‘So you believe us?’

‘Of course. The pictures don’t lie. The coordinates don’t either.’

‘And it’ll do some good?’

‘If I have a say in things,’ he said with a smile.

I could have hugged him. With my parents missing, Langdon an enemy, Innocent dead, and distanced from pretty much every other adult I’d encountered on this miserable trip by my poor French, Mukwege seemed a god. There was something absolute about him. He believed us.

‘And you say your parents are being held against their will, that you know where they are, that you need help to secure their release?’

I blurted out the street name.

‘After the vote,’ he said, ‘I’ll be leaving the way I arrived. Wait for me.’

At that he shot his cuffs and checked the time on his watch. It was plastic and orange and massive, bright against his huge black wrist. He gave us both a friendly nod and strode toward the parliament building.

As Mukwege disappeared inside, taking our story with him, I suddenly felt very alone with Amelia. We stood facing each other before the massive facade of the People’s Palace. I felt lightheaded, dizzy with something more than relief and tiredness. Together, along with Xander, we’d achieved something. We may well have done some actual good.

64.

‘We need to get the bike back to the taxi guy,’ Amelia said.

‘Three o’clock, as the vote’s happening, is what we told him.’

‘You can buy me a Coke or something,’ she said. ‘While we wait.’

We rode the motorbike to a nearby drinks stand beneath the shade cast by a clutch of dusty trees, and hoovered up a couple of cold drinks each.

We called Xander, filled him in. He was as pleased as we were that his carefully put-together email of evidence had reached its target. After that we just sat and waited until eventually three o’clock wound round and we wheeled the bike to the front of the parliament building again. I wasn’t necessarily expecting its owner to show up: he might prefer to keep the deposit I’d given him. But at three on the dot there he was, with his brilliant-white teeth and this time wearing a pristine New York Mets cap. Once he’d looked the bike over and found it satisfactory, he took the hat off, pulled the cash from within and handed it over. I gave him our helmets too: he could always sell them.

‘Merci,’ we said in unison.

Once he’d gone there was nothing to wait for except Mukwege’s return. Now that three o’clock had passed he would be out soon, surely? And yet he didn’t appear. By four I began to have doubts. He’d seemed so genuine, surely he’d come? Four turned to four fifteen, four thirty, four forty-five …

‘You can’t wait, can you?’ Amelia sighed.

‘No.’