Doing Dangerously Well (33 page)

Unfortunately, she recognized the similarities. Both Jegede and Guevara exuded sexuality, incandescent beauty and a signal intensity. In the flesh, in movement, such qualities might be all one would see. But in the static images of Jegede, she discerned
a person willing to die. What would others identify in a photo of her, behind that bland facade? A person willing to kill?

If she-the potential agent of Jegede’s destruction-could grow so entranced by his image, how tightly would the great American public embrace him? Almost to suffocation. And that asphyxiation would paradoxically breathe life into him, while choking the life out of her.

With fumbling hands, she grabbed the phone and called Kolo.

“President Kolo? Mary Gla—”

“Have you seen the papers?” His voice fractured as his composure fled. “A bush man like Jegede wanders out of his village and blinks into the spotlight like this? A man of no substance-some inconsequential, blank-faced illiterate straying onto the world stage? He’s lost! The man is disoriented! Someone should rescue him!”

“Is there a way of—”

“Don’t worry!” Kolo snapped. “I’m seeing to that. Three parties have located a baffled man ambling without direction. They’ll deal with him.”

“Assassins?”

“Ex-convicts. Same difference. They’re with him now. They appear to be taking their time, that’s all. In the meantime, I need more protection.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.” She put down the phone, making no further effort in that direction.

Instead, she stood and looked out the window, staring down at the entrance to TransAqua. Sinclair and the boys emerged from its mirrors, heading downtown to a bar, or more likely to a strip club on the outskirts. They walked past the building’s vast fountains, water crashing down mammoth blocks of rock five storeys high, some of it evaporating into the desert’s arid heat. Her eyes followed as the men emerged from behind the
waterfall’s mist until their shimmering figures disappeared into the distance of the Acquisitions team’s parking lot. From their leisurely pace, it appeared as if Sinclair had firmed up new plans, perhaps even in cahoots with Jegede to oust Kolo. She had to act decisively, on intuition—which was not her strongest point.

With a brisk search of the Internet, she researched the activities of the African Water Warriors, hard-core militia from Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta, where decades of struggle against the oil industry had produced sociopathic killers. Through a crackling mobile signal, she managed to contact the group, via an imprisoned member.

Mary cut to the chase immediately. “I have $25,000. There are three people sympathetic to your cause in Wise Water. Find one of them. Your two groups need to work in parallel. A bonus, of course, will be forthcoming.”

The skies grew heavy as the humidity worsened. Throughout August, the rain fell in an endless onslaught, battering corrugated roofs like rapid gunfire, so thunderous that people had to shout to be heard. Puddles joined together into muddy streams, currents through which people had to push, planting each step firmly before taking the next. Rain abated, only to appear again accompanied by explosions of thunder and shocks of blue lightning that lit up the entire sky in cracks of neon.

President Kolo had always been nervous of the raging storms whipped up by the rainy season. He hated the constant deluge of water, loathed the unpredictable nature of lightning and the violence of thunder’s boom. With widespread discontent and his presidency under constant threat, he was exhausted.

He picked his way from his residence through the long corridors and stairways to his office, sniffling at his misfortune, personally affronted that nature had seen fit to threaten his
equilibrium during the time of his greatest tribulation. His besieged silhouette stood at his office window, dwarfed by the glass that towered above him. As he fingered plush burgundy curtains, he stared at the torrent. He winced in anticipation of each bolt of lightning, his fat digits clutching the velvet. They tightened as his pounding heart waited for the next crack of thunder to blast through the heavens. He waited a few seconds. No thunder. He waited a few moments more. Silence. He relaxed his grip. The crinkled velvet eased out of its tight ball, recovering in cautious stages from the imprint of his grasp.

An instant later, the heavens exploded. Kolo yelped. He ran to the curtains and rolled his body up in them, shaking. He stood there for many minutes, allowing this gentle womb to bring momentary peace to his life. He wept.

The initial euphoria of having attained the presidency was over and panic had set in. Most knew how dangerous his position was; few understood how distracting, how utterly exhausting, the preservation of life could be.

