A 747 angled down from the dusky blue mass of clouds over Charles de Gaulle airport, setting up a thin whine of vibrations in the windowpane. Marceau reached out and held his fingertips against the glass until the vibrations stopped. His fingers left foggy blotches on the glass, chilled by an air conditioning unit beneath the window. He watched the plane speed down the runway and fade away into the rain. KLM.
The narrow strip of grass in front of the hotel looked raw green in the sallow morning light. Quelle saloperie! Marceau said aloud. Summer not over yet, and it looks like November.
He coughed and placed his fingers on the pane again. His hand began to tremble, and he pressed harder. Another plane dropped down from the ashen clouds. Sabena. In L’Etrier Jacques Delpech watching him warily, his straight black eyebrows raised ever so slightly over cool blue eyes. Goddamn Belgians. Crash, you bastard, he muttered, crash, go up in flames! The jet settled down onto the runway, like a plump hen, and cruised into the distance. Suddenly dejected, Marceau stared gloomily down the runway as the plane disappeared from sight.
He lit a cigarette, turned from the window, and fell into an armchair. He was exhausted. He said to himself that he had to hold on just a little longer, an hour, maybe two, depending on Guichard’s jibber-jabber, and then a quick flight to Geneva to pick up the Swiss Air flight back to Kinshasa. And Nicole. He groaned aloud. No more! No more! It was over! No more questions. Finished the all-night fights with Nicole that in the beginning had ended with good, hot sex, but lately sent him off, festering with jealousy into a separate bed. Over. Done with. He could not stand it any more.
At this point, after three months with Nicole, Marceau knew the exact size and shape, according to Nicole—the bitch probably exaggerated on purpose to drive him crazy—of Jacques Delpech’s prick; the name of his favorite aftershave—Drakkar Noir, which every goddamn pansy waiter on the Right Bank in Paris used, for God’s sake—he knew that he ordered his suits from Henry Poole and Company at 15 Savile Row where his fitter was a Mr. Meryan-Green, and his shirts from Charvet in the Place Vendôme; he knew his favorite champagne—pink Laurent Perrier, the same as his lordship Citoyen Président Mobutu, and Delpech’s birthday—June 18th, the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo; what was a Belgian born in the Congo doing with a birthday like that? He also knew that Jacques Delpech never wore pyjamas to bed. He also knew that he always went to sleep on his back. He also knew . . .
With a violent effort Marceau heaved himself out of the chair and went to the bathroom, where he splashed cold water over his face and stood for a long time drooping over the sink running cold water over his wrists.
He dried his face and hands and went back to the chair to wait for Guichard. He lit a cigarette, leaned back, and watched the smoke hesitate, then slide down unresisting toward the air conditioner. The diabolic dialogue itched at the back of his thoughts, pushing forward. Listen to me! it said. Again: And how many times did you go to his office, Marceau had asked. How many times, hein? Staring past him, Nicole sat cross-legged on the bed, her hands draped over her ankles. Not her best feature. Nicole’s ankles were thick. Piano legs. From time to time she took a sip of champagne from a glass on the bedside table. Stubbornly, she pretended that he was not there. She picked up an emery board and began to file her nails. Where was Delpech’s secretary all that time, hein? Hein? Dis-moi, chérie, he had asked finally in his best, sweet, shit-eating tone, Tell me, were his wife’s ankles as thick as yours? Both legs flailing, Nicole shot off the bed and planted herself in front of him. Twice a week, she hissed, lowering her face to his. Sometimes three. If I wanted it! she said, and Marceau thought that he was going to burst into tears, right in front of her.
Marceau rubbed his eyes and sighed. The windowpanes buzzed like a beehive. He looked at his watch. Half past ten. He thought of Guichard coming through the door and what he was going to say and suddenly a great surge of joy overwhelmed him, so exhilarating that he had to get out of the chair and walk quickly into the bathroom to relieve himself. Every time he remembered the miracle—the Miracle!—the idea that had come to him, magically, when he awoke from a doze on the plane coming up, he had to go pee.
My God, Marceau thought, these past three days would have killed an ordinary man. Guichard ringing him from Angola to set up this meeting in Paris, then Jacques Delpech and his up-yours, buster smirk, and then Boketsu, our soon-to-be in-house petit nègre dragging him out in the middle of the night to rake him over the coals for getting down and dirty with his buddy Delpech. And Nicole. That torment. God, no wonder his body ached as if somebody had been twisting him by the short hairs for days. Marceau shook himself, and as he was zipping up, he thought he heard a knock on the door. He had a violent urge to pee again but restrained himself and walked to the door.
