Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

  They reminded him somewhat of his truckers’ class back in Valdez, except that he doubted he’d have as much trouble getting this mob to fight back. There were forty-eight of them here, in this large littered storage room in Balim’s second building. They were Balim’s employees, or the friends or relatives or fellow tribesmen of Balim’s employees, and it was his job over the next few days to turn them into something approaching an invading army. At the moment, what they most looked like was the Saturday-night overflow from a tough-neighborhood bar.

  Charlie had been assigned to Lew as an interpreter, and stood beside him now, chewing a piece of sugarcane and looking extremely relaxed. Lew gazed over his troops, most of whom looked no more than mildly curious at what was about to happen, and said to Charlie, “Tell them to sit down.”

  Charlie spoke. Since the crew was a mixed tribal bag, mostly Luo and Kikuyu, he spoke in Swahili, a language of which Lew had only a smattering—certainly not enough to cope with the slurring elision-filled singsong rapid delivery of Charlie. But surely it was taking too long to translate “Sit down,” and Lew noticed that many of the men exchanged amused glances as they settled themselves on the dusty floor.

  “Charlie,” Lew said. When the man turned his small alert face. Lew said, “Charlie, all you have to do is translate what I say.”

  “Oh, sure,” Charlie said.

  Lew hefted the two-by-four. “Tell them,” he said, “I am now going to show them what to do if a man comes at them with a stick.”

  Charlie nodded, and spoke in Swahili. Again there was a ripple of amusement among the seated men. Charlie turned back to Lew, ready for the next translation.

  “Right.” Lew held out the two-by-four. “Take this.”

  “Sir?”

  “Go ahead, take it.”

  Confused but obedient, Charlie took the piece of wood, transferring his sugarcane to his left hand.

  Lew stepped back about three paces. “Come at me with the stick, Charlie,” he said.

  Charlie looked blank for a second, then frowned down at the two-by-four and back up at Lew. “I pretend! Pretend to attack you?”

  “If you want,” Lew said indifferently. “Whatever you want to do.”

  With a little smile, Charlie turned to the audience and spoke again in Swahili. An appreciative murmur spread through the men; several hid big grins behind their hands.

  Lew said, “I didn’t give you anything to translate, Charlie.”

  “I just told them what will happen,” Charlie explained. “So they will not be startled.”

  “Fine. Come on, now.”

  “Okay.”

  Charlie came forward, pretending to pretend. Lew had expected that—a deceptively mild approach rather than a lunging screaming performance—and he saw the instant when Charlie’s eyes changed, just before the quick leap forward and the slashing swing of the two-by-four, aimed squarely for Lew’s head.

  Lew stepped forward inside the swing, his left arm going up at an angle to deflect the blow upward, at the same time that his right foot was coming up very hard into Charlie’s crotch. Charlie screamed, a very satisfying sound in any language, and shriveled to the ground like an ant on a burning log. The two-by-four hit the floor and bounced away.

  The men loved it. They laughed; they clapped their hands; they said admiring things to one another. Lew bent down to place a solicitous hand on Charlie’s shoulder, saying, “You all right, Charlie?”

  Charlie couldn’t quite raise his head far enough to look up but he did manage to nod.

  “Will you still be able to translate? Should I get somebody else to translate?”

  “I can do it.” Charlie’s voice sounded as though it were being strained through canvas.

  “I need good translations, Charlie. Accurate translations. You’re sure you’re up to it?”

  Now Charlie did lift his head. He and Lew studied one another, their faces just a few inches apart, and Lew watched Charlie work out the equation in his own mind. Bad translation equals extreme pain. Good translation equals an end to pain.

  Slowly, Charlie nodded. “I can do it,” he said.

  “Fine. Let me help you up.”

  Charlie stood, his posture and expression those of a very old man. Lew made a little show of dusting him off, while the watching men giggled and slapped their knees. Then Lew said, “Ready?”

  Charlie swallowed noisily. Standing a bit straighter, he said, “Yes. Ready.” His voice wasn’t normal yet, but it was better.

  “Good. Tell them the purpose of that demonstration was to prove that a weapon does not make a man invincible.”

