Three

by Justin D'Ath

  A spiderweb of fine cracks had turned the windscreen silver. There was a tiny, bullet-sized hole right in the middle. On the other side was empty sky.

  The baboon had disappeared.

  I twisted round to see where it had gone. The man in the back seat had twisted round, too. I had to giraffe my neck to see over his shoulder. Five or six car lengths behind us, our would-be killer lay sprawled in the middle of a wide intersection.

  I felt a rush of victory, like I had just scored the winning goal in a game of football.

  Sunday Balewo: 1; Baboon: nil.

  But there was nothing to celebrate. My parents were still dead.

  The man in the back seat muttered under his breath. A big black van had come shooting out of a side street. It went flying across the intersection, straight towards the baboon.

  Aaaaee! The baboon was still wearing its bomb!

  Bang!

  I jumped. But the noise was not a bomb – the van had stopped just before reaching the baboon and its deadly backpack. And I realised the bang had come from the wrong direction. I turned quickly to look. There was a football-sized hole in our windscreen, directly in front of the driver. He must have punched through the cracked glass so he could see where he was driving.

  ‘You could have killed us,’ he growled.

  ‘I shot the baboon.’

  ‘Give me the gun,’ said the man in the back seat. I handed it over. Both men seemed angry with me. What was their problem? Hadn’t I just saved our lives?

  ‘Do your seatbelt up,’ the driver commanded.

  I clicked it into place. My hands were shaking. My mouth felt dry. Nothing made sense. In my mind, I could still see the expression in the baboon’s weird blue eyes moments before I shot it.

  A look of total confusion.

  I asked, ‘Was it baboons like that one that killed my parents?’

  The driver licked a bead of blood off his knuckle where he had lost some skin punching out the windscreen. ‘One baboon,’ he said. ‘We think the First Lady was collateral.’

  Collateral. As if she was a thing, not a person. O Ama! I took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘But I am a target, right?’

  The driver slowed the Mercedes and turned left into an unmarked side street. ‘True. You were next in line for the presi–’

  He hit the brakes. I was thrown forward against my seatbelt as the Mercedes skidded to a halt. And the driver’s unfinished sentence buzzed around in my head like a hornet in a bottle.

  Next in line for the presidency?

  But there were more urgent things to worry about right now.

  Like: why had we stopped?

  And: why so suddenly?

  My side of the windscreen was all silvery cracks, impossible to see through. I leaned over to look through the hole on the driver’s side.

  ‘Get down out of sight!’ he hissed.

  I did not have to be told. Rattling up the narrow street towards us was a huge brown and green army tank, escorted by two columns of soldiers on bicycles.

  Tyres squealing, the Mercedes reversed flat out around the corner back into Adelo Road.

  ‘Do you think they saw us?’ the man in the back seat asked, as soon as we were out of sight.

  ‘Of course they saw us!’ snapped the driver.

  I raised my head cautiously. ‘Those were not rebels.’

  ‘It depends whose side you are on,’ said the man behind me.

  The driver performed a quick U-turn, then took us speeding back along Adelo Road the way we had come.

  ‘What is going on?’ I asked. ‘They were soldiers.’

  Neither man said anything. The one next to me was concentrating on driving; the one behind me peered out through the rear window with the silver pistol raised. (As if a pistol would be any use against two dozen soldiers and a tank.) We came to another intersection and made a hard left turn.

  ‘Things have changed,’ the driver said finally. He slowed to make another turn – right, this time. ‘There has been a coup d’état. Mbuti has seized control of the government.’

  I felt my eyes go big and my mouth drop open. ‘Not General Mbuti?’

  ‘Yes. The Lion.’

  That was what he liked to be called. His proper name was General Lionel Mbuti and he was one of my father’s Big Men. Had been one of my father’s Big Men. How could he have turned against Baba? It was Baba who had sent him overseas to study at an American university, and Baba who had put him in charge of the Army when Mbuti returned from America three years later. They played golf together every Saturday morning.

