“Where has he gone?”
“How de fuck should I know? Absconded to America most likely.” Deet took another pull on the scotch bottle, which was almost empty.
“Deet, why don’t you put that down and come with me.”
“Vhere are ve going?”
“To the airport, of course. Let’s get the info firsthand.” Deet took one more pull from the bottle, clumsily screwed the cap back onto it and, clutching it around the neck, stood up without wobbling. “Dat’s a goot idea.”
I drove as fast as I could to the operations office at Spriggs-Payne. The door to the office was open. The lounge area was empty. We walked straight to Mike’s office. Paterson was sitting at Mike’s desk.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I can see by de look on your faces. I am not de boss, but this is de only time I get to sit at the boss’s desk. He is gone, as you can see. And he has taken everything with him except de pencils.”
“Who’s running the company?” I asked.
“I am,” said a voice behind me. Deet and I turned to see a middle-aged white man looking a bit disheveled and angry, as though he had been roused from a deep sleep. He introduced himself as Mr. de Ruiter.
“You,” he said, pointing a finger at Paterson. “Get out!” He made a motion toward the doorway. Paterson slowly stood up, straightened his collar, and left.
“What da fuck do you boys want?” Mr. de Ruiter said, taking the seat Paterson had just vacated.
Deet and I both cringed and gritted our teeth at being called “boys.” Was that how he saw us?
“Vhat do you think ve vant?” Deet said.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Mr. de Ruiter said. “McCoy cleaned out as much of the liquid assets as he could. He’s gone to God knows where. I’ve been asked to come here and sort this mess out.”
There was a long silence except for the rustling of papers.
“Honorable Williams still owns the majority of shares. I see no reason why the company can’t continue. The business is here. We haven’t lost our major clients. All we’ve really lost is a few thousand dollars and one asshole. It’s just a business like any other business. Will you boys work with me or not?”
“Not if you continue to refer to us as boys,” I said.
Mr. de Ruiter looked up at us, his eyes fixed, unblinking and uncomprehending. “Okay, sure,” de Ruiter said.
We said that we would stay, but as we were leaving the operations office, Deet expressed his doubts. “Anodder fucking Afrikaner, probably a crook.” We walked over to the hangar and spoke to Paterson. He expressed the same doubts but without the profanity. He said that he would stay with the company.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it a try.”
I later learned that Honorable Williams had infused enough cash into the company to meet the payroll and expenses for at least three or four more months.
Deet and I went downtown to Heinz and Maria’s for lunch and a beer. It was pretty crowded and I saw a couple of American pilots I knew in the corner of the bar, huddled over the radio. I went over to see what was going on.
“Hey, Bill,” I said.
They both turned around to me and said in unison, “Kennedy’s been shot! He’s dead.”
“Holy shit!” I said. “I can’t believe it!” I turned to my friend. “Deet, did you hear that? The president of the United States has been assassinated!”
“Ya, ya! I heard, ya. Dat is somezing else! Vhat happens now? A military takeover?”
“God no!” I said. “Vice President Johnson takes over. But this is incredible. I just can’t believe it.”
I looked around the room, and though there was some general discussion among the Germans about the assassination, no one seemed overly upset by it. At that moment I felt further away from home than ever before.
During that month our business picked up. I had thought that Mike was involved in some shady deals, but de Ruiter went openly into smuggling. I made a lot of trips to the diamond mines. Some of our flights that month were made into Guinea. These were risky ventures. No paperwork was involved, no trail. We would pick up Mandingos from the road along the border. Usually, a Mandingo would come into the office and ask us to pick up his “relative” on the border road. He would indicate where and the time. The road wasn’t traveled much, and we could come in full flaps with the engine at idle for silence.
The moment the airplane stopped, the Mandingos would come out of the bush. On my trips, they were always where they said they would be, and they were always on time. Then we would take off without turning around. They had a lot of diamonds on them that they were getting from the mines in Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Usually this kind of pickup went off without a hitch except for one pilot who worked for Stumpy Beizell, another operator at Spriggs-Payne. He landed on a road just over the border in Guinea. He stopped the airplane expecting to see Mandingos, but instead he saw a man dressed in a soldier’s uniform come out of the bush. The apparent soldier grabbed the pilot by the neck and pulled him out of the airplane. The pilot took out his gun and fired it in the air in an attempt to startle the man into letting go. It worked, and the pilot, in panic, scampered under the airplane and jumped into the right, front passenger seat. However, the company had removed the controls from the right side of the plane, so the pilot had to lean over to the left seat to operate the controls. He instantly opened the throttle to full power. The man in the soldier uniform ran toward the airplane and jumped in front of the spinning propeller, which immediately decapitated him.
At this point, a woman ran out of the bush screaming. She grabbed the tail of the airplane and hung on, still screaming, until she dropped off as the airplane gained speed. The pilot, severely shaken, flew back managing the flight controls on the left side from the right seat. Blood was still splattered over much of the airplane when he got back. Stumpy, the owner, was upset, of course. It took a whole day to clean the airplane and the prop was a little bent, but he had one of the local auto mechanics hammer it out.
