“You think so?”
“Why not? The Ugandans did, and there are constant rumors that the Kenyans will, the Tanzanians will. In Zaire it is already almost impossible for an Asian to live. They’ll throw us out of all of Africa someday, you wait and see.”
“You could be right,” Lew agreed.
“And what price our Kisumu warehouses then? Oh, but London!” Young Mr. Balim beamed. “The worst they will do in London is insult me.” Mimicking some nasal voice calling a dog, he said, “Here, Paki; there, Paki; go away now, Paki.” He laughed and said, “So they call me Paki. I was born in Uganda of a man who was born in Uganda of a man who was born in India, but that’s all right, I’m a Paki. And even a Paki can go to the West End, can shop in Harrods, can buy a little maisonette in Chelsea. A Paki can open a store, and the English will shop there. A Paki—I know a Paki who opened a little advertising agency for little Paki accounts—little travel agencies and tailors and so on—and he did well, and the English began to hire him. Because they saw he was good, you see, valuable to them. Give me a pragmatic people, and I won’t care what they think of me.”
Smiling, Lew said, “What sort of business will you open?”
“We wait upon opportunity,” Young Mr. Balim said. “First this adventure, and then we settle down to Paki respectability.”
The thirty miles to Macdonald Bay took just over three hours, of which the last part was the most difficult. The rafts weren’t particularly agile and had to be jockeyed into position against a very narrow slice of muddy shoreline. Shutting down three of the four outboard motors on each raft, they eased in very slowly, the others drifting slightly while Frank went first, thudding his raft too hard into the shore, ripping loose one of the oil drums. His men saved the drum, unloaded the raft, and dragged it up onto the shore.
By the time Lew steered the tenth raft toward land, gently nudging the mud flat, the other nine had already been dragged as far as possible beneath the cover of the trees and, under the direction of Isaac and Charlie—a true odd couple, that—the men were further hiding the rafts with tree branches and brush. Once Lew’s final motor was shut down, he could hear the receding whine of another motor going away inland; that would be Frank, traveling by moped up to get the truck.
The next three hours were all logistics, the slogging boring frustrating job of getting all your men and all your supplies to the place where they’ll eventually be needed. Lew knew this phase from many battles in several wars and had long ago learned the only thing to do at such a time was to cease having opinions. It was a mistake to think that such-and-such an event should have happened by now, or that this person should have realized that fact, or even that somehow there should have been a better way.
There was no better way. No matter what you thought or planned, the truck would be overloaded the first time after Frank brought it down from the depot, and it would become mired three miles up from the lake, forcing everybody to trek those three miles, unload the damn truck, drag it out of its muddy ruts, and then reload it again, all by the shifting uncertain beams of several flashlights invariably being aimed at the wrong spot.
It was also inevitable that several fistfights would break out, that the soft ground of their landing site would be churned by all those feet into mud, and that when there weren’t too few men for the loading at the lake there would be too few for the unloading at the depot. And it was probably even inevitable that the truck, on one of its return trips, would drive over a case of beer, smashing all the bottles and giving itself a flat tire, which also had to be changed by flashlight, the whole area stinking of beer.
What wasn’t inevitable was that they would have called it Ellen’s Road.
Lew hadn’t known about that, and didn’t see it until the end because he stayed at the lake during the whole transfer operation, traveling up with the last truckload, he and Frank in the cab, the final ten workmen and the last miscellaneous cases in the back.
Frank wrestled with the wheel, the truck grinding slowly up along the faint line of roadway, its headlights partially covered with tape but still showing the straight road steadily sloping upward, the dark trees and brush on both sides, here and there the startled red reflections of animal eyes. “I’ll tell you something,” Frank said.
“What’s that?”
“This is exactly like the night before a war.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Yeah, but do you know what makes this job better?”
“What?”
Frank released the wheel for just a second to jab a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the men out of sight and hearing beyond the cab partition. “Those assholes don’t have guns,” he said.
“I know what you mean. Unfortunately, the people on the other side do.”
“We won’t see no people on the other side.”
“I hope you’re right,” Lew said, and awhile later Frank grappled the truck to a standstill, saying, “We’ll walk in.”
With the truck engine and headlights off, the world was at first absolutely black and absolutely silent. None of the starlight or faint moonlight reached down to here through the branches, and all of the surrounding animal life had been frightened into silence by the arrival of the truck.
But gradually new sounds filled the emptiness, the vague mutterings and jostlings of men in an encampment. And off to the left through the trees were glimmers of both flashlights and firelight.
“This way,” Frank said.
They tramped in on a rustling roadway of crushed branches and leaves, soon seeing the depot up ahead, the dim forms of people moving against the lights. “So this is the place where I didn’t get to take pictures,” Lew said, and saw the sign on the tree, and said, “Oh, shit.”
“What’s up?” Then Frank followed Lew’s gaze and said, “Oh. I forgot about that.”
“Your idea?”
“Well,” Frank said, immediately on the defensive, “she did design the fucking thing. And I put it up before she walked out on you.”
“She didn’t walk out on me,” Lew said, obscurely angry. “Not the way that sounds.”
