An Honourable Fake

by Terry Morgan

They'd been sitting, edging forward in the jam for over an hour before things slowly cleared.

  "Right, Chelsea. We are now close to the Solomon Trading office. What will you do when we arrive?"

  "Work with Vigo, sah. We take the stock."

  "So Vigo should be somewhere around here, yes?"

  "Yessah."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Stop the car, sah."

  "Good idea. Then what?"

  "Sah?"

  "What will you do after stopping?"

  "Me sah?"

  "You sah. What are you going to do? Do you think it a good idea to phone Vigo to check if he's close by?"

  "Yessah."

  "Go ahead."

  Chelsea phoned Vigo. Mazda answered. Yes, they were coming. Perhaps twenty minutes. Perhaps an hour. Chelsea reported this information.

  "OK, now listen again, Scumbag. You're on duty. No-one sleeps on duty. Have I been asleep? No. Eyes closed? Yes. But all the time thinking, planning, assessing. Understand?"

  "Yessah."

  "All the time you were asleep at the wheel I was quietly planning our next move and my plan is to go for a walk because, while you wait for Vigo, I need to find an internet cafe. Any idea where I might find one?"

  Chelsea sat forward, rubbed his neck, then leaned out of the window and looked around. "This not my area, sah. Maybe Vigo knows."

  "Can you see Vigo? Is he close by?"

  Chelsea looked up and down the crowded side street still clogged with traffic, food vendors, cars, trucks and yet another guy selling cowboy hats. "No sah."

  "Jesus. Stay here. Don't move and don't sleep. If you sleep you're fired. Understand? When Vigo arrives phone me."

  Dobson got out, stretched and took a stroll past the Solomon Trading Office. A single policeman was on duty outside - sitting, tapping his foot with his stick. Right next door was Jimmy's Cybernet Cafe.

  Dobson took a look inside. It was brightly lit, air-conditioned and almost every computer was occupied by silent young men in short sleeved shirts and close-cropped hair, probably engrossed, Dobson decided, in sending 419 scam emails right underneath the notice that said "BE WARNED. Any customer caught with 419 job will be handed to the police.":

  Dobson paid the attendant and found the last remaining seat. Then he logged on, accessed Colin's dark site and sent a coded message and the list of names given by Chelsea's father. It took thirty minutes. Then he returned to Chelsea.

  "No see Vigo, sah."

  "So, we wait."

  "Are we eating, sah?"

  "You ate yesterday. OK, go. And bring some water."

  Truth told Dobson's mouth was as dry as an old carpet and his stomach was groaning.

  But, while he waited, Dobson sat, looking out of the car window. People were brushing by on all sides of the car, so many that the wing mirror had already bent the wrong way. The air was thick with dust and fumes as hundreds, thousands, of serious, sweating faces passed by. Coming from where? Going to where?

  "You ever just sit and watch crowds on Lagos streets, Mark?" Gabriel once asked him. Well, he was now.

  This was sub-Saharan Africa where the number of poor people had increased during the past three decades. The percentage was lower but population growth meant numbers had doubled. The West handed out aid but never a solution because the solution, as Gabriel was so fond of saying, was in the hands of the people themselves.

  "Look at Nigeria," he'd said. "Job creation will never match the growing demand. A global economy means jobs are lost not created. So, what does the future hold? You'll see more tension over living space and resources, more terrorism, more poverty, more unemployment and even bigger mass migration."

  Chelsea returned, eating as he walked.

  He flopped into the driver's seat and handed Dobson a paper-wrapped portion of whatever it was he'd just bought with Dobson's money. And he sat there in his tee shirt and old trainers, licking greasy fingers, drinking from a plastic water bottle, penniless other than what he scrounged - one of millions of young men with no hopes, no plans, no future.

  Gabriel had talked to him about Nigeria for a long time. He'd talked about the history of the far north east of Nigeria along its border with Niger and Cameroon. He'd talked of murders, shootings, bombings, imprisonment, ill-fated army involvements and about characters who had come, then gone, and whose only contribution was to intensify tension and conflict.

  He'd mentioned names like Mohammed Yusuf and a Salafist group at Maiduguri's Alhaji Muhammadu Ndimi mosque, about things from even further back in time about tribal wars long before borders were set up by foreign invaders and colonialists.

  And Dobson had tried to follow it but it was, like so many pieces of history complicated and impossible to fully understand unless you'd lived through it and were part of it or studied it in great depth. Even if you'd lived amongst it Dobson doubted if there had been anyone who understood it or could explain it.

