Agents of Treachery

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  “They are there no longer?”

  “Naturally he has dismissed them. How could he trust them after this? He also ordered the arrest of the army chief of staff. His order has of course been carried out.”

  “The army chief of staff is in your custody?”

  “For the time being, yes. It gives us an opportunity to talk frankly to each other.”

  “Who is handling security if not the army?”

  “The national police. This is an honor, but it is a strain on our manpower, especially with the Pan-African festival beginning the day after tomorrow. Thousands will flood into Ndala, including twenty-six heads of state and who knows how many other dignitaries and nobodies. But of course the safety of our own head of state and government is the number-one priority.”

  “You are investigating, of course.”

  “Oh, yes,” Benjamin said. “Suspects, some of them of very high rank, are being interviewed, quarters are being searched, every safe in the nation is being opened, information is being gathered, fingerprints and other physical evidence have been assembled, all the usual police procedures are in place, but on a much larger and more urgent scale than usual. The presidential palace is off-limits to everyone except the president and the police.”

  He was in complete control of his voice and his facial muscles. But underneath his unflappable behavior, he glowed with joy. He was within reach of something that he wanted very much indeed.

  “The fangs and so on are not all that we have to worry about,” Benjamin went on. “The president for life has also received an anonymous letter, mysteriously placed under his pillow by an unknown hand, stating that a sample of his bodily secretions has been given to a famous juju man in the Ivory Coast.”

  This was momentous news. Playing the naif, my assigned role in this charade, I said, “Bodily secretions?”

  “We believe they were obtained from one of Ga’s women. He is deeply concerned. This can only mean that a curse has been put upon him by an enemy. The curse can be reversed only if we can find the culprit who hired the juju man.”

  Imparting this news, he remained impassive. No smile, no equivalent of a wink, no expression of any kind came to the surface. Benjamin himself had, of course, engineered everything he was reporting to me: the fangs, the venom, the anonymous letter with its chilling message. But he described these things as if he had no more idea than the man in the moon who was responsible for tormenting President Ga.

  * * * *

  The Juju curse was the keystone of the plot. I had known Africans, one of them an agent of mine who possessed a first-class degree from Cambridge, who had withered and died from witchcraft. The bodily secretion was the vital element in casting a juju spell. Some product of the victim’s body was needed to invoke a truly effective curse, a lock of hair, an ounce of urine, a teaspoon of saliva, feces. The more intimate the product, the greater its power. Nothing could be a more effective charm than a man’s semen. No wonder Ga was beside himself. And no wonder that he was now in Benjamin’s power.

  By now, more than thirty African heads of state had flown into Ndala for President Ga’s Pan-African Conference. This was the day on which they would all ride through the city in their Rolls-Royces and Mercedes Benzes and Cadillacs, waving to the vast crowd that had been assembled to greet them. Whether any of these spectators had the faintest idea who the dignitaries were, or what they were doing in Ndala, were separate questions. Whole tribes had been bused or trucked or herded on foot into the city from the interior. Many were dancing. Chiefs had brought warriors armed with shields and spears to protect them against enemies, wives to service them, dwarves to keep them entertained. Every single one of these human beings seemed to be grunting or shouting or singing or, mostly, laughing, and the noise produced by all those voices, added to the beating of drums and the sound of musical instruments and the tootling of automobile horns, made the air tremble. Palm wine and warm beer flowed, and the spicy aroma of stews and roasting goats rose from hundreds of cook fires.

  At last the sergeant found the exact spot he had been looking for, an empty space in front of the parliament building, and parked the car in the shadow of a huge baobab tree. A couple of constables were already on hand, and they cleared away the crowd so that we had an unobstructed view.

  “They will come soon,” the sergeant said.

