Anthills of the Savannah (26 page)

It was Agatha’s habit to cry for hours whenever Beatrice said as much as boo to her; and Beatrice’s practice to completely ignore her. But today, after she had deposited the used plates in the sink, Beatrice turned to where Agatha sat with her face buried in her hands on the kitchen-table and placed her hand on her heaving shoulder. She immediately raised her head and stared at her mistress in unbelief.

“I am sorry Agatha.”

The unbelief turned first to shock and then, through the mist of her tears, a sunrise of smiles.

T
HE VOICE
had become expansive, even self-indulgent. Two calls in one day! In the morning it was to give her full marks for moving the horse; but, if the horse was still in Bassa, to impress upon her that the city was not a safe environment for him. So she had better be thinking quite soon of a cross-country gallop.

“It’s not me you should worry about; I can promise never to find a horse. It’s the others who are more efficient than myself in the matter of finding horses.”

Completely bemused at the end of this strange mixture of whimsy and deadliness Beatrice found herself saying the words: “Are you genuine?” which rang almost as strangely in her ear as the communication that had given rise to it. He gave no answer. Perhaps he was already half-way to replacing his telephone and didn’t hear the question. Or perhaps he heard but did not wish to put himself in the vulnerable position of being questioned. If so, fair enough. One should not look a gift-horse in the mouth. The fellow wasn’t hired by her as her private detective, so he was within his rights to lay down conditions for his freely volunteered assistance.

Assistance, did she say? So she was already assuming he was on her side, already taking him for granted. So early in the day. Careful now, Beatrice, careful. How did her people say it? Don’t disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand.

That evening he called again to answer the question.

“You asked was I genuine? If by that you mean do I ride horses or do I play polo the answer is an emphatic no. But if you mean do I like horses, yes. I am a horse-fancier.” Click!

So he did hear it. Only he needed the time, a whole day, to work out a clever answer. Oh, well. She couldn’t really complain… though she must admit to being a little troubled by the tone of sportiveness creeping into his manner. But again, why not? Why should this unconventional benefactor be judged by her own sedate sense of seriousness. Was she forgetting that kind though he might have been to her on one occasion he was still a practising hangman? And what could be more natural than for a man in his
profession to have a somewhat unorthodox sense of humour—gallows humour, in fact!

Two other things that happened that day compounded Beatrice’s anxiety. The
National Gazette
had come out in the morning with a strange story: The Commissioner for Information, Mr. Christopher Oriko, who had not been seen in his office or his residence for the past one week had according to unconfirmed reports left the country in a foreign airliner bound for London disguised as a Reverend Father and wearing a false beard.

What were they up to now? Was this a smoke-screen behind which they hoped to eliminate their second victim less messily than the first?

Then at six o’clock came a police statement declaring Mr. Christopher Oriko, Commissioner for Information wanted by security officers in connection with the recent coup plot and calling on anyone who had information concerning his whereabouts to contact the nearest police station and warned citizens that concealing information about a coup plotter was as serious as failing to report a coup plot or taking part in a coup plot; and the penalty for each was death.

This announcement had not come as a complete surprise to Beatrice. Still to hear those idiotic accusations made against the backdrop of that unflattering full-face picture of Chris dug up from God knows where staring out at you from the screen injected a chill into one’s circulation, even without the ominous death sting at the end.

She and Elewa sat in reflective silence after the announcement. Agatha who seemed to have heard it from the kitchen and moved up to the door was leaning on the doorway, silently. Then the telephone rang as though on cue shattering the dramatic silence. Elewa sat up, her head held high like a deer that sniffs danger, its erect ears waiting for a confirming rustle. But no stealthy sound came and no flashing movement, and she sat back again. Beatrice’s change of countenance, the tone and words of her half of the conversation had dispelled the air of dread which had lately attended telephone calls. The conversation was indeed about the announcement but whoever Beatrice was talking to seemed merely to be expressing friendly concern. When she dropped the telephone Elewa and Agatha had been having a quiet discussion of their own on the matter.

