Anthills of the Savannah

THIRTEEN

One of the many questions Ikem had had to field in the course of his lecture, some briefly and others at some length, concerned a fairly persistent rumour that the Central Bank of Kangan was completing plans to put the President's image on the nation's currency. Was it true and if so what did the honourable lecturer think about such an eventuality?

'Yes I heard of it like everybody else. Whether there is such a plan or not I don't know. All I can say is I hope the rumour is unfounded. My position is quite straightforward especially now that I don't have to worry about being Editor of the Gazette. My view is that any serving President foolish enough to lay his head on a coin should know he is inciting people to take if off; the head I mean.'

The statement which was roundly applauded in the auditorium was to reverberate louder still throughout the country from the very next morning when the National Gazette came out brandishing in the heaviest possible type the headline: EX-EDITOR ADVOCATES REGICIDE!

One of the ifs of recent Kangan history is what the fate of Ikem might have been had he backed out of that speaking engagement at the university. Those who hold that the lecture was decisive are probably underrating the sheer indefatigability of Major Johnson (Samsonite) Ossai, Director of SRC. For he was moving and closing in relentlessly on a number of alternative fronts the most menacing coming from the direction of the controversial expatriate Director of Administration at the Bassa General Hospital, Mr. John Kent, popularly called the Mad Medico. For over a year now the perspicacious Major had had the foresight to keep Mr. Kent under very close but discreet surveillance. And what accrued to the Major from this particular exercise was of such crucial importance that it might have sufficed by itself even if the lecture had not happened. This is not by any means to underrate the new opening offered by the lecture for it did make a dramatic pincer movement and quick kill easy and inevitable.

Mr. Kent was hauled in quietly for interrogation, held secretly and incommunicado for four days at the BMSP, released under tight security and deported within forty-eight hours. A terse radio and television announcement of his deportation for activities prejudicial to state security issued by the Directorate of State Research Council when Mr. Kent was already airborne was the first and last official intimation Kangan had of this unexpected event. Few at first could have linked it clearly with the suspension of the Editor of the National Gazette announced earlier although the two announcements coming so close to each other left in many minds the impression that the uneasy calm of the past twelve months might at last be speeding to a close.

And then a few hours later there was yet another special announcement. This time it was issued by the Army Council (a body that no one could recall announcing anything in years), and it told the nation simply that, in an extraordinary meeting of the Army Council, Major Johnson Ossai, Director of the State Research Council, was promoted to the rank of full colonel. End of special announcement.

He is certainly sticking to his promise to do things constitutionally, thought Chris when he heard this latest bulletin.

It was all very well for Beatrice to make fun of his morning routine of informational alienation but no one had yet suggested to him a better way for getting to know what was going on, not in the outside world — that had always known how to wait — but right here in Kangan. So instead of the BBC at seven as usual he got up earlier the next morning and tuned in to its six o'clock news. And true enough Mr. Kent's deportation from the West African state of Kangan, although extremely scanty in detail, had made world news!

With one ear glued to the little transistor radio he dialled Ikem's number. He had failed to reach him last night when the news about MM first broke. The houseboy who answered the phone said he had gone out in the afternoon with dat gal…/ And now the telephone was ringing away and nobody was picking it up. Ikem was notorious as a late riser and positively hated to be disturbed early in the morning, but Chris thought that in present circumstances he might at least pick up his phone… No. Very well.

He tried Beatrice next. She answered sleepily at first but on hearing who and what became instantly and intensely alert.

'Try and get the BBC. They are likely to have a fuller story in the African news after the world bulletin.'

'But how does one get the BBC? You know I have never yet been able to find them. All I get is that infuriating thing in special English from the Voice of America. I think my radio must be made by CIA…'

A little later she called back, her voice utterly dejected, to report failure yet again.

'Never mind, dear. Come right over. I managed to record MM off transmission. Meanwhile I am trying to reach Ikem. His ability to sleep through storms is beginning to irritate me… See you.'

By the time Beatrice went over at about seven-forty-five, Chris had been alerted and was making frantic calls all over Bassa without any success. As soon as her car drove in he rushed out. 'Ikem's not in his flat though he went to bed there last night…'

'He may have gone out early.'

'His car is in the garage and… let's go and see for ourselves. Can you drive us?'

