by Jeremy Duns
The boys stopped their game as we approached. The tallest of the group ambled over and stood between us and the front door, legs akimbo and arms folded.
‘We closed,’ he scowled.
‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for Mister Thompson-Bola. Is he in?’
He looked us up and down, and slowly shook his head.
‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘We want to talk to him about Daniel Talabi.’
He wasn’t convinced: perhaps the name didn’t mean anything to him. But someone had been following the conversation, because there was a sudden scratching at one of the windows. The boy took a couple of steps back, listened for a few moments, and then gave a small nod of his head and stood to one side.
Pritchard and I walked into the Afrospot.
*
The room was a degree or two cooler than outside, but every bit as lifeless: there were beer stains on the floor, and smears on the windows. In the doorway stood J. J. Thompson-Bola. He looked tired, but otherwise the same as when I’d last seen him: he was still in his silver trousers, and between two fingers he held a marijuana cigarette so large it looked about to collapse in on itself.
‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘The journalist. Where’s your girlfriend?’
I could sense Pritchard stiffen beside me. ‘She wasn’t my girlfriend,’ I said. ‘But I have to apologize – I’m not really a journalist. I work for the British High Commission, as does my colleague here.’ Pritchard showed his diplomatic passport: he was a second secretary, impressive cover to have set up in less than a day.
J. J. took a long drag of his joint. He didn’t seem too surprised. ‘What do you know about Daniel?’
‘Is there anywhere we can sit down and talk?’
He nodded, and gestured for us to follow him. We walked down the corridor, past several doors, until we reached one, which he pushed open.
It was the green room. It didn’t appear to have been touched since I’d been here – I supposed the police had occupied them for most of the rest of the night. It evidently also served as a dormitory of sorts, as there were a few mattresses on the floor, and as a dining room: several people sat eating at the central table, among them Abigail. She was wearing the same kind of traditional outfit as previously, but the headdress had gone. She looked up as we walked in, and immediately recognized me. She rattled something off to J. J. in their own language; they were Yoruba, I remembered from the file. J. J. replied in kind – I caught only ‘Daniel’. She looked at him in surprise and, with a few words, immediately dismissed him and everyone else from the room.
When they had all gone, she addressed me: ‘You want to talk about Daniel?’
I walked over and sat down at the table opposite her. Pritchard stayed put by the door.
‘We believe we may be able to arrange his release,’ I said. ‘Would that be important to you?’
‘How?’ she said. The eyes behind the thick lenses were unflinching, proud and unafraid. ‘How would you be able to accomplish that? I saw you run from here yesterday night. Run from the police. So I ask again: how will you arrange for the long-awaited release of my nephew from unlawful imprisonment?’
I could see how she could be trouble. Her voice was that of a natural orator – and she was no fool.
‘Last night was a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘I work for the British government, and we have called in some favours with the people who are dealing with Daniel’s case. They are more than willing to cooperate. Provided,’ I added, ‘that you can help us with another investigation we are conducting.’
I scanned the instrument cases leaning against the wall. They looked untouched. The table was the same mess of glasses and bottles and musical paraphernalia, only now with a few half-finished plates of what looked like curry.
What was it I was looking for?
‘You are not here to help Daniel,’ she said.
Her tone was calm, but there was defiance in her face – a lifetime of defiance, against men who looked like me. I wished I could reach across to her and tell her that I was no enemy, that I shared her cause. But I couldn’t – because I didn’t think I did any longer.
‘We’re not here to help Daniel,’ I admitted. ‘But if you don’t help us, things may become worse for him.’
She looked at me with disgust. ‘You think you can blackmail me?’ she said. ‘I have nothing you can take. Nothing! Not even Daniel. I will not be forced against my will to do your bidding.’
I took out the Tokarev and leaned across the table.
‘I think you will.’
She didn’t avert her gaze. ‘Why must men always revert to violence?’ she said.
‘I believe you’ve met Mao. The answer’s in his book. “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.’
‘That is incorrect. It is political power…’
‘This is political.’
‘Shoot me, then,’ she said, in the same calm voice. ‘Shoot me with your gun. I don’t think your masters would look kindly on it.’ She glanced at Pritchard. ‘Do you approve of this behaviour?’
Without moving the pistol, I glanced over my shoulder at Pritchard. He adjusted his sunglasses and gave the slightest of nods, either in answer to her question or to tell me to carry on.
I carried on.
‘Tell me about the man who was meant to collect the rifle,’ I said, placing a touch more pressure on the pistol.
And then she reacted. It was just for a fraction of a moment, but her eyes flickered to a spot a few degrees above my head. And in that instant I thought I saw something she’d not wanted me to see: not exactly panic and not quite fear. Confusion? And then she was staring straight at me again, expressionless, as though it had never happened.
I turned to follow the line her eyes had taken. Pritchard. But why would she look at him? And then I noticed that something was hanging on the back of the door, directly behind him. A white sheet, it looked like.
