee machine. ‘But the coffee’s pretty good. Well, usually. I mean, it’s late, and—’
‘Where is she, Étienne?’
He nodded at one of the posters. A medic was bandaging a stump where a small African boy’s hand should have been. ‘Tim runs the camp in DRC, near the Rwanda border. Silke’s been working on his aid campaign. She organized everything, even wrote the posters.’ He smiled. ‘You must be proud of her.’
‘Yes. Very.’ Fuck, she’d probably told me all this stuff and it had gone in one ear and straight out the other.
Étienne stared at the posters, lost in another world. ‘Tim’s operating in impossible conditions. I expect she told you – in the last twelve months alone there’ve been two thousand cases of rape, mutilation and summary execution, just in Ituri province. That’s where our camp is.’
His hand shook as he poured the coffee. It might be outrageous stuff but these guys had to be conditioned to get past that shit to operate. Things must be grim out there if they’d got to him like this.
‘I was out there myself a month ago. When we took our mobile clinic to places where there were roads, we passed burned-out houses, one village after another completely destroyed and abandoned. It was terrible.’
His hand shook more as he thought about what he had seen. ‘She talks about you a lot, Nick.’
‘That’s nice. But where is she?’ I’d already got there, but I needed to hear it confirmed.
‘She’s on our relief plane to Kinshasa.’ He shifted his gaze from the posters at last. ‘Today was the tipping point. On top of everything else, there was an earthquake, just a minor one but it’s devastated the village we’re based in. Tim’s overrun. We’ve never heard him sound so desperate.’ He put down his cup. ‘She felt she couldn’t stand by while—’
‘Where did they fly from?’
‘Geneva. A charter, non-stop to Kinshasa, with as much aid as we could buy. It’s emptied the bank account. Then it’s trucks east to the road head and after that on foot.’
‘They must have a radio or something – sat phone?’
‘Sat phones are a luxury we can’t afford . . . There’s one at the camp, but—’
‘When will she get there? Are they part of a relief convoy from Kinshasa?’
‘Tim phones us every couple of days, or if there’s an emergency – which is most of the time at the moment.’ He tore the top sheet off a memo pad and scribbled a number.
I counted twelve digits. It must be an Iridium.
‘Please don’t use this unless you absolutely have to. They’re swamped by casualties. I’m sure she’ll contact you as soon as she can.’
‘You’re right.’ I swigged the dregs and put the cup down on the desk. ‘But will you ask Tim to remind her anyway?’
He nodded.
‘And I need the exact location of this camp, mate. You got a map reference or the name of the village?’
Étienne didn’t ask why I wanted to know so much as he wrote down the details. Just as well because I wasn’t going to tell him. How could I, when I wasn’t sure myself?
He walked me to the door. We shook, and he kept his grip as he looked me in the eye. ‘Nick, I’m not going to bullshit you. It’s a horrible, dangerous place. I’m still having nightmares, but she obviously felt she had to go. All I can say is our camps have never been attacked. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and pray it stays that way.’
5
Fuck praying.
I rode the moped back uphill like a man possessed. I needed to get to the house and throw my stuff together and – fuck – do what, exactly? Were there planes or trains this time of night? To where? How the fuck would I get myself into the middle of the jungle and find that poxy village? I didn’t even know where I wanted to go. All I knew was that I was going to get her out of that shit-hole and find out one way or another if she would marry me. It wasn’t brain surgery.
Maybe Stefan could do something. Maybe he had some way of contacting her I didn’t know about. Maybe he controlled her bank account and credit cards – maybe he could threaten to cut her off if she didn’t turn straight round. I mean, there wasn’t much love lost between them, but even so, he wouldn’t want her risking her life for what he’d see as a bunch of worthless natives. No, why would he do anything now? Everyone else seemed to know but me: she’d always been like this. Maybe he already knew. Fuck it, who cared? I didn’t need anything from him.
I dumped the moped next to a big blacked-out BMW parked right outside the front door and stormed into the house.
I half ran down the hall. Stefan was back in the sitting room with a whisky, but he was no longer alone. Two Chinese guys, both very formal in grey suits and ties, were standing with him by a desk, poring over maps and papers. Cigarettes dangled from their mouths.
He saw me, excused himself and started into the hallway. There was no need. I gave him the middle finger and a cutaway sign before I headed for Silky’s room.
What the fuck did she think she was playing at? This was grown-up stuff. It wasn’t a party. She couldn’t just phone a cab home if she got bored.
As I paced her floor, I stared at the twelve-digit number for so long I could have recited it. I wanted to call, but I resisted. What was the point? Even if the flight got in tomorrow morning, it would take them days to get there. The roads were shit – when there were roads.
What time would they land?
I Googled Kinshasa airport. There was a contact number, and the time difference was only one or two hours from GMT, depending.
I dialled. The line crackled, and there was a distant ring tone. I got a faint voice over background mush. It sounded like the airport was at the bottom of an ocean. I struggled with my French and the guy struggled with his English, but we established between us that the plane from Geneva was arriving at six thirty in the morning. I thanked Jacques Cousteau and hung up.
It would take them ages to get landside. African bureaucracy had to be experienced to be believed. They might not even be granted visas.
They? Was she travelling with other volunteers? I hadn’t asked Étienne. Did they already have visas? Something else I’d forgotten. There was so much I didn’t know.
They might be turned away. They might not even get landside.
That was the first positive thought I’d had. If Silky was denied entry, she’d be put straight back on the plane. If not, there’d be a window of maybe an hour or two, from about ten a.m. local time, when I might get through to her mobile. If she’d taken it with her, and if it was switched on. And assuming there was coverage in the city . . . What the fuck did I know?