Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

  Was all this true? But if it were not true, how would they know so many details, and how did it happen that the assemblage of matériel had been so unusually smooth and effortless? And if it was indeed the truth, including their claim of a plot to resteal the coffee “with violence,” then all that mattered now was that Bathar was in danger. Bathar, the only son of Mazar Balim.

  Which was why Balim had immediately and sincerely offered his fullest cooperation, telling Magon and Obuong what little they hadn’t already known, which was mostly the timetable: when the coffee would be hijacked, when it would be brought to Port Victoria. “It’s happening right now,” Balim had told them, and they’d been pleased at the news; a good dinner had been given Balim at a local hotel at their expense, and when they’d come out afterward the Mercedes and the truckload of soldiers were already waiting. And now they were running through the night over the washboard roads, the Mercedes in the lead, the truck following in their dust.

  The Nzoia ferry did not run at night. They had to take the wider sweep through Sio, through tiny villages without electricity, down long dirt roads hemmed in by fresh growth after the long rains. Riding along in silence beside Obuong, Balim had leisure in which to grow used to his worry about Bathar, and to think about more mundane items, such as what these two government men were really up to. Was it all as selfless and official as it appeared? How unlikely.

  Treading with care, Balim began his exploration into the question of motive as indirectly as possible. Breaking the long silence, “Uganda,” he said to Obuong, “has been a troublesome neighbor for years.”

  “Oh, very troublesome,” Obuong agreed. Smiling, he said, “That’s why we were so pleased at your initiative.”

  “Yes, you called me a patriot.”

  Obuong found that amusing. “I did?”

  “Yes, when we first met in my office.” Balim made himself as small and round and inoffensive and harmless as possible. “I knew you meant it ironically,” he said, the slightest hint of self-pity in his voice.

  Politeness barely covering the mockery, Obuong said, “I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”

  “Not at all.” Balim sighed, accepting the calumnies of this world on his bowed shoulders. “But it did make me wonder,” he went on, “what you thought our motive was in taking this coffee.”

  “Money,” Obuong said, promptly and simply and emphatically.

  “Only money?”

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Balim,” Obuong said. “I am not myself anti-Asian. Some of my best friends in Nairobi are Asian.”

  Balim nodded, accepting these bona fides.

  “But I don’t think it’s unfair to say,” Obuong went on, “that it is well known that patriotism is not an emotion known to Asians. Their interests—perfectly legitimate interests—lie elsewhere. Money, merchandising. Art. Learning. At times, religion. And they are very good family people.”

  “Patriotism,” Balim gently pointed out, “is the love of one’s country. Unrequited love of one’s country is a passion difficult to maintain.”

  “There have undoubtedly been injustices committed against the Asians,” Obuong said, in the manner of a person utterly uninterested in discussing such injustices. “But please let me reassure you. If profit was a consideration at all—in addition to the love you bear your adopted country, of course—you still have something to look forward to. Not as much, of course.”

  “Of course,” Balim said.

  “There will be various taxes to be paid, import duties and so on. Due to your … patriotism … I should think certain normal fines and seizures of goods would be waived in this case.”

  “Good of you,” Balim murmured.

  “Then, of course, the Jhosis have really far too small a plantation to handle all that coffee. We can make arrangements for particular other growers who could assist.”

  “I see,” Balim said. He was smiling. The familiar whiff of corruption, so long missing from his relationship with these two, was at last a comforting presence in his nostrils. Politics, trade, graft, and the general opposition to Idi Amin; all had come together to make this unlikely partnership.

  “Almost there,” Godfrey Magon said from the front seat, and Balim looked out past him at the sharply defined world snared in their headlights.

  At night Port Victoria ceased almost entirely to exist. One or two lights flickered deep in the interior of the shops around the grassy market square, but the little stucco-faced houses lining the dirt road down the long, steep slopes to the lake were black and silent, humped together in the darkness like natural growths, unpopulated hillocks.