“Guy!” Guichard shouted as if they had just stumbled across each other at the North Pole. He stepped into the room and fumbled with the buttons of his raincoat. “Mon Dieu, Guy, you look like shit.”
“I feel like shit.”
“Are you sick? Malaria?”
“No. Hell no. I’ve been working hard. Contrary to what the big know-it-alls in the corner suites may think, it’s hard work down . . .”
“I know, I know,” Guichard said, scraping a chair across the carpet to a table. “We’re anxious to hear what you’ve got for us. Sit.”
“Be right with you. I was about to take a leak.”
Guichard could hear the toilet swishing and gurgling as Marceau came back into the room.
“So,” Marceau said, breathing heavily as he sat down, “What would you like to know?”
“Why, everything! my good man,” Guichard said, baffled. “Start with Delpech. I imagine he was the tough recruit of the two.”
“Delpech?” Marceau said, and he could feel that tight little coil of joy, the miracle idea, ready to spring. “Delpech tough? Well, I guess I may have a little more experience in these things than you, Bernard, I’m not bragging, I’m just saying I’ve had some experience with these things, men like Delpech, I mean, and you’d be surprised . . .”
“So?” Guichard seemed to be staring at him, those big, bulgy frog eyes, popping out of his head. “So Delpech is on board? No problems?”
“What?”
“Is Delpech going to play ball with us?”
“You bet,” Marceau said, a little louder than he would have liked. He thought that Guichard jumped. “Sure he is, just as you said he would, Bernard, you said it right there sitting out on my terrace, you said. I believe it was you who said that he needed money, the bastard needed money because his business isn’t going too good and his wife is suing him for divorce, or I think I heard that he is suing his wife for divorce, but whatever it is, he needs money, lots of money, and you were right all along about that, Bernard, so Delpech is ready to sign the ticket.”
“Ticket?”
“Yeah, I mean, play ball . . . you know on our team. On board.”
“Oh. Fine. Fine. Because you know, Guy, this operation is worthless without Delpech. Petro-France can’t afford to paint itself into a corner where we’re dealing only with some unpredictable African who can turn on us overnight.”
Guichard took out a burgundy leather portfolio and laid it across his lap. “And Boketsu Bika?” he asked, looking up at Marceau.
“Well, there . . . ah, with Boketsu, it’s complicated, because he’s got in mind some pretty radical, I mean, some substantial, I mean, it’s not your usual kind of kickback.”
“What does he have in mind?”
“Ah . . . a coup. A coup d’état.” It seemed to Marceau that Guichard’s frog eyes cranked out a little further from his face.
“A coup?”
“Yeah, a coup. And he’s got it all worked out, which tribes will play along, which ones won’t and why not, and how much money it will take to make them play along and all that shit. You ought to hear him talk. Says that Zaïre is going down the tubes, believe me, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out, and he’s the right man at the right time to step in and take over. Seems he’s been working on this thing for years. Last time he tried out the idea, he wasn’t so strong, and Mobutu wasn’t so weak. And now he’s got all his ducks lined up and all that’s missing is money.”
Guichard was breathing through his mouth, and his eyes had not moved. “Where will he get the hardware? Guns? Missiles? Whatever.”
“He’s got suppliers lined up in Libya. Maybe a big dealer in Brazil, he’s waiting to find out.”
“He’s worked all this out on his own? A little hand from Belgium, maybe? It could be the Belgians. They hate Mobutu. Or the CIA. Mobutu is getting to be a real embarrassment for the Americans. And Boketsu speaks English. Studied somewhere in the United States. We’d better check that out. No need for us to bankroll a coup if the CIA is into this.”
“Well, he never mentions any other parties. As I say, you ought to hear him talk. Gets really carried away.” Marceau could feel fatigue creeping up his legs, over his body. He had to hold on a little longer.
“And who will fight? Who will pull off the coup? Take over the radio and TV station and those things they do in coups?”
“Mercenaries. He’s got those lined up, too. South Africans, some Belgians, a few English and French. That’s what the money is for. Good guns and good fighters. He thinks a thousand men ought to do it. Easily, he says.”
