The Tanzania Conspiracy

by Mario Bolduc

  Except, of course, if the young man was, despite appearances, innocent. But Max recalled that the nurse had confessed to the murder.

  Perhaps that was what felt so strange. He’d spontaneously admitted to his guilt, even if the case was far from solid. There had been no direct witnesses to the murder. His lawyer, Jason Chagula, wouldn’t have found it too difficult to sow doubt in the jury’s minds. His admission of guilt was as strange as his decision not to incriminate the witch doctor Zuberi, who’d gotten off with what amounted to a slap on the wrist.

  As they neared Prince Rupert, rain fell, a grey, monotonous mass, more mist than rain that soaked the landscape without flooding it. A scent of wet earth rose, mixed with that of the sea. They crossed the downtown core — a large, uninspired street with rundown hotels and boarding houses — and the port appeared. An industrial port. Busy, full of action and goings-on, flanked by canneries on each side. That explained the giant billboard they’d spotted stating, with obvious pride, PRINCE RUPERT, THE HALIBUT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

  Near the wharf, with a backdrop of the same pine trees, fishermen were off-loading their catch to cannery employees, most of them Indigenous. Despite the industrial activity, the place felt like the edge of the world, far from everything. Farther still than Bukoba.

  Shembazi’s accomplice parked the Subaru in front of a sorry-looking McDonald’s where, behind a storefront running with rivulets of rain, a few retirees sat mournfully, baseball caps screwed tightly on their heads. Facing the parking lot, they watched the newcomers. Their arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “So?” Shembazi asked, turning the engine off.

  “I don’t know where he lives.”

  “Enough, O’Brien.”

  “We made an appointment.”

  “Where?”

  “Smile’s Seafood Café. Tomorrow. Noon.”

  As they’d driven into the city, Max had noticed a billboard advertising the place, with its daily special, including the best halibut in British Columbia, simple, delicious meals for the whole family. Likely a rather popular diner-style restaurant, busy at noon with workers stopping in for a quick bite. A crowd that might be to Max’s advantage.

  Before Shembazi could say anything, Max added, “If Musindo sees I’m not alone, he’ll disappear.”

  Shembazi hesitated, no doubt wondering if Max was bluffing. Finally, he told his colleague to start the car, and they drove to the outskirts of the city.

  They found a motel there, a little off the main road, though its marquee could be seen in the distance, perched on a tall pole. A gas station abutted the motel. Hardly any cars in the parking lot. A lit sign on a truck proclaimed cheap rooms. Certainly, this place had known better days. It needed a coat of paint to start with.

  Shembazi’s accomplice walked into the reception to rent the room. Shembazi pushed Max out of the car into the now-pouring rain. Completely drenched, he was marched into a large humid room that smelled of cleaning products. Two queen-sized beds, a worn-out chest of drawers over which a large plasma screen had been installed. The only modern touch in an otherwise faded decor.

  The two men handcuffed Max to the bathroom radiator and closed the door on their prisoner. Shortly after, Shembazi left the room in search of something to eat. Max could hear the television, which Shembazi’s colleague had turned on. He inspected the radiator, solidly bolted to the floor. No way he could break free. In any case, even if he did somehow manage to get the handcuffs off, the bathroom window was too narrow to slip though. And he couldn’t expect to fight his way out against an armed veteran of an African civil war.

  Not much hope of escape.

  Max had won a few hours, but all he’d really managed to do was prolong his ordeal. When he realized Max had led them astray, Shembazi would put a bullet in his head. If he didn’t decide to first give him a little taste of the kandoya.

  A few moments later Max heard Shembazi returning. The bathroom door opened. He tossed a sandwich and a soda at him the way he might have thrown a bone to a famished dog, then shut the door. Max kicked the sandwich away. He should have eaten, should have regained his strength, but he’d lost all appetite. The door opened again two hours later, and Shembazi threw a sheet at him.

  That night Max slept fitfully, awakened over and over by the sound of his handcuffs rubbing against the radiator. Stiff, exhausted, he finally saw grey light appear at the small window above his head. His captors had taken his watch, so he had no idea what time it was. Very early in the morning, no doubt. On the other side of the door, not a peep. His two jailers were sleeping.

