The four soldiers drifted laggardly by, not quite dragging their rifles in the dirt. The sergeant, moving with self-satisfied fussiness, reappeared among the motor-pool vehicles and came marching back to the office, where he said, “Well, I succeeded for you. It wasn’t easy.”
“I’ll have a truck soon?”
“Ten minutes, no more.” He returned his clipboard to its nail on the wall with a solid slap of self-satisfaction at a job well done. “It’s being gassed up now,” he said, “windshield cleaned, everything fine.”
“That’s good.” Isaac touched the other requisition on the sergeant’s desk. “Now, about this for Friday.”
“Twenty trucks.” The sergeant, very dubious, shook his head.
“Three days from now, plenty of warning,” Isaac pointed out, and they spent the next fifteen minutes haggling over that, the sergeant at last promising that he would do his best—he couldn’t answer, of course, for incompetent staff or careless previous drivers or the importunings of even more important individuals than the one whose signature was on this request—but at least he would do his best, and quite possibly, at noon on Friday, twenty trucks would be ready and forthcoming.
“It helps,” the sergeant explained, “that you won’t need drivers.”
A knock on the door was followed by the appearance of a grease-covered skinny man in uniform trousers and dirty undershirt, who said the truck was ready. “Exactly on time!” the sergeant exclaimed inaccurately. “Come along, Captain.”
The truck was just outside, a five-ton Leyland Terrier, several years old, with a black canvas cover on an aluminum frame over the bed. The engine was running; that is, it was loudly coughing and missing. “Not warmed up yet,” the sergeant said. Extending another clipboard and a ball-point pen, he said, “No dents or scratches. Sign here.”
Isaac wrote on the form under Comments: “Many general dents and scratches.” Then he signed, with something of a flourish, “Captain I. Gelaya.” Pleased that he’d signed the name without hesitation, relieved and happy that he was getting away with this so easily, he handed the clipboard back.
“Isaac!”
Responding automatically to his name, and also to the sound of a familiar voice, Isaac turned, and his heart leaped into his throat.
He was face-to-face with a man named Obed Naya, who was also in the uniform of an Army captain, but who wore his uniform legitimately. An old friend, Obed Naya, a onetime classmate at Makerere University. A man who’d had dinner at Isaac’s house, who had danced with Isaac’s wife. He had entered the Army after university, in the latter days of the Obote presidency, and he and Isaac had seen less and less of one another after Amin had taken over. He was now something in engineering for the Army, and he knew who Isaac really was, and Isaac no longer had any idea who Obed Naya might in the last few years have become.
Brazen it out. What would Frank do? “Obed,” Isaac said, forcing a broad smile onto his face, stepping forward with hand outstretched. “It’s been a long time.”
Delight was being replaced by confusion in Obed’s eyes as they shook hands. He blinked at Isaac’s face, then at his uniform, his captain’s bars. Utterly bewildered, he said, “I had no idea you, uhh…” And Isaac could see him beginning to remember the truth, what had really happened to his old friend Isaac Otera.
“They had me up north for a while,” Isaac said, babbling to keep Obed from speaking. He squeezed Obed’s hand hard, begging him to go along for the sake of their old friendship. “But now I’ve been transferred again. Amazing how things change, isn’t it?”
“Yes… yes.”
“Well, I mustn’t keep my General waiting. It’s been wonderful to see you again, Obed.” Isaac stopped and peered intently at Obed’s stunned face. “I mean that,” he said. “Wonderful to see you again, see that you’re healthy, you’re all right. We’ll have to get together soon.”
“Yes,” Obed said in a faraway voice.
Isaac felt his old friend’s eyes on him as he climbed up into the truck’s dirty cab and forced the floor shift into first gear. What was Obed thinking? What conclusions would he draw? Would he permit Isaac to get away, out of friendship or bewilderment, or would he suddenly raise the alarm? “This impostor—!” But he remained silent, beside the truck, his face a mask of shock.
The truck jolted forward. Isaac fed the gas slowly. He didn’t want the engine to stall; he didn’t want to seem to run away. In the rearview mirror on the truck door beside him, he could see Obed staring.
Up ahead, the Mercedes turned off the road at the spot where Lew had been captured by the men from the State Research Bureau. Isaac, following in the clumsy truck, looked in his mirror and saw only empty road behind him. He made the turn off the highway.
It was an hour since he’d driven away from Jinja Barracks, shaking at the wheel of the truck with pent-up fright and the nearness of his close call with Obed. Willing his hands to behave themselves on the steering wheel, he’d driven the truck through town and past the building holding the lawyer’s office. He’d leaned out the cab window on the way by, pretending to stare at something up ahead, so Frank could get a good look at him. Then he’d circled the block twice, and the second time Frank had pulled out in front in the Mercedes, leading the way east out of Jinja toward the Kenyan border.
And now, with no trouble at all, here they were on the old access road, overgrown with shrubbery, rutted and pitted underneath. Ahead, the Mercedes moved at barely five miles an hour, rocking and dipping on the uneven ground as though it were a small boat in a choppy sea. The truck followed in a more elephantine manner, its big tires crushing down the rocks and roots that made the Mercedes dance.
After a quarter of a mile, the Mercedes stopped and Isaac braked the truck behind it. Frank came back and said, up through Isaac’s open window, “No problems?”
“No problems. I ran into an old friend, but he didn’t give me away.”
Frank looked startled, but then he grinned. “Didn’t give you away, huh? Isaac, you’re wasted in an office; you were born for this life.”
“I’ll be glad, just the same, to be back in that office.”
“Sure you will. Park this thing off to the right here, out of the way. We’re far enough now; we can’t be seen from the highway, and we can’t be seen from the railroad.”
“Fine.”
Isaac put the truck where Frank had suggested, then joined him in the Mercedes. He got into the backseat where his chauffeur’s uniform awaited him, and changed clothing while Frank bumped and groaned them on down the road. When the Mercedes stopped, Isaac looked forward and saw the gleaming steel stripes just ahead.
“Come on,” Frank said. “Come look at our model railroad.”
They got out of the car and walked down to the railway line. Looking back up the hill at the Mercedes, parked incongruously in the middle of the semitropical forest, surrounded by trees and vines and brush, Isaac was confused for a second because the car didn’t look as out of place as it should; then he realized that luxury-car advertising for years has featured lavish color photos of gleaming expensive automobiles in the woods or on deserted beaches or perched on mountaintops. Now I know why they were there, Isaac thought. Their drivers were stealing coffee.
Frank said, “What are you grinning about?”
“A stray thought. Not important.”
“It’s somewhere down this way,” Frank said, and led the way along the rail line to the right.
Isaac couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder along the track from time to time, even though he knew no train would be coming. As part of his clerical role in this operation, he had learned the current status of Uganda Railways, and it was scanty indeed. There was no longer passenger service on the main line between Kampala and the eastern border with Kenya at Tororo. Generally speaking, two daily trains now passed this spot, one in each direction, both freights, both traveling at night to avoid the heat of the sun.