'Sure.' She noticed he was trembling.

The front door was locked so they went round to the back and through the kitchen door to which the houseboy held a spare key. The flat was in a shambles. Books and papers and clothes were strewn everywhere in the living-room and in the master and spare bedrooms. An alarm clock lay among shards of its broken glass beside the bed.

The houseboy was repeating what he had already told Chris on the telephone a short while ago when there was a tap on the door and a woman came in uncertainly, and then a man. They were Ikem's neighbours in the adjacent flat. The man, a civil servant, recognized the Commissioner for Information at once.

'Good morning, sir,' he said. Finding the Commissioner there seemed to have lifted his morale and removed some of the gloomy timidity with which he had come in. 'Agnes, this is the Commissioner for Information, Mr. Oriko. Sir, this is my wife.'

'Good morning sir,' said Agnes the wife also brightening up considerably.

'Thank you. Have you seen anything of your neighbour? Since last night?'

The man looked at Beatrice questioningly and then around the room and the open doors.

'There is nobody else here. You know who I am. This is Beatrice Okoh, Senior Assistant Secretary, Finance. We are not police or security, just friends of Mr. Osodi. Did you see anything?'

'Pleased to meet you madam… I was fast asleep when Agnes woke me up and said there were two jeeps outside…'

'Army jeeps?'

'So I went to the window to look and she was right. There were two jeeps standing in the yard and by that time the people were banging on our neighbour's front door. Then after some time we could hear the door open.'

'Did they identify themselves? Did they say who they were?'

'I think they said they were from State Research Council.'

'Yes, that's what they said. And we heard him say that he was coming before he opened the door.'

'Yes?'

'We were not sure that they were soldiers. You know how armed robbers can sometimes say they are soldiers. So we were afraid to go out.'

'That's understandable. When exactly did this happen?'

'They were here exactly one-fifteen or so. And they left at around two-thirty. That was when they came out with our neighbour.'

'How many were they?'

'They plenty-o. Some came inside and some stayed outside. My husband said they must be up to ten but I didn't count.'

'Did you get any vehicle numbers?'

'I tried to but they parked under the umbrella tree, so the security light could not shine there for me to see the number well.'

'Was he rough-handled? Listen, you can speak without fear.'

'Unless inside the house. But outside they did everything quiet.'

'So there was no struggling or pushing or something like that… outside?'

'No. I didn't see anything like that.'

'But our neighbour's hand was inside hand-cuff,' said the wife, 'and his face…'

'We couldn't see very well sir. As I told you it was dark…'

'His face?' asked Chris turning fully to the wife.

'We couldn't see very well whether his face was swell up. It was too dark. So we don't know whether it was because of the dark or that his face was swell up.'

'Thank you very much. You have given us the first solid information. You need not worry. We shall not mention you in any way.'

'Thank you sir, thank you madam. This our country na waa. Na only God go save person.'

When Chris first heard through a friend's telephone call of MM's deportation at six p.m. the day before, he had tried to speak to Ikem but he had apparently gone out with Elewa. So the last time they talked together was the morning of the regicide story. Containing his irritation as much as possible he had wanted to know exactly what Ikem had said at the lecture. He fully expected an explosion from the other end in answer to his query but to his delight Ikem seemed quite upset that whatever he said had been so atrociously distorted and he was then drafting a stiff letter to the editor and even mentioned possible court action.

Standing there now ineffectual, in the ruins of his flat, Chris's mind, locked out as it were on a barren corridor of inactivity, fluttered, panic-stricken, from one closed door to the next.

'I wonder if he did send the letter.'

'What letter?'

'To the Editor of the Gazette. It is important that they print his denial.'

'You think they will. With that odious fellow licking his lips. Anyway phone him and ask him why the letter has not appeared. He used to be a poodle of yours…'

'We must reach Elewa. Who knows there may have been hints of this earlier in the day.'

'How?'

'I don't know really. But she was here till six.'

'The people came at one in the morning. Still I agree that Elewa ought to be told, anyway. Do you happen to know where she lives. No? Nor do I. The houseboy might know.'

'That's an idea.'

The houseboy didn't know where she lived nor where she worked.

'Let's see, I believe she told me she was a sales-girl in an Indian or was it Lebanese shop. Textiles I think. But which particular shop… I suppose we could try all the ones in the Yellow Pages… But Elewa who? We don't know that either, do we? Oh well I am sure she will hear one way or another and come back here.'

