He turned his gaze to Mulamba. “Okay. One more time. Why Belgium? And this time maybe ease up a little on the messianic proclamations.”
“I shall endeavor to restrain my enthusiasm,” Mulamba replied. “This story begins with David Livingstone, a Scotsman who spent many years in Africa, exploring and setting up missions throughout the interior, in the hopes of opening commercial routes and ending the slave trade. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Livingstone did not see the African natives as savages to be exploited without mercy, but rather, he believed that they were also God’s children. He was fiercely opposed to human trafficking, and he believed that the only way to bring Christianity and civilization to Africa was by establishing trade in natural resources.
“He was correct in recognizing the vast untapped wealth of Africa, but naïve in his belief that this wealth would change the way his fellow Europeans looked at Africa. Instead of recognizing the humanity of Africans, most saw only a new opportunity to increase their wealth.”
“Human nature is a bitch,” Rook said.
Mulamba gave a sad look. “Oui. King Leopold II of Belgium was perhaps the most notorious of these adventurers. In 1885, he established the Congo Free State, in what is now my country. It was not to be a territory of Belgium, but rather an entirely commercial venture dedicated to exploiting the natural resources of the region. Elephants were hunted for ivory, native forests were cleared for rubber plantations, and of course, there were diamonds and other minerals to be taken. And although they were not slaves in name, the people of the Congo — my ancestors — were just one more resource to be exploited. The conditions on the plantations were brutal. Failure to meet a quota was punishable by death, and the mutilated bodies of men, women and children would be publicly displayed as a warning to others. The right hands of the victims were collected as proof of death, and the soldiers who enforced the quotas were rewarded for the number of hands they collected. Those bounty hunters soon realized it was easier to cut hands off without killing, and hundreds of thousands were mutilated, but still forced to keep working.”
Queen, who had been calmly stitching the gash in her thigh with a suture needle from her first aid kit, shuddered. “That’s someone’s idea of civilized behavior?”
“Is that what you’re looking for in Belgium?” Rook said, regretting the tone of his earlier statement. “Proof of these atrocities?”
“No. The abuses of the Congo Free State were widely reported, even then. Men such as Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote books exposing the brutal treatment of the native population. Please, pardon my digression. I will try to explain.
“In the year 1866, Livingstone embarked on an expedition to discover the source of the Nile River. At the time, this was an ambition on the order of…say, going to Mars. For years, no one heard from Livingstone. No one knew if he was alive or dead. In 1869, a New York newspaper sent Henry Morton Stanley to find Livingstone, and his search took nearly three years. Stanley eventually found Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in November of 1871.”
Rook remembered that historic nugget. “‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume.’”
“Exactly. Though Stanley probably did not actually speak those words. It is more likely that he fabricated the account of the meeting, to add an element of drama to his newspaper dispatches.”
“A goddamned sound bite.” Rook sighed. “Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
“We do not know for certain what Stanley said, or what else transpired during that meeting, because Stanley removed several pages from his diary, which were the only records of his meeting with Livingstone.”
“Why would he do that?” Queen asked. “That’s like erasing the videotapes of the moon landing.”
“Some historians have speculated that the actual account in Stanley’s diary would have contradicted what he reported, making him look foolish. Stanley himself claimed that he was embarrassed, because he did not embrace Livingstone, fearing that he might contract malaria or sleeping sickness.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone destroyed evidence to cover their ass.”
“I believe he might have been trying to cover something else. Recall that Livingstone had been missing for nearly six years. In that time, he explored parts of Africa that had never been seen by Europeans, and perhaps not even by the natives living nearby. Imagine the stories he had to tell, and now, at long last, he had a chance to share what he had learned with another white man.”
“Makes sense. So why the cover-up?”
Mulamba pursed his lips, reminding Rook of the look that Bishop sometimes got during their poker games, when he was trying to decide whether to fold or go all in. “Scientists believe that the first humans originated in Africa, probably in the Great Rift Valley. Yet, throughout all of recorded history, Africa has always been the land of the savages. There is no record of any great civilization in sub-Saharan Africa, in ancient times. The oldest known advanced culture in the interior is the Great Zimbabwe society, which dates back no further than the eleventh century. The birthplace of humanity, and yet no significant advancement for thousands of years. Does that seem likely to you?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “When European explorers arrived in Africa, they found marvelous kingdoms possessing great wealth and power in the interior. These civilizations did not appear overnight, but were, like many other great civilizations throughout history, built on the foundation of previous civilizations. Tribal warfare, often driven by the demand for slaves, destroyed those kingdoms, ensuring that Africa would never be anything more than the land of the savages. Nevertheless, there are stories of great forgotten cities in the depths of the jungle.”
Rook rolled his eyes. “You’re talking about the plot of every Tarzan story ever written.”
“Rook,” Queen said, the tone of her voice a warning to be polite, then she turned to Mulamba. “Forgive me for being blunt, sir, but he makes a good point. Lost cities? It’s like something from an Indiana Jones movie.”
“Where do you imagine the ideas for such stories originated?” Mulamba said. “Until the arrival of European missionaries, the native tribes of the interior had no written language. They had only oral traditions, stories handed down from one generation to the next. Stories of fantastic cities and ancient kingdoms reclaimed by the jungle.”
“You said it yourself,” Queen countered. “There aren’t any ruins. Wouldn’t someone have found something by now?”
“When the missionaries and explorers arrived, they brought death on a scale that we can scarcely imagine. It is believed that as many as ten million people died in the Congo alone — fifteen percent of the population — during the Belgian occupation. Who can say what was lost?” Mulamba paused, momentarily overcome with emotion. “However, to answer your question, I believe that something was found. There is a rumor that Dr. Livingstone himself found the ruins of an ancient civilization, perhaps on the edge of the Congo rain forest or somewhere in the Rift Valley, during his expedition to find the source of the Nile.”
Rook saw where Mulamba was headed. “So Livingstone told Stanley about it. Stanley wrote it all down in his diary, but then decided to tear those pages out. Why the change of heart? And why didn’t Livingstone ever talk about it?”
“Livingstone was quite ill at the time, possibly delirious. He died less than two years later, without ever recovering. It may be that he never intended to reveal what he had found, believing that such a discovery would lead to further exploitation of the African people. However, Stanley might have had a much different reason for destroying the record of that meeting.