As he readied himself for the stroke, the girl asked, “Do you want screaming?” She was American.
“Yes, screaming. Lot of screaming. If you don’t scream, I’ll whip harder and harder.”
Lippincott whipped and the girl screamed with each cutting crack. Back came the whip, then forward, crack, and the polished snakelike cord glistened with blood, back and forward, back and forward, faster until the screams and the whip and the cracking became a single sound of anguish and then it was over. James Forsythe Lippincott was spent and with the sudden quenching of his strange and sudden thirst, his powers of reasoning assumed command and he was suddenly afraid.
He realized now the girl had screamed almost as a duty despite the great pain. She was probably drugged. Her back looked like raw meat.
What if someone had taken pictures of him? He could deny them. It would be his word against some bush nigger’s. What if the Minister of Public Safety found out he used his name improperly? Well, three, maybe four hundred dollars would take care of that.
What if the girl died? Twelve thousand dollars. He gave more than that each year to the Brotherhood Union for Human Dignity.
So why be afraid?
“Are you through, Lippy?” the redheaded girl asked dully, her voice heavy with drugs. “If you are, you’re supposed to take the chains off.”
“How do you know my name? That’s only used in my social circle.”
“Lippy, this is Busati. Are you through?”
“Uh, yes,” he said, going to the wall to get a better look at her face in the dimly lit room. She was about twenty five, the fine, lean nose had been broken days before and was swollen and blue now. There was a gash in the lower lip that had crusted around the edges.
“Who are you?”
“Don’t ask. Just let me die, Lippy. We’re all going to be dead.”
“I know you, don’t I? You’re…you’re,” and he saw the features, now mangled, that had once graced Chesapeake Bay society, one of the Forsythe girls, a second cousin.
“What are you doing here, Cynthia?” he said, and then, in horror, remembered and said, “We just buried you in Baltimore.”
“Save yourself, Lippy,” she groaned.
In his panic, that was just what Lippincott intended to do. He envisioned Cynthia Forsythe somehow getting back to Baltimore and disclosing his terrible secret. Lippincott grabbed the end of the whip and wrapped it around the girl’s neck.
“You’re a fool, Lippy, you always were,” she said and James Forsythe Lippincott tightened the whip and kept pulling the ends until the red swollen face of the girl disclosed a tongue and the eyes bulged and he kept pulling.
The sergeant downstairs understood why James Forsythe Lippincott did not wish to write out a personal check, and yes, he would trust him to return to his hotel and make arrangements with the National Bank of Busati to get cash. “We do not worry,” the sergeant said. “Where would you go?”
Lippincott nodded, although he was not sure what the sergeant meant. He understood only that he would be allowed to pay for what happened upstairs, and that was all he wanted to hear.
When Lippincott returned to his hotel, Walla was still missing. He called for him several times, then vowed that when he saw Walla again, the busboy would get a beating to carry on his back for the rest of his life.
The vice-president of the bank offered to supply guards to Lippincott because walking around Busati with $12,000 was not the wisest of courses. “This is not New York City,” the banker explained, apologetically and inaccurately.
Lippincott refused. He was sorry three blocks later. One of the many military patrols stopped him and as he reached into his pocket to show his identification and a ten-dollar bill, he must have disclosed the bulk of his cash, for the officer reached into his pocket and took out the envelope of one hundred and twenty hundred-dollar bills.
“That belongs to the house with the iron gate,” said Lippincott hoping the power the house seemed to have would extend to the officer. Apparently it didn’t, because the officer simply double-checked Lippincott’s identification, asked him again if he were indeed James Forsythe Lippincott, then shoved him into the Land Rover and personally drove the vehicle away.
Out of the capital they drove, and along the great Busati River they drove. Darkness fell over the Busati and still they drove on, alone, the rest of the patrol having been ordered to stay back in the city. They drove so far that when they stopped Lippincott swore the stars seemed close, as close and as clear as they must have been when man first descended from the trees.
The officer told Lippincott to get out.
“Look, I can give you twice that amount of money. You don’t have to kill me,” said Lippincott
“Get out,” said the officer.
“I’m a personal friend of the Minister of Public Safety,” said Lippincott.
“You’ll find him over there behind that wide tree,” said the officer. “Go.”
So Lippincott, finding the Africa night chilly and his heart even chillier, went to the wide tree that rose like a little prickly mountain from the Busati plain.
“Hello?” he said but no one answered. His elbow brushed up against something on the tree. He looked around. It was a boot. A leg was in the boot and on top of the leg was a body. The dangling hands were black. The body did not move and it smelled of the last release of the bowels. The body was in an officer’s uniform. Lippincott stepped back to escape the smell and to try for a better look at the face. Suddenly a flashlight illuminated the body’s features. It was the Minister of Public Safety. A large spike protruded from his head. He had been nailed to the tree.
“Hello, Lippy,” said an American voice.
“What?” gasped Lippincott.
“Hello, Lippy. Squat down on your haunches. No, not your butt on the ground. On your haunches, like a slave waiting for his master. On the haunches. That’s right. Now, Lippy, before you die, if you’re very nice, you may ask me a question.”
