And for three weeks, after that night, I tried to lose the loneliness that their three happy marriages had pulled from my heart by taking every job I was offered, and cutting every deal I could devise. I flew one passport run to Kinshasa staying, as instructed, at the Lapierre Hotel. It was a nearly squalid three storey building in a laneway parallel to Kinshasa's long main street. The mattress was clean, but the floor and the walls seemed to be made from recycled coffin-wood. The grave-like smell was overpowering, and a sweating damp filled my mouth with gloomy, unidentifiable tastes. I chain-smoked Gitanes and gargled Belgian whisky to kill them. Rat-catchers patrolled the corridors, dragging conspicuous hessian sacks that bulged with writhing, fat animals. Cockroach colonies had claimed the drawers of the dresser, so I hung my clothing and toiletries and other personal items from hooks and thick, crooked nails conveniently hammered into every surface that would endure them.
On my first night I was ripped from a light sleep by gunshots in the corridor beyond my door. I heard a crumpling thump, as of a body falling, and then shuffling footsteps pulling something heavy, backwards, along the bare wooden floor of the hallway. I clamped a fist around my knife and opened the door. Men were standing at three other doors in the corridor, drawn as I was by the sounds. They were all Europeans. Two of them held pistols in their hands, and one held a knife similar to my own. We all looked at one another, and then at the trail of blood that smeared its way down the corridor out of sight. As if in response to a secret signal, we all closed our doors again without a word.
When I followed the Kinshasa run with a mission to Mauritius, my hotel on the island-nation provided a welcome and agreeable contrast. It was called the Mandarin, and it was in Curepipe. The original structure was built as a small-scale reproduction of a Scottish castle. The turreted resemblance was clear enough, on the winding approach through a neat English garden. Inside the building, however, the guest entered a kingdom of Chinese baroque designed by the Chinese family who were the new owners of the hotel. I sat beneath huge, fire-breathing dragons and ate Chinese broccoli with snow peas, garlic spinach, fried bean curd, and mushrooms in black bean sauce by the light of paper lanterns, while the windows gave a view of castellated battlements, gothic arches, and rose-studded topiary.
My contacts, two Indians from Bombay who lived in Mauritius, arrived in a yellow BMW as had been arranged. I got into the back of the car and had barely spoken a greeting when they took off at such tyre-torching speed that I was hurled backwards into a corner of the seat. We screamed along back roads at four times the speed limit for fifteen knuckle-whitening minutes and then they pulled into a silent, deserted grove. The overheated car cooled down with little clinks and clunks of sound. There was a strong smell of rum on both men.
"Okay, let's have the books," one of the two contacts said, leaning around from the driver's seat.
"I haven't got them," I snarled at him through clenched teeth.
The contacts looked at one another and then back at me. The driver raised his mercury-lens glasses, revealing eyes that looked as though he kept them in a glass of brown vinegar beside his bed at night.
"You don't got the books?"
"No. I was trying to tell you that on the way here-wherever the fuck we are-but you kept saying, Keep cool! Keep cool! And not listening to me. Well, are we cool enough now? Huh?"
"I'm not cool, man," the passenger said. I saw myself in the lenses of his glasses. I didn't look happy.
"You idiots!" I growled, switching to Hindi. "You nearly killed us all for nothing! Driving like a speed-freak-arsehole-Bombay taxi-driver with the cops up his arse! The passports are back at the sister-fucking hotel. I stashed them because I wanted to be sure of you two motherfuckers first. Now the only thing I'm sure of is that you guys haven't got the brains of two fleas on a pariah dog's balls."
The passenger lifted his glasses, and they both smiled as widely as their hangovers would allow.
"Where the fuck did you learn to speak Hindi like that?" the driver asked. "It's fuckin' great, yaar. You're speaking like a regular Bombay sister-fucker. It's fantastic, yaar!"
"Damn impressive, man!" his friend added, wagging his head admiringly.
"Let me see the money," I snapped.
They laughed.
"The money," I insisted. "Let me see it."
The passenger lifted a bag from between his feet and opened it to reveal many bundles of cash.
"What's that shit?"
"It's the money, brother," the driver replied.
"That's not money," I said. "Money is green. Money says, In God We Trust. Money has the picture of a dead American on it because money comes from America. That's not money."
"It's Mauritian rupees, brother," the passenger sniffed, wounded by the insult to his currency.
