Kahawa Page 12

  The dog that patrolled inside this building at night was named Hakma. A big barrel-chested unamiable brute, he had once been described by Frank as half German shepherd and half gorilla. “Yeah, Hakma, hello, you know who I am, you fucking beast,” Frank said, standing still just within the door while the dog—much more conscientious than the human guards—sniffed his body first, and only then, having recognized the pass-smell, turned his attention to the good aromas from the pail. “That’s not for you, fucker,” Frank said, pushed the dog away, and headed for the offices.

  The door between Isaac’s and Balim’s offices was ajar. The light was on in there, and voices sounded. Massively frowning, holding the pail up in front of himself with both hands on the handle as if it were an offering, Frank tiptoed across the dim outer room and looked through the doorway.

  The kid! Son of a bitch bastard, it was Young Punk Balim in there with Ellen, grinning like the rat he was, telling stories, chuckling away. A wicker picnic basket was on the floor; a small gaily printed cloth now covered a third of Balim’s desk, and on it were plates and stemmed glasses. What were they eating? Cold chicken, cheese, fruit. Gritting his teeth, Frank watched the rotten bastard pick up a bottle of white wine to refill their glasses. “It may be my provincial background,” he was saying, oily punk, “but I have always found theater in the West End somehow too slick. Did you have that sense?”

  “I know what you mean,” Ellen said. She was completely at her ease. Frank wanted to go in there and make her feel guilty, ask her how she could just picnic like this with Lew in God knows what trouble. Of course, he’d have to hide his own pail of sandwiches.

  Reluctantly, in utter silence, he retraced his steps, shutting Isaac’s outer door behind himself and calling Hakma several uncomplimentary names on the way out.

  It would be a loss of face in front of Bibi and Eddah to return this soon, and with the picnic uneaten. Feeling badly used, Frank drove southeast out of town and found a place to park where he could look out over the moonlit gulf. Forty miles away, too far to see from here, Winam Gulf opened into Lake Victoria, itself two hundred miles wide and two hundred fifty miles long. In all that vast expanse, with the moon shining down and the calm water rippling like a purring cat, there was not one place where Frank Lanigan would not feel unhappy.

  “If that’s her taste—” he muttered, and opened the pail. He ate both sandwiches, drank two of the bottles of beer, skipped the cookies one by one across the calm water, drove home to the darkened house, kicked George off the bed, and slept like a log.

  13

  It was a beautiful young black woman in a bright-colored print dress who met Sir Denis Lambsmith this time at the strangely empty Entebbe Airport. Her dark-cinnamon skin glowed with innocent health, but there was something seductive in her broad smile and the eager glisten of her eyes. “I’m delighted to meet you, Sir Denis,” she said, shaking his hand, her own hand small and slender and firm. “I am Patricia Kamin, of the Ministry of Development.”

  Sir Denis, despite the fact that he was immediately taken by this attractive young woman, couldn’t resist the temptation to ask, “What’s happened to Mr. Onorga?”

  She looked prettily confused for a second; then the sunny sexy smile broke out once more and she said, “Oh, the man from the Coffee Commission! I believe he was transferred. You’re in my hands now.”

  “Then I’m delighted,” Sir Denis said, smiling down upon her from his greater height and age and sex and race.

  “You have your luggage? The car is this way.”

  It was a black Toyota, which Patricia Kamin drove herself. No secret police this time; how pleasant. Beside her in the front seat, Sir Denis took pleasure in the movement of her knees and her sleek legs as she angled the car out of the empty parking lot and around the sweeping circle to the main road. All airports in former British possessions are toy versions of Heathrow, no matter how redundant the roundabouts.

  “How is London?” she asked, once they were on the road toward Kampala.

  “Drizzly.”

  She laughed, a musical sound, and said, “Still full of foreigners?”

  He looked at her, surprised, not quite sure how to answer, not at all sure who she thought she was. “Foreigners?”

