He poured himself a glass of water, and washed down a handful of pills: one for his heart, a couple of vitamin capsules, and another for blood pressure. With every day that passed, his enemies claimed, the president’s energy seemed diminished, and the country’s problems became more acute.
Well, he would show them. The old lion was still cunning. He had read the columnists in the local papers. If Nugilu ran, there was no guarantee that she would win, said the analysts; but the outcome would be a close thing. “The president will know that he has a fight on his hands” concluded one writer.
“Let them try,” he growled. True, he was well past his physical prime. Nduka was the first to acknowledge this, and he made unsavoury jokes about it, inviting opponents to leave their wives with him for a night: “Then let them judge!”
He would draw on his battle-forged guile. The bar room gossip, which the Central Intelligence Organisation monitored, and passed on to him in their daily state of the nation report, was correct – but only up to a point. Certainly he was tired, and his memory was not what it was. He was, after all, in his seventies . . . or was it his eighties?
“I am tired, very tired, Mlambo. Do you know when I was born? No? I was born in the year of the Great Floods. But was this the floods of 1927, or the floods of 1933? The elders are not sure. Not sure . . .
But he was not losing his touch.
True, he was far from confident that he would win a clean fight – not that Kuwisha politics were ever clean. It would be a costly business to ensure that the ruling party won the election, even with the advantage of decades of patronage.
Nduka looked at the portrait of Sir James Kennedy hanging on the fireplace wall. What was that advice that his old friend used to give him, about enduring the consequences of difficult decisions?
“Make up your mind, and then lie back, old chap, lie back and think of England – or in your case, think of Kuwisha.”
He owed a stable presidential succession to the party, to the country, to the people of Kuwisha. But what if he couldn’t manage it? It was a prospect too ghastly to contemplate.
Mrs Nugilu was due any minute now. She would be a worthy successor. She had chosen her campaign ground shrewdly, choosing not to focus directly on corruption. That was clever.
“All voters know politicians are corrupt,” Nduka was fond of saying: “All are corrupt. But some are less corrupt than others.
“They are more efficient, more efficient in putting their policies into practice than others.”
Mrs Nugilu had chosen to campaign on three issues – the environment, health and literacy.
Nduka had had many talks with Nugilu about this.
Kuwisha, she said, was a male-dominated society. “Like the farmyard, the hens have no rights. We only lay eggs,” she said, to Nduka’s croak of amusement.
And the male members of the electorate would surely be resentful of a campaign that smacked of women’s issues, or which could be seen as an attack on vested interests. The men of the ruling establishment might be political dinosaurs, doomed to become extinct, but they were wealthy enough to buy votes by the ballot box. Any direct assault on them, however much they deserved it, Anna Nugilu had decided, must be avoided.
Nduka agreed with her, and he watched closely as she took her campaign the length and breadth of Kuwisha. She raised concerns that transcended the hidebound male elite, and went to the heart of the country’s prospects. Her concerns about the environment – water, fuel, land erosion, and the effect of the declining stock of wild animals – were uppermost. After all, she pointed out, it was the environment that was the main attraction for the million visitors a year, who made tourism so important to Kuwisha. A healthy nation needed potable water, a right enjoyed by less than half of Kuwisha’s people. If clean drinking water was available to all, the fatality rate for the children under five could be halved.
Anna Nugilu had also decided that it was not worth promising huge changes to the country’s decrepit educational system. Who would pay for it, after all? The country could not afford to maintain its existing schools, let alone find the money for new ones. Instead she committed her party to a ten-year literacy programme, using newspapers and radio stations, and supported with donor aid funds, at the end of which all adults would be able to read. That at least was the target.
This was also the best way to tackle Aids, she argued. There was nothing in her programme that the ruling class could object to, and there was every reason for the country’s women to support her. It was, acknowledged President Nduka, a skilful strategy. He had said as much in the private exchanges with her. And the more he discussed the points she raised, the more he came to admire Anna Nugilu.