The flashlight had gone off and now the voice came out of the African dark, and try as he might, Lippincott could not see the speaker.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know who you are, but I can make you a rich man. Congratulations on successfully scaring the crap out of me. Now, how much?”
“I’ve got what I want, Lippy.”
“Who are you?”
“Is that your one question?”
“No, my one question is what do you want?”
“All right, Lippy, I’ll answer that. I want to revenge my people. I want to be accepted in my father’s house.”
“I’ll buy your father’s house. How much?”
“Ah, Lippy, Lippy, Lippy. You poor fool.”
“Look. I want to live,” said Lippincott, straining to keep his backside just off his raised heels. “I’m humbling myself. Now what can I give you for my life?”
“Nothing. And I don’t care about your humbling yourself. I’m not some Harlem shine who calls himself Abdulla Bulbul Amir. Humbling doesn’t do anybody any good.”
“You’re white? I can’t see.”
“I’m black, Lippy. African. Does that surprise you?”
“No. Some of the most brilliant men in the world are black.”
“If you had any chance at all, you just blew it with that lie,” the voice said. “I know better. I know every one of you Lippincotts and Forsythes. There isn’t one of you who isn’t a racist.”
“What do you want?” asked Lippincott. “What do you want?” The man was obviously keeping him alive for something. There was silence. Far off, a hyena howled. There would be no lions near here, not with vehicles and men having been around the area.
“I can get you recognition from America,” said Lippincott. “My family can do that.”
“Who is America to recognize or not to recognize?”
“What do you want?”
“Some information.”
“If you kill me, you won’t get it.”
“First I’ll get it and then I’ll kill you. There are many ways to die and some aren’t so bad.”
Lippincott believed the man and like many people who find death too strong to face, he told himself a little lie. He told himself he would be spared if he told the man the truth.
“The Minister of Public Safety didn’t tell you about the house, did he?”
“No, he didn’t,” Lippincott said, remembering again the gruesome corpse hanging from the tree near his head. “My boy Walla did.”
“Never mind, the Minister had to die anyway,” the voice said. “Unlike most members of this government, he would not see things my way. Now, you’ve done research on slave ships and the original slave trade into the States. There was a Butler plantation on which you still have the records, isn’t that so?”
“Yes. I can show them to you. They’re at my Chesapeake Bay estate.”
“In the basement storage or the library?”
“I forget. But I can show you.”
“No matter. We’ll get them, now that we know which of your homes they’re in. That’s all I needed. Anything I can give you besides your life?”
“Nothing,” said Lippincott on the hope that if only his life would do for a favor, his life he might get.
“Don’t you want to know the answer to your research about the breakup of the great Loni Empire?”
“I want my life.”
The voice ignored him. “The Loni Empire,” it said, “broke up because it put its faith in outsiders. It hired people to do what it should have done itself. And they grew soft and weak, and finally the Hausa just pushed them over, as if they were soft, fat children.”
Despite his predicament, Lippincott was interested. “That’s too simple,” he said. “To build a great empire takes character. The Loni must have had it. They would not just roll over and play dead.”
“No, you’re right,” the voice said. “They would have fought. But something got in the way. Your family’s accursed slave trade. So the best of the Loni wound up shipped away to grow cotton for you. But I’ll tell you a story. The Loni are going to return to power again. I hope that makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t,” Lippincott said, “but suppose you tell me how. Right now, the whole Loni tribe couldn’t build a shoebox.”
“Simple,” the voice said. “I’m going to lead them back to power.” He paused. “Really horrible thing you did to that girl. Not that it matters, Lippy. Not that she matters or that you matter. You’d have to pay a long time before the Lippincotts and the Forsythes ever got even. It doesn’t matter. What matters is in the mountains.”
Lippincott heard the hyena sounds and smelled the death smells of the Minister of Public Safety and felt a sudden great shock to his back, that came out his chest, and he fell forward on a spear that was through his body. When his head hit the Busati plain, he was dead, another small piece of fertilization, no more than an ancient Loni emperor or an ancient Loni child. Africa took him as one of its own, the earth as ever being the only truly equal opportunity employer in the history of man.
Walla, being more intelligent than either the Minister of Public Safety or Lippincott, was safely up the Busati River in his village. He had something to sell of far greater value than the last pieces of silver engraved with the old English “V” at the Busati Hotel. He had information; information was always salable.
Hadn’t the clerk from the Ministry of Justice sold a copy of the files of the Busati secret police for gold—real gold—coins you could roll in your hands and buy fifty wives with or twenty cattle or shoes and plows and shirts and maybe even a radio for private use, instead of sharing it with the whole village?
So Walla told his brothers he was leaving the village and that his eldest brother should meet him over the border in Lagos, Nigeria in a month.
“You are selling tales, Walla?” asked the elder brother.
“It is best you do not know what I do,” said Walla wisely. “Governments do terrible things to people who know things.”
“I have often wondered why we have governments. Tribal chiefs never did terrible things to people who knew things.”
“It is the white man’s way.”
“If the white man is not here anymore, and if, as the radio says, we are getting rid of everything white, why cannot we get rid of white governments?”
