The Tanzania Conspiracy

by Mario Bolduc

  Max recognized Samuel Musindo immediately.

  Valéria’s son. The young man gave Max a terrified look, as if begging for his help. Max was as powerless as he was.

  Kerensky freed Musindo’s ankles and forced him out of the trunk and toward the cabin, threatening both men with his rifle.

  The voice he’d heard at Smile’s? Likely Musindo. Kerensky had made him call the restaurant before tying him up and throwing him in the trunk.

  “This is madness, Kerensky,” Max said. “I know what you want to do. You’ll never get away with this. You won’t get away with the other killings, either.”

  Kerensky stared at Max. “Without justice we turn into wild beasts. Whoever manages to avoid it is avoiding the will and the right of men to punish their fellow men.”

  “So bring Musindo in, make him face justice.”

  “I am justice.”

  Inside the cabin, keeping Max in his field of vision, Kerensky tied Musindo to the bed in the middle of the room. Then he secured Max to a chair close by.

  The place had been prepared for just this purpose. A set piece. Kerensky had let Max live so he could witness the executioner at his job.

  “A death sentence without a witness is murder plain and simple,” Kerensky continued. “Capital punishment is a ceremony because it’s legally sanctioned, yes. But also because citizens can see the mandate they’ve given their government carried out.”

  “I’ve given no permission, not to you or anybody else, Kerensky.”

  “Not you yourself, of course. But the people.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’ve never been more sane.”

  “You’re about to commit murder.”

  “An execution. That’s entirely different. There’s no anger in me. No impulsiveness. Only a clear mind and a desire to make sure the sanction given this criminal is applied. Six years ago I was given a mandate. I’m here to set things right.”

  Musindo listened to the exchange, struck by the man’s madness. Max, as well. He was trying desperately to think of an escape route.

  “And then?” Max asked. “When it’s done, when you’ve made things right …”

  “The future isn’t important.”

  As he spoke, Kerensky opened a suitcase on the kitchen table and pulled out a handful of small vials. A few syringes, as well. From time to time, he glanced at Musindo, who continued fighting against his bonds, but he never ceased to be calm and professional. He looked like a surgeon preparing for an operation.

  “Normally, I offer prisoners an opportunity to speak their last words,” he told Max, ignoring Musindo completely. “As long as they’re not obscenities or insults.” He turned to the nurse. “He had his chance at his last execution. No need to repeat himself. And a priest would do him no good.”

  Kerensky moved to the prisoner and ripped his shirt open with a single, rapid movement, attaching tiny suction cups to his chest. Musindo was fighting his restraints, trying to scream, but the gag wouldn’t allow it. His agitation didn’t bother the executioner, who continued his meticulous work.

  “Cardiac sensors,” he told Max, who hadn’t asked. “They’ll inform me of the death of the subject without my needing to manually measure his vital functions.”

  “Enough, Kerensky.”

  “Generally, these preparations are made before the witnesses arrive. But today, of course, the situation is exceptional.”

  From his suitcase, Kerensky put other objects on the table, which Max couldn’t identify. Finally, he pulled out a long plastic tube that had a needle at its end. He examined it carefully.

  Kerensky returned to Musindo. Delicately, he stuck the needle in his arm. The man fought again in vain. From the same suitcase, a second tube, with a needle, as well, which Kerensky fitted into another vein. The procedure had the appearance of an ordinary blood donation.

  “A simple precaution, a secondary solution in case the injection doesn’t take place as intended. Normally, the two tubes should be behind a wall, first connected to a harmless saline solution, and later, to sodium thiopental, a preparation that puts the condemned man to sleep.”

  Kerensky spoke to Max as if giving a lecture. Behind him, Musindo had stopped thrashing. A veil had gone over his eyes. His struggle had subsided. Part of him had already died.

  The old man glanced at his watch. “We’ll be able to start in nine minutes.”

  “Kerensky, please listen to me —”

  “One more word out of you and I’ll put you to sleep. And you’ll miss the execution. Which would be a shame. For me, I mean. I’d need to find a new witness.”

