Jimfish enjoyed a tremor of self-esteem, though he replied very modestly. ‘When you’ve worked as a bio-robot on the roof of a crippled nuclear reactor leaking radiation, and seen your friend and mentor executed by a drunken Ukrainian firing squad, you begin to get a little worked up. At least, I hope so.’
Lunamiel’s kindly attendant now gave her views on their situation. ‘We will all be punished when the gendarmerie arrive. That is their way. We must get out of this appalling country, where the lives of women are hell.’
‘What are you saying?’ Jimfish asked. ‘The Great Leopard is the kindest of men. He has created, out of the old Belgian Congo, a free country where the shackles of European slavery have been thrown off, the very names of the old colonialists are forbidden and no one dares to wear a business suit. When he finds out how Lunamiel was bought and sold as the sex slave of a ruthless American agent, as well as a homicidal Minister of Education, not only will he open his heart to her, but also his Vuitton suitcase and shower her with wealth, as I have seen him do to his extended family.’
‘You are badly mistaken,’ said the dark lady. ‘Appealing to the Great Leopard will make things very much worse. When you hear my tale you will understand why. Our leader is an obsessive sexual maniac, a constant deflowerer of virgins, a compulsive adulterer and a wife-stealer.’
‘Are we are talking of the same man?’ Jimfish was flabbergasted. ‘Do you mean the President of Zaire, whose authentic tribal name of Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga actually means “The All-powerful, Earthy, Fiery Warrior Who, through His Endurance and Inflexible Will to Win, Moves from Conquest to Conquest, Trailing Fire in His Wake”?’
‘The very same,’ said his informant. ‘But those of us who speak his language translate his name in quite another way. We call him: “The Cockerel Who Screws All the Chicks in the Henhouse”. And I should know. I was once an innocent young girl from faraway Liberia, where my family betrothed me to an important Congolese entrepreneur, who promised them gold and diamonds and pink champagne. As it happened, this gentleman was the very same Minister of Mines you have heard so much about. Very soon after I arrived here, my husband deserted me and I was thrown on to the street. Marshal Mobutu decrees that divorce, desertion or cruelty are what women are destined for and he has made it an offence to protest. He encourages husbands to desert their wives on a whim, neglect their children and marry as often as they like. Our President also believes he has droit de seigneur, so he sleeps in turn with the wives of all his cabinet ministers and I happen to know your cherished Lunamiel is next on his list.’
‘Imagine that! Your late husband was the same man to whom my brother Deon offered me on long lease!’ Lunamiel shook her head in disbelief. ‘Luckily, he was shot to death by the squadron of pygmies kept by the Great Leopard for the purpose.’
‘It was a blessing for you, perhaps, but my luck ran out long ago,’ said the dark lady, dabbing away a tear with her silver veil. ‘After I was abandoned by my husband, I was targeted by bands of mutinous soldiers who had gone for months unpaid and took out their anger on women like me. I was made the plaything of pimps and used as bait by brothel-keepers. From the lovely young girl I had been when I came to the Congo, I crumbled into a wreck; my looks went, then my pride and my spirit. In the end I had no choice but to work as a servant, and when I saw this young white South African girl given as the other half of a timeshare contract to the late Minister of Education, I decided to save her from the horrors I had faced. After all, she was South African and clearly knew nothing at all about Africa. But then again, white South Africans, being the last of the employing classes, she would know how to treat domestic help with kindness. But her background and yours will be fatal when the marshal’s cruel gendamerie find us.’ The dark lady indicated the two bodies bleeding on the red sofa. ‘To have shot dead a minister in the cabinet of Marshal Mobutu is never a problem; he will be replaced in hours. But to have gunned down an American agent, when it is the Americans who have faithfully bankrolled the Great Leopard throughout his long reign as the King of the Congo, is asking for trouble. Let’s go — and quickly!’
‘But where can we go — and how?’ asked Lunamiel.
‘Come with me,’ said the dark lady. ‘In the garages of the Great Leopard is a fleet of limousines, keys in the ignition, the petrol tanks full. Each is ready to roll because no one knows which the President may choose or when he may have to leave in a hurry.’
CHAPTER 16
After inspecting the fleet of limousines in the presidential garage, they chose — on the advice of Lunamiel’s knowledgeable servant — a Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman. It was a vast black vehicle with creamy leather seats, walnut dashboard and a bar stocked with pink champagne. Its passenger windows were hung with heavy curtains that gave it the look of a catafalque on wheels.
The dark lady knew all about these splendid machines and their reputation for reliability amongst self-respecting leaders, who risked their lives to bring peace and stability to their often ungrateful peoples.
‘Nicolae Ceauşescu it was who told Marshal Mobutu that if he wished to travel in a style commensurate with his majesty, then only the Mercedes Pullman would do. It is the limo of choice among serious big men around the planet, from Marshal Tito and Mao Zedong, to the Shah of Persia. Colonel Gaddafi, Guide and Leader of Libya, hands them out as gifts, and my own President Samuel Doe, liberator of Liberia, owns half a dozen. I’ve even heard that Erich Honecker of East Germany liked to hunt deer by the strength of its headlights.’
Jimfish was dumbfounded by the sheer immensity of the limousine. ‘If we’re using it to escape, why not take something a bit less conspicuous?’
‘Size isn’t everything,’ the lady agreed. ‘But this Mercedes is also bullet-proof and that’s very important indeed.’
She turned out to be even wiser than Jimfish had imagined. On their journey through Zaire they were fired upon several times by gangs of soldiers who roamed the countryside, demanding bribes, robbing, raping and pillaging, but their armour-plated automobile shrugged off bullets as a buffalo does flies.
As they rolled along the potholed roads, in between attacks and ambushes, Lunamiel’s attendant told them her story.
‘You wouldn’t think so to look at me, but I am a princess of the Krahn tribe. Our people were local and truly at home in a part of Africa which later came to be called Liberia, when American settlers arrived, unasked, and took over. These new arrivals never amounted to more than a fraction of the original people of Liberia, but they ran our country as a one-party state. They saw to it that Americans and only Americans ruled the roost, and treated us as dunces or domestic servants.’
Jimfish remembered how things were done in Port Pallid, where Sergeant Arlow’s wife Gloriosa — so unfortunately blown to smithereens as she and her husband attended Sunday service — had kept not just a retinue of retainers for everything from cooking to the act of conception, but had even assigned separate servants to each hand when her fingernails needed care. Did he at last feel stirring within him the elements of what he hoped might be the heat that ignites to form the rage that is the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat? Certainly a painful longing for home took hold of him.
‘I know exactly what you mean! We had the very same in my country. In our case it was whites who ruled the roost, though they amounted to a fraction of the population. They were arrogant, stupid, lazy latecomers to Africa, colonialists, imperialists and slave-drivers, who saw themselves as God’s privileged people.’