Looking down, Chase said, “It came out very well. The white man’s burden, eh?”
“That’s-ah right! That’s-ah right!”
Neither of them mentioned that the right-rear bearer of the litter, an Englishman named Robert Scanlon, had recently been killed with a sledgehammer over at the State Research Bureau because of a business dispute with some people there.
Coming back over to the desk, patting the photo on his chest, Chase said, “This is what I wear today.”
“Oh, no,” Amin protested, “not all-ah day. You look-ah so nice in you clodes.”
“Underneath, then,” Chase said. “It’ll be my secret.”
“One-ah you secrets,” Amin said with an amiable smile. “Sit-ah down, my little Baron.”
“Thank you, sir.” Chase settled himself into his accustomed chair and said, “What I’m mostly here to talk about is coffee.”
And Sir Denis Lambsmith? Amin’s eyes brightened. “Yes?”
“The train can roll this week. Friday. Will the planes be there?”
It was Amin’s style to divide tasks among several people, so that only he ever knew the full dimensions or the complete story of what was going on. While Chase was dealing with Sir Denis, and to a lesser extent with the Brazilians (and on his own hook with Emil Grossbarger), it was Amin’s Deputy Minister of Development who’d been given the job of seeing to it that the Grossbarger Group provided the eight transport planes that had been agreed on. The planes were to be at Entebbe when the initial trainload of coffee arrived, and they would shuttle this first consignment of coffee to Djibouti, where it would be loaded onto ships in the Indian Ocean.
But there was a problem, and Chase unfortunately had now pointed to it. “We gonna get the planes,” Amin said, exuding confidence. “There’s-ah still one-ah two details-ah to be worked out.”
“Positioning costs,” Chase said. “I heard about it.”
“You hear about a lot-ah tings,” Amin said, displeased.
“I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help.”
“It-ah will work itself out,” Amin told him, shutting the door on that conversation. “And-ah dah train can still go on-ah Friday, even if we got to-ah store dah coffee a day or two day at-ah Entebbe.”
As was so often the case when things became irritating for Amin, the problem was money. The planes were being chartered from a firm based in Switzerland, which was insisting on what it called “positioning costs” before it would divert eight aircraft from their current work in Europe. It was the firm’s contention that to “position” each large cargo plane, fueled and with crew, at Entebbe would cost thirty-five thousand dollars U.S., money it was demanding in advance.
Since the Brazilians and the Grossbarger Group had already paid Uganda the advance money—and it had already been spent—they could not be called upon to pay these unexpected costs. However, Uganda’s foreign-exchange position—as usual precarious—would not permit a payment of two hundred eighty thousand U.S. dollars prior to shipping the coffee and being paid the other two thirds of the price.
At the moment, Amin’s people in Kampala and in Zurich were attempting either to convince the charter company to trust Uganda—a sovereign nation among nations, after all—for payment later, or to find some other air cargo company that would. So far, things weren’t going too well, though it was possible they could still make a deal with an American company, Coast Global Airlines, which had already in the last few years made lesser coffee shipments from Uganda to the United States. Coast Global’s primary problem seemed to be finding sufficient spare planes and crew for the job.
Chase rose, saying, “Well, if everything’s in hand, I’ll be off.”
“Yes,” Amin said. It was disappointing that Chase hadn’t once mentioned Sir Denis Lambsmith. Amin watched him cross the room back over to his clothing, and then added, “To Jinja.”
Chase looked surprised, but not worried. “That’s right,” he said. He put his white shirt on over the Idi Amin T-shirt, and buttoned it up.
“To see a lawyer,” Amin said, his friendly smile unchanged. “Name of Edward-ah Byagwa. Wha-ta you need-ah lawyer for, little Baron?”
“I’m buying some land near Iganga,” Chase said. “Used to be church land.” Smoothly he knotted his green tie.
“Buy-ing?”
Chase grinned, making them conspirators together. “You know me,” he said, shrugging into his tan sports jacket. “I like things to be nice and legal.”
“I know you, little Baron,” Amin agreed. “Have a good-ah time, in Jinja.”
Chase paused at the door, looking back, grinning again with the open smile that Amin knew to be his most thoroughly false expression. “So you knew I was going to Jinja,” he said. “I can’t get anything past you, can I?”
“I hope-ah not,” Amin told him. “I hope-ah not completely.”
28
Sex last night, and sex again this morning. He’s feeling guilty, Ellen thought, because he’s on his way to see his girl friend. She watched Lew’s profile as they drove to Balim’s offices, and in his expressionless face she read deceit, guilt, and self-indulgence.
She hadn’t told him about her conversation yesterday with Balim, nor did she see any reason why she should. He’d want to know why she was quitting Balim to work elsewhere, and that would lead inevitably to the name of Amarda Jhosi, and Ellen simply didn’t want that whole scene. She didn’t care to learn whether Lew would deny everything, or promise to reform, or even attempt to defend himself. When a thing is over, it’s over, that’s all; and this phase of Ellen Gillespie’s life was over.
In Balim’s office she sat quietly to the side, in the brown armchair into which Frank normally flung himself, while Balim explained today’s problem to Lew. “The grandmother,” he said, with an embarrassed little smile, as though she were his own grandmother and he were solely responsible for her. “The grandmother won’t stay in place.”
“I don’t think she likes us,” Lew said.
“Poor lady.” Balim sighed. “What she doesn’t like is the position in which she finds herself. The moral niceties in stealing from Amin, who stole from her, are too subtle for Lalia Jhosi. What is wanted here is reassurance, someone to convince her she hasn’t fallen in with thieves.”
“Then you should talk to her yourself,” Lew said. “Or send Isaac. That’s what I told him yesterday.”
Ellen looked sharply at him. Had he tried to get out of this trip? But that was just guilt again, and cowardice. The main difference between men and women, Ellen thought, is that men have so much simpler emotions; they can’t deal with complexity. If Lew were really trying to avoid Amarda Jhosi, it could only be because she was making him confused.
“Ah, no,” Balim was saying, “you are the man for the job. I am a merchant, and undoubtedly a shady character. At first I was a very good friend to bring my compatriots, my fellow refugees, this opportunity. But as time has gone on, Lalia Jhosi has come to realize that I am merely a sharp practitioner, the sort of Asian who gives Asians a bad name. As for Isaac, he would surely alarm the old lady by talking politics. She wants involvement with politics even less than with crime; after all, she’s already seen what politics can do.”
Lew glanced with a kind of frustrated anger at Ellen, then said to Balim, “But what am I supposed to do?”
“Be a clean-cut American boy. A fighter for justice and a defender of the oppressed.”