“Colonel Johnson Ossai speaking.”
“I see. Anything I can do for you, Colonel?”
“Well, yes… You see I have this very important message for Commissioner Oriko from His Excellency… I have tried him at the Ministry of Information several times but he is not on seat. I have tried his house but no answer. I wonder… erm… if you know his… erm… whereabouts. It is…”
“No I don’t.”
“I see. I am sorry…”
“Not at all, Colonel. Goodbye.”
Meanwhile Chris had, in addition to the foreign correspondents, made very useful contact with other opinion-makers. He was particularly encouraged by his meeting with the President of the University of Bassa Students Union. For security reasons they had met not in his hideout but in a rendezvous in another area of the Government Reservation. But as it turned out this precaution proved quite unnecessary. The Students Union had been so incensed by the crude regicide story of the National Gazette that copies of the newspaper were now regularly seized by students from newsvendors on campus and publicly burnt in the middle of Freedom Square. The Union had also written a long, angry letter to the Editor demanding an apology for the insult to students and their guest lecturer.
Chris handed him a copy of the statement he had prepared and watched him as he read it. The paper soon began to tremble in his hands. When he returned it he drew the back of one hand across his eyes. He tried to speak but the words were at first blocked by a violent movement of his Adam’s apple.
“I need a copy of this,” he managed finally. “Can I copy it and return?”
“That’s your copy,” said Chris, giving it back to him, “if you need it.”
“Thank you, sir. We will run off two thousand copies tonight so that every student will have it first thing tomorrow morning. This government has now committed suicide.”
“Well, young man,” said Chris getting up and offering his hand as a signal for parting. “I hope you are right. I certainly hope so. But we must not count too much on wickedness obliging us so readily… I am glad we’ve had this chance to talk.”
“Thank you sir. You can count on us.”
“This country counts on you. Take care now.”
CHRIS’S LAST VISITORS for the night were the two taxi-drivers. It had taken Elewa the whole morning and half the afternoon to locate one of them and arrange for them to meet with Chris at the same rendezvous.
By the third morning the BBC which had already broadcast news of Ikem’s death carried an interview between their Bassa correspondent and Chris who was described as a key member of the Kangan government and friend of the highly admired and talented poet, Ikem Osodi, whose reported death while in police custody had plunged the Military Government of this troubled West African State into deep crisis. In a voice full of emotion but steady and without shrillness Chris had described the official account of Ikem’s death as “patently false.” How could he be sure of that? Because Ikem was taken from his flat in handcuffs and so could not have wrenched a gun from his captors. So you are saying in effect that he was murdered? I am saying that there is no shred of doubt that Ikem Osodi was brutally murdered in cold blood by the security officers of this government.
The correspondent was deported the next day. But by that time the Students Union had taken up the story and were demanding a judicial inquiry and the immediate dismissal of Colonel Ossai and his prosecution for murder.
Two jeeploads of mobile police sent to apprehend the President and Secretary of the Union bungled the arrest; the young men gave them the slip. As if that was not dangerous enough other students began to taunt them as brainless morons. Now teasing the Kangan Mobile Police is worse than challenging a hungry Alsatian. They went berserk. But somehow, for reasons no one had been able to explain, they did not whip out their guns. Perhaps the bloody outcome of a similar invasion two years ago did after all leave its mark… Perhaps in the thousand ages of divine-like patience even this rock of mindlessness will be dented by the regular dripping of roof water! With koboko and truncheons they fell upon their fleeing victims chasing them into classrooms, the library, the chapel and into dormitories. In the Women’s Hostel, which some of the attackers had originally gained in the blind accident of hot pursuit they all finally congregated and settled into a fearful orgy of revenge, compounding an ancient sex-feud with today’s war of the classes.
As ambulances screamed in later to collect the wounded and move them to hospital an announcement was made on the radio closing the university indefinitely and ordering all students out of the campus by six o’clock that very evening.
THE BRITISH HIGH COMMISSIONER in Bassa went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protest about the deportation of two British nationals but instead was given a preview of a letter the security services were said to have intercepted and advised to return to his chancery and await a summons to the Ministry.
The letter, a blue aerogramme, was addressed to Mr. John Kent and signed Dick. A section of it highlighted by a red line running down the margin read:
Delighted particularly to have met that poet fellow who I believe edits the government daily. Splendid chap. Quite astonishing in view of the image one had of African dictatorships to have had a chance of sitting around and hearing treason spoken so casually and the local dictator dismissed as a comic fool! And by such a prominent member of his own government. The editors of The Times and the Guardian could use a holiday in Bassa! I’m doing a short piece for the Telegraph.
Chris could no longer move freely from one hideout to another because of a large number of army and police roadblocks springing up all over the city. Beatrice driving past his deserted official residence on recce saw a jeep stationed in the front yard and some riot policemen standing around. She drove on to the city centre, left her car in the parking lot opposite the Roman Catholic Cathedral, walked back across the street and made a call from a public telephone.