  Kerensky returned to the table, his attention on Musindo as if observing an alien object, with no particular emotion but obvious interest. “The doctor isn’t here,” he muttered. “He won’t come. But we’ll still be able to record the time of death …”

  At the appointed moment Kerensky made his way to one of the plastic tubes. He depressed a syringe. Musindo wanted to scream one last time, but that, too, was in vain. His face was deformed, prey to inhuman distress. Then he closed his eyes.

  “This is the part I love most,” Kerensky murmured. “Seeing anger become peace.” With his eyes on his victim, he added, “He’s sleeping. That way he won’t feel pain.”

  Kerensky pulled scissors out of his shirt pocket and moved to cut off a lock of Musindo’s hair. He returned to the table and slipped the hair into a small plastic bag.

  “Pancuronium bromide will paralyze his muscles, including his lungs. It should be enough, normally. But I’ll also inject potassium chloride to stop his heart in its tracks.” He turned to Max. “Death will occur within seconds, but the tradition is to wait a few moments before declaring the execution a success.”

  Syringe in hand, Kerensky made his way to the second plastic tube. He was about the depress the plunger when —

  “Albert, no!”

  Without abandoning the syringe, Kerensky wheeled toward the bedroom door.

  Roselyn propped herself against the door frame unsteadily.

  “Go away!” he ordered.

  “Don’t do it, please!” Roselyn blurted out.

  “Enough! Let me work.”

  “Stop!”

  Ignoring her, he returned to his work, leaning over the plastic tube. A shot rang out. Kerensky’s head exploded, sending pieces of cranium and brain flying across the room. Roselyn dropped the Beretta onto the floor, and soon joined it there, weeping.

  34

  Max had one concern: get out of the cabin before the cops arrived. Get Roselyn and Musindo out of this hell and hit the road quickly, as if speed could lessen the nightmare. The only car at their disposal was Kerensky’s Mercury, which they would need to get rid of quickly. Back in Prince George, maybe, where he could rent another car. But for now, all that mattered was to put some distance between them and this terrible place.

  After shooting Kerensky, Roselyn freed Max, and he immediately tried to wake Musindo but had no success. Instead, he carried him to the Mercury, and soon they were flying down Route 16. Next to him, Roselyn was lost in thought, still stunned by what she’d done: killed her husband. Max knew that while she suffered now, it would only be worse tomorrow, and the day after, for a long time to come. Her grief would be a horrible ordeal that she might never come out of.

  They’d been driving for half an hour when Roselyn broke the silence. “Albert saw us arrive in Prince George. He followed us from Vancouver. When I was kidnapped by Shembazi and handed over to his accomplice, he saw the whole thing.”

  Kerensky had intervened and saved his wife’s life; he’d shown up at the motel room Ferguson had rented. The Tanzanian hadn’t been suspicious of an old, fragile-looking man. Kerensky killed him with a single shot, Ferguson’s blood spraying the Stellar’s screen. The former rebel didn’t have a chance.

  The executioner had already figured out where Musindo was, but before carrying out another execution, he first had to take care of Shembazi and his accomp
lice. Since they were two, with Max to boot, he couldn’t eliminate them in the same way as Ferguson. He would need to lure them into a trap where he could pick them off as if they were the deer or feral pigs Kerensky loved to hunt with Glenn Forrester back in Texas.

  “Where were you all that time?” Max asked.

  “In the cabin. He’d rented it for the week. After Ferguson died, I tried to reason with him. I told him to turn himself in to the police. We spoke all night through to morning. I thought I’d managed to convince him. We would go together to the RCMP in Prince Rupert and explain the situation.”

  They wouldn’t mention the murders of Clements and Arceneaux. Kerensky would say that he’d acted out of anger in regard to Ferguson, who’d been holding his wife hostage. An argument that wouldn’t have convinced Peter but might get him out of Canada and back to Texas to go on living the life of a retiree. At least that was what Roselyn had hoped.