  If he had the means to flee, now would have been the time. But despite his sleepless night, no great ideas had come to him.

  Eventually, Shembazi woke up and walked into the bathroom to relieve himself. He leaned over Max. “I hope you’re being honest with us. You know what we do to traitors in Uganda?”

  Max had no desire to find out.

  Shembazi smiled and uncuffed Max. “Come on now, up. I wouldn’t want to miss our date.”

  Max was seated in a window booth at Smile’s where a few people sat having a late breakfast. He wasn’t much hungrier than the night before. The smell of bacon and eggs nauseated him. On the table, an abandoned plate, coffee gone cold. Maybe Smile’s had the best halibut in the world, but it had given up on the coffee a long time ago.

  Farther off, a server was preparing tables for the employees of the nearby McMillan Fisheries who usually came for lunch here. Near the back exit that led to the parking lot was Shembazi’s accomplice. Shembazi himself was seated at the entrance. They controlled both doors. Perfectly positioned, Shembazi could see the kitchen from where he was.

  What next?

  As they’d made their way to the restaurant from the motel, Max had tried to come up with a plan, a way to get out of the trap he’d set for himself. He hadn’t been able to think of anything. And so there he was, hopeless, convinced that Shembazi was already beginning to doubt the story about his meeting with Musindo.

  Behind the counter, the server was pulling cutlery out of the dishwasher, moving quickly, as she probably did this time every day. Over her head, the clock showed eleven. Beyond the kitchen’s swinging doors, the cook and his assistant were finishing their prep for lunch.

  There was no way out of this one. No solution.

  Worse still, Max was convinced that if he tried to run now, Shembazi and his man wouldn’t hesitate to shoot at him in the middle of the restaurant. The war between Uganda and Tanzania, like all wars, had made them unconcerned about collateral damage.

  Max had Roselyn’s murder on his conscience. He wasn’t about to become responsible for the mass killing of Smile’s patrons.

  “You haven’t touched your plate,” the waitress chastised him.

  “It’s delicious, I’m sure. Sorry.”

  “Do you want anything else?”

  “No thanks.”

  The minutes passed as his coffee was warmed up and cooled down until little by little the employees of the canning factories began to fill every empty table, jostling one another like schoolchildren. The waitress quickened the pace. Soon it was eleven thirty, then noon. Then five past twelve and a quarter past. As time went by, Shembazi’s face grew sharper, meaner. At twelve thirty he walked toward Max through the jam-packed restaurant, stopped in front of his table, and motioned for him to follow.

  It was over.

  Max got up, giving his seat to the people who were waiting in line. He felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter.

  “Max O’Brien?”

  A loud voice practically shouted over the hubbub from the back of the restaurant. At the end of the counter the waitress was holding the phone as if it were a tennis racket.

  “Is there a Max O’Brien here?” the waitress repeated, clearly impatient. She didn’t have a second to waste as plates piled up on the hatch that opened into the kitchen.

  Max glanced at Shembazi, who nodded in silence.

  “That’
s me!” Max cried as he rushed to the counter.

  He took the phone out of the waitress’s hands as she disappeared with four daily specials balanced on her arms. Shembazi stood right behind Max, scanning the restaurant for a black man with a cellphone. No one.

  “O’Brien here.”

  A long silence.

  “Rainbow Pier is what you’re looking for. The old drop-off point for ferries going to Port Simpson. Ask the waitress. She’ll know where it is.”

  A young man’s voice. Nervous. Max could hear the Tanzanian accent. Samuel Musindo?

  Max quickly answered, “Listen, Samuel, you absolutely —”

  Shembazi cut the line and motioned to his partner to follow. Time to go.

  33

  In the Subaru, a few moments later, Shembazi couldn’t contain his satisfaction. If he’d doubted Max’s revelations at first, those doubts were gone. Soon he’d get his hands on Musindo and finally put an end to him, though he was, of course, officially dead. Afterward, he’d get rid of another thorn in his side: Max himself.

