Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

  “We’d better get it back into place,” Frank said. “Tell him to call the others.”

  “He says,” Isaac translated, “to call the others.”

  “Very good.” Turning away, the man trotted off downhill.

  And now for the first time Isaac looked through the magic doorway. A path as broad as a railway line extended away down the slope, and after a few yards there actually was a railway line on it, old and rusted. The old tracks ran directly downhill, becoming quickly obscured because of all the undergrowth choking them. Nearer, tree stumps and disturbed earth showed where the rail line had been cleared and the pathway to it created.

  Isaac became aware of a sound that had been obscured when the wall was in place. It was the whine of a chain saw. Now, over it, came the sound of the blue-trousered man calling. The saw stopped; another voice answered. The voices rang clear and echoing in the upper branches of the trees, disturbing birds, which fluttered briefly, calling to one another, then settled back again.

  “If he knew one man couldn’t do it,” Frank grumbled, “then why the fuck did one man try to do it?”

  “Because you have such a loud intimidating voice,” Isaac told him.

  Frank thought about that. Isaac could see him trying to remain stern and angry. “If I’m so fucking intimidating,” Frank said, “how come you talk to me like that?”

  “Because I see through you,” Isaac said.

  Up through the woods, along the rail line, the blue-trousered man returned with three other men, all dressed in a similar style, though two did wear frayed and torn shirts. The three newcomers were highly amused at the sight of their blind lying on the tracks, and they made several remarks at the blue-trousered man’s expense. He laughed along with the others, so it was all right.

  The four men, with Frank and Isaac helping, lifted the blind and jockeyed it back into position, where it was wedged in so tightly by the branches on both sides that it didn’t even need to be tied in place.

  All six men were now inside. Frank said, “Let’s see how they’re coming along,” and they all walked back down the hill, following the old rail line. They had to struggle through trees and thick undergrowth until they came to another cleared section, where the broad path began again. Once more, tree stumps and fresh shallow holes between the rails showed just how much plant growth had had to be removed. And looking down the line, Isaac could now see the engine shed and the spur track angling away to the right.

  One of the men, who wore a pale-green dress shirt from which the sleeves had been raggedly cut off, gestured to the uncleared portion of track from which they’d just emerged and said to Isaac, “Tell him we’ll do that last.”

  Isaac passed the message on. Nodding, Frank said, “Smart. Another layer of protection.” Isaac translated that, and the man in the green shirt smiled.

  Walking on, they followed the spur down to the turntable. One of the potential problems, Isaac remembered, had been that the turntable was rusted into place at an unusable angle. But now it was aligned, fitting almost perfectly with the rails.

  All four men wanted Isaac to explain to Frank just how difficult that job had been, how many tools they’d broken, how long it had taken. Isaac translated about half of it, and in the translation back, he made Frank’s casual acceptance of their work sound much more enthusiastic than it was.

  They had done a lot in five days, beginning in rain but latterly in drying sun. Beyond the turntable, the old bumper had been removed and was lying unceremoniously in the shrubbery to one side of the track. The track itself had been extended with rails from beside the engine shed. Lacking ties or sleepers, they had half buried thick logs at intervals from the end of the original track to the gorge and then attached the rail plates and rails to those. It was a makeshift, tottery affair and couldn’t last long, but it only needed to last one day.

  What the men were working on now was the path from the engine shed out to the access road, creating a surface that would permit trucks to pass. Trees and undergrowth were being cut away and the resulting logs and branches used to fill in the ruts and gullies that crossed the route. Less than a quarter of the distance had been covered, but they could already see that it would work.

  “Okay,” Frank said, stamping up and down the completed portion. “This fucker’s gonna do the job.” Then he grinned at Isaac and said, “This was Ellen’s idea, remember?”

  “Of course—”

  “Let’s—” Frank stood looking around, hands on hips in his usual expression of impatience.

  “What is it?”

  “A plank, board—something.” Frank held his hands about a yard apart.