  I had thought they were friends.

  I had thought General Mbuti and I were friends!

  Hadn’t he invited me to call him Uncle Lionel when I was a boy? Hadn’t he attended my coming of age when I turned thirteen? Hadn’t he sent me a genuine World Cup football, along with a handwritten note of congratulations, when I was selected for the national squad last month?

  I wet my lips. ‘Are the baboons his?’

  ‘They were his idea, it would seem,’ said the driver. ‘We don’t know who trained them.’

  ‘How did you know one was coming after me?’

  ‘We had a tip-off.’

  ‘Who from?’ I asked.

  The driver slowed to take another corner. ‘The caller didn’t identify himself. He phoned the American Embassy and they got in touch with us.’

  ‘Why didn’t someone tell my father?’

  ‘The call came after the first bomb blast,’ the driver explained. ‘We only just got to you in time.’

  I thought of the crowded quadrangle at school. How not just I would have died, but all my fellow students as well.

  Everyone except Holly Parr, who had not attended school that day.

  ‘Why did he phone the Americans?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose he did not know who else to trust,’ the driver answered carefully. ‘The American Embassy staff are not involved in our politics.’

  They are now, I thought. By passing on the message about the second bomb, the Americans had saved my life.

  Was I really next in line for the presidency of my country? My father had never mentioned it. He was President for Life; I had assumed that he would live forever. I took a couple of slow, deep breaths to keep myself calm.

  ‘You men aren’t really bodyguards, are you?’

  ‘We work for Mr Kimutai,’ the driver said.

  Mr Kimutai was the Chief of Police. My two companions must have been undercover policemen.

  ‘Thank you for rescuing me,’ I said.

  ‘It is a privilege, Sunday.’

  This was the first time either of them had used my name. Now I realised that they had not been angry with me for shooting at the baboon; they had just been worried about my safety. It was their job to keep the future president of Zantuga alive.

  But I did not want to be president – I wanted to play professional football. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  We turned down another deserted backstreet. It was strange how there was no other traffic. There were no other people, either. It was like a ghost city.

  But things were about to change.

  The man in the back seat, who had been peering out the rear window while the driver and I talked, said softly, ‘We are being followed.’

  I twisted round and saw a big black van about a block and a half behind us – the same van that had nearly run over the baboon and the bomb. And it was really flying.

  ‘Brace yourselves!’ said the driver and spun the steering wheel violently.

  We turned so sharply that I was thrown sideways against my door. Tyres squealing, the Mercedes veered across the road. What was he doing? Was he crazy? All I could see through the spiderwebbed glass was a shadowy cliff of tall buildings rushing towards us, getting bigger, bigger, bigger . . .

  We were going to smash straight into them!

  CRUNCH!

  The jolt caused the whole spiderweb to collapse
. Tiny pebbles of glass fell all over me. Now I could see out. Instead of smashing into a cliff of buildings, we had bounced up over the footpath and plunged into an alley. Aaaaee! The driver was as mad as a tizzy bird!

  The alley was too narrow for our car. Both its side mirrors had been smashed off by the walls on either side. Yellow sparks flew past the Mercedes’ windows as its metal bodywork scraped along the bricks. The noise was very loud. So loud that I did not hear the other sound at first. The driver was steering with one hand. The heel of his other hand was pressed flat against the horn button, making a long, continuous wail, like a mortar-warning siren: HOOOOOT!

  Thirty metres in front of the Mercedes, running fast-fast away from us (but not fast enough) were two skinny boys. I held my breath as the distance narrowed to twenty metres, to fifteen, to ten. When it seemed that we were about to run them down, the driver braked gently, allowing the boys to duck into a doorway on one side. Then he hit the gas again and we shot past their big, startled eyes in a whirl of sparks and noise and brick dust.

