Three

by Justin D'Ath

  ‘Thank you, Sunday.’

  We went back afterwards to our hiding place. It felt safer there. If the keys were lost, mustbe someone had them. The person who shot Holly? I thought of Mustafa’s companion, the one I called AK-47 Man. I thought of the soldiers who said on the radio that she had been shot before they found her. Were they telling the truth? It did not matter really who had shot her. But one thing was true: Holly was lying in hospital with a bullet in her head because of me.

  To stop these thoughts, I asked Three about its leg.

  ‘Happen when fall off car,’ it said.

  Now I remembered how the brid had held one foot off the ground when it climbed out of the black van to chase me. All its other horrible injuries – the ones that needed bandages and stitches – had pushed that memory to the very back of my brain.

  ‘Where does it hurt?’ I asked.

  It pointed at the top of its leg.

  Three might not have been a regular baboon, but it was just as hairy. I put my fingertips softly-softly into the fur of its hip and felt a big, egg-shaped lump.

  You poor little guy, I thought.

  Injuries like this happened sometimes on the football field. I had seen them on two occasions. One was a dislocated shoulder, the other was a dislocated thumb. The shoulder was our fullback, Marcus Okoye. He had to go to hospital for surgery and was not back on the team for two months. But the thumb was not so bad. It was the goalkeeper of our number one rivals, the Nabozi Leopards. Their team’s physio popped the joint back in place right there on the field, then the Leopards’ goalkeeper kept playing like nothing had happened.

  I told Three about the thumb, but not the shoulder. I did not want to scare it.

  ‘Can Sunday fix?’ it asked.

  ‘I will try,’ I said. I hoped hip joints were like thumb joints. ‘You should have some Teledol first.’

  We talked about how many tablets Three should take. Last time it had taken six, but the stitches still had hurt.

  ‘Mightbe hundred?’ it asked.

  I wondered how good the brid truly was at understanding numbers. ‘There are only twenty-four in the packet,’ I said, reading the box.

  ‘Three have all.’

  ‘Twenty-four is too many.’ I emptied the box into my hand. There were four silver foil cards, but some of the tablets were gone. I counted how many remained: fourteen. Was it possible to overdose on Teledol?

  Then I remembered the grimace of pain on the goalkeeper’s face when his thumb had popped back in. And his physio had used painkiller spray.

  I broke all fourteen tablets from their foil wrappers and helped Three to swallow them one at a time between sips of baby formula from its mug.

  While we waited for the Teledol to work, I remembered the last time we had done this. Holly had been with us then. Aaaaee! How I wished I could go backwards in time! If I had a second chance, I would stop my brave girlfriend from going home until it was daylight and the curfew was over. I would stand in front of the door if I had to.

  I would hold her all night and keep her safe.

  Three yawned loudly and rolled its head sideways. I stared at the stitches that Holly had sewed into its neck after she took out the tiny silver bead that I had later destroyed, and a thought suddenly came into my head. If the transmitter was not in the backpack, then Mustafa would not have located the bag with his tracking device. So mightbe the backpack was still where I had left it, hidden beneath the broken-down matatu bus.

  With the bomb still inside it!

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked Three.

  ‘Bit sleepy,’ it said.

  ‘Good. The Teledol must be working. Can you wiggle close-close to the wall behind you?’

  I positioned the brid so its good hip was pressed against one of the big iron beams that were like the ribs of the warehouse. Kneeling on the floor beside it, I wrapped one hand around Three’s thigh, just down from the dislocated joint, and placed the palm of my other hand directly on the bony lump. Then I took a deep breath.

  And pushed.

  The other team’s goalkeeper had only grimaced in pain when their physio clicked his thumb back into place. Three screamed. It was a horrible sound, ear-rattling, like the cry of a little girl I saw on the way to school one day, when her foot was crushed under the wheel of an oxcart. But there was another sound also, that came half a heartbeat before Three screamed – the small pop of a hip bone going back into its socket.

