Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

  DONALD E. WESTLAKE

  KAHAWA

  Contents

  GRATITUDE

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

  PART TWO

  16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

  PART THREE

  25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

  PART FOUR

  34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

  PART FIVE

  44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

  PART SIX

  56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  GRATITUDE

  My gratitude goes, first and foremost, to Dean Fraser, who shared his experience and expertise to a wonderful degree. Les Alexander created the necessary environments with unflagging optimism, and Rich Barber, Knox Burger, and Gary Salt usefully shared their enthusiasm and professionalism.

  I can best express my gratitude to some individuals by not spelling out their names. My friend T.E.M. of the railway (who introduced me to M. F. Hill’s The Permanent Way) was patient, helpful, and amusing. J.M. of the Coffee Board provided tea and information. In Grosvenor Square, R.B. was charming and insightful, while CM. provided anecdotes and a lovely copper nugget.

  Back home, Brian Garfield, Gloria Hoye, and Justin Scott made fine suggestions along the way, and Walter Kisly built a bridge just when it was most needed. As for Abby … she knows; she knows.

  PROLOGUE

  Each ant emerged from the skull bearing an infinitesimal portion of brain. The double thread of ants shuttling between corpse and nest crossed at a diagonal the human trail beside which the murdered woman had been thrown. As a shadow crossed the morning sun, a dozen ants became crushed beneath the leathery bare feet of six men plodding down the trail from the Nawambwa road toward the lake, each bearing a sixty-kilogram sack of coffee on his head, none of the scrawny men weighing much more than sixty kilos himself. The surviving ants continued their portage, undisturbed. So did the men.

  Farther downslope, the trail ended in a tangle of foliage at the edge of Macdonald Bay, with Lake Victoria visible beyond Bwagwe Point. The six men dropped their coffee sacks and sprawled beside them for a short rest, using the sacks as pillows. Two smoked cigarettes; three chewed sugarcane stalks; one scratched insect bites around his missing toe.

  A helicopter flap-flapped by, very loudly, and the men became utterly still, looking up through the screen of leaves and branches as the big olive-green chopper went by, like a bus wearing a beanie. It was the same sort as the large helicopters used by the Americans to deliver troops to battle in Vietnam, but the markings showed it belonged to the Army of Uganda. Three black men in American-style combat uniforms crouched in the broad doorway in the chopper’s side, peering down at the lake.

  The six coffee smugglers, invisible beside the trail, watched and listened without reaction until the helicopter chuff-chuffed away across the sky, westward toward Buvuma Island. Then they all talked at once, with nervous enthusiasm, agreeing the helicopter had been a good omen. Having just searched this area, it was unlikely to return for some time. And how lucky they themselves hadn’t arrived twenty minutes earlier; by now, they would have been visible and helpless on the open water.

  Since luck was with them, they should seize the moment. Their two canoes were dragged out of hiding—the rifles safe within, the ancient, untrustworthy outboard motors still attached at the rear of each boat—and were pushed into the water. The sacks of coffee were loaded, the men arranged themselves three in each canoe, and they proceeded slowly out across the bay, southward, the motors stinking, the low morning sun in the eastern sky stretching their shadows across the calm water.

  Forty minutes later they had progressed fifteen miles, heading east now toward the narrow strait between the mainland and Sigulu Island and thence to Berkeley Bay. The border between Uganda and Kenya—a line seen only on maps—bisected Berkeley Bay, and not far beyond lay the tiny, unimportant town of Port Victoria, their tended landfall. A much shorter route for smuggling lay directly across Berkeley Bay from Majanji or Lugala on the Uganda side, but the shore there was heavily patrolled this year. And because so many floodlight-bearing helicopters prowled the border at night, the risky daytime passage had become safer.

  All six men heard the chuff-chuff at once, over the nasal sputter of the outboard motors, and looking over their shoulders they saw the giant thing sailing toward them through the sky, like something on wires attached to God’s fingers. There was no escape this time; they’d been seen, the helicopter was floating in a circle around them, its open doorway filled with pointing men.

