‘Gaby; while you were my client, you enjoyed my protection. Now you are not, and that obligation is ended. Jackson, please escort Ms McAslan from the premises.’
Leathercoat swung back the tail of his leather coat to free his gun. Gaby was quicker. She hit him in the balls with the side of her fist and as he doubled up, she pulled out his gun. She found the safety, cocked the hammer, pointed it, two-handed, at Haran’s head. The Skateboard Kid dropped the scripture case and drew his weapon. It was big. He was cool, and smiling. He could hold it on a white woman one-handed, without trembling. But he was that second too slow and that made it a stand-off and not a clean blow-away.
‘Haran, tell him to put it down. Tell him to put it flat on the table. I can kill you. I will kill you.’
‘I am pleased to say that you have surprised me, Gaby. I am impressed. But what does this prove? Maybe I will die. You certainly will. More deaths, Gaby. Needless deaths.’
Gaby licked her lips. Her tongue was so dry it clung to her lower lip.
‘You know he’s going to run out on you,’ she said to Mombi. ‘That piece of information he wanted from me; it’s an exit visa. He made me betray a friend and his family to get it. He’s going out of this place tomorrow, Mombi, on the last plane. He’s leaving you, to sink or swim. He doesn’t give a fuck, Mombi. Everything you’ve worked together to achieve, all the trust you’ve built up, it doesn’t matter to him. His own hide does. He’s getting out and you can go to hell.’
‘Gaby, you are boring me,’ Haran said. Leathercoat climbed to his feet, face contorted in testicular agony. Haran waved him away from Gaby, away from the Skateboard Kid’s line of fire. ‘She is lying, of course.’
‘Why should I lie, Mombi? He let me go, why should I stay and put myself in front of his bullets for a lie? He’s running out on you, Mombi. You can’t trust him.’
The Skateboard Kid held the gun as steady and sure as death and justice. Haran looked at the beautiful Ethiopic scripture case on the glass table.
‘Kill her,’ he said.
‘No.’ Mombi’s leather girls were hideously fast. One stood off the Skateboard Kid, the other covered Leathercoat. Gaby’s arms ached but she held the bead on the bridge of Haran’s nose. ‘I will not allow it. Give her back the visa of her friend,’ Mombi said.
‘You believe this white bitch over me?’ Haran said.
‘Yes,’ Mombi said. ‘Get her her paper or I will kill your men and the m’zungu will shoot you where you sit.’
Haran smiled. It was like the skin peeling back from a skull.
‘Fetch the visa,’ he said to Leathercoat. To Mombi he said, ‘Now you show yourself for the fool you have always been. There is nothing here for us, can you understand that?’
‘The fool is the one who thinks he can run from the Chaga forever,’ Mombi said. ‘It will catch you in the end. That is why you will stay with me, Haran. You will come with me into the Chaga. There is a new network growing in there; its mesh is fullerene carbon, not optical fibre, but it can still feed fisherman with the skill to cast it and trawl its rich catch. You will work with me, Haran. We will reclaim everything that has been taken from us. We will succeed beyond all our dreams of greatness. It is the future in there. To stay out here is to be pushed into the past. You will not make it out here, Haran. There is nothing left out here but more and more of this. You should thank me, that I still offer you this after you try to betray me.’
Leathercoat cautiously placed two sheets of paper on the glass table top.
‘Put them in the box,’ Gaby said. ‘Give the box to me.’
‘Go now,’ Mombi said. ‘Get your friend out of the country, since he has decided he must go. Haran will not harm you. You are under my protection now.’
Gaby lifted the Ethiopic scripture case one-handed and cautiously backed along the balcony. The gun was fluttering now. The pain in her right arm was incredible.
‘Go!’ Mombi ordered.
Gaby turned and ran. She ran through the back rooms, and through the Cascade Club where the bar staff washed glasses and the boys played down in the pit. She ran down the steep street stairs. She met a posseboy coming up. She shouted at him, waved the big gun. He flattened himself against the wall as she exploded out onto the street and saw a phalanx of camouflaged picknis and army surplus APCs advancing down the street.