  ‘I think it worked,’ I said in the silence that had followed both noises. ‘How does it feel, Three?’

  ‘Bad!’ A tear dribbled from the suicide bomber’s good eye. ‘Three hurt real bad.’

  ‘Sorry. I was hoping the Teledol would make a difference.’ I sat back on my heels. ‘Can you move your leg?’

  Three moved its leg, just a tiny twitch. ‘Still hurt.’

  ‘Do you mind if I check it?’

  It gritted its teeth. ‘Okay. But no more push.’

  I carefully parted the fur on its hip. There was still swelling, but the hard lump had disappeared. ‘I think it is fixed,’ I said. ‘Can you move it again?’

  Three slowly bent and unbent its leg.

  ‘Can you flex your ankle?’

  ‘What is flex?’

  ‘Bend your foot up and down.’

  It moved its foot.

  ‘Now wiggle it from side to side.’

  Three did as I asked.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘Still hurts.’

  ‘It will for a while, Three.’

  Marcus Okoye had not been able to kick a football for two months. But Three did not have to kick a football.

  It just had to deliver a bomb.

  24

  Please Stay Alive

  I had not taken much notice of the window in the bathroom, except when the bird had scared me. Now I took notice. Six bumpy glass louvres swivelled open when I pulled the little iron lever. Climbing onto the toilet lid, I checked to see what was outside. Not much – just the spiky top of a cyclone fence, almost at window level, then the corrugated iron wall of another warehouse, almost close enough to touch. But I could not touch it, because just outside the louvres was a cage of thick wire to stop thieves getting in.

  Sliding the louvres from their tilted metal slots, I stacked them on the floor next to the hand basin. Then I climbed back onto the toilet lid. The wire cage was held in place by eight six-sided iron nuts. With the shifting spanner I had used on the first night to smash the transmitter from Three’s neck, I removed all eight nuts. Then I turned the cage on an angle, so I could bring it in through the opening. I leaned it against the wall beside the toilet. Now I looked up at the empty window frame. It would be a tight fit, but I knew I could squeeze through.

  Back in the warehouse, I searched through the clothing bins until I found a dark-coloured hooded top, much like the one that Holly had worn on Friday night. (It did not help her! I thought.) The sleeves were too short, but that did not matter. Nobody would see me and think, How badly he dresses, the son of our president, because I no longer was that person. And nobody would see me anyway.

  My fingers were clumsy. It took me a few tries, in the fading light of the warehouse, to fit the two ends of the zipper together. It was a bit like the last few minutes before a football game, when you are waiting for the referee to blow his whistle. It is not nerves, it is not uncertainty, it is excitement. After three days in the warehouse, three days of feeling sad and lonely and helpless, at last I was about to do something!

  First I went back to our hiding place to check Holly’s phone for messages. It was on top of the stacked cartons. My drinking mug, my spoon and the jug of water were up there also. I had put my things high so Three could not reach them. It had its own mug, its own spoon (which it did not use), and I did not want it playing with the phone.

  I need not have worried. The brid was lying on its blankets, exactly where I had left it. Both its eyes were closed – the swollen one like always and the good
one also. Since mid-afternoon, when I fixed its hip, Three had not moved. Fourteen Teledol. I hoped that was not too many. What was it that Jessica had said? ‘. . . induced coma’. Did a person wake from one of those? Did a brid?

  I knelt and put two fingers near its nostrils and it was still breathing, praise God!

  I needed it to stay alive.

  When I pressed the button to wake up Holly’s phone, nothing happened. The screen stayed blank. Aaaaee! Now the phone was in a coma. I told myself it did not matter. Hearing news about Holly would make no difference: she would live or she would die, and there was nothing I could do about it. Just like there was nothing I could do about my dear parents.

  Except get revenge.

  Filling Three’s mug from the water jug, I placed it on the floor where the brid would find it if it woke up before I returned.

  ‘I will be back soon, Three,’ I whispered, in case it could hear.

