Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

There was no reaction at all, not even a kick. They threw him on the metal floor in back; then eight soldiers climbed in with him, four on the bench on each side, all using his body as a footrest and a target for when they had to spit. Kekka and the driver rode up front. The car jolted forward, leaving the Mercedes behind.

  “Money?”

  Chase, in fear and exhaustion, had lost consciousness for some time, until he heard that English word whispered in his ear. Then he opened his eyes to the semidark of twilight, no movement, and an armored car empty except for himself and the young avid-eyed soldier leaning over him. “Where—” Chase asked, and had to clear his throat and swallow.

  “They’ve gone to eat,” the soldier said in Swahili. “I made sure to be left as guard. General Kekka had one of his headaches; he required food. You know General Kekka’s headaches?”

  Chase nodded. He was still trying to work saliva into his parched mouth and throat.

  “Sometimes,” the soldier said, “General Kekka kills with his headaches.”

  Chase waited, watching the young soldier’s eyes.

  “This is Mbarara,” the soldier said, keeping his voice low, just for Chase. “Not far yet. I heard you say ‘money.’ I know what that is. Fedha.”

  “That’s right,” Chase whispered. Here’s my man! he thought. Here’s my man! Here’s my man!

  “In the automobile,” the soldier said, his eyes gleaming not only with cupidity but also with his own cleverness. “That’s what you meant! Money in the automobile!”

  “Yes! If you—”

  “How much?”

  Chase thought. “You know who I am,” he whispered, not yet trusting his voice. “You know I would not run away with a little money.”

  “Yes. Yes. How much?”

  “Enough for two. One million British pounds, and four gold bars from Zaire.”

  The soldier’s eyes bulged in his head; saliva reflected from his teeth. “We go there!” he whispered in shrill excitement. “You show me where you hide all this!”

  “Yes, yes, just untie—”

  But the man was gone. Rearing up as best he could, the neck rope biting into his throat, Chase stared and listened, and couldn’t understand what was happening until all at once the armored car’s engine started, the vehicle jolted backward, stopped, jolted forward, swung around in a tight U-turn, and went bouncing out some bumpy driveway to the road.

  The bastard! The dirty dirty dirty bastard! As the armored car tore south, jouncing and swaying on the unrepaired road, Chase bitterly saw the soldier’s plan: he would bring Chase back to the border, torture him until he got his hands on the hidden loot in the Mercedes, then murder Chase, bribe his way across the border, and enter Rwanda a rich man.

  No. No. Fighting his ropes, fighting gravity, fighting the thuds and crashes as the armored car plowed from pothole to pothole, fighting his own battered weary body, Chase squirmed to the rear of the car. With his shoulders, with his forehead, he forced himself around into a position on knees and shoulders; then, at a particularly vicious jounce, he propelled himself upward so that he knelt sitting on his haunches with his back against the tailgate.

  Outside, the road swept away at a dizzying pace under the armored car. Mbarara was less than fifty miles north of the border, and the soldier was clearly trying to get there and across before the alarm went out.

  Still, as the road moved up into the hills there were more and more curves, and the soldier would eventually either have to slow down or crash. Chase waited, battered by the armored car’s gyrations, his balance unsteady, and finally the armored car nosed up and turned into a sharp uphill curve. As it slowed, Chase pushed down with his legs, heaved himself up, flung himself backward. For one dreadful moment he hung there, the small of his back teetering on the tailgate, his feet stretched to their maximum, the rope grinding deep into his neck. Then the armored car once more jounced, and shrugged him off.

  Strapped, swaddled, out of control, Chase fell heavily onto his head and ceased to struggle.

  Jouncing. It was a dream, Chase thought, bile in his mouth. A dream of escape, nothing more. He moved his horribly aching body, and it was without ropes! And he was sitting on, propped up on, something soft, something that gave with the bumps.

  His eyes flew open, staring for a dislocated instant without recognition at the nighttime road seen through a truck windshield. “AAAH!” he cried, and threw his hands forward onto the dashboard for support.

  “You’re awake, poor man,” the driver said, in English.