They left the flat so that Beatrice could go to work. Chris advised her not to make enquiries on the matter from her office but to leave everything to him.

He spent the entire morning on the telephone. The mental immobility which the devastation in Ikem's flat had induced in him had now lifted completely. His mind got clearer on what he had to do as he went along doing it. Major Ossai was not available to speak to him and nobody else in the Directorate could help with the information he required.

The President's Principal Secretary would not put him through but promised to call him back as soon as the President was free to talk to him. What was the subject of his discussion? Oh, but that is not a matter for the President. You want to speak to the Director of SRC.

Then he called the Attorney-General who said he didn't know about it.

'But aren't you supposed to know?'

'Well, yes and no. If it is purely a matter of state security it could be tricky… I will know ultimately of course, you know…'

Professor Okong hadn't heard; and the Chief Secretary to the Government had just this minute been told by the Attorney-General.

Oh, well! No point continuing to search for the living among the dead! So he changed tack. It was clear that Major Samsonite Ossai and his boss were adopting a quiet line. Therefore he must embark on a massive publicizing of the abduction. He knew he could count on some of the representatives in Bassa of foreign news agencies, their press and radio. On the home front there was no comparable resource to lean on but there was the enormous potential of that great network nicknamed VOR, the Voice of Rumour, the despair of tyrants and shady dealers in high places. Before evening both systems, foreign and local seemed set to start buzzing in the interest of the abducted man.

Then at six o'clock yet another Special Announcement from the Directorate of State Research Council was on the air:

In the discharge of its duty in safeguarding the freedom and security of the State and of every law-abiding citizen of Kangan the State Research Council has uncovered a plot by unpatriotic elements in Kangan working in concert with certain foreign adventurers to destabilize the lawful government of this country.

This dastardly plot was master-minded by Mr. Ikem Osodi until recently Editor of the government-owned National Gazette.

Investigations by top security officers of SRC have revealed Mr. Osodi's involvement in three separate aspects of the plot:

(1) He was the key link between the plotters in Kangan and their foreign collaborators.

(2) He was the lynchpin between the plotters in Bassa and a group of disgruntled and unpatriotic chiefs in the Province of Abazon.

(3) Under the guise of a public lecture at the University of Bassa on 26 September, Mr. Osodi furthered the aim of the plotters by inciting the students of the University to disaffection and rebellion against the government and the life of His Excellency the President and the peace and security of the State.

In the early hours of this morning a team of security officers effected the arrest of Mr. Osodi in his official flat at 202 Kingsway Road in the Government Reservation Area and were taking him in a military vehicle for questioning at the SRC Headquarters when he seized a gun from one of his escorts. In the scuffle that ensued between Mr. Osodi and his guards in the moving vehicle Mr. Osodi was fatally wounded by gunshot.

His Excellency has already appointed a high-level inquiry into the accident to be headed by the Chief of Staff, Major-General Ahmed Lango, with the directive to commence investigations immediately and to report within fourteen days.

Meanwhile investigations are proceeding with a view to uncover all aspects of the plot and to bring to book any other person or persons, no matter how highly placed, involved in this treasonable conspiracy to divert our great and beloved country from its chosen path of orderly progress into renewed bloodshed and anarchy. Long live His Excellency the President! Long live the Republic of Kangan.

Signed Colonel Johnson Ossai, Director of the State Research Council.

That is the end of this Special Announcement. There will be a repeat of the announcement at seven o'clock.

Chris threw a few things into his travelling bag while he waited nervously for Beatrice to arrive. As soon as she drove in he went out with the bag, locked the front door and left his house, as it turned out, for good.

The decision to leave had little at first to do with fear for his own safety although that factor was to loom larger with every passing day. But right now in his mind the overwhelming issue which had been crystallizing even as the announcement was issuing from the box was how to counter the hideous lie. Not tomorrow, it could be too late, but now!

