Blue Gold (15 page)

“Kai belongs to a group. There's going to be a meeting,” Laiping told Min when they had reached an open stretch of walkway where no one could hear them. “We should go.”

Min gave her a fearful glance. “I don't know.”

“Do you want things to change, or not?” said Laiping, echoing Kai.

“When is the meeting?”

“I'll find out,” she promised, giving Min a hug before they parted ways at the main boulevard.

Laiping watched Min walk out onto the road to avoid the crowds on the sidewalk, as though she was too fragile to mix with them—no trace left of the bulldozer who met her at the station just a few weeks ago. She had no idea how to find Kai, or, if she did, how she would convince him to trust her. But she had to, for Min's sake—and for her own.
Anybody can see how bright you are
, Kai had told her. Laiping vowed to prove to him she was smart, and the first way to do that was by finding him, like a needle among a hundred thousand strands of straw.

SYLVIE LAY ON THE MAT
with her eyes closed, thinking how nice it would be to go on sleeping. The nightmares had been bad, startling her awake with jumbled visions of soldiers and machetes, and raging fire. Now, when she could see the light of day through her eyelids, it felt safe to sleep. But it was a school day and she had to get herself and Pascal fed and washed. Olivier she didn't have to fuss over—he had stopped going to school entirely, and was never at home.

When she sat up, she saw Mama and Lucie curled beside her, but the other mat, where Pascal normally slept beside Olivier, was empty.

“I saw him leave,” reported Lucie, stretching. “It was still dark out.”

“You have to find him, Sylvie,” Mama fretted.

“I will,” she said, pulling on her white school blouse and blue skirt. Pascal had been sulking ever since Mama let slip Sylvie's plan to go to Canada, but it was unlike him to run off. Olivier was the quick-tempered and impulsive one—Pascal was usually easygoing and eager to please. She wondered what the nine-year-old could be thinking. “Lucie,” she said in a rush, “slice some of that fruit for breakfast.”

“The knife is gone!” said Lucie, rummaging through their small collection of pots and implements.

So wherever Pascal was, he had taken the knife with him. Quickly fastening the buttons of her blouse, Sylvie wondered if he pictured himself a soldier, like Olivier, and the thought of it made her hurry all the more.

She ran most of the way to the school, hoping to find him playing football in the patch of red dust that served as a pitch. When he wasn't there, she decided check with his friend, Jean-Yves, who didn't attend school. She knew where he lived in Zone 5 with his brothers, and made her way there—suffering the usual lewd stares and comments from bored men loafing under trees and in doorways.

She found the eldest brother, Luc, chopping wood outside their hut. A little older than Sylvie, he was the head of the family since the parents were killed in the fighting back home. Sylvie knew from Pascal that they had been small-time miners, gathering loose coltan from the hillsides. The government had allowed people to make a living that way for a while, until things changed and the Mai-Mai arrived to chase them away. They were the sort of people that Sylvie's father had been trying to protect—the reason he was killed.

“Jean-Yves is gone, too,” Luc informed her indifferently.

His right hand was missing—taken by a soldier, Sylvie guessed. He was using his left hand to chop firewood, his right foot to keep the log in place on the ground. Sylvie shuddered as Luc brought the ax down on the log, a toe's width from his foot.

“You should be more careful,” she said. He looked at her with lifeless eyes that seemed to say he didn't care what happened to him anymore. “Did Jean-Yves say anything about where he was going?” she asked, refocusing on Pascal.

“He does errands for Kayembe's men sometimes. If you find him, tell him to bring back our machete.”

A missing knife and a missing machete. Sylvie feared her instinct had been right.
They've gone to become soldiers!
She knew where she had to look next.

There was a zone in Nyarugusu, a half-hour's walk north of the old market, where decent women didn't go, day or night. It was where Kayembe's men lived—where Sylvie assumed that Olivier had been staying, and where Pascal might have gone to join him. As Sylvie walked into Zone 7, she was stared at by groups of men gathered outside crude lean-tos. They didn't speak to her or offer to buy sex, which somehow made them more frightening than the drunks and loafers in other parts of the camp. There was a desperation about them that made Sylvie's skin crawl. Her head was light with dread that one of these men might attack her. She pulled her blouse down at the back to ensure modesty at the front. Keeping her eyes downcast, she forced herself to keep walking.

She came into a circle of abandoned, falling-down huts. The charred bones of animals were scattered out from an old fire pit, long gone cold. She recognized two of Kayembe's men—the scrawny one and the round one who had carried her beans and oil for her—leaning against a jeep, smoking cigarettes. Gathering every ounce of her courage, Sylvie went up to them.

“Do you know Olivier?” she asked.

The skinny one looked her up and down. Sylvie saw a handgun in his belt.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I'm his sister. I need to find him.”

“Lucky girl,” he said with a lecherous grin. “You found me instead.”

“Mind your manners,” said the big man, cuffing the smaller one. “Don't you know her? She belongs to Kayembe.”

Sylvie bristled, but didn't argue.

“Don't mind Arsène,” the larger man told her. “But you shouldn't be here. It isn't safe.” He opened the passenger door of the jeep, as though he fancied himself a gentleman. “Allow me to take you back to your home.”

“I must see my brother,” she insisted. “Please. It's important. Our little brother is missing. I think he may have gone to find him.”

The big man hesitated. “The boss won't like it.”

“He said it's all right,” she told him. “He said to ask you to take me to him.”

The fighter's eyes narrowed. Sylvie could see he knew she was lying, but he also saw her desperation, and there was a kindness about him.

“Get in,” he said at last, ushering her into the jeep. He jabbed his finger toward the man he called Arsène, warning him, “Keep your mouth shut about this.”

