Three

by Justin D'Ath

  ‘Nobody is very good until they get proper coaching.’

  ‘I bet you were always good,’ he said.

  ‘Not always,’ I said.

  We smiled at each other. In a different place and at another time, we might have been friends.

  ‘I am called Joseph,’ he said, pushing one hand across the table as if to shake mine; but then he realised that my wrists were tied and both of us became embarrassed.

  ‘I am sorry this has happened to you, Magic Feet.’

  Did he not understand that I was no longer Magic Feet? That my football career was over? That I no longer cared whether Zantuga did well in the World Cup? There were more important things in the world than kicking footballs. Matters of life and death.

  I said, ‘A girl got shot the other night for breaking curfew. Have you heard how she is, Joseph?’

  ‘The American girl?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know what happened to her?’

  ‘I am not supposed to talk about it,’ said Corporal Joseph.

  ‘Please,’ I begged him. ‘That girl went to my school. She was my . . . friend.’

  The young corporal bit his lip, as if he was thinking about what to say. He looked down at his hands. And when finally he spoke, his voice was different. ‘It was rebels that shot her,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘We found her lying on the road. We took her to the hospital.’

  Sweet Paradise! I thought. Corporal Joseph was one of the soldiers who had found Holly! But he was acting like someone who was not telling the whole truth. Or like someone who had something to hide.

  Suddenly I had a terrible thought. ‘She is not dead, is she?’

  He shook his head. ‘They got a doctor all the way from England to fix her.’

  ‘Did he fix her?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sunday. The operation was today.’

  I wanted to ask more, but once again there were footsteps in the corridor. This time they stopped outside the door and it opened. Captain Falana came in, followed by a different policeman. The new policeman used a pair of cutters to snip off the plastic cable-tie that secured my wrists. I asked if they were going to release me, but Captain Falana said that I would be held overnight in the cells and mightbe they would let me out in the morning.

  ‘When the curfew is over,’ he added, smiling at me for the first time.

  Then he patted me on the arm, like a father or an uncle – not like a soldier who had made me kneel on the road and threatened me with an Uzi sub-machine gun. ‘Good luck finding work, Mr Basketball,’ he said.

  Behind him, the young corporal, who knew me by another name, sent me a secret smile.

  27

  Cell

  They put me in a tiny cell. There was not even a bed. The policeman gave me a blanket, but it was itchy with bedbugs and I spent most of the night scratching and rolling around on the hard concrete floor.

  My mind was restless also. Would they really release me in the morning? Could I trust Corporal Joseph not to talk? Should I have told him that I planned to leave Zantuga? And was that really my plan? Chief of Police Kimutai had only been thinking about my safety when he had suggested it, but I could not imagine living in a faraway country called Australia, like Jessica had suggested. It would be a bit like dying.

  I told myself not to worry about it. For now, my plans did not go any further than getting even with General Mbuti.

  And this gave me a whole new set of things to worry about. All of them were connected to Three. What would the brid do if it woke up and found itself alone in the warehouse? Would it think that I had deserted it? Would it be sad, scared, hungry? And I should not have pushed the pile of cartons back across the entrance, trapping it in our hiding place. Also I should have left it an opened can of rice pudding, in case it was hungry when it woke up.

  But would it wake up at all, after swallowing fourteen Teledol tablets?

  It was strange. Even though Three was just an animal, sometimes I found myself thinking about it almost as if it was a human.

  And I was going to send it to its death.

  Is it any wonder that I hardly slept that night?

  A new policeman brought my breakfast. It was not much – two slices of cold toast with red jam and a mug of unsweetened tea – but I thanked him when he pushed the tray through the food slot in the barred door of my cell. I was very hungry.

  ‘Are they going to let me out today?’ I asked, pushing back my hood so I would not get food on it.

  The policeman did not answer straightaway. He just stared at me strangely, as if there was something on my face that should not have been there – a blob of jam mightbe, or a sticky crumb of toast – and I wiped my lips.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, still giving me that strange look.

