The vista from his office balcony no longer gave General Belewa the pleasure it once had. The wind from the sea was as cooling and mellow as ever, but the sea itself had become an ally of his foes. And the night itself was too dark.
The generators ran only here at his headquarters and at the Monrovia fleet base and army garrison, three lonely constellations in the night. The rest of the capital underwent a rationing mandated blackout. No streetlights burned. No vehicles moved in those streets. No buildings were illuminated save by the faint flicker of candlelight or the ruddy glow of charcoal. Even kerosene and lamp oil were precious and hard to come by now.
The people, his people, huddled in the darkness again. It was as if he had never come to this place. As if he had never tried to make a difference.
“General… Obe. May we speak with you?”
“Of course, Sako.”
Brigadier Atiba and Ambassador Umamgi waited within, standing beside Belewa’s desk. His chief of staff smiled, an eagerness and a fire flaring within his old comrade that Belewa had not seen for many days.
The Algerian mullah was smiling as well, but for him it seemed only an enhancement of the growing sardonicism he had been displaying these past weeks. Two stapled and type written pages in the format of an operations proposal lay on the desk blotter.
“General, I think we may have a plan.”
“What kind of plan, Sako?”
“A plan to break the blockade. A way to get us the fuel we need. A way to beat the Leopard, Obe!”
Belewa dropped into his chair. Picking up the proposal, his eyes sought the first paragraph. “Is this a concept of yours, Sako?”
“No, but it looks good to me. The premise was suggested by the Algerians. Ambassador Umamgi promises his government’s full support in the operation. It is all so simple, Obe. It has to work!”
Belewa scanned the first page, then the second. It was indeed simple. All so very, very simple.
“No.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. The excitement drained from Atiba’s face, bewilderment and anger boiling up in replacement.
“No? What do you mean, no? This will work, Obe! This plan strikes right at the heart of your Leopard. Haven’t you always taught us to strike at your enemy’s weaknesses? Well, this plan strikes at the weakness of the Garrett woman. It will destroy her and the stranglehold she has on us!”
“It also takes us back to places we have left behind, Sako.” Belewa threw the proposal back onto the desktop. “It drives us to do things we have sworn never to do again. We will think of something else.”
“Now I say no!” Atiba leaned forward, slamming his palms down onto the desktop, glaring into Belewa’s face. “Obe, we are running out of time! We lost half of our oil reserves last night. Half! We have less than six weeks left! Then everything you and I have worked for is over!”
“We will find some other way to break the blockade! One that leaves our honor intact.”
“Honor be damned! What other way? We are throwing away a chance to win! I want a reason for this, Obe, not talk of honor and places we’ve been. I want one solid reason why we should not at least try!”
“You desire a solid reason? I will give you one.” Belewa rose from behind the desk, his eyes locking with Atiba’s. “We will not execute this plan because I say we will not! Is that adequate, Brigadier?”
The impact of Belewa’s words pushed the Chief of Staff back from the desk. For a long heartbeat the two warriors stood posed, rank and past friendship an irrelevancy. Then Atiba turned and stormed from the room.
The General and the Ambassador were alone then, and it was Umamgi who broke the silence. “There is a parable,” the Algerian said quietly, “of a man who was a great king. However, this man valued his own pride more than he did his kingdom. And because of his pride, one day the king lost his kingdom. And since there was no kingdom, there was no reason for there to be a king. And since there was no longer a reason for a king, inshalla, there was no longer a reason for there to be a man. A thought, General.”
Belewa felt his hand come to rest on the flap of his pistol holster.
“Get out!”
The mullah only smiled, nodded, and turned for the door. As it closed behind him, Belewa sank down behind his desk once more, his head coming to rest on his crossed arms.
Deftly, Felix Akwaba brought his pirogue into the wind, heaving to in the easy ocean swell. Rising stiffly from the aft thwart, he lowered the patched cotton sail, letting his little craft drift. Settling back again, he held the bow into the waves with an occasional dip of the steering paddle.
The night was lit only by a half moon and the ten million and one tropic stars overhead. It mattered little to Felix, however. He’d been sailing this stretch of coast for fifty-odd years, and he knew it better than he did the inside of his own hut.
If he should glance back over his right shoulder, he would see the phosphorescent flash of the surf rolling over Biahuin Reef. If he should look over the left, it would be the flashing red warning beacon of the radio mast at Point Yannoi, a marker as good as any official lighthouse on the coast.
This was the usual place and the correct time. They would make their appearance soon.
When it happened, as always, it was a little startling, the only warning being the hiss of a razor-sharp bow cutting water. That bow loomed abruptly out of the darkness, towering over the pirogue and sweeping past as the vessel came alongside. A sweep of foredeck followed, a slender gun barrel up-angled against the sky and a rakish superstructure, the faint glowworm glow of the binnacle light in the wheelhouse the only illumination visible along the Patrol Craft’s 170-foot length.
Felix heard the muffled engines now, reversing, and a moment later the wooden hull of his pirogue and the steel one of the newcomer bumped lightly together. Boathooks reached down, holding his craft alongside, and a dark shape extended a hand to help pull him aboard.
His helmeted and flak-jacketed guide led him silently inboard. Again as usual, the interior of the little warship was illuminated with that odd bloodred light that did not hurt Felix’s night-adjusted eyes. Within the cramped wardroom, she was waiting.
”Comment allez-vous, Monsieur Akwaba. Le petit biere?”
When she had first sought him out, her French had the stiffness and formality of the European about it. Now, however, after only a few short months, she had the lilting flow of the African idiom down perfectly. Almost unnervingly so. Because of her near-white hair and gray-blue eyes, the agents she recruited among the Frenchside boatmen privately referred to her as Le Petite Phantome,” The Little Ghost.”
Felix sometimes wondered if there was more truth in that name than he knew. The white folk claimed that they had no sorcerers or sorceresses living among them. However, with this one, he wasn’t so sure.
”Merci, s’il vous plait, Capitaine,” Felix replied carefully, taking a seat across the table from the female American naval officer. “The night is warm.”
Producing a chilled bottle of Flag lager, she filled the two water glasses waiting on the table. After waiting a moment for the foam to settle, they drank together, accomplishing the ritual of hospitality.
“How is the fishing?” she inquired, setting her glass on the table.