As soon as he got to his first hideout he picked up the telephone and summoned two foreign correspondents to meet with him at eight o'clock that night. Then he went to the back room where a camp-bed and writing-table had been set up for him and began to draft his statement. His mind was strangely efficient and lucid; no detail seemed to escape him. A few minutes after he began working he re-emerged in the living-room where his host and Beatrice were making phone calls and told them to make sure that people understood that Ikem was not just wounded but dead. He was convinced that the drafters of the government statement had deliberately chosen a phrase which was popularly misunderstood in order to diffuse the shock of the news by revealing its full extent only in stages. Beatrice thought the theory a little ingenious but didn't argue the point.

When she got home that night a little after eleven she found Elewa whom she had failed to locate all day, distraught, waiting in her flat. And, just as Chris had said, she had totally misunderstood the announcement! For a brief while she toyed with the idea of leaving her in her ignorance till morning. But she immediately realized that if she did it would not be necessarily out of consideration for Elewa but more likely from the cowardly fear of having to handle such a terrible task all by herself. And that decided her. The future she saw unfolding so relentlessly before them would demand brutal courage, not squeamishness, from the likes of Elewa and herself, from now on.

And strange are the ways of deep emotion, Elewa proved the tougher of the two! One piercing cry that continued to reverberate in Beatrice's brain like a rifle-shot in salute to a fallen comrade and Elewa sat down, still and silent. It was Beatrice herself who then gave way to emollient tears she had reserved all evening making frenetic phone calls in Chris's secret command post.

By late afternoon of the next day it was obvious that the State Research Council had begun to look for Chris. One of the foresighted steps he had taken was asking Beatrice to return to her flat and to go to work as usual in the morning and not try to make physical contact until further notice. Just before close of work her secretary asked her to take a call from the Director of SRC. She picked up the phone with deliberate slowness which gave her time to compose her voice and attitude. When she spoke she was cold and indifferent but not hostile.

'Colonel Johnson Ossai speaking.'

'I see. Anything I can do for you, Colonel?'

'Well, yes… You see I have this very important message for Commissioner Oriko from His Excellency… I have tried him at the Ministry of Information several times but he is not on seat. I have tried his house but no answer. I wonder… erm… if you know his… erm… whereabouts. It is…'

'No I don't.'

'I see. I am sorry…'

'Not at all, Colonel. Goodbye.'

Meanwhile Chris had, in addition to the foreign correspondents, made very useful contact with other opinion-makers. He was particularly encouraged by his meeting with the President of the University of Bassa Students Union. For security reasons they had met not in his hideout but in a rendezvous in another area of the Government Reservation. But as it turned out this precaution proved quite unnecessary. The Students Union had been so incensed by the crude regicide story of the National Gazette that copies of the newspaper were now regularly seized by students from newsvendors on campus and publicly burnt in the middle of Freedom Square. The Union had also written a long, angry letter to the Editor demanding an apology for the insult to students and their guest lecturer.

Chris handed him a copy of the statement he had prepared and watched him as he read it. The paper soon began to tremble in his hands. When he returned it he drew the back of one hand across his eyes. He tried to speak but the words were at first blocked by a violent movement of his Adam's apple.

'I need a copy of this,' he managed finally. 'Can I copy it and return?'

'That's your copy,' said Chris, giving it back to him, 'if you need it.'

'Thank you, sir. We will run off two thousand copies tonight so that every student will have it first thing tomorrow morning. This government has now committed suicide.'

'Well, young man,' said Chris getting up and offering his hand as a signal for parting. 'I hope you are right. I certainly hope so. But we must not count too much on wickedness obliging us so readily… I am glad we've had this chance to talk.'

'Thank you sir. You can count on us.'

'This country counts on you. Take care now.'

Chris's last visitors for the night were the two taxi-drivers. It had taken Elewa the whole morning and half the afternoon to locate one of them and arrange for them to meet with Chris at the same rendezvous.

By the third morning the BBC which had already broadcast news of Ikem's death carried an interview between their Bassa correspondent and Chris who was described as a key member of the Kangan government and friend of the highly admired and talented poet, Ikem Osodi, whose reported death while in police custody had plunged the Military Government of this troubled West African State into deep crisis. In a voice full of emotion but steady and without shrillness Chris had described the official account of Ikem's death as 'patently false.' How could he be sure of that? Because Ikem was taken from his flat in handcuffs and so could not have wrenched a gun from his captors. So you are saying in effect that he was murdered? I am saying that there is no shred of doubt that Ikem Osodi was brutally murdered in cold blood by the security officers of this government.

