by Peter Riva
Pero asked, “First time you wore that band?” The sailor smiled and nodded. “Your Captain reachable?” Again the nod. “Could you call him for me?” The sailor only nodded again, not a talkative fellow.
“Ensign Fellows calling Captain Burrows, come in please,” he said into his hand radio.
“Burrows here, state your position and duty. Over.”
“Wilson Airport, flightline security, duty roster of six, each with a local security officer, private service, Securicor by name. Over.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Two men here, one by the name of,” he impressed Pero that he had memorized his name “Baltazar, Pero. Both those with special passes, we were briefed for. Baltazar wants to talk to you, over.”
“Put him on, all assistance. Over.”
“Captain, can we borrow your man here, Ensign Fellows, for some special duty?”
“You have the authority. What’s wrong with the local security?” Pero looked at the Securicor man. Pero didn’t answer; after a pause of silence, he got the point. “Make a good driver, d’ya think? Over.”
“He’ll do. So, can we have him? We’re going to inspect the three fueling operations here, to see if they can find out which one put a bomb on board a plane two or three days ago. Over.” Ensign Fellows, although a burly man, looked suddenly smaller, his shoulders lost their swagger. The Securicor man, on the other hand, reached for his nightstick, ready to draw, and looked about. Pero began to worry that either was hardly what he could rely on.
“Permission granted. Fellows is, as of this moment, under your command, this is considered a war zone for this operation. Get that, Fellows?” Pero handed him the mike and he replied that he did, aye aye captain and all that sort of thing. If he had thought this was going to be an easy operation, he now knew better. The Captain signed out, brusquely. He had his hands full, no doubt.
“What’s your first name?”
“Jack, Sir.”
“And your name?” Pero asked the Securicor man.
“Joshua Mdare, Sir.” The Sir was a nice touch.
“Okay, here’s what I want you to do Jack, Joshua. Go and arrest Sheryl at Mara Airways and bring her here. If she’s not there, get the duty officer to bring the fueling records for the past four days, all Mara aircraft. You okay with that Jack, and you, Joshua?” They nodded, maybe they would work out better than Pero thought. They got in the light truck and sped off. The blinking light was turned on as soon as they started down the flightline. It is what Pero wanted, visible action.
Pero told Mbuno he needed to “arrest” Sheryl to get her away without argument or causing suspicion and that she was, really, going to help. Pero had known her for fifteen years or more. And besides, he knew she was JT’s servant, first and last. They could count on her discretion and help. They needed to identify that fueling man, it was their only hope to backtrack to a cell and hopefully find out what they were planning.
In no time at all, Sheryl, looking very worried, was brought to David’s office. They had commandeered it.
“Mr. Baltazar, what’s going on? What have I done?”
“Nothing Sheryl, we need your help and I needed to get you here quickly and without argument.”
“Sorry about that, ma’am.” Fellows said.
“I thought Pero was in trouble. I am very frightened.”
“Sorry, really, Sheryl, please don’t be frightened, but we have an emergency and maybe only you can help. Here’s the situation, JT is in trouble, Mary too. Maybe only we here can find out the people who are after them. That explosion the other day, your Cessna? That was meant for us and Mary.”
“Oh God, no, Lord Jesus Christ no.” She was visibly shocked. She knew the plane was blown up, how could she not?
“Sheryl, why are you so shocked? You knew it was blown up . . .”
“But the manager, Mr. Roberts,” the owner of Mara, “told us it was a freak mechanical problem, not a bomb, that the pilot was wrong. The police don’t seem very interested either. Who did this?”
Pero guessed why Roberts had lied, he had an airline to protect. But Pero needed Sheryl to get behind their probe, quickly, so he told her the truth. “Al-Qaida or al-Shabaab,” names to strike fear in anyone so close to the Gulf. Everyone lost someone or knew someone who had died. Nairobi is, really, an overgrown town where everyone knows just about everyone else.
She repeated herself: “Oh God, no, Lord Jesus Christ no.”
“Unfortunately, yes, Sheryl. Now listen, we need to know who fueled that Cessna, which service was the provider, and then we need to find out which fueling attendant actually had his hands on the plane. That’s the only way a bomb got on board. No one else had access. Can you help?”
