Devil’s Harvest Read online

  His room was stifling, the heat radiating off the thin walls. A mosquito net hung in a damp knot above the middle of the bed. He noted that the linen consisted of only a sheet. No doubt one did not need anything more, he realised with some trepidation. Surely the heat would abate at night? In an effort to restore some sense of order, he unpacked his clothes, arranging them across the plywood board that served as a shelf, and changed into shorts. Then he sat on his bed, head in his hands, half-wondering if there was perhaps a better standard of room, or if there was somebody to complain to. Surely, he, on the brink of full professorship, wasn’t expected to endure this? When he could stand it no more, he fled the infernal room for the reception area.

  The bar and dining room was an earthen-floored expanse covered by a wide thatched roof and open on the sides. Fans were suspended from the beams, spinning rapidly but with little notable effect. The smell was better here, due largely to a bowl of smoking frankincense that gave the air a misty quality, heightened by the smoke from hookah pipes at many of the tables. A meeting was in progress at one of the larger tables, delegates earnestly listening to the speaker, some making notes on pads of paper. The bar area itself was dominated by a rowdy group of white men in shorts and T-shirts, inebriated to the stage of masculine back-slapping and hugging. Gabriel chose a low couch and table at the other end of the open area. He was pleased to see Rasta, now also the establishment’s barman, approaching him with a smile and a tall glass filled with amber beer and a good white head.

  ‘Local beer,’ he said, placing the full glass in front of him. ‘White Bull Lager.’

  Gabriel took a long draw, the cool liquid soothing his throat. Given that as a unified Islamic state Khartoum had banned all alcohol in Sudan, he was grateful both for its availability and its quality.

  He muttered his thanks and the barman grinned before heading back to his post.

  The meeting at the large table had wound to a close, and the delegates were standing, their heads lowered in a parting prayer. At this moment the group of men at the bar – probably not deliberately, but nevertheless unfortunately – elected to burst into song, a shouted chorus of which the only discernible words were ‘We don’t give a fuck about anyone else’. The group in prayer murmured their praise despite the intrusion. Mercifully, the tuneless song was cut short by the scoring of a try in a foreign rugby match being shown on the tiny television set above the bar. Fists were raised and high-fives shared liberally.

  Gabriel noted two men sitting slightly apart on bar stools, both drinking and smoking. They ignored the noise around them and maintained their conversation. The one talking, with sandy-coloured hair and deeply tanned arms, was explaining something, moving his hand to indicate the banking of a plane or helicopter. The other man nodded seriously. At that moment, the tanned speaker looked up and stared straight at him. Gabriel looked away, gazing into his beer instead. Flies were pestering him and he noted with dismay that two were now doing breaststroke in his warming lager. A monitor lizard, the size of the Queen’s corgi, was watching him with interest from the ledge of the low wall, its bluish tongue tasting the air.

  ‘You should smoke; it keeps the fuckers off your face.’ The sandy-haired man had peeled away from the bar and sat down opposite Gabriel. ‘And only eat when it’s dark. Then they leave you alone. And you can’t see your food, which is good ’cos here it looks like it came out of a hadeda’s arsehole. But the mozzies rip you apart then, of course. That’s Africa for you – not for fucking sissies, hey?’

  The man’s accent was rough and flat, like a New Zealander’s. He had a scar, a smooth keloid on the left side of his neck, an irregular shape like the outline of a country. Although it was small, it was still difficult to look at him without letting one’s eye slip off the edge of his jaw to the shiny patch. His biceps flexed as he spoke and he had some kind of coat of arms tattooed on his upper shoulder. He was halfway through an unfiltered cigarette.

  ‘Everyone’s fucking off like rats. Rainy season starting. Going to start pissing down soon. Mud everywhere. Shit running down the streets. So what’s with you? You got a good reason to be here or you just fucking stupid?’ Smoke billowed from his mouth as he spoke.

  ‘Most probably just stupid.’ Gabriel laughed lightly, but the man showed no sense of humour. ‘I’m doing research. I’m a biologist.’