Guichard sat back in his chair for a moment. “A coup,” Guichard said softly, ramming his fountain pen into the breast pocket of his suit. “A coup!” he whispered, throwing aside his portfolio and getting up to pace the floor. “Do you realize what this means, Guy? Do you realize what you’ve handed us, on a goddamn silver platter, you fucking genius!” He slapped Marceau on the back and tried to pull him out of his chair. “I told them you were the man for the job. Robert argued with me, almost argued me down, but I held out. Fucking genius!”
Guichard pranced around the room. For a moment he stood at the window chewing on a fingernail. Then, he turned to Marceau. “Cabinda,” he crooned. “Cabinda! Does that mean anything to you, Guy? Hmmn?”
“Another oil company?” Marceau queried half-heartedly.
Guichard laughed and sat back down. With both hands he smoothed back the hair at his temples and sighed happily. “Well, cher ami, Cabinda is a small triangle of land that fits like a puzzle piece into Congo, Angola, and Zaïre. Cabinda, unfortunately, currently belongs to Angola. Cabinda’s oil is the main source of Angola’s foreign exchange, in point of fact. The Cabindans want to secede from Angola. And take their oil with them. We know, or we have reason to believe, that Mobutu has been financing the rebel secessionist FLEC-FAC for years. Why? Because Mobutu wants those gorgeous oil reserves—as well as a few more miles of coastline to add to Zaïre.”
Marceau could feel his stomach knotting again. Money, when was the bastard going to talk about the money? Cut out the goddamn geography lesson.
“So what does Boketsu’s coup have to do with Cabinda?”
“Plenty,” Guichard said. He smoothed his hair again and settled his shoulders against the chair. “Ah, mon cher ami, thanks to you,” Guichard said, pointing a meaty finger toward the ceiling, “Somebody Up There is dealing us some terrific cards! Petro-France is about to pick up a royal flush!”
Guichard leaned forward, his clasped hands dangling between his knees. “Look at it this way, Guy,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “Boketsu stages his coup, takes over Zaïre, and with the kind of money we’re going to pour into this thing, he can do it, but I want to talk to him first, before we lose our heads over this. Anyway, with our man running the country, well, I think you can see for yourself what the possibilities are.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along. I said it to you before, get the top guy on the payroll, and you said no, Mobutu was too expensive.”
“Ah, ah, ah, there’s a big difference here, Guy. All the difference in the world. I said our guy, remember? We’re going to give him the money to put him on the top. After that, we pull the strings, he belongs to us. We aren’t coming in begging for handouts. If we put Boketsu in Zaïre, that’ll make two—what I mean is, we’ve got President Sassou Nguesso across the river virtually under house arrest. The whole damn country is falling apart. So we had to pull the plug on him. Let’s face it, there is only so much the natives can take. After a while, what the hell, they start fighting even if they know the next bullet is for them. Look at Zaïre. It’s getting there. So over in the Congo we’ve picked out our guy, we’re funneling the cash his way, and he’s going to take over. Sans problèmes. We just have to let the Congolese get their national conference out of the way and blow off a little steam about democratization. Look at it, Guy, do you see the big picture now? Our man in the Congo and our man in Zaïre means Cabinda in Petro-France’s pocket. Let Chevron have what’s left of the oil in Angola. After we take away Cabinda, the Americans can have Angola.”
Guichard reached over and shook Marceau’s knee. “Hey, Guy, sure you’re not sick? The last man I saw with eyes as glassy as yours died of black water fever a day later.”
With great effort, Marceau mumbled, “Sleep. I haven’t had much sleep lately, that’s all.”
“Why don’t you go home? Get some sleep. What’re you doing in a dump like this, anyway, an airport Ramada Inn, for Christ sake?”
Guichard threw his head back and looked around the room. The bed had not been slept in, but Marceau had obviously stretched out on one side of the bed, which was slightly rumpled; a corner of the spread had been pulled back and a pillow wedged against the headboard. His folded garment bag leaned against the wall next to the door. “What’s the story? You going to spend a few days with Margot before heading back down?”
At the mention of his wife’s name Marceau, with an effortful jerk, sat up straight.
“I can’t. I know I should. You see,” Marceau floundered, searching for an acceptable excuse. What the hell had got into Guichard, asking him personal questions like that? “I can’t. Have to get back for a party. At Boketsu’s place. He expects me.”