I placed the gun back in its holster and walked over. Pritchard gave me a puzzled look, but stepped out of the way. I unhooked the sheet, and found it wasn’t a sheet at all. It was an apron. Embroidered on one sleeve was a small red cross. It also had a pocket across the front, out of which poked a small piece of white cloth, which I took out. A cap.
The roof of my mouth felt dry, and I could hear a drumming in my head.
They hadn’t been expecting a man to collect the rifle.
They’d been expecting a woman.
*
I didn’t find out how much more Abigail Thompson-Bola knew – perhaps it was just that there was a nurse’s apron hanging in the green room of her son’s nightclub. But even if she had known more, she wasn’t going to give it to me without a long struggle, and I didn’t have the time for that.
I had until Friday afternoon. Manning’s programme didn’t make clear the precise time the PM was due to arrive at the Red Cross camp in Udi, but the earliest it could be was half past two, so that was my deadline.
Anna had been due to pick up the rifle. She had been a Red Cross nurse in Germany; the assassin was to use the same cover. It couldn’t be coincidence, and explained several other things. Abigail’s odd glance at me when I had entered the green room of the Afrospot: she’d either been expecting a woman or wondered if I was her last-minute replacement, Golf Course Man. And why nobody had searched my room at the hotel, despite my doing everything to try to draw Anna out of the embassy. Because she wasn’t in the embassy, but three hundred and fifty miles away.
But there was a lot it didn’t explain. What had prevented Anna from picking up the rifle and the nurse’s uniform? Why the sudden change of plan? Perhaps she had found out Slavin was about to defect. Panicking that he knew about the plot to kill the PM, she had left for Udi early, leaving one of her team behind to dispose of Slavin and pick up the weapon and apron.
These were all grim thoughts, though, because her involvement in something of this magnitude suggested that she had not only known about the
plan to kill my father, but was more likely to have been the one to have pulled the trigger. I realized that a part of me had been harbouring the hope that she might have been almost as much of a pawn in the Germany operation as I had been. But this didn’t look like someone who could have been used in that way. This looked like a ruthless professional assassin.
Pritchard had realized the ramifications of the apron within seconds, of course – I’d bloody given him the file in which it stated her cover in ’45 had been as a nurse. That meant it was now more important than ever that I found her. Because if he got to her before I did, he had ample reason to put her in a room and squeeze her for everything she knew. And that meant I was dead.
As soon as we had left the club, Pritchard had headed for the High Commission with Manning to work on getting transportation to Udi, and had told me to check out of my hotel and get down to the Government Press Office in the centre of town to apply for a permit to fly to the front. We were due to meet back at the safe house for a progress report at 15.00 sharp.
It was now half past two. I had checked out of the hotel, but I hadn’t been to the press office and I wasn’t intending to go. Presuming that Anna had not changed her plans, there were now seventy-two hours on the clock, rather than forty-eight, but Pritchard had an awkward problem to solve: if he told London that the Prime Minister’s life was in danger, they’d cancel the trip and he’d lose his chance to find out how the plot related to Slavin’s defection. But any request for airborne transport would have to be cleared by the Federal side, and I already knew from Isabelle that the authority for that could take weeks. At any rate, they wouldn’t let me on board, not after a British newspaper had just accused the Nigerian air force of deliberately targeting Biafran civilians. There were tank convoys, of course, but Udi was a hell of a long way away. Even in peacetime, getting across a country like this could take a while. In the middle of a war, three days would be pushing it.
I’d thought of a better idea. I had disposed of the rifle, dismantling it and leaving it in the wardrobe of my hotel room. Then I had taken a taxi to the Agence France-Presse offices, which were housed in a concrete office block opposite one of the Arab embassies in Ikoyi. I told the driver to wait and rang the bell. A tanned Frenchman in shirtsleeves answered the door, and I told him I was looking for Isabelle Dumont.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘She has already left.’
‘Where from? What time was her departure?’
He smiled tolerantly – Isabelle and her lovers – and looked at his watch.
‘Three o’clock,’ he said. ‘From the main airport.’
I shook his hand and ran back over to the taxi.
*
Through one of the windows, I could see that the Nigeria Airways DC-4 that had been on the tarmac when I’d arrived on Monday was still there – or perhaps it was another DC-4. But just one soldier stood beside it now, and as I watched he threw his cigarette stub to the ground and began to climb the steps of the ladder.
‘That’s my plane,’ I told the customs official. ‘If it leaves, prepare to receive a very stern note from Government Office headquarters.’
He was a small man with an oversize cap and a neat row of pens in his shirt pocket. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘But I need to see your authorization before I can let you through.’
‘And I’ve already told you that I don’t bloody have it! It’s on the plane with my colleague, Isabelle Dumont. There was a mix-up at the office, and she left without me. Call the control tower, stop the plane and ask her if she works with Robert Kane – or you can say goodbye to any chance of promotion!’
Something in that lot – perhaps the idea he’d be stuck talking to the likes of me forever – penetrated, and he hurried off to a back office. I lit another cigarette – forget my silly game, my body needed the nicotine – and watched the plane.