  “Stop! God, stop!”

  The driver pulled off the road and stopped, and Chase fumbled open his door, fell out onto the ground, and vomited until he was down to dry heaves. Beside him, the man who’d been driving the truck knelt and consoled him, brushing his shoulder with a solacing palm. And when Chase finished, the man gave him a cloth to wipe his face. “I’m sorry I have no water for you,” he said. “But it’s not far to Mbarara.”

  Mbarara! Again! Chase looked up, and saw the turned-around collar; a minister. “You saved me,” he said.

  “The government doesn’t like me to be out,” the minister said, “so I visit my parishioners at night. You were set upon and robbed?”

  “Yes. They took my car.”

  “You are very fortunate they didn’t take your life,” the minister said, helping Chase to his feet. “In Mbarara, we can get you medical assistance. And of course police.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  Chase permitted the minister to help him back up onto the passenger seat of the small battered pickup truck. His foot hit two metal tire irons on the floor, clanking them together.

  “Such a messy car,” the minister said, reaching forward. “I’ll move those.”

  “No, no, that’s all right.”

  The minister shut the door and walked around the front of the truck while Chase reached down for one of the metal bars. It was too bad this Good Samaritan story had to end on such a sour note, but Chase had need of this truck and couldn’t afford the alarm to be raised.

  It was no good trying to go back for the Mercedes; he had to cut his losses on that one. There was only one exit route left: back the other way, eastward, through Kampala and Jinja. He had to reach the coffee thieves before they emptied the train and started away across the lake.

  The minister opened the driver’s door. “Lucky I came along,” he said.

  55

  Through the afternoon and into the night the transfer of the coffee went on. It took half an hour to load a group of four trucks, and nearly an hour for the trucks to drive down to the lake. With the work force at the lake half the size of that at the depot, it took another hour to unload each group of trucks onto the rafts, spread the tarpaulins on top, then moor each raft in the calm water just offshore.

  There was of course no way to hide these loaded rafts from the air, but the few planes and helicopters that passed overhead before nightfall paid them no attention. Those aircraft belonged to Uganda’s anti-smuggling patrol and had been called in from duty over the lake to help look for the missing train. They saw the tarpaulin-covered rafts in the bay but ignored them. They could be floating there for any of a hundred reasons, ranging from fishing to oil exploration to archaeology, and certainly could have nothing to do with a stolen train.

  The first batch of trucks to reach the lake was no more than half unloaded when the second arrived, and as the first quartet finished and started back up the access road the third came into view. Frank returned to the depot with the first group, leaving Charlie and a crony of his to remount the rest of the outboard motors. Their trucks squeezed by the downward-traveling fourth group halfway back, and arrived at the depot, just before six o’clock, in time to help finish loading the fifth and final batch of trucks.

  Twelve freight cars had been tossed into the gorge by now, in three clusters of four, and each jettisoning had been the occasion for another round of self-congratulation and beer. Frank found the work force, including Lew a
nd Young Mr. Balim and Isaac—who had been replaced as sentry by a workman who’d fallen off the back of a truck with a sack in his arms and landed under it—all feeling very chipper and optimistic indeed. “Have a beer, Frank,” said Isaac. Isaac!

  Frank took the beer, but gave them all a look of disapproval. “When we get drunk is afterward,” he said.

  Lew came smiling over to say, “Take it easy, Frank. We’re moving the stuff. And there’s a kick here, you don’t know about it yet, there’s something … Just wait for it.”

  Frank knew Lew Brady to be a solid reliable professional, if a trifle young. But now, peering into Lew’s eyes, he saw a glittering spark that surprised him, a rashness he hadn’t realized was there. He said, “Lew? What is it?”

  “Just wait for that truck there.”

  He meant the truck Isaac had borrowed from the Ugandan Army a few days ago. Lighter and smaller than the other trucks, it was being used now to take the last coffee from the four freight cars currently being unloaded; eight or ten tons in all.

