Kolo shuffled papers from his in-tray to a pending folder. He listened to the ceiling, sure he could hear pipes trickling with water, about to burst over him.
The intercom buzzed. Kolo jumped.
“Police to see you, sir,” his aide said.
“Bring.”
The three killers selected by the inspector general walked in, dressed in shirts and ties, accompanied by seven officers. Kolo kept them standing as the aide backed out of the room.
“Worraps?” the ugliest one asked him, hitching up his trousers and lowering a baseball cap over his eyes.
The president of Nigeria’s mouth froze open. Had the inspector general selected the bushest men in Nigeria? Ogbe Kolo put much stock in social codes and ritualized forms of greeting. He detested those who sank to the familiarity of “Worraps?” The insolence astounded him. Still, what could you expect from killers? Manners?
He looked them over with disgust. His eyes focused on the tallest of the trio, an attractive man with a handsome smile, perhaps too unctuous? To his left stood a small bundle of repugnance, the ugliest man Kolo had ever seen, his face riddled with poisons and exploding with pustules. To his right, a man on the verge of an eruption: hulking, taut, his red eyeballs full of rage and hate.
“News?” Kolo looked at the tallest when he spoke.
“We have penetrated the organization,” the tallest man replied in a charming voice, melodious and untroubled. “The head man is Femi Jegede.”
Idiots. “I am aware of that.” Kolo sat more erect.
The man smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, perhaps in apology, perhaps insolence. “We are now within his inner sanctum.”
“You mean coterie. Good.” Kolo looked at his nails, selected one and started biting. “Well?” He looked at the fierce man, who had not spoken.
“We can bring you the body,” the ugly one answered on his comrade’s behalf. “No problem.”
The fierce man kept staring at Kolo, silent.
“So?” Kolo asked. “Where is it?”
“Still alive. Body no go help, sah.” The ugly one rubbed his shirt as if to warm himself up.
“Why not?”
“The people dey make trouble. Jegede just give match. Na the people who dey light the match. Understand?”
“The people?” Kolo yelped. “What people?”
“Everyone. Farmer, market woman, mechanic, palm wine tapper, even thief people.” The ugly man’s teeth were chattering in the air conditioning, which was working well.
Kolo’s felt a pain shoot up his arm. “Heart attack!” he screamed.
The three men turned to run.
“No! Wait!” he yelled.
The trio stopped.
Kolo felt his pulse. The pain subsided. He took four aspirin, grumbling, “Three heart attacks in one month. What next?”
He snapped his fingers, ordering the trio to follow him. Accompanied by the presidential guard, they walked along long corridors and down three flights of stairs until they reached the bowels of the building. He shepherded them to a broom cupboard, where he could be certain enemies had not secreted bugging devices or cameras.
Kolo turned on a bare bulb. It served only to highlight the boils and sores on the ugly man’s face. Within seconds, Kolo unlocked the door to let in a crack of air so their stinking body odour would not suffocate him.
“Kill Jegede,” Kolo ordered. “But be careful-oh! It must look as if his own organization killed him. Don’t bring any wahala on my head. One week. Go.” He waved them away.
“E no easy.” The ugly man refused to move. “The people fit kill us.”
“We can kill the man, five minutes, no problem.” Even in this harsh light, the tall man’s face radiated a serene beauty. “But his corpse will bring more wahala if it is dead. People will want some crime scene investigation, LA-style. Latex glove will point at you. We need timing.”
He had obviously watched too much American television, yet his words made sense. Kolo looked at his nails again, selected another one and began biting. “Okay. Find timing. But remember: faster service, better money.”
“Okay. Like corporate bonus.”
“No more than three months. Understand? Go.” Kolo slammed the door and left the trio in the broom cupboard, hoping these fools did not operate on Naija time. If so, three months could mean a year.
As the presidential guard turned left, he hopped to the right, then dodged around a corner. If one of them had been paid to kill him, they would have to find a less intelligent target. He smiled as he made his way up the back stairs to his office.