  ‘Birdman, hey?’

  The skin across the back of Gabriel’s neck prickled and he felt a surge of protective adrenaline kick in. All his senses were alert now. ‘Funny, I heard the same expression recently. From a man named Bill in Nairobi.’

  ‘Bill? Never heard of him. My name’s Jannie.’ No handshake was offered. Instead the man dropped the remainder of his cigarette and placed his boot heel over the glowing ember, grinding it into the earth. The next one was already alight.

  ‘Yanni, with a “y”?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Do I look Greek to you? No man, South African: Jannie, with a “j”. I’m a contractor. Security.’ There was a pause, apparently meaningful to the South African but lost on Gabriel. ‘So what kind of birds you into?’

  Gabriel hesitated, unsure how to answer. Again, he got the sense that there was some innuendo he was missing, perhaps a gauntlet, a challenge. But without knowing what was being discussed, he dare not say anything. The moment seemed to last for ever, until finally his inquisitor relented: ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll know soon enough.’

  The South African picked up his half-empty soft pack of cigarettes in one massive paw and stood, towering above Gabriel. ‘Be seeing you, boet.’ He cocked his thumb and finger in a mock gun and made a little ‘pow’ sound as his thumb dropped. The blond hairs along his forearm stood out against his tanned skin.

  The monitor lizard eyed Gabriel with suspicion. Juba was awash with local military, UN military, private militia, security consultants, and other apparent opportunists, but no one like him, he realised. They thought he was a bloody ornithologist. And the only birds he could see were the vultures overhead. Perhaps this was all a grand mistake, he thought, trying to dig the upturned flies out of his beer with his finger. Perhaps now was the time to turn around and go back to whatever he could still call home.

  * * *

  Gabriel’s first night in Juba was disturbed and uncomfortable. He felt a pressing need to communicate with Jane, perhaps more as someone from his ordinary life rather than a person still dear to him. Uncharacteristically, he unburdened himself in an email to her, after battling to get the laptop to connect to the erratic internet server. But the moment it was sent, he regretted the emotional tone of the message. He nevertheless checked his inbox every few minutes, hoping for some reply, some connection with his known existence. None was forthcoming and his loneliness deepened with each passing minute that he remained unanswered. He returned to his toolshed-for-a-bedroom, only to find it still fiercely hot and everything, from the floor to the sheets on the bed, moist to the touch. Then, foolishly, he opened the door to try to cool it down, and had to chase out an invading host of amphibians. The first toad he had spotted – a relatively small specimen given the maneater in the shower – was easy to corner, but the moment he picked it up, it emptied its entire digestive system over his hand and wrist. He herded the rest of them out with the back of his shoe and then turned his attention to the variety of insects and arachnids that had also grabbed the opportunity to seek shelter from the dark outside.

  But the early evening’s interruptions were nothing compared to what followed. The noise of the frogs in the dank fields surrounding the compound was close to deafening. There seemed to be a number of competing disco parties happening immediately outside his shed. And there was a bird, or some kind of aerial being, moving through the trees above his room, making a noise that was both soft and somehow threatening, a bit like the small but rapacious dinosaurs he recalled from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. He had a vision of it, scaly and sharp-teethed, ripping through the thin skin of his room and feasting upon him uninterrupted. He e
ventually dozed off, lying on his back and trying not to move so as to avoid the clinging moisture of the sheets, only to be awakened within the hour by a barrage of machine-gun-fire, hundreds of rounds blasting off in the near distance. It was short lived but it left him shaken and he hunkered down in the centre of his bed, waiting for dawn to come.

  Sunrise so close to the equator was less the gentle transition from dark to dawn and more the abrupt switching on of a spotlight. One moment it was dark, and the next Gabriel found himself squinting into the hot core of the sun. The lack of sleep and the persistent challenges delivered by nature and humanity left him headachy and miserable. He longed for his morning espresso and the crisp coolth of an autumn Bristol dawn. Instead, breakfast consisted of thick-cut white bread and peanut butter, washed down with instant chicory. It did nothing to improve his mood. The White Nile Lodge’s attempt to pander to European taste needed work.