  Seconds later, the Mercedes burst out into a wide, empty street. It was a T-junction, so we could not continue straight ahead. We skidded to a stop in the middle of the intersection. The driver’s head turned right and left.

  ‘Which way?’ he asked.

  I did not know where we were, but I knew the way I would go.

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Left,’ said the man in the back seat. ‘They will not expect us to double back.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said the driver.

  Both men acted as if I had not spoken. But they should have listened. As soon as we turned left, the black van came rushing out of a side street about a hundred metres ahead of us.

  And swung in our direction.

  We slammed to a stop once more. The driver swore in bush dialect. His voice was scared. He pulled at the gear stick and the engine stalled.

  ‘Push the clutch in!’ cried the man in the back seat.

  The van had stopped also. A distance of half-a-football-pitch separated the two stationary vehicles. Our driver was still struggling to restart the Mercedes. The van’s front doors flapped open and two men jumped out. Both wore suits and dark glasses like my two companions. One had a small black pistol, the other had an AK-47 assault rifle. Crouching next to their black van, they began firing at us.

  BAM! BAM! BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP!

  The Mercedes shook as a deafening hail of bullets slammed into its grill, its headlights, its bodywork.

  ‘GET DOWN!’ yelled the man in the back seat.

  I didn’t need to be told. But my hands were shaking so badly that I could not release my seatbelt.

  Never in my life had I been so afraid!

  The driver next to me was still trying to start the engine. He was turning the key and pushing the pedals. But the engine would not start. There was a strong smell of petrol. A cloud of steam rose from under the bonnet.

  BOP-BOP-BOP! BAM-BAM! went the guns of our attackers.

  I heard other noises behind me. A door creaked open. The man from the back seat went charging past my window, firing his pistol as he ran.

  BAM! BAM! BAM-BAM!

  It was very brave and very foolish. He did not have a chance. Not against two men with guns. Not against an AK-47.

  BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP!

  At last I got my seatbelt undone. I ducked below the dashboard.

  ‘Sunday . . .’

  The driver was slumped sideways in his seat, with his face turned towards me. His dark glasses had slid down his nose, revealing his eyes for the first time. They seemed to stare right through me. He was trying to remove something from his coat pocket, but his fingers were shaking and clumsy. Gently I moved his hand to one side. In the bottom of the deep pocket, among several sharp-edged pebbles of glass, I found a small mobile phone. I held it up for the driver to see.

  ‘Is this what you are looking for?’

  His lips moved, but I could not hear what he was saying through the gunfire. I had to lean closer.

  ‘Call . . . Kimutai . . .’ he breathed.

  Then it was just me alive in the wrecked Mercedes.

  A burn of spew rose in my throat as I slipped the little phone into my shirt pocket. Not even the Chief of Police could help the man in the seat next to me now. With trembling fingers, I repositioned the dark glasses so they covered his sightless eyes.

  The gunfire had stopped. The only sound was the hiss of a deflating tyre. Slowly I raised my head and peeked over the glass-strewn dashboard. Halfway between the Mercedes and the black van, the man from the back seat lay motionless on the road. One of our attackers was down too, but the other man seemed unhurt. Crouched behind one of the van’s open doors, he was fumbling with his AK-47. It must have jammed. Now was my chance to jump out of the car and run for my life.

  But I just sat there, frozen by fear. I felt like that foolish desert mouse in the bedtime story my Baba used to tell me when I was little.

  Seeing the stalking cobra, it cannot move a muscle.

  And things in my world were about to get worse.

  Now that the shooting had stopped, there was further movement inside the van. The gunmen were not alone. I saw two heads rise into view. They were barely visible in the back of the van, but I could see that one of them was white. The other was not. Aaaaee! When I saw the second face more clearly, my blood turned to ice.

  There is a word in traditional language d’lawo, which means real and unreal, both at the same time – sort of like you are having a dream when you are awake. That is how I felt as I watched a small, not-quite-human figure climb out of the open van door next to the man with the jammed AK-47.