Frank stopped and held Lew by the arm. “Listen, my friend. I’ve known an awful lot of women in my life, and sooner or later every damn one of them will leave you walking around, scratching your head, and saying, ‘What the fuck was that all about?’”
“Frank, don’t give me a whole locker-room—”
“Hear me out, goddammit.”
“Let go my arm,” Lew told him, “and then I’ll listen.”
Frank released his arm. “Ellen was a very good woman,” he said. “One of the best. Too fucking good for the likes of you.”
“And you.”
“I know that. The point is, she packed up her little ditty bag and she went. And you can poke around for weeks if you want to, like you got a thorn in your paw. Or you can say, ‘Screw it, there’s more of them out there in the bushes.’ What the hell, you did all right before you ever knew that particular woman.”
With a crooked smile, Lew said, “Ellen made the same point.”
“There, see? Be as smart as she is and you’ll be a man, my son.”
Lew said, “I’ll tell you what the situation is, Frank, but I don’t feel like talking about it a lot. Ellen leaving was like catching the flu. You get over the flu, but first it gets worse for a while. I saw that sign and I realized it was getting worse.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “I can follow that. Get well soon, pal.”
“Thank you,” Lew said, and walked on with Frank, not looking up again at the sign.
Some of the tarpaulins had been brought up from the lake and had now been made into lean-to tents. Cartons filled with large cans of stew were among the supplies; the tops had been levered off these, and the stew was heating in the cans over several small fires, filling the air with an aroma of dinner. The endless kalah games continued, beer had been distributed, men were laughing and visiting, settling down on blankets i
nside the tents, starting to relax at the end of a day of hard work.
Lew took a bottle of the warm beer and strolled around the encampment, not wanting conversation with anybody. Just uphill from the maintenance depot, away from the people, there was a clear spot in the roof of branches, where he could look up and see the stars. The moon had risen almost to its apogee. Ellen is ninety miles from here, he thought. Only ninety miles.
42
Ellen couldn’t sleep, but she didn’t want to admit the fact by turning on the light or getting out of bed. Her room here in the transient air-crews’ quarters at Entebbe was small and clean but very cold and impersonal; more a prison cell than a hotel room. There was a slatted blind to cover the window, but she’d raised that some time ago so she could watch the quarter-moon climb diagonally up the sky, moving almost stealthily in its slowness and silence.
Is Lew in Uganda now? They’ll be coming over tonight, to steal the train tomorrow, if nothing’s gone wrong. Has something gone wrong? Is he in Uganda, or have they had to give it up for some reason?
Should I have stayed?
When she’d arrived here yesterday afternoon, it had seemed at first as though she were wasting her time, as though she should have stayed in Kenya merely because there was nothing for her at Entebbe. Certainly the planes weren’t here, and the smiling false man from the government had lied to her for two hours before she’d finally browbeaten him into admitting the truth.
The truth was that everything was still tentative. It was still, even at this eleventh hour, possible that Coast Global would not be able to assemble sufficient planes, or sufficient personnel to crew them, in time for Friday’s scheduled operation.
The contract Ellen had signed had of course given Coast Global an out, but it was the sort of boiler plate she’d come to accept in such contracts; it never meant anything. But this time it might. According to the contract, if for any reason the job she’d been hired for failed to materialize, she would be paid her expenses to and from her home (Kisumu!) plus one quarter of the agreed-on salary, which would probably be not much more than a thousand dollars.
And at the end of it back she’d be in Kisumu, instead of in Baltimore. Even with her airline discount, it would take most of her money to get to the States via commercial carrier. If she hadn’t quit Balim, of course, he would have been obligated to pay her return fare, but now he was off the hook and Ellen was firmly on it.
Through all the irritation about money and contracts and lying government men, she had kept tucked away in the back of her mind one oddly comforting thought: if the job fell through, if she wound up back in Kisumu after all, it would be some sort of sign or something that she should stay with Lew.
Unless he’d already moved Amarda in.
Her thoughts had grown increasingly troubled, not eased by the five other crew members—casuals, hired like her for this one-time job—who’d showed up in the course of the evening and then this morning. And it wasn’t till nearly noon today that they’d known for certain the job would take place.
The eight under-crewed planes had started arriving at three this afternoon, and the last hadn’t showed until after nine tonight. With the end of uncertainty and the addition of all these other pilots and navigators, a certain conviviality developed, and during dinner in the otherwise empty airport coffee shop Ellen had smilingly turned down three separate propositions. So it was her own fault if she was alone tonight in this bed and unable to sleep.
The moon was nearing apogee, climbing just beyond the top of the window frame. Is Lew in Uganda? Will the coffee show up here tomorrow? If it does, will that mean they didn’t make the try, or that they tried and failed? The grayish pale moonlight inched out of her eyes and moved away down the blanket, and Ellen drifted into shallow unsatisfying sleep.
43
They took Chase to the State Research Bureau, pretending he’d meet Amin there to “help him” in some undefined way in connection with “the Swiss man who is buying the coffee.” In other words, some corner of Chase’s scheme had unraveled and Amin had sent Colonel Juba to pick at it and find out what it meant.
