The Labyrinth of Osiris Read Online Free PDF Page B

the reply. Blood.
    Semblaire had kept his cool.
    ‘In France we prefer to shake hands.’
    He chuckled at the memory. Lighting a Gitanes, he blew a smoke ring up towards the ceiling fan and stretched, enjoying the feel of the cotton sheets against his naked body. Although he had turned fifty this year, thanks to a careful diet, yoga and regular workouts with his personal trainer he had the physique of a man ten years younger. Maybe even fifteen. He felt good in himself. Strong, fit, confident. Even more so now that the meeting was done and he was on his way home.
    Normally it would have been handled by someone lower down the company pecking-order. In this particular instance, with the Chinese clawing an ever-larger slice of Congo’s mineral wealth, the board had asked him to come out and make the deal in person. Local representatives would handle everything from here – as one of the world’s leading mineral traders they couldn’t be seen to be associating with a mass-murderer – but for this initial contact the company had wanted to make an impression. Show Ngande they meant business. And Semblaire had been happy to do it. Not just because the potential profits were so immense, but because he liked a bit of adventure. Apartment in the 7th arrondissement, villa in Antibes, thirty-year marriage, three daughters – life, he sometimes thought, was just a little too comfortable. He needed the occasional frisson. And anyway, with the bodyguards the company had provided – five of them, ex-BFST, currently sunning themselves beside the pool now that the heavy stuff was over – he was never going to be in any danger.
    From behind the bathroom’s closed door came the hiss of a shower. Semblaire blew another smoke ring and touched his penis, recalling the pleasures of the previous night, thinking there was probably time for further fun and games before the flight back to Kinshasa. The morality of the thing never entered his mind. Or at least never troubled his mind. Any more than did the morality of doing business with a freak like Jesus Ngande. According to the UN, the man was responsible for the best part of a quarter of a million deaths, mainly women and children. With the money they were paying him – $5 million a year – that total would increase. But then Ngande controlled the mines. Other corporations, anxious to maintain the illusion of due diligence, sourced their material from middlemen who in turn sourced it from other middlemen in an extended relay of culpability-laundering that kept the ore’s origins at a suitable distance. Anything up to ten exchanges between the slave mines of North Kivu and the markets of Europe, Asia and the US. And with each exchange the price per kilogram went up exponentially. Source the minerals direct, as they were doing, and you got them for a fraction of the price. Rape, mutilation, murder – they weren’t pleasant things. But the money his company would be saving – and therefore making – was extremely pleasant. And frankly, who cared what blacks did to one another. Congo, after all, was a very long way from the boardrooms of Paris.
    He finished his cigarette, swung off the bed and gave the bathroom door a quick rap to indicate he was ready to start again. Then he crossed to the French doors and tweaked open the curtains, looking out. In the distance rose the brooding bulk of the Nyiragongo volcano; below him ragged lawns ran down to the hotel swimming pool, where he could just make out his bodyguards, and a couple of other people. NGOs probably. Certainly not holidaymakers. No holidaymakers ever came here.
    The NGOs amused him. Just like all those useless bleeding-heart, anti-corporate, anti-globalization idiots amused him. Prancing around with their laptops and mobile phones raging about Western exploitation of Third World resources. And yet without coltan and cassiterite there wouldn’t be any laptops or mobile phones, and without corporations such as his there wouldn’t