  From Charlie’s tone, and the men’s interested reaction, he was translating verbatim now. Satisfied, Lew went on: “But we are not going into Uganda to look for a fight. There’s a shipment there, to be loaded and unloaded. That’s what we’re going for. Most of us will not be armed.”

  There was a stir of dissatisfaction when Charlie translated that last sentence. Lew said, “If Ugandan Army or police attack us, we will leave Uganda at once. My job is to teach you how to get back to the rafts in case of attack. In other words, how to retreat, while those with guns protect your rear.”

  One of the seated men made an indignant statement. Charlie said, “He says, give them all guns, they’ll protect themselves.” He was clearly pleased that Lew was being given some trouble.

  Lew nodded. “Look at the man next to you,” he told them, and waited while they listened to the translation and then did actually look back and forth, confused and self-conscious, laughing at one another.

  Lew went on slowly, giving Charlie plenty of time to put it all in Swahili: “That man beside you has very little experience with guns, and no experience at all with war. Imagine you are walking in the woods, with an entire army somewhere around. Imagine that man now sitting beside you is also in the woods, somewhere nearby. There’s a commotion up ahead. People are shooting; people are yelling. With all the trees and bushes, you can’t see what’s going on, you can’t tell who’s who. Do you really want that man now sitting beside you to have a gun, out there in those woods, near you?”

  There was general discontent at that. Several of the men had things to say. Like most people, they wanted to believe they were capable of decisive heroic action. Probably the most difficult part of Lew’s job—in the armies he’d worked for, as well as here—was to get people to understand their limitations. Once they’d accepted how ignorant and unready they were, they’d be prepared to start listening to instruction.

  Charlie, having a wonderful time, turned back to Lew. “They say—”

  “I know what they say.”

  Hunkering down in front of the attaché case that he’d brought in here like any schoolteacher entering any classroom, opening it so the lid obscured the contents from his students, Lew took out two pistols, both Italian-made Star. 38 caliber. Shutting the lid, he stood and faced the group, the pistols held loosely in his hands. “Tell them this, Charlie. If any man here thinks he knows guns well enough to be trusted with one in Uganda, he can prove it by dueling with me now.” At continuing stunned silence from his left, he said, “Tell them, Charlie.”

  Charlie did, and the men became wide-eyed and silent. Lew went on: “We’ll stand on opposite sides of this room, each of us holding his pistol at his side. Charlie will count to three, and then we will both begin firing, and continue until somebody has been hit. I won’t shoot to kill; I’ll aim for the knee.”

  They discussed it among themselves. Lew continued in a negligent manner to show them the pistols.

  At last Charlie, his manner betraying a surprised and reluctant admiration, said, “They don’t want to do it.”

  “Tell them this. I’ll say what they know and what they don’t know. And if anyone disagrees with me, he can always call my bluff.”

  Charlie translated that with as much relish as when he’d thought it was Lew who was in trouble. The seated men looked mulish and resentful as they listened, but not actually
rebellious.

  Lew put the pistols away, snapped the case shut, and went on with his lecture.

  “I don’t want any of you to die in Uganda. I don’t want you to shoot each other, and I don’t want you to be shot by the police. Mr. Balim knows I have worked as an instructor in different armies, and he has asked me to teach you what you have to know to be safe on our trip together. We only have a few days, so if you don’t want to learn, or you don’t like the way I teach, you can leave. No one will argue with you.”

  Lew looked around the room, expecting that this bluff also would not be called. The men were being offered a very healthy bonus for this work, and had been told only the bare minimum they needed to know: that they would travel over the lake to Uganda, that they would work as loaders there of a “shipment” (they hadn’t been told of what), and that they would travel back to Kenya the next day. Lew expected a combination of greed and curiosity to keep them all actively involved.

  He was right. They settled down at last, and he talked to them about the terrain they would be covering. He explained how, in heavy woods, even a group their size could avoid being seen from the air. He told them how to react under fire: never run in a straight line, and—most important—never assume immediately that they’re shooting at you. “You’re hiding behind a tree. They’re shooting at some other guy. You panic and run. Now they’ll shoot at you, and probably hit you, too.”

