No old friend appeared today to stop his heart. It was clear that Obed Naya had not turned him in, had kept his own counsel. What had the man thought was going on? If only there were some safe way to get in touch, to thank him, but any contact at all would be dangerous to Obed. A letter or a phone call would attract the wrong attention. It would be a poor thank-you to get his old friend killed.
Once he’d signed for the trucks, he went back to the one he’d driven here and ordered the men out. In their ragbag of army clothing they looked about like the other soldiers at Jinja Barracks. Isaac enjoyed pretending to be a tough officer, barking at the men, ordering them into the trucks. Once he saw that in fact all the engines did work, he thanked the sergeant once more, promised to return the trucks by noon tomorrow, and led the convoy out of the Barracks and eastward out of town.
They were merely an Army convoy, one of the commonest of sights on Ugandan roads. No one gave them a second glance.
At a quarter to twelve, Chase came smiling out of the jewelry shop on Kampala Road. Ugandan shillings would be useless to him after today, so he had just converted most of his into a small but lovely diamond necklace. He should be able to sell it for at least twenty thousand dollars once he got to Europe.
This was his last stop. Eat lunch now, before departure? No; now that things were in motion he was increasingly gripped by a sense of urgency, a strong desire to keep moving. He could stop at a market, buy some food to eat on the way. Deciding that, he returned to the Mercedes, stowed the small flat box containing the necklace in the glove compartment, and drove away from there. Westward, away from Kampala, away from Jinja and the coffee train. Away from Uganda, away from the past. Away from danger.
Frank walked along the track to where Charlie half snoozed, smiling dreamily inside the earphones, listening to the busy talk of the workaday world. It was just noon. “Charlie,” Frank said. “Where’s the train?”
“Oh, hello, Frank. They just called.”
“Who did?”
“Tororo station. Train gone through, making good time.” Frank stared at him. “Gone through Tororo?”
“Sure. Very fast train.”
“Jesus H. Galloping Christ!”
Frank pounded back up the track to where Lew and the workmen were easing that second rail closer and closer to the spur. “Son of a bitch, Lew!” he yelled. “The fucking train’s ahead of schedule!”
Lew looked down the track, as though expecting to see the thing coming. “Where is it?”
“Eighty miles from here. Gone through Tororo already. The bastards are highballing.”
Lew looked around, then bawled, “Bathar!”
Young Mr. Balim appeared, as though from under a sleeper. “Here I am.”
“Tell them,” Lew said, “we’ve got to do this faster. The train’s an hour from here.”
“Oh, my gosh.”
“Not an hour,” Frank said. “They can’t do eighty, not that full.”
“Tell them an hour,” Lew insisted.
While Young Mr. Balim translated—it griped Frank’s ass that a punk like that could rattle off the fucking Swahili—Frank turned and saw an army truck just going over the level crossing. “Isaac’s back! Get these people moving, Lew.”
Frank trotted down the track to the access road, where truck after truck was now lumbering across. Who asked the goddam railroad to run ahead of schedule? Jumping up onto a passing running board, Frank rode down to where Isaac was directing everybody where to park. “Hey, Isaac!”
Isaac waved, grinning from ear to ear, the ultimate schoolboy playing hooky. “No trouble at all,” he called. “I am reborn a highwayman.”
Frank had no time for amenities. “Isaac, the train’s running ahead of schedule. It’s already past Tororo. Get your drivers up to help Lew move that fucking track.”
“Tororo!” Turning away, Isaac started shouting panicky instructions at his drivers. More Swahili.
It was like a conga line, with Lew at the head, Young Mr. Balim behind him, Frank, Isaac, the four ex-railwaymen and the forty-eight laborers. Fifty-six men in a row, all stooping over to grasp the double lip of the rail in both hands, tensing, waiting.
“On three,” Lew called. “You do it, Bathar.”
Young Mr. Balim’s voice sounded clear and musical over the tracks: “Moja! Mbili! TATU!”
The hundred twelve hands gripped; the fifty-six backs strained and lifted; the rail cleared the ground and moved leftward not quite a foot, and fell.
“Again!”
“Moja! Mbili! TATU!”
“Moja! Mbili! TATU!”
“Jesus,” Frank grumbled, “isn’t the fucker there?”
Lew looked down at the two lengths of rail, the main track gleaming, the spur orange-red with rust. We should have guessed, he thought. “It’s there,” he said. “Come take a look.”
While the men all straightened and rubbed their backs, stretching and laughing at one another, Lew and Frank and Isaac and Young Mr. Balim and the ex-railwaymen all stood looking at the rails. Frank said it: “It’s two fucking feet too fucking short.”
Lew sighed. “We took two straight lines,” he said, “and curved them. The outer curve has to be longer than the inner curve to come to the same place.”
“Two feet. We’ll derail the fucking train if we try to run it over that.”
Lew turned to Young Mr. Balim. “These men have been working here for a week. Ask them if they’ve seen any short piece of rail we could fit in there.”
Young Mr. Balim asked the question, but didn’t have to translate the negative headshakes. Frank said, “Goddam son of a bitch dirty bastard.”
Hardly noticing the fact, Lew had taken over. “Frank,” he said, “we didn’t come this far to get stopped by some little gap in the rail. We’ll work something out. You start them driving spikes. Have we got the measure?”
“Right here,” Young Mr. Balim said, picking up the long notched stick they would use to be sure the rails were the right width apart.
“Give it to Frank. You and these guys come with me. There’s got to be something in this depot we can use.”
Frank stood holding the stick Young Mr. Balim had given him. He looked truculent and confused. “Now what?”
Lew said, “Frank, we’ve got the first rail spiked into place. You use the measure to put the second rail the right distance from it, and have the men spike it in. I’ll be right back.”
“Where’s my translator?” Frank was demanding; as Lew led his party down toward the engine shed, Frank overrode Isaac’s attempt to volunteer by bellowing, “Charlie, you asshole, get over here!”
The interior of the engine shed was an agglomeration of half-eaten food, ancient rotting leaves, animal and bird droppings, rusting tools and metal tables, rotted planks and foul woodsmoke. Lew and the other five searched through this mess without result; everything they came up with was either too long or too fragile for the weight it would have to support.
“Something,” Lew said, hands on hips, glaring around. “Something.”