  It was guns they were pointing, and then firing. The smugglers had been prepared for arrest, for some brutality, possibly for torture, but they had not been prepared to become target practice in a great bathtub. Two of them dragged old Enfield rifles up from the canoe bottoms and returned the fire.

  The soldiers, not expecting armed resistance, had flown too low and too close, the better to score hits on their fish in the barrel. Instead of which, two men in the helicopter doorway staggered back into the darkness within, and a third dropped like a full sack out into the air, falling beside his rifle down into the water. The helicopter, as though God had been startled at His play, jerked upward into the sky and tore away northwestward, toward land.

  The men in the canoes were now terrified. The helicopter would soon be back, possibly with others. There wasn’t time to reach that invisible line in the water and the dubious safety of Kenya. To their left was the shoreline of Uganda, low dark folds of hills, but they were in great fear of returning there. Directly ahead mounded Sigulu Island, ten miles long and a mile or two wide and covered with thick brush, but the soldiers would expect them to hide there and would have hours and hours of daylight for the search. To the right, a cluster of tiny brushy islands lay like suede buttons on the water; after a quick conference the six agreed to make for one of these. They ripped open the sacks and dumped the coffee into the lake, both to lighten the boats and to make it possible to deny that they were the coffee smugglers; but they kept the sacks, because they were poor men and thrifty.

  They chose an island at random, pulled the canoes well up from the water’s edge, and covered both their boats and themselves with layers of brush. But they were men who had never been in the sky, and were unaware of the clear lines the canoes had made in the mud and the brush, arrow shafts leading from the water directly to their hearts. When the helicopter did return within the hour and, after only the slightest hesitation, landed on the island of their hiding place, they could only believe it was devilry.

  The officer in the helicopter was extremely angry. When the six men were found and lined up in front of him, he beat their faces with his fists and lashed their arms with a piece of brush. They had killed one of his men and wounded two others; it was a personal humiliation, an official disgrace, a blow to his hopes for military advancement. It was a blot on his copybook.

  The six men denied that they were smugglers, which only enraged the officer more. He kicked their legs with his U.S. Army boots, while a uniformed man with an expressionless white face watched from the helicopter doorway. And when the empty coffee sacks were found, the officer turned cold and dangerous in his fury. He ordered the six men to lie on the ground on their bellies. He ordered his soldiers to pour gasoline onto the coffee sacks, and to spread one sack on each prone man. Then he personally set the fires. The flames in sunlight seemed to dance in midair, lightly, inoffensively, while the tan burlap darkened to match the stenciled black Swahili word Kahawa.

  The men writhed and screamed beneath their burning blankets, and the rancid smoke rose into the clear sky as the white man in the helicopter doorway lit hi
s cigar.

  The soldiers broke up the canoes with small hatchets, and then boarded the helicopter and were flown away, through the drifting smoke.

  This occurred early in March of 1977. It was reported in the London Times on April 5.

  PART ONE

  1

  Lew Brady picked up the two-hundred-thirty-pound man, turned him over like a sack of potatoes, and flipped him onto the mattress. The other two attackers stood around blinking, openmouthed, not moving forward. “What’s the matter with you birds?” Lew demanded. He grabbed one by his unzipped leather jacket, spun him, yanked the jacket shoulders so the garment came halfway down the man’s arms to hold him like a straitjacket, then shoved him into the other guy. They stumbled together, tripped over the edge of the mattress, and fell on the two-hundred-thirty-pound man.

  Lew stood with hands on hips, frowning down at the muddle of men. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you clowns should just join the union.”

  One of the other men in the room said, “Mr. Brady, that’s not fair. You’re trained, and we’re not.”

  “Training you idiots is what it’s all about.”

