“Oh, this is about justice. What else?” – Michael Ennis
Tonight sees Kate – and us – learn more about the guardian angel appointed for her, and steel herself for a visit to Rwanda for the first time since being whisked away from the country. It remains uncertain, however, who she is really to trust, as the older players in this dark game of power and justice circle obliquely around her. Small wonder that her strongest instincts are her defensiveness and a reluctance to go places and do things others tell her to do – or not to.
Following her intense encounter with Ganimana last week, she is dropped off by Drewe, who casually informs her that her phone has been bugged. There is a message from Alice, at the Eddingham restaurant. She decides to join her there, although very late. The establishment is almost empty but Alice is still there. Kate asks her why she is still in the country. She believes it is part of a manoeuvre against her stepsister President Mundanzi – she actually wants Ganimana’s extradition to fail, because that will make her look weak. Alice defends herself but looks increasingly shifty – except that this is not shiftiness, it is violent nausea. She urges Kate not to touch the nuts – they have been poisoned. She sends the table crashing, then rushes for the toilets, vomiting up blood. Cut back to Ganimana, hooked up to a drip but in good spirits; “C’est magnifique,” he chuckles.
Over coffee with Michael, he concedes he and Alice were once lovers, but Kate produces an image of a more recent kiss. “Don’t lie – ever again,” she spits at him. The chances of their ever getting romantic seem ever more remote.
Kate rearranges her meeting with Viner, who she had been on her way to see before Drewe intervened last week. He is infirm but has a nice pile in the Chilterns and a full set of marbles. He fetches the file from a lock-up on his grounds. It only contains the “headlines” of the case, he says – the rest of the files are in Tanzania. He advises her not to be too strong, like her mother – storms come, reeds bend, oaks fall.
Where Kate goes, her guardian angel is generally only half an hour behind. But Kate has spotted him. Viner stalls him at the door, even pulls a gun on him, while Kate vrooms away. There then follows an almost comical car chase across the fields of the Chilterns, soundtracked by The National’s Afraid Of Everyone, culminating in a stand-up row to which a passing cyclist bears reluctant witness.
Back with Michael, Kate learns that the guardian angel is in the employ of Eunice Clayton, assistant secretary at the US Bureau of African Affairs. Moreover, says Michael, it was Eunice who took the photo Kate was given by Alice – she had worked at the same NGO as Ed. Kate is now coming to believe that she is the victim of some sort of Masonic conspiracy. But Michael agrees she should go to Rwanda to see what sort of justice system they have out there. And her guardian angel will be going with her.
In Kigali, Rwanda, we learn the GA’s name – Florence. Kate giggles, as if to say, what, as in The Magic Roundabout? No, it’s Flo-rence, says Florence. Gruffly. Seconds later, a roadside incident fazes Kate. She jumps out of the car and is violently ill.
Florence and Kate meet David Runihura at the presidential compound. You suspect David and Florence actually know each other well, but David makes out that this is their first encounter. Next, a meeting with an adviser on international crime, Dirk Schreiber, who attempts a little humour; “as is my name, so is my job”, which brings forth merely tumbleweed. However, guided round by Schreiber, Kate feels able to report back to Michael that Rwanda’s judicial system is in robust health: witness protection, abolition of the death penalty, and so forth. Ganimana could expect a fair trial.
Meanwhile, over dinner with Florence, Kate tells him that she feels like just one Tutsi among millions in Rwanda – so many traumas, such as that of the hotel bellboy with the huge scar on his head. But Florence is not one of them, he reveals to her. He is a Hutu. His family escaped to Zaire when the Tutsi Army invaded in 1994. After they died, the orphaned Florence was shipped to the US, on a programme, where he went through school and eventually entered the military. Eunice was his sponsor. Later, they visit the church that was scene to the massacre the French priest failed to prevent; with headless statue of Christ and all – today, it is a monument.
Back in London, Alice, recovering from her food poisoning, is visited by Frank, who, to her dismay, tries to cheer her up with a hand puppet. She hands him a dictaphone for safekeeping. “It contains something people do not want to hear.”
In Rwanda, Kate and Florence learn from a case involving a lying witness that, contrary to her original optimistic assessment, the judiciary is not in such great shape – defence counsels have to work for a fixed fee, and consequently find themselves stretched and less able to uncover such abuses. Michael suggests a scheme for financial assistance. He goes to meet a representative of the UK foreign office – a somewhat oily, Machiavellian fellow who is not as cooperative as Michael might have liked. The foreign secretary, it seems, takes a keen interest in Rwanda. He hints that the UK’s preference, “after the salutary lessons of Libya”, would be for a strong leader in Rwanda to prevent a return to “tribal insanity”. He seems to know of Michael and Alice’s strong connection. He compares him to David Rizzio, personal secretary to Mary Queen of Scots, whose grisly fate, murdered by Protestant lords, he recounts in fine detail. “Perhaps people like that never quite understand the true nature of their game,” he suggests to a departing Michael, who suddenly seems a bit less omniscient and a bit more vulnerable.
Notes and Observations
Much as Game Of Thrones recaps in these pages include a violence and nudity count, so Black Earth Rising needs a vomit count. Two last week and two further cases this week, with Alice’s a particularly ghastly bout in which she lost most of her stomach lining. Kate’s roadside chunder was mild by comparison.
Speaking of Game Of Thrones, spotter’s badge for those who recognised Julian Glover as Viner, also Grand Maester Pycelle in GoT. A further spot, however – the non-speaking actor who plays the cyclist caught up in Kate and Florence’s car chase? Adrian McLoughlin, who played Stalin in The Death of Stalin.
Ironic to see Kate upbraided by President Mundanzi, who all but accuses her of neocolonialist condescension. “Have you met your own prime minister? Yet you expected to meet me.” Her hostility is intriguing – does she have reason to see Kate as an enemy, or rival even, rather than ally?