  The baboon’s head was heavily bandaged, but it still wore its muzzle and backpack. And in its pale eyes was that same look I had seen through the Mercedes’ windscreen – the Found you, now I am going to kill you look.

  But first it would have to get close enough to its target for the bomb to do its work.

  When the baboon started towards me, I saw immediately that something was wrong. It was moving awkwardly, keeping one rear foot clear of the ground, as if putting weight on it caused pain. Seeing that – realising that my enemy could not walk properly – shook me out of my trance.

  It was not a cobra, and I was not a mouse.

  Shoving open my door, I slid out of the car and ran fast-fast in the other direction.

  4

  Lion Feeple?

  How could the baboon still be alive? I wondered.

  My head was filled with a dreamy sense of d’lawo. Hadn’t I shot it from point-blank range?

  The windscreen must have deflected the bullet. Or did the swerving motion of the Mercedes spoil my aim? Whatever the reason, it seemed I had only injured the cursed creature, not killed it. And one of the men in the black van – mightbe the white man I had glimpsed in the back – must have patched it up with bandages.

  But he had not fixed its foot; and that gave me hope as I ran for my life.

  Baboons have two arms and two legs like humans, but they use all four to run. So they are faster. But this baboon was reduced to three legs. And I was fast for a human – the press and my country-people did not call me Magic Feet for no reason. In truth, I was not given that name for my speed, but for my agility: once I had possession of the ball, it was hard for other players to claim it from me without fouling. But today was not about football, it was about staying alive. I was being chased by a baboon that was a suicide bomber – fouling me was what it wanted.

  Fouling me with a bomb! Aaaaee!

  I glanced over my shoulder. Even with only three legs, the baboon was gaining ground. My magic feet were not going to save me.

  Use your brain, Sunday, I told myself. If you cannot outrun it, you will have to out-think it. Humans are smarter than monkeys, ne?

  But this was no ordinary monkey.

  I ducked into the same alley that the Mercedes had squeezed through coming the other way. How h
ad it fit? Had I spread my arms wide, my fingertips might have touched the sides. High above me, lines of washing hung from ropes strung from building to building. People lived up there. They were apartments. Surely someone would hide me if I asked? But who could I ask? There were no windows at ground level and all the doors were locked.

  But one door had a button. I pressed it and heard a bell ring faintly inside. Hurry up, hurry up! My heart jumped like a trapped frog as I waited for someone to come. The baboon could not be far away. At any moment, it would come limping around the corner into the alley.

  How close would it have to get?

  I was about to press the bell again, when I heard a noise behind me. I spun around. Directly across the alley, another door had cracked open about three centimetres. Someone peeped out through the gap. As soon as our eyes met, the door started to close.

  My feet are not truly magic, but only a baboon (with four good legs) could have crossed that alley faster. The flats of my hands slammed into the door before three centimetres became none.

  ‘Please let me in!’ I cried, but the person on the other side did not listen.

  There was a pushing contest and I was stronger. The gap grew larger: six, twelve, twenty centimetres. When it was wide enough, I barged in and quickly closed and locked the door behind me.

  Praise God!

  It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. I found myself in a long, dim passage with numbered doors on both sides. Facing me, looking scared but brave, stood an old woman in a faded orange bush-gown and a matching orange headwrap.

  ‘I greet you, mah,’ I said, bowing my head. ‘I am sorry if I scared you.’

  The fear left her face when she noticed my school uniform. ‘You do not live here.’

  ‘No, mah. But there were men with guns. I feared for my life.’

  I did not mention the baboon; some instinct warned me not to say too much.

  ‘It Lion feeple?’ asked the old woman.

  She had a strong northern accent. Northerners have difficulty with the English P and F sounds; often they muddle them up. It took me a few moments to understand what she had meant to say: Is it the Lion’s people?

  ‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘They did not look like soldiers.’