  Frank swigged his beer and watched the men work, and even though it seemed to him their attitude was somehow frivolous, he had to admit they were doing the job, moving quickly and smoothly. And when that lone truck was filled and starting on its way—the driver had been the loser in a brisk short-straw contest—Frank got to see what drug it was that had made them all so high.

  It was danger. As an ex-railwayman uncoupled the four empty cars, the thirty workmen all clambered up their sides, some climbing onto the roofs, some hanging on the ladders, the rest going inside the big open doors, all yelling and hurrahing, laughing and waving their beer bottles around.

  Frank looked for Lew, to ask him what this was all about, but Lew was scrambling up onto the roof of the lead car. Young Mr. Balim was grinning in the doorway of the third car, taking deep swigs from his beer bottle.

  Frank found himself almost alone on the ground, with Isaac. “Isaac,” he said, “what the hell is this?”

  “Boys will be boys,” Isaac said. “That was Lew’s explanation.”

  “Sounds like one of Charlie’s.”

  The grinning ex-railwayman between the cars yelled and waved his arms to indicate the coupler was unfastened. The grinning ex-railwayman atop the fifth car waved and nodded to indicate his car’s brake was securely on. And the grinning ex-railwayman on the first car drained his beer bottle and tossed it ahead of the car into the gorge. Then, with a grand gesture, he spun the wheel to release the brake. And nothing happened.

  So why was everybody cheering? Frank looked, and the thirty men on and in and hanging from the cars were all whooping and cavorting and leaping and dancing around, stomping their feet like crazy people in the Middle Ages trying to frighten away plague.

  “It’s been building from the start,” Isaac said, at Frank’s elbow. “It’s bigger and more ridiculous every time. God knows where it will lead.”

  The vibration. Now Frank saw what those clowns were up to; the vibration of their dancing and carrying on was overcoming inertia, starting the empty cars forward on the slight slope, sliding every damn one of those idiots toward the cliff!

  “Jesus H. Christ, Lew!”

  The men on top of the lead car were running now, Lew among them, leaping across the space to the next car. The ones riding below jumped out the open doorways on both sides, while the ones hanging onto the ladders simply dropped off and fell to the ground or on top of one another, laughing and kicking their legs.

  There was some sort of contest taking place up on the roofs. The idea seemed to be to wait until the car you were on was actually falling, its front wheels already in space, before leaping to the next car back. The first car had already gone into the gorge; the second was going; the whole mass was accelerating. There wasn’t room on the narrow roofs for everyone who wanted to play chicken; from the second car roof a half dozen men dove sideways at the last possible instant, rolling on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling, hands scrabbling for holds in the scrub.

  “Holy leaping shit!”

  And Lew was up there with those assholes; he was in the middle of it; he was a fucking ringleader. Always on the front car, he was never the first nor the last to jump back to the next, but invariably timed his move just before the last-second rush.

  Frank thought, I’m too old for this, by Christ. I am gonna retire.

  “Frank!”

  It was Young Mr. Balim calling. Frank watched in horror, thinking of what he would have to say to the old man, while Young Mr. Balim in the third car waved and grinned and waited until what had to be too long before pirouetting out of the car, beer bottle held high, and crumpling all in a heap next to the edge. Frank stopped breathing, and Young Mr. Balim uncurled and crawled quickly forward to look over the lip and watch his car fall.

  Frank breathed. “Isaac,” he said. “Isaac, how can you let them do this?”

  Isaac’s expression was doleful, but still good-humored. “How can you not?” he asked.

  With a concerted cheer, and with bodies hurtling in all directions, the fourth car sailed out over the edge and into eternity. Amid the whooping and the hollering, Frank and Isaac stood unsmiling and alone, like a couple of preachers in a cowtown on a Saturday night.

  Lew came over, grin and bottle both intact, bottle half-full, clothing spotted with dirt and twigs. “Whadaya say, Frank?”

  “I say, if you aren’t drunk you’re fucking crazy.”

  “Then I’m fucking crazy, Frank.” Lew lifted his bottle in a toast and swigged half the remainder.

  “What makes you so goddam cheerful?”

