Michela Wrong - In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz - Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo

And finally, of course, there was the pony-tailed piano player. Wizened and impassive, he had been playing in the Atrium café as long as anyone could remember. He had tinkled out his lugubrious version of ‘As Time Goes By’ as his frame became more hunched and his hair turned from black, to first salt-and-pepper, and finally to dirty white. By May 1997, it was the piano player’s puzzling absence, as much as any other event, that signalled a fundamental change was looming. A seismic shift in the world as we knew it was about to take place, and the piano player, for one, did not want to be around to see it.

The rebel movement born in Kivu in late 1996, which had triggered hoots of derisive laughter when it had pledged to overturn Mobutu, had proved far more formidable than anticipated. As it had begun capturing territory, sceptical Zaireans had gone from dismissing it as a Rwandan invasion led by a discredited Maoist to welcoming it as a liberation force. Neighbouring countries with long-standing gripes against Mobutu joined the bandwagon and the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) picked up momentum.

Up in Binza, the mouvanciers had gone from haughty dismissals of the rebel problem to frantic questions: why wouldn’t Mobutu DO something? Drained by prostate cancer, the president had curled up in his lair on the hill like a sick animal. ‘When you are a soldier,’ he declared, ‘either you surrender or you are killed. But you don’t flee.’

Days dragged into weeks. Bracing for the worst, anxious Western governments quietly pulled together a force in Brazzaville whose commandos practised the cross-river trip in high-power motor-launches and helicopters. The diplomats were busy, juggling a stream of visa requests from the mouvanciers with preparations for the evacuation of expatriates who were stubbornly refusing to heed the increasingly forceful warnings issued over the BBC World Service.

‘We’ve built a special cement step to allow women with high heels to get into the motor launches. And I’ve even got peanuts and chocolate bars ready for anyone who might starve to death while we’re waiting for our men,’ an ambassador proudly announced. He had gone on a trial run across the river and returned somewhat breathless. ‘Door to door, it took just three and a half minutes.’

The rebels kept marching. National television broadcast footage of General Nzimbi Nzale, head of the DSP, haranguing his troops for hour after hour, ordering them to defend Mobutu to the death. The camera frame was tight and one assumed, from his hoarse tones, that he was addressing an audience of thousands. But the military made the mistake of allowing a foreign television crew to attend the same event. They filmed the general from behind, revealing a couple of dozen nose-picking soldiers, vacant-eyed, barely paying attention. Could these be the same men who had drawn up a list of strategic sites to be blown up and personalities to be assassinated once the rebels reached the city, a list leaked to Kinshasa newspapers?

In the Hotel Intercontinental the shops, anticipating the looting that traditionally preceded the rebels’ arrival, first slashed the prices on their designer brands and then staged ‘everything must go’ sales, trying to shift stock before a more dramatic type of ‘liquidation to tale’ occurred.

But their usual customers were no longer interested. Quietly, the mouvanciers were abandoning their villas in the hills and moving down to the Hotel Intercontinental, where they spent fitful nights, armed bodyguards perched on seats outside their rooms. You would spot them in the lobby, surrounded by matched sets of Louis Vuitton luggage, before they boarded planes and headed for properties bought years before in Belgium, France, Switzerland and South Africa in preparation for just such a day. It was almost possible to squeeze out a tiny pang of sympathy for these, the most well-heeled refugees in the world.

As for the expatriates, they had been told by their embassies to keep one holdall at the ready for the eventual evacuation, so shopping was ruled out. The designer stock stayed stubbornly put, and the evening ritual amongst journalists staying at the hotel became a window-shopping tour to mentally select which bargain to snatch as the crowds surged through the plate glass.

‘What you have to realise is you’ll only get the chance to go for one item,’ a veteran correspondent told me with deadly seriousness. ‘There won’t be any time for faffing around. So it’s all about focus. Quick in, quick out.’ I dallied for a while over a pair of yellow lace knickers with matching bra. But in the end a tan leather jacket, worth at least $1,000, I reckoned, by Kinshasa prices, won my vote.

We were not the only ones getting light-headed with anxiety. A dinner hosted by a Zairean friend who worked at one of the ministries was a jolly, noisy meal until one of the guests called for silence. Looking around the gathering of lawyers, university professors and consultants, he raised a glass of pink champagne and reminded them that this was exactly the social class targeted for elimination after Liberia’s 1980 army coup. ‘Let us drink a toast to change, and pray we are all still here in a year’s time to celebrate,’ he said.

Soon after, a curfew was announced, and evening outings came to an end. Defeated soldiers and deserters were trickling into Kinshasa, hijacking the first cars they stumbled upon. It was no longer safe to venture out after dark. Instead, along with a growing number of crop-haired ‘security experts’ brought in by the embassies, we were confined to the Intercontinental’s pizzeria, where the band laughably dubbed ‘Le Best’ serenaded us with a muzak medley which always featured a particularly mournful cover version of ‘Hotel California’. ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave,’ they wailed.

All airlines had now cancelled their flights to Kinshasa and the ferries had been requisitioned by the government. After weeks spent wondering whether to go or stay, the decision had been taken out of our hands.

The Hotel Intercontinental manager was finding the experience as claustrophobic as the rest of us. His appearance was as natty as ever, but his face was beginning to show the strain. ‘How much longer is this going to go on? I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. It’s giving me ulcers,’ he confessed over breakfast. Fearing a siege, he had stockpiled enough food, water and diesel to cater for 2,000 people for at least a fortnight. Now he chose to combat the tension the only way he knew how: by entertaining in style. Select, candle-lit dinners were staged in the wine cellars of the hotel. Surrounded by dusty vintages, nestling in the bowels of the building, for one brief night we felt sheltered from the approaching storm.

‘Do you really think these Tutsi troops are going to be as effective as people say?’ asked my neighbour as we savoured the nouvelle cuisine. ‘I suspect it’s all a myth. It’s easy enough beating the Zairean army out in the sticks. But surely when the rebels get to Kinshasa, and the DSP have nowhere left to run, it’ll be completely different?’

It was a view I heard repeatedly, but not one I shared. I had no expectations the DSP would ever do battle. What I feared was that they would go for the soft targets, like journalists. I had developed a habit of shouting in my sleep and regretted now checking into the sixteenth floor. A precise image haunted me: looking through the spyhole in my door and seeing two DSP men, guns cocked, about to break into the room and toss me out of the window. Even if I hit the main building on the trip down, there was no way I could survive the fall from that height.

Radio Trottoir, ‘pavement radio’, as the city’s gossip network was known, was in overdrive. There were rumours of Chinese mercenaries landing in their hundreds, of Zulu troops being called in from South Africa, of goose-stepping soldiers coming in from North Korea to save Mobutu. Also circulating were leaflets telling residents who wanted change to tie white bandanas around their foreheads when the rebels arrived as a sign of support. On the main routes into town, tanks and artillery had been set up. But with each soldier convinced a rival unit was bent on treachery, they were too busy watching each other to stop the steady flow of infiltrators into Kinshasa.