Black Star Nairobi

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  “What do you guys do? I thought you were looking to enroll … PhD program and all,” Amina said, trying not to sound nervous.

  “Do you really care?” Muddy asked her. Amina thought for a minute or so.

  “Shit, I don’t care … I don’t know why I thought I cared,” she said, which led to another high philosophical debate about why we need to know things or people and what it means to truly know.

  Perhaps the idea that you could really get to know someone’s soul was an overstatement, but, thinking of Muddy, I thought, I hoped, that you could get at least part of the way there. I guess this what Helen the Hacker meant—you hack the person, not the computer. We still didn’t know Sahara that well. In fact, we hardly knew him at all.

  It was time for Muddy and me to leave. O and Amina both looked at us as if to ask what had taken us so long. By the time we made it to the door they were kissing. Two wounded people had found each other. I wanted to say something about it to Muddy but it occurred to me that whether O woke up missing his wife less, or even more, it would not change the bottom line—she was gone. That was his life now—a constant longing for what he had lost.

  Muddy and I took a cab back to Michael’s. Julio and the teacher had started on a bottle of tequila. Still high from the festival, they decided we should walk to the Mexican neighborhood that was just few blocks from Michael’s house, in search of bar to call mi casa, as Julio put it.

  This was something I had forgotten about the United States—in Kenya each ethnic group had a territory that they claimed as theirs; in the United States, the territories were neighborhoods. We didn’t have far to go before we made it to the Bajo Tierra. The bar was more like a dugout; from the street you went down a few stairs that led you through a short, brightly colored tunnel.

  The bar itself was old-fashioned, none of those flashy digital jukeboxes and fancy lights. The only concession to modernity was a small ATM in the corner.

  We had a beer, took the keys to the Ninja Cleaners van, and left Julio and the teacher having a good time. I guess they were becoming friends. Back in the van, we turned on the AC and made love like we were teenagers, our flowing African clothes getting in the way, with Mexican pop music playing in the background.

  There was still one more day of the festival left and I was hoping it would count for something.

  CHAPTER 13

  OLD FRIENDS

  He wouldn’t have recognized me. He wouldn’t have been expecting me to be in the U.S., let alone at an African Festival in Oakland; and in my outfit, to him I was anyone other than myself.

  Nor would I have seen him, except that on this second and last day of the festival I’d stopped giving in to the seductive music and food and I had gone back to work. Even then it took me several passes to realize that the surfer dude sitting at a table drinking Tusker beer and chatting away with friends at the makeshift bar we’d been at just a day before was the man I had let go in Nairobi, who, naked, had still somehow managed to get a motorcycle and rescue Sahara.

  Convinced it was him, I called Muddy and O. Julio and the teacher hadn’t joined us, they had some business to take care of. I didn’t ask what kind of business. I went over to the bar and ordered a Tusker, watching him, ready to move. Muddy and O soon joined me and I discreetly pointed out the man.

  We needed him to come with us quietly, so we could talk without urgency and fear of interruption. In Kenya we would have just grabbed him, right there where he was. Now we were completely at a loss about what to do—being on the right side of Kenya’s blurry law had spoiled us. Were it not for the seriousness of it all, it would have been comical. Like pickpockets, we had to wait until an opportunity presented itself.

  At last, he and his friends were done with their beer and we followed them out of the festival as our man chatted and laughed without a care in the world. We followed them down a beautiful street with trees and flowers along the sidewalks. Finally, he waved goodbye to his friends and hopped up a flight of stairs to an apartment complex. It wasn’t hard to tell which apartment was his. A light came on, a window opened, and Lingala music piped through it.

  The question again—what do we do? We finally had something major, a direct connection to Sahara, and we had no idea what to do.

  “We are ghosts, no one knows we are here, or even thinks that we could be here—there is no motive to trace. We could just go in, grab him, and be gone in a few seconds,” O said, with a voice that made me pity the man.