Sheryl straightened her spine, she became resolute, “Oh, yes, if it will save my pastor, I will help in any way I can. The fueling company, it was Agip, they have a contract with them. The fueling took place in the middle of the night because we weren’t sure what time you would be turning up. The plane was, technically, still on charter to you because it held your camera equipment and was in bond by customs.”
“And the man who fueled her?”
Sheryl was contrite, “I don’t know, I didn’t see anyone doing it at that early hour, I am sorry! I was off duty.”
Fellows chimed in: “Excuse me, ain’t there a security camera anywhere we could look at?” It was too simple. Sheryl explained she had a live camera so she knew what was happening on her hangar apron, but no recorder. “But the tower . . . maybe.”
Pero stood and everyone started moving with him towards the door, “Ensign, you and Joshua go to the tower and check out if they have a recorder or a ground track recorder. I doubt it, but it’s worth a try. Also check the voice logs for . . . What time, Sheryl?
“Between four and five, Thursday morning, there’s a bill with a time chit.”
“Okay, see if there’s video, and also check the tower voice logs for that time in case someone radioed in for permission to cross the runway, see if there’s a name.” The fuel depots were on the other side of the airport, they all could see them way over there with their huge tanks and warning lights, “Agip” emblazoned and lit up as advertising. “Sheryl, you ride back to your office with them and pull the fueling log for the Cessna, see who signed the receipt or fueling slip and bring that sheet to me. Then we’re going to go over to Agip and see if we can match it. Jack and Joshua can pick you up on their way back. Everybody get back here in twenty minutes, no more, okay?” All three nodded.
Pero decided it was time to call State. He needed more news of Tom Baylor. If Tom had found anything, now was the time to know it, while they had time, fourteen hours before “show time.”
“Baltazar here. At Wilson Airport. Any further developments on Baylor and anthrax?”
“Lewis here, anthrax is lowest grade, mixed with talcum powder and sugar. Still, it was an effective scare, but may be a false trail meant to mislead us into complacency. They found the missing bottle. It was only dropped in the kitchen pantry. They’re decontaminating. In case you are over-thinking again Baltazar, it was not a trick only to get them to move. Original plan was the Hilton as replacement for Norfolk, but it was changed to the InterContinental by Threte himself since he had stayed there twenty years ago when he was a pilot,” (for Pan Am). “And Special Ops, the Seals, searched the InterContinental top to bottom, no explosives there. It’s clean.”
The Director was in full briefing mode now. “Now, Baylor’s full message decoded and SeaKing is landing that site as they speak. He Morse coded the whole message again and again. The lat long were your last location near an escarpment, and they’ve pinpointed him there. He’s wounded, his thermal image is not walking, but they have hope, the Brits told me on the radiophone hookup that they saw him moving his arm, they think. The rest of his message, that you haven’t heard, is this: “burn ashes, Jetson.” That’s all. Can you make heads or tails? We can’t. I asked the Brits and our people here to rep
eat it to me two minutes ago, so that exact message is confirmed.”
Pero stared at the ceiling, thinking, shook his head and said, “No, I can’t figure it out yet, but I’ll work on it. When will they know he’s all right, when can they speak with him?”
“Depends; the SeaKing should have him any moment now. If he can speak, I will get his report and relay to you, and to Heep, affirmative?”
Pero was puzzled, why is he asking me? Oh, damn, I’m a field agent now, I guess he has to. Field agents called the shots, sometimes.
“Affirmative. End.” And the two clicks. What the hell are the Jetsons, a cartoon show from his youth, doing in this mixed bag of clues? Maybe it’s someone’s name. Maybe, well, maybe anything.
Joshua and Jack returned with Sheryl. Mbuno and Pero were waiting for them impatiently in the office. They confirmed that Wilson had no ground radar or flightline video recorder, nothing other than a log entry that an Agip tanker had signaled that they were crossing the active runway. In the middle of the night, that must have been hardly even worth noting. Sheryl, on the other hand, had the expense and time chit, and the fuel delivery log. The times matched. It was without signature and she was despondent. “Sheryl, still, it’s filled in by hand, the Agip people may know or recognize something. Let’s go ask them.”