  Since then he'd read a good deal, but it still made little sense other than to re-enforce the fact that human behaviour often stemmed from some sort of inbuilt desperation to impose beliefs and ways of life on others and to hate those who did not share their ways enough to kill them. A human life in Africa was still very cheap.

  And Gabriel had moved onto discussing other parts of Africa.

  "Look at South Africa, Mark. You know the country. Tell me, is South Africa a better place since apartheid? Are black South Africans happier? More optimistic? More confident? More affluent? Are they really freer? You know that twenty six percent of South Africans are out of work? If you add in the number of utterly demoralised people who no longer look for work, it's thirty six percent. And how many more are out of work since they were last promised jobs and security by the President? One point six million more, that's how many.

  "Their economy is stagnant, Mark, but it needs to expand by five percent every year if poverty and unemployment is to fall. It's impossible. It's not achievable. Does that explain the rising crime levels? Of course. Does it explain why vast shanty towns still surround every city? Of course. Does it explain economic migration? Yes.

  "The same people who used to demonstrate against apartheid now demonstrate against corruption, inadequate public services and brown outs. But governments can't create jobs. Only the private sector can do that, but how many jobs could they create even if the country was run differently?"

  Dobson remembered nodding his head throughout all of that. Most of it was indisputable.

  "Unlike Nigeria, and the Middle East, South Africa has not yet been broken by religious tension," Gabriel went on, "But I do not hold out much hope of it not being broken by economic tension. Better not to have a religion at all, Mark. Better still not to have so many humans living in such a small world."

  And Dobson had nodded because he'd felt exactly the same for years although he'd never been brave enough or lucid enough to shout it from the rooftops like Gabriel had been for thirty years.

  "So, what can I do?" he'd asked. And so, here he was, sitting, waiting in a stiflingly hot car in Lagos with a list of crooks and fraudsters in his pocket.

  Vigo turned up shortly after that with a high sided truck. After bribing the policeman who was still tapping his foot with his stick outside the Solomon Trading office he, Mazda and Chelsea went to work.

  By nightfall the truck was full and Vigo sat in the back seat of the car behind Dobson writing numbers on the back of his hand. "Nearly two million Naira profit, Mercedes."

  Dobson returned Chelsea's car key to him. "Collect your car Chelsea and go home but be at Vigo's office by eight in the morning. If you're late, the apprenticeship is terminated and Pops Obodi will know everything."

  "Yessah."

  And then Dobson's phone bleeped - a text message from Colin Asher: "Your list's ready."

  By ten Dobson was back at the Airport Hotel where the management claimed that "relationships are nurtured, no cosmetics to our services, all is rea
l and natural to make guests feel desired, value and pampered."

  That might have been so, but the WiFi was too unreliable for Dobson's purposes. He took off again and found another internet cafe called Chummy's.

  At eleven he was told to leave as they were closing. But it was all there - a spread sheet with names, dates of birth, short CV's, links to press cuttings and an 'other information' column. Dobson copied it to the memory stick he kept in his boxer shorts, returned to the Airport Hotel and re-read it on his laptop.

  George Obodi had come up trumps. The names on George's short list were the ones with the longest columns:

  Kenneth Balogun, Samuel Tami, Abdul Hakim, Precious Johnson, Festus Fulani. All of them had high level government links into oil, gas, transport, shipping, healthcare, telecommunications. Each of them were linked to each other and with past and present links to the FAA with positions of responsibility for technical specifications, budgets, contracts. Then there were the names of characters who hung Christianity around their necks to suggest honesty and legitimacy - names like Pastor Ayo, Pastor Lazarus, Father Adebola and Bishop William.

  But one name stood out above all others. Festus Fulani's column was in red and given a large red asterisk and at the bottom, Colin had added in:

  "Festus Fulani owns a lot of property in UK - we're still checking this. He also entered Cairo three times in the last year on a Saudi Arabian passport, done up in smart Arab dress. Name of Mohamed Fouad. He left for Riyadh on another passport in the name Mohammad Fawwaz. He then met with a Libyan called Ali Najib who is currently under surveillance by security including SIS and CIA. Mohammad Fawwaz disappeared but is thought to have left Saudi Arabia via Jeddah. There is a suspicion he flew to Abuja. Why? What is he up to? That is the question. Now, please check your usual email."

  Dobson then checked his normal email. There was only one.

  "Your bedtime Google reading for tonight is ancient Fulani Jihad & Kanuri history. Food for thought. Have a nice day. Colin."