  At the bottom of the hill, near the shoreline, was the unfinished hotel. The two men Frank had left here to guard the building supplies were tending a smoky orange fire in a large oil drum. “A beacon,” Godfrey Magon pointed out, “to guide our heroes home.”

  60

  Isaac drove the first truck, with Chase in the passenger seat beside him fondling the pistol. Their headlights were taped down to mere slits, producing something not much stronger than candlelight, a faint amber glow barely bright enough to distinguish the road from the surrounding woods. Only the lead truck used headlights at all, each of the other three navigating by the red taillights of the truck ahead.

  From time to time Chase tried to make small talk—”What are you going to do with all the money?” “Do you like your new life as a swashbuckler?” “What ministry were you with in Uganda?”—but Isaac refused to answer. He hated this creature beside him; he had to grip tightly to the steering wheel to keep himself from a useless suicidal attack against the man.

  Bathar. Painful scenes played in his head, of himself telling Mr. Balim that Bathar was dead; and of course he must be the one to break the news. Frank lacked the sensitivity, and all the rest were strangers.

  That’s why he has the gun, Isaac thought, why he wasn’t calm until he had a gun in his hand. It’s because his viciousness makes him hurt people, he can’t stop hurting people, and he needs protection against the rage and hatred he inspires.

  The gun had been prominent in Chase’s hand when Isaac had come over to the truck cab, back at the depot, to say, “All loaded. I just have to send someone up to get Young Mr. Balim.”

  “No need for that,” Chase had answered, sitting in the cab, smiling at him in that lazy-cat way of his. “I already met him on the way down.”

  Isaac had stared, unwilling to believe. “What did you—?”

  “You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Chase had said, stroking the gun. “Get in, let’s go.”

  For the next hour Isaac could think about that, all the way down the long road to the lake. Fresh pale scars winked from the tree branches, mementos of earlier trucks. The close-lying darkness to either side seemed peopled, teeming with watchful silent life; but none of it so dangerous or so evil as Chase.

  It seemed to Isaac finally that they must have crossed into some other plane of reality where there was no lake, no farther terminus at all; there was nothing but the road and a permanent condition in which he drove endlessly through unrelieved darkness with this self-satisfied monster at his side. But then he saw a figure in the dimness ahead, standing between the ruts, and recognized that shambling posture immediately as belonging to no one else but Charlie. Of course it was; Charlie stood grinning, a long shaggy piece of sugarcane sticking out of his mouth like a financier’s cigar.

  Charlie waved for Isaac to follow, then scampered on ahead, a manic figure, some ramshackle wood sprite with no redeeming social qualities. The previous trucks, empty and dark, were pulled barely off the road on both sides, leaving a narrow high-walled alley for Isaac to negotiate.

  Chase said, “Why, it’s a major operation.”

  It was. In near-darkness two trucks were being unloaded onto two rafts. The swarming lines of men, with their heavy sacks of coffee, looked like agitated ants forced to move their nest. Isaac braked to a stop, cutting the engine, and in the sudden silence he
could hear beneath the muted sounds of the loading a disturbed plash of water against the rafts.

  Frank strode up from the edge of the unseen lake, looking big and mean and bad-tempered; his boss expression. Lew followed, glancing quickly this way and that, looking for rips in the fabric. Sounding wistful, Chase said, “I could hit them both from here.”

  Isaac turned to look at the man, who was gazing through the windshield, smiling faintly. If he lifts the gun, Isaac thought, I’ll stop him. I’ll kill him if I can.

  Chase met Isaac’s eyes. Seeming both surprised and amused, he said, “I’m not going to, Otera.” He made that shooing gesture with the gun. “Climb out. I’ll follow you.”

  Isaac opened the door and clambered down to the ground. Chase followed through the same opening, so Isaac moved a few steps away. Frank, before coming up to them, was already calling out orders: “Get your men down to the lake, Isaac, let’s finish this, it’s too fucking dark to work.”

  “He has a gun,” Isaac said quietly, and stepped farther away to the side as Chase shut the truck door and revealed himself, smiling in the faint light, holding the gun casually but prominently at his side.

