Mahmoud hasn’t got a handle on anything, which means he has to see to it all himself. Mahmoud is assigned with supervising the food and water, and all he has to do is check that everyone pays and that the food and water are of good enough quality. And he’s supposed to coordinate the people assisting him. It all happened so quickly. Sure, when Mahmoud asked, “Are you making me admiral for food and water?”, he might have given the matter further thought. But he was happy to have washed his hands of it. And let’s face it, who could he have brought along in Mahmoud’s place? He mobilised all his contacts, only leaving out the complete idiots. And people can say what they like about Mahmoud, but he’s not stupid. Still, you never know what might suddenly drive a man crazy. It could be a woman, or money, or in Mahmoud’s case an official position. So he hasn’t been able to wash his hands of this at all, because more and more of Mahmoud’s time has been taken up deciding which badge to make for himself. He got hold of an old captain’s hat, God knows where from, and you could ask the same about the epaulettes he sewed onto his T-shirt.
“Admiral for Food and Water”? How ludicrous is that? Why admiral? Mahmoud was never in the navy. And he’d only swim if you tossed him into the mouth of a crocodile.
So it’s all down to him again. At least he can be happy that the hierarchy is functioning to some degree. Anyone who’s worked as a people smuggler knows how to make quick checks or to deal with people who haven’t paid. But beyond that you can’t ask for much. He’s only just managed to ensure that for each truck there are one or two people he knows and can to some extent rely on. They’ll let him know if something’s not working. Malaika lends him one of her pink angelmobiles, so he can rapidly access the section of the convoy in question. The thirty minutes it can take them to drive there, thirty minutes in which his mobile often has no reception – these are the times he can most easily fall asleep.
“We’re there!”
“Hmm?”
“Truck 29!”
Lionel wipes his eyes with a damp hand. He feels slightly fresher afterwards, as if a dog had licked his face. He forces open his swollen eyelids and gets out.
People have surrounded his car and are beaming at him; children laugh and whoop as if he’s about to pick them up and carry them around with him. At times like this he can understand where Malaika gets her energy from, this inexhaustible, terrifying energy. It’s unbelievable how tirelessly she works. But then again it makes a difference whether you’re dashing around the place as the good fairy the whole time, handing out water or medicine or those unusual things that European women evidently harness their breasts with like oxen before a plough – or whether you’re responsible for all the other shit.
He slips a foot beneath the mudguard over the front tyre. Groaning like an old man, he heaves himself up to get a better view. Beyond all the children he sees Orma waving and making her way towards him through the crowd.
“They want to talk to you.”
“Oh God! I told you to get rid of them! It’s always the same thing.”
“No, this time they say it’s something different!”
“And you believed them? Really, Orma! It’s the oldest trick in the book!”
Three figures approach him. A mountain of a man, in his late thirties perhaps, another man in glasses, and a woman he can tell has an excruciating voice just by looking at her. The mountain tries to say something, but the woman pushes him aside.
“What are we paying five dollars for?”
Of course. Always the same. Just the tone is different. This woman talks faster than other women. And her voice is higher. Much higher. Sometimes, when playing, children squeal as high as they can, but this woman trumps them all. He had no idea that people could talk at this pitch.
“There isn’t enough water!”
“There has to be enough,” Lionel sighs. “And there is enough!”
“Thirst isn’t everything. We have to wash too, you know!”
The voice! Like bashing a long, rusty nail into your ear. And then twisting it. Lionel is delighted when his mobile rings.
“Yo, what’s my favourite hiker up to? How’s it goin’?”
It’s astonishing that Mojo hasn’t called until now.
“Not great.”
“That’s always the way, amigo! The legs feel at their heaviest just before the summit.”
“We need to talk.”
“You know what? I don’t reckon we do. Hikin’ tales are the most goddamn boring tales in the world. Either it’s too steep uphill, too steep downhill or someone gets lost. The story’s only excitin’ if the hiker dies, but you’ve got a cell, you can call folk. And I’ve got all ten series of ‘Baywatch’ to get through. You know ‘Baywatch’? It’s a classic! O.K., let’s cut the crap: where’s my moolah?”
“I haven’t got it.”
The screeching woman looks at him expectantly. He looks past her at the dust, the sand and the wide, empty nothingness.
“Sorry, must have been some sort of interference on the line. It sounded like you said you hadn’t got it.”
“And I don’t.”
Mojo laughs.
“You’re a scream. But you’ve been to my office. You’ve seen the T.V. set. Maybe you thought Mojo is one of those guys who buys big televisions to impress dumb niggers. But you’d be thinkin’ wrong. I’m not like that.”
“I—”
“Sorry, but I’m not finished yet. I buy big television sets because I like watching T.V. And I don’t want no overbloated picture, I want H.D. I don’t wanna see Pamela Anderson’s nipples blur into little squares. I want those nipples so sharp that Pamela Anderson squeals if I touch the screen. I’ve got it all on Blu-Ray.”
“But—”
“But it doesn’t exist on Blu-Ray, is that what you’re sayin’? Wait, can we be sure?”
“I don’t know—”
“Me neither. Shall I ask Bandele?”
“The . . .”
“Bandele! Is ‘Baywatch’ out on Blu-Ray?” Mojo chortles. “Boy, am I excited!”
He laughs again.
“You should see this nigger rackin’ his brains. You’re O.K., Bandele. You might be a fool, but you’re O.K. But this guy, our T.V. pussy magnet, he’s no fool. He’s one smart guy. Are you listenin’?”
“What?” Lionel tries not to sound stressed, but he’s reached the point of sheer exhaustion.