  What she didn’t know was that Albert was only pretending to mollify her. That Ferguson’s body was in the trunk of his car. That the body was already part of Kerensky’s plan to get rid of the two other Tanzanians. Roselyn had fallen asleep, drugged by a pill Albert had slipped into her water glass. When she woke hours later, she heard noises in the neighbouring room. Max’s voice. She discovered Musindo connected to familiar plastic tubes and decided to intervene, knowing she wouldn’t be able to reason with her husband.

  “I didn’t have a choice.” She added, her voice low, “He turned me into a killer.”

  A little before Terrace, Musindo began to stir in the back seat. Max got off at the next rest stop and parked as far as possible from the other vehicles. Musindo sat up, lost, confused. Max opened his door for him. The nurse leaned over and puked on the asphalt. Minutes passed. The retching became bile as his body emptied itself of the drug Kerensky had administered.

  Roselyn returned from the nearby gas station with water and ice. Musindo was recovering his senses, though he remained bewildered. But this was the second execution he’d survived — he was getting the hang of it.

  Max brought him up to speed. Roselyn’s intervention had saved his life. The night before, Musindo told him, Kerensky had called out to him in a supermarket parking lot in Prince Rupert. He was out of breath, seemed in pain, asked for help getting his groceries into his trunk. Musindo hadn’t suspected a thing. Moments later he was locked in the same trunk, terrified. When the trunk opened eventually, Musindo recognized the kidnapper. Fear turned to panic. The rickety old man was his executioner from Tanzania. His worst nightmare had become a reality.

  “His madness killed Valéria and Sophie,” Max informed him. “And Thomas, your adoptive father.”

  “My real father.”

  So Max’s first intuition had been right: Valéria and Thomas had had a short affair while she was still a university student. They’d agreed he’d keep the child. She later married Richard Stroner and had another child with him — Sophie. Valéria hadn’t attempted to reach out to Samuel. He made the first move as an adult when he tried to find his biological mother.

  Musindo told Max how, just weeks before, Valéria had warned him that Kerensky was hunting for him. Wanted to kill him. She told him to be very careful and that she was looking into ways to keep him safe, to find him a new place to live. She’d be getting her hands on a small fortune soon and would make a plan. Until then he had to watch himself and keep a low profile.

  When he learned of the tragic death of his mother, his father, and his half-sister, his first thought was that Kerensky was responsible for the killings, just as he would be for Zuberi’s murder. He’d had no idea Shembazi was after him, as well, under direct orders from President Lugembe.

  “What about Jonathan Harris’s ransom?” Max asked.

  “I took it out of Valéria’s account. I didn’t know she’d just been killed. When I heard the news, I didn’t dare touch a penny of it for fear someone would start following the money.”

  “I need to know,” Max said. “Did you kill Lugembe’s daughter?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I’m not guilty. I never was. I only wanted to help Clara.”

  “You knew each other?”

  “We worked together. She was helping Valéria’s organization.”

  When albinos were born at the clinic, Musindo made sure they ended up in the hands of adoptive families on Ukerewe. Their biological parents knew about this, and some chose to move to the island along with the child. For most parents, it was enough to know their children would live in safety. The nurse had been not only wrongly accused of Clara’s murder but wrongly accused of trafficking in albinos with Zuberi and others of his ilk. Valéria hadn’t been able to help him prove his innocence.

  “What happened to Clara?”

  Musindo took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, trying to put some order in his head. “We were in love. Completely devoted to each other. No one knew. Especially not her father. And one day she told me she’d learned something about his dealings in the past.”

