The Constant Gardener (48 page)

“I'd like you, please, to post this for me, Ghita,” Justin said, handing her a fat envelope addressed to a woman in Milan. “She's not a girlfriend, in case you're curious. She's my lawyer's aunt”—a rare smile—“and here's a letter for Porter Coleridge at his club. Don't use the Field Post Office, if you don't mind. And no courier service or anything. The normal Kenyan mails are quite reliable enough. Thank you immeasurably for all your help.”

At which she could restrain herself no longer, and threw her arms round him, and herself against him, and held him as if she were holding on to life itself until he prized himself free.

Captain McKenzie and his copilot Edsard sit in the Buffalo's cockpit, and the cockpit is a raised platform in the nose of the Buffalo's fuselage, with no dividing doors to shield the crew from their cargo—or the cargo, for that matter, from the crew. And directly below the platform, one step down from it, some thoughtful soul has provided a low russet-colored Victorian armchair of the sort an elderly family retainer might pull up before the kitchen fire on a winter's evening, and clamped its feet to the deck by means of improvised iron shoes. And that is where Justin sits, with a headset over his ears and frayed nylon ribbons like a child's walking harness round his belly, while he receives the wisdom of Captain McKenzie and Edsard and occasionally removes his headset to take questions from a white Zimbabwean girl called Jamie who has made herself comfortable amid a tethered mountain of brown packing cases. Justin has tried to offer her his chair but McKenzie has stopped him with a firm, “You're here.” At the tail end of the fuselage, six Sudanese women in robes crouch in varying attitudes of stoicism or stark terror. One of them is vomiting into a plastic bucket kept handy for the purpose. Quilted panels of shiny gray line the plane's roof, red launch lines dangle from a cable beneath them, their metal-lined tips dancing to the thunder of the engines. The fuselage grunts and heaves like an old iron horse dragged back for one more war. There is no sign of air-conditioning or parachute. A blistered red cross on a wall panel indicates medical supplies. Below it runs a line of jerry cans marked “Kerosene” and tied together with twine. This is the journey Tessa and Arnold made and this is the man who flew them. This is their last journey before their last journey.

“So you're Ghita's friend,” McKenzie had observed, when Sudan Sarah brought Justin to his tukul back in Loki and left them alone together.

“Yes.”

“Sarah tells me you had a travel document issued to you by the South Sudanese office in Nairobi, but you've mislaid it. That right?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I take a look at your passport?”

“Not at all.” Justin hands him his Atkinson passport.

“What's your line of country, Mr. Atkinson?”

“Journalist. The London Telegraph. I'm writing a piece on the U.n.'s Operation Lifeline Sudan.”

“That's a real pity just when OLS needs all the publicity it can get. Seems silly to let a little piece of paper stand in the way. Know where you lost it?”

“I'm afraid I don't.”

“We're ferrying mostly cases of soya oil today. Plus a few care packages for the boys and girls in the field. Pretty much the normal milk round, if you're interested.”

“I am.”

“Do you object to sitting on the floor of a jeep under a pile of blankets for an hour or two?”

“Not in the least.”

“Then I think we're in business, Mr. Atkinson.”

And thereafter McKenzie has clung doggedly to this fiction. On the plane, as he might for any journalist, he describes the workings of what he proudly calls the most expensive antistarvation operation ever mounted in the history of mankind. His information comes in metallic bursts that do not always rise above the din of the engines.

“In South Sudan we have calorie rich, calorie middle, calorie poor and plain destitute, Mr. Atkinson. Loki's job is to measure the hunger gaps. Every metric ton we drop costs the U.n. thirteen hundred U.s. dollars. In civil wars, the wealthy die first. That's because, if someone steals their cattle they can't adjust. The poor stay pretty much the way they were. For a group to survive, the land around it has to be safe to plant. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of safe land around. Am I going too fast for you?”

“You're doing admirably, thank you.”

“So Loki has to assess the crops and measure where the hunger gaps will appear. Right now, we're on the verge of a new gap. But you've got to get the timing right. Drop food when they're due to harvest, you mess with their economy. Drop it too late, they're already dying. Air's the only answer, by the way. Transport the food by road, it gets hijacked, often by the driver.”

“Right. I see. Yes.”

“Don't you want to take notes?”

If you're a journalist, behave like one, he is saying. Justin opens his notebook as Edsard takes over the lecture. His subject is security.