Mlambo was getting close to panicking. The tape was running, and eating up the sixty minutes it was designed to last. The president meandered on, having one of his mental walkabouts, those occasions which were starting to trouble his doctor and to alarm his advisers. No-one knew what triggered them, but they could last up to fifteen minutes, during which he would drift off into his own, silent world, or reminisce about events long over and days long past.
It was Mlambo’s diffident but insistent cough that finally cut through to the president. Nduka refocused on the boy nervously watching him.
The private secretary announced the arrival of Anna Nugilu. The president dismissed Mlambo, and told him to wait in the gloomy ante-room, adjoining the study. He adjusted his dark glasses. Nduka’s optician had advised him that little could be done to save his sight, but the glasses would delay the deterioration. He tugged at the jacket of his pinstripe suit, and moved behind his desk, placing his ornate ivory-handled flywhisk, made from the tail of a Colobus monkey, on the blotter on front of him. First, however, there was something to do, and it would not take more than a minute. He buzzed his secretary.
“Tell Lutuli” – the general manager of the State Bank of Kuwisha – “that I will make sure that Newman Kibwana repays his loan, but not until after the elections. The bank will get its money by the end of next month. I want a story about this in the papers tomorrow. I have work for Kibwana.”
Nduka took a final look at himself in the mirror, pulled back his shoulders, and went to the doorway to greet his visitor. Twenty minutes later, the meeting was over. Mlambo watched from the ante-room as Mrs Nugilu shook hands with the president, adjusted the carnation in his lapel, gave him a kiss on his cheek, and then left State House.
Slowly and stiffly, the president left the study, and Mlambo thought he heard the sound of President Nduka’s knees creaking. Nduka would be back soon to prepare his Uhuru Day message, and the sooner Mlambo got out of the study the better.
“Boy!”
Mlambo stiffened to attention.
“Take the tray back to the kitchen.”
The senior State House steward, Lovemore Mboga, who had brought in the president’s afternoon medicine, stayed by Nduka’s side. Thankful for the excuse to go back into the study, Mlambo collected the tray, grabbed the tape recorder from under the president’s desk, stuffed it down his shorts, and scuttled out.
As Githongo turned out of the ante-room, bringing up the end of the presidential procession, the senior State House steward turned and gave Mlambo the evil eye, a look of venom and malice, enhanced by the fact that his right pupil had a white crescent encroaching on the pupil.
So preoccupied was Mlambo, so upset by Githongo’s malign glare, that when he left State House for the rendezvous with Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere, the toto failed to take the most elementary of precautions. Not once did he look round to see if he was being followed. Had he done so, he would have seen that a nondescript youth was never less than fifty yards from him . . .
Mlambo had trudged the journey from State House to Harrods burning with resentment. If it had been up to the toto, he would have washed his hands of the whole business. Ntoto and Rutere, they could go to hell, as far as he was concerned. But the papers that day carried some blood curdling accounts of the mun
giki’s latest outrages, and the boy from Zimbabwe, unhappy though he was, felt that his decision to cooperate had been vindicated.
It was a cool and awkward meeting.
Mlambo refused Ntoto’s conciliatory offer of a dough ball and Coke. And without a word, he handed over the tape recorder, and with it, the tape.
Ntoto fired off questions.
No, said Mlambo, he had not replayed the tape.
No, he insisted, he had no idea what was on it.
Nor, he added, did he want to see Ntoto again.
Ntoto shrugged.
“I was going to give you a share of what we get when we sell this tape recorder, Mlambo, one thousand ngwee, even, but if you don’t want it . . .”
Mlambo hesitated. Perhaps he was being too hard on himself.
“Two thousand,” he said, at the same time changing his mind about the proffered dough ball. It was then that Ntoto knew that the State House toto, notwithstanding his achievements, was at heart a weak boy.