“You listenin’ to what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m sayin’ you’re one smart guy. You’re thinkin’ Mojo’s tryin’ to take me for a ride, I know ‘Baywatch’ only came out on D.V.D. And so I’m sayin’ to you, you’re right. And yet you’re wrong. Right here in front of me I’ve got the entire edition of ‘Baywatch’ on Blu-Ray. Custom made. I know a guy who does this sort of thing for me. And this ain’t some kind of computer freebie, he does it for me in a real American studio. You see, I’m an aficionado. Know what that means?”
“I can imagine.”
Mojo pauses. “Really?”
“Well, what it means is that you don’t just enhance the resolution of the scenes with tits in them, but everything, including the credits. It’s much more expensive and you want me to feel afraid because you can afford to shell out a fortune for ‘Baywatch’. But me being afraid isn’t going to do you any good. I’m afraid all the time, see? The problem isn’t that I’m not afraid enough. The problem is that we have a problem.”
“Ooh! Customer not satisfied. May I register your complaint? Did you have different expectations of our product?”
He has to admit that to begin with he didn’t have a clear notion of how it would work. And he’s astonished that it’s worked out till now. He can’t say, of course, that he didn’t believe it was possible, but then again he never posed the question. He just saw his great opportunity to get to Europe, to Germany, crumble before his eyes, and then seized the only contingency plan that could be cobbled together at short notice. Even if the chances of success had been twice as poor he would still have gone for it, because anything was better than the 100 per cent certainty of spending his life on this totally messed-up continent. Of course he was anxious from the very beginning. Most of all he was anxious about being disappointed.
On the first day his greatest fear was of turning up and finding that none of Mojo’s promises had materialised. He’d already envisioned setting off, telling himself not to be impatient, that everything was very difficult to organise, then darkness would fall and he’d realise that Mojo’s water wasn’t coming, that Mojo had left him in the lurch, or conned him, or both.
And then the lorry appeared.
A dented ZiL from Russia, dating back to the fifties or sixties, but still roadworthy. And not just one; Mojo had got hold of them all. The next lorry was parked one kilometre further on. And one kilometre beyond that, a third.
“Aren’t the trucks there?”
“They’re here.”
“Don’t you like my trucks?” Mojo says sarcastically. “Would you rather Scania? Or M.A.N.?”
It’s true, Mojo works with Russian, Indian and Chinese wrecks. But nobody expected anything different. Mojo has to take anything with wheels, even juggernauts or flatbed trucks if they’re big enough. Those lorries that aren’t tankers are loaded with plastic barrels, and you can tell how difficult it is to get hold of these by the fact that the water sometimes tastes of paint or diesel. But supplying the water is nowhere near as complicated as organising food.
How do you feed one hundred and fifty thousand people? Who have nothing but the odd earthenware pot? The usual camp provision of flour, sugar and oil is pointless because these people have neither the time nor equipment to bake or mix their porridge. Some of the white exercise junkies have got concentrates, which are very practical, but Mojo had to kick-start deliveries of these, and if he didn’t steal them they would be unaffordable. What remained, to begin with at least, were carbohydrates and fats that are easy to portion up, such as bread, flatbread, nuts and dried fruits. In the first few days Mojo had to plunder a number of large bakeries. Well, not quite plunder, because he was reliant on them. So he gave them the money, but made it perfectly clear that virtually every other customer had to take a back seat. All the same it was hard to build up a continual supply. That’s not the main problem, however.
“I don’t care which lorries you use. The problem is you.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Mojo?”
Not a sound.
“Mojo? Hello?”
“Say that again.”
“I don’t have the money. And you’re the reason why not.”
“What’s goin’ on here? Do I look like some kinda service hotline?”
“You’re preventing us from being able to pay you. We can’t give you anything from our coffers if you nail them shut! We need electricity.”
“You’ve got electricity.”
“Not enough. What use is it if only my smartphone works? Everyone has to pay their share, which means everyone needs a mobile!”
“There are one hundred and fifty thousand of you. Do you think everyone can have their own plug socket in the middle of the desert?”
“I don’t know what else to say, but if you want your money you’re going to have to sort that out. Not every phone needs to be charged every day, but every second day for sure. Maybe families can get by with one phone between them, maybe others can share sometimes, but the bottom line is that we need to be able to charge thirty thousand mobiles, at least. And we need generators that don’t cut out. And a mobile network.”
Silence.
“Hello? Do you get what I’m saying? If you don’t secure the electricity supply, you won’t get any money for ‘Baywatch’. Because it won’t work, no matter how afraid I am.”
More silence.
“I not trying to get your back up. I know I’m empty-handed. I know you could say any time you’re stopping deliveries because you’re not getting any money. Then we’d die and that would be that. But you’re in the best position to know what your daily cut of this can look like: ten thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars. I’m not getting a cent of this money, but it’s precisely the sum that’s going to slip through your fingers every day if you don’t sort out the electricity. Every single day.”
Silence, but from the rustling he can hear that Mojo is still on the line.
“The same is true of food and water. If someone’s got nothing to drink today, they can’t pay tomorrow. The more that make it, the more money ends up in your lap.”
“If you make it,” Mojo says defiantly.
“If we don’t, no-one will embark on this journey after us. And for every convoy that doesn’t set off you’ll lose the same amount. Every day. Man, you can bathe in money, but we need electricity.”
“Hey, watch that tone of yours, amigo!”
“I don’t think I’m your amigo,” Lionel says, speaking as calmly and firmly as he can. “I’m your partner. I’m the guy who’s going to make you rich. If you give us electricity!”
A short silence on the other end of the line, and the connection is cut.
Lionel slips his mobile into his pocket. At that very moment he realises he’s made an unforgivable error. The woman plants herself in front of him. And while she squeals at him with every last breath of the air she’s been inhaling for twenty minutes, Lionel hopes, like a lovestruck young man, that Mojo is going to call back.