The Fall of Saints (13 page)

“Who owns it?” I asked.

“I’m coming to that. First the name. Three Ms: Miwani Miracle Ministries. The logo is just a graphic representation of the Swahili word Miwani, or glasses, hence vision. Clever, isn’t it?”

“An interesting evolution. Ever since I lost the case of the Alternative Clinics—” Jane began.

“Oh, you are the Jane of the alternative clinics,” Wainaina interrupted. “The
Daily Star
covered the case, but they called you Mr. Kagendo. The guy who captioned it was given a verbal thrashing by the editor. That’s how I came to be in charge of copyediting as well.”

“You mean you have to thank me for your promotion,” Jane said.

“You might say so.”

“I want my cut, then.”

“You mean a pound of flesh?” I asked. I could not help it.
The Merchant of Venice
was one of the Shakespeare plays staged at Msongari in my time, and I thought Jane played Portia to my Shylock.

“ ‘The quality of mercy is never strained,’ ” Wainaina said, casting a glance at Jane.

“ ‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath; it’s twice blest,’ ” Jane said, and looked at me.

“ ‘It blesseth him that gives and him that takes,’ ” I intoned, not to be outdone.

We were beside ourselves with laughter. Bantering had quickly become our way.

“Come to think of it, your interest in law may have started with your playing the amateur lawyer,” I said to Jane.

“Probably. Jokes aside,” Jane continued, “losing the case dampened my spirits. But I believe this 3M business may have started under the name the Real Alternative Clinics. Almost like— I would not call it gloating, but definitely piggybacking on the earlier name, or the loss of it.”

The affair seemed to have impacted my friend profoundly, but I did not want to lose the trail. “So who owns Three Ms?”

“Susan, I think, a reverend.”

“The one Susan?” Jane asked.

“Susan, Her Holy Reverend, or officially Her Holiness, but she uses the titles interchangeably. Jane, you must know her?” Wainaina said.

“I don’t, but which Kenyan does not know of her?” Jane said.

Her Holy Reverend, the leader and founder of Miwani Miracle Ministries and founder and owner of Three Ms, aka the Real Alternative Clinics, emerged as a boisterous, robust, slightly overweight, and charismatic woman and skilled orator.

“You have to give it to her,” said Jane. “That is, if we are talking about the same Susan. Her meteoric rise to the top echelon in the society, with connections to every center of power, from Parliament to the army, police, and political parties, is astounding by any standards. At national events, she is often called upon to bless the nation.”

“The more data I gathered about her,” Wainaina resumed his narrative, “the more I found myself admiring her. My research gave me a little window into her character and dynamic personality . . .”

She was brilliant enough to have been admitted to the prestigious Alliance High School, but her father could not afford the tuition. She landed a job as a filing clerk in the Ministry of Education, but with six brothers and sisters who all relied on her meager salary, she found life pretty difficult, and it was then, in the depth of misery and sorrow, that she had her first call from Jesus. She became a devout Christian. Those who recalled her days as a youth member of the Ngarariga church said she was an extremely resourceful organizer of fund-raising events.

It was then, so the story goes, that she introduced the idea of a church-run raffle for the benefit of the poorer congregation. The winner would earn two plane tickets to Mombasa. Susan chaired a small committee that handled the raffle tickets. She involved the whole congregation in prayer that the ticket should go to the chosen one. When it turned out that the chosen one was one of her brothers, some irate congregates objected and accused her of naked nepotism. Deeply upset that they should question the mysterious ways of God, Susan quit the church and went into the wilderness. For a year nobody knew her whereabouts. Then she emerged from wherever she had been, literally in rags, with scratches on her arms that she claimed came from wrestling with satanic cactus thorns in the wilderness. She told a harrowing, heart-wrenching story of how, in the depths of her tribulations, sorrow, and despair, the Lord visited her in the form of a bird and said: “Susan, rise, follow me, and I shall make you fishers of men.” A born-again Christian, she founded her own church under a tree in Limuru and told the story of her call over and over again, asking the congregation, “Have you ever heard a bird speak?” The Holy Spirit assumed the body of a bird and spoke to her.

