“Or cold feet,” said Young Mr. Balim.
“I think more highly of my friends than does my son,” Balim said, giving Ellen a rueful smile. (Frank saw that she faintly responded to the smile; Balim could do anything, when he set his mind to it.) “Still,” Balim added, “if for any reason one of my couriers fails, the other must surely succeed. Then Baron Chase will phone me, I will explain the problem, and he will arrange for Lew’s release.”
Still clearly dubious, Ellen said, “You make it sound almost easy.”
“It almost is. You go home now,” Balim said, patting Ellen’s shoulder, “and I’ll call—”
“No,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”
“Ellen, I promise I’ll call you the minute—”
“Where should I go?” she demanded, astonishing Frank by suddenly flaring up at Balim. “Back to that little house by myself? Or to your guest room, or Frank’s living room? I’m better here.”
“But if the call comes late at night, when I’m at home?”
She looked at the telephone on his desk. “Wouldn’t it be the same number there?”
Balim laughed, again patting her shoulder, saying, “You win.”
“If the phone rings, I’ll pick up, but I won’t speak. I’ll just listen. No matter what he says, I won’t say a word.”
“I believe you,” Balim said. “You can stay.”
The pail contained two sandwiches that Bibi had made, four bottles of White Cap beer, two glasses, napkins, a small bag of homemade cookies. Frank looked in the pail, smiled, and was pleased. Putting its top on, he smacked the giggling Bibi on the rump and carried the pail out to the Land-Rover.
It was nearly eleven at night. The streetlights of Kisumu are dim and widely spaced. There isn’t much by way of nightlife, not out on the streets. Frank kicked the Land-Rover past houses that were mostly dark, or with a wan light showing pink through cloth-covered windows, and parked at last in front of Balim’s buildings. Two of the guards—ramshackle ragged men for whom hard hats and Sam Browne belts served as uniforms—lounged near the door on upturned wooden boxes; they made some small effort to look alert when Frank appeared, but didn’t go so far as to stand. The other guards would be around back, from where the possibility of theft was naturally greater.
The dog that patrolled inside this building at night was named Hakma. A big barrel-chested unamiable brute, he had once been described by Frank as half German shepherd and half gorilla. “Yeah, Hakma, hello, you know who I am, you fucking beast,” Frank said, standing still just within the door while the dog—much more conscientious than the human guards—sniffed his body first, and only then, having recognized the pass-smell, turned his attention to the good aromas from the pail. “That’s not for you, fucker,” Frank said, pushed the dog away, and headed for the offices.
The door between Isaac’s and Balim’s offices was ajar. The light was on in there, and voices sounded. Massively frowning, holding the pail up in front of himself with both hands on the handle as if it were an offering, Frank tiptoed across the dim outer room and looked through the doorway.
The kid! Son of a bitch bastard, it was Young Punk Balim in there with Ellen, grinning like the rat he was, telling stories, chuckling away. A wicker picnic basket was on the floor; a small gaily printed cloth now covered a third of Balim’s desk, and on it were plates and stemmed glasses. What were they eating? Cold chicken, cheese, fruit. Gritting his teeth, Frank watched the rotten bastard pick up a bottle of white wine to refill their glasses. “It may be my provincial background,” he was saying, oily punk, “but I have always found theater in the West End somehow too slick. Did you have that sense?”
“I know what you mean,” Ellen said. She was completely at her ease. Frank wanted to go in there and make her feel guilty, ask her how she could just picnic like this with Lew in God knows what trouble. Of course, he’d have to hide his own pail of sandwiches.
Reluctantly, in utter silence, he retraced his steps, shutting Isaac’s outer door behind himself and calling Hakma several uncomplimentary names on the way out.
It would be a loss of face in front of Bibi and Eddah to return this soon, and with the picnic uneaten. Feeling badly used, Frank drove southeast out of town and found a place to park where he could look out over the moonlit gulf. Forty miles away, too far to see from here, Winam Gulf opened into Lake Victoria, itself two hundred miles wide and two hundred fifty miles long. In all that vast expanse, with the moon shining down and the calm water rippling like a purring cat, there was not one place where Frank Lanigan would not feel unhappy.
“If that’s her taste—” he muttered, and opened the pail. He ate both sandwiches, drank two of the bottles of beer, skipped the cookies one by one across the calm water, drove home to the darkened house, kicked George off the bed, and slept like a log.
13
It was a beautiful young black woman in a bright-colored print dress who met Sir Denis Lambsmith this time at the strangely empty Entebbe Airport. Her dark-cinnamon skin glowed with innocent health, but there was something seductive in her broad smile and the eager glisten of her eyes. “I’m delighted to meet you, Sir Denis,” she said, shaking his hand, her own hand small and slender and firm. “I am Patricia Kamin, of the Ministry of Development.”
Sir Denis, despite the fact that he was immediately taken by this attractive young woman, couldn’t resist the temptation to ask, “What’s happened to Mr. Onorga?”
She looked prettily confused for a second; then the sunny sexy smile broke out once more and she said, “Oh, the man from the Coffee Commission! I believe he was transferred. You’re in my hands now.”
“Then I’m delighted,” Sir Denis said, smiling down upon her from his greater height and age and sex and race.
“You have your luggage? The car is this way.”
It was a black Toyota, which Patricia Kamin drove herself. No secret police this time; how pleasant. Beside her in the front seat, Sir Denis took pleasure in the movement of her knees and her sleek legs as she angled the car out of the empty parking lot and around the sweeping circle to the main road. All airports in former British possessions are toy versions of Heathrow, no matter how redundant the roundabouts.
“How is London?” she asked, once they were on the road, toward Kampala.
“Drizzly.”
She laughed, a musical sound, and said, “Still full of foreigners?”
He looked at her, surprised, not quite sure how to answer, not at all sure who she thought she was. “Foreigners?”
“When I was there over Christmas, the city was full of Norwegians and Danes and Frenchmen and I don’t know who all.”
“Oh, yes. Shopping.”
“That’s it,” she agreed. “You couldn’t get near Harrods. I did my shopping on Oxford Street.”
“I imagine that was also full.”
“It was. I’ll never understand international finance,” she said, flashing him another smile. “I met the nicest Swede, and he kept explaining to me over and over how he was saving money by coming all the way to London to do his Christmas shopping, but it simply never made sense. And the hotel he was in! A shower really big enough for two!”
Sir Denis drove himself from sexual thoughts with pompous statements. “I think we’ll find normality returning,” he said, “once the North Sea oil starts to flow.”