Kahawa Page 6

  “I have difficulty,” Sir Denis said, “understanding the position of any principal who reneges on an already completed negotiation.”

  Looking more and more worried, Velhez said, “But you’ll speak with them?”

  Knowing he meant the consortium, Sir Denis said, “They aren’t politicians, Carlo, they’re businessmen. They’ve already committed themselves to an initial outlay of well over one and a half million U.S. dollars. Not counting the cost of transport, warehousing and all the rest.”

  “But you’ll speak with them.”

  Sir Denis sighed. His practiced mind had already reached the compromise that all parties would be able to live with. The task now was to get them all to accept it. Laying the groundwork, he said, “Carlo, you know I’ll do my best.”

  “Something can be worked out,” Velhez said, as though uttering a prayer.

  “To be frank with you,” Sir Denis said, not being at all frank, “I think it very unlikely Grossbarger will move at all.”

  Startled, almost angry, Velhez cried, “The profit remains the same!”

  “But the initial risk increases. There are other investments these same men can make, severally or together. Also, there’s the loss of income from the additional capital being tied up.”

  “I realize that.” Velhez blew in agitation through his bandit moustache. “But we’ve come this far.”

  “It’s possible,” Sir Denis said, noticing how suddenly alert Velhez became, “that I’ll be able to bring them up a bit. But certainly not to fifty percent of the new demand. Not to six million dollars.”

  “Perhaps forty-five, forty—”

  “No, Carlo. These people are going to be very angry when I talk to them, and neither you nor I can blame them.”

  “Of course,” Velhez said. “But it’s not our fault. Surely they’ll understand that.”

  “I doubt they’ll much care whose fault it is,” Sir Denis pointed out. “I am willing, Carlo, to urge the Grossbarger group to increase their advance payment to two million U.S.”

  “Two! Out of twelve!”

  “If I were to ask for more,” Sir Denis said, “they’d hand me my hat at once. I’m not at all sure but what they’ll do so, anyway. However, we can but try.”

  “Two million,” Velhez repeated, his expression dazed. “Ten million from us.”

  “What I’ll also do,” Sir Denis went on, “is have a word with the chaps here. Captain Chase, or whoever it might be. Perhaps we can bring them down a bit.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Velhez said. The wind was well and truly out of his sails; even his moustache sagged.

  “Well, we’ll speak with them,” Sir Denis said. “We may have a beneficial effect. And what I’ll suggest to you now, just between ourselves—”

  Velhez sat up. “Yes? Yes?”

  “When I speak to our friends in London and Zurich,” Sir Denis told him, “I won’t talk in terms of percentages. I’ll put the idea of raising their ante to two million in the best possible light, and with luck they’ll agree. Then, whatever concession you and I can obtain from the people here will benefit exclusively your share of the obligation.”

  Sir Denis Lambsmith’s great talent lay not in finding brilliant solutions to knotty problems but in finding brilliant ways to describe and present the messy pedestrian solutions that were usually the best of a bad lot of options. Velhez, having five minutes ago believed that his new liability was to be a mere six million, now became happy and relieved to hear that whatever relief from ten million he could wangle for himself he wouldn’t have to share with his partners. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s possible, I suppose, possible we could talk them down to a quarter rather than a third. In that case, with two million from our other friends, our own cost would be no more than seven million.”

  “Let’s not be premature,” Sir Denis warned. “There are still many people to be brought on board.”

  “You’re right.” Velhez stood in a sudden hurry, moustache aquiver. “I must phone São Paulo.”

  “I have some telephoning of my own,” Sir Dennis said, also rising. “I’ll see you at the reception.”

  “At the reception,” Velhez replied. “Good luck to us both.”

