Isaac said, “And now we’ll have to tell him about Bathar.”
Lew said, “Frank, I’ll go up and get him.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Frank said.
“It’s not stupid. What if he’s alive? He isn’t ready for Uganda, Frank, believe me. Think about it; they find him, they find the depot, they start to twist him.”
“He’ll talk,” Frank said.
But Lew brushed that aside. “He’ll talk the first ten seconds. But they won’t stop, Frank. I know these bastards now. Chase! If Young Mr. Balim’s still alive, and your pals find him, what then?”
Chase didn’t lift his head. “They’ll play him for a month,” he said tonelessly.
“If ever there was a mouse in the land of cats,” Lew said, “it’s Young Mr. Balim.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank said, and turned to bellow, “Charlie!”
“Right here,” said Charlie, who was.
“Take seven or eight guys,” Frank told him, gesturing at Chase, “and tie this fellow up with a lot of rope. I don’t want him comfortable, see what I mean?”
“Oh, sure,” Charlie said, grinning.
“And put a gag in his mouth. A dirty gag. Use your shirt.”
Charlie giggled, and called in Swahili to the men standing around, several of whom came forward in anticipatory pleasure. Meanwhile, Frank turned back to Lew and Isaac, saying, “Come on over here.”
They walked a bit away, farther from the light, where Frank frowned at Lew, shook his head, and said, “You’re talking about two hours, up and back. Minimum. We’ll be out of here in less than an hour. And if Chase really is up to something, we can’t hang around. In fact, we can’t hang around, anyway.”
Isaac said, “Frank, think of Mr. Balim.”
“I am thinking of Mr. Balim. I’m thinking of every fucking body.”
“I won’t come back,” Lew said. “Listen, Frank, whether he’s alive or dead I’ll get back a different route.”
“There are no different routes,” Frank told him. “We stole their fucking coffee crop, remember? They’ll have that border shut like a nunnery in the Hundred Years’ War.”
“Ellen,” Lew said.
Nobody understood him. Isaac, thinking Lew had forgotten in the press of the moment, said, “Lew, Ellen isn’t with us anymore.”
“Sure she is,” Lew said. “She’s at Entebbe.”
Isaac gaped at him, too astonished to speak. Frank said it for them both: “Entebbe? You’re gonna escape from Uganda through Entebbe?”
“I wouldn’t be the first,” Lew said, grinning. “Frank, get a message to her. You can do it, you’re her former employer back in Nairobi. The message is, an old friend of hers from Alaska, a guy named Val Dietz, he’s in Africa passing through, he says he’ll be in Entebbe sometime the next twenty-four hours, he sure hopes he can stop by and say hello, buy her a drink.”
Isaac, feeling very uncomfortable, said, “Lew, you shouldn’t be the one to do this.”
“I’m the only one who can,” Lew said.
His expression sour, Frank said, “Still the fucking hero, huh?”
“Always and forever, Frank.” Lew was already backing away, grinning, in a hurry to be off. “Remember the message.”
Isaac said, “Val Dietz, from Alaska.”
Frank said, “Where’d that name come from?”
“She’ll understand it.” Pointing at Isaac, Lew said, “Twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll remember,” Isaac promised.
Lew turned and trotted away toward the empty trucks. Watching him, Frank muttered, “Ellen’s gonna blame me.”
61
He couldn’t believe the pain in his head. It wasn’t fair to hurt like this; no matter how much he’d had to drink, no matter how late he’d stayed up, it just wasn’t fair. If the head was going to explode, why didn’t it go ahead and explode and be done with it? Why go on torturing him, hurting so much he couldn’t even get comfortable, the mattress was so hard and lumpy and—
Mattress? Lord, Lord, he wasn’t even in bed, he was on the ground somewhere, he’d never made it home, he even had all his clothes on, his shoes—
Tentatively he opened one eye, saw nothing, and felt increased pain in his skull. Lifting a slow-moving shaking hand, he rested the palm consolingly against his throbbing brow, and the horror he touched there made him shriek! He sat bolt-upright, and stared in blank terror at the blackness all around him.
“My God. My God.” He had no idea Who exactly his God was, only that in moments of distress he felt the presence of some potentially benign Figure gazing placidly and with some amused interest over the rim of Heaven and down upon poor little foolish Bathar.
Blood. Caked blood and torn flesh and a great throbbing pounding bruise. And blackness all around; nothing discernible except just beside him this dark small truck. Truck. Corpse in it. Yellow lights, engine coughing, noise behind him, turn, incredibly fast flash of metal.
Remembering everything—God, are you watching? I’m in Uganda, God—Bathar used the truck to drag himself to his feet. His nerves were all unstrung; he could barely stand; his stomach was roiled; stars and planets spun and imploded in the periphery of his vision. He leaned on the little pickup truck, gasping, waiting for the symptoms to go away, and they didn’t even let up.
But he couldn’t stay here. He had to get back to the depot, warn them. “There’s a crazy person out here; he hits without warning, for no reason at all. Just a crazy person.”
But was he? And who was he? And why do such a terrible thing?
Bathar pushed himself away from the support of the truck, not because he was ready to stand on his own but because he was driven by a sense of urgency. He had to report to Isaac right away, tell him what had happened.
He tottered over the level crossing, struggling to regain control of his legs, and thought he was doing well enough until he came down to the rocky, uneven, root-hampered roadway, where he promptly fell, breaking his fall painfully with his forearms. He rested awhile on the cool damp ground, but then again made it to his feet and proceeded in a wary half-crouch, hands splayed out to the sides.
He did fine until, just before Ellen’s Road, he fell over the moped. Frank had ridden it up here at the very beginning, to get the first truck, and the thing had been shoved out of the way after that, its usefulness finished. When Bathar fell over it, he got a handlebar in the stomach that winded him and forced him to lie quietly on the ground for another little space of time. Then, sighing, hoping God was watching and admiring these strenuous efforts, he made it to his feet once more, found Ellen’s Road, worked his way slowly in to the depot, and everybody was gone. Nothing was left but the last four freight cars, stripped of their cargo.
How could that be? How long had he been unconscious? He stared upward at the sky but saw no indications of dawn. Why had no one come looking for him? And where were they all?
Gone. They left Uganda. Left Uganda.
“Oh, my,” Bathar murmured, his own voice a comforting friend in this unpopulated blackness. “Oh, God, am I in trouble.”
Hurry after them? But how long had they been gone? He’d left his watch at home—ah, the lovely mahogany dresser in his lovely dark cozy comfortable room at home—his watch at home on the dresser top with his wallet, his little gold bracelet, his gold money clip, all his civilized fripperies, because he’d been going off on an adventure. An adventure!