  He left me to finish my breakfast. But he came back soon after with another policeman. This policeman was older. He had sergeant’s stripes. The younger policeman carried a sheet of A4 paper. There was something printed on one side, but I could not see it because he held the paper with its blank side facing my cell. Both men studied the paper, then they looked at me, then they looked again at the paper.

  And my mind took me back to Flag Raising last Friday. Three had sat on the wall overlooking the school quadrangle. It had held a piece of paper and it had kept looking at its piece of paper, then looking down at us in the quadrangle. ‘Cover your faces!’ Headmaster Okilo had shouted.

  Aaaaee!

  Wriggling my head slightly, I made my hood slip down almost to my eyes. But it was too late. The two policemen had seen my face.

  ‘What is your name?’ asked one.

  I said the first name that came into my head, that of the champion right-winger of Zantuga’s national football team: ‘Matyo Akunyili.’

  ‘Get that thing off your head,’ the sergeant ordered.

  I pushed the hood back, but not all the way.

  ‘You don’t look like Akunyili,’ he said. ‘You look more like that new one – the one they call Magic Boots.’

  ‘Magic Feet,’ the younger policeman corrected him quietly.

  ‘Magic Feet, yes.’ The older man nodded. ‘Who is also known as Sunday Balewo.’

  For the first time in my life, I wished we were not such a football crazy country. I shook the hood forward again. ‘I am not him,’ I said.

  But I did not sound convincing, even to myself.

  ‘Everybody’s been looking for you,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘I am not him,’ I repeated.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said. And he smiled. ‘Enjoy your breakfast, Mr Balewo.’

  Hiding inside my hood like a cowardly tortoise, I watched their feet walk away from my cell.

  And suddenly I was no longer hungry.

  When my jailers returned, mightbe forty-five minutes had passed. With them were the two soldiers who had brought me to the police station the previous evening.

  Captain Falana said, ‘You had us all fooled last night. I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Sunday Balewo.’

  One of the policemen unlocked my cell and Corporal Joseph (who had not been fooled last night) came in and silently looped a new cable-tie around my wrists. He pulled it tight – but not as tight as the night before – and walked me out into the corridor.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.

  It was Captain Falana who answered. ‘You are coming for a ride, Sunday Balewo. There is someone who very much wants to see you.’

  28

  The Lion

  It was not the same truck from the night before. This time we rode in the front of an open-topped army jeep. Corporal Joseph drove, I sat in the middle and Captain Falana sat on the other side of me. In the back stood a machine-gunner in full battle uniform. The huge machine gun was mounted on a tripod behind our seats. Its fat, cheese-grater barrel poked forward over my head. It felt like we were going to war – and truly that might have been better than where we were going.

  I knew who wanted to see me.

&
nbsp; When they marched me into the President’s office, the man I had once called Uncle was seated behind my father’s desk, calmly reading a newspaper. The desk was strewn with more newspapers. Some were spread open like the one in Mbuti’s hands; others were messily folded and tossed carelessly to one side. I had never seen my father’s desk so untidy.

  Mbuti wore a plain blue shirt with its sleeves rolled up and a pair of gold-framed reading glasses. At first, he acted as if he had not noticed me. We all stood watching him read the newspaper, waiting for him to look at us.

  Finally he took off his glasses, folded his newspaper and set it down next to a tray with a silver teapot and two familiar china cups on it, and looked me in the eye.

  ‘Good morning, Sunday,’ he said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  Without waiting for an answer, my parents’ murderer picked up the teapot and began pouring. ‘I hope you like Earl Grey. I find I’ve developed quite a taste for it lately.’

  I took a deep breath. The Earl Grey tea had belonged to my dear father. The cups had been a present to him from my dear mother. If my wrists had not been bound, and had Corporal Joseph not been gripping my elbow, I might have leapt across the desk like a wild baboon attacking a brid on a rooftop.