But he had served his purpose, and served it well, albeit reluctantly. Mlambo waddled off, back to State House. He would go, he decided, via the market, and buy more bhang. The lad who had followed Mlambo from State House kept his distance all this time, watching the exchange between the three boys, as they huddled together behind a refuse dump next to Harrods. He also noted that Ntoto and Rutere were at pains not to be seen by a young white man who turned up just as Mlambo left. If he was not expecting the two boys, he certainly seemed to be waiting for somebody.
It was all very odd, thought the lad, very odd indeed. Before setting off to follow Mlambo back to wherever the toto was going, he jotted down the number of the Land Rover in which the white man eventually drove away. Just in case . . .
Ntoto was in a predicament.
He was determined to keep – or rather, to sell – the tape recorder, but nevertheless he wanted to get the tape inside it to Pearson. There would be time to work something out. Meanwhile the full enormity of what they had done was slowly making its impact on the boys.
Rutere’s eyes took on a glazed look, which was not entirely to be blamed on the glue he had been sniffing:
“We could eat at Harrods for ever with that money.”
Between them they had worked it out: if each day they were to buy one serving of maize meal with relish, a couple of chicken necks, a dough ball and a Coke to wash it all down, the money would last a year. A whole twelve months! One year, knowing where the next meal was coming from, and a solid meal at that. From their perspective, next week was about as far into the future as they ever looked. Next month was just about conceivable. But a year from today . . . that was to live in a dream. They did their arithmetic again, using a calculator they had stolen a few weeks earlier from a German tourist. They were correct. It was one whole year. And Rutere was right. It was as good as forever.
Ntoto giggled. They had tricked the white man, and the recorder was now as good as theirs. But what had been recorded? Just what had the president said to Anna Nugilu?
The boys retired to Harrods, sat on their haunches on the red-polished frontage, and crouched over the tape recorder. Ntoto was fairly confident that it was the same model as he had seen Furniver use, but was taking no chances.
He turned it over in his hands, and examined it from every direction. Only when he was satisfied that he knew how it worked did Ntoto allow his curiosity full rein. Titus was about to press the play button when he heard voices approaching.
It was Furniver, deep in conversation with Charity.
The two adults emerged from the kitchen, and sat down, still talking. Had they not been so engrossed, Ntoto would have been caught red-handed. In the nick of time he pushed the machine away from him, a combination of slide and shove, sending it slithering over the polished cement surface in the direction of the large wicker armchair which Furniver usually occupied. Had Ntoto accurately calculated the effort required, the machine would have slipped under the chair, out of sight, and he could have recovered it when the coast was clear.
As it happened, disaster struck. To Ntoto’s dismay, the tape recorder didn’t quite make it, and came to a halt within inches of Furniver’s briefcase. Charity noticed it as she got up from her seat next to the banker to get him another glass of mango juice. She broke off their intense exchange and bent down.
“One of these days, Furniver, you will lose this machine. You are too careless.”
Furniver, still absorbed in the conversation about the letter, hardly seemed to notice when Charity, without further ado, dropped the tape recorder into his briefcase, and resumed their discussion about the London lawyers and the danger they posed to Harrods.
At the end of the melancholy exchange she looked round the bar, decided that she could leave it for half an hour, and turned to Furniver. There was an important and pressing matter to deal with.
“Now come with me, Furniver. We are going to the clinic. My cousin Mercy is expecting you. You are walking like a donkey that has been serving street boys all night. I have seen you, scratching your batumba. Perhaps you have worms? Or do you have a jipu? I myself think it is a jipu, and needs to be lanced. Or squeezed.”
She gave him what is called an old-fashioned look:
“And tell me, Furniver: just what were you going to do with your finger? Your steward Didymus Kigali, is a very worried man, and I, Charity Mupanga, am a very worried woman and so is Mildred.”
“Bugger Mildred,” he was about to say, when to Furniver’s great relief, he saw that Charity was smiling.