“We have four levels of security at the food stations, Mr. Atkinson. Level four means abort. Level three is red alert, level two fair. We got no zero-risk areas in South Sudan. OK?”

“OK. Understood.”

McKenzie comes back. “The monitor will tell you when you arrive at the station what level they've got today. If there's an emergency, do what he tells you. The station you're visiting is in territory technically controlled by General Garang, who gave you the visa you lost. But it's under regular attack from the north as well as rival tribes from the south. Don't think this is just a north-south thing. The tribal groupings change overnight and they'd as soon fight one another as fight Muslims. Still with me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Country of Sudan is basically a fantasy of the colonial cartographer. In the south we've got Africa, green fields, oil and animist Christians. In the north we've got Arabia and sand and a bunch of Muslim extremists intent on introducing shariah law. Know what that is?”

“More or less,” says Justin who in another life has written papers on the subject.

“Result is, we've got everything we need for pretty much perpetual famine. What the droughts don't achieve, civil wars do and vice versa. But Khartoum's still the legal government. Ultimately, whatever deals the U.n. cuts in the south, it's still got to pay its dues to Khartoum. So what we've got here, Mr. Atkinson, we've got a unique triangular pact between the U.n., the boys in Khartoum and the rebels they're beating the living daylights out of. Follow me?”

“You going up to Camp Seven!” Jamie the white Zimbabwean girl bellows in his ear, crouching becomingly beside him in her brown denims and bush hat and cupping her hands to her mouth.

Justin nods.

“Seven's the hot one right now! Girlfriend of mine got hit by a level four up there just a couple of weeks ago! Had to trek eleven hours through marshland, then wait another six hours without her pants for the pickup plane!”

“What happened to her pants?” Justin yells back at her.

“You have to take them off! Boys and girls! It's the chafing! Wet hot steaming trousers! It's unbearable!” She rests for a while then returns her hands to his ear. “When you hear cattle moving out of a village—run. When the women follow them—run faster. We had a guy once ran fourteen hours on no water. Lost eight pounds. Carabino was after him.”

“Carabino?”

“Carabino was a good guy till he joined the northerners. Now he's apologized and come back to us. Everybody's very pleased. Nobody asks him where he's been. This your first time?”

Another nod.

“Listen. Statistically, actuarially, you should be pretty safe. Don't worry. And Brandt's a real character.”

“Who's Brandt?”

“The food monitor at Camp Seven. A great guy. Everybody loves him. Crazy as a bedbug. Big God man.”

“Where does he come from?”

She shrugs. “Calls himself a washed-up mongrel like the rest of us. Nobody has a past up here. It's practically a rule.”

“How long's he been there?” Justin yells, and has to repeat himself.

“Six months, I guess! Six months in the field nonstop is a lifetime, believe me! Won't come down to Loki even for a couple of days R and R!” she ends regretfully, and flops back exhausted by her yelling.

Justin unbuckles himself and goes to the window. This is the journey you made. This is the spiel they gave you. This is what you saw. Below him lies emerald Nile swamp, misted by heat, pierced with Jigsaw-shaped black holes of water. On higher ground cellular cattle pens are packed tight with animals.

“Tribesmen never tell you how many cattle they've got!” Jamie is standing at his shoulder, yelling in his ear. “The food monitors' job is to find out! Goats and sheep get the center of the pen, cows outside, calves next to them! Dogs go in with the cows! At night they burn the cow dung in their little houses in the perimeter! Wards off the predators, keeps the cows warm and gives them God-awful coughs! Sometimes they put the women and kids in there as well! Girls get good food in Sudan! If they're well fed, they fetch a better marriage price!” She pats her stomach, grinning. “A man can have as many wives as he can afford. There's this incredible dance they do—I mean honestly,” she exclaims, and puts her hand over her mouth as she bursts out laughing.

“Are you a food monitor?”

“Assistant.”

“How did you get the job?”

“Went to the right nightclub in Nairobi! Want to hear a riddle?”

“Of course.”

“We drop grain here, right?”

“Right.”

“Because of the north-south war, right?”

“Go on.”

“Big part of the grain we drop is grown in North Sudan. That's whatever the U.s. grain farmers don't dump on us from surplus. Work it out. The aid agencies' money buys Khartoum's grain. Khartoum uses the money to buy arms for the war against the south. The planes that bring the grain to Loki use the same airport that Khartoum's bombers use to bomb the South Sudanese villages.”

“So what's the riddle?”