Within a few years she had moved from a tree to a rented classroom and then her own church building, where she led the hymn: “Count your blessings, count them one by one, and you will see what the Lord has done for you.” They flocked to her church to count their blessings, making sure they brought their tithes. Miwani became the fastest-growing church in the country, and its branches could be found in most cities across the country. In honor of the tree under which her church was founded, every branch planted a tree, which was blessed by Reverend Susan.

“How did she acquire the title ‘Her Holiness’?” I asked, fascinated.

“That’s another story,” Wainaina said. “If you go to her church, as I had to do several times, the first thing you will notice is the mixture of Roman Catholic and High Anglican rituals, a far cry from the puritanism of the beginnings, when her church was characterized by bareness, simplicity. Wherever she goes—and there came a time when she started traveling beyond our borders—she would add another ritual and claim it had been revealed to her by God. This is what she did when she returned from some Eastern European countries, Estonia or Latvia, and brought rituals of the Orthodox Church. Her church now is a Kenyan version of the Santería in Cuba. And each time she comes back from her travels, she makes incredible claims: It was after she returned from the East that she proclaimed she was responsible for the fall of godless communism. Never mind that her visit was several years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet system . . . You asked me how she became Her Holiness. Susan visited the US, and when she came back, she said she had met a Black Angel.”

“Literally?” Jane asked.

“Literally. At least so her followers believe. Sometimes they talk of a choir of black angels. And when they talk about it, they burst into song, a call-and-response version of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see

Coming for to carry me home

A band of angels coming after me

Coming for to carry me home.

“Her followers believe she did not fly back to the country in a regular plane. A band of angels carried her shoulder-high all the way from America across the Atlantic to Africa—”

“What’s wrong, Mugure?” Jane and Wainaina asked in unison.

It was nothing, really. It was the audacity of the coincidence. I told them about the three incidents involving encounters with a Susan-type woman: Estonia, with Zack; and Melinda, in New York.

“Religion has become the fastest-growing industry in the country,” Jane added.

“I don’t blame her. All over the world, religion means money. The Vatican, after all, is richer than many countries in the world,” said Wainaina.

“But you must give Susan some credit,” chimed in Jane. “She is quite shrewd. Hundreds of businesses are owned by her or linked to her. Beauty salons, dry cleaners, makeshift small hotels, import/export, anything. She does not thrive by faith alone.”

“Yes, but she puts faith in every business,” said Wainaina. “Remember the name of her church: Miwani Miracle Ministries. She believes in angels and miracles, and hers are not abstract. You might think, for instance, that the curios in her shops are ordinary. No, no. She has breathed into them the breath of the black angel.”

“Curios? How do you mean?” I asked, the name ringing a thousand bells in my mind.

“Yes, she owns curio shops all over. Apparently, they have tried to export abroad, directly or with partners, but not everybody in Europe and the US is as gullible as we Kenyans when it comes to faith. Her followers believe that those giraffes and elephants and Maasai warriors can transmit the breath of angels to the owner.”

I told them about the Rhino Man of the Manhattan curio shop.

“Reverend Susan is an interesting character,” Jane said, “but I doubt she would let herself get involved in murky business. Why would she do in the dark what she can do for profit in the light?”

“Yes, she profits by the light,” Wainaina said. “There is the Festival of Rags, for instance.”

“Festival of Rags?” I said, more as a statement than a question. Melinda had mentioned it at the end of her season at Shamrock, the same night we were confronted by the suited gunman.

“That’s right. Starting from nothing, her church grew; her own blessings grew; her money multiplied; her garments became increasingly expensive. She founded the festival to celebrate her rise from rags to riches and remind her followers of the humble beginnings. This year’s star performer is a woman advertised as having the voice of an angel. There are a few posters in town to that effect,” Wainaina said.

“Her name is Melinda,” I said. “She’s my friend. She does possess a golden voice. She isn’t aware yet that I am in Kenya.”

