The Laughing Monsters

TWO

We got our Ugandan visas at the Entebbe airport without any trouble. Hungover from the long, rocking flight, with the two stops in between, at both of which they kept us suffocating in our seats for upward of two hours while the cabin’s temperature rose to match that of the surrounding tropical darkness, I, for one, wasn’t sure I was still alive, felt I might have entered some intermediary realm on the way to oblivion, and the smoothness of our passage among the Entebbe officials and through the terminal and out to the hired cars only mixed me up all the more. I thought we should go back inside and double-check these visa stamps. Michael said, “My people don’t like senseless trouble. It’s not West Africa. Relax.” He got us into a car, where Davidia fell asleep instantly, her head on his shoulder, and we sailed toward our beds. Cool air reached our faces through the driver’s open window — cool. From Lake Victoria, I gathered.

Thanks to Michael’s budgetary strictures we stayed at the Executive Suites, a place with resale-shop paintings hung crookedly, but in all sincerity, on some of its walls, a “bed-and-breakfast,” as Michael called it, a good two kilometers from the lake and from the real hotels. On a tour of its single story, looking for a bed that wasn’t broken, I counted fourteen rooms. We arrived a bit too late for the breakfast.

I spent much of the day wandering muddy lanes in search of a phone and soon got one, another Nokia. I took a late lunch at a table in front of a quick-shop calling itself Belief Enterprises and loaded the device with minutes and sent Michael a text: “Note new phone. Have lunch without me. I’m at a table eating chicken, while chickens wander around at my feet.”

Later Michael woke me from a deep nap by slapping at my door crying, “Nair, dinner is mandatory.”

For three seconds I was awake, felt ready for adventure, very nearly got my feet on the floor — woke again still later with no idea where I was.

I checked my new phone. Another hour gone. Hymns filled the air outside my window, some nearby congregation worshipping in song, and then the unintelligible reverberations of a sermon through loudspeakers. By the time the preaching was finished I’d taken a cold shower and located myself in Entebbe, and it was Sunday.

I found Michael and Davidia at a round white table in the patio restaurant embracing and cooing among the remains of their dinner, spaghetti, probably from a can. I wasn’t hungry. The happy couple drank Nile beer from the bottle and I had an orange soda and Michael told us we’d traveled southeast from Freetown about five thousand kilometers and had landed five kilometers north of the equator and twenty kilometers south of Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and three hundred kilometers east of the Mountains of the Moon and the headwaters of the Nile River; that the elevation was some twelve hundred meters, that we couldn’t expect temperatures to get above 3 °Celsius, and that we’d better set our watches ahead to 8:42 p.m., because we’d lost an hour heading east; and then in a clear, sweet tenor voice he sang most of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to his fiancée, accompanying Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, whose voices issued from the bartender’s boom box.

I went over and got the barman to switch it off and taught him to make a vodka martini and drank one or two of them pretty rapidly.

When I rejoined my comrades with another drink in my hand Michael said, “I was just explaining to Davidia — we’ll head north tomorrow for Newada Mountain. Or in that direction. North. Stanley explored there, looking for the source of the Nile.”

“More will be revealed,” I said. I was aware that lately I was drinking more than ever in my life. I couldn’t relax or feel like myself in this region without banging myself on the head with something.

“My village is there,” he told us, “in sight of Newada Mountain.” Next he said, “I’m being communicated with by a spirit. Something or someone is contacting me. No, I’m serious. The spirits of my ancestors, the spirits of my village.”

“What village? I thought you were some sort of — what the hell are you, originally, Michael? Some sort of displaced Congolese.”

“I am exactly that. A displaced Congolese. And now,” he said, “I’m going to replace myself.” He took hold of Davidia’s arm as if to hand her to me in evidence. “She’s along because I’m going to marry her. I want her to meet my parents.”

“I thought your parents were dead.”