  “We have to talk to him first,” Muddy said.

  “And take him where?” I asked them both.

  “We have the van, we can find a quiet place,” Muddy replied.

  “We would have to get rid of it—and it’s good for our cover,” I countered. There really was only one thing to do: for Muddy to knock on his door as we hid. When he opened it, we would burst right through and interrogate him inside. It didn’t matter that now he’d know we were here in the States. Either O or I would kill him.

  There was a problem with that idea, though. It was one thing when we were all in the same busy bar tent at the festival, and we were part of the scene. It was another for Muddy to knock on his door. He would be cautious, and if he was in fact a central part of Sahara’s team he would immediately recognize her.

  Muddy agreed to do it anyway.

  “It’s the best we can do … what are we gonna do? Tail him until one night he decides to pee in a dark alley at three in the morning?” O said.

  We waited until someone entered the complex, and just when the door was about to shut, we rushed in. I could feel the familiar tension that now bordered on excitement. Leaning against the wall on either side of the door, we prepared our weapons as Muddy knocked. The man asked who was there.

  “Where’s the party?” Muddy asked him through the door.

  He opened it, leaving the security latch in place.

  “John Adams said this was the place to head to after the festival?” Muddy lied.

  “No one by that name lives in this building, I think,” he said. Muddy apologized and started to walk away.

  “Do you have his number?” he asked helpfully.

  “Yes, he gave it to me but my cell doesn’t work in the United States …” she answered.

  “Oh, where are you coming from? By all means, come in and use mine …” he said, opening the door.

  Muddy followed him in. We heard a thump and walked in to find the man lying on the floor, unconscious, and Muddy holding her gun by the barrel. We tied and gagged him, and then O slapped him back into consciousness.

  “If you scream, we will have no choice,” O said to him as he removed the gag.

  “I wasn’t going to do anything to her … phone, she wanted a phone. I will pay—how much?” he said, after a few seconds of trying to comprehend what was going on.

  Muddy slapped him.

  “How much do you think I’m worth?” she asked him.

  “I don’t understand. I was just trying to help—ask her,” he said, looking around for a way out.

  “Like you helped that man escape me in Nairobi?” I said. I could see the recognition on his face—it slowly turned into fear.

  “Shit, shit, shit! I had no idea what was going on—I was just a driver … you know, just their driver,” he pleaded.

  “What is your name?” I asked him.

  “Pete,” he answered. “Peter Arnold.”

  I found his wallet on the desk. The driver’s license gave the same name and address.

  “Pete—everything you know,” Muddy said.

  “I had no idea they were going to kill your wife,” Peter said to O.

  “How did you know?” I asked him.

  “Know what?”

  “That it was his wife and no one else who died?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that, wait, what I meant was—that’s what Jim, Jim Delaware told me in the Range Rover,” he said hurriedly. I didn’t react to his mentioning Sahara’s real name; neither did O or Muddy. We we
re here in his apartment, he assumed we knew everything; all we had to do was keep him talking.

  “Things were happening fast—how could he take the time to explain who had died and who had lived?” I asked him. He looked at me but he didn’t answer. He must have been thinking that, having let him walk away once, I was going to do it again.

  O, who had been quiet all along, pulled up a chair and sat so that he was facing Peter.

  “Listen to me very carefully. You are already dead. You should have died in Nairobi. You didn’t, and that’s okay. We are here now to make it happen. Go back to the moment we walked in through that door and tell yourself, I am dead. Then, I want you to try and earn your life back,” O said calmly, even helpfully. O’s eerily calm demeanor scared Peter into talking.

  “Look, guys, I have changed … I’m only thirty years old, you know—I’m just starting to figure out life, trying to live my life—Kenya, all that is behind me …” Peter pleaded. His face, having gone white at first, was now beet red.

  “I don’t care about your future, tell me about the past …” O interrupted. “So let’s talk.” O untied Peter’s hands and sat back down.