  “When I was there over Christmas, the city was full of Norwegians and Danes and Frenchmen and I don’t know who all.”

  “Oh, yes. Shopping.”

  “That’s it,” she agreed. “You couldn’t get near Harrods. I did my shopping on Oxford Street.”

  “I imagine that was also full.”

  “It was. I’ll never understand international finance,” she said, flashing him another smile. “I met the nicest Swede, and he kept explaining to me over and over how he was saving money by coming all the way to London to do his Christmas shopping, but it simply never made sense. And the hotel he was in! A shower really big enough for two!”

  Sir Denis drove himself from sexual thoughts with pompous statements. “I think we’ll find normality returning,” he said, “once the North Sea oil starts to flow.”

  “No more of those headlines? ‘Pound Soars,’ ‘Pound Plummets’? That’s all the papers said, every day I was there. You could get positively giddy.”

  “Newspapers,” Sir Denis said, with a wry smile and shake of the head.

  “Did you ever hear,” she asked him, “the description of who reads which London papers?”

  “No, I don’t believe I have.”

  Frowning ahead at the road, her expression that of an earnest student, she said, “The Times is read by the people who run the country, the Observer by the people who think they run the country, the Guardian by the people who think they ought to run the country, the Express by the people who think the country ought to be run the way it used to be run, the Telegraph by the people who think it still is, and the Sun is read by people who don’t care who runs the country, just so she has big tits.”

  His heightened sexual awareness at her use of that ultimate word almost—but not quite—overpowered Sir Denis’s polite response: the chuckle, the nod, and, “Very good. Very accurate.”

  “I have cousins in Fulham,” she said. “They keep me up-to-date.”

  So they chatted, and Sir Denis learned that Patricia Kamin had been for a while an attaché at the Ugandan Embassy in London, that her cousins had left Uganda at independence in 1962, and that she herself seemed unusually sophisticated on the question of national allegiance. Sir Denis at one point asked, “You don’t find it … difficult to work with the current government?”

  She shrugged. “Why? At bottom, all governments are the same bureaucracy. If you learn how to do an acceptable job while letting your boss take all the credit, you can work for any government in the world.”

  He laughed again, and saw that they were driving up a wooded hill, though still in the middle of the city. “Where are we going?”

  “The Presidential Lodge. Since this is a more informal occasion than last time, President Amin wants you to be his guest in his home.”

  That should have been flattering; but instead was frightening. Trying to hide his real fear with the display of a false trepidation, Sir Denis said, “I hardly think I deserve such an honor.”

  “British modesty,” she said, quite openly laughing at him. “The rest of the world will never get the hang of it.”

  “Not at all modest,” he said modestly, unable to keep from a modest simper.

  Her own simper was downright suggestive. “I bet you have no reason to be modest at all,” she said.

  His room was spacious and bright, but erratically furnished with too many contrasting items; Europe, Africa, and Arabia clashed in the pictures and tapestries and ornate mirrors, in the unusually tall king-size bed covered with a gaudy cotton throw, in the wooden rocking chair painted a refreshingly straightforward white, in the cheap-looking frosted-glass light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. Heavy dark-green draperies were open at one end of the room, revealing glass sliding d
oors and a small concrete-railed terrace, on which stood two chrome-and-plastic lawn chairs.

  Showered, changed, fortified with a whisky from his flask washed down with water from the bottle on the dresser, Sir Denis stepped out onto the terrace and looked at the hillside before him, dappled with bright swaths of color over pockets of darkness, alive with the late-afternoon songs of birds. Below, through the foliage, he could see the green, the church, the tall pink building. Idly, he wondered what that was.

  Something made him turn, and the sight of a person in his room, through the glass doors, startled him so thoroughly that he grasped the concrete rail for support. But then, heart still pounding, he recognized the man as Baron Chase, and the expression on his face as a smile. Sir Denis made as though to re-enter the room, but Chase came forward, gesturing to him to stay where he was.