It had been with much reluctance that Furniver agreed that after his visit to the clinic he would be escorted back to his office by a group of Boys. There were far too many strangers around, said Charity, and she did not like the look of them. Even Nellson Githongo, she pointed out, had sniffed tension, and had left his bike in safe custody.
Flanked by half a dozen boys, and with Ntoto carrying his briefcase, Furniver got back without incident – though he could have sworn he had caught a glimpse of the boy thrusting his hand into the case. He waited for Ntoto, who lagged behind the group.
Furniver waited, and let the boy catch up.
“What’s the matter, Ntoto?”
“Nothing, suh.”
Claiming that he needed to check the papers he needed, Furniver took a quick look inside the case, feeling slightly ashamed that he did not altogether trust Ntoto. But the tape recorder was there, and so were the Harrods documents . . .
They had just reached his office when one of the older Mboya Boys beckoned him. The others formed a protective circle around the two of them, and facing out, providing privacy while at the same time ensuring security.
The boy looked around, lifted his shirt, and undid the clasp of his belt. After a final check, he reached down between the belt and his waist, and to Furniver’s horror and astonishment, pulled out a small handgun.
While Furniver watched, frozen to the spot, the boy took the briefcase and thrust the weapon, which he had wrapped in an oily rag, into one of the pockets.
It was the first time Furniver had seen a handgun in Kireba, and he tried to explain that he had not the slightest intention of using one. He seemed to be listening to someone else as he heard himself going through the standard objections to weapons, for it all seemed so feeble, so half-hearted.
What perturbed him most was the evidence that a gun culture had taken root in Kireba, and neither he nor Charity had been aware of it. Never before had a weapon been displayed in front of him, and though it looked old, it had the sheen of a gun that was regularly maintained.
He stood at his door to his office, feeling old and silly.
“I will not take it.”
The older lad stayed silent, looked at his feet, but made no move to recover the gun. Furniver was about to dig into the briefcase and retrieve the weapon himself, when to his surprise, Titus Ntoto intervened.
The fourteen-year-old, whom Furniver had thought was little more than the gang mascot, appeared
to be the gang leader.
“There are boys, Mr Edward, young men even, in the movement called mungiki who are paid by government to do political things. You must be careful, Mr Edward,” said Ntoto gravely. “If mungiki people harmed you, we who are your friends, the Mboya Boys, we would be blamed.”
“For God’s sake, Ntoto, don’t be ridiculous. Take back this . . . this, er, this thing.”
Ntoto did not budge.
“Why? Why would you be blamed?”
“Because Government wants to stop Mboya Boys from organising erections.”
Furniver looked baffled.
“For elections,” said Ntoto, “organising for elections, against the president.”
The gang took no chances, and left the office only after Furniver had let himself in, and locked the door. Even then, a pair of Mboya Boys hung around, just in case . . .
What to do with the gun? He could hardly leave it in the briefcase. He took it out, and examined it more closely. As far as he could tell it was loaded. Furniver pulled open the drawer on his desk, and pushed it to the back . . .
He sat at his desk, and remembered that he had to finish recording the story he had written for his granddaughter. He reached into his briefcase, and pulled out the machine, pushed the rewind button to bring the tape to its beginning, and then pressed play.
Much to his surprise, the voice that came back was not his. In fact it sounded rather like the president, followed by the voice of a woman, who seemed vaguely familiar. The language was not Swahili, so Furniver could not follow the exchange. Perhaps Charity, or someone else, must have inadvertently pressed the record button when picking it up from floor at Harrods. It did not matter. The easiest course would be to start the whole thing again. After all, it would take only half an hour to complete, and he had time on his hands.
Furniver cleared his throat, checked that the record button was working, and began to read from the children’s short story that was still on his desk:
“Stripey! Stripeee! The lean striped cat in the garden pricked up his ears, twitched his long tail, and decided to pretend that he hadn’t heard. Hole-watching was a serious business . . .”
Last Orders at Harrods Page 21
