“Nothing,” Charlie said. “Just nonsense.”
Lew moved on. He was starting to get into the question of hiding in the woods during a police sweep when Isaac came in with an interruption. “Mr. Balim says he’s sorry, but you can’t work with these people tomorrow.”
“Why not? We don’t have much time. And this was his idea.”
“Mr. Balim says, you can have them every day after tomorrow. But, he says, you must fly to Nairobi tomorrow morning.”
Nairobi. Amarda.
Lew hadn’t thought of her since—Since the rain had stopped? Since she had driven away from Kisumu two weeks ago? Since last night’s muddled and mostly forgotten dreams? If he never saw her again, the affair was over. “Isaac,” he said, “I’ve got these people to train. Can’t you make the trip this time?”
“A black man, a black Ugandan, deal with an Asian family?” Isaac shook his head with a rueful smile. “Besides,” he said, “I’m supposed to go on a trip with Frank tomorrow.”
“A trip? Trip?” Irritable, Lew looked around at the observing, interested men. “It isn’t fair to them,” he said.
Isaac said, “Lew? What’s wrong?”
Meaning that he wasn’t behaving sensibly. Isaac would begin to wonder why he was making such a fuss over the training of these laborers—earlier, in Isaac’s presence in Balim’s office, Lew had given no such indication of concern for these men—and he might even begin to suspect the truth. “All right,” Lew said. “Sorry, Isaac, I don’t mean to be bad-tempered. I’m just having a little trouble with this crowd, that’s all.”
“Then you won’t mind a day off,” Isaac said.
Ellen will fly me; Jesus. “Not a bit,” Lew said, forcing a cheerful grin. “Nairobi, here I come.”
26
“The border,” Isaac said. His mouth was dry; his eyes kept blinking; his hands trembled on the steering wheel.
“You wanted an adventure,” Frank said from the backseat. “Here it is.”
Looking in the rearview mirror, Isaac saw Frank lounging at his ease back there, his tie somewhat askew, his suit jacket open, his white shirt rumpled at his waist. Frank seemed happy, unconcerned, merely amused by Isaac’s fear. I must be like that, Isaac told himself. I must watch Frank, and if he is not afraid I must also be not afraid.
And if the moment comes when Frank is afraid?
Turning his mind sternly away from that question, Isaac slowed the gray Mercedes to a stop just before the red-and-white- striped pole that blocked the entry to Uganda. On the left stood the small shed containing customs officials and border guards. Two sloppily uniformed men with repeating rifles strapped to their backs leaned negligently by the shed door, watching the Mercedes without expression.
Frank leaned forward, extending his document wallet over Isaac’s shoulder, saying, “Here you go, old son. Knock ’em dead.”
“Or vice versa,” Isaac said. His voice was trembling, spoiling the unaccustomed effort at a joke. He hated that.
Frank laughed. “Just don’t tell ’em your right name.”
“No fear of that.”
Very reluctantly, Isaac opened the Mercedes door, stepped out into the warm sunlight, adjusted his chauffeur’s cap and dark-blue chauffeur’s jacket, and walked on watery legs toward the shed.
After Lew Brady’s experience, back before the rains, it had been decided that no one connected with this operation dared enter Uganda again using his own name and ID. Therefore, through various contacts of Balim’s in Nairobi, false documentation had been arranged, so that now, when it was necessary to go to Uganda in a more open manner than the lake route Frank had twice used, they were (they hoped) prepared.
Isaac, grown increasingly discontented with his clerk’s role, had purchased false identification for himself as well, explaining to Balim that Frank would need from time to time a translator who looked more civilized than Charlie. Also, Frank would surely welcome the presence of someone who already knew the ground. And, finally, there were things to be done in Uganda that only a black man could do, and whom could Balim trust for those things more than Isaac? Balim had responded by reminding Isaac that the first law of survival was never to volunteer; then he had accepted the voluntary offer. So here Isaac was, willy-nilly, a man wanted by the Ugandan police, a man high on Idi Amin’s personal death list, walking—however shakily—directly into the lion’s den.
Inside the overheated metal-roofed shed were half a dozen soldiers and customs officials, all looking bored and mean and half-drunk, as though they might murder him, or at the very least pull off his arms and legs, merely for a moment’s amusement. Without a word, looking neither left nor right, Isaac put Frank’s documents and his own on the chest-high counter dividing the room, then stood there like an exhausted horse, waiting.
After a moment, the oldest and least-dangerous-looking of the men came forward and began slowly to study those papers: Frank’s green American passport, Isaac’s red Kenyan passport, Frank’s letters and other identification, Isaac’s driver’s license, the Mercedes registration.
These papers claimed that Frank was an American named Hubert Barton, an employee of International Business Machines, on his way to Jinja to discuss a computer installation there with an attorney named Edward Byagwa. (Photostat copies of correspondence between Byagwa and IBM were included.) The papers also identified Isaac as a Kenyan national named Bukya Mwabiru, employed as a chauffeur by East Africa Car Hire, Ltd., main office in Nairobi. The Mercedes registration showed it to be owned by the same company (of which Mazar Balim owned thirty percent).
The border guard frowned his way through these documents one by one, mumbling to himself from time to time, his lips moving. Finally he glowered at Isaac and said, “Barton.”
“In the auto.” Not trusting his voice—it might break, crack, fail entirely, somehow give him away—Isaac spoke as few words as possible.
The guard moved slightly to his left, so he could look through the open doorway and see Frank sprawled on the backseat of the Mercedes. “Why doesn’t he come in here?”
“Air conditioning,” Isaac said, and even essayed a shrug. “He’s an American.”
The guard grunted. Saying nothing else, he brought up stamp and pad from under the counter and stamped both passports, then wrote illegibly over the stamps. However, instead of giving the papers back to Isaac, he lifted a leaf in the counter, stepped through, lowered the leaf, and marched out of the shed, carrying the papers.
Isaac followed, half-afraid the other guards would yell at him to stay. He trailed the guard over to the Mercedes, where the man gestured with the papers for Frank to open the window. Frank did, and the guard said, severely, “Jambo.”
“That means ‘hello,’ doesn’t it? Jambo yourself, pal,” Frank said. “Jesus, it’s hot out here. Anything wrong, driver?”
“No, sir,” Isaac said.
“Well, jambo some more,” Frank told the guard, and pushed the button to reclose the window.
How can he do that? Isaac asked himself. Frank’s nonchalance, rather than reassuring him, was just increasing his terror. And this is the easy part, he reminded himself gloomily.
The guard, rebuffed, frowned a moment longer at the car, as though considering whether or not to search it (not that there was anything to be found in it). Then, abruptly turning away, the man handed the documents wordlessly to Isaac and gestured at one of the lounging soldiers to raise the barricade. Isaac, his hand trembling so hard he had trouble opening the car door, slid in behind the wheel, dropped the papers on the other leather bucket seat, watched the red-and-white pole lift out of the way, put the engine in gear, and for the first time in three years moved onto the soil of Uganda.