Was all this true? But if it were not true, how would they know so many details, and how did it happen that the assemblage of matériel had been so unusually smooth and effortless?
And if it was indeed the truth, including their claim of a plot to resteal the coffee “with violence,” then all that mattered now was that Bathar was in danger. Bathar, the only son of Mazar Balim.
Which was why Balim had immediately and sincerely offered his fullest cooperation, telling Magon and Obuong what little they hadn’t already known, which was mostly the timetable: when the coffee would be hijacked, when it would be brought to Port Victoria. “It’s happening right now,” Balim had told them, and they’d been pleased at the news; a good dinner had been given Balim at a local hotel at their expense, and when they’d come out afterward the Mercedes and the truckload of soldiers were already waiting. And now they were running through the night over the washboard roads, the Mercedes in the lead, the truck following in their dust.
The Nzoia ferry did not run at night. They had to take the wider sweep through Sio, through tiny villages without electricity, down long dirt roads hemmed in by fresh growth after the long rains. Riding along in silence beside Obuong, Balim had leisure in which to grow used to his worry about Bathar, and to think about more mundane items, such as what these two government men were really up to. Was it all as selfless and official as it appeared? How unlikely.
Treading with care, Balim began his exploration into the question of motive as indirectly as possible. Breaking the long silence, “Uganda,” he said to Obuong, “has been a troublesome neighbor for years.”
“Oh, very troublesome,” Obuong agreed. Smiling, he said, “That’s why we were so pleased at your initiative.”
“Yes, you called me a patriot.”
Obuong found that amusing. “I did?”
“Yes, when we first met in my office.” Balim made himself as small and round and inoffensive and harmless as possible. “I knew you meant it ironically,” he said, the slightest hint of self-pity in his voice.
Politeness barely covering the mockery, Obuong said, “I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”
“Not at all.” Balim sighed, accepting the calumnies of this world on his bowed shoulders. “But it did make me wonder.” he went on, “what you thought our motive was in taking this coffee.”
“Money,” Obuong said, promptly and simply and emphatically.
“Only money?”
“Please don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Balim,” Obuong said. “I am not myself anti-Asian. Some of my best friends in Nairobi are Asian.”
Balim nodded, accepting these bona fides.
“But I don’t think it’s unfair to say,” Obuong went on, “that it is well known that patriotism is not an emotion known to Asians. Their interests—perfectly legitimate interests—lie elsewhere. Money, merchandising. Art. Learning. At times, religion. And they are very good family people.”
“Patriotism,” Balim gently pointed out, “is the love of one’s country. Unrequited love of one’s country is a passion difficult to maintain.”
“There have undoubtedly been injustices committed against the Asians,” Obuong said, in the manner of a person utterly uninterested in discussing such injustices. “But please let me reassure you. If profit was a consideration at all—in addition to the love you bear your adopted country, of course—you still have something to look forward to. Not as much, of course.”
“Of course,” Balim said.
“There will be various taxes to be paid, import duties and so on. Due to your… patriotism… I should think certain normal fines and seizures of goods would be waived in this case.”
“Good of you,” Balim murmured.
“Then, of course, the Jhosis have really far too small a plantation to handle all that coffee. We can make arrangements for particular other growers who could assist.”
“I see,” Balim said. He was smiling. The familiar whiff of corruption, so long missing from his relationship with these two, was at last a comforting presence in his nostrils. Politics, trade, graft, and the general opposition to Idi Amin; all had come together to make this unlikely partnership.
“Almost there,” Godfrey Magon said from the front seat, and Balim looked out past him at the sharply defined world snared in their headlights.
At night Port Victoria ceased almost entirely to exist. One or two lights flickered deep in the interior of the shops around the grassy market square, but the little stucco-faced houses lining the dirt road down the long, steep slopes to the lake were black and silent, humped together in the darkness like natural growths, unpopulated hillocks.
At the bottom of the hill, near the shoreline, was the unfinished hotel. The two men Frank had left here to guard the building supplies were tending a smoky orange fire in a large oil drum. “A beacon,” Godfrey Magon pointed out, “to guide our heroes home.”
60
Isaac drove the first truck, with Chase in the passenger seat beside him fondling the pistol. Their headlights were taped down to mere slits, producing something not much stronger than candlelight, a faint amber glow barely bright enough to distinguish the road from the surrounding woods. Only the lead truck used headlights at all, each of the other three navigating by the red taillights of the truck ahead.
From time to time Chase tried to make small talk—“What are you going to do with all the money?” “Do you like your new life as a swashbuckler?” “What ministry were you with in Uganda?”—but Isaac refused to answer. He hated this creature beside him; he had to grip tightly to the steering wheel to keep himself from a useless suicidal attack against the man.
Bathar. Painful scenes played in his head, of himself telling Mr. Balim that Bathar was dead; and of course he must be the one to break the news. Frank lacked the sensitivity, and all the rest were strangers.
That’s why he has the gun, Isaac thought, why he wasn’t calm until he had a gun in his hand. It’s because his viciousness makes him hurt people, he can’t stop hurting people, and he needs protection against the rage and hatred he inspires.
The gun had been prominent in Chase’s hand when Isaac had come over to the truck cab, back at the depot, to say, “All loaded. I just have to send someone up to get Young Mr. Balim.”
“No need for that,” Chase had answered, sitting in the cab, smiling at him in that lazy-cat way of his. “I already met him on the way down.”
Isaac had stared, unwilling to believe. “What did you—?”
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Chase had said, stroking the gun. “Get in, let’s go.”
For the next hour Isaac could think about that, all the way down the long road to the lake. Fresh pale scars winked from the tree branches, mementos of earlier trucks. The close-lying darkness to either side seemed peopled, teeming with watchful silent life; but none of it so dangerous or so evil as Chase.
It seemed to Isaac finally that they must have crossed into some other plane of reality where there was no lake, no farther terminus at all; there was nothing but the road and a permanent condition in which he drove endlessly through unrelieved darkness with this self-satisfied monster at his side. But then he saw a figure in the dimness ahead, standing between the ruts, and recognized that shambling posture immediately as belonging to no one else but Charlie. Of course it was; Charlie stood grinning, a long shaggy piece of sugar-cane sticking out of his mouth like a financier’s cigar.