  Suite 202 was guarded by sloppy-looking soldiers in British-style uniforms and berets. Inside, in a room awkwardly combining traditional English and modern Danish furniture with Arab carpets and wall hangings, there was a fairly large and motley crowd. The white faces belonged mostly to businessmen, British or American, German or Scandinavian, plus a sprinkling of diplomats from those foreign embassies still open in Kampala: Arab, mainly, but also the French and a few others. The blacks present were of three sorts: slender cold-faced men in military uniform; male and female civil-service types in suits and party frocks, providing the underlay of cocktail-party chitchat; and beetle-browed, angry-eyed men in safari suits or loud shirts, many wearing large dark sunglasses, most of them standing with side-thrust hip and one arm reaching behind their backs to clutch the other elbow. It was a childlike posture, but it made Sir Denis think of evil children, as though the hand gripping the elbow were a last restraint from some thoroughly vicious act.

  Sir Denis was later arriving than he’d wanted to be, having been held on the phone for quite some time, principally with the consortium’s de facto leader in Zurich, Emil Grossbarger. Still, he assumed his hosts were bugging his telephone and would understand why he was late.

  As he entered the large central room of the suite—the party seemed to flow also into rooms to left and right—Carlo Velhez approached with a tall and somewhat heavyset white man. Both were carrying drinks. Carlo’s expression was hectic, his frantic eyes almost distracting attention from his luxurious moustache, while the other man had a lidded look, like a snake on a sunny rock. Baron Chase, Sir Denis told himself.

  “Sir Denis Lambsmith,” Carlo Velhez said in his thickly accented English, his voice quivering with suppressed emotion, “may I present Baron Chase.”

  “Delighted,” they both said, and Sir Denis extended his hand, which Baron Chase took but did not return. Instead, continuing to hold Sir Denis’s hand, Chase said, “We must get you a drink.”

  “Thank you, I—”

  Still gripping him by the hand—an experience Sir Denis found horrible—Chase turned half away, lifting his free arm in a signal. “Can’t have our guest of honor without a glass in his hand.” In his speech, Chase affected a jaded homosexual style that he probably thought of as upper-class. His accent was homogenized midlantic.

  A servant—short, skinny, young, apprehensive, foul-smelling—pressed rapidly through the crowd to Chase’s side. Sir Denis, while ordering a gin-and-tonic, was not at all surprised to see the man who had been his driver from the airport standing against the wall with two similarly dressed fellows, all frowning and glowering alike. Like the Tontons Macoute in Haiti, the “secret” police in this country were blatant about their existence.

  At last, a drink having been ordered, Chase permitted Sir Denis to reclaim his hand, saying, “Your friend Carlo has been telling me his troubles, and I’ve been telling him mine.”

  Meaning that Carlo had not managed to whittle down the new demand; thus Carlo’s frantic expression. Sir Denis amiably said, “I did hear something about an attempt to reopen the negotiation.”

  “Oh, really?” Chase frowned in apparent puzzlement. “On what basis?”

  “Perhaps I was mistaken,” Sir Denis said. “Something about a larger payment in advance.”

  “Oh, the restructuring!” Chase laughed, shaking his head. “That’s not a—Here’s your drink.”

  “Thank you.”

  The foul-smelling boy went away. Sir Denis sipped gin with a hint of tonic and too much lemon. Chase said, “There’s no renegotiation, Sir Denis. May I call you Sir Denis?”

  “Of course.” And why not? Sir Denis would know he was being spoken to with formal correctness, and the Canadian would believe they were on an informa
l footing; another diplomatic triumph.

  “A restructuring of the payment schedule, Sir Denis,” said Chase, relishing his new formal informality, “is hardly a renegotiation. But that’s not your concern. Do come along and meet the president.”

  A coldness ran up Sir Denis’s spine, to become a thrill of dread raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He restrained a shiver, saying, “I’d be delighted.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Carlo said to Sir Denis, his expression that of a man too polite to mention that he was drowning.

  Holding Sir Denis gently but persistently by the elbow—could this man never keep his hands to himself?—Baron Chase steered him past conversations in several languages and through the connecting door to the next room on the right, where a dozen or so people stood in the awkward poses of bad statuary, facing the family group which dominated the center of the room.