“Actually,” Stumpy said, “I think it helped. Before, there was a lot of vibration in it. Now there is only a little.”
I later learned that something similar had happed to other air service operators. Their belief was that the Mandingos were being watched; that somebody else wanted a piece of the action, and the soldier’s uniform was a disguise.
The Mandingos were not universally loved. Liberians referred to them as the Jews of Africa. They were exclusive, insular, and aloof, and compared to the native population, very rich. It’s likely that some of the locals had been watching these pickups, killed or somehow scared off the Mandingos, and waited at the pickup point.
The Mandingos weren’t talking. They were always very closed mouthed and conducted themselves as though nothing ever happened.
CHAPTER 16
DEAD MAN WALKING
I was in the hangar looking over some damage done to one of the airplanes when de Ruiter called me into his office.
“There’s a village up country that needs a body taken to his home village for burial. I need you to do it.”
“Okay, so long as he’s in a box.”
De Ruiter shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“How long has the person been dead?” I asked, an important question in tropical Africa.
“I don’t know that either. I would imagine not long. But, whatever, you’re doing it, right, matey?”
I flew up to a little village due north of Gbarnga. They had a white sheet out indicating all was clear, and I landed without difficulty. A crowd of villagers was waiting for me as I approached. Five of them were dressed up and apparently ready to go to the funeral. It was about a hundred degrees in the shade and this one man was all dressed up in a black suit, tie, and dark glasses. The others sort of carried him into the back of the plane and sat him up straight. Everyone was laughing and shouting, having a great time except the guy in the suit. He would just groan, “Ahhh, ahhh.” I figured th
ey had all started drinking for the occasion a little early and this man had gone over his limit of rum. I wanted to get going because it was getting really hot with everyone in the plane.
“Where’s the box?” I asked.
“Oh, it at de otha village,” one of them said.
“Well then, where’s the body?”
“He sittin rah hee.”
“Him? In the suit?” I asked. “But he’s not dead!”
“Oh, he will be bah de time we get dere!”
And he was.
About a month after this memorable flight, airplane parts started to become scarce. Then the cleanup boys were let go. A few days later, de Ruiter asked us if we could wait two weeks past our normal pay period.
“Das ist it!” Deet exclaimed. “De beginning of de end. I know de signs.”
A few days later I was scheduled for a flight up to one of the diamond mines in the north. When I returned, I noticed that none of the airplanes were untied or out on the ramp. The hangar doors were closed. I walked into the operations office and de Ruiter’s door was open. I wasn’t really surprised to see Honorable Williams there. He was seated at the desk going over a large ledger book. He was dressed in an immaculate white shirt, dark tie, and dark blue suit. He wiped away the streams of perspiration running down his face with a large handkerchief.
“Ah! Ken. I’m glad to see you,” he said.
“To what do we owe the honor of your being here, sir?”
He laughed. Honorable Williams was a good-natured man, and a favorite around the airport. We seldom saw him in the operation’s office, so I knew this was serious.
“We are shutting down African Air Services. It is unfortunate but it appears that Mr. de Ruiter was as big a thief as his predecessor. The operation is broke, and I have decided to liquidate the company and transfer all equipment and assets to Monrovia Airlines, which, as you may know, is one of my other companies. I’m thinking about using this hangar and office building as a maintenance facility—the Monrovia Airlines office will be strictly operations and this will be maintenance. But don’t worry, young man, you will be paid.”
Honorable Williams opened another large cloth-bound book. I could see that it was a book of company checks. He scribbled the amount I was owed on one, signed his name, tore it out of the book and handed it to me with a little bit of a flourish.
“Everyone will be paid,” he said, “and I want you to know that there is a place for you at Monrovia Airlines, should you want it.”
“Thank you, sir. I would like that very much,” I said, feeling genuinely grateful.
“Good,” he said. “I must tell you, however, that they have a seniority system there. You won’t have as much work, at least for a while, as you had here. Is that all right?”
“Sure. Are the others going too?”
“So far, everyone I’ve talked to has agreed to move over to Monrovia. I’m certainly glad that Paterson did. He’s an invaluable asset. I haven’t talked to Deet yet, but I hope he will come also. It’s not easy to get good men, as you can see.” He pointed to the desk. “I have a good manager over at Monrovia—Andre. He’s tough but he’s fair, and he knows the business. I think you will like him. Why don’t you stop by, say Monday about 10:00 a.m. I’ll tell him to expect you.”
I thanked Honorable Williams. It was a sincere gesture of appreciation. I wasn’t ready to leave Liberia. I had the gnawing feeling that I was on the verge of something important. I just didn’t know what.
It was Friday so I had a couple of days before meeting Andre. I jumped into Junebug and looked at the check once again. It was a sizable amount, a month’s pay. It had to come out of Honorable Williams’ personal funds. However, while it was generous, I knew he could make it back in a short period of time. Even the most indifferent operator could make a living with half an effort, and many did.