  The three men on the mattress were beginning to take out their frustrations on one another, with fists and elbows. “Hold it, there, hold it.” Lew leaned down to pull them apart. “I’ll tell you when to fight.”

  They straggled to their feet, and Lew herded them over with the rest of the class: sixteen brawny adult males, all standing around looking sheepish and sullen, like a football team at the end of a winless season. “Line up,” Lew told them. “Face the mirror.”

  This large top-floor space in a ramshackle low office building on the outskirts of Valdez, Alaska, was intended to be a rehearsal hall. Several ballet classes met here, as did a Yoga society. One long wall was mirrored. A piano stood in one corner and a cluster of folding chairs in another. Half a dozen ratty mattresses were scattered on the floor. Wide windows gave a view of the used-car lot across the way.

  During Lew’s first four months up here in Valdez, while he was learning to pronounce it “Val—deez” like a native, it had seemed there were no jobs at all here for a man of his profession. But then he’d met Alan Kampolska, who owned a small local trucking operation and was being harassed by union “organizers” attracted by the pipeline construction. Kampolska’s drivers were big and tough, but they didn’t know how to handle themselves against goon squads.

  Which was where Lew came in, with his experience as a Green Beret and a mercenary in Africa. Kampolska had offered to hire him to teach his boys how to conduct the war against the union thugs. Lew, bored and frustrated, had agreed. But it was slow hard work, not at all like training recruits in an army.

  The main problem was mental attitude. In most self-defense classes it’s the instructor’s job to build self-confidence by a long string of small victories; but these guys were brawlers and sluggers, men who could handle themselves in tough situations, and the problem was they were suddenly facing an enemy too mean and too organized for them. Their reaction was a kind of aggrieved bewilderment, a belief that they were already defeated. So Lew had switched from the orthodox method of ego boosting to an unorthodox program of kicking the shit out of them. If he couldn’t build them up to self-confidence, maybe he could knock them down to self-respect. (And he was also, of course, working off some of his own irritable frustration.)

  Now, with the sixteen in a glum row facing the mirror, Lew marched back and forth like the top sergeant he had frequently been. “Look at yourselves,” he ordered. “You’re a crowd of big, tough, no-nonsense sons of bitches, you look like you could hunt bear with a baseball bat, but you walk in here and all of a sudden you’re a goddam bunch of ballet dancers.”

  The man who’d complained before complained again. “You’re a trained professional, that’s why.”

  Lew shook his head. “Tell me the truth,” he said, making it a general question. “You want to throw in the towel, just give up and join the union?”

  “No,” they said. “Shit, no,” some of them said. “Fuck the union,” some others said.

  Which was good spirit, but not quite good enough. Lew sighed, and went over to stand directly in front of the complainer, a tall and rangy white man named Bill, who sported several tattoos and a straw cowboy hat. Looking him in the eye, Lew said, “Bill, if we met in a bar and got into an argument, what would you do?”

  Bill had the sullen look of a man who expects to be hurting in a few seconds. “Throw a punch at you, I guess,” he muttered.

  “And what would I do?”

  “Grab my fist, twist it around behind my back, and run me into the wall.”

  “You’ve seen me do that.”

  “I sure have,” Bill said. The others all chuckled. They loved to see one another get thrown around.

  Lew said, “Bill, can you see in your mind that move I make?”

  “Sure I can. I dream it.”

  “Then do it.”

  Bill massively frowned. “I dunno. I—”

  “I’m giving you more warning,” Lew told him, “than you’ll get on the street. I am about to throw a punch. You’ll either do the move, or you will become punched in the face.”

  “Jesus,” Bill said, and Lew punched him in the face. Bill sat down on the floor, everybody laughed, and Lew sighed.

  He turned to another of the men, but what he would have said was drowned out by the sudden roar of a low-flying plane skimming past, barely above the building roof. Everybody in the room instinctively ducked his head and hunched his shoulders until the roar faded. Then Lew saw his students exchange an amused and knowing glance, and he shook his head.