He heard water dripping. His smile faded. He checked the ceiling. No leaks. He put his ear to the wall. The drip grew into a trickle, then a stream. Suddenly he heard splashing sounds, a struggle, gurgling, muffled pleas for help. His brother’s voice. He put his hands to his ears and sprinted to his office, hardly able to breathe.
In the heat of Ottawa’s summer, Barbara worked from home, in her garden, sitting in a deck chair, airing her feet. The flowers had thrown off their green cloaks, stepping out in exuberant style. Behind their petals, they had dabbed perfumes of differing qualities. Some, unable to contain their need for attention, had splashed on ostentatious scents. Others, wishing to maintain the elitism rampant in the world of flora, aimed for an elegant perfume. Still others, peeking shyly from behind a veil of leaves, left subtle traces of fragrance that only the most refined nasal passages could detect.
With the perfumes came the clothing. Here, subtlety was cast aside, as the flowers elbowed out the competition with increasingly brash and garish guise: large, outmoded bonnets of flamboyant pink, wide petticoats of banana yellow, ridiculous shawls of dramatic purple, all manner of unnecessary frills and flounces. It mattered little how much they clashed, only that they could attract enough attention to ensure their continued presence on earth. This extravagant rivalry seemed to mirror Barbara’s universe. If Femi managed to captivate the public’s interest, he could ensure his survival too.
With an officious sense of purpose, Barbara opened one of many newspapers piled up next to her chair. As a neighbour watched her studying the newsprint, she flapped the paper to straighten it. Journalists supported Femi with unswerving, undeviating veneration: “Jegede: The Gandhi of Nigeria.” She smiled with pride, mixed with a pang of jealousy.
Not in the least tanned from his foray into the tropics, Beano returned in good spirits, save for a stomach bug that left him somewhat fatigued and addle-headed. He parked his bike in his office and bounced towards the weekly meeting with a slight fever.
Outside the room, Mary detained him. “How was the trip?” She peered at him through thin eyelashes.
“Rain! Storming down! I thought I’d see Noah’s ark coming around the corner.”
“Yeah, it’s the rainy season over there.”
The monotony of her voice threw Beano into a state of incomprehension. How did she manage to get up in the morning, let alone function?
“I was wondering less about the weather,” she continued, “than the trip itself.”
He transported his face into its dimples. “Aw, sorry. How dumb! The dam, right? That’s only slightly behind schedule. It’s mainly the payola, the tempo over there, the lack of industrialization, the insurgents.”
“The terrorists?”
“Right. The terrorists. Other than that …” He shrugged. He could not read her reaction. He was not sure she had produced one.
Just then, Sinclair pushed past them.
“How’r you doin’?” Beano queried.
Two rows of white enamel sparked into life, aimed in Beano’s direction. “Dangerously well. And you? How’d the trip go?”
“Dangerously wet. Had to swim to catch a taxi, with an embarrassing lapse into breaststroke.”
Sinclair threw his head back and laughed, completely out of proportion to the joke. He slapped Beano on the back and stalked into the conference room without asking any further questions.
In the meeting, Sinclair spoke only of other projects, the ones keeping his job afloat in the short term.
Resembling the eagle he delighted in sporting on his bolo, Cheeseman circled like a bird of prey over another area ripe for the picking, his attention drawn by the East Africa team to the outflow of Victoria Lake in Uganda.
Silence had descended over the Niger River project; this could only mean that Sinclair and Glass had navigated through new waters to reach their personal deltas, Sinclair having apparently cut Beano adrift in the process.
TWENTY-THREE
Proving a Negative
Flimsy barbed wire fencing protected TransAqua’s dam site at Kainji. Femi walked the perimeter, his eyes tracking its course. It seemed such an inconsequential barrier-it was not even as thick as a finger-yet it represented an obstacle protected by hidden forces. This insubstantial line demarcated a conversion from public and private, from outside to inside. Within its boundaries lay the vast networks of international business, shielded by the full weight of the law, government and the armed forces.