She went to bed early that night but sleep came to her only in short, fitful spells. The third or fourth time she had woken up she thought she heard sounds coming from the direction of the spare bedroom. She got up and tiptoed there and could see at once from the doorway in the faint illumination filtering in from the security lights outside that she was sitting on the bed.
“Elewa!” she said switching on the ceiling light at the same time. “You no fit carry on like this-o.”
Beatrice had decided to look after her for a few days and had pushed her writing-desk against the wall and set up a bed for her. She had talked to her at length this evening, given her five milligrams of Valium and left her sleeping before retiring herself. And now here she was sitting on the bed her face a mirror of devastation. Her distracted look actually scared Beatrice. It was not mere grief. It was more. Something of the frightened child was showing strongly now—bewilderment, alarm, panic.
“You no fit carry on like this at all. If you no want save yourself then make you save the pickin inside your belle. You hear me? I done tell you this no be time for cry. The one wey done go done go. The only thing we fit do now is to be strong so that when the fight come we fit fight am proper. Wipe your eye. No worry. God dey.”
Elewa exploded into loud crying now. Beatrice went and sat beside her and brought her head against her breast with one hand and began to tap her shoulder rhythmically with the other. When she had quietened her down she slowly disengaged her embrace and laid her gently on the pillow. She went to the wall and switched off the lights and returned to sit on the bed.
“Make you lie down,” said Elewa in a voice washed clear by tears. Beatrice complied and lay down on her back beside her in silence. After a while she slowly turned on her side and raised Elewa’s head and ensconced it tenderly in the crook of her arm and began to tap a steady rhythm again on her shoulder. The door of memory was unlocked and she saw herself as a child tapping the only doll she ever had, a wooden thing with undeveloped hands, a rigid, erect trunk and the stylized face of the masked maiden spirit. Ele
wa’s chest, richly proportioned, heaved spasmodically like a child’s in the aftermath of crying. In the end Beatrice could tell from her deep breathing that she had at last floated into sleep broken now and again by sudden violent starts of nightmare which mercifully did not wake her up. She needed the sleep, poor child. Soon she herself was dozing off.
The car lights first, sensed in the vague indeterminacy of unformed dreams, and then the harsh crunch of tyres on the pebbled driveway. She sprang to her feet. Out of the glass louvres she could see three jeeps unmistakable in the night from the sinister, narrow, closely-set eyes of headlamps. Her heart thumping she rushed to her bedroom, snatched a tough pair of jeans from her wardrobe, leapt into them, zipped up and belted. Then she searched and pulled out another pair. Elewa was standing beside her.
“Put this on quick!”
Then she pulled out two dressing gowns…
A number of heavy knocks on her door…
“Miss Okoh. This is State Security. Open up at once!”
She put on her dressing gown, helped Elewa into hers and ordered her back into the spare bedroom with hand-and-head gestures.
“Miss Okoh. This is the last warning. Open the door now. State Security.”
“I am coming.”
“Well, hurry up!”
She took the bunch of keys from the sideboard and began to unchain the iron grills. Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn’t get the key into the keyhole. Elewa snatched the bunch from her, turned the padlock and unchained the heavy grill. Then Beatrice shocked into calmness by this action snatched back the keys and, whispering “Go inside!” to Elewa who ignored the command, turned the lock in the steel and glass crittall door. It was wrenched out of her grip and swung outwards. Then a huge soldier rushed in pushing the two women aside so powerfully to his right and left in a dry breast-stroke movement that sent Elewa, slight as a reed, down on the floor on her bottom.
“Easy, Sergeant!” This from an officer who followed less dramatically. Three others came in after the officer while the rest stayed at the door.
“Miss Okoh?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry to disturb you at this hour. But I have instructions to search your flat. May I proceed?”
“Anything in particular you are looking for?”
“What kind nonsense question be dat.”
“OK, Sergeant. I will do the talking. So keep quiet! Well, yes, Miss Okoh, there are certain things we are looking for but it is not our practice to discuss them first. Incidentally I advise that anybody in the flat should come out right away. All the exits are guarded and anyone trying to escape will be shot. Is that clear? Now we will proceed.” He deployed his men to different locations in the flat with the silent gestures of a field commander. Thereafter he went from one sector to another supervising the operations. Beatrice followed him at a discreet distance.
The red-eyed sergeant who was given charge of Beatrice’s bedroom was executing it with a vengeance. He had pulled out the bedsheets off the bed and thrown them on the floor where he walked all over them as he frenziedly darted from one object to another. It was fortunate that Beatrice never learnt to lock suitcases and things. So the sergeant’s fury had nothing to wrench open. He merely spilt clothes everywhere. The officer came in and asked him again to go easy and picked up the bedsheets himself and threw them back on the bed. As the captain turned his back Beatrice caught in the eye of the sergeant a flash from the utmost depths of contempt and hatred.
“Miss Okoh, excuse my asking. Who is this young lady?”
“She is Elewa… my girlfriend.”
“Your girlfriend? Interesting. What does she do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean does she have a job?”
“Yes. She is a sales-girl in a Lebanese shop.”
“Does she live with you normally?”
“No, she is just visiting.”