  Meanwhile, Max wondered who had actually made the call. They must have been followed, the three of them. Shembazi and his accomplice were running headfirst into a trap, with Max and Musindo getting first billing as the bait. Though his situation looked marginally better now — more players joining the mix could only help Max at this point — he still had no idea who might be waiting at Rainbow Pier.

  As they drove, Max wondered whether he’d been led down the garden path the entire time. He’d followed a series of fabricated revelations, leading Max and his two pursuers toward this specific spot that had nothing to do with Musindo’s true whereabouts. The phone call at the restaurant confirmed his suspicions: the three of them were small fry in a conspiracy much larger than they imagined. Max’s only advantage over Shembazi and his accomplice was that he was aware they were being manipulated.

  There had been a time when ferries sailed from Rainbow Pier, connecting Prince Rupert not only to Port Simpson but also to Klemtu, Bella Bella, and the Queen Charlotte Islands. Mostly Indigenous Peoples lived along the coast from Port Hardy, north of Vancouver Island, to the border with Alaska, south of Ketchikan. They had traded with the Russians when they owned a piece of Alaska, and later with the Americans. Early in the twentieth century, the construction of the railway had made Prince Rupert into the last important port before the American border.

  Over the years, an increase in tourism and maritime traffic meant building new installations. Rainbow Pier had been abandoned, its wooden structure left to rot by the combined action of salt and wind blowing in over the Pacific Ocean.

  It was hard to reach the place. A metal fence barred entry to the wharf itself, which could be seen through the gate about two hundred metres away. A yellow placard announcing DANGER completed the picture. Waves broke noisily, almost angrily, against the seawall built to prevent erosion. A grey sky loomed over this sinister picture.

  The area was isolated. A good place to get killed.

  Shembazi got out of the car first and looked around, his face anxious, tense. For the first time, Max detected nerves. Shembazi wasn’t leading this little expedition any longer; he was being led.

  Shembazi turned to Max, impatiently waving at him to get out of the car. His accomplice was standing guard next to the Subaru, scanning the environment.

  “Walk in front of us,” Shembazi ordered.

  “If he sees you, he’ll run.”

  “He won’t get very far. And neither will you. So don’t try anything.”

  Max approached the fence. From close up, he saw it was open, with a rusted lock hanging uselessly from it. Obviously, the city didn’t come here much to check on the wharf. Max imagined how this secluded site could become a hot spot for teenagers looking for unsupervised time on the weekends. Cars and motorbikes parked every which way, bonfires near the water, beer bottles thrown here and there, shattered against concrete blocks because there was nothing better to do.

  But for now, the place was quiet. Max stepped onto the path that led to the pier. He couldn’t see its far edge, shrouded in a mix of mist and fog that rose from the water. Shembazi, gun in hand, walked a few metres behind him, scanning the surroundings. His partner was concentrating on the boulders, perhaps fearing the appearance of Idi Amin and his Libyan mercenaries.

  Max walked steadily but slowly, trying to calm his nerves. If Samuel Musindo had laid this trap for Shembazi, with Max’s involuntary complicity, he wouldn’t bide his time. That was what Max feared: to be caught in a firefight, an ambush.

  Suddenly, Max saw a silhouette loom out of the fog.

  Seated on the ground, back to him, leaning against one of the concrete blocks at the entrance to the pier, a black man contemplated the ocean. The sound of crashing waves kept him from hearing Max. He turned to Shembazi. The two Tanzanians had noticed the silhouette and moved into position.

  Shembazi’s accomplice hid behind a boulder. The two men had Musindo in a pincer. Shembazi waved Max forward.

  How would the nurse escape? Max had no choice but to follow Shembazi’s order. He was a few steps away from the nurse and still the man hadn’t budged.

  Max called, “Musindo?”

  No reaction. Strange …

  Max walked forward, then around the man to face him.

  It wasn’t Samuel Musindo, but Ferguson, Harris’s bodyguard. Dead, and more, if that was possible. He’d been shot at close range with a large-calibre weapon. His body rested against a concrete block.