  It would have been the last thing I ever did.

  As well as the two soldiers who had brought me to my father’s office, there were four heavily armed guardsmen in the room. Two stood about a metre-and-a-half behind the desk, another guarded the door behind us and the fourth was over by the window. Even a baboon would have no chance.

  ‘I do not drink tea with murderers,’ I said. He was going to have me killed anyway, I thought, so why not speak my mind?

  Mbuti carefully set the teapot down. ‘Is there a murderer here?’ he asked. His gaze travelled slowly around the room, pausing for a second or two on each of his men, as if he expected one of them to confess to murder. When nobody said a word, his eyes came back to me.

  ‘Tell me who this murderer is, Sunday, and I will have him dealt with.’

  ‘It is you!’ I said through my rattling teeth. ‘You murdered my parents.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Mbuti raised his eyebrows in pretend surprise. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Everyone knows it.’

  Mbuti was silent for a few moments. As much as I hated him, I could see why many of my countrymen and women respected him. There was something about him that truly did remind me of a lion. Something powerful. Something dangerous. So it did not really work, now, when he tried to look offended.

  ‘I am disappointed that you think so poorly of me, Sunday,’ he rumbled (even his voice was lion-like). ‘But the fact of the matter is –’

  I tried to interrupt, but Mbuti cut me off with a silencing gesture of his big right hand.

  ‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘The fact of the matter is, your parents’ murders have been dealt with. I dealt with them, Sunday. You should be thanking me, not accusing me.’

  I certainly was not going to thank him. I no longer believed a word that this man said. But he had made me curious. I peered at one of the newspapers – not the one Mbuti had been reading, but one closer to my side of the desk – and the words seemed to be in another language.

  ‘Who were the murderers?’ I asked.

  ‘Rebels.’ Mbuti sipped his tea. ‘They were led by Solomon Kimutai, the former Chief of Police.’

  ‘That is ridiculous!’ I scoffed. ‘Mr Kimutai was the one who had me picked up from school. He sent two undercover policemen to rescue me.’

  He was also your friend, I was tempted to add. You played golf with him and Baba every Saturday.

  ‘Kimutai sent those men to kidnap you, not to rescue you,’ Mbuti said.

  Then he explained how his men, the ones in the black van, had chased after us to rescue me, killing my two kidnappers in the process. But I had run away before they could explain who they were.

  ‘What about the monkey?’ I asked.

  ‘The monkey was merely a decoy. Kimutai’s men brought it with them to the school so your headmaster would think you were in danger and allow them to take you away.’

  ‘It had a bomb.’

  ‘There was no bomb,’ Mbuti said. ‘It was just a monkey wearing an empty backpack.’

  His eyes twinkled with silent laughter. ‘Who would trust a monkey with a bomb, ne?’

  For a moment, I could think of nothing to say. Despite everything that had happened over the past few days, doubts were beginning to tangle my thoughts. Suddenly I realised that not once had I actually looked inside Three’s backpack.

  ‘What about the monkey that killed my parents?’ I asked.

  ‘A mortar bomb,’ said the general. ‘Fired over the palace walls by Kimutai’s rebels. All these stories about suicide bomber monkeys are complete and utter nonsense!’

  He spoke with such lion-like authority that I almost found myself believing him. Almost, but not quite. Deep down, I knew he was lying. If the men in the black van truly had been trying to save me, why had they shot the Mercedes full of bullets when they must have known I was still inside it? And if Three was just a decoy, why had they patched it up after it fell off the Mercedes and then sent it after me again?

  What Mbuti did not know (and what I certainly was not going to tell him) was that I had spent the last three days in Three’s company. The creature was much more than ‘just a monkey’. It could talk! And it had told me who had sent it – a white man named Mustafa, who worked for the man sitting across the desk from me, sipping my father’s Earl Grey tea from a bone china cup my mother had given him for their twentieth wedding anniversary.