  It was a little before five in the afternoon. The parade was already about ninety minutes behind schedule, but there was no such concept as “on time” in Ndala or any other place in Africa. Maybe forty minutes later, we heard the faraway, warped sound of a brass band playing “The British Grenadiers.” The music grew louder, and the band marched by, drum major brandishing a baton that was as tall as he was, every musician’s eye seemingly fixed on the Austin as the marching men turned eyes left on the parliament and the flags of the African nations that flew from its circle of flagpoles. A battalion of infantry then marched smartly by, drenched in sweat, arms swinging, boots kicking up powdery dust. The infantry were followed by several tanks and armored cars and howitzers. Finally came a platoon of bagpipers, tartan kilts and sporrans swinging, “Scotland the Brave” splitting the sun-scorched air. If the Brits had taught these people nothing else in a century of colonialism, they had taught them how to organize a parade.

  “Now come the presidents,” the sergeant said. “President for Life Ga will be first, then the others.” Then, even though we were alone in the car with the windows rolled up, he dropped his voice to a whisper and added, “Watch very carefully the road ahead of his car.”

  Ga’s regal, snow-white Rolls-Royce materialized out of the dust. There were a few grunts from onlookers but no ululations or other such behavior. The masses merely watched this strange alien phenomenon, and no doubt they would have reacted in the same way if a spaceship had been landing among them. Not that the occasion was wholly lacking in ceremony. The soldiers posted along the street at ten-foot intervals came to present arms. The sergeant leaped out of the car, and he and the two constables stood to attention, saluting. I got out, too. No one paid the slightest attention to me. But then, only a few of the onlookers were paying very much attention to President Ga. The Rolls-Royce continued its stately approach, flags flying, headlights blazing. The crowd stirred and muttered.

  Then, without warning, the crowd suddenly broke and began to run in all directions, men, women, children, the decrepit old borne aloft by their sons and daughters, everyone except the dancers, who had by now fallen into a collective trance and went right on dancing, oblivious to the panic all around them. Everyone else scattered as fast as their legs would carry them. The presidential Rolls-Royce slammed on its brakes and stood on its nose. Inside it, President Ga or one of his doubles, dressed in a white uniform, was thrown about like a rag doll.

  It was impossible not to see Benjamin’s hand in all this. A single thought filled my mind: assassination. He was going to kill this man in full view of thirty other presidents for life.

  I leaped onto the hood of the Austin, then scrambled to the roof. From that vantage point I saw what all the fright was about. A black mamba at least ten feet long was slithering with almost unbelievable swiftness across the road in the path of the white Rolls-Royce. Suddenly half a dozen brave fellows, half-naked all of them, leaped out of the crowd and attacked the serpent with pangas, cutting it into pieces that writhed violently as if trying to reconnect themselves into a living reptile. The crowd uttered a loud, collective basso grunt. This was a huge yet subdued sound, like a whisper amplified to the power of ten thousand on some enormous hi-fi speaker yet to be invented.

  The Rolls-Royce, Klaxon sounding, sped away. The sergeant said, “Get into the car. We must go.”

  I did as he ordered. Inside the sweltering, buttoned-up Austin, I asked if the mamba crossing President Ga’s path on his day of triumph would be seen as a bad omen.

  “Oh, yes,” the sergeant said, grinning into the mirror. “Very bad. No one who saw will ever forget.”

&nbs
p; Darkness fell. The sergeant did not take me home but drove me to a different safe house on the outskirts of the city. As soon as we were inside I switched on the English-language radio. The opening ceremonies of the Pan-African Conference were now in progress at the soccer stadium. Announcers shouted to be heard above the blare of bands and choirs, the boom of fireworks, and the noise of the crowd. Needless to say, not a word was uttered over the airways about the meeting between the mamba and Ga’s white Rolls-Royce. Everyone knew all about it anyway by word of mouth or talking drum or one of the many Bantu tongues that could be signed or whistled as well as spoken.