  Isaac translated the request, and one of the workmen immediately laughed, nodded, and trotted away to the engine shed, to return a minute later with an old one-by-six, originally part of a window frame, both ends rotted away by dampness. “Perfect,” Frank said, and pulled out his boot knife.

  They all stood around watching as he laid the board on the ground, knelt over it, and carved the thick letters into the time-grayed wood, revealing slightly darker wood underneath. When it was finished, the board said: ELLEN’S ROAD. “There,” Frank said.

  Isaac, during the carving, had explained to the workmen that Ellen, Mr. Balim’s white woman pilot, was the one who had thought up this road. They had all seen the woman around Balim’s office, had thought of her as eminently fuckable, and were well pleased to have the road named after her. (Although in its earliest days Swahili had developed a written language and literature using Arabic orthography, that had been swept away and replaced by the European alphabet when the Portuguese overran the Arab merchant towns along the Indian Ocean early in the sixteenth century. Today the literate speaker of Swahili uses the same alphabet as the literate speaker of English; “road” in Swahili is njia, but “Ellen” is Ellen.)

  After much discussion about the perfect location for the sign, a roadside tree near the engine shed was chosen, one of the workmen shinnied up, and the board was nailed into place. As the nailer slid back down, the others raised a cheer, which rang through the woods.

  Well, well, Isaac thought, the world of the active man can be rather fun.

  But now they got back to business. “Three days,” Frank told the workmen, through Isaac, and they all grinned and nodded and said there would be no problem. “Okay,” Frank said.

  “We’ll go out this way. I don’t wanna mess with that blind again.”

  The last several uncleared yards of Ellen’s Road were rough going, particularly since Isaac was wearing ordinary shoes, as would befit the chauffeur of a Mercedes.

  At the access road, Frank stopped and looked downhill. “Twenty miles to the lake,” he said. “Easy as falling off a house.”

  Behind them, the chain-saw buzz started up once more. That nasal noise somehow only re-emphasized the quiet and the peacefulness of this forest, the tall graceful yellow-barked thorn trees, smaller trees of a dozen kinds, several varieties of purple acanthus, hibiscus in many colors, ground orchids, and here and there the creeper vine called setyot, which flowers only once in every seven or eight years; there are tribes who wait for its flowering before initiating their youngsters into manhood. Songbirds moved through the higher branches, keeping their distance from the chain saw and the movements of men.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Isaac said, gazing around, watching a robinchat—a small bird with yellow face and breast, gray wings, snowy white head—soar from branch to branch, pausing at each to announce one or another of its many brief songs. “Beautiful, peaceful.” Sadly, nostalgically, thinking of Obed Naya, he said, “What a wonderful country this could be.”

  “Nice place for a battle, though,” Frank said critically, studying the forest around them. “Particularly if you were attacking from uphill. Well, come on, let’s get you back to that office you like so much.”

  32

  Late Tuesday afternoon, and Sir Denis was exhausted. He could hardly keep his eyes open, and the softness
of the Daimler’s upholstery, the smoothness of the drive, the calm skill of the chauffeur up front beyond the glass partition; all struggled passively against his desire to stay awake. “My Lord, but I’ll be glad when this is over,” he said.

  Beside him, a fur wrap over his useless legs, Emil Grossbarger snorted, saying, “Also I. Ziss Amin is not a businessman.”

  “I don’t know why he insisted I be there when the coffee is shipped. As though I were some sort of dispatcher. But he made it a condition of the sale. Yet another condition of the sale.” Sir Denis yawned. “The last, I hope. Excuse me.”

  “After ziss, you can go home to São Paulo, you can rest.”

  “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  There was a little silence in the car while they both pondered that statement; neither of them was as young as anybody used to be. Outside, the modern glass-and-concrete banking towers of Zurich went by, pink with embarrassment in a mountain sunset. A Volvo with red United Nations license plates rode for a while ahead of them before turning off toward the lake. How odd it was that so many offices of the United Nations were here, in Switzerland, a country that didn’t even belong to the UN. Perhaps, Sir Denis thought, the rest of the world is trying to learn the secret that’s kept the Swiss out of every war fought since 1521.