Still encased in the curtain, Kolo stroked the velvet, running his hands up and down the fabric, feeling its pile move in the direction of his hand and then flick gently back into place like tiny feathers tickling his skin. Four allies had turned against him. How many more lurked in dark corners and clubhouses? After a life spent building alliances, plotting his way into their company, bribing them into loyalty, he had now been thrust back into the position that had plagued him during the entire period of his unhappy childhood.

When the thunder stopped, Kolo crept away from the window and sat down, a shrunken figure behind a giant desk in a football stadium of an office. The bureau had been specially imported from the Congo and was made of wenge wood, a rare hardwood in dark brown with a most pleasant grain. Kolo stroked it.
Its drawers had been decorated with silver plaques depicting his rise to presidency, crafted by the famed Asiru family of Osogbo. He followed the panels. On the top left drawer, his birth in front of smiling chiefs, with his brother in the background. On the bottom left drawer, Kolo in the foreground, waving as his brother rose with the angels to the skies.

Kolo secretly scoffed at the term “identical twin.” Very little about his brother had seemed a duplicate of himself. His brother’s eyes were set wider apart, his nose and lips smaller, his skin lighter than Kolo’s. On some level, deep in their subconscious, others must have sensed this. When people greeted them both, they shook his brother’s hand first, stared into his brother’s eyes and asked him questions regarding both of them.

His brother was also more affectionate. He loved to tease their mother. Kolo, on the other hand, would scurry away from such contact, hiding in cupboards with books and newspapers, more a child of his father.

The top right drawer depicted Kolo holding university degrees, with a small inset of his trip to Mecca. The next drawer showed Kolo with a sun shining above him and his arms around Nigeria’s natural resources. At the bottom, on the biggest drawer, was Kolo on a throne, the Nigerian flag behind him, in an agbada so large that its ends were cut off at the sides of the panel.

Kolo shuffled papers from his in-tray to a pending folder. He listened to the ceiling, sure he could hear pipes trickling with water, about to burst over him.

The intercom buzzed. Kolo jumped.

“Police to see you, sir,” his aide said.

“Bring.”

The three killers selected by the inspector general walked in, dressed in shirts and ties, accompanied by seven officers. Kolo kept them standing as the aide backed out of the room.

“Worraps?” the ugliest one asked him, hitching up his trousers and lowering a baseball cap over his eyes.

The president of Nigeria’s mouth froze open. Had the inspector general selected the bushest men in Nigeria? Ogbe Kolo put much stock in social codes and ritualized forms of greeting. He detested those who sank to the familiarity of “Worraps?” The insolence astounded him. Still, what could you expect from killers? Manners?

He looked them over with disgust. His eyes focused on the tallest of the trio, an attractive man with a handsome smile, perhaps too unctuous? To his left stood a small bundle of repugnance, the ugliest man Kolo had ever seen, his face riddled with poisons and exploding with pustules. To his right, a man on the verge of an eruption: hulking, taut, his red eyeballs full of rage and hate.

“News?” Kolo looked at the tallest when he spoke.

“We have penetrated the organization,” the tallest man replied in a charming voice, melodious and untroubled. “The head man is Femi Jegede.”

Idiots. “I am aware of that.” Kolo sat more erect.

The man smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, perhaps in apology, perhaps insolence. “We are now within his inner sanctum.”

“You mean coterie. Good.” Kolo looked at his nails, selected one and started biting. “Well?” He looked at the fierce man, who had not spoken.

“We can bring you the body,” the ugly one answered on his comrade’s behalf. “No problem.”

The fierce man kept staring at Kolo, silent.

“So?” Kolo asked. “Where is it?”

“Still alive. Body no go help, sah.” The ugly one rubbed his shirt as if to warm himself up.

“Why not?”

“The people dey make trouble. Jegede just give match. Na the people who dey light the match. Understand?”

“The people?” Kolo yelped. “What people?”

“Everyone. Farmer, market woman, mechanic, palm wine tapper, even thief people.” The ugly man’s teeth were chattering in the air conditioning, which was working well.

Kolo’s felt a pain shoot up his arm. “Heart attack!” he screamed.

The three men turned to run.

“No! Wait!” he yelled.

The trio stopped.

Kolo felt his pulse. The pain subsided. He took four aspirin, grumbling, “Three heart attacks in one month. What next?”

