Now in his 80s, Bill Close lives on the ranch in Wyoming he began to buy while working in Africa (Image: Tara Bolgiano)
Bill Close was set to become a well-paid New York surgeon but suddenly had a change of heart and went off to work in the war-torn Belgian Congo. There he met Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, an ambitious soldier who some years later was to seize power in a bloodless coup in what was by then the Republic of the Congo (and later, Zaire). Through Mobutu’s support for Close’s medical work, they became friends, but dangerous tensions lurked beneath…