TransAqua’s private army, comprised mainly of former Nigerian military personnel, guarded the enclave whose separate infrastructure cauterized the wound of living within the developing world. It cleaved to all the amenities that the West took for granted: uninterrupted power supply, clean water that flowed from taps, working telephone lines, computers, air conditioning and cable television. It housed not only the corporation’s local headquarters but white houses of differing sizes for the foreign staff, surrounded by well-kempt lawns featuring all manner of ribald flora.
Having scouted the periphery of this citadel, Femi realized he could not enter the sanctum without a pass recognized by a series of high-tech electronic devices. He considered other options. He scanned the distant row of buses waiting to shuttle personnel from the site back to the closest town, twenty miles away.
A bird needs wings to fly, he thought as the sun skidded across his eyelashes, making him blink. So why not cut off its feathers? He contemplated for a while, considering not only methods but implications.
The three new recruits were waiting at a farmstead hut that belonged to a sympathizer. Femi returned with a plan: “We phone a bomb threat.”
Uncharacteristically, Lance reacted with an explosive impatience. “So why did you make me launch new threads to come? I have a cell. I don’t need to find my pulse in this city!”
Igwe pulled down his glasses and peered over them at Lance as a gesture of reprimand.
“Dat na question? Use your sense, joh!” Femi boomed. “Once job finish, we can watch you use your cell. But before, we need to show we can stroll the place at any time. So we target bus and—”
Yussef interrupted, “Why bus?”
“Bus only require pass; building require strip naked ID and consultation with forensic scientist each time you show face.”
Lance settled back into a pacific composure. “Eh-heh. So we go for D & C! Detonate and celebrate.”
“Yes, but we no wan’ risk worker life. So we go plant firecracker.”
“Are you joking?” Ekong glowered. “You wan’ use toy? Are you serious? Make we bring skipping rope too?”
Unruffled by War’s volatility, Femi threw his eyes to the sky with impatience and theatrically turned to Igwe. “I beg, don’t let him make me spark.” He then rotated back to Ekong and explained in a quiet voice, “Why use hammer if you can use pin?” He glared until Ekong finally lowered his eyes. After clearing his throat, Femi continued, “So, we use your natural assets.”
The three turned to him with query in their eyes.
“Igwe, Mr. Cautious, you’re ground control as always.”
“Eh-heh!” he replied. “And you can cross your leg at home base too. Everyone know your eye. It’s not safe for you.”
“If you insist, but then you have to put your own leg for road to get their passes. People trust you.”
“He’s like a pet.” Lance reached out to stroke Igwe.
“A pit bull is a pet!” Igwe snapped back. “Don’t mess!”
“So, Lance—since you enjoy putting your hand in the mouth of pit bull, you can entertain the guards, distract them. You have a good virus for that.”
“Bring photo, so they can remember you,” Igwe mumbled with an unusually caustic tongue.
“Ekong,” Femi flashed a look of reproach at Igwe, “you plant the firecrackers under the buses.”
Ekong glared at Femi, obviously understanding the implications of his “assets.”
“Yu!”
“Yes?” Yussef looked anxious.
“Drive a motorcycle just outside the gates and pretend it’s broken.”
“Why me?”
Lance responded before Femi could open his mouth. “Which moto will stop for an ugly guy like this? You can linger.”
Before a quarrel broke out, Femi added, “Leave TransAqua on leg, enter motorcycle, and then detonate the firecrackers. There are the devices.” He pointed to a box. “I go wait near bus stop make sure three commot safely. If not, I go come get you people.”
“What?” Igwe cried.
“I know the exits!”
“There’s only one exit-now! It’s known as the entrance. Your body also want to wear cape and tights?” Igwe kissed his teeth.
“I was hoping to. Why? Do you think say I overdress?”
