Chapter 1.7

Chapter 8

They were returning from a raid on a Hutu refugee village, which they had first looted in search of food, particularly meat, and again recruits to make up for the casualties that recent jungle skirmishes had inflicted on them. To this end, they had kidnapped ten children between the ages of twelve and fifteen, whom their men, particularly Danilo, would train with the usual dose of brutality, drugs and sensual stimuli to turn them into killing machines if necessary. But there was a boy Branko Popovic had set his sights on for a different purpose. It was an eleven”year”old boy with very dark skin and prominent buttocks who had awakened the Serb's fantasies.

Upon arrival at the camp, he entrusted Danilo to take care of the batch of future warriors and his personal servant to take care of the boy he had reserved.

“Make him wash well and feed him. You know what to do.

Popovic lay down on the bed dressed in his fajina uniform and fell asleep immediately. At the age of fifty”five the struggles to which he had been subjected since the long”distant war in Bosnia gained their share of energy

He woke up when his servant entered his material house carrying the boy only dressed in a loincloth. The man coughed lightly to reveal it.

"Do you want me to take it and bring it later?"

Popovic took the boy by the hand and brought him closer to his bed, then stroked his belly and his butt.

“No. Leave it now.” He answered.

"His name is Dido," the servant reported, referring to the boy before leaving.

Pleased by the child's passivity, the Serb forced him to climb onto the bed. He had already decided to make it his immediately.

Alisha had taken a flight to Brussels and left with light luggage, consisting of a single suitcase that could be placed in the upper compartment of the row of seats. Since I was going to spend two or three days in the Belgian capital and some places nearby, I did not have much replacement clothing. Basically he was wearing pants and a jacket.

He took a room in a three”star hotel and showered before going out to lunch. From the room he made the first three appointments with firms that he planned to visit that day. A fourth did not prosper because they simply refused to interview strangers, which was to be expected in companies that had a lot to hide and were known to be in the sights of independent journalists and television channels who wanted to expose European partners who financed the African warlords responsible for so much killing and suffering in the recent thirty years. As a former colonial power in the Congo and neighboring countries, Belgium maintained preferential ties with some of its leading circles.

Alisha was going to play a role that was known to her for her long working and romantic relationship with Romain. Posing as an Indian businesswoman named Aruna Laghari, the wife of an American mining entrepreneur named Bill Morris, she carried with her business cards with those details and an address in Paris.

In the early afternoon he rented a car and headed for the first of the appointments located in a lower”class suburb of Brussels. There she was received by one of the firm's directors named Claes Jacobs.

After sitting in Jacobs's office and exchanging some kind phrases that were complements to the animal magnetism that the woman emanated with her spectacular silhouette, deep dark eyes and black hair, Alisha”Aruna clearly explained the purpose of her visit, with Arguments that were as close as possible to the truth: The company headed by her husband Morris was carrying out explorations in an area of central Africa that was not going to reveal at the time, close but different from those already in operation in Kivu. The geological survey looked promising and she was looking for potential customers with good purchasing power and financial resources. At a certain moment, he dropped a phrase that implied that the mineral was in areas prohibited by the sanction of the Nations

…

United and trying to find out if that would be an impediment to doing business with the Jacobs company. As a result of her own Internet investigation, Alisha was aware that a company of her interlocutor had been sanctioned in 2003 by the UN, and that they had simply set up another with a different name and shareholders to return to business; He also had the intuition that Jacobs was actually a name”lender, a straw man behind whom the true owners of the business hid.

The man alleged that his signature was very severe in the requirement to his suppliers that they only deliver mineral with papers that accredited that it came from "clean" areas, but that they were satisfied with an affidavit to that effect, not carrying out further research.

When asked by the woman about her possibilities of increasing her purchases from a new provider, the answer was clear.

“The market is in full evolution and needs much more material than what is being exploited now. We are buying between fifteen and twenty tons of coltan per month, but we could increase this amount to fifty in one year.

Alisha”Aruna thanked the man and immediately had a feeling that this first interview reflected the story he was going to hear in the remaining seven signatures. He was not fooled.