“Because the Hausa downriver are fools,” Walla said. “They want to get rid of the white man so they can be white men.”
“The Hausa have always been fools,” said the elder brother.
In jeeps with massive supplies, the journey to Lagos would have taken a Busati army patrol a month. Walla, carrying a knife and no food, made the journey on foot in sixteen days.
Walla found a neighbor from his village and asked him for a good place to sell information.
“Not here,” said the neighbor who was an assistant gardener at the Russian Embassy. “They were paying good last year but this year is terrible. The Americans are best again.”
“The Chinese, are they good?” asked Walla.
“Sometimes they are good, but often they think it is enough to tell you funny stories in exchange for your information.”
Walla nodded his head. He had heard these things of the yellow men back in Busati, how they would give a button or a book and think of that as payment, and then be surprised and angry when told that was not nearly enough.
“Americans are the best again,” said the gardener, “but take only gold. Their paper is worth less each day.”
“I will take gold and I will return here and see you. Your information has been of value.”
“See the cook at the American Embassy. He will tell you the price to ask.”
The cook at the American Embassy promptly fed Walla and listened to his story, asking questions so that Walla would be well-prepared to negotiate.
“This Lippincott disappearing is a good thing. Quite valuable. But the nature of the house is even more valuable possibly. Who are these white women?”
Walla shrugged. “I do not know.”
“Who frequents the house?” the cook asked.
“I was told of it by a soldier. He said that Busati soldiers who do good things are given leave to go to the house and do terrible things to the women.”
“Does President Obode run the house?” the cook asked.
“I do not know. I think not. I was told that the sergeant who is at the house is a Loni.”
“A Loni? Are you sure he is not a Hausa? Hausa do those sort of things.”
“I know Hausa from Loni,” said Walla. “He is a Loni.”
“A Loni who is a sergeant. That is very important,” the cook said.
“It is worth gold?” Walla asked.
The cook shook his head. “The Americans do not know Loni from Hausa and could not care less that a Loni has reached a sergeant’s rank in Busati’s army. Do you have anything on the women in the house?”
“They never come out alive.”
The cook shrugged a so-what shrug.
“I know a name. It was told to me by a fellow of our village who worked at the airport. I remember it because it was like Lippincott’s name.”
“Her name was Lippincott?” the cook asked.
“No. Forsythe. Lippincott had a Forsythe in his name. My friend said he saw her being taken from a plane to a car. She screamed who she was, and then was dragged into the car. She said she was Cynthia Forsythe of Baltimore.”
“What did she look like?”
“White,” Walla said.
“Yes, but what kind of white? All whites do not look alike.”
“I know that,” said Walla. “Our friend said she had hair of flame.”
The cook thought about this and did not respond immediately. Instead he began chopping vegetables for dinner. When he had finished shredding long green leaves, he snapped his fingers.
“Eighteen thousand dollars. Gold,” he said.
“Eighteen thousand dollars?” asked
Walla, astounded.
The cook nodded. “That is what we ask for. We settle for fifteen.” And he told Walla to withhold the name of the girl until he got the money, but to mention Lippincott’s name quickly to make sure he got the money. He explained that the man he would introduce Walla to was J. Gordon Dalton, who was some kind of a spy. He would offer Walla ten dollars or twenty dollars, whereupon Walla should get up to leave, and then Dalton would pay the fifteen thousand.
“I knew a man who had a hundred dollars once,” said Walla. “A very rich man.”
“You will be rich too,” said the cook.
“I will have to be. I can no longer return to Busati.”
By nightfall, Walla was the richest man in the history of his village and J. Gordon Dalton was sending frantic codes to Washington. A top level officer unscrambled the message:
JAMES FORSYTHE LIPPINCOTT, BALTIMORE, MISSING. BELIEVED DEAD IN BUSATI BUSH. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. CYNTHIA FORSYTHE, BALTIMORE, HELD HOSTAGE. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS. INVESTIGATING.
Since Lippincott was part of the famous Lippincott family which numbered governors, diplomats, senators and most important, bankers, the message went to several department heads at 4:00 a.m. There was one problem with Dalton’s message. Cynthia Forsythe could not be a hostage in Busati. She had been killed in an auto accident three months earlier. It had made the papers because she was related to the Lippincotts.
It was decided quietly to check out the dead girl’s body. By noon, from dental work and a thumb print, the body was identified as not, definitely not, the body of Cynthia Forsythe.
“Who is it then?” asked the State Department man.
“Who cares?” said the FBI man. “It’s not the Forsythe girl. That means she probably is a hostage in Busati.”
“Well, we’re going to have to tell the White House,” said State. “God help anyone who runs afoul of the Lippincotts. Especially the bankers.”
Five reports on the case were made in the White House, four of which went to various Lippincotts. The fifth was hand-delivered to an office in the Agriculture Department in Washington, where it was coded and sent by scrambler to what the sender believed was an office in Kansas City. But the line went to a sanitarium in Rye, New York, and in that sanitarium a decision was made that unknowingly fulfilled an ancient prediction made soon after the Loni tribe had lost its empire:
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