The first encouraging sign was that Juba didn’t want anyone else to know Chase had been arrested. At the Bureau’s front door, he went so far as to ask the guard, “Is the president here yet?” Chase presumably was not supposed to notice the guard’s bewilderment, nor to hear the irritation in Juba’s hurried “No matter. We’ll wait in his office.”
So. Amin was not certain he had Chase dead to rights. Juba and his two young assistants and Amin himself were probably the only ones who knew Chase was a prisoner. (Amin had to know; Chase was far too important for Juba to arrest on his own initiative.)
So they went to “Amin’s office,” a large square room with gray industrial carpeting and several Danish-style sofas along the wall, which was in fact one of the interrogation rooms, though Amin did use it sometimes in conferences with Bureau people. He also used it for occasional in-person interrogations of his chief enemies, and it was here he’d lost his temper and shot the archbishop. Chase was supposed to be thinking about these associations, of course.
What he was thinking instead was that Amin was too impatient a man not to be here already if he planned to take part in this interrogation. In leaving it to Juba, he was giving himself later deniability. More important, he was also confirming for Chase that he wasn’t yet sure what was going on. They need to get it from my mouth, Chase thought, and they won’t succeed.
Juba, having earlier proved himself inept at clever double entendre, now proved himself inept at the psychological ploy. The next three hours of waiting—ostensibly for Amin—were supposed to soften Chase for the questions to follow, but the delay merely gave him time to plan out his own strategy.
At first Juba tried to fill the time with light conversation, but made the mistake of talking about foreign travel. Poor Juba had never been out of Africa; Tripoli was his cosmopolitan city, where the Libyans had taught him how to use his electronic equipment (some of which probably had created this present trouble). Chase responded with amiable condescension, until even Juba saw he was being made fun of. Then they sat in silence, unless Juba and his men spoke together, which they did from time to time.
And here was an irony Chase could appreciate without approving. After all his years of hiding his knowledge of Swahili, when these three Africans spoke secretly together it was in Kakwa, their tribal tongue, of which Chase knew only one word: kalasi, which means “death.” It might have been his imagination, but he thought he heard them use the word several times.
Colonel Juba tried to maintain an atmosphere of menace with dignity, but the other two, the captain and the major, were in reality only country boys from up north, basking in power and luxury, practically hugging themselves with delight at their great good fortune. In a well-ordered world—and they knew this better than anybody—they would be at best laborers now, on a farm or a construction project, and at worst they would be nothing at all, merely two more idle men whose ugly bitter wives worked small parcels of land for their minimal food supply. But here they were, because of Idi Amin, a “captain” and a “major,” with women and food and drink and clothing and even cars available just for the asking.
The burlesque that Chase was not a prisoner extended so far as their permitting him to go to the men’s room by himself, though the captain did stand in the office doorway watching the men’s room entrance until he returned. And after a while it extended to their offering him beer, when the captain and the major both began to drink. Chase accepted a bottle, but merely sipped at it, noticing that Juba didn’t drink at all.
Finally, after three hours of nonsense, Chase decided it was time to force the issue. Rising—the captain and the major sat up, looking as alert as possible after half a dozen bottles of beer—he crossed to the desk, behind which Juba was seated filling out pointless forms, and reached for the telephone. “Perhaps the president has forgotten,” he said. “He’s at the Old Comm
and Post, isn’t he?”
“No need for that!” Suddenly angry, Juba slapped at the phone, glaring at Chase. “Just sit down.”
“But if it’s so important for the president to see me, we should—”
“He’ll see you in his own good time!” Then Juba got himself back under control, and returned to the game of make-believe: “I’m sure the president doesn’t wish to inconvenience you, Captain Chase.”
“No inconvenience. Merely a desire to be of help.”
“Then there’s another matter you can help on, while we wait.”
Chase was aware that the major was on his feet, prowling around behind him. They could at any time use physical torture, but they preferred the cat-and-mouse tactics until they grew bored. Chase had to sense Juba’s state of mind very delicately, but didn’t want to make his own move until he knew for sure the extent of the problem. He said, “What other matter is that, Colonel?”
“Sometime ago there was a white man imprisoned here. He caused some damage, and you had him released. Why?”
What was this? In his irritation—maybe the stalling tactic had gotten through to him after all—Chase snapped, “All of this was covered at the time. The man was named Lewis Brady, he’s a gunrunner working for the Saudis, bringing weapons to Muslim revolutionary forces in Africa. He came here posing as a tourist to meet with me, unofficially, concerning arms shipments for friends of ours in the Sudan, to be shipped through Uganda. Libya unfortunately had his name on the wrong list, as a result of work he did for a pro-Libya faction in the Sudan several years ago. So he was arrested. When he didn’t appear at our meeting, I naturally made inquiries, and I found him here. He was already making his escape when I intercepted him.”
“There is no verification of this story.”
“Verification? The man was here. Libya has acknowledged his work with their people in the Sudan. I have told you his mission. What more do you need?”
Kahawa Page 36