  As they all knew, he was living with a pilot named Ellen Gillespie, who worked for the pipeline construction company. She always buzzed him on her return flight so he could drive out to the airport and pick her up.

  Which made it seem like he was pussy-whipped or something—that’s what these clowns were grinning about—but it wasn’t like that at all. Ellen was Grade A; they fit together terrifically; everything was or should be fine. Would be fine if he could line up a real job somewhere.

  Okay. The plane’s roar had faded, and he had another few minutes before leaving for the airport. Standing close to his next victim, a very broad-shouldered black man named Woody, Lew said, “Okay, Woody. You know the move?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.” There was a gleam in Woody’s eye; he was really going to try for it this time. Lew hoped the man would succeed, to give the entire class a lift. He also hoped the wall he was run into wouldn’t be the one with the mirror.

  “You’re about to get punched,” he said, reared back his fist, and felt a sharp pain in his shin. “Ow,” he said, his concentration broken, and Woody punched him smartly in the eye. Then Lew threw his own punch; Woody plucked his fist out of the air, spun him, twisted his arm up his back, and ran him into the side wall.

  Suddenly older and a lot more tired, Lew picked himself off the floor as his students yelled and cheered and clapped Woody on the back. The son of a bitch had kicked him in the shin!

  When the celebrations and congratulations at last died down, Lew said, “There. That’s what I’m talking about. Woody, you’re the first guy here to figure it out. The rest of you guys think it over, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He stood ramrod-stiff while his class trailed out, chatting and chuckling and offering to buy Woody any number of beers. Then, alone at last, he permitted himself to groan and to rub the various parts that hurt.

  “Something,” he muttered, massaging himself and limping over to his outer clothing on one of the folding chairs. “Something else,” he mumbled into the musky wool of a sweater he was pulling over his head. “Something has to happen.”

  2

  Baron Chase, a man so steeped in his own villainy that the evidences of his evil now only amused him, paced the hotel-room floor like a pirate captain on his quarterdeck. “I am talking,” he said, “about stealing a train.”
/>
  “You must forgive my English,” Mazar Balim requested. He spoke better English than most men of any nationality. “You are suggesting the holding up of a train? Pursuant to its robbery?” A well-off merchant of fifty-three, he sat on the bed, round body and short legs, like Humpty Dumpty, blinking up at Chase.

  “I am suggesting stealing a train,” Baron Chase said, smiling around his cigar, “pursuant to its rape.” Secure in his power, giving Balim a moment to think, he paused in his pacing to look out the narrow slatted window with its view of the alley leading to Standard Street, where a rag-dressed woman now walked in the bright sunlight, balancing on her head a rusted five-gallon drum filled with bits of wood and metal.

  In taking this modest room in the rear of the New Stanley Hotel, away from the conversational chatter of the Thorntree Café and the traffic noise of Kimathi Street, Chase had registered as James Martin, U.S. citizen, of Akron, Ohio, representing the Monogram Bicycle Tire Company of that city, and furnishing a passport, American Express card, and other documents in support of this identity. However, he dared not meet with Balim in either the first-floor cocktail lounge or the outdoor café, as “James Martin” would normally have done, but was forced to discuss the scheme with him here in this claustrophobic room, with its one comfortable armchair that Chase scorned, while Balim sat like a fat obedient boy on the edge of the bed, watching with round-eyed patience.

  There are several first-rate hotels in Nairobi, but none of the others would have done. The Hilton and the Intercontinental cater to the package tourists, mostly American but also European, while the Norfolk caters to Britons in whom the spirit of the Raj still lives, as well as to those Scandinavians and Germans who like to pretend they’re English. In the bars and restaurants of those hotels the customers’ faces are all white. Only in the New Stanley, the businessman’s hotel, the politicians’ and journalists’ hotel, are the customers—and their visitors—a mixture of white and black and Asian.