The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [18]
“When did they come?” Christopher asked.
“Maybe a month ago. First there was this one.” Nsango pointed at the sheet of paper. “Manuel. He speaks good French. Then the others a few days afterward.”
“How did they find you?”
“I suppose the Chinese told them.”
“What do they want?”
“A revolution. They talk even more than the Chinese—we have meetings all the time. The men like it, there’s a lot of beer, and they brought some very good guns.”
“How many?”
“Ah, my friend, not so many. Some mortars. Not enough ammunition.”
“Are they issuing the weapons to your men?”
“No, they’re like the Chinese were at first. We must make our own weapons to make our own revolution. Spears and stones—Mao’s teachings. We killed a South African for them— the capitalists have that mercenary camp still outside Elisabeth-ville. We ambushed a jeep, the whites were drunk. One got away—he had a machine pistol, so we didn’t chase him.”
“Are you going back?”
“Yes, I’m the leader. We need the guns. The Cubans won’t stay forever.”
“Nsango, I think you’re taking a chance.”
“It’s better than prison. What do they say about me in the papers?”
“In Léopoldville, nothing. But I see your name written on walls all over town: everyone believes you’re alive. In Brussels, that your movement still is dangerous, and that you are more so.
“What would you do about these Cubans?”
“Let them stay,” Christopher said. “It’s better to have someone you know than to wait for someone you don’t know to show up.”
Nsango picked up the candle and held it next to Christopher’s face so that he could watch his expression as he answered the question Nsango always asked.
“You still think I have no chance?”
“I don’t say that. I can’t help you—you have the wrong allies.”
“But if, after all, I win, you’ll be my friend, and your friends will expect me to remember past favors?”
“That’s what they’ll expect,” Christopher said. “They’re not always realistic.”
“We’ll see. When will you come back?”
“I don’t know. If you want to see me, send a postcard. The one with the elephants if it’s urgent. I’ll use a postcard with a picture of Pope John. I’ll come to Elisabethville on the sixth day after the postmark, ten o’clock at night. I don’t think you should come to Léopoldville again—at least, not to meet me.”
Christopher took a key out of his pocket and gave it to Nsango. “Deposit box 217, Banque de Haute Katanga, Elisabethville,” he said. “In case you need it, there’s a ticket to Algiers, a thousand dollars, and a passport with a visa for Algeria. It’s a Camerounian passport, so don’t go there.”
“What good would I be to the movement, or to you, in Algiers?” Nsango said. “The old soldiers’ home for revolutionaries.”
“What good would you be dead?” Christopher asked.
6
Trevor Hitchcock knocked on the door of Christopher’s hotel room at six in the morning. He was the son of missionaries, and he had spent his childhood in the Congo; he worked in the morning, slept in the afternoon, and drank through the night. His Presbyterian father had taught him to make no concessions to the climate and Hitchcock never went out in the sun without a coat and a tie and a Panama hat.
“Father made more converts than anyone in Kasai province,” Hitchcock once told Christopher. “He thanked God for smiling on the Presbyterians. Then he learned, after about five years, that it was because he sweated like a hog butcher in his black suits and his celluloid collars. The Congolese thought he smelled like a human being—the other missionaries, who wore shorts and took baths, smelled dead to them. That’s what whites are called in the Lingala language—the dead.”
Hitchcock read the cable Christopher had drafted in longhand after his meeting with Nsango. “What’s the film?” he asked.
“As I said in the cable, pictures of the Cubans. Also photographs