“Madam, make you no worry at all,” said Agatha. “Whether they look from here to Jericho, they no go find am. By God’s power.”

“Amin,” replied Elewa. “Na so we talk.”

C
HRIS MEANWHILE
had been weaving a nest of heady activity in the circumscribed quarters of his retreat. If only Beatrice had had more direct access to him in those few days of his rapid metamorphosis into the new career of prized quarry she might have learnt to be less surprised by the strange behaviour of his hunter; for even in his harried run Chris had stillaleft himself scope for heightening the drama of the chase. This apparent luxury made his tight corners not only more enjoyable to him but on occasion went so far as to offer him the illusion that he had turned hunter from hunted; that he had become the very spider manning a complicated webwork of toils and not the doomed fly circling in orbits of seeming freedom that nevertheless narrowed imperceptibly to a fatal impingement. Was this a necessary part of the psychology of hot pursuit that it will deceive even its own purpose, not to talk of the predicament of its victim, into liberal-looking sportiveness and fairplay?

Chris’s new network was fastened on the support of friends who
harboured him in spare rooms and Boys’ Quarters and even, on one dramatic occasion, pitched him through a loose board into the steamy darkness of the ceiling. This hide-and-seek gave everyone concerned a nice conspiratorial feeling of being part of an undertaking admittedly risky but still far short of menacing. However, after the police announcement spelling out the death penalty for everything including this kind of game, Chris and his current host had a serious talk together and decided that they could not rule out the chances that one or two people who had played a role in the affair so far might be frightened by this turn of events into quietly informing against him to buy their own peace. So the need for him to move out of Bassa entirely became suddenly urgent. But it was going to be tricky and there was no way it could be accomplished in one step in the short time he had. So it was arranged that he and his aide-de-camp, Emmanuel, should make a preliminary move out of the Government Reservation Area to the northern slums under the care of the taxi-driver, Braimoh.

Emmanuel Obete was the President of the Students Union who after a couple of visits had brought his bag along one afternoon and simply stayed on.

“Why have you come to me?” Chris asked him, not on the first day nor the second but as they ate a hurried breakfast of fried plantains and corn pap with his host on the third morning.

“For protection,” said Emmanuel who was revealing a new side of himself as a clown of sorts. Chris and his host looked at each other and laughed.

“Do your peoplé have a proverb about a man looking for something inside the bag of a man looking for something?”

Emmanuel laughed in his turn and said no they didn’t… but wait… they did have something that resembled it: about digging a new hole to get sand to fill an old one.

“He is something else,” said Chris to his friend. And he did not trouble the young man again about his reasons.

Emmanuel was also a fugitive wanted by the police. But being of only middling importance in police estimation he was not given the VIP treatment of having his wait-and-take picture on television. A troublesome Students Union official was nothing new to the Kangan police, and they were not about to make a song and dance about him.

“Now I want to tell you the real reason I came to you,” said Emmanuel later in the day.

“I see,” said Chris. “Actually the one you gave in the morning was good enough for me. What is it this time?”

“Well, this time it is because the security people are so daft they will look for me everywhere except where you are.”

“There you go again underrating the state security. Very dangerous, you know. Better to overrate your enemy than to underrate him. OK, look at this matter of the fatal gunshot. Anyone who can come up with that kind of thing can’t be a complete fool.”

“I don’t believe they came up with it, sir. Pure accident, that’s all.”

Emmanuel’s low opinion of the army and police was matched only by his dismal estimate of Kangan journalists. Between the two he would give a slight edge in fact to the security officers. And fortunately for him the incredible ease with which he had planted the story of Chris’s escape to London in the
National Gazette
came in handy as indisputable proof. He, Chris and their host had such a laugh when the news appeared; and Chris had to admit, shamefacedly as a former Editor of the
Gazette
, that the affair put the journalistic profession in Kangan in a very poor light indeed.

