Secret melody

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Geheime Melodie (English original title: The Mission Song ) is a spy novel by the British writer John le Carré from 2006. The German translation by Sabine Roth and Regina Rawlinson appeared in the same year. Against the background of the Congo Wars , the novel uses the example of an international conference to show the entanglement of political and economic interests in the power structure of the Democratic Republic of the Congo . A British interpreter with Congolese roots is suddenly faced with the task of preventing a war.

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Bruno Salvador, known as “Salvo”, the son of a Catholic Irish missionary and the daughter of a Congolese chief, has grown into an extremely adapted and patriotic British citizen after spending a childhood in African orphanages. His wife Penelope comes from the English upper class, but the love between the two has long since cooled down. She makes her editor-in-chief Fergus Thorne, known as "Thorne the Horn", nice eyes, and he comforts himself with a nurse from the Congo named Hannah. Professionally, Salvo is a much sought-after interpreter whose specialty is the numerous languages ​​of Eastern Congo . Every now and then the British secret service has drawn on its capabilities. So it is no big deal for Salvo when Mr. Anderson recruited him from the Department of Defense for a special assignment lasting several days.

Organized by a nameless syndicate of international business corporations under the leadership of Lord Brinkley of the Sands, a secret meeting takes place on one of the northern British Isles to discuss the future of the Congo. The hope for a peaceful future is the “Mwangaza” (“Bringer of Light”), a professor of Congolese history with the charismatic aura of Einstein , the leader of the “Path of the Middle”. By means of an uprising in Kivu , he is to be enthroned before the elections in order to create stability and prosperity in the country. It is hoped that this plan will be approved by three invited guests: the militia leader Dieudonné der Banyamulenge and Franco der Mai-Mai , as well as the Congolese businessman Luc, who half belongs to Goma , and the illness of his son Honoré Amour-Joyeuse, short "Haj" , is represented, a graduate of the Paris Sorbonne .

Salvo's task is twofold: superficially he works as an interpreter during the conference, behind the scenes he overhears the private conversations of the participants and passes the information on to his commanding officer Colonel Maxie and the advisor Philip, who is outside of any hierarchy. Despite disturbing details about the planned armed conflict, he remains patriotic and trusts a good outcome. Only Haj seems to want to torpedo the success of the conference. He questions the intentions of the Mwangaza, talks about its agreements with the “profit vultures” in Kinshasa as well as the syndicate's negotiated mining rights to gold, diamonds and the much sought-after coltan . His counter-model to a loss-making war in Kivu, from which only the economic syndicate and not the local population will benefit, is reconciliation with Rwanda and a joint economic federation.

During the next break in negotiations, Salvo is an ear witness to how Haj is tortured by Felix Tabizi alias "Tabby", the Mwangaza's secretary, in order to find out who was behind him. In fact, it turns out that Haj, too, is only acting as a puppet of a Dutch-American consortium that hopes to exploit the Congo under the supremacy of Rwanda. With three million dollars, which Philip has to apply to Lord Brinkley personally, Haj is finally bought too, and nothing stands in the way of the joint pact. Only Salvo is disturbed by what has been heard and secretly takes the tapes before the delegation, tired and relieved after the successful agreement, flies back to London.

With his lover Hannah he discusses how he can anticipate the planned coup and the exploitation of the Congo. While Hannah wants to turn to Baptiste, the London representative of the Middle Path, Salvo only trusts Lord Brinkley, a nobleman of such impeccable reputation that nothing can be imagined but that he is being betrayed by the Syndicate. But Baptiste is obviously bribed, and Lord Brinkley brazenly denies any knowledge of what is going on on the island. Salvo has no other advice than to write down his accumulated knowledge and hand it over to Mr. Anderson in a J'accuse letter, but the apparently so honorable official disappoints him and just wants to get the evidence. Hannah finally realizes that Haj wanted to send a message to the eavesdropping Salvo with his incomprehensible singing after the torture, and she sends the tape evidence to the Congolese.

The next day they learned from the news that a coup in Kivu had been foiled. Among the prisoners is the Mwangaza and Mäxie. The UK government denies any involvement in the proceedings. However, Hannah is immediately deported to the Congo because she was illegally involved in politics in England. Salvo, on the other hand, is being denied British citizenship, which was fraudulently obtained because of his father's silence for fear of sanctions from the Catholic Church. In extradition custody, Salvo can hardly wait to leave her former British homeland to be reunited with Hannah. He receives a letter from Haj in which he promises this support in the Congo, although the tapes would not have been necessary to convince his father of the sinister intentions of the Mwangaza and to induce countermeasures. He donated the three million bribe to charitable organizations.

background

A few months after the publication of the previous novel Absolute Friends , when le Carré was looking for a new subject for a novel, an incident on the African continent hit the headlines in March 2004: in Harare , the capital of Zimbabwe , a group of heavily armed mercenaries led by Simon Manns arrested for planning a coup against the dictator of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo . In return, the mercenary financiers had been promised oil production rights. The participation of Mark Thatcher , the son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, caused a particular stir in the British public .

After The Eternal Gardener , le Carré was very enthusiastic about the idea of ​​writing a second novel related to Africa, in particular about the exploitation of African natural resources by white intruders. He transferred the subject of a coup by hired mercenaries to the Congo, a state between mineral resources, violence and corruption, which had already been immortalized in literature by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Le Carré referred to the classic in an epigraph ). Although the action takes place exclusively on British soil, le Carré wanted to enrich it with vivid impressions from the Congo. Since he did not know the country first hand, he hired the journalist Michela Wrong as a consultant. In April 2006, when work on the book was already coming to an end, le Carré toured the country with Wrong and Jason Stearns.

While le Carré struggled with a correct representation of the Congolese warlords, the character of the first-person narrator , the interpreter Salvo, was much easier for him. Due to his fluent knowledge of German, he himself often served as an interpreter during his time in the diplomatic service. What fascinated him about the job was that it bridges the gap between cultures. In addition to the professional background, le Carré Salvo, like many of his protagonists, also lent elements of his own biography: Both grew up without a mother and with an absent father, both were surrounded by clergy in their childhood, both attended boarding schools. After the novel was published, le Carré described Salvo as “a half-breed caught between worlds, struggling to do the right thing, a little dodgy about many things, rashly in love, eager to serve but whom to serve? I can't pretend he's not like someone I knew pretty well when I was young: myself. "

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  1. ↑ a b Adam Sisman: John le Carré. The biography. Bloomsbury, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-4088-4944-6 , Chapter 24: "Mr Angry" .
  2. ↑ “a hybrid, caught between worlds, struggling to do the right thing, a bit thick about a lot of things, rash in love, wanting to serve, but whom? I can't pretend he isn't like someone I used to know fairly well when I was young: me. "Quoted from: Adam Sisman: John le Carré. The biography. Bloomsbury, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-4088-4944-6 , Chapter 24: "Mr Angry" .