  Before leaving the lodge, he had some joy with the unreliable wireless connection and received a short reply from Jane:

  I’m sorry Juba hasn’t been welcoming. I did try to warn you. I’m sorry also to tell you this while you’re going through hardship, but there’s no point in holding off. I’ve met someone. At work. Frank. I’m afraid it’s serious this time, so we’ll have to make arrangements when you return. X Jane.

  Gabriel’s stomach churned. Some military low-life this time. He pondered sourly how ‘serious’ sex might differ from intercourse that was somehow more flippant.

  He wrote a smarting reply: ‘Is Frank also married? Does he share your lack of loyalty to his marriage vows?’, then pictured Jane laughing at his choice of words. He deleted it and shut down the computer. He should have expected this. Indeed, they had all but agreed that their marriage had self-destructed and he could see no way out of the rubble of its aftermath. And yet the assuredness of her tone, the reference to ‘arrangements’, it all tore at him afresh.

  He left the camp in a state of distraction. Rasta sensed his moroseness and drove slowly through the mud-filled pools, saying nothing. Shadows of marabou storks and vultures swooped over the car as the huge birds circled above them, smaller hawks and kites skittishly among them. Crows the size of spaniels stalked over the mounds of rubbish like undertakers. Whores sat on crates outside the compound entrances, waving to him as they spotted him watching them from the open window. At one point, a herd of longhorn cattle blocked the vehicle’s path, their enormous bodies steaming in the morning sun, horns like the tusks of elephants pointed at erratic angles. Rasta turned into the UN Aid compound where Gabriel was to meet Ms Hillary Preston, a UN Development Programme employee. Professor Ismail from Khartoum had given him a letter of invitation and had set up the initial contact. Her email response had not been overly enthusiastic:

  Travel is still not easy beyond El Buhayrat north of Juba. The intended destination of the Bahr el Ghazal remains volatile; travel towards Abyei and in Unity State is not possible. We cannot promise to assist Mr Cockburn, particularly as he is a private person, but we will endeavour to advise him further when he is here.

  Gabriel was directed to her office – a prefabricated building in the centre of the sprawling compound – and found her sitting behind a cluttered desk, a youngish woman with short hair pulled back off her face.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her accent Canadian, her tone officious.

  ‘It’s … I’m Professor Cockburn.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘From Bristol. We exchanged emails last week?’

  ‘Oh right. Mr Cockburn. Yes, I remember the email. I wasn’t sure you were going to bother making the trip.’ Clearly, Ms Preston wasn’t expecting him to show up. For someone so young, she had a world-weary look. Her skin showed the ravages of the heat and her lips looked cracked. A rash of freckles covered her nose and the skin beneath her eyes. Her use of the word ‘bother’, spoken with a jaundiced tone, was discouraging as was her dismissal of his academic title.

  ‘So you want to travel north to look at a plant?’ she asked. Described in these flat tones, it sounded a particularly dubious undertaking – perhaps accurately so.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘And you want me to arrange transport?’

  ‘You did say you would be able to help—’

  ‘I said I might be able to advise you. It’s not exactly easy to get to Bahr el Ghazal province.’

  ‘I realise that. Which is why I need your help.’

  ‘Mr Cockburn, forgive me if I sound … unhelpful. We rotate the stints of our personnel in places like South Sudan, to avoid burnout. I have been here longer than most. Perhaps I seem unsympathetic. But I can tell you, the world has moved on; no one is interested any more. There was a time when, as an NGO, if you weren’t in South Sudan, you were no one. Before South Sudan, Darfur was the place to be. Now that place is Damascus. The journalists have all left to cover Mali. And Haiti, again. Here, only the scavengers are left.’ She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Picking at the carrion.’

  ‘I understand that you might question my motives—’

  ‘It’s not for me to enquire, nor to question,’ she interrupted. ‘But there’s a phrase – Juba slang, if you like – for people like you, for the hundreds of people that float through disaster scenes like this: briefcase NGOs. They have the briefcase for the money, but nothing else. They bring paperwork and statistics and bank account details, but give nothing of meaning.’