It was starting to move. Damn it, he had to hurry. I wondered if I should go in there and make the call myself. The plane was taxiing towards the runway, and with it my chances of getting to Udi. I had no other plan. I’d have to sit it out and wait for Pritchard to arrange something, but the chances were that they would allow only him to go, and that would be it…
The plane stopped. The official beckoned me.
XIV
The inside of the plane looked just like the one I’d flown in from London, only the seats were filled with sombre-looking soldiers instead of diplomats and aid workers. But it still bore many of the markings of civilian travel, right down to the emergency information card and sick bag in the seat pockets.
‘Which division are we with?’ I asked Isabelle a few minutes after we had taken off.
She gave me a puzzled glance. ‘The first,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘No reason,’ I said. I stood up and placed my bag in the overhead locker. ‘Thanks again for your help, by the way – you needn’t have.’
‘It was nothing.’ She rummaged around in her bag until she had found a camera. ‘Take this,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘If you’re coming as my photographer, you may as well take some pictures. That’s a Nikon F – the best. Just point it at anything you think is interesting and press here.’
I strapped the camera around my neck and peered over at her window: the city was receding rapidly below us, the sun reflecting off the water as we swung inland.
‘So what brings you back to me?’ asked Isabelle. ‘What is your mission in Enugu?’
‘I’m not telling you that!’ I said. ‘I don’t want it all over the French papers tomorrow.’
She gave a short, indignant laugh. ‘So I risk my neck for you and you are not even gentleman enough to share with me the reason…’
There was a flirtatious upturn to her mouth, but anger lay just below the surface. She didn’t realize that my not telling her was protection, for both of us.
‘Perhaps later,’ I said, picking the tourist map from the seat pocket in front of me. ‘How long do you think it will take to reach Enugu?’ I asked. It was very close to Udi.
‘Get ready,’ she said.
I glanced over at her: she was looking down the aisle. I raised my head a little and saw that one of the soldiers was walking towards us. He was a tall, lanky fellow, and from the way the others stepped out of the way as he passed, I guessed he was in charge.
‘You are journalists?’ he asked when he reached us. He wore a thick, sweat-stained camouflage jacket with a grenade dangling from each pocket, and the word ‘GUNNER’ was written across his helmet in white paint.
‘Yes,’ said Isabelle. ‘I am a reporter.’
‘And I’m her photographer,’ I said, holding up the camera.
Gunner gave me a sharp look.
‘You are English?’
I nodded.
‘BBC?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re with a French agency—’
‘You want interview me?’
I looked at him – he seemed serious.
‘I’m sorry?’ I said.
‘Interview. I give you exclusive,’ he said.
I tried to explain that I was just Isabelle’s cameraman. ‘I don’t do interviews,’ I said.
He didn’t seem to hear, and gestured that I follow him. I glanced at Isabelle, who gave me a nod and passed me up a notebook and pen. I squeezed past her and followed Gunner down the aisle.
He was heading for the rear of the aircraft, which was partitioned off with a grubby green curtain. Behind it, the seats had been stripped out and the space had been filled with crates of AK-47s and ammunition, lashed to the floor with ropes. Gunner seated himself on the floor between a couple of the crates and waited for me to ask him a question.
I crouched down beside him. The only thing I really wanted to know was how long it would take for us to get to Enugu, and how I could get to Udi from there. But that obviously wouldn’t do. After a few seconds of silence, he gave me a look that indicated he wasn’t impressed with English journalism so far.
‘How l
ong do you think the war will last?’ I said – the first thing that had come into my mind.
He thought about this for a moment, and then replied solemnly: ‘Hopefully, it will end soon. But first we must finish it.’
I dutifully noted down this pearl of wisdom, and tried to think of another question that might satisfy him.
‘Do you think it is a just war?’
He looked up sharply.
‘Just?’ he snorted. ‘Of course. Ojukwu tried to break this country into pieces. But to keep Nigeria one is a job that must be done.’
He was parroting Federal slogans at me – I’d seen the last sentence on a poster on a street in Lagos just a couple of hours previously.
‘So you don’t think the Biafrans have a case for secession?’
‘What case?’ He leaned forward and made sure I met his gaze. ‘I am from the East. But I no agree with this so-called “secession”. It no serve the interests of our region, and it no serve the interests of Nigeria. It only serve Ojukwu and his rebel clique.’
‘You’re an Ibo?’ I said, surprised.
He held up one finger imperiously. ‘Please, Mister BBC Journalist, do me the courtesy of allowing me to finish. I am Ibibio. I no like this Biafra idea from start, so I go leave the East and join the army to help crush the rebel movement.’
‘That’s an excellent quote,’ I said, and he straightened his shoulders a little and jutted out his lower lip. ‘Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me.’ He looked disappointed, so I asked him his name and rank to round the thing off for him.
‘Captain Henry Alele,’ he said, proudly, and I noted it down. He looked at me expectantly.
‘And can I just ask, for our readers, how you got your nickname? Were you on anti-aircraft duty?’