She stopped dead. The vehicles stopped dead. The wind stirred the lion’s head Black Simba cartel banners on their pennons and aerials. The door of the lead pickni opened. A black man wearing a fluorescent orange jacket stepped out.
‘It seems that you do not need John Wayne and the 7th Cavalry to come over the hill to rescue you,’ Faraway said. ‘But I think they are going to come over the hill anyway, because they have wrongs to right.’
Gaby ran and hit him like a free kick from the edge of the box. Faraway held on to her. He had always been a better goalkeeper than his cool allowed. He whirled her away through the battle lines as the Black Simbas advanced on the Cascade Club.
‘I got it,’ Gaby said, holding up the scripture case. ‘The visa. I got it.’ Then the shakes started. Faraway just caught the scripture case in time. He took Gaby to the main street and through the crowds of spectators hoping to see blood to a coffee stall. He bought her sweet milky Kenyan chai and sat her on the kerb until she could talk through the shivering. He eased the gun out of her hand, looked at it, set it aside.
‘I got out, Faraway,’ Gaby whispered. ‘I got Tembo’s visa back. Mombi made him give it to me. Don’t let them hurt Mombi, she saved me. They can do what they like to Haran.’
The sound of heavy automatic weapon fire came from across the avenue, and was answered by the short flat barks of shotguns and hand pieces.
61
Day Zero.
The crowd outside the gates on the airport road had been the worst Gaby had ever seen, but she had managed to push the Landcruiser and its passengers through, past the soldiers who looked as if they knew that they could only hold the wire so long. She had thought that once they were inside the airport it would be all right. She was wrong. The crowd inside the departures hall was worse.
They stood in the lobby between inner and outer doors. Tembo clutched his exit visa. Mrs Tembo clutched After-the-Rains. Sarah clutched her best doll; Etambele clutched her favourite toy, which was a matted furry pencil case. They stood with their identity badges pinned to their clothes and looked at the crowd. It was almost religious; so many people so close in such a confined space. Souls wedged in a glass and concrete box, awaiting exodus, or judgment.
‘Oh my God,’ Gaby said.
Doubtless important PA announcements went unheard and unheeded over the babel of voices in the concourse. The people were too densely packed to obey them.
‘There are people in white uniforms at the check-in desks,’ Faraway said, seeing over the heads of the crowd. ‘We have the camera with us, the News Team trick might work again.’
‘With children and luggage?’ Gaby asked. She took a deep breath to prepare herself for the annihilation of the crowd. Faraway plunged into the crowd, swinging one hundred thousand shillings of video camera like a riot baton. Tembo and his family tucked into his slip-stream. Gaby took the rearguard, waving a microphone and shouting, ‘SkyNet News team! Let us through, please!’ The way Faraway smiled as he elbowed you away from the check-in desk, you would feel he was doing you a personal favour.
‘Five to travel,’ he announced to the woman in UN white at the desk, who did not care if people jumped the queue as long as her ticket out was safe in the back pocket of her pants. She checked the exit visas and tapped information up on her screen. She took such a long time doing it that Gaby wanted to drag her out of her little booth and press any key, every key, that might do something. The woman studied the words on her screen for a long time, and the visa for a longer time. She took Tembo’s passport and examined it for the longest time. She checked the names of wife and children against the passport and the exit visas and the screen. She checked the photo badges against the passport and the visa and the screen. Then she gestured for them to put their bags on the scales. Baggage allowance on the relief flights was one piece each, adult and child. Tembo and Mrs Tembo had managed to reduce it all to two big cases, which they dragged, and a backpack for Sarah. Etambele had not wanted to be left out, so she had a backpack too, a little cloth one Mrs Tembo had sewn together. It held her dolls’ clothes, one dress and her washing things. Gaby did not think she could be so merciless with personal possessions. Take little, leave little, lose little was her professional motto. The UN woman looked at the bags, but did not move to weigh or tag them.