Around four o’clock the next afternoon, Femi arrived at an informal bus stop, marked by a concrete block. The bus carried staff from the turmoil of survival to the inner sanctum of TransAqua and the warm breast upon which so many laid their heads.
Femi sat down on the pavement next to the block. He opened a newspaper, feigning a languid interest, but inwardly too restless to digest the information. After a short period, he turned a page.
“Ah-ah!” a voice behind him shouted, making Femi jump. “Not so fast. I haven’t completed my perusal.”
He turned around to see a small man wearing a tattered tie and jacket and carrying an empty-looking satchel. He had an officious air, his sense of importance accentuated by his thick glasses but betrayed by the Scotch tape that held a cracked lens in place.
Frowning, Femi held the page open, struggling to contain his anger against this vermin: a man serving his own self-interest to the detriment of the greater good. After a minute, he received further instructions: “Okay. Next page.”
Femi flipped the page with an irritated whack. “Don’t they give you newspaper at the dam site?” he snapped.
“I hope so,” the man replied. “But since I am not currently in employment in those majestic facilities, how am I supposed to apprise?”
Femi waited for the end of the man’s sentence. There was none. “Why are you standing here, then? Are you selling something?”
“Can you not see my briefcase?” the man barked. “What am I carrying? Is it not a briefcase? When have you seen a vendor carry a briefcase, you idiot? I am a man of business, not a common vendor. This is why this country is in bedlam. They squander money on education. Why not just let idiots like you walk around in circles? Tie mattress around your body, let you perambulate.”
Femi stared at the man. His chest was thrust out so far that his back curved in a hollow shape, leaving a large bottom to stick out in an S. His stance signalled his utter certainty that all the statements that fell from his lips could be found referenced in the world’s encyclopedias as absolute truths. Something about the man set Femi on edge. He exploded. “Are you not satisfied already? You’ve killed over one million? You want more? Go and work at a slaughterhouse, joh. Enjoy yourself there.”
He closed his newspaper.
“Who are you talking to?” The man’s bald head glinted in the sun. “Who? Do you know who I am? I am an orphan of the storm. Yes, that’s correct. The flood extinguished my own father. Who are you to talk? Are you someone? No! Of course not!”
Femi looked at the man closely and for the first time noticed the sadness in his eyes. Grief was the found
ation upon which the rest of his emotions were now built. Looking at this man, Femi knew in an instant that he looked upon a fellow sufferer. Chastened, he calmed down.
“Sorry-oh, my friend!” Femi said, as images crowded in of his father’s neck snapped back by the force of the water, his father screaming his name. “May your father rest in peace.”
“Rest in peace? How can he rest in peace, you ragamuffin?” The man’s voice cracked as he threw his satchel down on the road. “My mother met her own expiry date just six months after. From traumatization. My junior sister became invalidated.”
Femi hung his head as tears welled in his eyes. Dozens of images flashed through his mind: his mother in the kitchen as panes of glass shattered into her eyes. He did not know how his family had died, but their terror haunted him.
The man stared at Femi, paused and dabbed his eyes with his greying sleeves. He leaned over and picked up his battered portefeuille. He began to weep. “My senior sisters are at home. The crop has failed, the fish are poisoned, the corporations have polluted the land.” He sobbed. It seemed as if, in voicing his wretched story, he had become aware of its overwhelming tragedy. “I have no pecuniaries. No prospect. Just suffering. What can I do?” He turned to Femi, as though he could provide an answer. The man was barely able to stand, the oppressive weight of responsibility resting heavy on his shoulders.
It was obvious to Femi that the man had never had time to grieve. As with so many other Nigerian men and women, the duties of the parents had been passed on to sons and daughters with no preparation. They had to survive with no guidance from the elders, no path, no footsteps to lead the way—this and more had all been wiped away by the flood.
“This is the only place with job-now,” the man continued, drying his tears with a tattered jacket sleeve. “What does the Lord want from me? There is nothing I can do for Him! He should look somewhere else. Nobody can assist Him here.”
Doing Dangerously Well Page 25
