The Labyrinth of Osiris (3 page)

He sat tapping the wheel, staring ahead at a large hoarding carrying an artist’s impression of what the new road layout would look like, accompanied by the logo: ‘Barren Corporation: Proud to be sponsoring Jerusalem’s future history.’ Occasionally he pumped the horn, adding to the cacophony of irate hooting that already filled the air, and twice lowered the window and bellowed ‘
Yallah titkadem, maniak!
’ at the truck driver. The rain hammered down, sending rivulets of muddy water streaming across the street from the roadworks.

He gave it five minutes, then lost patience. Retrieving his police light from the passenger footwell, he slapped it on to the roof, plugged the jack into its socket and hit the siren. That got things moving. The lorry driver shunted forward, the log-jam broke and Ben-Roi was able to drive the hundred metres round the corner to the David Police Station.

Kishle, as the station was generally known – the Turkish word for prison, the purpose it had served under Ottoman rule – was a long, two-storey building that dominated the southern end of the square, its grilled windows and stained, stone-block walls lending it an air of dour shabbiness. There was another Kishle up in Nazareth, widely considered the most beautiful police station in Israel. It was not an adjective Ben-Roi would have used to describe his own workplace.

The guard in the security post recognized him and retracted the electronic gate, waving him past. He drove through the arched entranceway and along the twenty-metre tunnel that cut through the middle of the building, emerging into the large compound at the rear. A stable block and horse exercise area occupied the compound’s far end, with beside them a low, innocuous building that looked like a storehouse but in fact housed the city’s bomb-disposal unit. All the rest of the space was taken up with parked cars and vans, a few with police number plates – red with the letter M for
Mishteret
– most with yellow civilian ones. Ben-Roi had a set of both, although he generally used the civilian ones. No point advertising he was a cop.

He slowed and swung into a space between a pair of Polaris Ranger ATVs. As he climbed out of the car someone held an umbrella over his head.

‘
Toda
, Ben-Roi. You just won me fifty shekels.’

A paunchy, bearded man handed him a cup of Turkish coffee. Uri Pincas, a fellow detective.

‘Feldman spotted you in the traffic jam,’ he explained, his voice a gruff baritone. ‘We had a little sweepstake on how long you’d last before you used the siren. I guessed right. Five minutes. You’re getting patient in your old age.’

‘I’ll split it with you,’ said Ben-Roi, taking the coffee and locking the car.

‘The hell you will.’

They walked across the compound. Pincas held the umbrella over the both of them against the rain while Ben-Roi sipped from the Styrofoam cup. He might have been a sarcastic bastard, but his colleague certainly made a good coffee.

‘So what’s happening?’ he asked. ‘They said there was a body.’

‘In the Armenian Cathedral. They’re all down there now. The chief as well.’

Ben-Roi raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t usual for the chief to get involved, not at this early stage.

‘Who’s the investigator?’

‘Shalev.’

‘Thank God for that. We might actually solve this one.’

They came to the tunnel that led into the compound. To their left a single-storey annexe ran off the back of the main building, the control centre for the 300-odd security cameras that monitored the Old City.

‘I’m in here,’ said Pincas. ‘See you when you get back.’

‘Can I borrow the umbrella?’

‘No.’

‘You’re inside!’

‘I might go out.’

‘
Ben zona
. Son-of-a-bitch.’

‘But a dry son-of-a-bitch,’ chuckled Pincas, grinning. ‘Better get a move on, they’re waiting for you.’

He walked towards the annexe’s glass doors. When he reached them he turned. Suddenly his expression was serious.

‘He garrotted her. The bastard garrotted the poor bitch.’

He fixed Ben-Roi with a hard, cold stare. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His meaning was perfectly clear.
We’ve got to catch this guy
. Their eyes held, then, with a nod, Pincas threw open the doors and disappeared into the building. Ben-Roi drained the last of the coffee.

‘Welcome to the promised land,’ he muttered, scrunching the Styrofoam cup and launching it towards the basketball hoop at the far end of the compound. It didn’t even get close.