He snapped his fingers, ordering the trio to follow him. Accompanied by the presidential guard, they walked along long corridors and down three flights of stairs until they reached the bowels of the building. He shepherded them to a broom cupboard, where he could be certain enemies had not secreted bugging devices or cameras.

Kolo turned on a bare bulb. It served only to highlight the boils and sores on the ugly man’s face. Within seconds, Kolo unlocked the door to let in a crack of air so their stinking body odour would not suffocate him.

“Kill Jegede,” Kolo ordered. “But be careful-oh! It must look as if his own organization killed him. Don’t bring any wahala on my head. One week. Go.” He waved them away.

“E no easy.” The ugly man refused to move. “The people fit kill us.”

“We can kill the man, five minutes, no problem.” Even in this harsh light, the tall man’s face radiated a serene beauty. “But his corpse will bring more wahala if it is dead. People will
want some crime scene investigation, LA-style. Latex glove will point at you. We need timing.”

He had obviously watched too much American television, yet his words made sense. Kolo looked at his nails again, selected another one and began biting. “Okay. Find timing. But remember: faster service, better money.”

“Okay. Like corporate bonus.”

“No more than three months. Understand? Go.” Kolo slammed the door and left the trio in the broom cupboard, hoping these fools did not operate on Naija time. If so, three months could mean a year.

As the presidential guard turned left, he hopped to the right, then dodged around a corner. If one of them had been paid to kill him, they would have to find a less intelligent target. He smiled as he made his way up the back stairs to his office.

He heard water dripping. His smile faded. He checked the ceiling. No leaks. He put his ear to the wall. The drip grew into a trickle, then a stream. Suddenly he heard splashing sounds, a struggle, gurgling, muffled pleas for help. His brother’s voice. He put his hands to his ears and sprinted to his office, hardly able to breathe.

In the heat of Ottawa’s summer, Barbara worked from home, in her garden, sitting in a deck chair, airing her feet. The flowers had thrown off their green cloaks, stepping out in exuberant style. Behind their petals, they had dabbed perfumes of differing qualities. Some, unable to contain their need for attention, had splashed on ostentatious scents. Others, wishing to maintain the elitism rampant in the world of flora, aimed for an elegant perfume. Still others, peeking shyly from behind a veil of leaves, left subtle traces of fragrance that only the most refined nasal passages could detect.

With the perfumes came the clothing. Here, subtlety was cast aside, as the flowers elbowed out the competition with increasingly brash and garish guise: large, outmoded bonnets of flamboyant pink, wide petticoats of banana yellow, ridiculous shawls of dramatic purple, all manner of unnecessary frills and flounces. It mattered little how much they clashed, only that they could attract enough attention to ensure their continued presence on earth. This extravagant rivalry seemed to mirror Barbara’s universe. If Femi managed to captivate the public’s interest, he could ensure his survival too.

With an officious sense of purpose, Barbara opened one of many newspapers piled up next to her chair. As a neighbour watched her studying the newsprint, she flapped the paper to straighten it. Journalists supported Femi with unswerving, undeviating veneration: “Jegede: The Gandhi of Nigeria.” She smiled with pride, mixed with a pang of jealousy.

Not in the least tanned from his foray into the tropics, Beano returned in good spirits, save for a stomach bug that left him somewhat fatigued and addle-headed. He parked his bike in his office and bounced towards the weekly meeting with a slight fever.

Outside the room, Mary detained him. “How was the trip?” She peered at him through thin eyelashes.

“Rain! Storming down! I thought I’d see Noah’s ark coming around the corner.”

“Yeah, it’s the rainy season over there.”

The monotony of her voice threw Beano into a state of incomprehension. How did she manage to get up in the morning, let alone function?

“I was wondering less about the weather,” she continued, “than the trip itself.”

He transported his face into its dimples. “Aw, sorry. How dumb! The dam, right? That’s only slightly behind schedule. It’s mainly the payola, the tempo over there, the lack of industrialization, the insurgents.”

“The terrorists?”

“Right. The terrorists. Other than that …” He shrugged. He could not read her reaction. He was not sure she had produced one.