They all piled into the truck, Jack and Joshua up front with Sheryl squeezed in between, her legs over to the left to allow for the stick shift. Mbuno and Pero sat in the open back. They sped across the runway, their blue light whirling away, just after a plane landed, its prop wash jostling the small truck. Agip was just ahead. Pero could see the fueling depot was busy, two trucks being crawled onto as top hatches were opened and replenished. Avgas is flammable stuff; it made sense to keep it over this side, away from the main airport. Unfortunately, it was also smack up against the Kibera slum, one of the areas of densest population on the overpopulated continent.
Kibera is where a majority of Nairobi’s citizens live. As a slum, the tin roofs on mud houses are not the problem, nor are the people and their makeshift churches, nor the tattered clothing of the poor. A lack of running water, no garbage collection, and raw sewage running down shallow ditches at the side of dirt lanes between closely packed single room houses, where as many as sixteen people lived, was the problem. Cholera and typhus always reared their ugly heads. Poverty and starvation were slower killers. False baby adoption clinics, no medical facilities, and preying ministers who only gave aid in return for fealty to one god or another contributed to the horror. Hyenas dared not enter Kibera, it is said, since they would be eaten. The rats fared no better. AIDs claimed ten percent of Kibera’s population every year and still Kibera’s population grew as the nation’s poor increased, forcing them to this area of lawlessness and human decay.
Up against the slum of Kibera, on a slight rise of a little more than fifty feet, sat the avgas and kerosene tanks (jet fuel) of the three suppliers. The lights that lit up their signs painted on the huge thirty-foot high tanks are, sometimes, the only illumination for Kibera’s residents except for the thousands of charcoal fires preparing a simple maize dinner.
The Securicor truck pulled up at the Agip depot office, three piled out of the cramped interior, and two slid off the tailgate. Pero immediately asked Jack and Joshua to march in and arrest everybody, everyone working there, and line ‘em up. Pero was sure if someone tried to run they might get a break.
No one did.
The manager, when questioned, said he knew the handwriting on the slip. It was a temporary employee who was moonlighting, for extra cash. They needed extra people this week because of the Meeting tomorrow, they were so busy. Pero quizzed him some more and it turned out that the moonlighting man, who worked at a car gas station in Ngong (an Agip gas station, of course), would be on duty tomorrow night, if they wanted to talk with him. One of the jump-suited fuelers, with his hands still up, started to babble. Pero turned to Mbuno “Could you tell him to lower his hands and speak slowly? Find out what he knows, take him outside.”
Jack wanted to know if “the old man,” meaning Mbuno, needed anyone to help him in case the man decided to run. Pero smiled and shook his head. No one would get away from Mbuno who would know before they did if they were even thinking of running. Pero told Jack it was all right.
“Okay, listen up, all of you. You are under arrest. This facility is closed down. Ensign, get some help from your other shipmates, and take these people to the Aero Club—which you will commandeer—and lock them up until the police can take them. And shut this operation down.”
The Aero Club was a relic of post-colonial period when the power was still with the remnant colonialists of “better days.” Pero knew the Aero Club had room to spare, and it was on the lead apron of the runway—very handy to access to the rest of the field.
Jack was unsure. “All of them?” When Pero frowned, sternly, he snapped to attention and said, “Aye aye, Sir.” Then he got on the radio and called the captain to request backup, “seven detainees to be taken into custody to the Aero Club.” Pero told Joshua to pull his nightstick and if anyone moved, to hit them, hard. Joshua grinned.
The Agip manager looked angry. “You cannot do this, who are you?” he lowered his hands and advanced towards Pero. Joshua’s club whirled through the air and the manager took a blow on his forearm. It must have hurt. He stepped back sharply.
Pero was loud and clear, “Well done, Joshua. If they are more of a problem than that, have Jack shoot them. Dead would be fine, understand?” Joshua nodded and Jack, still on the radio, asked the captain if it was okay “to shoot someone on Mr. Balthazar’s order.”