“Not my real parents. My other parents. The whole village is one family. Everyone is my mother and father and brother and sister. If the feeling is right, we’ll be married right then and there.”

Davidia said, “Wait — if the feeling is right?”

“If you’re welcome. And I’m sure you’ll be welcomed. The bride is always welcome, unless she comes from a clan devoted to stealing.”

“And I’ll be your best man,” I said.

“The equivalent.”

“Nobody’s going to cook me and eat me, I hope.”

“People don’t quite understand,” Michael said, and he may have been serious, “to be eaten pays a compliment to your power.”

A couple of whores came in and sat at another table.

The boom box was back in operation. I talked Michael and Davidia into trying the barman’s martinis. They had a couple each, and danced with one another. Between numbers we listened to the song of a frog who sounded like a duck, an insistent duck.

“I knew it from the start,” I said. “Congo. I knew it.”

“Not Congo, no, not necessarily.”

Davidia said, “Isn’t it time you told us where we’re going? Where are your people located?”

“During the reprisals they were dispersed. We were uprooted and scattered. But they’ve reconvened. Relocated.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Where? Quite near to Arua, in the northwest corner of this country.”

“Uganda.”

“This country where we’re having our supper. Uganda.”

“Not Congo,” I said.

“Not Congo.”

“And how do we get there?”

“We’re taking the bus from Kampala.”

“Come on! We’ll take a plane,” I said.

“It has to be the bus. You can easily see why.”

“Why?” Davidia said.

He meant Horst, and Mohammed Kallon. If for some reason Interpol was on us, they could check the flight manifests out of Entebbe. I saw the logic. I disliked the conclusion.

“You’ll get to view the countryside,” he said to Davidia.

“Good! The bus!” she said.

“Arua is the birthplace,” Michael informed us, “of Idi Amin Dada. In the month of March they celebrate his birthday.”

“What? You mean the whole town?”

“Just a handful of people. But nobody stops them.”

The bus … Out of pity for us all, I didn’t laugh. “So we simply climb aboard,” I said, “and go away.”

“Yes. Day after tomorrow. Can you just come with me?”

“Sure. I’m drunk enough.”

“Good. Stay drunk.”

“What about you,” I asked Davidia—“are you drunk enough?”

“I’m in love enough.”

She had a somber glow about her, a smoldering vitality that warmed the air. She made me hungry. I wanted to smell her breath.

And the nightclub girls, one of them wearing a curly blonde wig, like a chocolate-covered Marilyn Monroe … The bartender didn’t talk to them and they ordered nothing, they only watched me, and waited.

Michael’s tongue was tangled in martinis—“I don’t want to be a thumb,” he said, “in the turd in the punchbowl of life.”

“What?”

Michael was drunk. That meant he was in pain. He gripped a pen, he was writing something on a napkin. He tapped me on the shoulder and handed it to me. In the pleasant darkness, I couldn’t make out the letters.

I told him, “I wouldn’t have expected you to marry black.”

Michael shook his head as if to clear it. Davidia stared at me. “What did you say?”

Right. What had I said? “The drinks are clobbering me. It’s the altitude.”

“You should have put food in your stomach,” Michael said.

Davidia said, “Explain your remark.”

“You mean defend it.”

“Fine. Defend it.”

“I’ll explain it,” I said.

“We’re waiting.”

“He’s always had a weakness for the Middle Eastern type, that’s all. The Persian princess sort of female. I apologize for talking out of turn. I do apologize.”

She laughed. She was angry. “Don’t twist yourself in knots.”

It was only for Michael’s sake I was trying to smooth things, but Michael wasn’t even listening. “Back to another subject,” he said. “I never answered your question about the Tenex corporation.”

“Tenex?”

“Do you remember? At the Freetown airfield. We were talking about uranium. Tenex handles U-235 material from dismantled Soviet warheads. Dilutes it to ten percent pure and barters it to the United States.”

“Jesus, Michael — again, the U-235?”

