One
UNTIL YOU’VE SAT DOWN TO a game of poker inside Africa’s most brutal jail you don’t really know what it’s like to sweat, decided Steve West. He could feel a drop of perspiration snake down his neck, then drip down his back. It was cold - the sweat of fear. He glanced down at his cards. Two eights. ‘Christ,’ he muttered under his breath. With a life at stake, you’d be hoping for something better than a couple of eights to bet on.
But those were the cards.
And sometimes there was no choice but to play the hand fate dealt you.
‘Raise you,’ he said, pushing a fifty-dollar bill onto the table.
The man opposite chuckled, took a deep, thoughtful drag on his cigarette, then glanced furtively at his own cards. Felipe Abago was a big, angry beast of a man, weighing at least 300 pounds and, from the way he sweated in the early-evening warmth, a lot more of it was fat than muscle. He was wearing a cream linen suit, though it looked to be years since he’d last put on the jacket. But then, reflected Steve, when you ran one of the biggest, most terrifying jails in Africa, you didn’t have to dress for the office.
On Bioko, a small tropical island off the main coast of the oil-rich African state of Equatorial Guinea, Broken Ridge jail held more than 5,000 men and women, often for years at a time, cramped sometimes as many as 100 to a cell. According to the taxi drivers, the screams of the women being raped could be heard as far away as the capital Malabo. And Abago was the Commandant. His own private hell, thought Steve. And he seemed to revel in it.
‘I said I’d raise you,’ repeated Steve, a note of quiet determination running through his voice.
‘I like to think about my cards, Mr West,’ said Abago.
Steve just shrugged. ‘Play it your way,’ he replied casually.
‘Some beer,’ shouted Abago loudly.
One of the prisoners quickly brought across a tray, with two bottles of Ghanaian-brewed Stone Strong Lager. The man was six foot, noted Steve as he grabbed a bottle of the chilled lager, but he had thick iron manacles clamped to his feet and hands, and there was a metal ring around his neck so that he could be hooked and unhooked from his cell with ease. He walked with a limp, and there were raw, bloody welt-marks down his back where he’d taken a whipping. He was dressed only in a pair of dirty denim shorts and smelled of blood and rotting flesh. ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Steve as he grabbed the bottle, watching the man scurry away like a frightened animal.
Steve took a hit of the beer, and looked around the bar.
The main block of Broken Ridge was on the seafront, its forbidding exterior ringed by a barbed-wire fence that rose eight feet into the air. It was patrolled constantly by heavily armed guards, whilst four watchtowers, one at each corner of the compound, were manned by sullen-looking soldiers with machine guns. The bar was just outside the main jail, next to the dusty road that led up from Malabo. Men from the jail were made to work at the bar, while a dozen or so women were dragged from the cells each night and forced to service the guards and customers in the few bedrooms out the back. Like many African jails, the staff were paid a pittance, and running the makeshift bar and brothel was the only way they could earn a proper living. The oil workers from the rigs would come up here at the weekends and spend their cash on beer and girls, but this was a Tuesday night, and the place was quiet.
Maybe it will warm up later on, wondered Steve. But let’s hope not. This place is bad enough on a quiet night.
I’d hate to see it when it gets rough.
Steve had landed in Malabo this afternoon, after catching an Air France flight from Heathrow to Paris, then connecting onto the French airline’s service to Equatorial Guinea. He’d spent most of the ten hours in the air cursing the fact that he was here at all. A mate of his called Ollie Hall, who also worked for Dudley Emergency Forces, had taken on a contract to break a man out of the jail. Why Ollie had accepted the job, Steve couldn’t begin to understand. Nobody broke out of Broken Ridge. Once you were locked up here, you were already as good as dead. You were just waiting to be buried.
That was true of the five thousand miserable souls locked up here.
And now it was true of Ollie as well.
And it was Steve’s job to get him out.
Two days ago, Ollie’s fiancée Katie had come to see him. There were tears streaming down the woman’s face. Their wedding was in less than four weeks’ time. The Embassy had promised to do all they could, but they couldn’t even guarantee to get a meeting with the Interior Minister in four weeks. If they were to negotiate Ollie’s release, it would take six months at least.
And even then they weren’t exactly optimistic.