BRUNO SALVADOR, KNOWN to friend and foe alike as Salvo, is an impetuous linguistic genius of mixed race. Born of a Congolese headman’s daughter and an erring Irish Catholic missionary, and now assimilated into the British way of life, he was educated first at a mission school in the East Congolese province of Kivu, and afterwards at a gloomy Sussex boarding school for the unwanted sons of Rome.

But Salvo’s transplantation to Britain has done nothing to dim his passion for the many languages and dialects of the eastern Congo he left behind. From earliest childhood they have been his secret family. Tucked out of sight in the servants’ hostel of his father’s Mission House, the secret child listened spellbound to the tales of passing hunters, witchdoctors and warriors, and memorised every cadence and turn of phrase. In the privacy of his tiny cell, he composed his own dictionaries by candlelight. Trekking with his beloved father to the mission’s remotest outposts, he never missed a chance to add another dialect or nugget of vernacular to his ever-increasing store.

And at his gloomy English boarding school, his miraculous talents are swiftly recognised by a wise, if over-affectionate, priest who exhorts him to put them to the service of his Maker: “What greater blessing, my dear Salvo,” he cries, “than to be the bridge, the indispensable link between God’s striving souls?” The ever-impressionable Salvo needs no second telling. By his early twenties he is a qualified professional interpreter in the lesser-known languages of Central Africa, in demand not merely from London law courts, hospitals and immigration services, but by City com- panies engaged in the creative adjustment of diamond, gold, cassiterite, oil and other commodity prices.

Little wonder then if he has also caught the all-seeing eye of British Intelligence, which under the seal of official secrecy, awards him a part-time contract to transcribe the stolen voices of Central African conspirators. How does he see himself in this role? As a “made man” of the English secret establishment. As a fully anointed member of the great invisible brotherhood that enables humbler souls to sleep safely in their beds at night. As the protector of the unborn, unconceived, all-English son he dreams of having one day. Crouched in his underground cubicle with the headphones on, and the shadowy march of indoctrinated feet crossing the cellar windows, he is even able to withstand the jibes and infidelities of his increasingly absent all-English journalist wife. He therefore feels excited rather than alarmed when, on a hot August night in 2005, he is called away from a party to celebrate her promotion in the newspaper and, by way of a safe flat in South Audley Street, is spirited to an unmarked cargo plane parked on the dark side of Luton airport.

Where is he headed? What great cause will he be serving? He may know only that his mission is deniable, yet vital to the nation that adopted him, and he has adopted in return. He has been warned that he will no longer be engaged in the passive defence of his country, but taking the battle to the enemy. He has been cursorily introduced to his new commanding officer, one Maxie, a rakish 36-year-old English adventurer of the officer class. For additional security, Bruno Salvador will be travelling under the covername of Brian Sinclair.

Salvo tells the story in his own voice . . .

A country more cursed than blessed by its riches

The mist-covered hills of eastern Congo hold many dark secrets. Near-impenetrable vegetation rises out of the vast expanses of Central Africa’s Great Lakes, forming the world’s second largest rainforest. Brooding volcanoes tower above. A land of outstanding natural beauty, the Democratic Republic of Congo is apparently cursed by the factors that created it.

Gold, diamonds, timber, copper, cassiterite, cobalt, and coltan — a metallic ore used in mobile phones — are present in almost obscene amounts. It has consequently known little but violence and exploitation for centuries. Local people, speaking a variety of dialects and wanting only to graze cattle and grow maize and cassava, have been prey to outsiders keen to obtain the riches beneath the soil.

First came Arab slave traders, then Victorian adventurers paved the way for the voracious King Leopold of Belgium, who ran an area the size of Western Europe as a private fiefdom, shipping out vast amounts of ivory and rubber. The Arabs brought Swahili, the only common language in the east of the country today. It never caught on elsewhere, a tendency encouraged by rulers only too happy that their subjects could not plot together.

Independence in 1961 ushered in one of Africa’s most venal dictatorships. President Mobutu Sese Seko refused to build roads for fear that they could be used to overthrow him. He changed the country’s name to Zaire and nationalised the mining companies. His cronies looted the country to buy villas in Brussels and France.

More recently, gangs of militia and rebels slaughtered pygmies and other small tribes, as well as mountain gorillas. The pygmies were killed after being accused of showing secret forest pathways to rival gangs. Human rights reports that say their body parts were eaten, to try to inherit the magic spirits that they are believed to possess. The gorillas were sold as collectors’ items or meat.

The regional rivals Uganda and Rwanda armed competing groups who used the weapons to settle old scores. Proxy armies and local warlords used forced labour to work the mines. Whole villages were massacred. Rape and pillage followed, causing at least two million people to flee their homes.

During Congo’s last civil war in the mid-1990s, which followed a successful armed rebellion against Mobutu, about four million people were killed in the world’s most deadly conflict since the Second World War. Today, with the country finally at an uneasy peace, more than 1,200 people still die each day from preventable diseases. The UN has called Congo the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, on the scale of a “tsunami every six months”.

The present President, Joseph Kabila, who faces an election run-off on October 29, speaks Swahili, but not a word of Lingala — the language of the capital, Kinshasa, and the west of the country.

That mirrors a wider split between east and west. In the capital, where French is also widely spoken, the English-speaking and educated President and his followers are often referred to dismissively as “foreigners”.

JONATHAN CLAYTON

The writer is Africa correspondent of The Times

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