by Jeremy Duns
I spent several minutes sorting through all the thoughts that came to me. When my eyes had fully adjusted to the dark and I thought I could see how the rifle worked, I began a field-strip.
I detached the magazine, then lowered the safety and emptied the cartridge chamber. Then the sight. The eyepiece was still a little wet, so I took hold of a corner of curtain and dried it as best I could. Finally, I detached the cheek plate, followed by the receiver cover and retracting mechanism…
‘What you are doing?’
I looked up to see Isabelle staring at me from the bed.
‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I’m cleaning the rifle. There’s been a power cut.’
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘It is what time?’
I told her. She picked her damp dress from the floor and slipped it over her head with a shudder. It was a shame to watch her body vanish beneath the fabric – I had an urge to get up and help her take it back off.
I placed the rifle back in its case and walked over to the bed.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ I said, seating myself beside her.
She pushed her hair behind her ears and smiled, her teeth gleaming in the soft bluey-greyness of the room. ‘You have nothing to be sorry about.’
‘Not that,’ I said. ‘Earlier, when I made all those accusations. Mistaking you for a spy.’
She tilted her head up sharply. ‘Why do you say that?’
It was my turn to smile. ‘Last time I checked, French intelligence still insists its agents have basic driving skills.’
She punched me in the shoulder. ‘Connard!’ But it was said with affection. ‘Did you also search my clothes for transmitters after I fell asleep?’ I didn’t react, and she punched me again.
‘What story did they give you?’ I asked. ‘They didn’t say it was your chance to help la patrie, I hope?’
She shook her head. ‘That wouldn’t have worked.’ She paused, wondering whether or not she could trust me. Then, perhaps realizing she now had little to lose, she shrugged her shoulders and continued. ‘Before I was due to travel to the front last year, an old colleague of my father approached me. He said they were doing everything they could to end the war here, but if I could provide any information on what I saw it might help end it sooner.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked at me straight on. ‘It might save lives, you know?’
I nodded. ‘The usual lie.’
It was too quick for her and she bristled. ‘I forgot – you are British. Of course you say this. Your government arms the Nigerians so they can isolate Biafra and starve innocent women and children. How could you think any differently?’
I smiled tolerantly. ‘I never discuss politics before breakfast.’
She looked at me with all the scorn she could muster. ‘Do you treat all questions you cannot answer this way?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I treat all questions asked by people who have already made up their mind this way.’ She stared blankly at me. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’re supplying the Nigerians with arms. So are the Russians, and others. Guns, tanks, planes…’
‘That is your justification? That you are not alone?’
‘Your government only started selling arms to the Biafrans last year,’ I went on. ‘Its contribution is still tiny compared to what the Nigerians receive from us and Moscow. And no heavy weapons. At its current level, France’s support isn’t enough to give Biafra even the slimmest chance of victory. That’s because the idea isn’t to help Colonel Ojukwu win the war – it’s to help General de Gaulle win votes. Your government doesn’t give any more of a shit about starving Biafrans than mine, and any information you’ve given your father’s friend has, like the arms he has supplied, merely prolonged the bloodshed. You haven’t saved lives – you’ve helped take more of them.’
I saw the slap coming, and steeled myself for it. Now we were even.
She started crying soon after, so I took the rifle case into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub. I reached for the collapsible rod tip: the bore looked filthy.
She didn’t know anything about Anna, or Slavin, or any of it. She was just an amateur, a hopeless idealist caught in the crossfire.
‘I have to leave soon,’ I called out. ‘Can you get ready?’
I went over to the basin. A dead rat lay face up in it, its eyes staring glassily at me from the darkness. I opened the window and threw it into the street below. Perhaps that’s what I am, I thought: a dead rat flying towards a gutter, where larger creatures wait to devour me.
Melodramatic fool. I was as bad as she was. Nobody was going to devour me. I’d devour them first.
The water from the tap was tepid, but I splashed it all over my face and body anyway.
‘I leave now.’ She was standing in the doorway.
I dried myself, and she waited for the words of kindness that were not going to come from my lips. I suppose she was used to men begging her to stay.
‘If you have to pay any traffic fines, the AFP office has my details.’
There was no need to humiliate her, so I smiled. ‘You’re heading back to the front, then?’
She nodded. ‘This afternoon.’
The phone started ringing in the main room, and I went through to answer it. Could this be it? Could it be her?
‘Paul,’ said the man’s voice on the other end. ‘It’s Geoffrey. Have you seen this morning’s Daily Times?’
I looked up to see Isabelle walking past the bed. ‘Best of luck,’ I said to her. She nodded, but didn’t make eye contact. The door made barely a click as she closed it behind her.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Manning was saying. ‘Hello, is anyone there?’
‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ I said. ‘No, I haven’t read the papers yet – it’s barely dawn. Why?’
‘The entire front page is about bodies being dug up from bunkers on Ikoyi golf course, that’s why!’
Alebayo had been right – it wasn’t a bad paper. They’d put the story together in just a few hours. I told Manning we could discuss it at the airport.