“Bien sûr. Margot will have to understand. You’re turning into a ball of fire, Guy. A real ball of fire. So. Write up a presentation for Robert and the higher-ups. Pump every detail out of Boketsu and get it down on paper.” Guichard got to his feet and headed toward his raincoat.
“The money,” Marceau said, “Boketsu wants details.”
“I’ll have to see him first, before we . . . ah, formalize things. But there’s no problem. No problem. Reassure him. Keep him spinning. Has he asked for a specific amount?”
“Well, in a way . . . more or less. A minimum he needs, he keeps talking about that.”
“We can manage. Everything should go on wheels from here on out. Smooth as smooth. Just don’t let your friend get unreasonable. The company is not fond of pissing away too much money on the natives.”
“And Delpech?”
“That’s more straightforward. Work out the details with him down there. Damned good thing you nailed him down. He’s too close to Mobutu to be left out of the loop.”
“The money. What do I tell him about the money?”
“What?”
“Delpech is asking a lot. I mean, he expects a payoff up front, too.”
“How much?”
“Five million.”
Guichard whistled. “Greedy. Very greedy. The black man’s white man usually doesn’t cost that much.” Guichard pushed out his nether lip and jiggled the change in his pocket. “In the long run, that’s peanuts, of course. And a guy like Delpech, a European, helps keep the wild cards to a minimum in a deal like this.”
Marceau’s head ached, a steady hammer blow at the base of his skull, and he was so tired that his knees were trembling.
“But the money . . .” Marceau said, his voice little more than a whisper.
“The money?”
Marceau was afraid that at any minute he would grab Guichard’s fat shoulders and start shaking the answers out of him. “The money! How does this fucking thing work?”
Guichard’s moist, unctuous laughter resonated throughout the banal room. “Ah, pauvre innocent!” he said. “I had no idea what you were driving at. Well, it’s very simple. Numbered Swiss bank accounts are marvelously simple. I fill out the forms, send them to you, Monsieur Delpech signs them, and you send them back to me. Compris?”
Marceau felt his heart stumble and skip, one, two, three; then a steady purr of contentment lapped through his veins.
When the plane landed in Kinshasa, Guy Marceau was so delirious that he had to be carried off the plane. For the veteran Swiss Air crew, Marceau’s comatose state on arrival was an intriguing novelty. Given the absence of medical treatment available in most African cities, they had become accustomed to handling sick and dying passengers desperate to reach the hospitals of Europe and South Africa. Even after the airlines adopted stricter measures prohibiting those passengers unable to walk to board planes, determined friends and relatives could always manage to get on each side of the sick or injured person and “walk” him or her on board. So Europeans who went out of their heads and raved incoherently during the flight or who were dead on arrival in Zurich or Brussels or Frankfurt or Lisbon or Paris or Johannesburg were still more routine than the airlines and their crews would have liked.
After Guichard left the room in Paris, Marceau had fled to the bathroom to relieve himself. That was when the vomiting started. He stood over the swirling water of the toilet until the retching gave way to dry heaves. His whole body felt bruised and sore. Even the weight of his shirtsleeve against his arm was painful. The pain at the back of his neck radiated down his shoulders. He lost an hour collapsed in a feverish sleep on the bed. He woke in a panic, grabbed his bag, leaving his shaving kit behind in the bathroom, and boarded the plane to Geneva. In the first class Swiss Air lounge in Geneva the hostess was convinced that Marceau, shaking uncontrollably and mumbling to himself, was high on some drug and considered picking up the phone and calling the police to get him out of the lounge. On the plane en route to Kinshasa the young wife of a Citicorp executive returning from summer vacation complained to the stewardess that Marceau had pawed at her back and tried to crawl between her and her seat. To get warm, that’s what he kept saying over and over, the woman told the stewardess. The indignant young woman moved to another seat, and the stewardess collected all the blankets she could find and piled them on Marceau. Before he became delirious, Marceau struggled to the bathroom where he stood weaving unsteadily over the toilet. Steam from his urine rose from the toilet bowl. Jesus Christ, he said, Jesus Christ Almighty.
Afterwards, he could not remember how he got back to his seat. He could not remember landing at Njili or the drive up to the Villa San Diego, where his cook took one look at him, lying in a soggy heap on the bed, and ran next door to borrow a bottle of quinine pills from the Minister of Transportation’s cook.
Two days later when Nicole came back to the house, the worst of the malarial fevers had passed, and Marceau was so overjoyed to see her that he forgot to ask her why she had not been there when he returned from Paris.