The correspondent was deported the next day. But by that time the Students Union had taken up the story and were demanding a judicial inquiry and the immediate dismissal of Colonel Ossai and his prosecution for murder.

Two jeeploads of mobile police sent to apprehend the President and Secretary of the Union bungled the arrest; the young men gave them the slip. As if that was not dangerous enough other students began to taunt them as brainless morons. Now teasing the Kangan Mobile Police is worse than challenging a hungry Alsatian. They went berserk. But somehow, for reasons no one had been able to explain, they did not whip out their guns. Perhaps the bloody outcome of a similar invasion two years ago did after all leave its mark… Perhaps in the thousand ages of divine-like patience even this rock of mindlessness will be dented by the regular dripping of roof water! With koboko and truncheons they fell upon their fleeing victims chasing them into classrooms, the library, the chapel and into dormitories. In the Women's Hostel, which some of the attackers had originally gained in the blind accident of hot pursuit they all finally congregated and settled into a fearful orgy of revenge, compounding an ancient sex-feud with today's war of the classes.

As ambulances screamed in later to collect the wounded and move them to hospital an announcement was made on the radio closing the university indefinitely and ordering all students out of the campus by six o'clock that very evening.

The british high commissioner in Bassa went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protest about the deportation of two British nationals but instead was given a preview of a letter the security services were said to have intercepted and advised to return to his chancery and await a summons to the Ministry.

The letter, a blue aerogramme, was addressed to Mr. John Kent and signed Dick. A section of it highlighted by a red line running down the margin read:

Delighted particularly to have met that poet fellow who I believe edits the government daily. Splendid chap. Quiet astonishing in view of the image one had of African dictatorships to have had a chance of sitting around and hearing treason spoken so casually and the local dictator dismissed as a comic fool! And by such a prominent member of his own government. The editors of The Times and the Guardian could use a holiday in Bassa! I'm doing a short piece for the Telegraph.

Chris could no longer move freely from one hideout to another because of a large number of army and police roadblocks springing up all over the city. Beatrice driving past his deserted official residence on recce saw a jeep stationed in the front yard and some riot policemen standing around. She drove on to the city centre, left her car in the parking lot opposite the Roman Catholic Cathedral, walked back across the street and made a call from a public telephone.

She went to bed early that night but sleep came to her only in short, fitful spells. The third or fourth time she had woken up she thought she heard sounds coming from the direction of the spare bedroom. She got up and tiptoed there and could see at once from the doorway in the faint illumination filtering in from the security lights outside that she was sitting on the bed.

'Elewa!' she said switching on the ceiling light at the same time. 'You no fit carry on like this-o.'

Beatrice had decided to look after her for a few days and had pushed her writing-desk against the wall and set up a bed for her. She had talked to her at length this evening, given her five milligrams of Valium and left her sleeping before retiring herself. And now here she was sitting on the bed her face a mirror of devastation. Her distracted look actually scared Beatrice. It was not mere grief. It was more. Something of the frightened child was showing strongly now — bewilderment, alarm, panic.

'You no fit carry on like this at all. If you no want save yourself then make you save the pickin inside your belle. You hear me? I done tell you this no be time for cry. The one wey done go done go. The only thing we fit do now is to be strong so that when the fight come we fit fight am proper. Wipe your eye. No worry. God dey.'

Elewa exploded into loud crying now. Beatrice went and sat beside her and brought her head against her breast with one hand and began to tap her shoulder rhythmically with the other. When she had quietened her down she slowly disengaged her embrace and laid her gently on the pillow. She went to the wall and switched off the lights and returned to sit on the bed.

'Make you lie down,' said Elewa in a voice washed clear by tears. Beatrice complied and lay down on her back beside her in silence. After a while she slowly turned on her side and raised Elewa's head and ensconced it tenderly in the crook of her arm and began to tap a steady rhythm again on her shoulder. The door of memory was unlocked and she saw herself as a child tapping the only doll she ever had, a wooden thing with undeveloped hands, a rigid, erect trunk and the stylized face of the masked maiden spirit. Elewa's chest, richly proportioned, heaved spasmodically like a child's in the aftermath of crying. In the end Beatrice could tell from her deep breathing that she had at last floated into sleep broken now and again by sudden violent starts of nightmare which mercifully did not wake her up. She needed the sleep, poor child. Soon she herself was dozing off.