  He told them what to do in case they were captured: “Tell them everything they ask. Tell them the truth, cooperate, give them anything they want. Let them see how scared you are. And keep a very sharp eye out for a chance to get away. Listen to me, this is important. If you come on like a tough guy, they’ll beat you down and eventually they’ll kill you. If you behave like a nervous wreck, and answer all their questions, they won’t worry about you very much, they might even get careless with you. In a battle, there’s lots of distractions. If you see a chance to run, take it.”

  Out of the attaché case he brought an example of the one weapon he wouldn’t mind their carrying: a woolen sock, filled with sand. “Just tie it loosely. If you think you’re about to get caught, untie it, dump the sand out, throw the sock away. Then you’ve never had a weapon at all.”

  They enjoyed the sock full of sand; from the way they pointed at Charlie and laughed and said several things, they wanted Lew to demonstrate the weapon on Charlie. “What are they saying?” Lew asked, straight-faced.

  “Nothing,” Charlie said. “Just nonsense.”

  Lew moved on. He was starting to get into the question of hiding in the woods during a police sweep when Isaac came in with an interruption. “Mr. Balim says he’s sorry, but you can’t work with these people tomorrow.”

  “Why not? We don’t have much time. And this was his idea.”

  “Mr. Balim says, you can have them every day after tomorrow. But, he says, you must fly to Nairobi tomorrow morning.”

  Nairobi. Amarda.

  Lew hadn’t thought of her since—Since the rain had stopped? Since she had driven away from Kisumu two weeks ago? Since last night’s muddled and mostly forgotten dreams? If he never saw her again, the affair was over. “Isaac,” he said, “I’ve got these people to train. Can’t you make the trip this time?”

  “A black man, a black Ugandan, deal with an Asian family?” Isaac shook his head with a rueful smile. “Besides,” he said, “I’m supposed to go on a trip with Frank tomorrow.”

  “A trip? Trip?” Irritable, Lew looked around at the observing, interested men. “It isn’t fair to them,” he said.

  Isaac said, “Lew? What’s wrong?”

  Meaning that he wasn’t behaving sensibly. Isaac would begin to wonder why he was making such a fuss over the training of these laborers—earlier, in Isaac’s presence in Balim’s office, Lew had given no such indication of concern for these men—and he might even begin to suspect the truth. “All right,” Lew said. “Sorry, Isaac, I don’t mean to be bad-tempered. I’m just having a little trouble with this crowd, that’s all.”

  “Then you won’t mind a day off,” Isaac said.

  Ellen will fly me; Jesus. “Not a bit,” Lew said, forcing a cheerful grin. “Nairobi, here I come.”

  26

  “The border,” Isaac said. His mouth was dry; his eyes kept blinking; his hands trembled on the steering wheel.

  “You wanted an adventure,” Frank said from the backseat. “Here it is.”

  Looking in the rearview mirror, Isaac saw Frank lounging at his ease back there, his tie somewhat askew, his suit jacket open, his white shirt rumpled at his waist. Frank seemed happy, unconcerned, merely amused by Isaac’s fear. I must be like that, Isaac told himself. I must watch Frank, and if he is not afraid I must also be not afraid.

  And if the moment comes when Frank is afraid?

  Turning his mind sternly away from that question, Isaac slowed the gray Mercedes to a stop just before the red-and-white-striped pole that blocked the entry to Uganda. On the left stood the small shed containing customs officials and border guards. Two sloppily uniformed men with repeating rifles strapped to their backs leaned negligently by the shed door, watching the Mercedes without expression.

  Frank leaned forward, extending his document wallet over Isaac’s shoulder, saying, “Here you go, old son. Knock ‘em dead.”

  “Or vice versa,” Isaac said. His voice was trembling, spoiling the unaccustomed effort at a joke. He hated that.

  Frank laughed. “Just don’t tell ‘em your right name.”

  “No fear of that.”

  Very reluctantly, Isaac opened the Mercedes door, stepped out into the warm sunlight, adjusted his chauffeur’s cap and dark-blue chauffeur’s jacket, and walked on watery legs toward the shed.