“Of course it would not have happened under your editorship or Ikem’s,” said Emmanuel in a tone that was not entirely free of certain impish ambiguity.

“Thank you, Emmanuel. Such gallantry.”

“No, I mean every word, sir.” And it seemed, this time, he did.

But Chris had some difficulty getting the matter off his mind. Long after the merriment over Emmanuel’s brilliant success had subsided he kept repeating to himself: “One telephone call! From a senior Customs Officer who for obvious reasons would rather not reveal his identity! Unbelievable!”

Chris’s disguise for his first hop was nothing as fanciful as Emmanuel’s priest’s cassock. He wore Braimoh’s everyday clothes and cap to match, and a few smudges of pot-black on his face and neck and arms to tone down a complexion too radiant for his new clothes or pretended calling as a retail dealer in small motor-car parts. The one-week growth of beard he had nurtured just in case, was discarded as not too great a success, especially when his host suggested, half-seriously, that the Reverend Father’s beard in Emmanuel’s rather more successful fiction might have the result of
drawing police attention instinctively to people’s chins for some days to come.

Braimoh had two passengers in the back seat of his old cab when he arrived to pick up Chris for the critical journey to the north of the city. His estimate was eight or nine odd security roadblocks to cross. Chris said good afternoon to the two strangers behind and took the front seat beside the driver. Before driving away Braimoh reached into the untidy junk in his glove-box and brought out three kolanuts and offered them to Chris.

“Make you de chew am for road. Anybody wey see you de knack am so go think say you never chop breakfast.”

The two men behind laughed rather a lot at this and Chris not being sure whether they were people who laughed much ordinarily or hid malice behind laughter cast a questioning glance at Braimoh, even as he reached for the gift.

“Dem two na my people. No worry.”

Chris took the proffered kolanuts, and thanked Braimoh. Then he gave one to the two men behind as though in appeasement and put the others in his pocket. Seeing where they had been fished out of he would need to wash them before eating.

Emmanuel darted out for a quick goodbye and vanished again behind the main house into the Boys’ Quarters. It had been agreed that he would travel separately to rejoin Chris later.

They passed the first three check-points without trouble. The soldiers and police looked tired and waved cars through rather inattentively. Chris was almost certain that Emmanuel’s
Gazette
story must be more than marginally responsible for thus putting the law off their guard. He was something else, that boy Emmanuel. Why did we not cultivate such young men before now? Why, we did not even know they existed if the truth must be told! We? Who are we? The trinity who thought they owned Kangan as BB once unkindly said? Three green bottles. One has accidentally fallen; one is tilting. Going, going, bang! Then we becomes I, becomes imperial We.

The traffic was beginning to slow down at the big bend in the road just before the Three Cowrie Bridge. Another check-point, no doubt. Stupid fellows the police; they would choose the approaches to a bridge to disrupt traffic! At long last Braimoh cleared the corner, and ran full tilt into it! This was no ordinary check-point but a major combined army and police operation.
There were two military jeeps by the roadside and three police patrol-cars flashing their roof-lamps. Ahead, passengers were being ordered out of vehicles.

Braimoh panicked and made the first move of a hasty U-turn, which was a serious error considering the flashing patrol-cars waiting to give chase! The man behind Chris shouted to Braimoh to get back into line, and he promptly complied. But it would seem his ill-considered move had already been noticed.

“Oga come out quick! Make we use leg.”

Chris was out of the car like a shot and so was the man who had spoken. They were on the kerb side of the road, fortunately.

“Quick, make we de go!”

As they walked smartly away from their car towards the bridge the soldier who seemed to have noticed Braimoh’s suspicious move was coming briskly towards them. Chris was watching him through the corner of his eye until they drew level. The soldier stopped.

“Hey, stop there!” he shouted. Chris and his companion halted on the sidewalk and turned to him, standing on the road. His face was scarred by three heavy marks on either side. He had accompanied his order with the unslinging of his automatic weapon. The width of a car separated him from Chris and his companion.