Everyone heard the answer “If he says shoot, sailor, shoot. He can kill them all—he can order you to kill them all—he has that authority from the Presidents of the United States and Kenya. This is a state of emergency, get it? No more questions.”
“Aye aye, Sir!” And Jack clicked off, “Sorry Mr. Baltazar, it’s just that I have never shot anyone.”
“And let’s hope you don’t have to. But we have a mass murdering group out here and we can’t, for now, know who’s with us or who’s against us. We need to press on, inconvenience some folks, and stop the bastards.” Pero turned to the Agip people. “If you behave, it will all be over soon and you’ll be free to go, but Agip planted a bomb on an aircraft Thursday, so until we find out who, you are all arrested, get it?” Everyone, wide-eyed nodded and when the Navy reinforcements turned up, they walked meekly to a minibus to go to the “makeshift brig, in the Aero Club.” Pero said thanks to his two deputies and went outside to see how Mbuno was getting on. Sheryl was helping him. The man nodded vigorously.
“Bwana, this man is, like Miss Sheryl, a follower of Pastor Threte. He is very unhappy that a man who worked here, a Maasai Muslim he knows, put a bomb on Miss Mary’s plane. He is swearing revenge. Miss Sheryl has told him that it is not right to kill. I have asked him to take us to this other man’s boma; he’s Maasai from Ngong. This man has said he will. He will show us.”
Pero left Joshua and Jack in charge, promising to be back within two or three hours, and told Sheryl to return to the Mara offices and say nothing. They took the petrol manager’s jeep, with blinking light, back across the runway to switch to their Duka car, dropped off Sheryl at Mara, and, with Pero driving, sped off.
Crossing the Maasai Plain, where only fifteen years ago, there was only open pasture for wild animals, now fences and plantations, small and large, whisked by in the headlights. The main obstacles were the hyenas, scavenging at night. One particularly big male was dragging a dog, probably someone’s pet. A few antelope scurried past, jumping from one fenced field to another, quickly followed by just a glimpse of a leopard skirting the edge of the road, its coat glowing with the sheen of a ghost blue moon as it leapt away.
Heep had reminded Pero, twice that day of his expertise, “Produce this thing . . .” he had said. Pero knew he was right. It was what Pero did, and did well. The very same skills
it took to take a bunch of talented strangers and mold them into an effective, efficient television crew were needed here. As a producer, Pero needed to keep hundreds of thoughts and details turning over in his mind, ready to bring any one of them to bear. Pero needed to understand power—both officialdom and personal ego—and balance that with appropriate action—Pero’s and theirs. But more than anything Pero had to be single-minded. It is what attracts everyone to media production—the invigorating, mono-focus, passion—putting everything else out of mind. It was what kept actors waiting to work only two weeks a year and what kept his job interesting. It wasn’t the travel to exotic places, it was the ability to manage problems quickly and produce something concrete from nothing. And Pero did that well, working over forty weeks a year. It was what Pero had to do here. Mono-focus, concentrate, produce this endgame. Heep was right.
The only difference was that the stakes were higher. Too high, if Pero thought about it too much.
CHAPTER 17
Ngong
Pero knew the road to Ngong well. He went past the Langata turn-off and took the next left towards Ngong. Tourists flock to Ngong to get to the Karen Blixen Museum set in the grounds of her old coffee plantation farmhouse. Out Of Africa, her seminal work, still attracted people to Africa, people captivated by the sheer romance of the landscape, people, and fauna that imbued her life so richly. Mbuno was translating driving instructions from the Agip man on the back seat. In less than forty minutes Pero was being gestured, palms down, by Mbuno, to slow their progress. The young Agip man, in the rear-view mirror, stared ahead, pointing. They drove past an Agip gas station, closed for the night, then two all-night open-fronted bars with blaring music and immediately turned left, off the main street, into an alleyway and then clear of the village, for about two miles on a dirt track. He gestured again to slow further and stop. Pero cut the engine and, as it was downhill, drifted, silently, closer until the passenger pointed to a circle of thorns, a boma enclosure, the typical Maasai camp barrier, off to the right of the dirt track.
