Back in Monrovia, everyone suspected that Tolbert had lost the support of the Americans. It was thought that the Americans had begun to mistrust the president’s engorged ego and greed and his increasing recklessness and were about to abandon their man in Africa, cutting him loose both of their restraints and of their protection. If you want a big dog, the Americans believed, you have to give him a long leash. But not too long. For a decade, William Tolbert, the president of Liberia, had been one of the Americans’ big dogs. Maybe now they were switching the leash to Charles Taylor. Maybe Charles would return in triumph from Libya and become the next president of Liberia.
It was a not-uncommon syndrome in Africa in those years, in which a puppet president gradually became a self-deluded despot who no longer remembered who was really in charge of his country. After years of feeding and lavishly housing the leader and his cronies, the citizens finally grow hungry and angry enough to riot in the streets. The leader calls out the army and brutally shuts down any and all opposition. Soon, however, the army, unpaid for months, becomes demoralized, and the officer corps gives evidence of increasing unreliability — a reluctance to follow orders passed down from the commander-in-chief, loud demands for back pay or, with national cash reserves having long since dried up and no cash money available, demands for increased emoluments and political payoffs and perks — until finally, with the leader no longer able to buy their loyalty, the officers come together and plot the leader’s overthrow and replace him with one of their own.
Around four o’clock of the afternoon of the coup, Woodrow telephoned and said he had to stay late at the ministry and might have to remain there overnight. “There’s a bit of a crisis over here,” he said with typical understatement. “And by the way, you’d better keep off the streets until tomorrow at least. There’ve been reports of a few rows between the army and the police out there. Nothing serious, you understand, but I’ll send Satterthwaite over, if you like,” he added.
“We weren’t going anywhere, anyhow. No need to send Satterthwaite. He’ll just want to hang around and read his comic books,” I said blandly, Satterthwaite having become my least favorite member of the household. The truth is, though Jeannine and I had grown somewhat more cautious in our movements through the city since the Rice Riot a year earlier, by the same token, because the anger of the rioters had not been directed against our home, we felt oddly, perhaps unrealistically, protected by our high wall and locked gate, our brave dogs, and our status.
“Stay as late as you like. We’ll be fine,” I said, not in the least curious as to the nature of the crisis at the ministry. About once a month, due to a “bit of a crisis” or an unexpected cabinet meeting or the sudden need to entertain a visiting foreign dignitary or corporate chieftain, Woodrow did not come home until dawn or midday the next day, arriving rumpled, exhausted, smelling of whiskey, cigar smoke, and cheap perfume. I never asked him where he’d been. I could guess easily enough, of course, but had no desire to confront him. By then I had come to welcome his shabbily contrived absences. I saw them as earning moral capital for me; moral debt for himself. We were drifting steadily apart, each of us in a different way, I thought, preparing for the inevitable split.
The night of the coup, however, Woodrow surprised me and did not stay out till dawn or beyond. Instead he arrived home around one a.m. Jeannine and I rushed from our bedrooms to the living room to see who or what had caused the dogs to bark. I flipped on the light, and there he was, standing by the door like a burglar caught in the act.
“You’re home early,” I said.
“Yes.” Then, speaking slowly, almost with a drawl, he said, “I’m lucky to be home at all, if you want to know the truth. Have you been listening to the radio?”
“No. I was at the lab till supper, and Jeannine was with the boys all afternoon outside. Why? Did we miss something?”
“You missed something, yes.” Quickly, he told us what had happened that afternoon and evening and gave us an indication of what would likely happen tomorrow. A dozen enlisted men led by an illiterate master sergeant named Samuel Doe had pushed their way into the Executive Mansion, and facing barely token opposition from the president’s personal security force, had captured Tolbert and placed him under arrest. Their boldness and the suddenness of the attack had bought them sufficient time and unpredictability to let them capture and imprison in a single afternoon all of the president’s ministers, including, of course, Woodrow, along with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the few generals still loyal to William Tolbert. The soldiers simply walked into the offices, homes, and restaurants where the officials happened to be working or dining and took them at gunpoint to the damp, windowless cells at Barclay Barracks. By midnight, Sergeant Doe and his men had released several of the lesser ministers, again including Woodrow, and the generals, in exchange for their pledge of support for the coup. They announced over the radio that they had overthrown William Tolbert’s corrupt and barbarous regime. Sergeant Doe stammered and stumbled his way through the announcement, as if making it up as he went along. Then he and his men eviscerated the president with their bayonets and tossed him and his guts from the window of his office to the lawn below.
“These boys mean business. They’re going to clean house,” Woodrow said, and poured himself three fingers of whiskey and drank it off.
“What are you going to do? What are the Americans doing?” I asked.
“The usual. They’re evacuating most of their embassy staff and any U.S. nationals who want to leave. The cultural attaché over there, Sam Clement, called to check on you and the boys, actually. Kind of surprised me. I guess they still regard you as a U.S. citizen over there. Anyhow, I told him we’ll be all right,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“These new boys, they know they’re going to need a few people like me just to keep things running. They’re enlisted men is all, soldiers, sergeants and corporals, mostly illiterate Krahn country boys, and they’re already scared of what they’ve done. They even want Charles Taylor to come home and help them run the country,” he said, and abruptly gave a pleased cackle. “Ha! I may come out of this with a promotion!”
Jeannine in her nightgown and cotton robe, castoffs I’d given her, stood listening at the door, half hidden in the darkness of the hallway. “You wan’ some supper, Mistah Sundiata?” she asked. She rubbed her eyes like a child wakened unexpectedly from sleep.
“No, no, I’m fine! You two go on to bed. I’ve got to check through my files. There are some things I’d just as soon keep out of the hands of anyone who might come looking,” he said, and poured himself another drink. “Can’t be too careful at a time like this.” His face was covered with a film of sweat, whether with excitement or fear I couldn’t tell. Possibly, in this climate, it was the whiskey: Scotch is a northern-latitude drink. Woodrow’s consumption of alcohol had gradually increased over the last year or so, and I’d begun to suspect that he was becoming an alcoholic. I’d never lived with an alcoholic before and wasn’t sure what to expect or how to measure the disease’s stealthy approach.