  “I had you removed, vunce, from ze Uganda transaction.”

  This was the first either of them had mentioned that. On Sir Denis’s arrival this morning from London, to meet with Grossbarger for the first time since his removal and reinstatement, he had wondered how the man would act toward him, and how he himself would behave in return. And the answer had been, they would both ignore the incident.

  They had had a good lunch in Grossbarger’s private dining room, in his apartment atop the tower containing his offices, during which no word of hostility or explanation was either requested or offered. Much of the conversation, in fact, had been about the wild mountain scenery, dark green below and gray-white-black above, forming the unexpected cyclorama background to this hard, modern, commercial city. “Ze mountains mock our little buildings,” Grossbarger had said, smiling conspiratorially at them out his forty-seventh-floor window.

  But now, at almost the last minute, as Grossbarger accompanied Sir Denis to the airport, the subject was all at once brought up. “I had you removed, vunce, from ze Uganda transaction.”

  “I know that,” Sir Denis said, treading carefully. No inflection in his voice, he said, “I’ve wondered why you did it.”

  “You must know,” Grossbarger answered, “zat not all ze coffee sold in ze vorld is of an unquestionable pedigree.”

  “Smuggling, you mean. The ICB does what it can.”

  “Vich is nossing,” Grossbarger said, patting his fur lap rug in evident satisfaction. “Vat can your Coffee Board do ven legitimate roasters collude in ziss smuggling?”

  Roasters was the coffee industry term for the companies that bought the coffee from the growers, prepared it, and packaged it for retail sale. “We know the problem,” Sir Denis said, “but a roaster has no obligation—moral or legal—to question the bona fides of every shipment of coffee he buys.”

  “Of course not! And in any event, legitimate growers also collude, helping to bring smuggled coffee back into legitimate channels. Even governments, my friend, have been known to turn a blind eye and a ready palm ven ziss smuggling goes on.”

  “Are you suggesting the coffee Uganda is selling the Brazilians is smuggled from somewhere else?”

  “Oh, no, no!” Grossbarger’s mobile mouth expressed eleven kinds of amusement. “Uganda does not smuggle coffee in. Uganda smuggles coffee out. Particularly very recently as ze social structure zere breaks down. Do you know ze nation called Malavi?”

  “Malawi? Yes, of course, in Africa.”

  “East of Zambia, souse of Tanganyika.”

  “Tanzania,” Sir Denis corrected.

  Smiling slyly, Grossbarger said, “Nostalgia. In any event, Malavi is really outside ze African coffee-growing belt, alzough it has in recent years exported some small amount. But zis year! My friend, zis year Malavi is a major coffee producer!”

  In principle, Sir Denis disapproved of such occurrences in the world of coffee, no matter how common they were or how they were winked at by all concerned. But Grossbarger’s delight was so infectious that he couldn’t keep from returning the smile, saying, “How fortunate for Malawi’s growers.”

  “Growers zey are, perhaps. Harvesters zey are, certainly. You know, my friend, ve Sviss”—that said without the faintest hint of irony or discomfort—”have known for centuries ze value of having a lake as a border viss anozzer country. So hard to patrol a lake, you know. And it iss almost as zough ze colonial powers vere consciously turning ze continent of Africa into a gigantic board game called ‘Smuggling’ ven zey laid out ze national boundaries. Lake Victoria borders sree nations, Lake Nyasa sree, Lake Tanganyika—Is ze lake still called Tanganyika?”

  Acknowledging the teasing with a head bob and a grin, Sir Denis said, “Yes, it is. Your former German colony is still referred to in the name of the lake.”

  “Good. Lake Tanganyika borders four countries! How can zere be legitimate business at all?”

  “I sometimes wonder,” Sir Denis said. “But I don’t understand the connection with, um—”

  “Viss my kindness toward you?” Looking pleased with himself, ruffing up the fur throw, he said, “Oh, yes, kindness, I am not being ironic. You see, my friend, I vas given information zat somesing vould happen to zat coffee shipment.”

  “You mean theft?”