  Musindo told Max and Roselyn the story of this young, ambitious politician, an excellent orator, a respected economist, but without a penny to his name. Lugembe had fallen for Myriam Ikingura, who came from a well-heeled family in Dar es Salaam, her father an activist who’d worked alongside Julius Nyerere for independence. She had twins. Two little albino children from a previous marriage: Faith and Clara. But Lugembe had been attracted to Myriam more out of a desire to advance his career than out of true love. Especially since Myriam displayed erratic behaviour. She’d broken off ties with her family, gone against everyone, Lugembe first. Their marriage quickly became a convention, a partnership. At conferences, parties, receptions, she could be seen on the arm of her husband. The rest of the time they lived separate lives. Faith and Clara’s mother drank like a fish in Dar es Salaam’s ritzy hotels. She was seen wandering the streets after her legendary drinking sessions. Behaviour that was compromising, politically dangerous. Lugembe had felt forced to have her sent to the Mirembe Psychiatric Hospital in Dodoma. She lost custody of the twins, and Lugembe hired a nanny to take care of them.

  And then one day Faith was kidnapped. The culprits took advantage of the nanny looking the other way. The next morning all that was left of the child, her clothes, in fact, was discovered in an abandoned house. Another victim of the witch doctors.

  A terrible tragedy.

  And Lugembe had been responsible for the kidnapping. He needed money for his political campaign. The one that got him elected to the national assembly and launched his political career.

  Clara’s twin sister was worth more than other albino children, it was said, because she was the daughter of a madwoman. Purity was guaranteed in the children of insane women, according to the outlandish beliefs, meaning that the charms and trinkets would be worth that much more. Faith represented a fortune. Financially stuck, Lugembe, ambitious and impatient, hadn’t been able to resist the gold mine.

  “Devastated by Faith’s death, unaware of the role her husband had played, Myriam threw herself off the hospital roof. Maybe she was pushed because she had her suspicions about her husband. In any case, the suicide didn’t harm Lugembe’s career.”

  While working with Musindo and Valéria, Clara had come to better understand the complexities of the human trafficking in albinos. She became more interested in the investigation into her twin sister’s kidnapping and death. She discovered that soon after the disappearance, the nanny’s family had managed to regain their ancestral land that had been confiscated during the Nyerere government’s agrarian reform. In other words, the nanny’s oversight had benefited her family. There was no direct proof or out-and-out accusations, but Clara asked her adoptive father a few questions. He flew into a rage. With that, she sentenced herself to death, though she didn’t know it.

  Max now understood why Lugembe was so desperate to track down Musindo and kill him. Samuel knew the president was guilty, knew he was responsible for the death of his two adoptive daughters. If
it became public knowledge that he’d sold Faith to fund his electoral campaign and killed Clara to cover his tracks, he could kiss the presidency goodbye. He would be completely and definitively ruined. There would be no more handshakes and hugs with Barack Obama. And so Lugembe had sent Shembazi to find and kill Musindo before his career was destroyed.

  Devastated by her son’s arrest and the accusation levelled against him, Valéria played both sides. As she urged President Komba to bring back capital punishment, she worked to avoid her son’s death and find him a safe place on the other side of the world. A remote area where he could rebuild his life.

  “And Valéria managed it by putting pressure on Albert Kerensky through his grandson,” Samuel said.

  Valéria had discreetly met the executioner at his hotel in Dar es Salaam. She explained that Adrian would live if he obeyed. Kerensky didn’t have a choice. And she’d assured him that no one would ever know what had actually happened, not Lugembe or Komba or anyone else. Something that wouldn’t be too hard to promise, since Kerensky was in Tanzania secretly. Legally, he didn’t exist. But if he spoke up one day, he, too, would be caught up in Lugembe’s wrath.

  Kerensky had gotten the message. He faked the execution. Musindo stayed in hiding for a few weeks while arrangements were made for his escape with Sophie. They drove to the border with Burundi, the most porous crossing in the country. From Bujumbura they’d taken a flight to Amsterdam through Kigali. Samuel was travelling under his new identity. He played the role of an African businessman flying to Europe to meet with investors. They spent two days holed up in a hotel in Haarlem before heading to Canada, their final destination. To Lake McFearn, to be exact. Sophie returned to Tanzania the next week, once she knew Samuel was safe.

  “Valéria had kept in touch with a good friend of her husband who worked at the Alcan plant in Kitimat,” Samuel said. “Thanks to him, I eased into the community without attracting too much attention.”