I’ve always thought it a laugh, Michael’s obviousness when he means to be sneaky. No stage villain ever looked more the conspirator, leaning forward into his face’s shadow, his head cocked toward the game, the trick, his right eyebrow going up, his lip curling in a sneer.

A quick, horrid intuition assaulted me.

Davidia placed her hand on my forearm and asked if I was okay. I said, “I’m fine, except I need to be smarter.”

“Smarter isn’t always better though, is it?”

“Good night.”

I went over and made an arrangement with the whore in the blonde wig. She stood up, and hand in hand we journeyed to my bed.

She was drunk, also in some way drugged, and she passed out when we were done — perhaps before we were done, and I simply didn’t notice.

* * *

Later I woke as the woman was leaving, and I locked the door behind her and lay in bed watching the Chinese cable station, a piece about fourteen baby pandas in the Shanghai zoo. A sudden rainstorm hit the roof like an avalanche and killed the city’s power and sent all of existence back where it came from. I thought of the woman wandering around out there in the roaring dark.

On my nightstand I found the napkin Michael had written on. By the light of my cell phone I made out the words, but not their meaning:

He’s my panda

from Uganda

he’s my teddy bear

they say things about him

but I don’t care

Idi Amin

I’m your fan!

— I read it several times. The rhyme scheme interested me.

* * *

Not long after six in the morning I heard, through the papery walls, the buzz of Michael’s clippers and the shower running next door, and soon I heard someone going out. A few minutes later came a light tapping. I was heating water for instant coffee — the Suites provided a drip brewer but nothing to brew in it, only a jar of Nescafé. The tapping came again, and I realized it must be Davidia.

I got close to the wall and said, “I’m awake.”

Her voice came quite clearly. “Come and see me.”

“Should we meet in the restaurant?”

“Let’s talk in here,” she said. “Come over. Or around.”

“I could easily come right through.” Talking through the wall like this, I felt how close our faces were.

The lights in the hallway flickered on and off. The door stood open. In the random illumination she waited in a yellow silk robe, barefoot. She stepped aside and I entered bearing my cup and my jar of Nescafé.

“Where’s Michael?”

“Taking his morning run.”

The air tasted damp from the shower. Her underwear was lying around. I smelled her perfume. But she said, “It stinks in here. Sorry. Sometimes he sits down and smokes half a dozen cigarettes one after another. Doesn’t say a word. Lost in his head.”

She picked up a cigarette from the nightstand and put the end in her mouth. Looked around. Perhaps for a lighter.

“Do you smoke?”

She threw it in the pile of butts in the ashtray and said, “I’m so stupid.”

“Let’s have some coffee. Do you have bottled water?” She gave me a liter jug and I set about heating water in the brewer.

She sat on the bed. “We had a fight.”

“I’m surprised to hear that. I mean to say — you were pretty quiet about it. I had no idea.”

“He wanted to be quiet. So he could hear you through the wall.”

“Hear me?”

“You and the girl,” she said.

“We were quiet too,” I said.

“We’re a stealthy bunch of idiots,” she said. “And I mean idiots.” She got up but didn’t know where to go. “I’ve been wanting to see you alone.”

“Why?”

She paused. “I don’t have a ready answer.”

“Did you have something you wanted to say?” Seeing I wasn’t helping, I added, “I’m only trying to help you figure it out.”

“I wanted to see what we were like together.”

“Oh.” I devoted myself to the cups and spoons and Nescafé. “What were you fighting about?”

“I thought Kampala was the destination. Now we’re going on to Arua.”

“But last night at dinner you were ready to swing with it.”

“‘Swing with it’? Who are you, Jack Kerouac? You reach way back into the last century for your Americanisms.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Sure, last night I was a real swinger. Alcohol affects me too. I didn’t realize he wasn’t telling us anything.”

“Michael doesn’t draw up plans. He weaves tales. Just let him be mysterious. If there was any way of hurrying him along, believe me, I would have found it by now.”