  “Eggzactly. Seft und smuggling go togezzer. Just ze ozzer day I vas reading in ze paper, a truckload of coffee vas hijacked in Nairobi by two men viss guns. Eighty-five sousand English pounds’ vorth of coffee in vun truck. Vell vorth ze attention of any gunman.”

  “What is supposed to happen to the Ugandan shipment?”

  “I don’t know.” Grossbarger shrugged, looking away now at tiny patches of farmland, neatly planted, small and artificial-seeming against the backdrop of the mountains. The airport wasn’t far. “Perhaps nossing,” Grossbarger said. “But to be honest, Denis, if somesing does happen, I vished you not to be harmed.”

  “Harmed?”

  “Oh, yes, I am serious. Zese people, you know, zey are not chentlemen like you und me. Und in ziss case, zeir opponent, ziss Idi Amin, he is also not a chentleman. I felt zere vas danger to anyone involved.”

  “Emil,” Sir Denis said, earnestly and awkwardly, “I am touched, and I thank you. But I could wish you’d spoken to me directly, to learn if I wanted such protection.”

  “You vould say no! In your position, I vould say no! So I tried surreptitiously to have you removed from ze scene of danger, und I failed. Und so now I tell you ze truth, so you may defend yourself. Somesing may happen to zat shipment. Keep out of ze vay, if it does.”

  Smiling, Sir Denis said, “I don’t fancy arguing with gunmen.”

  “Good. Anozzer sing. Ze vorst sing you could do vould be speak to ze Ugandan officials. Ve have no proof; ve have no facts; ve have no suspects. But if somesing does happen, und you have varned zem in zis vague vay, zey will detain you for questioning for ze rest of your life.”

  “Yes, I see that.” Sir Denis rubbed a hand over his face. “And I thought my only problem was exhaustion.”

  The Daimler was turning in at the airport entrance. “Keep vell, my friend,” Grossbarger said.

  The stewardess woke him in Rome, where he must change planes.

  The stewardess woke him in Tripoli, where he must change planes.

  The pilot woke him at Entebbe. “We’re here, sir.”

  Here? Sir Denis opened stinging eyes and looked at morning, somewhere on the planet. “Wum—” his mouth tasted terrible, full of woolly caterpillars. “Where?” he asked.

  The pilot, a young Libyan Muslim, easygoing and self-confident with his modern skills, had seen these overly tired businessmen before, pushing themsel
ves till they dropped. “Entebbe, sir,” he said. “Wednesday morning, May twenty-fifth, nineteen seventy-seven. End of the line.”

  “End of the line,” Sir Denis said, moving his stiff, cramped body. I am sixty-one years of age. “Yes, thank you.”

  33

  Lew stared at her. “You’re doing what?”

  “I’m leaving,” Ellen said. “I’ve got a job.”

  “A job?” They were seated at right angles at the kitchen table, in front of breakfasts of coffee, melon slices, and thick pieces of toast. Warm sunlight angled in through the open windows, gleaming on the surfaces they had together cleaned and polished, shimmering on the curtains Ellen had hung, highlighting the white-painted shelves Lew had put up. He frowned down at the food on his plate. “You’ve got a job. Balim,” he said as though accusing her of disloyalty to the firm.

  “He knows about it.” She seemed awfully goddam calm, but on the other hand, this wasn’t a surprise to her. “He’s getting a new pilot.”

  “A new—” There were so many spiky points on this ball she’d thrown him that he didn’t know which one to grab for first. “What kind of job? Where are you going?”

  “Back to the States.”

  The States. Was there a glimmer of understandable sense in that? Almost hopefully, because then at least he’d have some idea what was going on, he said, “Are you homesick? Is that it?”

  But she laughed, as though relieved at the opportunity to break the tension—break her tension, not his—and said, “No, Lew, I’ve never been homesick in my life. I’m an Army brat, remember? I wouldn’t know where home is.”

  “Then—Then, what?” The name Amarda trembled on his tongue, but it was just possible that Amarda was not the problem, and it would be stupid to open up that subject if he didn’t have to. “Ellen, what is it?”