  Then it got very quiet inside their little circle. Below, on planks over the roiled mud of the shore, the workmen continued to load the rafts. Above in the narrow corridor between the empty trucks, the men who’d just ridden down from the depot were jumping out onto the ground, demonic in the red glow of the taillights as they stretched their stiff muscles and made quiet conversation together. Here around the lead truck there was silence, with Chase beside the door in his torn trousers and the uniform coat and belt, the pistol gleaming in his hand. Isaac stood away from him to the side, Frank farther away toward the lake, Lew just beyond Frank. Charlie watched in childlike interest at the periphery of the light.

  “Surprise,” Chase said.

  Frank said, “What’s this all about?”

  Lew took a step to his left, but with sudden harshness Chase gestured with the gun, saying, “Don’t go anywhere, friend.”

  Frank, already angry, said, “Chase, what are you fucking around at?”

  “A little trouble at the office,” Chase told him, his good humor returning. “I had to leave.”

  Isaac said, “He killed Bathar.”

  Frank stared at Isaac, as though blaming the messenger. “He did what?”

  “I hit him with a tire iron,” Chase said, as though it were an unimportant detail. “He might be dead, he might be alive. What difference does it make?”

  Speaking to Isaac as though Chase weren’t there, Frank said, “Did you see it?”

  “No. Bathar was on watch, up by the crossing. This man wouldn’t let me send anyone for him.”

  Frank thought about it, then came to a conclusion. “Okay,” he said, and walked toward Chase.

  Chase had been lounging at his ease, shoulder against the shut truck door, but now he stood up straight, flashing the gun again, saying, “Frank, take it easy.”

  Slogging forward, workmanlike, Frank said, “How many times can you pop me with that little thing? I’ll still take your fucking head off.” Behind him, Lew had also started forward, moving to Frank’s right. Isaac watched, openmouthed. He wanted to yell, to make them stop, but he couldn’t think what the words would be. And Chase seemed just as astonished. “Frank!” he shouted. “Don’t make me do it!” But Frank just walked forward, at the end reaching out for Chase’s head.

  Which was when Chase reversed the gun and tried to use the butt as a club. But Frank held his forearm, twisted the gun out of his hand, and tossed it dismissively to Lew. Then he started hitting.

  Chase was big, but Frank was bigger, and he now went at Chase the way he drove the Land-Rover, the way he pushed his employees, the way he did everything in life, wading straight in.

  “He’s alive!” Chase cried, arms up to defend himself. “It’s true, it’s true, he’s alive!”

  But Frank didn’t hear, or didn’t care, or didn’t believe. His elbows pumped out and back and up and down, his thick head was thrust out, his feet were planted like oak trees, and rather than box his way past Chase’s defensive arms he pounded his way through them, crowding Chase against the side of the truck and hitting his arms and shoulders till they grew too battered and weary to lift anymore, then going to work on the man’s torso instead, pausing once with his big palm against Chase’s chest, saying, “I’m saving your head for dessert,” then pounding his torso some more. The workmen who’d just come down from the depot gathered around to watch and admire.

  “Frank,” Lew said. He spoke quietly enough, but something odd in his tone attracted Frank’s attention, and he at once stopped, took a step back, and as Chase sagged down onto the truck’s running board Frank turned and said, “What’s up?”

  Lew had come over to stand near Isaac, who saw that he was holding the gun open so Frank could see the cylinder. Isaac saw it, too, as Lew said, “It’s empty, Frank.”

  Frank gave an angry bark of laughter, as though saying it didn’t matter, but when he turned back to Chase he no longer seemed so determined to beat him to death. “So, you simple bastard,” he said. “You’ve got nothing in your pecker at all.”

  Chase didn’t speak. His breath was short and ragged and loud; he hugged himself as though afraid he might be broken somewhere inside. He stared at the ground at Frank’s feet, waiting for whatever would happen next.