  Sir Denis had earlier pulled the glass door almost completely closed behind himself. Now Chase slid it open, stepped out onto the terrace, and said, “Forgive me, Sir Denis, I hope I didn’t startle you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I knocked, but I’m afraid you couldn’t hear me out here.”

  “Not to worry.”

  Chase slid the door shut. “I’ve learned since our last meeting,” he said, as though casually, “we have a mutual friend.”

  “Oh?”

  “Emil,” Chase said, with a faint knowing smile.

  Sir Denis had been so appalled at the idea that he and a man like Chase could have acquaintances—hardly friends—in common that it took him several embarrassing seconds to realize Chase meant Emil Grossbarger, who at lunch in London had said Chase wanted to make some sort of obscure deal. Then, even more embarrassingly, in his surprise he started to blurt the name out: “Emil Gross—!”

  “Yes,” Chase said, so quickly and with such intensity and such a sudden feral glare that Sir Denis blinked and clamped his teeth shut. That had been a look at the real Baron Chase.

  Who immediately dove out of sight again, like a submarine. His surface placid, Chase gazed out over the hillside, saying, “A beautiful city, Kampala. Probably the loveliest in the empire. What Saigon was for the French.”

  “It’s fortunate in its setting.”

  “If in nothing else,” Chase said wryly.

  “I was wondering,” Sir Denis said. “What’s that pink building down there?”

  “State Research Bureau,” Chase said, without inflection.

  “What’s that?”

  “Statistical section. You know, red tape.”

  “Ah. Red tape in a pink building, how appropriate.”

  “Isn’t it? Care for a walk on the grounds?”

  Having understood—though belatedly—that Chase had spoken so indirectly about Emil Grossbarger because he expected that even on this terrace the bugging equipment might still pick up their words, Sir Denis now further understood that a walk on the grounds was the way to avoid eavesdroppers, so he immediately said, “Delighted.”

  “Good. Come along, then.”

  There were paths among the twisted branches, the great glossy leaves, the brazenly colorful and sweet-smelling flowers. Chase and Sir Denis strolled along, incongruously once or twice passing soldiers in field uniform and armed with machine pistols, for whom, apparently, the color of their skins was bona fide enough. Sir Denis waited for Chase to mention Emil Grossbarger, but for a long time the man merely chatted about inconsequential things: air travel, the climate in London and in Uganda, the current trade problems between Uganda and Kenya. Knowing that Sir Denis now domiciled permanently in São Paulo, Chase also questioned him rather closely about Brazil, explaining he was thinking about various parts of the world in which he might “retire.” “Parts of the world other than Africa,” he said at one point, with his characteristic self-mocking smile.

  Having already played the fool once today, on the terrace, Sir Denis refused to bring up the topic of Emil Grossbarger himself. His companion apart, the walk on the hillside was extremely pleasant, in this area too wild to be a park but too tame to be jungle. From time to time the pink building downslope was visible through the branches and blooms, its windows sparkling in the sun. The air was soft-scented and delicious, the light clear without glare, the rich earth underfoot padded with the mulch of centuries. The pink building formed a fanciful backdrop to a lovely soothing setting.

  Chase said, “I understand you’ve met Patricia Kamin.”

  “What? Oh, yes, she drove me in from the airport.”

  “A bright girl,” Chase said. “Very good at her job, I believe.”

  “I was impressed by her.”

  “One of your liberated women, I understand,” Chase went on. “Sexually, if you know what I mean.”

  Feigning mere polite interest, heart suddenly beating, the memory of Patricia’s mention of the Swede and the hotel shower suddenly engorged in his head, Sir Denis said, “Oh, really?”

  “I’m told she’s quite the bedroom acrobat. I wouldn’t know, myself.”

  “You surprise me,” Sir Denis said, heartily hating him.

  “I don’t shit where I eat.”

  The crudity of the phrase, mixing with the overstimulation of the subject matter, shut Sir Denis down completely, gave him no response at all, and made him unready for Chase’s abrupt change of subject:

  “Grossbarger says you’ll talk for him.”