G
OMA
, D
EMOCRATIC
R
EPUBLIC OF
C
ONGO

Jean-Michel Semblaire settled back into the brushed cotton of his hotel bed and reflected on a job well done.

It had been a trying fortnight. A renewed outbreak of rebel activity had closed Goma airport shortly after his arrival in the country, forcing him to kick his heels in Kinshasa for a week before he’d finally managed to get a flight east to the Rwandan border. Then there had been another four-day hiatus as his fixers hammered out the fine detail of the meeting, which had already taken the best part of three months to set up. Finally a Cessna ride out to the remote airstrip at Walikale, followed by a rattling two-hour drive through dense jungle, had brought him face to face with Jesus Ngande. The Butcher of Kivu, whose militias had turned mass-rape into a fine art and who, more important, controlled half the cassiterite and coltan mines in this part of the country.

After all the build-up, the meeting itself had lasted little more than an hour. Semblaire had handed the warlord a goodwill down-payment of $500,000 cash, there had been some rambling discussion of tonnages and how the ore would be moved north across the border into Uganda, and then Ngande had produced a bottle and proposed a toast to their new business partnership.

‘
C’est quoi?
’ Semblaire had asked, examining the reddish-purple liquid in his glass.

Ngande had beamed, the boy-soldiers around him collapsing into fits of doped-out giggling.

‘
Sang
,’ came the reply. Blood.

Semblaire had kept his cool.

‘In France we prefer to shake hands.’

He chuckled at the memory. Lighting a Gitanes, he blew a smoke ring up towards the ceiling fan and stretched, enjoying the feel of the cotton sheets against his naked body. Although he had turned fifty this year, thanks to a careful diet, yoga and regular workouts with his personal trainer he had the physique of a man ten years younger. Maybe even fifteen. He felt good in himself. Strong, fit, confident. Even more so now that the meeting was done and he was on his way home.

Normally it would have been handled by someone lower down the company pecking-order. In this particular instance, with the Chinese clawing an ever-larger slice of Congo’s mineral wealth, the board had asked him to come out and make the deal in person. Local representatives would handle everything from here – as one of the world’s leading mineral traders they couldn’t be seen to be associating with a mass-murderer – but for this initial contact the company had wanted to make an impression. Show Ngande they meant business. And Semblaire had been happy to do it. Not just because the potential profits were so immense, but because he liked a bit of adventure. Apartment in the 7th arrondissement, villa in Antibes, thirty-year marriage, three daughters – life, he sometimes thought, was just a little too comfortable. He needed the occasional frisson. And anyway, with the bodyguards the company had provided – five of them, ex-BFST, currently sunning themselves beside the pool now that the heavy stuff was over – he was never going to be in any danger.

From behind the bathroom’s closed door came the hiss of a shower. Semblaire blew another smoke ring and touched his penis, recalling the pleasures of the previous night, thinking there was probably time for further fun and games before the flight back to Kinshasa. The morality of the thing never entered his mind. Or at least never troubled his mind. Any more than did the morality of doing business with a freak like Jesus Ngande. According to the UN, the man was responsible for the best part of a quarter of a million deaths, mainly women and children. With the money they were paying him – $5 million a year – that total would increase. But then Ngande controlled the mines. Other corporations, anxious to maintain the illusion of due diligence, sourced their material from middlemen who in turn sourced it from other middlemen in an extended relay of culpability-laundering that kept the ore’s origins at a suitable distance. Anything up to ten exchanges between the slave mines of North Kivu and the markets of Europe, Asia and the US. And with each exchange the price per kilogram went up exponentially. Source the minerals direct, as they were doing, and you got them for a fraction of the price. Rape, mutilation, murder – they weren’t pleasant things. But the money his company would be saving – and therefore making – was extremely pleasant. And frankly, who cared what blacks did to one another. Congo, after all, was a very long way from the boardrooms of Paris.

He finished his cigarette, swung off the bed and gave the bathroom door a quick rap to indicate he was ready to start again. Then he crossed to the French doors and tweaked open the curtains, looking out. In the distance rose the brooding bulk of the Nyiragongo volcano; below him ragged lawns ran down to the hotel swimming pool, where he could just make out his bodyguards, and a couple of other people. NGOs probably. Certainly not holidaymakers. No holidaymakers ever came here.