“This is why I had to talk to you — to compare notes. Can I trust you? No — I can’t, can I? — I mean, trust you to be straight with me. What are we doing? I mean, specifically, you two — what are you up to? There’s something going on, and he won’t tell me what.”

“There’s nothing going on in the sense of — going on. We’re traveling together.”

“Why do you tag along?”

“I’m one half of the entourage.”

“He assumes you’re devoted to him. I’m not so sure.”

“He assumes I’m devoted to getting rich. You know — exploiting the riches of this continent.”

“And is that really you? A cheap adventurer?”

“Why do you call it cheap? Adventure is glorious. I don’t understand why people put it down.”

“I can’t believe you just went off with that poor woman, in her silly-looking wig. Did you think to use protection?”

“This is a little crazy. Don’t you think it’s none of your business?”

“No. But don’t you think I have reason to be crazy?”

“Drink this coffee,” I said.

“Something’s wrong with him, Nair. In the middle of the night he gets these sort of, I don’t know what, nightmares, sleepwalking, talking in his sleep — really, I don’t know what.”

“Actual sleepwalking? Walking around in his sleep?”

“No, but — talking, thrashing — talking to me, but talking crazy, looking right at me, but he looks blind when I shine a light on him.”

“Night terrors. Right? Violent memories.”

“It’s driving me nuts. It’s scary.”

“Tell me something: When did you arrive in Africa?”

“Tomorrow will make it two weeks.”

“Just short of two weeks. Right on schedule for a meltdown. Nothing serious. A tiny low-grade implosion, let’s say, of your American personality.”

“I’ve traveled before. Don’t condescend to me. I’m crazy about a man who’s driving me crazy because I’m crazy about him. He won’t tell me anything. He took my cell phone.”

“Really? Jesus.”

“He won’t let me call home.”

“Your people must be frantic.”

“There’s only my dad, and we don’t correspond much anyway. He’s bitter at me since I started doing work at the Institute. Still, I mean, if I could call him — I would. If Michael would let me. Why won’t he let me? Is he always like this? Because it seems like something new.”

“It’s nothing new.”

“You’ve seen it before. Paranoid suspicions. Taking away people’s cell phones.”

“I’ve been analyzing Michael Adriko for a dozen years. First of all — you realize he’s a war orphan. He was born into chaos, and he’s pathologically insecure. He keeps a stranglehold on the flow of information because then it feels like his life can’t get away from him. But whatever you absolutely need to know, he tells you. Even though sometimes I’d like to torture him with electricity.”

“Don’t joke. He’s been tortured before.” It was true.

Davidia stood there holding her cup with two hands looking alone, and pitiable, and stupidly I said, “Are you really going to marry him?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Do you really love him?”

She said, “Do you know who my father is?”

An unexpected query. “I guess not.”

“Michael didn’t tell you? My dad’s his CO — the garrison commander at Fort Carson. Colonel Marcus St. Claire.”

“Oh my lord,” I said, “oh my lord.” I jumped up to say something else and only said, “Oh my lord.”

“Until I met Michael, I’d only known two loves: love for my father, and love for my country. Now I love Michael too.”

“But you said your dad and you were on the outs.”

“It’s complicated. It’s family. I’d say we’re estranged. All the same, he loves Michael as much as I do. Everybody loves Michael. Don’t you love him, Nair?”

“I can’t resist him. Let’s put it that way.” And I added, “Oh my lord.”

* * *

I went to the lobby, more on the order of a vestibule, and ordered some coffee. Soon Michael came through the doors in a powder-blue sweat suit and put his hands on his knees and bowed like that, breathing heavily, showing the top of his big muscular shaved head. Then he stood and whipped off his sweatband and wrung it out over the floor.

I waved to him. “Come here, will you?”

He came over.

“Sit down.”

He sat down beside me on the divan, his leg against mine.

“Michael. You’re pissing me off.”

“Never!”