  “My name is Peter Arnold,” the man said again. “Until that morning, I drove for Jim Delaware and his men—you know, shit, I was just a backpacker, just wanted to see the world but I was always broke. I knew my way around Nairobi—the flea-bag motels, where to get a cheap meal, you know, people always thinking I was loaded coz I was white, but I was just trying to see the world, broke as hell. I was a mzungu, right? I was Bwana Peter. One night at Florida 2000—I was just trying to get laid and I take this fine-ass woman to the back—she doesn’t look like a prostitute or anything, but after we’re done and get back to the bar, she asks me for two hundred dollars, two hundred for a fucking BJ. I have no money—and she goes crazy, and everyone at the bar is looking at me like they want to kill me. Here comes Mr. Moneybags, and he slaps two hundred dollars on the table—gives her another twenty and asks her to get us and herself a drink. Later he offers me a job as his driver. I accept,” he explained.

  It was time to change tactics, time to up the game. If Peter knew we would be going Cop 101 on him, then he would have anticipated all this.

  “Peter, let me ask you something,” I said.

  “Yes?” he responded.

  “Did you expect us at your door tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after, or ever?”

  “No, I don’t understand, I can’t, how did you get here? How did you find me?” he asked.

  “How did we get into the country? How did we find you? I’m not saying we know everything, there is a lot we don’t know, but you can be sure we will find it all out. What you should be worried about is whether you’ll be around to see us fail or succeed,” I explained.

  “Also, Peter, understand that we cannot arrest you, threaten you with years behind bars—it’s life or death. Your life is in your hands,” O said.

  “Amos Apara, tell us what happened,” I said to him. I could see he was surprised that we knew the man’s name.

  “I don’t know—they didn’t take me everywhere—like, I drove them to scout out places. When the Norfolk happened, I thought it might be them—but I had driven them there over a year ago, so I let it go,” he answered.

  The grainy security tape we had recovered had shown five men getting out of the van, but it sounded like they did their reconnaissance in the Range Rover. It was possible that he had been kept out of the loop.

  “What happened to Amos?” I asked him again.

  “He just stopped showing up,” he said.

  “And you didn’t say anything?” Muddy asked.

  “I asked where he was. And the boss man … you know, Jim … he said Amos had gone home—but the way he said it, with a smile, it was as if he wanted me to know that something had happened to him—like he was giving me a warning,” Peter said. “I could feel the tension between them sometimes—you know, it was as if he didn’t always agree with whatever they were doing. I mean, like sometimes they wouldn’t talk to him—they were … businesslike.”

  “Were they always like that?” O asked.

  “No, before they were chummy—like friends … made jokes about women, sometimes about Africans—you know, American humor,” he answered, looking at me. “What are you going to do with me? I’m doing well, right? Giving you what you want? Yeah?”

  “Stay with Jim,” O said to him, ignoring his plea.

  “Jim? He knows everything about Africa—some kind of history buff, like, one time we were driving down Kimathi Street and he goes into the whole Mau Mau thing. Out in the bush, he would be pointing out different plants and trees and calling them by their Latin names, even told us about the formation of the Rift Valley. He was like a father-figure kinda guy—but he never talked about himself,” Peter said, beginning to look a bit relaxed.

  “Is that why you came back for him? You had a clean break. You could have just walked away, but you didn’t,” I said, trying not to raise my voice in anger.

  “Money, I needed cash—it was payday—I needed the money. I had to come back for him. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money in Kenya, or anywhere. It was all for the money,” he explained.

  “When was the last time you spoke to him?” I asked.

  “Last night. He was supposed to come to the festival, but he’s having a party tomorrow night. He wanted to see if I could shuttle some of his guests from the airport,” he said, to our surprise.

  I could feel my heart pounding—we were this close to the man we had come to know as Sahara. O leaned back into the chair and Muddy decided to get some ice for the back of Peter’s head.