  After Lew Brady’s experience, back before the rains, it had been decided that no one connected with this operation dared enter Uganda again using his own name and ID. Therefore, through various contacts of Balim’s in Nairobi, false documentation had been arranged, so that now, when it was necessary to go to Uganda in a more open manner than the lake route Frank had twice used, they were (they hoped) prepared.

  Isaac, grown increasingly discontented with his clerk’s role, had purchased false identification for himself as well, explaining to Balim that Frank would need from time to time a translator who looked more civilized than Charlie. Also, Frank would surely welcome the presence of someone who already knew the ground. And, finally, there were things to be done in Uganda that only a black man could do, and whom could Balim trust for those things more than Isaac? Balim had responded by reminding Isaac that the first law of survival was never to volunteer; then he had accepted the voluntary offer. So here Isaac was, willy-nilly, a man wanted by the Ugandan police, a man high on Idi Amin’s personal death list, walking—however shakily—directly into the lion’s den.

  Inside the overheated metal-roofed shed were half a dozen soldiers and customs officials, all looking bored and mean and half-drunk, as though they might murder him, or at the very least pull off his arms and legs, merely for a moment’s amusement. Without a word, looking neither left nor right, Isaac put Frank’s documents and his own on the chest-high counter dividing the room, then stood there like an exhausted horse, waiting.

  After a moment, the oldest and least-dangerous-looking of the men came forward and began slowly to study those papers: Frank’s green American passport, Isaac’s red Kenyan passport, Frank’s letters and other identification, Isaac’s driver’s license, the Mercedes registration.

  These papers claimed that Frank was an American named Hubert Barton, an employee of International Business Machines, on his way to Jinja to discuss a computer installation there with an attorney named Edward Byagwa. (Photostat copies of correspondence between Byagwa and IBM were included.) The papers also identified Isaac as a Kenyan national named Bukya Mwabiru, employed as a chauffeur by East Africa Car Hire, Ltd., main office in Nairobi. The Mercedes registration showed it to be owned by the same company (of which Mazar Balim
owned thirty percent).

  The border guard frowned his way through these documents one by one, mumbling to himself from time to time, his lips moving. Finally he glowered at Isaac and said, “Barton.”

  “In the auto.” Not trusting his voice—it might break, crack, fail entirely, somehow give him away—Isaac spoke as few words as possible.

  The guard moved slightly to his left, so he could look through the open doorway and see Frank sprawled on the backseat of the Mercedes. “Why doesn’t he come in here?”

  “Air conditioning,” Isaac said, and even essayed a shrug. “He’s an American.”

  The guard grunted. Saying nothing else, he brought up stamp and pad from under the counter and stamped both passports, then wrote illegibly over the stamps. However, instead of giving the papers back to Isaac, he lifted a leaf in the counter, stepped through, lowered the leaf, and marched out of the shed, carrying the papers.

  Isaac followed, half-afraid the other guards would yell at him to stay. He trailed the guard over to the Mercedes, where the man gestured with the papers for Frank to open the window. Frank did, and the guard said, severely, “Jambo.”

  “That means ‘hello,’ doesn’t it? Jambo yourself, pal,” Frank said. “Jesus, it’s hot out here. Anything wrong, driver?”

  “No, sir,” Isaac said.

  “Well, jambo some more,” Frank told the guard, and pushed the button to reclose the window.

  How can he do that? Isaac asked himself. Frank’s nonchalance, rather than reassuring him, was just increasing his terror. And this is the easy part, he reminded himself gloomily.

  The guard, rebuffed, frowned a moment longer at the car, as though considering whether or not to search it (not that there was anything to be found in it). Then, abruptly turning away, the man handed the documents wordlessly to Isaac and gestured at one of the lounging soldiers to raise the barricade. Isaac, his hand trembling so hard he had trouble opening the car door, slid in behind the wheel, dropped the papers on the other leather bucket seat, watched the red-and-white pole lift out of the way, put the engine in gear, and for the first time in three years moved onto the soil of Uganda.