‘I’m not sure you should come,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we should be seen together. It might—’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Blow my cover? You’ve just used my real name on a line that may well be tapped, so I think it’s a bit late to be worrying about that, don’t you? I’ll be at the airport at half-seven, as agreed. I’m leaving your car here – the police will be looking for it. Send one of your secretaries to come and pick it up.’
‘Looking for it? Are you pulling my leg?’
‘Unfortunately not.’ I didn’t tell him the back window had also been shot off, but he’d find out soon enough. Instead, I told him that the Afrospot had turned out to be a club, and that the owner was a certain J. J. Thompson-Bola. I spelled it out for him, and when he’d got it I told him to see if there was anything in the files.
Then I hung up and called the Soviet Embassy again. It was a different clerk, but much the same message: Third Secretary Grigorieva had not come into the building yet and no, he had no idea when she was due. I left my details again, then dressed, reassembled the rifle and called reception to order a taxi. Part of me wanted to direct it to the embassy, so I could sit and wait for her to turn up, but I knew I couldn’t. There was something else I couldn’t put off: it was time to face Pritchard.
*
The rain had finally stopped, and the sun was rapidly climbing the sky. It looked as round and yellow and artificial as a child’s drawing up there, but its effect on me as the taxi sped along the main road was real enough: my cheek facing the window felt like a branding iron had been placed on it. The city outside seemed flat and colourless in the glare and the haze, and I felt a little dizzy and nauseous – perhaps the previous night’s activities had taken more of a toll than I’d realized. Luckily, there were few cars on the road, so we arrived at the airport in good time. The driver charged me two Nigerian pounds, despite a sign saying it was a fixed fare of one and ten bob the other wa
y. There were more important arguments to be had, so I paid him.
‘Robert!’ Manning shouted at me as I entered the arrivals terminal. He was keen to rectify his earlier mistake, even if it meant making a few more in the process. He marched towards me, waving away a small collection of flies buzzing around him. He’d traded the nightwear for a khaki linen suit and deck shoes – it made him look only slightly more trustworthy.
I asked him if Pritchard had landed yet, and he shook his head. ‘Some sort of a hitch in Madrid, apparently.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Look, Paul, I really think this situation—’
‘Did they say how long the delay was?’ Perhaps there was time to go to the embassy and come back – it wasn’t so far away. Perhaps Pritchard’s flight would have to turn tail to London, and he wouldn’t come out at all.
Manning dashed the thought: ‘An hour at the most.’ He suddenly noticed the case. ‘I do hope that’s not what I think it is.’
It admittedly wasn’t ideal, carrying the thing around in the airport, but it wasn’t safe leaving it at the hotel either. I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on tradecraft from Manning.
‘Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough on the phone,’ I said, keeping my voice even. ‘Everything that happened last night was necessary. Everything except for the police shooting at me, that is. That might have been because the nightclub you’d never heard of was a KGB drop.’
He quietened down then. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Jungle dancing’s not really my thing, you know.’ He tried to get a smile out of me, but when he realized it wasn’t going to happen he swivelled his head around the hall theatrically, then leaned over and handed me the newspaper, from one end of which peeked a plain brown dossier. By the time he’d finished the manoeuvre, even the woman cleaning the floor was watching.
‘Turns out we have a dossier on the family,’ he said.
‘Anywhere in here sell food?’ I said, trying to move the conversation to a safer subject. There didn’t seem to be any police around, but I didn’t want to attract more attention if it could be helped – one trip to the dungeons had been enough.
‘There’s a stall in the car park,’ said Manning. ‘Nowhere else is open yet.’
I fished some coins out of my pocket and handed them to him. ‘Fruit if they have it,’ I said. ‘Bananas or citrus. Failing that, anything with sugar in it.’
He didn’t disguise his anger at being ordered around, but I was London – I might be in trouble with Pritchard, but he knew that a few choice words about his cock-up over the Afrospot could force him into early retirement. So he chewed his lip and waggled his eyebrows, and walked over to the exit.
I found a seat and examined the front page of the Daily Times. ‘CORPSES ON THE GOLF COURSE!’ was the headline, and the story contained full descriptions of both men and some lurid speculation from unnamed sources about their manners of death – but no clue as to the perpetrator. I read it twice and decided I was fairly safe: it would be very difficult for the police to prise anything out of the Russians, and judging by the number of other crimes reported in the city on the inside pages, they already had a fair amount on their plate.
I turned to the dossier. It was a dull affair, by and large, filled with lengthy accounts of impossibly trivial matters relating to seemingly every member of the extensive Thompson-Bola clan. After struggling through it, I came out with two files of interest. One involved a Daniel Talabi, the cousin Thompson-Bola had mentioned at the club: he was a writer who had been imprisoned by the government for aiding the ‘rebels’.
But by far the most substantial dossier was on Thompson-Bola’s mother, Abigail. The harmless-looking woman in glasses and headdress was apparently something of a firebrand. She had a decades-long history of anti-colonial protest – and was, according to the file, a hardened Communist. She had been one of the first African women allowed behind the Iron Curtain, where she had met Mao. If there had been any doubts in my mind about the family’s knowledge of the drop, this put paid to them, and she was now my prime suspect for the contact.