  The sudden need to laugh only intensified Sir Denis’s dread. Idi Amin wore a camouflage uniform, several sizes too small, the meandering swaths of greens and browns stretched tight across his huge torso and thick thighs, so that at first glance he looked like an aerial photograph of rolling countryside, emphasized by the bulging jacket pockets just below the putative waist. The string of medals on his chest—so many they overlapped, like magazines on a coffee table—might be the region’s principal town. But what to make of that brooding mammoth black olive of a head, with its wide dissatisfied mouth and heavy disbelieving eyes?

  To Amin’s right stood a young and beautiful light-complected black woman, very tall and slender, in some sort of native costume involving many yards of wrapped colorful cloth. Her hair, in the local style of the very rich, had been braided and twisted into arches and figure eights rising a foot from her head like a modern sculpture in wrought iron. The young woman was very happy, smiling as though she believed this to be her own birthday party.

  Flanking the adults were two children, each a kind of echo. The little girl beside the young woman—probably six or seven years of age—had a simpler and more traditional hairdo but wore a similar costume. The boy of about ten, pressing shyly against Amin’s left leg, wore an exact replica of his father’s camouflage uniform. Both children were beautiful, with large brown eyes and solemn expressions.

  The guiding hand on his elbow forgotten, Sir Denis allowed Chase to pilot him across the room. All else disappeared, and Sir Denis watched those black eyes watch him approach.

  “President Amin Dada,” Baron Chase said, releasing the elbow at last, “may I present Sir Denis Lambsmith?”

  A broad smile bisected Amin’s face. Sir Denis, having expected any smile from this creature to be ferocious, was astonished at how boyish Idi Amin could look, despite his size, his ugliness, his reputation. Shaking Sir Denis’s hand in his own big but gentle paw, Amin said, “Foreign exchange,” and laughed.

  “Delighted to meet you, Your Excellency,” Sir Denis said.

  “Foreign exchange,” Idi Amin said again, as though the phrase were Sir Denis’s name, or a password, or a joke known only to them. Then he laughed some more, and patted Sir Denis’s shoulder, and turned away to signal to one of the nonentities at the side.

  The man who hustled forward was neat but shabby, intelligent-looking but worried, tall but bent with anxiety, unquestionably Negroid but with an aquiline nose and pointed chin. Circling behind Amin and the woman and the two children, this fellow took up a position beyond the little boy—who was gazing with perfect solemn curiosity up at Sir Denis—and apparently awaited instructions.

  Which came rapidly, in a quick rattle of words from Amin. The language was breathy and sharp-toned, with clicks and glottal stops and frequent harsh joinings. Swahili. The new man listened, nodding, and when Amin had stopped he turned to Sir Denis and said, “The President for Life says he is most happy to have you here in our beautiful country. He hopes you will take the opportunity while you are here to travel about and see some of our most famous scenery. And he is glad that you will take the interest in us to help us with our problem with foreign exchange.”

  Sir Denis listened to all this in some astonishment, then said directly to Amin, “Your Excellency, it was my understanding that you speak English.”

  The translator was about to render this into Swahili, but Amin answered it first, in that language. The translator told Sir Denis, “The President for Life says he has some very poor English, good only for the barracks ground. With a person as important as yourself, the President for Life considers it necessary that the language is, umm—”

  “Pre-zeis,” said Idi Amin.

  The translator blinked and swallowed, as though he’d been threatened. “That the language is precise,” he said.

  “But surely,” Sir Denis said, again speaking directly to Amin, “this is a social situation. None of us will try for hard bargaining here, I hope.”

  Amin smiled again, this time the look having something of that ferocity Sir Denis had been anticipating. Another rattle of Swahili, like hail on a tin roof, was translated: “All the bargaining is over. The President for Life is happy that the Brazilians and the International Coffee Board have found Ugandan coffee tasteful.” More Swahili, then: “And the price of our tasteful coffee acceptable.”

  “The coffee and the price are both excellent,” said Sir Denis, essaying a small smile in the direction of Amin.

  More Swahili: “The President for Life is happy that the Brazilians and your own, um, leaders are—”

  “Print-zi-pals,” said Idi Amin.

  “Your own principals,” the translator hurriedly said, “are agreeable to the very small and modest advance payment of one third.”

