Burning Angels

65

Over the years, Nairobi had earned the nickname ‘Nairobbery’, and with good reason. It was a hectic and lawless kind of a place; a place where anything could happen.

Jaeger, Narov and Dale edged into the downtown chaos, honking bumper-to-bumper through streets crammed with cars and battered matatus – garishly painted minibus-taxis – plus people heaving cumbersome handcarts. Somehow, in spite of the desperate crush, the riotous mass of humans and machines continued to function.

Just.

Jaeger had spent a good deal of time in this city, for it was a transit point for British military training grounds in desert, mountain and jungle warfare. Yet he’d never once set foot in the teeming Nairobi slums, and for good reason. Any foreigners – mzungus – dumb enough to stray into the forbidden city tended to disappear. Down there in the ghetto, a person with a white skin wouldn’t stand much of a chance.

The tarmac gave way to a rutted track, the vehicle kicking up a trail of dust. The surroundings had changed utterly now. The concrete and glass office blocks of downtown were no more. Instead, they were driving through a mass of rickety wooden hovels and stalls.

Figures squatted at the dusty roadside selling their wares: a heap of tomatoes, blood red in the fierce sunlight; piles of puce onions; mountains of dried fish, scales shimmering golden brown; an avalanche of worn, dusty shoes – battered and down-at-heel, but all still for sale.

A view opened before Jaeger: a vast shallow valley filled with the choking haze of cooking fires and smouldering heaps of refuse. Wood and plastic shacks rose one on top of the other, scattered in hopeless confusion, narrow alleyways slithering amidst the chaos. Here and there he spotted a bright patchwork of colour – washing hung to dry amidst the rank, toxic smoke. He was instantly fascinated, and somehow also unsettled.

How did people live here?

How did they survive amongst such lawless deprivation?

Their vehicle overtook a man running along pulling a handcart, gripping wooden shafts worn smooth by the passage of the years. He was barefoot, and dressed in ragged shorts and T-shirt. Jaeger glanced at his face, which was glistening with sweat. As their eyes met, he sensed the gulf between them.

The carter was one of the teeming hordes of the slum-dwellers, who fed the insatiable hunger of this city. This wasn’t Jaeger’s world, and he knew it. It was utterly alien territory, and yet somehow it drew him to it like a moth towards a candle flame.

Jaeger’s all-time favourite terrain was the jungle. He thrilled to its ancient, wild, primordial otherness. And this place was the ultimate urban jungle. If you could survive here, with its gangs, drugs, shacks and changa’a – illegal drinking – dens, you could survive anywhere.

As he gazed out over the sprawling wasteland, sensing the raw ebb and pulse of the place, Jaeger heard the ghetto’s signal challenge. In any new and hostile environment, you had to learn from those who knew how to fight and survive there, and he would need to do the same. This was a place of unspoken rules; unwritten hierarchies. The ghetto had its own laws, to protect its own, which was why outsiders steered clear.

Back at their hotel, Dale had briefed them extensively. The more affluent Kenyans were never to be seen in the ghetto. It was a place of shame, to be kept strictly hidden; a place of hopelessness, brutality and despair. Hence how Simon Chucks Bello and his fellow orphans could disappear without trace – sold for a few thousand dollars.

The vehicle drew to a halt at a roadside bar.

‘This is it,’ Dale announced. ‘We’re here.’

The ghetto-dwellers stared. They stared at the vehicle, for there were few smart new Land Rover Discoveries in this part of town; in fact, few vehicles at all. They stared at Dale – this moneyed mzungu who dared to stray into their territory – and the others who dismounted from the Discovery.

Jaeger felt so alien here; so set apart; more different perhaps than he had ever felt before. And strangely – worryingly – vulnerable. This was one jungle in which he had never been trained to operate, and one terrain in which no camouflage was ever going to be possible.

As he, Narov and Dale moved towards the roadside bar – stepping over a putrid open drain-cum-sewer made of cracked and flaking concrete – he felt as if he had a target pinned to his back.

He passed a woman squatting on a wooden stool at a rickety roadside stall. She had a charcoal-fired stove at her feet, and was deep-frying small fish in a crescent of seething oil. She gazed out at the riot of life, waiting for a customer.

A distinctive figure waited on the sidewalk: squat, broad-chested and with massive shoulders. Jaeger could tell that he was immensely powerful and battle-hardened; a born street fighter. His face was flat and scarred, yet his expression was strangely open; an island of calm amidst the chaos.

He wore a T-shirt with the slogan: I FOUGHT THE LAW.

Jaeger recognised the line from his teenage years. Back then, he’d been a big fan of the Clash. Momentarily, the lyrics flashed through his head: Breaking rocks in the hot sun, I fought the law and the law won…

He had few doubts who this was.

It was Julius Mburu, their passport into the slum.