  Lew handed the pistol to Isaac and walked forward. While Isaac held the broken-open thing in both hands, not knowing what to do with it, surprised by the weight of it, Lew stopped beside Frank and said, “Chase. Talk to me about Young Mr. Balim.”

  “I hit him.” His voice was flat and weary and uninflected.

  “Where? With what?”

  “Side of the head. Tire iron.”

  Isaac walked over to join them, the gun in his palms like a gift. Lew continued his catechism. “Check his pulse afterward?”

  “No.”

  “Do anything else to him?”

  “Searched him.”

  “Do you think he’s alive, or do you think he’s dead?”

  Chase lifted his weary head, showing a flash of his old arrogance and contempt. “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t care.”

  Isaac said, “Why wouldn’t you let me send people to get him?”

  “What difference does it make?” Chase, who had suffered the beating in stoic silence, seemed pushed beyond endurance by the interrogation. “You’re all dead, anyway,” he said.

  Frank jumped on that. “Who says? What’s going on, Chase?”

  But Chase lowered his head, his expression obstinate. Whatever he had meant, it was clear he would not explain any further. Frank glanced toward the lake, then back at Chase. “You got a double cross in mind? That would be your style, wouldn’t it, you son of a bitch. I told Balim about you.”

  Isaac said, “And now we’ll have to tell him about Bathar.”

  Lew said, “Frank, I’ll go up and get him.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Frank said.

  “It’s not stupid. What if he’s alive? He isn’t ready for Uganda, Frank, believe me. Think about it; they find him, they find the depot, they start to twist him.”

  “He’ll talk,” Frank said.

  But Lew brushed that aside. “He’ll talk the first ten seconds. But they won’t stop, Frank. I know these bastards now. Chase! If Young Mr. Balim’s still alive, and your pals find him, what then?”

  Chase didn’t lift his head. “They’ll play him for a month,” he said tonelessly.

  “If ever there was a mouse in the land of cats,” Lew said, “it’s Young Mr. Balim.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frank said, and turned to bellow, “Charlie!”

  “Right here,” said Charlie, who was.

  “Take seven or eight guys,” Frank told him, gesturing at Chase, “and tie this fellow up with a lot of rope. I don’t want him comfortable, see what I mean?”

  “Oh, sure,” Charlie s
aid, grinning.

  “And put a gag in his mouth. A dirty gag. Use your shirt.”

  Charlie giggled, and called in Swahili to the men standing around, several of whom came forward in anticipatory pleasure. Meanwhile. Frank turned back to Lew and Isaac, saying, “Come on over here.”

  They walked a bit away, farther from the light, where Frank frowned at Lew, shook his head, and said, “You’re talking about two hours, up and back. Minimum. We’ll be out of here in less than an hour. And if Chase really is up to something, we can’t hang around. In fact, we can’t hang around, anyway.”

  Isaac said, “Frank, think of Mr. Balim.”

  “I am thinking of Mr. Balim. I’m thinking of every fucking body.”

  “I won’t come back,” Lew said. “Listen, Frank, whether he’s alive or dead I’ll get back a different route.”

  “There are no different routes,” Frank told him. “We stole their fucking coffee crop, remember? They’ll have that border shut like a nunnery in the Hundred Years’ War.”

  “Ellen,” Lew said.

  Nobody understood him. Isaac, thinking Lew had forgotten in the press of the moment, said, “Lew, Ellen isn’t with us anymore.”

  “Sure she is,” Lew said. “She’s at Entebbe.”

  Isaac gaped at him, too astonished to speak. Frank said it for them both: “Entebbe? You’re gonna escape from Uganda through Entebbe?”

  “I wouldn’t be the first,” Lew said, grinning. “Frank, get a message to her. You can do it, you’re her former employer back in Nairobi. The message is, an old friend of hers from Alaska, a guy named Val Dietz, he’s in Africa passing through, he says he’ll be in Entebbe sometime the next twenty-four hours, he sure hopes he can stop by and say hello, buy her a drink.”