  “I had not believed,” Sir Denis said carefully, “that the discussion on that point was finished.”

  “All finished!” Amin said, laughing out loud, thumping his palm in satisfaction against his stomach, making a single muffled drumbeat. Other people in the room, who could not have heard the conversation, nor have understood it if they’d heard it, found a reason to laugh. Amin reverted to Swahili, and the translator delivered the translation: “We are here now, in great friendship and joy, to sign many papers.”

  One of the more useful tools of diplomacy was the tactful display of annoyance. Speaking now to the translator, Sir Denis said, “Would you tell the President for Life how happy I am that this problem has been resolved? I wasn’t before this aware of its resolution.”

  Idi Amin laughed again and spoke in Swahili. The translator looked very unhappy and remained silent. Idi Amin lowered an eye to glance at him. The translator said to Sir Denis, “The President for Life says, his cock is bigger than yours.”

  “Oh,” said Sir Denis, at a loss for the first time in his adult life. “Well, yes, I see. Perhaps so.”

  “Foreign exchange,” Idi Amin said, and leaned forward in the friendliest way to pat Sir Denis’s arm. “Very happy,” Idi Amin said.

  Sir Denis, in the hot humiliating fire storm the world had now become, once more felt Baron Chase’s hand on his elbow. With one final statement to Amin, he allowed himself to be led away.

  Afterward, in his hotel room, writing up his notes of the meeting, he couldn’t remember for the life of him what that last thing had been that he had said to Idi Amin. Somehow, he doubted it had been adequate.

  7

  That morning Mazar Balim closeted himself in his office with Isaac Otera for an hour to discuss various details of business. Isaac had brought to Balim’s commercial affairs a bureaucratic love of files and paperwork it had never known before. At first Balim had been made uneasy by this massive tidying, and had complained, “Isaac, when some government eventually hangs me, they will use all these papers of yours as their only evidence.” But eventually he’d grown used to it, and now he was even pleased at how thoroughly his business was known by this nonmember of his family, this non-Asian, this in fact black Ugandan.

  They were interrupted at one point by Frank, who was told by Balim through Isaac to wait. Then they cont
inued, one careful neatly labeled manila folder at a time, until all lake and railroad shipping, all warehousing, all sales and purchases, all payments and collections, had been taken under consideration and discussed. Then at last Balim smiled his round shy winning lovely (completely deceitful) smile and said, “Thank you, Isaac. Would you tell Frank to come in?”

  “A moment, sir,” Isaac said, surprisingly enough. Instead of rising, he continued to sit on the wooden chair beside the desk, knees together, all the manila folders in a neat stack on his lap. “May I speak?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Balim said, his smile turning politely quizzical.

  “You have not discussed with me this new operation,” Isaac said.

  Balim nodded agreement, his face showing nothing.

  “You have not asked me to open a file, to check anyone’s references, to do a cost estimate, to arrange warehousing, transportation—

  “Yes, yes,” Balim said. “The point is taken.”

  “In sum,” Isaac said, with his own small functionary’s smile, “it is to be presumed that I know nothing about the operation at all.”

  “I would never presume that, Isaac.”

  “If I understand the situation correctly,” Isaac went on, “the centerpiece of the operation will be the theft of a large amount of coffee inside Uganda and its smuggling into Kenya.”

  “I take it,” Balim said, “that your source of information is Charlie.”

  Isaac ignored that. He said, “I appreciate your delicacy in not involving me in an illegal and quite probably violent act. You have naturally taken it for granted that, since I am an active Christian, and since my background is in government affairs, I would prefer to have nothing to do with such an activity.”

  “You do me honor by the suggestion,” Balim said.

  “However,” Isaac told him, gently yet firmly, “in some ways this operation is similar to any complex business undertaking. There will be partners and employees—the two Americans who arrived yesterday, for instance—who must be vetted and their positions made clear. There will be questions of transportation, perhaps of lodging. Sooner or later the coffee itself must reenter normal business channels, and must do so armed with appropriate paperwork.”