  Seeing the repulsion on Max’s face, Shembazi quickly joined him. Max made his move: he took advantage of his captor’s moment of confusion and despair at Ferguson’s death to push the police officer hard in the chest. Shembazi tumbled over the concrete block. That was when Max heard a gunshot. Instinctively, he threw himself onto the ground, pulling Ferguson’s body over him while trying to grab Shembazi’s gun. From the corner of one eye, he saw the Tanzanian’s partner collapse, a bullet in the middle of his forehead. The second shot hit Shembazi in the shoulder, then a third burst his head open.

  Max got to his feet. A stranger dressed in hunting gear marched out of the undergrowth, a rifle in hand. An elderly man sauntering slowly toward him with the determination of someone who knew where he was going and had all the time in the world to get there. He had just killed two men but didn’t seem unnerved in the slightest.

  Max recognized him from the picture Roselyn had shown him: Albert Kerensky.

  Without taking a moment’s pause to glance at his two victims — he was so sure he’d killed them that he didn’t even stop to investigate — he halted his advance and raised the rifle. Max heard him breathe in hard and realized that what he’d mistaken for calm and exceptional mastery were the symptoms of physical weakness. The man was sick, very sick, and avoided any unnecessary movement.

  If Kerensky wanted to kill him, as he had the other two men, why hadn’t he shot already? To enjoy the kill? To force him to suffer Ferguson’s fate? Shembazi’s gun was a few steps from Max, but he’d never get there in time.

  “That way.” Kerensky’s voice was strong, surprisingly so considering his condition, as if illness had wracked his body but not his mind.

  Max walked in the direction indicated by Kerensky, through the bushes. They hiked one hundred metres or so, following the contour of the coast, until they reached a Mercury Grand Marquis parked at the end of a dirt road.

  Kerensky forced him to lie on his stomach on the rear seat, hands behind his back. Max felt his wrists and ankles being bound by plastic tie wraps, the kind from a hardware store. Kerensky then passed a chain between the two sets of straps, transforming Max into a pig ready for roasting. He could barely move, let alone go after the former Texas executioner. The elderly man slowly settled behind the wheel and drove off.

  Max had begun to feel a bit more confident during their stroll to the car, thinking the man intended to let him live. But now his anxiety was back with a vengeance. He’d let him live
, sure, but for how long?

  When they reached an intersection and turned off the dirt road, Kerensky, without slowing, threw a sheet — it smelled new — over Max’s body, covering him completely. By twisting his body, Max managed to uncover his face. Despite his precarious position, he realized they were now driving on the Trans-Canada Highway. Kerensky had left Rainbow Pier without even bothering to dispose of the bodies of Shembazi, Ferguson, and the third accomplice. Plainly, he wasn’t afraid of what the police would think about such carnage. He simply didn’t care. That worried Max more.

  Before Prudhomme Lake, the Mercury left the main road and returned to the forest. On the radio, Kerensky found a country music station. Johnny Cash crackled to life. He pulled a can of Canada Dry out of the glove compartment and opened it with one hand.

  His stillness made Max’s skin crawl. “Kerensky, listen, please. You got what you wanted. Vengeance for Roselyn.”

  Kerensky didn’t react.

  “You won’t get away. The police will come after you as soon as they find the bodies of those three men.”

  Kerensky turned the sound up.

  They drove for a few kilometres on a poorly maintained track cratered by rain, ice, and snow. Likely used only by hunters in the fall, or tourists accompanied by guides. Kerensky seemed to know the place. He drove with assurance, zigzagging among the potholes.

  The area was uninhabited, as if it had been closed for the season and everyone sent back to wherever they’d come from. In front of the Mercury, around a curve, a handful of unoccupied shacks, humble dwellings falling into ruin, seemingly abandoned long ago. Kerensky followed the trail for another kilometre, then stopped in front of a cabin raised on stilts on a series of large boulders, its porch facing a small lake, back against the road.

  An isolated retreat.

  After freeing his ankles, Kerensky dragged Max out of the car. Holding his weapon on him, he motioned for him to open the trunk. A black man in his thirties was tied and gagged with gaffer tape, his eyes filled with fear, shaking from terror and cold.