“It is kinda nice,” Frank admitted, and looked back up the track to where fifty men were just starting to shuffle the northern rail back to its original position.
48
The city of Jinja, population fifty-two thousand, in addition to being the spot where the Nile emerges from Lake Victoria, so that it is therefore a port of some importance, is also a railway hub, an important freight stop on the main east-west line as well as being the western terminus of the northern loop branch line through Mbulamuti. The railroad station at Jinja, as a result, was kept manned all day even under the current reduced level of rail service.
The main office in the red-brick station building was a long narrow room in which an L-shaped, chest-high, dark-wood counter kept the public limited to one quarter of the available area, nearest the door. There was just enough space beyond the counter for two desks, two chairs, one tall filing cabinet, and a wooden pigeonhole arrangement on the wall, holding freight manifests and unsold passenger tickets. One of the two desks was assigned to the stationmaster (and ticket agent), while the other was for the yardmaster (and chief of security).
There was a great deal of pilferage going on in the railway these days, and no one seemed able to stop it. There was a general public suspicion, well founded, that railway employees were themselves responsible for a great percentage of the losses. The result was, most of the phone calls to Jinja station were from irate and suspicious freight customers whose shipments had disappeared.
The yardmaster, himself an honest man, could do nothing for such callers but sigh and agree and promise to look into it. His days were increasingly frustrating and unsatisfying, and if he could have thought of anything else to do with his life he would have quit this job long ago. As it was, he spent his time searching for honest men to stand guard over the yards, and apologizing to customers who no doubt thought he was a crook, too. A very sad situation.
At one-forty-five that afternoon, the yardmaster hung up the phone after one more such unhappy call, and looked up at the round railroad clock on the wall. “That freight didn’t go through, did it?”
The stationmaster was working on the fumbo in today’s paper. “I just can’t get three down,” he said. “A seven letter word meaning ‘trade fair or international mart.’ First and last letters both O.”
“Onyesho.”
“That fits!”
While the stationmaster laboriously printed in the letters, the yardmaster again frowned at the clock. “It must be nearly an hour since they went through Iganga.”
“What’s that?”
“The special train. The coffee freight.”
“They’ll be along.”
“It shouldn’t take an hour.”
“Maybe they saw a pretty girl beside the line and stopped to bless her.”
The yardmaster laughed. The phone rang, and he stopped laughing.
There was no direct rail service to Entebbe. After an early lunch, Patricia drove Sir Denis to Luzira, Kampala’s port, where the major freight yards were located and where the train would terminate. This was an official trip, in order for the yardmaster at Luzira to show Sir Denis the trucks waiting to carry the coffee from the train to the aircraft at Entebbe.
As they drove, alone in the car, they talked about their plans. “I’m not making any promises,” Patricia said.
“Of course not. We’ll simply take each day as it comes.” Sir Denis beamed on her. “I’m looking forward to showing you Brazil.”
“Brazil.” She shook her head, a bemused smile on her lips. “That’s one future I never even suspected,” she said.
Amin had anticipated a report from Colonel Juba about Chase sometime this morning. When the colonel hadn’t appeared by eleven o’clock, Amin telephoned his office at the Bureau, only to be told the colonel wasn’t there. Nor was he at home.
Amin came to the conclusion that Juba, to keep Chase’s arrest secret, had taken him to some other safe place, such as a rural police station, until he’d extracted the man’s story. “Inform me immediately,” he ordered, and went off to lunch.
Today’s lunch was more enjoyable than most. He was welcoming back his young Air Force men who’d just been ejected from the United States.
American companies such as Bell Helicopter had been training Amin’s pilots for several years, but recently a few busybody American congressmen—mere publicity seekers—had applied pressure, claiming to be humanitarians, claiming the United States shouldn’t do business with a country like Uganda—as though America’s skirts were clean.
The bad publicity had frightened the American companies, though, and the whole problem had been compounded last October, when the only three Christian Ugandans enrolled with the eighteen Muslim Ugandans being trained by the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, had defected, asking the American government for political asylum and being granted it, and then of course telling all sorts of wild stories.
The upshot was, the several dozen Air Force men in the United States—some of whom had already received British training in Perth, Scotland—had all now left America and returned to Uganda, their courses incomplete. And it was to greet the last six of these, just back from Vero Beach, Florida, that was the purpose of today’s lunch.
Amin loved contact with his brave young airmen. They reminded him of himself, or of the smoother and more sophisticated person he might have been if he’d had a firm proud good Idi Amin Dada to help him along the way in those early years. At the same time, it made him feel good to know he was still better than any of them. He could beat them at boxing, at basketball, at swimming races. And in the last analysis he was the father who made them possible.
There was much laughter and beer drinking at lunch, and many lies told about American women. Amin challenged all comers to arm wrestling, and won every match. His plan to buy long-range bombers and attack South Africa was discussed and given a respectful hearing. Amin emerged from lunch in a very happy frame of mind.
Which was at once spoiled, because neither Chase nor Juba had been found. Where were they? Amin gave orders, and soon learned they were positively nowhere in the Bureau building, though last night’s duty officer did remember having seen Chase leave the place around midnight.
Leave? Chase? Alone?
A call to Chase’s bank confirmed Amin’s suspicions. The man had been in this morning, and his safety-deposit box proved to have been cleaned out. What was worse, he had apparently turned over a chit for five thousand U.S. dollars in cash, forged in Amin’s name!
“He’s running, my little Baron.”
Calls to the airports at Entebbe, Jinja, Tororo, Soroti, and Kasese confirmed that Chase hadn’t yet left the country, at least by air. No white man, in fact, had flown out of Uganda in the last twelve hours.
Which left the roads and the lake. The lake was very unlikely; Chase had no boat of his own and had never cultivated any acquaintanceship with boat owners. He had always made it plain that he didn’t enjoy the occasional jaunt on Amin’s yacht. He wouldn’t like the sense of exposure, of limited options, associated with escape by water.
Which left the roads. “Call every border post,” Amin ordered. “If Chase went through, we want to know where, and what name he used. If he tries to go through now, he should be stopped and sent back here. I don’t care what condition he’s in when he gets here, just so he can still talk.”
The stationmaster put down his completed fumbo and yawned. Although the job had been much more strenuous back in the days of East African Railways, it had been more interesting, too. The stationmaster looked up at the clock, and was disheartened to see it was only five past two. Three more hours of boredom. “Say, old man,” he said to the yardmaster, “where’s that train of yours?”