I drove over to the Airport Bar. It was a concrete block building on the side of the airfield. The dark rectangular openings that served as windows had no glass but were fitted with building contractor’s reinforcing steel bars instead. The bars were shaped to resemble palm trees or birds and painted in bright reds, greens, and shades of yellow. Once inside, with the help of overhead paddle fans, it felt open and airy, much like similar public establishments in Key West or Hawaii. Birds flew in and out of the place, easily navigating through the openings. After a beer or two it could be quite pleasant.
The Airport Bar was run by a French woman named Madeleine Roudeau. She was an attractive woman, probably thirty, and had two young children who always seemed to be in evidence. She was divorced from a Dutchman whom no one had seen in years. She had a good bartender, and she kept the place in good condition. It took up most of the main terminal building and wasn’t very far from the hangars. The bar sat maybe thirty people. During the day, passengers would fill up the place and wait for the arrival or departure of the DC3 that flew in and out of Spriggs-Payne once a day. There were some native joints along the side of the runway, but most pilots hung out in Madeleine’s place after work. After a couple of drinks, we would usually go to a restaurant or bar in town for dinner. Madeleine’s also had reasonably good food, and if we happened to be on the airfield around lunch time, Madeleine’s was where we ate.
It was early, not yet lunch. I didn’t feel like having anything alcoholic, so I ordered a coffee. The coffee was as good as I expected it to be. It was possible, but bad coffee was hard to find in West Africa. Madeleine slipped on to the seat next to me at the bar.
“I heard about African Air Services,” she said. Madeleine wore her chestnut brown hair at shoulder length and let the right side fall into what use to be called a peek-a-boo bang.
“Bad news does travel fast,” I said.
“Any prospects?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I’m going to see Andre at Monrovia Air on Monday, but it’s limited right now—part-time work for a while. Have you heard anything? Anybody hiring?”
“Go over and see Stumpy. He was in here yesterday complaining about his lack of help. He does a lot of work at all of the mines. You will not like him. He’s a first-class prick, but it’ll be something to tide you over.”
I thanked Madeleine for her advice, paid for the coffee, and drove over to Stumpy’s hangar.
Harland “Stumpy” Beizell had an artificial leg below the right knee. He had a slight limp that he compensated for by kicking out his right leg, giving the appearance of a sort of half goose-step when he walked. He operated a little air services business consisting of four airplanes, two of which were Lockheed Air 60s that he had convinced investors to buy. They were large tri-cycle gear airplanes and were powered by 340 hp, turbo-charged engines. They had sliding cargo doors that were good for his kind of operation. They were good performers and could haul a lot of goods, making them particularly well suited for the iron mine runs. He also had a couple of Cessna 185s. They looked like they were in pretty good condition.
One of his investors was a Belgian who had lived in the Congo, an older man by our standards. He had plenty of money, and he had put a lot of it into Stumpy’s business. Stumpy was American but had been in the country for a while. You could tell from his sagging yellowish eyes, the slow and listless way he moved, and his sallow complexion. Nevertheless, he was still a formidable man with something of the lone wolf about him.
I found Stumpy sitting at his desk in a very dark and grubby little office. The grease on his hands seemed to have spread over every inch of every surface of the room. His head tilted down and was engulfed in a cloud of cigar smoke.
“You Stumpy?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?” he said without looking up.
“I’m Ken. Ken Verrier. Madeleine over at the Airport Bar said you needed a pilot. I was working over at African Air Services, and well, you know what happened there. So I’m looking for some pick up runs. I can start any time.” He raised his head to look me straight in the eye. After a long pause, he said, “You haven’t been i
n Africa long, have ya.”
“Long enough,” I said.
“It’s just that you still have a clean, healthy look about you. Anyway, be here a week from Monday—early. I have a run you can take, and we’ll see how it goes.”
CHAPTER 17
SHEENERY MON
Monday morning came and it was time to meet Andre. I drove over to his hangar, which also housed his office. It was good to see Paterson walking out of the hangar toward me.
“Hey boss!” he said. We shook hands in the Liberian manner.
“How are things going, Paterson?”
“I started work yesterday. It good to have a job, suh. Yes indeed.”
“What do you think of Andre?”
He hesitated for a moment. “He is a man of few words, sir, a man of few words. Well, it’s good to see you suh. We will be working together again. Dat is good.” Paterson extended his hand once again. We shook and I watched as he walked away. A man of few words probably meant the same thing in Liberia as it did in the US—someone who knew where he was going, knew what he wanted, and what to expect.
I walked into the hangar, taking a few moments to notice the aircraft being serviced, then knocked on Andre’s office door.
“Entrez!” he said in a loud voice without shouting.
He was standing facing a large blackboard—the scheduling board. On it was scribbled all of the pertinent information about the day’s flights. I introduced myself.
“Yes, yes, I know who you are. Honorable Williams has informed me. Have you seen our aircraft?”
“Only the ones on the ramp and in the hangar.”
“Are you checked out in any of them?”
“Yes.”
“Good, that will save us some time. Most of our work is related to the diamond trade but we also have other clients. Occasionally we work with the Peace Corps as well as some private charters—the same work you did at African Air Services. We have also acquired many of their clients. Oh, and by the way, if Honorable Williams or anyone in his family wants to fly somewhere, they fly. Understand?”
The Dung Beetles of Liberia Page 12
