Warlord. James Steel

just after lunch in the back of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes.

      Alex was surprised by Fang when his long limbs unfolded themselves like a daddy longlegs from the car door. He is northern Chinese, as tall as the Englishman, with wavy black hair, blue eyes and an angular face with cheekbones that seem painfully large. His skin is smooth and he looks to be about thirty.

      When he arrived he strode up the imposing stone steps of the house towards Alex, full of confidence, completely unfazed by his first time in the heart of the English countryside. He thrust his hand out, ‘Hello, my name is Fang Xei Dong but my business name is Simon Jones.’

      His English is American-accented but it still has the flat, staccato Chinese diction. He clearly knows that no Westerner will ever get the sliding tones of his name right and doesn’t want them to embarrass them with untoward mispronunciations. He cheerfully laughs off Alex’s polite attempts at saying his name. ‘Don’t worry, in Congo I am called Monsieur Wu. It’s the only Chinese name they can pronounce.’

      He talks in rapid bursts, his long arms often reaching forwards as he speaks, as if trying to get hold of some perceived future.

      He wears the casual uniform of the modern global businessman: neatly pressed chinos, button-down blue shirt with a pen in his top pocket and iPod earphones hanging down over his top button, a casual black blazer and loafers. When he settles himself in the drawing room he sets out an iPad and two BlackBerries on the coffee table in front of him that beep and chirrup frequently.

      He sits forward on the leather armchair now and pushes his narrow-lensed titanium glasses back up his nose with a rapid unconscious dab of his hand; they slip off the bridge of his nose because his head jerks about as he speaks.

      ‘This operation is completely covert at the moment but I understand from my contacts in the defence community that you are used to operating in this manner?’

      Alex just narrows his eyes in response.

      ‘I am referring to your operation in Central African Republic, which I understand was a Battlegroup level command?’

      Alex nods. He is very cagey about his past activities. His CAR mission has achieved legendary status in the mercenary community but they don’t know the half of it. Any mention of the word Russia or any possible operations he was involved in there and he clams up completely.

      Fang is reassured by his discretion.

      ‘This operation will require that level of skill and more. To be candid with you, we realise that it is …’ he pauses ‘…unconventional, from an international relations point of view, and we would prefer to work with a discreet operator such as yourself rather than one of the big defence contractors. They are much more … conventional,’ he finishes, sounding evasive.

      Alex knows that by conventional he means law-abiding. He nods politely in acceptance of the point but winces internally. It wasn’t the sort of reputation he had sought at the start of his career. He had always wanted to be able to serve his country for his whole life; major general was what he had been hoping for. Somehow things just didn’t work out like that.

      Fang blasts on regardless. ‘I represent a consortium of Chinese business interests that will lease Kivu Province off the Congolese government for ninety-nine years. Under the terms of the lease it will effectively be ours to do what we want with.’

      He stretches out his arms and says with a note of wonder in his voice, ‘In Operation Tiananmen we are going to set up a new country and bring order out of anarchy!’

      Alex looks at him quizzically. ‘Is that Tiananmen as in Square?’

      ‘Yes, it means “the mandate of heaven”.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘It’s the ancient Confucian right to rule, the basic authority that any government has to have in order to form a country. And you are going to establish it, Mr Devereux. It is our new vision for the world.’

      Gabriel Mwamba is twenty-one and in love.

      He is an itinerant salesman, pushing his tshkudu cargo-scooter uphill along a narrow track through the forest, breathing hard and sweating, beads of it stand out in his black, wiry hair like little pearls. The tendons across his shoulders and neck stand out and feel like red-hot wires.

      He has covered thirty miles in two days over the hills; today he started out at 4am. To dull the pain he is thinking about Eve and how he is going to impress her when he gets back to the refugee camp where she lives. He is an ugly man and knows it, so he realises he has to compensate for it in other ways – he will be a successful businessman.

      When he met Eve last year he liked the look of her, small and stocky with good firm breasts and smooth skin. When he heard of her rejection by her husband because of her albino baby, he knew she was the one for him. A fellow outcast. She looked so sad and he just wanted to put a smile on her face.

      His own features have been carelessly assembled: his jaw is too big, he has tombstone teeth, puffed-out cheeks and heavy eyebrows. His body looks odd, composed of a series of bulges: a large head, powerful shoulders, protruding stomach and bulging calf muscles. It’s all out of proportion with his short legs, a broad trunk and long arms. Because he knows he looks unusual his face has an anxious, eager-to-please look that irritates people and leads them to be crueller to him than they would otherwise be. However, Gabriel is an optimist with big plans and he never gives up.

      He has been reading a French translation of a self-help book – I Can Make You a Millionaire! – written by an American business guru. He has absorbed a lot about spotting opportunities in the market and is sure he is onto one now. Market intelligence is key to these breakthroughs and he listens to his battered transistor radio once a day (to preserve the batteries, which are expensive) to catch the main radio bulletin from Radio Okapi, the UN radio station that broadcasts throughout Kivu.

      The local Pakistani UN commander was on the bulletin talking in very bad French about the success of their recent operation against the FDLR and how they had opened up the road into the village of Pangi and installed a Joint Protection Team to allow the market to be held there on Saturday.

      Immediately Gabriel knew this was his opportunity. He got together all his money and bought a load of consumer goods off another trader who hadn’t heard the news and was selling them cheap. Pangi had been inaccessible for months so they would be crying out for what he had to offer, and that meant profit. As the self-help book put it: ‘Adversity is spelt OPPORTUNITY!’ It’s a big investment but he is going to make a killing.

      The tshkudu he pushes is loaded up with old USAID sacks containing cheap Chinese-manufactured goods: soap, matches, batteries, condoms, combs, print dresses, needles and thread, some tins of tuna (way past their sell-by date), boxes of smuggled Ugandan Supermatch cigarettes and six umbrellas in a bundle. He also has sacks of charcoal from the charcoal trading network throughout the province – he is following one of their secret paths through the woods.

      It is heading downhill now into Pangi. The tshkudu is heavy and tugging at his grip. It’s six feet long and made of planks – he built it himself. He hauls back on the handlebars to prevent it from running away from him, digging the toes of his flip-flops into the mud. The trail comes out of the trees and onto a dirt road leading to the village, where he passes the local massacre memorial. The date and number of people killed are scorched with a poker onto a wooden board nailed to a tree: 20 July 1999, 187 people. He doesn’t give it a second look; every village has one from the war.

      He is looking to the future and full of hope. At the moment he is a small-time trader, but one day he will graduate to be one of les grosses légumes – the big vegetables, the businessmen in the regional capitals of Goma or Bukavu, running an internet café or a trucking company.

      A jolt of fear goes through Gabriel and he stops daydreaming. His step falters and he wants to run away but they have seen him already and to show fear would invite an attack. Three soldiers with Kalashnikovs are lounging at the side of the road on a log, smoking and staring at him through their sunglasses. Like everyone in Kivu, Gabriel is well