  Mbuti also did not know that I had been in phone contact with the former Chief of Police after all this started. And his version of events was much more believable than the general’s.

  ‘What happened to Mr Kimutai?’ I asked.

  ‘There was a shoot-out.’ Mbuti shook his head and sighed. ‘He wouldn’t let us take him alive.’

  Now I knew why Mr Kimutai had not phoned back. He was dead like the dark-glasses men. All three men had died trying to save me! It was very hard to hide my feelings.

  Keeping my voice as steady as possible, I asked, ‘If all the rebels are dead, why is there a curfew? Why are there soldiers everywhere?’

  Why are you sitting in the President’s office, acting like you own it?

  Mbuti leaned forward. ‘You must understand, Sunday, that this is a dangerous time for Zantuga. We are only a small country, but we have great riches – more oil even than Saudi Arabia – and there are those who want to come and take it from us. That traitor Kimutai wasn’t acting alone – he had help from our enemies across the border.’

  ‘Which border?’ I asked.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Mbuti. ‘That is why we must be vigilant, why we in Zantuga must be united and strong. Your father – may he rest in peace – was a greatly respected leader, Sunday. But now he is no longer here to protect our borders, and our enemies are watching us like a pack of hungry hyenas. They are hoping to see signs of weakness, signs of civil unrest, signs of brother turning against brother. If they believe we are no longer united and strong, they will come and steal our oil. Only the army can stop them.’

  Here Mbuti spread his hands. ‘And I control the army.’

  At that, the man they called the Lion fell silent. He sat staring at me across my murdered father’s desk. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something – mightbe, Only you can save Zantuga, Uncle, so it is okay for you to sit there – but I did not say it. I did not say anything. Surely he knew that there was nothing I could do to stop him, so why did he seem to want my approval? And what difference did it make what I said, since he was going to have me killed anyway?

  Then a thought flashed into my head: mightbe Mbuti was not going to have me killed, after all! Mightbe he was not looking for my approval! Mighbe he had brought me here for another reason altogether.

  I had no idea what that reason could
be, but suddenly I saw the truth of it in Mbuti’s eyes. He wanted something from me.

  And that shifted the power from his side of the presidential desk to mine.

  ‘Can someone please cut this thing off my wrists?’ I said. ‘How am I supposed to drink a cup of tea, if my hands are tied behind my back?’

  29

  Superstar

  Mbuti sent everyone out of the office except for the guardsman over by the window.

  ‘That one doesn’t speak English,’ he explained. ‘We can talk man-to-man.’

  I was sitting in one of the wing-backed chairs usually reserved for heads of state and other important visitors to the President’s office. My recently freed hands cradled a steaming bone china cup that rattled slightly in its saucer.

  ‘So, talk,’ I said.

  Mbuti seemed amused by this. He took another sip from his own cup. ‘Are you a patriot, Sunday?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He placed his cup carefully in its saucer, then looked me in the eye. ‘Because your country needs you.’

  For a second or two, I could think of nothing to say. Had I been wrong about him? Did he want me to be president?

  ‘I . . . um . . . aren’t I a bit too young?’ I stammered.

  The general winked. ‘It’s true that your father might have pulled a few strings, but I think you’re ready.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Already they are calling you Africa’s Pelé.’

  What did that have to do with it? Many people believed that Pelé mightbe was the greatest football player ever, but I did not think that he became president of his homeland, Brazil.

  ‘What about Mr Sekibo?’ I said, naming one of my father’s other Big Men. ‘He looked after everything that time Baba had a heart attack.’

  Now it was Mbuti’s turn to seem puzzled. ‘It must be twenty years since old Freddy played football. I doubt if he could even kick one now. We’d be a laughing stock!’

  Slowly-slowly, understanding came to me. ‘You want me to play football?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we are talking about?’ asked Mbuti.