  “I’ll tell you, Frank,” Lew said, and pointed with his free hand. “You see that sign?”

  “Ellen’s Road. I’m sorry I put the fucker up.”

  “Don’t be.” Lew turned to give his happy grin to the remaining cars of the train, sliding down now into position for the next four to be unloaded, then looked back at Frank. “I’ve been with these guys all day,” he said. “Every time I look up I see that sign and I wonder what went wrong, and then I look around at what I’m doing, shlepping coffee sacks, and I wonder why I’m so happy.”

  “Beer,” Frank said.

  “Maybe.” Lew was plainly cheerful enough to agree with anything: that the world is flat, that the end justifies the means, that this is the Pepsi Generation, just any damn thing at all. “What I think it is,” he went on, “more than the beer, I think I’ve figured out who I am.”

  “An asshole,” Frank said. “Trying to be a dead asshole.”

  “Maybe that, too. But something more.” Within Lew’s merry madness, seriousness lurked. He said, “You know, Ellen isn’t a one-man woman any more than I’m a one-woman man. I’m not gonna put on a tie and go down to the office, and she’s not gonna stay home and sort the laundry. We’re absolutely perfect for each other, and it’s a great relief to me to know that.”

  “I’m glad for you.”

  “Thank you, Frank. Why Ellen and I are so perfect for one another is because we’re so alike. And because neither of us wants the other one to be anybody but who we are.”

  “And who the fuck are you?” Frank asked, feeling more sour by the minute.

  “I’ll tell you who I am.” Lew was really very excited. He said, “It came to me in a revelation, this afternoon. That sign, this train, that cliff. I’ve accepted my destiny, Frank. I’m the hero!”

  Frank stared at him. “You’re the what?”

  “The hero. That’s what I was born to be. And that’s why I can go up on top of those cars and take a couple chances.” The bastard had the effrontery to pat Frank on the cheek. “The hero doesn’t get killed,” he explained.

  PART SIX

  56

  It was with the next group of cars that the first man went over. He’d made an error of judgment, that’s all; it was a simple mistake and therefore hilarious. “Ali! Ali!” the others all shouted in shocked delight, and crowded to the edge of the cliff to watch their comrade drop.
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br />   “Jee-sus!” Lew cried, but he couldn’t take it seriously either, and stared down the cliff face as though it was some silent two-reeler comedy he were watching instead of the death of a man. The cars fell, the man stood on the last roof gaping upward, and the last thing he saw in this world was three dozen men laughing at him. Then the cars hit the bay, the water boiled over full of slashing strips and shards of wood, and when the surface settled there was nothing on it at all.

  The men at the cliff edge laughed till they staggered; they held their sides from laughing; they mimed for one another the round-eyed round-mouthed look of astonishment on that fellow’s face when he’d scrambled to the end of the fourth car’s roof only to find nothing beyond it but a widening carpet of air. But Lew lost the comedy of the thing the instant it was over, and when he turned and saw the expression on Isaac’s face he was sorry he’d ever been amused at all. Stepping quickly from the edge, he strode over to solemn Isaac and said, “It’s getting out of control.”

  He’d made such a comment only because he wanted Isaac to think he was a responsible individual and not one of the people laughing, but Isaac shook his head and corrected him. “No, it’s been out of control. This will calm them for a while.”

  The workmen were drifting back from the cliff, undoubtedly remembering it was beer time, but they still mugged and mimed and expressed their pleasure at the unanticipated spectacle. Watching them, Lew said, “Are you sure?”

  “They’ll have an hour to think about it,” Isaac said as Young Mr. Balim strolled over to join them. “Next time they’ll remember, and they’ll all be a little more careful.”

  “I thought,” Young Mr. Balim said rather tentatively, “I might go up to the road, relieve the man on watch there.”

  Isaac frowned. “Why?”

  “Because he’s probably asleep.” Young Mr. Balim smiled wistfully. “Also, I don’t think I like the entertainment here.”

  Lew said, “Isaac says it won’t happen again.”

  “Well, there’s a great lesson in it,” Young Mr. Balim said, “which I don’t need repeated.”