“Tell me once and for all, in full detail. What’s this all about?”

“Do you like Davidia?”

“I don’t want her here.”

“What-what!”

“Not if you’re up to what I think you’re up to. And if it’s what I think, then you’re fucking up, man. You’re fucking up.”

He stared down at the palms of his hands for a bit and then showed me his face: a soul without friends. “Let’s walk around. I’m still cooling off.” But first he went to the counter and called for the clerk and begged a cigarette and stuck it behind his ear.

I followed him out the doors and into the wash of red mud that passed for a street. The brief stretch of morning had already baked it hard. At this elevation the air was cool enough, but the equatorial sunshine burned on my back. It was crazy to walk.

Michael strolled beside me gripping my arm with one monster hand and with the other massaging my neck, my collarbones. His face shone with joy and sweat. “It’s good to speak honestly to you, Nair! Now it’s time, now I can do that. Now I’m happy. I was desolate, but now I’m happy. Ask me anything.”

“Jesus, Michael, where do we start? How about your military status?”

“I belong to nobody’s military. I was an attaché merely.”

“There’s a US Special Forces unit hunting around eastern Congo. Looking for the Lord’s Resistance. Were you attached to them?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you run off?”

“That’s an ugly rumor.”

“Did you run off?”

“I didn’t run off. I moved away in support of my plan. My beautiful plan — and yes, yes, yes, we’re going to get rich, how many times do I have to tell you? Be patient. Soon you’re going to see something. With one stone, I’m killing a whole flock of birds.”

“Cutting through the muck — your status is AWOL.”

“Detached. Detached is more precise.”

“Next question. Are we messing around with fissionable materials?”

“Hang on, my brother.”

Over the last few days his speech had lost its American flavor, and his stride, I noticed, had an African man’s swivel now, and his shoulders rolled as he walked, like an African’s. The lane climbed steeply here. He stopped to get a light from a vendor and then he was many paces ahead, on a rise, jogging toward the crest while puffing on his cigarette. I caught up with him and he said, “My brother, do you think our wedding ceremony involves U-235?”—with a false and sickly grin. What an amateur. When it came to fountains of falsehood — a bold artist. But a simple denial, one word, a flat lie? No talent for that.

“Hold on,” I said, “let me catch my breath.”

A shirtless beggar in khaki shorts approached, smiling and dragging one leg and crying, “Sahibs!” The leg was enormous from elephantiasis, as if another whole man clung to him.

Michael yoked the man’s throat with one hand, in the web of his thumb and finger, and lifted him so his horny yellow toes dangled a few inches off the ground and said, “Nothing today. Ha ha!” and set him back down. We walked on. To me he said, “I jog at six every morning. Do you want to get in shape with me?”

“No. I want you to tell me about U-235.”

“Not yet. What else? Ask me anything, Nair.”

A bit more, not a lot, had been revealed. No sense driving further against this foam-rubber wall. “How about this one: You’re marrying the camp commander’s daughter?”

“The garrison commander. Yes.”

“This is too wonderful. Where’s the unit from the Tenth?”

“Close by Darba, Congo.”

“If we go up there — won’t he want her back?”

“Whether we go or not, he’ll want her back.”

“He won’t get a bunch of vigilante Green Berets on our tails, will he?”

Michael was silent in a way I didn’t like.

“Will he? I’m not up for risking any bloodshed. ‘Any’ means not one drop.”

“No, no bloodshed. They won’t suspect we’re anywhere near them.”

“Let’s just not go.”

“Not go?” He turned in a complete circle, seeking a witness to my folly. “He says ‘Not go’! Do I have to make it clear? Then I’ll make it clear. Let me make it clear about my clan. It’s as if I left a man for dead and ran away to save myself. Then the next day he walks into my camp covered with blood, ready to go on living. Can you imagine the shame you would feel looking in his eyes? That’s the shame that makes me go back to my village. Can I make you understand? I’m going to marry Davidia. She’ll be my life’s mate. We’ve got to launch our lives together properly, with the blessing of my people. How can I make you understand? This is essential, it’s not a gesture, it’s not a nice idea — it’s the essence of the thing. Without it, I’m nothing, and she’s nothing, and we’re nothing.”