“Why is the U.n. financing the bombing of South Sudan and feeding the victims at the same time?”

“Pass.”

“You going back to Loki after this?”

Justin shakes his head.

“Pity,” she says, and winks.

Jamie returns to her seat among the soya oil boxes. Justin stays at the window, watching the gold sunspot of the plane's reflection flitting over the twinkling marshes. There is no horizon. After a distance, the ground colors merge into mist, tinting the window with deeper and deeper tones of mauve. We could fly for all our lives, he tells her, and we'd never reach the earth's hard edge. With no warning the Buffalo begins its slow descent. The swamp turns brown, hard ground rises above the water level. Single trees appear like green cauliflowers as the plane's sunspot whips across them. Edsard has taken the controls. Captain McKenzie is studying a brochure of camping equipment. He turns and gives Justin a thumbs-up. Justin returns to his seat, buckles up and glances at his watch. They have been flying three hours. Edsard banks the plane steeply. Boxes of toilet paper, fly spray and chocolate shoot down the steel deck and thump against the raised dais of the cockpit close to Justin's feet. A cluster of rush-roofed huts appears at the end of the wingtip. Justin's headset is full of atmospherics like classical music being played at the wrong speed. Out of the cacophony he selects a gruff Germanic voice giving details of the state of the ground. He makes out the words “firm and easy.” The plane starts to vibrate wildly. Rising in his harness Justin looks through the cockpit window at a strip of red earth running across a green field. Lines of white sacks serve as markers. More sacks are strewn over one corner of the field. The plane straightens and the sun hits the back of Justin's neck like a douche of scalding water. He sits down sharply. The Germanic voice becomes loud and clear.

“Come on down here, Edsard, man! We made a fine goat stew for lunch today! You got that layabout McKenzie up there?”

Edsard is not so easily wooed. “What are those bags doing out in the corner there, Brandt? Has someone made a drop just recently? Are we sharing space with another plane up here?”

“That's just empty bags, Edsard. You ignore those bags and come on down here, you hear me? You got that hotshot journalist with you?”

McKenzie this time, laconically. “We got him, Brandt.”

“Who else you got?”

“Me!” yells Jamie cheerfully above the roar.

“One journalist, one nymphomaniac, six returning delegates,” McKenzie intones as calmly as before.

“What's he like, man? The hotshot?”

“You tell me,” says McKenzie.

Rich laughter in the cockpit, shared by the faceless foreign voice from the ground.

“Why's he nervous?” Justin asks.

“They're all nervous down there. It's the end of the line. When we touch down, Mr. Atkinson, you stay with me, please. Protocol requires I introduce you to the Commissioner ahead of everybody else.”

The airstrip is an elongated clay tennis court, part overgrown. Dogs and villagers are emerging from a clump of forest and heading toward it. The huts are rush-roofed and conical. Edsard makes a low pass while McKenzie scans the bush to either side.

“No bad guys?” Edsard asks.

“No bad guys,” McKenzie confirms.

The Buffalo banks, levels out and rushes forward. The airstrip hits it like a rocket. Clouds of flaming red dust envelop the windows. The fuselage sags left, then farther left, the cargo howls in its moorings. The engines scream, the plane shudders, scrapes something, moans and bucks. The engines die. The dust subsides. They have arrived. Justin is staring through the falling dust at an approaching delegation of African dignitaries, children, and a couple of white women in grubby jeans, dreadlocks and bracelets. At their center, clad in a brown homburg hat, ancient khaki shorts and very worn suede shoes, strides the beaming, bulbous, gingery and undeniably majestic figure of Markus Lorbeer without his stethoscope.

•      •      •

The Sudanese women clamber from the plane and rejoin a chanting cluster of their people. Jamie the Zimbabwean is hugging her companions to whoops of mutual pleasure and amazement, and hugging Lorbeer also, stroking his face and pulling off his homburg and smoothing his red hair for him while Lorbeer beams and pats her bottom and chortles like a schoolboy on his birthday. Dinka porters swarm into the rear of the fuselage and unload to Edsard's instructions. But Justin must remain in his seat until Captain McKenzie beckons him down the steps and leads him away from the festivities, across the airstrip, up a small mound to where a cluster of Dinka elders in black trousers and white shirts sit in a half circle of kitchenchairs under a shade tree. At their center sits Arthur the Commissioner, a shriveled, gray-haired man with a hewn face and intense, sagacious eyes. He wears a red baseball cap with Paris embroidered on it in gold.