  O tied up and gagged him so we could go to the kitchen to decide on what to do next. As valuable as he had become to us, we could not take any chances with him yet.

  Peter was what he was—an American taking advantage of his whiteness in Kenya—that was no crime. He had been used, but that wasn’t a crime either. There was no depth to him, neither more or less—he was what you saw: a surfer dude. We could kill Peter and try to storm our way into Sahara’s party. But there would be such a massive manhunt for his killer that, even though there would be no evidence linking us to him, it was unnecessarily risky.

  Or we could use him. The plan we eventually agreed on was simple, because we had to keep it simple. We needed to know who the guests at Sahara’s party would be and, if possible, what they had come to celebrate and talk about. Peter had some of the names and their arrival times; we would run those by Jason and Helen to start with. And we needed to spend some quality time with Sahara.

  It was also time to bring Mo and the Madison Times into the picture. I trusted her and we needed whatever we found to be out in the open as soon as we left the U.S. We would be safe to the extent that there were no more secrets for Sahara and his handlers to protect.

  That left the question of how to get to Sahara.

  Our best cover so far had been as illegal immigrants from an anonymous Africa. I suggested we use the same cover to get to Sahara.

  “How, exactly?” O asked.

  “Think back to the assistant director at the African Studies Program, the white people at the festival, why Peter opened the door for Muddy, think of some of the whites you’ve met in Kenya—what do they have in common?” I said.

  “It’s easy to see why Peter opened the door,” he said humorously.

  “They all want to help Africans without knowing their names,” I answered, smiling along. “We become those Africans to Sahara. We ask Peter to make a call saying that he just met some Africans who are running an illegal car-washing business—they come to people’s houses. His guests could drive home in clean cars as a gift from Sahara, and they’ll be helping Africans help themselves,” I explained.

  “It will make him look good,” Muddy agreed.

  “It’s risky—there’s a good chance Sahara knows we’re here—but it’s a risk we have to take,” O agreed.

  We went ba
ck to Peter and explained the plan. If he wanted Sahara out of his life, and if he wanted to live, we were his best chance.

  We didn’t recognize the four names Sahara had given Peter for the airport pick-up. Jason came back with nothing either. If they had no records, even discreet ones, what were they doing with Sahara?

  I called Helen—no headway with the encrypted file—but she said she’d be happy to look over the names, and she was still working on finding out the addresses of Amos Apara and the rest of the crew.

  Peter was now nervous about the possibility of something going wrong. I didn’t envy him: no matter what happened, his life was going to change—for better or for worse. And the only way he could make it happen was by going through Sahara. He had some beer—Tuskers, of course—and I poured a glass for him. He gulped it down and picked up the phone. We didn’t want to risk using the speakerphone, so he made the call with the volume turned all the way up so we could hear what Sahara was saying.

  “Mr. Delaware, it’s Peter.”

  “Isn’t it a bit late to be calling?” Sahara asked him.

  “My apologies, but I just got back from the African festival and I have something that will interest you …” Peter said. Sahara didn’t say anything.

  “I met three Africans, they are here under very tough circumstances, but they are quite industrious …”

  “What are they selling, not curios, I hope?” Sahara asked with a laugh.

  “They are really trying to make a go of it—they run a car-wash business. Ninja Car Washers …” Peter began, before he was interrupted by loud laughter from Sahara.

  “What? Ninja cleaners? You can’t make this stuff up! Oh, boy—I’m glad you called. Tell me more …” Sahara said, trying to stifle his laughter and get his professorial voice back.

  “Like I said, they are very industrious. You don’t go to them—they come to you. I was thinking that for your guests driving in tomorrow, these Africans could wash their cars and make some extra cash. It’s nothing, I know that, but it would be an interesting party favor—unique—charity. You know, like Kiva—real help for those helping themselves,” Peter said with surprising conviction.