As he expressed these ideas he followed them with his eyes, watching them gallop away to the place where they made sense.

“And we’re going somewhere called Newada Mountain?”

“Near there. I haven’t yet learned the exact location.”

“And yet you’re sure your people have reconvened.”

“I just know they had to come back together. It’s the natural thing to do.”

“It’s essential.”

“Yes. Essential. You say it like an empty word, but the word is full. It’s the truth. It’s about the essence of things. Nair, I can guess where you got your information about me. From Horst, or Mohammed Kallon. Fuck them. Officially I’ve deserted, but in truth I’m returning to the loyalty I ran away from. What is desertion? Desertion is a coin. You turn it over, and it’s loyalty.”

I agreed. “My, my. You’ve been thinking.”

“A soldier must never think. In fact, when you’re forbidden to think, it comes as a relief. Why did my mind start thinking?” His face was swollen with misery. “Nair, you’re the most important friend I’ve ever had.”

* * *

At five the next morning Michael had us traveling in a hired car through the darkness toward Kampala. As we approached the capital the traffic got thicker, and the air itself, with the smoke of breakfast fires and diesel fumes, and we raced under the attempted streetlights, many of them burning, turning the smoke yellow. Somewhere around here we’d get on a bus that would take us to the country’s northeast corner. We hunted up and down unnamed streets until the driver gave up and put us out, and then the three of us stumbled over gutters and potholes among the hordes of street denizens waking up to the long slow overclouded African dawn, begging for assistance — we begging; not them. Michael got us to the booking office of the Gaagaa line, as it was called, a five-by-five-meter space completely covered with people asleep, who didn’t mind being stepped on by others making for the clerk’s cage. The clerk showed us a seating chart, and I wrote my name where I wanted to sit, up front near the driver, and Michael put himself and Davidia across the aisle.

As we boarded the craft I looked up and realized it must have been dawn for half an hour, but the sky was so cloudy no real sunshine made it through. It was good having a cushion to sit on, even a gashed and moldy one, but I couldn’t understand Michael’s cheery attitude, his eagerness amid this fleet of debauched luxury liners exported from Malaysia or Singapore in freighter-size lots of wreckage, throttled and punched into taking a few more gasps, filing onto the roads with their busted television sets and torn-off seat belts, full of Michaels. We stowed our gear in racks overhead and Michael made sure Davidia and I each had a bottle of water and a box of Good Life butter biscuits. From some sort of church in the building behind us, on the second floor, above the public toilets, came a chorus of singing. Davidia arranged her long African skirt and pillowed her head on a folded scarf against the window and fell asleep. The passengers settled in all around, pulling their cell phones to their heads and talking. They smelled of liquor and urine and armpit. Michael now placed himself among them, resuming the mantle of African poverty — the way a civilized African does, relaxing the shoulders and calming the hands and letting down the veil over his heart.

The bus’s woman conductor stood in the aisle and addressed us, giving us her name and town and then bowing her head to pray out loud for one full minute in the hope this journey wouldn’t kill us all. She invited everyone to turn to the next passenger and wish him or her the same thing, and we did, fare ye well, may this journey not be your last, although one of these journeys, surely, will send us — or whatever parts of us can be collected afterward — to the grave.

Our captain was a small man in a crisp white shirt and gray trousers, with a beard and turban. He sat down and started the engine and rattled the gearbox, and in just a few minutes the speedometer, I had a clear view of it, topped 100 kilometers per hour.

