Returning the form, Chase said, “You see the authority.”
“Oh, yes, Captain Chase.”
“And the place.”
“Jinja; yes, sir.”
“And the date of implementation.”
“Yes, sir. Tomorrow night.”
“We must keep this quiet until then. We don’t want to scare our bird away.”
Laughing, the duty officer said, “No, Captain, we don’t.”
“There’s one thing more,” Chase said.
The duty officer waited, alert.
“This is not something to be written. This is from the President himself.” Chase tapped the form with a fingertip. “Give her the VIP treatment.”
PART FIVE
44
Eight a.m. The train—locomotive, tender, twenty-seven coffee-laden cars—pulled out of the yards at Soroti, headed south. A brief sprinkle before sunrise had left the world sparkling clean. The engineer and fireman, drinking their after-breakfast beer and feeling the deep vibration of the locomotive as it pulled eight hundred tons of coffee over the shining rails, sang happy songs together as they sailed along the track through the green countryside. They called to pretty schoolgirls crossing the fields toward the main road, carrying their books against their breasts. Some of the girls waved back.
Lew stood aside while the four men who’d built this blind carefully removed it, pulling it downhill and to the left, leaning it against a tangle of shrubbery. “Very pretty,” he said, and stepped through the magic doorway in the jungle to look at the railroad track. “Very pretty indeed.”
Young Mr. Balim, who claimed to speak Swahili sufficiently well for the task, had assigned himself to Lew as translator. Following through the gap, he said, “My goodness. To hear about it is one thing, but to see it is something else.”
“Bathar, tell them this is a very very pretty structure. They did a Grade A job.”
Young Mr. Balim’s translation was at least close enough to wreathe the faces of the four men in proud smiles. They did a lot of nodding and pointing and talking, all of which Young Mr. Balim translated as “They say they had much difficulty, but they knew the job was very important.”
“They did just fine. Thank them again.”
While that was going on, Lew studied the rails. Unlike American track, which is laid with staggered joints so that each joint is always at the midpoint of the opposite rail, the British habitually lay track with parallel joints. This practice makes for a marginally less solid line, but it does come in handy for hijackers intending to divert the track. “These joints here,” Lew said to Young Mr. Balim, having walked down the line a bit to the west. “This is where we’ll open the track. Ask them if they agree.”
Young Mr. Balim posed the question, which Lew had asked since after all these men had been hired for their railway experience. And the answer was “Yes, they say that’s the place they had in mind.”
The up freight had gone by two hours ago, just after dawn, when the brief rain was stopping. The railway was theirs. “We might as well get the work crew up here,” Lew said, “and get started.”
Isaac, in his Ugandan Army captain’s uniform, approached the truck, where Frank was suspiciously watching the twenty men chosen as drivers select clothing out of the boxes before climbing aboard. He looked as though he suspected them of lying about their ability to drive; which was in fact possible. Isaac said, “How does it look?”
“What? Oh, the uniform. Fine,” Frank said. “You could strike terror in my heart at forty paces wearing that.”
“That’s reassuring,” Isaac said.
“Good. Charlie!”
A part of Mazar Balim’s business was a brisk trade in Army surplus and used clothing, which was where all the stuff in the boxes had come from. Charlie was helping the men find military-style clothing that fit, though what Charlie knew about right-fitting clothing was anybody’s guess. He looked up at Frank’s voice, said, “Yes, Frank?” and trotted over to receive instructions.
“Tell those clowns,” Frank said, “we want those uniforms back.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Those duds are for sale in the shop in Kisumu, they’re supposed to go back on the shelf when we’re done, so they shouldn’t get ’em all dirty and fucked up.”
“Okay, fine.”
Something about Charlie’s translation struck the men funny; Isaac, listening, faintly smiled, until he saw Frank glowering at him, beetle-browed. “Did he tell ’em what I said?”
“Oh, sure,” Isaac said, and in essence Charlie had delivered Frank’s message. Isaac thought it better if Frank remained unaware of the details. He said, “Couldn’t we speed up this loading process?”
Frank grinned at him. “In a hurry to get started?”
“No,” Isaac said truthfully, “I’m in a hurry to get it over with.”
The bank opened at nine-thirty, and Chase was its first customer, striding in with smiling confidence, greeting the assistant manager by name, handing him the forged request chit from Idi Amin for five thousand dollars U.S., in cash. (That, Chase knew, was the highest amount the assistant manager would give him without telephone verification.) “While you’re getting it,” Chase went on, “I’ll just visit my box.”
“Certainly. Of course. Miss Ngana? Would you take Mr. Chase to the safe-deposit boxes?”
Chase had always assumed that Amin knew what was in his safe-deposit box, so he’d never kept anything there but some jewels and personal identification. These he now removed, so that when he returned upstairs with the willowy Miss Ngana, he carried in his pockets about thirty thousand dollars’ worth of ivory figurines and small pieces of jewelry in gold.
The small canvas packet was waiting on the assistant manager’s desk. Approaching, Chase was overcome by a huge yawn. “Very sorry,” he said, when he could. Not wanting to risk a return to his own house, he’d spent last night with a whore of his acquaintance, who had insisted on giving him his money’s worth.
“Not at all,” the assistant manager said, smiling. “Many mornings I feel the same myself.”
“Coffee, that’s what I need.” Chase smiled his secret smile.
“And less love life,” the assistant manager said, beaming broadly and nervously to show he had dared a joke.
“That, too. Well, good morning.”
“Good morning, Mr. Chase.”
Outside, Chase strode briskly to the Mercedes he’d commandeered last night from the Bureau building’s parking lot. Stuffing the bag of money under the front seat, he started the engine and drove quickly away. He still had three more banks to visit, plus several shops.
Even success, though, had its bitter taste. Amin is taking millions out of this rotten country, Chase thought, and I’m taking thousands. Big fish, little fish. Ah, well; we all eat as much as we can.
Frank didn’t realize it, but when he shinnied up a telephone pole wearing earphones connected to a dangling ball of wire he looked like some sort of bear act in the circus. That’s why there was so much snickering going on below. He suspected the racket had something to do with him, however, and resolved to kick ass just as soon as he got to the ground.