Doing Dangerously Well (30 page)

“Yaah!” the farmer said. “That Kolo na go kill all of us. He go finish this country
patapata.
Him and him Swiss bank account.”

“Is his father not ashamed?” another woman asked.

“You think his family know shame?” Femi interjected, his eyebrows rigid with astonishment. He waited for a rebuttal.

The women stopped working, his dramatic outburst pinning them in place.

A farmer clapped her hands. “His father with his gold under-pant, wiping his nyansh with gold toilet paper, shitting gold money?”

“I beg!” Femi roared, as if in a courtroom. “Make him do jiggy-jiggy with Swiss bank manager. Him pikin be bank account.”

Some of the women in the nearby fields barked with laughter, slapping each other on the back. However, amongst all this movement, Femi noticed one girl of gaunt features, standing immobile. She did not laugh, only scrutinized him with an
intense concentration. He glanced at the rows of sorghum struggling to hold on to their healthy green rather than succumb to a flaccid brown. The colours shifted in erratic patches, a chaotic pattern reflecting the unpredictability of water supply. He could try to escape, running zigzags amid their soaring leaves, but the women would know the region better. So instead, he returned the woman’s gaze with a playful air. “Are you staring at me or,” Femi looked around, “have I entered the exact position where you were staring prior to my arrival?” Though in many ways he welcomed death, he wished to be the agent of his own departure, not the target of a murder.

Her eyes did not blink. She continued to scrutinize him. Finally, she spoke. “Femi Jegede. You are Femi Jegede.”

Femi waived this aside. “Nonsense. Jegede is always surrounded by his militia. What would I be doing here alone if I were such an important man? Ah-ah!”

“We are poor people,” she continued as if she had not heard him. “Farmer no dey get money; we be poor people. We waka half day to go get water. Now Kolo come, he say make we pay for water. Police dey charge money. Now, no money for chop food.”

“We no fit even collect rainwater,” another added, striking her hoe on the ground with a whack. “Or police dey come.”

The emaciated loner spoke once more. “Why are you here?”

He decided to trust the girl. “Em, well I work for the power company. You see power line?” Femi pointed to the far distance. “They go for dam. Me, I go quench power line, jus’ for small-small time.”

The large woman grabbed his arm in alarm.

“No!” The young woman’s voice stayed steady. “You no go touch power line!”

The other women thrust him to the ground, surrounding him
so that little light was visible above his head, machetes in their hands. In this tight circle of emotion, heat and rage, the girl spoke. “Show us power line. We don quench am for you. Let your mother rest in peace-now! You be Femi Jegede. I know you. We don wait for you long, long time.”

One woman ran for palm wine, while another returned with gari and stew. “Ah-ah,” another woman yelled, hovering over him. “Look at you. You need woman to feed your belle! Woman no go marry oga wey thin like palm leaf. Come chop food.”

Femi sat like a child in the middle of this circle of human compassion, and tears softened the contours of his vision. He detected the fury he felt reflected in the eyes of others. This small act, this emotional transfer, allowed his anger to float away, taken by the heavy air and deposited in the breasts of the land’s mothers-mothers, he knew, who would fight with the strength and cunning of tigers to protect what little they possessed.

And so as news of Femi’s presence in the area spread, the local farmers destroyed infrastructure crucial to dam development. When questioned by the police, they adopted a mien of shock and dismay that such violence could have been perpetrated so close to their property. They screamed for husbands and sons, slapped them in front of police, furiously demanding to know if they had been involved in such wanton sabotage of public property.

Likenesses of Femi’s mother and grandmother circulated in the region, even in those households struck by water blindness.

A
lthough the Dam Division had deployed key staff to Kainji, surrounding themselves with a preponderance of American construction crews, Beano suggested that he assume the mundane task of visiting the area, chiefly as a courtesy, in Sinclair’s stead. Dam Div could be unusually sensitive when TransAqua put their lives at stake.

At Kainji, the project had fallen behind schedule as expected, but Beano’s dimples managed to secure a loyalty that Sinclair’s dazzling width of teeth and Glass’s linear slash could never have achieved. He stood with a project manager in a Portakabin, watching an artillery of rain smash down to earth, pummelling the ground so hard that stones pinged and flipped.

“Wow! It really pours down here, huh?” Beano shouted over the rain’s booming.

“No protection against it, sir,” the man shouted back through the dank air. “Wish they’d invent an umbrella made out of Kevlar.”

Beano released a ripple oflaughter. “Project going well despite?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve had to build infrastructural support-roads, bridges, you name it-and fly in all the equipment.” He wiped the sweat from his face and forearms. “Some shipped in, of course.”

Beano flashed a bashful glance of adulation at this item of burly masculinity. The project manager might find it unsettling, Beano knew, but he would also appreciate the acknowledgement that only the tough could survive Nigeria’s rigours.

“Any problems from saboteurs?”

The man’s chest puffed out. “Nothing we can’t handle, sir.”

His fingernails shredded to non-existence with the anxiety wrought by three months of indiscriminate destruction in areas north of Kainji Dam, Kolo once more called for the newspapers. He had moved his desk behind a pillar that separated two large windows, in order to hide from potential snipers. To reinforce his authority, however, he also ordered that his portrait hang behind him, even though its frame jutted out slightly into the window casings.

The minister for the environment entered. Although the man was one of the least powerful ministers in government, Kolo enjoyed his confidant’s company, if only to assure himself of his own worth-a particular humiliation inadvertently meted out to his hidden opponent.

“Good morning, Mr. President. How are you, sir?” The minister’s manner seemed skittish.

“Well as can be, under the circumstances. And yourself?”