The NGOs amused him. Just like all those useless bleeding-heart, anti-corporate, anti-globalization idiots amused him. Prancing around with their laptops and mobile phones raging about Western exploitation of Third World resources. And yet without coltan and cassiterite there wouldn’t be any laptops or mobile phones, and without corporations such as his there wouldn’t be any coltan or cassiterite. Every e-mail and text they sent demanding justice, every call they made organizing another rally, every website they set up bemoaning human rights abuses – all were made possible by the very misery and exploitation they so vociferously condemned. It was laughable, utterly laughable. Or at least it would be if he bothered to give it a second thought.

Behind him the hiss of the shower slowed and stopped. Semblaire turned, glancing at his Rolex to check how much time he had. There was a knock at the door.

‘
Merde
,’ he muttered. Then, louder: ‘
Moment!
’

He swept a towelling robe off the floor, put it on and crossed the room.

‘O
ui?
’

‘
Garçon d’étage
,’ came a voice. Room service.

He hadn’t ordered anything, but he was in the hotel’s most expensive villa and the management were forever sending over complimentary drinks and flowers and sweets, so he didn’t think twice about clicking off the lock and opening the door.

A pistol jammed hard into his sternum. He started to speak but the woman holding the gun held a finger to her lips. Or rather to the lips of the latex Marilyn Monroe mask she was wearing. She backed Semblaire into the room. Three other figures followed – two male, one female – the last of them closing and bolting the door. All wore masks: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elvis Presley, Angelina Jolie. They weren’t African, that much he could tell from their bare arms and necks. Otherwise they gave nothing away. Were it not for the gun, the effect would have been comical.

‘
Qu’est-ce vous voulez?
’ he asked, trying to keep his voice calm. The woman with the pistol didn’t answer, just pushed Semblaire back on to the bed. The one in the Elvis Presley mask went over and drew the curtains tight shut. Angelina Jolie knelt on the floor and clicked open the Samsonite briefcase she was carrying, removing a tripod and digital video camera. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a short, spindly man with tendrils of greasy hair poking out from beneath the neckline of his mask, walked round to the bedside table where Semblaire’s MacBook was charging. He lifted the lid and turned it on. There was a chime and the screen went grey as the laptop booted.

‘
Qu’est-ce que vous—
’

A hand whipped out and slapped Semblaire hard across the face.

‘Shut up.’

The accent sounded American, with a hint of something else. Russian? Spanish? Israeli? Semblaire couldn’t be sure. In front of him Angelina Jolie, who was darker than the other woman, extended the tripod’s legs and placed it in the middle of the room, slotting the camera into the holding mechanism. She switched it on, opened out the viewfinder and angled the lens down so that it was aimed directly at the Frenchman’s face. On the laptop a screensaver of Semblaire and his family came up, indicating the machine was fully booted.

‘Password,’ said Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning the MacBook round.

Semblaire hesitated. His first thought had been that this was a holdup. They hadn’t touched his wallet, however, which was lying in full view on the end of the bed, and their desire to get into his computer persuaded him this was something more sinister than plain robbery. There was a lot of stuff on there that neither he nor his company would have wanted . . .

‘Password,’ ordered the man again.

‘Now,’ snapped Marilyn Monroe, lifting the pistol and pressing it hard against Semblaire’s temple. With no choice, he leant forward and started tapping. Schwarzenegger swung the MacBook round, slotted a USB stick into one of the ports and played a finger over the touchpad, exploring the hard drive. Semblaire was scared now, really scared.

‘
Écoutez
,’ he began, ‘I don’t know what you want from me—’

He was interrupted by a muted clatter from the bathroom. The intruders tensed, glancing at each other, the one with the gun tutting and shaking her head as if to say, ‘We should have checked.’ Schwarzenegger laid aside the laptop and slipped a Glock from the back of his jeans. Monroe and Jolie did the same, backing off and aiming at the door. The one in the Elvis Presley mask approached the bathroom and flattened himself against the wall beside the door. He paused, eyes flicking towards his colleagues, then reached out, turned the handle and threw the door open.