Manning returned with my breakfast: an unripe banana and a bottle of Fanta.
‘I checked on the flight’s progress,’ he said. ‘No news.’
The hour had passed – the delay was now edging up to two. I decided enough was enough, and told Manning to set up a meeting with Pritchard for the afternoon – I had a few errands to run.
‘Are any of your safe houses near the Afrospot?’ I asked. But he wasn’t even listening to me – he was focusing on something over my right shoulder. I asked him if he had heard, and his eyes flicked over to meet mine. He pointed across to the customs official taking down the barrier in front of passport control.
‘They’ve landed,’ he said.
*
Pritchard came through ten minutes later, striding confidently past his fellow passengers. In his dark suit and tie, white shirt and dark glasses, he looked like an upmarket funeral director. He caught sight of us and walked over.
‘Hello, Henry,’ said Manning, beaming. ‘Welcome to Lagos.’ It was evidently his line for airports.
‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ said Pritchard. ‘How’s Marjorie?’ They shook hands and exchanged a few more pleasantries. Then Pritchard turned to me, and gave me the kind of look I saved for dead rats.
‘Paul,’ he said, dipping his head.
‘Henry,’ I nodded back.
Manning lifted Pritchard’s bag and we walked back outside and hailed a taxi.
*
The return journey was conducted in silence, save for Manning’s barked instructions at the driver. Pritchard sat next to me, staring sullenly at the landscape. It made sense that he didn’t want to talk shop with others present, but what was he thinking in the meantime? I ate my banana and tried to clear my mind.
About forty-five minutes later we reached a large square, in the centre of which a street market was setting up. Manning paid the driver and led us through the aisles, past traders laying out their wares. One stall was apparently a grocer’s, but although the fruit and vegetables were abundant, they were rotten and already covered in flies. A handful of Westerners were wandering around, waving their money and cameras, and I realized that this was probably where the photograph of Slavin had been taken.
Manning made a show of haggling over an intricately carved knife for a couple of minutes, before leaving off and pointing us to a grand colonial house on the corner of the square. He led us through a side entrance and down a narrow dirt path until we came out at a small garden in the rear of the property. He pushed open a rickety door and we followed him through several rooms. Chandeliers, chaises longues, candelabra: it was like walking onto the set of The Forsyte Saga after hours. Some of the furniture was in covers, and fat balls of dust sat contentedly in the corners. Manning explained that the local building industry had long been dominated by the Ibos, but that most of them had returned to the East when it had seceded, leaving dozens of unfinished and unsupervised buildings dotted around the city.
It was an unconventional choice for a safe house, but I had to admit he wasn’t quite as daft as he looked. The market was popular with tourists, meaning that white faces were less likely to stick out, and the building was so conspicuous that nobody would think twice about anyone who entered it.
We climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, which was home to a large ballroom that Manning had cleaned up a bit. I sat in an easy chair by a large electric orchestrion, and Pritchard walked over to the window and looked out at the rooftops.
‘Depressing-looking country, isn’t it?’ he said. He swivelled on his heels and inspected his Patek Philippe. ‘So. What time did you tell Slavin to get here for?’
Manning looked over at me anxiously.
Pritchard registered it. ‘Problem?’
I broke the news. He didn’t react for a long time, just stared at a spot on the floor in front of his shoes. Then he looked back up at Manning.
‘Thank you, Geoffrey,’ he
said. ‘You’ve done very well. We can take things from here.’
‘Oh,’ said Manning. ‘Right-oh, then. I’ll be at the office if you need me.’ He gestured to a phone on a mahogany dresser, then scuttled away, leaving me alone in the room with Pritchard.
XII
‘So,’ he said, removing his sunglasses and placing them carefully inside his jacket. ‘You came to meet me. You’ve got balls, Dark, I’ll give you that.’
‘You’re still angry I left London ahead of you, then,’ I said.
‘Angry?’ He tilted his head and considered the idea. Then he walked over to me, the heels of his brogues clicking loudly across the floor. He came right up, until his face was just a couple of inches from mine. ‘Put it this way,’ he hissed. ‘If you ever do something like that again, I will destroy you.’ He rocked back on his heels, pinching his nose as though trying to stop the rage from bursting out. ‘Do you understand?’
I said I did, and let silence consume the room for several seconds.
‘But you decided to run me anyway.’
He stepped away and laughed a joyless laugh. ‘Believe me, this wasn’t my idea. I pushed for them to recall you, but Farraday told me to make the best of the situation and come out as your control.’
‘Farraday is a fucking fool,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘He’s also our fucking Chief at present, and unless you’re tendering your resignation we are going to do precisely what he fucking says.’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘Apart from getting the sack, you mean?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll blow your cover to the Nigerians and you’ll be locked up and being buggered by the natives before you know it.’
He took off his jacket and placed it over the back of a nearby chair. Then he rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing pale but muscular forearms. It was a clear signal: beneath the funeral director’s garb was a man it would be wise not to mess with. But I already knew that.