  ‘Look, I—’ Gabriel tried to staunch her tirade.

  She raised her hand to prevent him from speaking: ‘Plus, the UNDP operates in difficult terrain. It would be naive to think that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the political will of influential people. We need, by way of example, to straddle both Khartoum and Juba, given that our work is critical to both, and the camps are populated by people crossing borders. Have you heard of aid farming, Mr Cockburn?’

  ‘No, but I don’t see what—’

  ‘I thought not. Simply put, aid farming involves influencing where and how aid is disbursed. You can dictate where people live, for example. With the stroke of a pen, the powers that be can force a hundred thousand people to pick up their measly belongings, leave a famine-struck camp and journey hundreds of kilometres to the new piece of dirt where aid is now delivered. Like starved bees following the honey. At its most cynical, you can divert aid to your own militias so that they can continue massacring people without having to worry about farming – living off Western aid while they perpetrate their atrocities.’

  ‘That sounds appalling, Ms Preston,’ Gabriel said, ‘but it’s really got nothing to do with my project. I’m not here to deliver aid or farm. I’m a scientist. And I’m very sorry that all this is going on here—’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Ms Preston eyed him for a moment. ‘What I’m saying is that, for all these reasons, the UNDP really has to consider its alliances and who we decide to help. We have to keep focused on our goals.’

  ‘And research on a non-crop-related plant is not one of your goals. I recognise that. I could try to explain to you why, in fact, this research might ultimately be exactly one of the developing world’s goals, but—’

  ‘But the situation we face is immediate.’ Ms Preston had an annoying habit of completing his sentences, her inserted conclusion not quite what he had intended. Still, he nodded in agreement. His inclination was to apologise for taking up her time and to leave, but instead he waited for her to make the next move. He had, after all, travelled all the way to meet her; he could not leave empty-handed.

  Her next statement, though a while in coming, led Gabriel to believe that she had, all along, anticipated his possible arrival and had a back-up plan to get rid of him.

  ‘There is someone who comes from that region, up north, who we have used recently as an interpreter because their English is good, educated in Uganda and now … they’re here in Juba.’

  For the first time Gabriel noted discomfort in her, a caution in choosing her wor
ds. Was he to be palmed off onto some drunk ex-SPLA child soldier with five words of English and an axe to grind with the British, he wondered.

  ‘Come back on Monday, at ten o’clock, and I’ll introduce you. Whether Alek will be willing to help you is another matter. That’s the best I can do for now.’ Ms Preston rose and gestured rather rudely to the door. Still reliant on her favour, Gabriel resisted the urge to put her in her place. He paused at the door to say goodbye, but she’d already turned back to her paperwork.

  ‘I hope this plant is worth it,’ she said, still looking down.

  It started raining as Gabriel and Rasta headed back towards the lodge. Lazy drops splattered against the windscreen, making crater patterns in the dust on the bonnet. They were passing through the central area where the government administration and embassies were located and the road was tarred, although it petered out on the sides into dirt. They passed an official-looking building with high walls and an equally tall and solid gate; outside a number of policemen, or perhaps soldiers, lounged in their navy-and-white camouflage outfits. One was pulling a tarpaulin over the large machine gun mounted on the back of a flatbed truck, belts of bullets hanging from its sides like spilt intestines. A ‘technical’, Rasta explained, a standard combat vehicle. The pace of the rain started to increase and the clouds bloomed overhead. Yet the air remained sticky and unbearable.

  ‘We will stop for tea,’ Rasta announced, pulling over to the side of the road without ceremony and ignoring the screeching hooter of a motorcyclist they had cut off.

  Gabriel wondered why the necessity for tea had suddenly imposed itself on his driver, and felt mildly annoyed that his wishes were simply assumed. But, given the brevity of his meeting with Ms Preston, he was in fact in no rush to get back to his small, overheated room.