Cross Country

market. I had two fine sons. When the RUF soldiers came to Kono, they came for us like the others. It was at night, in the rain, so there were no torches. They say to me, if I watch them kill my boys, then they will spare my wife. And when I did as they told, they killed her anyway.”
    The RUF was the revolutionary force responsible for the death of thousands. He was devastatingly matter-of-fact about it — a terrible family massacre, not unlike the ones in Washington, I thought.
    “And you lived,” I said.
    “Yes. They put me on a table and held me down. They asked if I want short or long sleeves for after the war. Then they cut my arm, here.” He pointed, though of course it was obvious what had happened.
    “They were to cut the other arm, but then an explosion came from the next house. I don’t know what happened after that. I fell unconscious, and when I woke up, RUF soldiers were gone. And my wife too. They left my murdered sons. I wanted to die, but I did not. It was not yet my time.”
    “Moses, why do you stay here now? Isn’t there anywhere else for you to go?”
    “There is nowhere else for me. Here at least sometimes there is work. I have my friends, other san-san boys.” He smiled at that revelation for some reason. “This is my home.”
    We had walked all the way into town by now. Koidu was a sprawling village of dirt roads and low buildings, still recovering from “the war” six years ago.
    I saw a half-finished hospital as we walked, and a mosque in decent shape, but other than that, I found mostly abandoned buildings, burned-out husks of small homes, everywhere I looked.
    When I offered Moses money for his trouble, he said he didn’t want it, and I knew not to force it on him.
    “You tell the story I’ve told you,” he said. “Tell it to America. Still, there are rebels who would like to kill all of us from the war. They want to make it so no one can see what they did.” He held up what was left of his arm. “So maybe you tell people in America. And they tell people. And people will know.”
    “I will, Moses,” I promised. “I’ll tell people in America and see what happens.”

Chapter 56
    THE HALL IN town was named, incongruously, Modern Serenity. The name was scrawled in blue on an old wooden sign out front, and it made me think of an Alexander McCall Smith novel,
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
.
    Maybe the building had been a church once. Now it was an all-purpose sort of place — one large, dingy room with tables and chairs that started to fill up as the sun went down.
    Someone turned on a boom box, and the guy who showed up with a keg of Star Beer dispensed it into previously used plastic cups and took money.
    Moses and his friends wouldn’t come inside and let me buy them a drink. They said they’d be kicked out if they couldn’t pay for their own beer. Instead, Moses told me, he’d hang out with some other men around an open fire, singing and talking, not far from the hall, and he pointed in the direction where he’d be.
    I spent the next few hours casually asking around and mostly getting nowhere. Even the few people who would talk to me about mining shut up as soon as I moved my questions anywhere else . . . such as to the subject of the illegal diamond trade.
    Twice I noticed men in camos and flip-flops licking their palms.
Diamonds for sale,
they were saying.
You need only swallow them to get them out of the country
. Both of them stopped and spoke with me, but just long enough to figure out I wasn’t selling or buying.
    I was starting to think this night might be a washout, when a teenage kid came over and stood next to me against the wall.
    “I hear you lookin’ for someone,” he said, loud enough just for me. Busta Rhymes was doing his thing on the boom box at high volume.
    “Who do you hear I’m looking for?”
    “He’s already gone, mister. Left the country, but I can’t tell you where he is. The Tiger.”
    I looked down at the kid. He was maybe five foot nine, muscled, and cocky-looking. Younger than I’d first thought too — sixteen or seventeen maybe. Barely older than Damon. Like a lot of teenagers I’d seen on the continent, he wore an NBA jersey. His was a Houston Rockets jersey, an American basketball team that had once featured an excellent player from Nigeria named Hakeem Olajuwon.
    “And who are you?” I asked the boy.
    “You wanna know more ’bout anything, it’s a hundred dollars American. I’ll be outside. It’s