  Before I left the warehouse, I shifted the stack of cartons back across the opening to our secret hiding place, so nobody would find Three if they came while I was gone. But I did not expect anyone to come. Not at night. Not during a curfew.

  And I would only be gone for a short time.

  25

  Countdown

  The dark, empty streets of the city under curfew were peaceful, like d’lawo but in a good way. It felt better than last Friday. Again there were no other people and the only vehicles were parked at the roadside, black and silent. But tonight a banana-shaped moon shone down on me. And the air was clean, there were many twinkling stars. A pinprick of light – either a space satellite or a very high jet-plane – moved slowly-slowly across the sky. Truly it felt nice to be out there under the banana moon, the moving light and all those stars. I felt more free than ever before in my life. Always there had been a bodyguard – Mr Nwosu or one of the others – walking close to me, his eyes alert for danger, the bulge of a gun beneath his jacket.

  True, there had been no bodyguard also on Friday, but I had not been fully alone – instead of a bodyguard with a gun, there was a brid with a bomb.

  I was going to send the bomb back. Not to Mustafa, but to the man he worked for – General Lionel Mbuti – to get revenge for the murder of my parents. But before I could do that, the suicide bomber must wake up.

  Were fourteen Teledol too many?

  Please do not die, Three, I spoke to it in my mind. Please wake up. I will make you well again. I will give you lots of food and many drinks of the baby formula that you like so much. I will make you strong.

  How long will it take for Three to heal enough? I wondered. Three days? Five days? A week? It did not matter. Only two things mattered: that Three did not die; and that nobody would come to the warehouse and find us before Three was ready.

  Mbuti could wait. A few more days in this life – even a week – was just an eye blink in the place where he was going. The countdown had started – tick, tick, tick, like a time bomb.

  Justice would be done.

  My journey to get the backpack – to go from the warehouse to the broken-down matatu bus and back – would take mightbe one hour, I thought. Or less, if I hurried. But I did not hurry. It was so nice to be out of the warehouse. So nice to feel free.

  It was this feeling of freedom that made me careless.

  There was the black shape of a truck parked at the roadside just ahead. It looked no different from all the other silent vehicles I had passed since leaving the warehouse.

  Until its headlights snapped on, its doors clunked open and a man shouted: ‘Put your hands above your head and don’t move a muscle!’

  For one second, mightbe two, I considered running. But I was caught like a desert hare in blinding headlights. And the voice that shouted did not sound like AK-47 Man or Mustafa. It was a deeper voice, with more authority. It was the voice of someone who gave orders to other men. A voice to be obeyed.

  Slowly I raised my hands.

  ‘Get down on your knees!’ the voice ordered. ‘Keep your hands raised!’

  A dreamlike sense of d’lawo fell over me again – but this time it felt bad – and I dropped to my knees on the hard, gritty asphalt. I knew then that my luck had run out.

  This time I was going to die.

  26

  Mr Basketball

  There were four of them. They were soldiers. They surrounded me with their shiny boots, their camouflage trousers and their big, threatening guns. The man in charge – the one who had shouted – wore the hat of an officer. Also he wore a tan armband that showed his loyalty to General ‘the Lion’ Mbuti. All four wore these.

  Using the short fat barrel of his Uzi sub-machine gun, the officer flipped back the loose hood of my top. ‘What are you doing outside?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you know there is a curfew?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . I am prom the north, suh,’ I said, pretending to have difficulty with the F and P sounds like someone from there. ‘I just got to the city this afternoon, suh. Where are all the feeples gone?’

  He ignored my question, but not my bad accent. ‘You don’t sound like a northerner.’

  ‘My village is not par, suh, only two days to walk. Most of us sfeak English, same as here.’

  ‘What are you doing in the city?’

  ‘I come to work at the oil refinery, suh. I am hard worker. I will send back the money to my farents.’

  The officer was silent for a moment. He seemed to believe my story. ‘Empty your pockets,’ he ordered.