  In all those minds, as in my own, the questions were: What happens next and when will it happen? I left the radio on, knowing that the first word of the coup would come from its speakers. Second only to the capture or murder of the prince, the broadcasting station was the most important objective in any coup d’état. Obviously Benjamin and his coconspirators, assuming that he had any, must strike tonight. Never again would he have such an opportunity to destroy the tyrant before the very-eyes of Africa. He would want to kill Ga in the most humiliating way possible. He would want to show him as weak, impotent, and alone, without a single person willing or able to defend him.

  Promptly at eight o’clock, the sergeant carried a cooler into the house, rattled pots and pans in the kitchen, and served my dinner, all five courses at once. The food was French. “This is the same food that all the presidents will be eating at the state dinner,” the sergeant said. I ate only the heated-up entree, medallions of veal in a cream sauce that had separated because the sergeant had let it boil.

  Around two in the morning, the sergeant’s walkie-talkie squawked. He lifted it to his ear, heard what sounded to me like a single word, and replied with what also seemed to be a single word. The conversation lasted less than a second. He said, “Come, Mr. Brown. It is time to go.”

  * * * *

  We drove through a maze of streets but on this night of revelry saw no sleepers by the wayside. Everybody was still celebrating. Oil lamps and candles glowed in the blackness like red and yellow eyes, as if the entire genus carnivora was drawn up in a hungry circle on the outskirts of the party. Music blared from loudspeakers, people danced, thousands of shouted conversations stirred the stagnant, overheated air. The city had become one enormous, throbbing Equator Club. The sergeant maneuvered the Austin through the pandemonium with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the hooter, constantly beeping to let people know that he wasn’t trying to sneak up on them and kill them. Not since Independence Night, I thought, could there have been so many witnesses awake at this hour, ready to observe whatever Benjamin was going to do next.

  At last we drove out of the crowd and into the European quarter. Through the rear window I could see the distorted, smoky-red glow of the city. I imagined I could feel the earth quivering in rhythm to the innumerable bare feet that were pounding it in unison a mile or so away. The music and the shouting were very loud even at such a distance.

  The sergeant drove at his usual brisk pace, lights off as usual. He parked the car and switched off the engine. By now my eyes had adjusted, and I could see another police car parked a few yards away. We were parked on a low hilltop, and the red glow of the city caught in the mirror-shine of its metal. Soon a third car drove up and parked close beside us. It was Benjamins Rover, identifiable by the baritone throb of its engine. The driver’s cap badge caught a little light. A large man who might have been Benjamin sat in the backseat alone.

  Moving swiftly, Benjamin got into the backseat with me. The dome light blinked. He wore the dress uniform I supposed he had worn to the state dinner—long pants, white shirt with necktie, short epauletted mess jacket that the Brits call a bum freezer, decorations. Benjamin smelled as usual of starch, brass polish, soap, his own musk.

  Headlights swept up the hill, turned sharp left into the street that paralleled the one on which our own cars were parked, then stopped. Car doors slammed, men moved quick-time, a key turned in a lock, a door squeaked as it was opened, a scratchy Edith Piaf LP played five or six bars of “Les amants de Paris.”

  We were parked behind the house into which Ga had gone to keep his rendezvous for tonight. Jumpy light showed in an upstairs window, dim and yellowish, as if filtering down a hallway from another room. The back door opened. A flashlight blinked. The Rover’s headlights flashed in reply.

  “Come,” Benjamin said. He got out of the car and strode into the darkness. I followed. The sergeant got something out of the trunk, then slammed the lid. Behind me I heard his brogans at a run. We went through the open door. Inside the house, the record changed on the hi-fi, and Piaf began to sing “Il Pleut.” Benjamin, entirely at home, strode down a hallway, then up a stairway. At the top, in half-shadow outside a half-open bedroom door, a policeman stood at attention as if he did not quite know exactly what was expected of him or what would happen next.