  “Well—Yes, I suppose so.”

  “You work a lot of sides of the street, eh?”

  Sir Denis wanted to slap that knowing smile right off Chase’s mouth. “Not at all,” he said.

  “You work for the Coffee Board, you negotiate with the Brazilians for the benefit of Grossbarger and with Grossbarger for the benefit of the Brazilians, you negotiate with us for both of them, and now you’re the go-between on a private arrangement between Grossbarger and me. I call that more than one side of the street.”

  “I don’t,” Sir Denis said with utmost stiffness. “I have no personal stake in this matter at all.”

  “You aren’t here for your health,” Chase snapped. He seemed angry, that subterranean violence threatening to surface again, as though Sir Denis in insisting on his own legitimacy somehow threatened that of Chase.

  Sir Denis explained, “I am here representing the International Coffee Board. I am their employee, and they are the only ones who will pay me any money as a result of this transaction.”

  “My, our skirts are clean.”

  “I don’t know about yours,” Sir Denis said, “but mine certainly are.” And he was fully aware just how ludicrous it was to engage in this sort of silly contretemps in the middle of this lush flower-filled tame jungle, surrounded by birdsong, watched over by the sun-glinting windows of the pink building.

  But perhaps the argument was over. Sir Denis’s last protestation might have done the trick; Chase now looked at him in a brooding way, as though considering the possible truth of what he’d been told. Tentatively, he said, “You transmit bribes.”

  “Of course I do.” Sir Denis added, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, before this transaction is done, I’ll be transmitting you a bribe.”

  Chase ignored that deliberate insult; when involved in contemplation of his own advantage, Chase was clearly capable of ignoring any and all extraneous provocations. He said, “If your skirts are so clean—”

  “Oh, come,” Sir Denis said, truly weary of this line of argument. “Just because a lot of naive American congressmen can’t accommodate themselves to the reality of this world doesn’t mean I have to be lectured on bribery by the likes of you.”

  “American—” Chase seemed honestly bewildered by the reference, then abruptly laughed and said, “Oh, the Lockheed business. Yes, I catch your drift.”

  “I would not bribe you to kill a man,” Sir Denis said, “that goes without saying. Nor to commit armed robbery.”

  “Pity,” Chase murmured.

  “But there are many parts of the world,” Sir Denis went on, “and I believe this i
s one of them, where the individuals in the pipeline must be given separate acknowledgment of their existence and importance.”

  “Oh, well said!” cried Chase, laughing out loud, obviously delighted, holding no grudges at all.

  Trying to get the discussion back on a rational and emotion-free track, Sir Denis said, “Emil Grossbarger suggested to me that it wasn’t a bribe you were after.”

  “He did, did he? What did he suggest I was after?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  The two men strolled along the winding paths, the soft earth humped with the twisted dark shapes of exposed roots. There was barbed wire around the pink building; how odd.

  Sir Denis kept expecting Chase to continue, to say what it was he wanted from Emil Grossbarger, but Chase had all at once fallen into a kind of blue funk. Sir Denis glanced from time to time at the man’s profile, but he remained deep in thought. From the unusual gauntness of his face, he was sucking on or biting his cheeks.

  At last, at a junction of two paths, Chase said, “Well, I suppose we ought to go back. Dinner won’t be long.”

  “But—Emil Grossbarger?”

  Chase gave him a blank, meaningless smile. “We’ll talk again later,” he said.

  The Presidential Lodge was a magpie’s nest, a pack rat’s lair. It was as though Idi Amin were on the mailing list of every gimcrack mail-order supply house in the world. Two wall barometers in one room. Fine Arab tapestries shared wall space with prints of ducks in flight. The furniture was of all styles, all gradations of taste, and there was far too much of it. A large avocado-colored refrigerator stood absurdly in a corner of the formal dining room; from time to time a white-coated waiter brought from it for the assembled guests beer or ice water or white wine.