  ‘Can I fut down my hands, suh?’

  ‘How else will you empty your pockets?’

  ‘Thank you, suh.’ I lowered my hands and turned the pockets of my hoody-top inside out. Nothing was in them.

  ‘Now your shorts’ pockets,’ he said.

  ‘They are basketball shorts, suh. They do not have fockets.’

  I heard one of the other soldiers laugh – mightbe at my silly accent. The officer turned to him. ‘What’s funny, Corporal?’

  ‘Nothing, Captain.’

  ‘Cuff him and bring him back to the truck.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  The corporal who had laughed was younger than the others. His uniform looked too big for him. He told me to put my hands behind my back. Then he looped a plastic cable tie around my wrists, zipping it so tight that it nearly cut my skin.

  ‘On your feet,’ he said.

  The captain stood waiting for us next to the truck. ‘Put him in the back, Corporal.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  To me, the captain said, ‘You are lucky we didn’t shoot you, Mr Basketball.’

  I did not mind being called Mr Basketball. As long as nobody called me Mr Football (or Magic Feet), there was still a chance that I might not die tonight.

  They took me to Police Headquarters, a square concrete-and-brick building on the west side of the city that I had driven past many times with my parents or with Mr Nwosu. It did not take long to drive there through the empty streets – mightbe fifteen minutes – but I was uncomfortable with my hands bound behind my back. Only the captain and the young corporal escorted me inside. I noticed that both policemen on duty wore the tan armbands of the Lion. While his senior officer filled out some paperwork at the front desk, the corporal and I were sent to wait in another room. There was a table and two chairs. The corporal closed the door and told me to sit down. He sat across from me and leaned over the table.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he whispered.

  It took me a moment to find my voice. ‘I am prom the north.’

  His eyes went narrow. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘Who you are,’ whispered the young corporal. He looked at the door, then lowered his voice even more. ‘You are Sunday Balewo.’

  My heart skipped. ‘Feeple say I look like him,’ I whispered. ‘But I am just a boy from a village in the north.’

  ‘What is the village called?’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘See!’ said
the corporal, a wide grin spreading across his face. ‘There is no village!’

  ‘There is. It does not have a name.’

  ‘You are lying.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘It is okay, Sunday, I will not tell anyone.’ The corporal’s eyes flicked down to the tan-coloured band on the arm of his too-big uniform. ‘A lot of us are sad about what happened to your father. He was not such a bad man.’

  He was not a bad man at all, I wanted to say. But that conversation could wait for another time. If there was another time. ‘What will they do to me?’

  ‘You broke curfew. I think they will lock you up.’

  ‘What will happen tomorrow?’ I asked nervously. Will they shoot me?

  ‘I think they will let you go.’ The corporal looked again at the closed door. ‘Captain Falana believes your story, I think.’

  There were footsteps out in the corridor. We both listened as they went clop clop clop past our door.

  ‘What will you do?’ asked the corporal.

  ‘If they let me go?’

  ‘Yes. If they let you go.’

  ‘I will get out of the city,’ I lied. Because I could not say the truth: I will blow up your commander-in-chief. ‘Then I will try to get out of the country.’

  ‘It is a sad thing.’ The corporal shook his head. ‘With you in the team, I reckon Zantuga had a chance to get to the World Cup finals. Mightbe we could even win it!’

  I shrugged. It was uncomfortable sitting with my hands bound behind my back. ‘We still might win,’ I said. ‘Akunyili was the top scorer in the African Cup last time.’

  ‘He is good in front of goal,’ the corporal agreed. ‘But he needs someone to feed him the ball.’

  ‘He has been getting better since they moved Mbanefo to left wing.’

  ‘True. But when they mark him man-to-man, he loses his cool.’

  I could not believe that we were having a football conversation after everything that had happened. But it was nice to talk to someone who was not a monkey.

  ‘Do you play?’ I asked.

  ‘Not anymore.’ The corporal looked shy. ‘Only when I was at school. I was never very good.’