He had started drinking today before noon, and at lunch had had to put up with lectures on economics from a Saudi Arabian who was here to discuss financial assistance for Uganda but who in fact spent all his time criticizing Amin’s handling of the nation’s economy. The Saudi Arabian seemed totally unaware that his arrogant “expertise” was simply the oil-wealth cushion he was reclining on, and that he knew no more than Amin about actually managing financial affairs. Amin had drunk heavily throughout lunch to help him put up with this popinjay, and then had retired here to the Old Command Post and its Botanical Room to go on drinking and to take out his bad temper on his defeated enemies.
A knock sounded at the locked door, across the room behind him. Amin reared up, heavy head turning, staring this way and that for enemies. He glowered at the four sleeping heads in the freezer, and it occurred to him to wonder why they couldn’t be delivered with their eyes open. As they were, they didn’t appear to be paying attention. He would have to talk to Minawa about that.
The knock repeated, more insistently. Amin muttered something and heaved himself up out of the chair, pressing his palm to the freezer for support. “One minute!” he called, first in Kakwa and then in Swahili. “One minute,” he muttered in English, “one minute, sir,” and looked around for somewhere to put down the whisky bottle.
There were a refrigerator and a freezer here in the Botanical Room, side by side. The refrigerator contained beer and other drinks, because Amin liked to entertain close friends in this room. The two were kept locked with a single chain and padlock. Now, closing the deep-freezer of his enemies, Amin fumbled with the chain and padlock, fastened them, and moved toward the door. By the time he reached it, his manner was much less drunk; only his breath and the increased redness of his eyes gave him away.
The person at the door to the outer room was a servant named Moses, a Bagisu from the slopes of Mount Elgon, a placid man, eager to please, with a very ready laugh, who famously loved Amin’s jokes and sense of humor. Amin didn’t realize it, but whenever it was necessary to give him a message while he was drunk or in a bad mood, the other servants always sent Moses, because he was least likely to be killed or beaten.
“Ah, Your Excellency,” Moses said. “Colonel Juba calls. He has a tape for you to listen to. He says he thinks it’s very important.”
“He thinks so, does he? Colonel Juba thinks Colonel Juba is important.” The colonel was in charge of the network of spy microphones, and many of the colonel’s tapes had in truth turned out to be very interesting indeed. Nevertheless, the lunch and the whisky had put Amin in a bad mood, which he was reluctant to give up. “Maybe someday I’ll take one of those tapes,” he said, “and shove it up Colonel Juba’s ass, and spin him in a circle, and listen at his mouth.”
Moses was delighted at the image. “That would be something,” he agreed, laughing and nodding.
Amin’s mood was improving by the second. “Order my car, Moses,” he said. “I’ll listen to this tape.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Moses said, and went laughing away across the main room while Amin strode off to piss and wash his face and change his lunch-stained safari suit.
The tape was of Patricia Kamin and Sir Denis Lambsmith, and when it reached the point where Sir Denis proposed marriage Amin, who had been smiling in anticipation of something special, roared with laughter and slapped his knee, looking around to be sure the other men in the room also got the joke. Then he said to Colonel Juba, “That’s it, is it? She really got him, that girl. She’s a holy terror, that girl.”
Colonel Juba was a thin man, painfully thin inside his Army uniform, with a long bony face and a permanent look of disapproval. “No,” he said. “It was the part before that, about the coffee.”
Amin was still feeling the effects of all that drink, although he had gratefully accepted a cup of coffee on arrival here at the State Research Bureau building. The tape was still running on. “Run it back, play it for me again,” he said, then frowned, because the tape now was nothing but a rushing sound, like a great wind through tree branches. “What’s that?”
“They’re taking a shower together,” Colonel Juba said. “They take many showers together.”
“A very clean girl,” Amin said with a big grin. “And a very clean white man.”
The technician rewound the tape, and Amin listened for the second time to the part that Colonel Juba thought important. With Juba and two technicians and two other officers in the room, Amin thought it important not to appear stupid, so this time he listened much more carefully.
SIR DENIS: You know, Emil Grossbarger told me why he wanted me out of this sale.
PATRICIA: So it was him?
SIR DENIS: Oh, I knew that all along. I could never understand why.
PATRICIA: Maybe he’s up to some hanky-panky.
SIR DENIS: He says he heard somebody’s going to try to steal the shipment.
PATRICIA: What?
SIR DENIS: It’s nothing. Some rumor he heard, Lord knows where.
PATRICIA: The shipment, it’s—It’s too big. Hundreds and hundreds of tons.
SIR DENIS: I know that. He just thinks conditions here are too unstable. If something went wrong, he thinks I might get hurt. It was an act of friendship, believe it or not.
PATRICIA: Yes, of course it was. You should be flattered to inspire such friendship.
SIR DENIS: You inspire greater feelings than that, Patr—
At Colonel Juba’s gesture, the technician switched off the tape. The colonel said to Amin, “Well? What do you think?”
Amin brooded for half a minute, much more sober now. He was not an intellectual man, but he was a cunning and clever one. His mind was like an anthill, the busy self-involved thoughts scurrying along the narrow channels. “Send them away, Juba,” he said, and sat nodding while Juba told the other men to leave.
When they were alone, Amin said, “Baron Chase has been talking to that Swiss man.”
“I was thinking that,” Juba agreed. It had never been a secret that Juba was among those who disliked and mistrusted Baron Chase.
“We haven’t known what he’s been saying to the Swiss man.”
“He won’t sleep with Patricia.”
Amin chuckled. “I think he likes to fuck boys.”
“We could send him a boy.”
“No. He wouldn’t give himself away that easy. He’s very clever, very cunning.” Amin recognized his own qualities in other men, and was an excellent judge of whether or not they could be used against him. “He has been restless here for some time,” he said, brooding, remembering his recent encounters with Chase. “Very restless. And he was gone a long time in London.”
Juba waited patiently. He had already come to his conclusion as to what move to make, but of course he’d heard the tape almost an hour before Amin. And he never had cared much for Chase.
“All right,” Amin said at last. “Take two men you trust, you know what I mean. Pick up Chase, but secretly. There are people in government who shouldn’t know about this, not till it’s over. So just you and me, and your two men.”
Juba nodded. “Good,” he said.
“Find out what Chase and this Swiss man are up to.”
“Carefully?”
Amin thought again, but this time very briefly. “No,” he said. “Baron Chase is spoiled for us now. We won’t need him anymore. Squeeze him dry.”