I did not know if Melinda and Zack were in touch, but I didn’t want her to leak my presence in the country. Ciru Mbai and I had agreed that should Zack or anybody else call about me, she would act as if Kobi and I were her guests in Cape Town. I had said the same to Sam and the folk in Ohio: To every inquiry, South Africa was the answer.

Melinda’s imminent arrival settled the order of business; we had to see Susan before she did. Wainaina would wear his colors as a journalist. I would have liked to get on with it right away, but we had talked into the night, and jet lag was catching up with me.

Jane offered Wainaina a place to crash. I bade them good night and walked to my bedroom. Fatigued in mind and body, I slept without dreams of gunmen, car chases, or the Mafia.

13

I
called Ohio first thing in the morning to say I had arrived safely and to check on Kobi. My son had gone to bed, Sam told me. Rosie was taking good care of him. A remarkable woman, Sam said of her, and assured me there was nothing to worry about. I detected slight stress in his voice. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

“Is everything okay?” I asked him, a little alarmed. It was nothing much, he assured me, just a man who claimed to be a police officer. Ben was his name. I held my breath. Had it anything to do with Zack and the suited gunman? A fatal gunfight in Tallinn? It was nothing to worry about, Sam said again, Ben had called to speak to me.

“When I told him I did not know how to reach you, he called me by name. I was surprised he knew we used to date. He said you had been on the run, and he had reason to believe that I was hiding you, and I would be held responsible should anything happen to you. Mugure, you understand, I don’t want trouble with the police. I admitted you had been here but that you had left for South Africa. I gave him Ciru’s contact in Cape Town.”

“How the hell did Ben trace me to you?” I wondered.

“Traffic lights, cameras, and Joe. Mugure, you ran several red lights on your way to and from Joe’s. He’s actually the one who called Ben. Joe claimed you were crazy and urged the police to commit you to psychiatric observation. I assured him that you seemed quite sane to me, and I told him about Joe trying to hit you. Joe is under their umbrella of suspicion, Ben said, though he did not elaborate. He said you should call, that I must tell you to get in touch with him. He talked of a hotline. Please call him.”

I looked at my phone after we were done. The missed calls confirmed Sam’s story: Ben had tried to get in touch with me. I did not know what made me angrier, Ben hinting that I was on the run, or Joe covering his murderous deeds by claiming I was mentally deranged. No, I was not about to call Ben. I had a little work to do.

•  •  •

The drama from Ohio was on my mind when I set out for the Miracle Church with Wainaina at the wheel of Jane’s car. I had to fake a cheerfulness I did not feel. He had already reported for work, talked to his editor about a possible story on the Festival of Rags, and been given the go-ahead. That meant he would work with me the entire day. Jane excused herself, wishing us good luck rather skeptically. She said she would help whenever her schedule allowed.

We had worked out an angle. Wainaina was the lead journalist and I his cameraperson, intending to do several stories on MMM leading up to the Festival of Rags. Beginning with the Three Ms agency, we would follow the story of adoptees from Kenya to their adopted homes and families abroad. We hoped she would show us written records and answer questions. The process of elimination would surely lead us to the Kasla partner agency.

The building was surrounded by a stone wall, with broken pieces of glass firmly cemented on top to discourage anyone from climbing over. We stopped by the blue metal gates.

The security guard peered at us through the small hole in the gate before stepping out. Wainaina took out his press card and explained our mission, an interview with Susan. The man looked at the ID, returned it, and said that Reverend Susan had already left and would not be back until evening prayers. In any case, we could not see her without an appointment. Could we see the church? No, the premises were open to the public during the hours of worship only, but we could look at the building from outside the gate without taking pictures.

Wainaina parked the car on the side. I had expected lots of activity, with cars and people going in and out of the church compound. “For some reason, I thought the church was located in the city center,” I said to Wainaina.

“This has been here all the time,” the man said. “After the holy tree, the Holy Spirit guided her here.”