“Dangerously well, sir,” he smiled at this phrase. “Dangerously well.”

Kolo jerked up at the faint echo of a similar phrase, but he quickly discounted such trifles and furrowed back down into his despair.

“The news is not good. What has this country come to?” The minister bowed and handed Kolo the papers with trembling hands. “Explosions everywhere. No one knows where Jegede will strike next. We cannot find where his militia is based.”

Kolo waved for the minister to sit down.

“You need to increase your protection. I can organize greater security for you,” the minister said.

Kolo slumped in his chair, gave an absent-minded nod and scanned the headlines: “Opposition to the Dam Grows.” Under a picture of broken power lines, the caption “Power to the people.”

His heart began its erratic drumming once more, beating messages of warning. “Who can believe it?” he demanded. “In a country that has fought unification since the day Europe carved it up, suddenly all these competing mishmashed people are uniting?” His threw the papers on the table. “What the hell is going wrong?”

“I myself cannot understand,” the minister responded. “It is a calamity of monstrous proportions.” He drew out a long, laborious tsk.

“And who is this Jegede? What makes him so special?”

The minister had no answer.

“Here I have been trying to encourage government to work together my entire adult life and they can’t agree even on one point of policy-not a single policy! Meanwhile, within a few months, this nincompoop with no effort or background whatsoever has drawn together every flotsam and jetsam of society!”

Frantic to annihilate any whiff of heroism that might attach to another human being, Kolo scrambled to deal with the situation. He waved away his minister and called Mary Glass at TransAqua. He pictured her as a beautiful woman, large, with huge breasts and an extensive backside, even though he knew she looked more like a strand of barbed wire.

“Mary Glass, TransAqua.”

“Hello, Ms. Glass. President Kolo speaking. Do you have a minute?” He knew she would make one, or he would not have asked the question.

“Yes, sir. Just a moment, I’ll get a pad and pen.”

This was what he liked about her: efficient, ambitious, conversations pared down to their bare essentials.

“Yes, sir?”

“I am calling about the situation at Kainji.” He opened his box of Quality Street and started feeling for a strawberry centre. None left-he must have finished them. He opted for hazelnut caramel. “I will be instituting a state of emergency.” The caramel slid smoothly down his tongue, tickling his throat. “The US ambassador has suggested that TransAqua deploy its own security forces to protect its interests.”

“Our own security forces? Like a private army?”

She had no idea, he thought. Of course it would be a private army.

“Certainly not!” he replied with indignation. “My dear Ms. Glass, that would be illegal. I’m referring to security forces to accompany your personnel and protect your infrastructure. The Nigerian Army is, of course, at your disposal. Many of them freelance after their shift. You may wish to contact your oil companies in the region for more information on structure and pricing. The embassy here could arrange recruitment for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

She really was as green as an unripe banana. And once matured, who knew? He enjoyed doing business with her. He found it so easy to motivate her, unlike dealing with his countrymen.

They signed off. He took his phone off the hook for a couple of minutes of quiet reflection. Surely the experts from the
West would capture the madman at the helm of this disruption, put the entire situation to rest and allow Kolo to resume his role.

He swivelled around to look at the trees, now being blown by the wind.

Kolo’s car pulled up to the American embassy, accidentally splashing the Marine guards with mud. He took an air-conditioned elevator to the ambassador’s office.

“President Kolo!” The ambassador slapped Kolo on the back. Even though the ambassador dressed with increasing formality, Kolo had noticed no accompanying increase in decorum. “Sure got yourself a mess here, huh? C’mon in and have yourself a drink.”

Kolo deeply regretted having left behind his motorcade. So instead he made sure his agbada billowed behind him as he walked in, creating an even more dramatic presence.

“Please sit down, Ambassador Bates.” Kolo deployed his most pronounced British accent to indicate to the ambassador that they were no longer equals.

For a moment, the ambassador seemed disoriented, but then he smiled benignly and sat down. The scalp underneath his crewcut, however, had turned pink.

“I’m sure you’ve read the reports on the difficulties we’re facing from the terrorists,” Kolo began.

“Sure have. Can anything be done to get the situation under control?”

“I have just dispatched our security forces to the area.” A white lie, but Kolo had plans for three assassins, who could do more damage than a whole army. “We will be penetrating the group—” He stopped short. He could not believe he had just given the ambassador a status report! His aides could do that.
In the blink of an eye, most gently and in a most subtle manner, the ambassador had managed to gain the alpha position. Kolo changed tack.

“We need to ensure that these terrorists are not painted sympathetically by your media, or it will put your business interests in jeopardy. I’m sure you’re on top of the situation.” He added an inflection of enquiry to the last sentence.

“Oh, uh, yeah, of course.” The ambassador smiled uncomfortably. “We’ve been working on that.”

“Is there anything our government can do to make your work more, um …” Kolo paused, enjoying the ambassador’s discomfort, “… successful?”

“We’ll deal with it.” The ambassador bowed his head and scratched his ear. “I’ll call some people tonight.”

“Do you have any project parameters? A timeline?”

The ambassador squirmed.

Kolo knew the word “no” was not part of the diplomatic vocabulary.

“I just need to get hold of six key people. They sit on all the boards. We’ll get things under control by the end of the week.”

“Perhaps link Jegede to more extremist groups? That always seems to work wonders.” Kolo crossed his ankles. “I say,” he added, “you don’t have any troops we can send to the region, do you?”

“We’re already overdeployed in Mexico, I’m afraid. The president’s gotta consider re-election.”

“That’s a pity. These anarchists are making it impossible for TransAqua to operate. And, of course, the unrest is bleeding to the oil sector.” Kolo sighed and looked wistfully at the ceiling.