Somewhere behind us in Kampala, somewhere in Entebbe, I could have found Wi-Fi, I could have sent an encrypted summary-of-activities to NIIA … Goddamn, such an SOA might have begun, you perfect assholes. You sent me into this mess but told me nothing relevant. Fully half of what I’ve learned, you already knew. You didn’t mention any U-235, did you, though I’m willing to bet you’d heard rumors, and that’s why I’m on this thing in the first place. And I’m not the only one on it, as I’m sure you’re also aware. You said nothing about Interpol’s interest, and as for Michael Adriko’s desertion, I had to hear about that from Mohammed Kallon, a cheap Leonean grasser. Are you after information? I might inform you that Michael Adriko travels incommunicado with his bewildered fiancée, who happens to be the daughter of the camp commander for the US Tenth Special Forces Group, and that yesterday I saw her brassiere lying around and it was white, imprinted with tiny pink flowers, but you probably know all about that too. In any case, if there’s something I know and you don’t, anything at all — you can wait for it at the bottom of Hell …

Three hours along the route, the highway changed from two lanes down to one. The rate of speed stayed at 100. Smaller vehicles drove off the road as ours sailed toward them. The big lorries, the twelve-wheelers coming at us with their manifestos painted on their faces — AK-47 MONSTER — FIRE BASE ONE — GOD IS ABLE — LIVE FOR NOW — gave us half the road’s width, and on our left side our own wheels traveled into the muck. None of these maneuvers required any reduction of speed on the part of anyone.

We slowed down only for the accidents, getting on the margin to steer around a small wreck, later another, and then we met a big one that stopped traffic both ways. I’d been nodding off and opened my eyes on a smashed lorry, a smashed pickup truck, a car upended and torn down the middle and sprouting limbs and dripping with blood. Pedestrians peered into the shattered windows without too much discussion or excitement. It must have just happened — ours was the first vehicle to come along, nothing to block the view. A baboon crouched on the bank of the roadway watching. A second observed from fifty meters on. Neither acknowledged the other. I noticed a bicycle bent in two tossed down on the grass. Michael clicked his tongue. “They just won’t slow down.”

While we waited for some force of civilization to take charge of the catastrophe, people descended from our bus to stretch their legs, eat their snacks, laugh, talk, relieve themselves. The three of us joined them at the roadside. Davidia shaded her eyes with a hand and studied the baboons studying us.

Michael said to Davidia, “He’s talking to you,” pointing to an old man who approached us. “He is a magician.” He looked less than magic, instead looked tiny and silly, sucking on a long purple sugarcane. “He says we are all captives of this world. We were stolen while we were asleep and we were carried here, and now we’re held captive in this world of dreams, where we believe we’re awake.” While Michael translated, the magician laughed and hacked at his stalk of cane with his two or three teeth, snorting. He smiled brightly at someone he recognized across the road and turned away from us as we vanished from his mind. Michael said, “Someone just has to drag that pickup truck to the side, and we’ll pass through.” He went back into the bus. In twenty minutes the driver sounded his horn. People began climbing aboard. Michael told me, “It’s not as bad as West Africa. But it’s still a hard land.”

All were aboard but one. In the field beside us Davidia, herself, was peeing — she gave everyone a big smile as she rose from her squat and dropped her hem and hitched her waistband with a very African, very female shimmy of her hips. I felt I was seeing her for the first time.

* * *

In Arua we took rooms at the White Nile Palace Hotel. Here was the palace, but we’d crossed the Nile twenty kilometers ago. We arrived at night and formed no impression of the surrounding neighborhood except by its sounds — goats and cattle, arguments and celebrations. Surveying the parking area and later the tables in the café, I judged we’d come among missionaries and relief workers — Médecins Sans Frontières sorts of people with good, big SUVs and clean hiking shoes. The grounds were well-kept and our quarters were comfortable. I hadn’t quite expected that.