  In a mirror I saw a man and a woman engaged in vigorous coitus and heard the woman’s moans and outcries. The sergeant marched into the room. Benjamin gave me a little push, and I marched in behind him. The room was full of burning candles. The smell of incense was strong. Smoke hung in the air. The woman shouted something in what sounded to me like Swedish. She was quite small. President Ga, lying on top of her, covered her completely. Her legs were wound around his waist, ankles crossed, feet in gilt shoes with stiletto heels. I looked into the mirror in hope of seeing the girl’s face. My eyes met Ga’s. The candlelight exaggerated the size of his startled, wide-open eyes. His face twisted into a mask of furious anger, and he rolled off the woman, knocking off one of her shoes. Now I saw her face, smeared lipstick and tousled hair. She was a cookie-cutter blonde, as flawless as a dummy in a store window.

  I knew what was coming next, of course. The sergeant took one step forward. In his outstretched hands he held the valise that I remembered so well. Evidently that was what he had retrieved from the trunk of the Austin. The snap of brass latches sounded like the metallic one-two of the slide of an automatic pistol. The sergeant opened the valise and turned it upside down. The mamba flowed out of the bag with the same unbelievable swiftness, as if it were coming into being before our eyes. I tried to leap backward, but Benjamin stood immediately behind me, blocking the way. President Ga and the blonde froze as if captured in a black-and-white photograph by the flash of a strobe light.

  The snake, a blur as it attacked, struck at the nearest target, President Ga. He grunted as if a bullet had entered his body His mouth opened wide and he shouted in English, “Oh, Jesus, Sweet Jesus!” It was a prayer, not a blasphemy. In the same breath he uttered a tremendous sob. Between these two primal sounds, the woman, screaming, threw her body over the foot of the bed. Somehow she landed behind us on all fours in the hallway. Still shrieking, still wearing one gilt shoe, she sprinted down the hallway. The constable in the hall pursued her for a step or two, picked up the shoe after she kicked it off, and caught her by the hair, which was very long. Her head jerked back, but she kept going, leaving the constable with a handful of blond threads in his hand. He stared at these in puzzlement, then blew his whistle. At the head of the stairs the woman was captured by a second constable, a man almost as large as Benjamin. He carried her, squirming, kicking, screaming, back toward the bedroom. Her skin was so white that I half-expected powder to fly from it. She bit his face. He twisted her jaw until she let go, and when he saw his own blood on her teeth he slammed her twice against the wall, then let go of her, throwing his hands wide in disgust that a woman should have attacked him, should have bitten him. Her limp, unconscious body slid to the floor. She landed with a thump on her round bottom, her back against the wall, her head lolling inside its curtain of hair. She twitched as if dreaming, and I wondered if her spine was broken. She had shapely breasts, pretty legs, peroxided delta, and it looked as though she had lipsticked her nipples. For some reason, maybe because this touch of perversity was so unimaginative, so innocent, such a learner’s
trick, my heart went out to her, if only for a moment.

  Behind me I heard a gunshot. In the confined space of the bedroom it sounded like an artillery round going off. The stink of cordite mingled with the incense. Benjamin stood over the bed with a smoking Webley in his hand. The headless snake in its death throes whipped uncontrollably over the bed, spraying blood on Ga and the sheets. With his hands protecting his genitals, Ga scooted rapidly backward over the bed to escape the serpent, even though he must have known that it was now harmless. What a seed God planted in the human mind on the day that Adam ate the apple! From the look on Ga’s face it was clear that he believed that he himself was dying almost as fast as the snake had just done, but his instincts, from which he could not escape, instructed him to cover his nakedness and flee for his life.

  Ga’s eyes were now fixed on Benjamin. The question in them was easy to read: Had Benjamin murdered him or rescued him? Benjamin made a gesture to Ga: Come.

  Ga, strangling on the words, said, “Doctor!”

  Benjamin ignored him. Silently he pointed a finger first at the sergeant, then at Ga. Then he whirled on his heel and left the room. The sergeant picked up the writhing snake and threw it into the hallway, then grasped Ga’s left arm, turned him onto his stomach, and expertly cuffed his hands behind him.