 

SYLVIE HELD ON TO THE DOOR HANDLE
as the jeep bumped along a dirt track toward the fringes of the camp. She was afraid of being alone with the big man, worried that she had made a mistake by trusting him. But she had no choice.

“You don't have to be afraid of me,” he told her, as though guessing her thoughts. “My name is Fiston. I'm Congolese, like you.” That proved nothing—the man who raped her was also Congolese. When she said nothing in reply, he remarked, “Olivier is a good man. Kayembe likes him.”

Sylvie found her voice. “What does he do for Kayembe?”

“Best not to ask too many questions like that,” Fiston advised her.

They reached the gates of Nyarugusu. Congolese weren't supposed to leave the camp without permission, but the Tanzanian guard waved Fiston through as if he knew him.

“Where are we going?” she asked, glancing behind her as the distance grew between the jeep and the camp gates. For years she had longed for escape from Nyarugusu, but now that she was outside, she felt afraid.

“Not too far now,” Fiston told her.

The jeep continued across a stretch of empty savannah until they entered a scrubby forest. Without warning, Fiston veered the jeep off the road and wove it in between sparse trees, with Sylvie bracing herself against the bumpy ride—wondering if this had all been a ruse. She was completely at Fiston's mercy. She was relieved when, after several minutes, a camp of army tents came into view. Fighters milled about, wearing combinations of camouflage shirts and pants. A ragtag army.

“Is one of them your little brother?” asked Fiston as he pulled the jeep to a stop.

He was pointing to a group of boys of various heights and ages playing target practice with knives against the trunk of a eucalyptus tree. Sylvie spotted Pascal on the fringes of the group, waiting for his turn to throw.

“That's him!” replied Sylvie.

She climbed out of the jeep and headed toward Pascal, just as Jean-Yves stepped forward with his family's machete. His aim was true, but his throw weak. The machete bounced off the tree to the ground. Pascal laughed along with the older boys as Jean-Yves ran to fetch it.

“My turn!” shouted Pascal.

He stepped up, taking careful aim with the knife he had taken from the hut that morning, but Sylvie reached him before he had a chance to throw.

“Pascal!” His face fell when he saw her. She seized hold of his arm, ready to drag him home. “How dare you run off like that!” she scolded.

“Are you going to let a girl boss you?” taunted the tallest of the boys.

The others laughed, Jean-Yves the loudest. Embarrassed, Pascal shook loose from Sylvie's grip.

“I go where I want to!” he declared.

Sylvie knew that if she wanted him to come with her, she mustn't humiliate him any further. “Come home now and see Mama,” she pleaded more gently. “You had us worried.”

“Go away!” he told her. Pascal waved the cooking knife in the air, swaggering like a soldier. “Go, I said!”

“You heard him!” Jean-Yves joined in, brandishing his family's machete toward Sylvie's face. “Go, or I'll give you another cut!”

For a moment, Sylvie was too stunned to speak. Jean-Yves was no older than Pascal, but he seemed vicious, like a wild animal.

“Hey!” Fiston marched toward them with unexpected speed, given his size. Pascal and Jean-Yves were suddenly just boys again, shrinking in fear. “Watch your mouths! And you,” he said, wagging his finger at Pascal, “you're lucky to have a sister who cares about you.”

Sylvie was beginning to believe she had misjudged Fiston. “Will you take us back to the camp?” she asked him.

“But don't you want to see Olivier first? Come,” he said, walking away without waiting for her reply.

“You wait here,” Sylvie told Pascal. “You're coming home with me.”

“I'm staying with Jean-Yves!” he protested.

“Then he's coming, too.”

In truth, now that she had found Pascal, Sylvie had no interest in seeing Olivier, who had traded her away to Kayembe as easily as farmer would trade a goat. But she followed Fiston across the clearing where men were gathered around a cook fire, roasting bushmeat. Sylvie's mouth watered at the smell of it.

“Fiston has got a girlfriend,” one of them teased.

“There's enough of me for three girlfriends to share,” joked Fiston, spreading his broad hands over his belly. “But not this one,” he told them. “She belongs to the boss.”

The men went silent. Sylvie noticed how their gazes fell to the ground, away from her, and she realized,
They're afraid!

Fiston led her to an area behind the army tents where a dozen vehicles were parked. Men and boys were shoveling black nuggets of ore from the back of a small truck into a larger one. Sylvie knew what the stuff was from Papa showing her when she was little. It was coltan—the same coltan that made soldiers rich, but so many others miserable.
Kayembe is bringing it from North Kivu
, she realized.
From home
. As they drew closer, Sylvie recognized Olivier, shoveling alongside the others.

“Olivier!” Fiston called to him. “You have a visitor!”

Olivier at first looked shocked when he saw Sylvie, then angry. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for Pascal. He ran away.”

“He's fine,” he replied irritably. “He hitched a ride here this morning.”

“I know,” she said. “I'm taking him home.”

“Your sister was very worried,” contributed Fiston. “A man looks after his family, Olivier, and doesn't make them worry.”

“Of course, Fiston,” Olivier responded with respect. “Thank you for bringing her.”

“Be the man your father was,” he advised.

“You knew him?” asked Sylvie.

“Everybody knew him,” replied Fiston. For a moment, it seemed he had more to say, but he thought better of it. “I'm getting some food,” he told Sylvie. “Let me know when you're ready to go back.”

Sylvie waited until Fiston was a safe distance away before turning on Olivier and hissing, “How dare you?”

“How dare I what?!”

“Promise Kayembe I would marry him! How can you work for that man, when he's helping the Mai-Mai, who killed Papa?”

“Keep your voice down!” Olivier told her with a nervous glance toward the camp. He led her away from the trucks and the men.