“I see.”
Elewa’s eyes darted from one to the other as they discussed her like the seller and prospective buyer of some dumb animal brought to the market. Her grief had temporarily been displaced by these strange events now going on around her. In her oversize jeans and dressing gown she looked almost comical. She was not walking around with Beatrice and the officer but had taken her position on a dining-chair in the living-room annexe.
Beatrice, worried about her fall, asked as many times as she came through the living-room how she felt. No trouble, she would answer. Perhaps it was the Valium making her unusually calm.
In Elewa’s room the soldier detailed there was looking through papers and books on the table when Beatrice trailing the officer came in again.
“Are you looking for books too?”
“Everything,” replied the officer on behalf of the soldier. “My people have a saying which my father used often. A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere even in the roof.”
He searched everywhere for his missing horse for about an hour, apologized for disturbing Beatrice’s sleep, saluted and left. What kind of enigma was this? Could there really be even one decent young man in the Security Services or indeed the entire Kangan Army and Police. Or was this the ultimate evil—the smiling face of Mephistopheles in the beguiling habit of a monk? Safer by far to believe the worst.
14
AS SHE WAS drowsily getting dressed for work the bedside telephone rang. Startled, she grabbed it on the second ring. A voice said: “Miss Okoh?”
“Yes. Who is that?” Her heart was thumping and the telephone in her unsteady hand bobbed up and down against her ear. Silence at the other end. Was he gone? Then:
“Never mind who. I know where the horse is. But I don’t want to find him. Get him moved. Before tonight.” He rang off.
Or was he cut off? She stood transfixed, the handset in her hand vibrating still against her ear. Hoping the voice would return? Had they been intercepted? Slowly she replaced and sank with leaden weariness into her unmade bed.
Move him? Was it a trap? To lure him into the soldier-infested streets? Who exactly was this fellow? Could he be genuine? Who in God’s name could one ask? Tears of loneliness began to form in her eyes. She got up, wiped them and blew her nose and then tiptoed to Elewa’s room. She was sleeping beautifully, childlike, beguiled perhaps by a dream in which the bad news had not yet been heard, where what happened here had not yet happened. She tiptoed out again leaving her to snatch what strength she could from the short reprieve of her dreams. She picked up her handbag and went alone in search of a safe telephone.
Later in the office she had a restless day wondering whether any of the score of accidents that could happen to the move had happened, and which. Only one was needed. Just as they say of bullets… The worst thing was sitting there so inactive signing daft letters, and not knowing what was going on. Should she risk a quick phone call from another office just to know, even without saying a word, whether his host, already gone to work when she had transmitted the message, had been reached to come back to arrange the move. And again that officer, was he genuine? Could anyone be genuine in these shark-infested waters? What then could his game be? Oh God! But why couldn’t she just slip into one of the offices down the corridor, dial the number and see who picks up the phone? But Chris would be mad; he had been so insistent that she must not… And if she simply dialled the number and didn’t speak, that could cause panic at the other end and might lead to a false step… Oh my God!
She left her office like a bird released from its cage, on the dot of three-thirty. (Chris had also insisted that she must not leave before closing time on his account because her movements would then attract attention. Damn his efficiency!) She did not head straight for home but went ostensibly shopping. From the crowded parking-lot, however, she went elsewhere than the shops.
There was a sprightliness in her walk as she returned to the parking-lot that told all her news. She decided to treat herself to a phial of Blue Grass and went into the shops. Instead of one bottle
she bought two; one for Elewa. Then she picked up a loaf of bread and a few other groceries and set out jauntily for home. At the car-park she deposited her bag of purchases on the bonnet of her car and unzipped her handbag for the key. She searched one compartment and then the other. Her ill-used heart began to palpitate again. She told herself to keep calm, take a deep breath, and search the bag more thoroughly. She did, and even emptied the contents on the bonnet. But the little bunch was not there. She half-ran all the hundred or so yards to the public telephone. A man was making a call. She knocked on the glass door and tried to slide it open. The man interrupted his conversation to protest.
“I am sorry. I’m looking for my car key.”
“There is no car key here,” said the man angrily as he wrenched the door from her hand, shut it firmly and resumed his conversation, after a hissing sound longer than men generally could manage. She returned dejectedly to the car after she had retraced her steps with mounting hopelessness through the various stops she had made inside the shop and the different cashiers’ stations where she had brought out her wallet from her handbag and made payments. Everyone, especially the perfumery girls, remembered her, but not her bunch of keys.
She was tired; hugely tired. The sun’s routine oppression had changed all at once into a special act of vindictiveness against her in reprisal perhaps for the nervous energy she had just displayed instead of the languor decreed from above. All around her in the parking-lot she saw vaguely in slow motion hundreds, more wise than she, who obeyed and prospered.
She turned around for no apparent reason and took a look inside the car, and saw the keys dangling from the key-hole. Transports of joy! Now she could go home and even if she failed to locate her spares—which had become a major fear since she had begun considering strategies—she could bring a mechanic, even a car-thief, and force the door-lock or do something with the glass, and move the car.