That day he attended the remaining appointments and the next day he was able to complete the ones that were missing. When he left the last one, he looked at the window that led to the office where he had found himself, and through the voile curtains he saw that his interlocutor, a certain Janssens, had picked up the phone as soon as she had left and was in a conference For some reason that haste gave him a bad feeling.

“Hans? I'm Gabriel from Brussels, hey, an Indian woman came to visit me, who claims to represent a new firm that is conducting prospecting in a new area of the Central Lakes ... yes, if new suppliers appear, the price of coltan may plummet. In our character as one of the largest suppliers to electronics, that would harm us ... I propose that they start a campaign to confirm if there are new players who want to enter ... Well in that case we would see how to eliminate the dangers.

On the trip back to Venice, Alisha pulled out her laptop and began recording the results of all her interviews, including hard, hard data on market size, as well as her subjective impressions. He knew that Romain loved his written reports.

That night the woman tried to call her boyfriend, although she did not know where she would be and if she would have a connection to enhance an Internet video conference. He was glad to be able to get in touch on the first attempt.

“Hello! I thought you would have already gone looking for your new place, wherever that is.

“In Uganda, not far from the border with the Congo and Rwanda. But no, we have not been able to leave because since yesterday afternoon it has been pouring rain throughout this area. The streets of Bukavu are flooded so imagine how the rural roads and paths will be that we must go. The lake is at a very high level and the rivers and streams have difficulty draining into it and flood all the fields.

“Then what will you do?

“Resign ourselves to accept the limits that Nature imposes on us and wait at least four days for the waters to drop and the vehicle to roll on the ground.

“I hope you are not looking for fun in Bukavu. I know there are women of all colors.

“Get those ideas out of your head. None compares to you.

“Maybe they don't compare. I hope you are not tempted to make the comparison.

“Well tell me. What have you found in the companies you have visited?

“All swear and swear that they comply with the UN restrictions, but between the lines they let you know that they will simply require you to deliver only "clean" metal and that they will discharge the responsibility for compliance on you, that is, on their suppliers.

“And were you permeable to the idea of doing business with a new supplier?

…

“It is all a matter of price, quantity and quality. There is no ideology or principle. Business is business. Ah! I wanted to warn you. One of those I saw the first day, a certain Janssens seemed somewhat suspicious to me.

“ For what reason?

“Call it hunch. As soon as I left he made a call that I suppose would be related to my visit.

“Well, you know that I have a lot of respect for the feminine intuition and very particularly for yours. Now do a parade again in front of the computer screen. I want to see how you dressed up and dressed today.

“I'm glad you ask because I actually spent an hour in front of the mirror before calling you.

Taking advantage of the immobility of the expedition caused by the storm, Mercier decided to visit the city in order to make first”hand contact with the social reality originated in Kivu due to the boom in clandestine trade in coltan and the war or rather wars that the mineral both caused and financed.

On the one hand, he found that although the city did not have any industry, certain economic activities were in rapid growth. Good examples were construction and real estate activities, including some extravagantly luxurious homes outside of the city context; Also land transport companies and even small airlines had a boom undoubtedly linked to mining, of which the vast majority was illegal.

As he wanted to see the two sides of the coin, he asked Yusuf to take him to a nearby church that was attending a kind of makeshift hospital. The priest told him about the horrible situation to which the people who came to attend were subjected.

"I can't understand how human beings can commit these aberrant facts," he said as he projected a series of creepy slides with rows of massacred men, women, and children, severed corpses, children who had had their heads blown off, and mutilated bodies covered. of blood.

“Those who survived have not fared much better, particularly women. Some of them were systematically raped by a gang of savages for days until they could no longer move. Many of those who arrive have their bodies destroyed by abuse and torture, and the psychological consequences are not less than physical.

"Who are the rapists?" Mercier asked.

“Mostly members of the irregular militias, many of them children who have their first sexual experience with these unhappy people. But also government soldiers and miners who want to take revenge on the fourteen”hour days spent in the quarries.”The priest sighed visibly affected by his own words; Romain laid an empathetic hand on his arm. Tears appeared in the eyes of the seasoned clergyman.

"Africa can be tough on her children." His narration continued. "But wars mean the end of all codes and brakes, and the reign of the most horrible instincts, instincts that wild beasts do not have.