The car lights first, sensed in the vague indeterminacy of unformed dreams, and then the harsh crunch of tyres on the pebbled driveway. She sprang to her feet. Out of the glass louvres she could see three jeeps unmistakable in the night from the sinister, narrow, closely-set eyes of headlamps. Her heart thumping she rushed to her bedroom, snatched a tough pair of jeans from her wardrobe, leapt into them, zipped up and belted. Then she searched and pulled out another pair. Elewa was standing beside her.

'Put this on quick!'

Then she pulled out two dressing gowns…

A number of heavy knocks on her door…

'Miss Okoh. This is State Security. Open up at once!'

She put on her dressing gown, helped Elewa into hers and ordered her back into the spare bedroom with hand-and-head gestures.

'Miss Okoh. This is the last warning. Open the door now. State Security.'

'I am coming.'

'Well, hurry up!'

She took the bunch of keys from the sideboard and began to unchain the iron grills. Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn't get the key into the keyhole. Elewa snatched the bunch from her, turned the padlock and unchained the heavy grill. Then Beatrice shocked into calmness by this action snatched back the keys and, whispering 'Go inside!' to Elewa who ignored the command, turned the lock in the steel and glass crittall door. It was wrenched out of her grip and swung outwards. Then a huge soldier rushed in pushing the two women aside so powerfully to his right and left in a dry breast-stroke movement that sent Elewa, slight as a reed, down on the floor on her bottom.

'Easy, Sergeant!' This from an officer who followed less dramatically. Three others came in after the officer while the rest stayed at the door.

'Miss Okoh?'

'Yes.'

'I am sorry to disturb you at this hour. But I have instructions to search your flat. May I proceed?'

'Anything in particular you are looking for?'

'What kind nonsense question be dat.'

'OK, Sergeant. I will do the talking. So keep quiet! Well, yes, Miss Okoh, there are certain things we are looking for but it is not our practice to discuss them first. Incidentally I advise that anybody in the flat should come out right away. All the exits are guarded and anyone trying to escape will be shot. Is that clear? Now we will proceed.' He deployed his men to different locations in the flat with the silent gestures of a field commander. Thereafter he went from one sector to another supervising the operations. Beatrice followed him at a discreet distance.

The red-eyed sergeant who was given charge of Beatrice's bedroom was executing it with a vengeance. He had pulled out the bedsheets off the bed and thrown them on the floor where he walked all over them as he frenziedly darted from one object to another. It was fortunate that Beatrice never learnt to lock suitcases and things. So the sergeant's fury had nothing to wrench open. He merely spilt clothes everywhere. The officer came in and asked him again to go easy and picked up the bedsheets himself and threw them back on the bed. As the captain turned his back Beatrice caught in the eye of the sergeant a flash from the utmost depths of contempt and hatred.

'Miss Okoh, excuse my asking. Who is this young lady?'

'She is Elewa… my girlfriend.'

'Your girl friend? Interesting. What does she do?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean does she have a job?'

'Yes. She is a sales-girl in a Lebanese shop.'

'Does she live with you normally?'

'No, she is just visiting.'

'I see.'

Elewa's eyes darted from one to the other as they discussed her like the seller and prospective buyer of some dumb animal brought to the market. Her grief had temporarily been displaced by these strange events now going on around her. In her oversize jeans and dressing gown she looked almost comical. She was not walking around with Beatrice and the officer but had taken her position on a dining-chair in the living-room annexe.

Beatrice, worried about her fall, asked as many times as she came through the living-room how she felt. No trouble, she would answer. Perhaps it was the Valium making her unusually calm.

In Elewa's room the soldier detailed there was looking through papers and books on the table when Beatrice trailing the officer came in again.

'Are you looking for books too?'

'Everything,' replied the officer on behalf of the soldier. 'My people have a saying which my father used often. A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere even in the roof.'

He searched everywhere for his missing horse for about an hour, apologized for disturbing Beatrice's sleep, saluted and left. What kind of enigma was this? Could there really be even one decent young man in the Security Services or indeed the entire Kangan Army and Police. Or was this the ultimate evil — the smiling face of Mephistopheles in the beguiling habit of a monk? Safer by far to believe the worst.