At dinner Michael was nowhere in evidence. Davidia and I shared a table with an elderly, exhausted French woman of Arab descent who told us she studied torture. “And once upon a time before this, I spent years on a study of the Atlantic slave trade. Angola. Now it’s an analysis of the practices of torture under Idi Amin. Slavery. Torture. Don’t call me morbid. Is it morbid to study a disease? That’s how we find the cure for it. What is the cause of man’s inhumanity to man? Desensitization. The numbness of the perpetrator. Whether an activity produces pleasure, pain, discomfort, guilt, joy, triumph — before too long the soul grows tired and stops feeling. It doesn’t take long. Not too long at all, and then man becomes the devil, he laughs at his former scruples, he enslaves and tortures without compunction.” The woman’s taut, quivering neck, her mouth opening and closing … Halfway through her dessert of ice cream with chocolate sauce, without a word, she got up and left the table.

“Is she coming back?”

“No. She’s paying her bill,” I said.

“She seemed possessed.”

“You attract a certain type, don’t you? Orphans and magicians and circus people. You draw them to you. I don’t know how.”

“I’m interested, and they feel it.”

“Where’s Michael? I haven’t seen him since we checked in.”

“As soon as we dropped our bags on the floor, he went out.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. ‘Seeking word.’ That’s all he said.”

“More will be revealed.”

* * *

But not revealed immediately. Whatever Michael was working on, it kept him away a lot the next two days. When it wasn’t raining Davidia read airport novels by the pool, in a tropical two-piece with a wraparound skirt, while I sat in the thatched shade with my laptop open on the bar, looking busy. The pool was kidney-shaped. Why? Why shaped like a human organ? Frequent downpours kept it brimming over. People rarely swam in it. An arm’s length above its surface, pairs of mating dragonflies whipped to and fro. Once in a while Davidia unwrapped herself down to her bikini and dipped herself in the water.

For restaurant and poolside music, American country tunes with a dash of rockabilly, the same forty-five-minute tape played all day long.

I wrote to Tina:

Well, no internet this AM at the White Nile Palace (Palace for Whites) Hotel. Writing off-line at the moment. No Wi-Fi here. We have to queue up for internet at the manager’s office.

A light rain began. Davidia left the area with a wave. She had very high, very round breasts. She wore sandals whose red color against her brown feet looked somehow violent. I reached beside me for my coffee and knocked it from the bar, and it shattered all over the tiles. I’d put myself on a seventy-two-hour moratorium — no spirits, no wine, no beer. A somber young waiter with a push mop came to look after the mess.

In its relationship with Emmanuel, the manager, the office computer is sort of a cartoon villain, coming up with some new way to thwart him every time he approaches it — this time it was a warning beep that wouldn’t stop — and his procedure is to start whacking whatever parts look whackable and twisting wires like they’ve been bad little wires and taking hold of the monitor with both hands and shaking the shit out of it, and today he gave the wall plug a good hard kick — not so stupid, really, because you do often get new results around here by wiggling the wall plug. Or snapping it with your finger. The people who work under him all know how to handle the computer just fine, and if the network’s up, they can make it happen, but Emmanuel, he just starts right in on the contraption like he’s carrying out an old vendetta, and I’ve learned not to ask him to try, except for entertainment.

I tried and deleted several ways of getting onto the next topic, and finally wrote—

Have you heard anything from Grant or that Major Kenworth guy, or any of those other boys in Sec 4?

— Section 4, Internal Inquiries, counterintelligence, the spy catchers. They hunt the traitor.

Let me know if anybody comes over from there just to say hi. I’ll tell you what it’s all about later on, when we’re together again.

— and deleted the final sentence and wrote instead, “I’ve put in for an opening over there, to tell the truth,” and deleted to tell the truth, “and if I have a shot at it, if they’re interested in me, they’ll probably do a little snooping.”

* * *

I woke and dressed fast without showering, ridden by a desire, an absolute lust, to get it all done this very moment, plus a feeling I wouldn’t get it done at all. I skipped breakfast and flagged one of the motorbikes waiting outside the hotel, and we traveled as fast as the engine could propel us toward the Catholic radio installation. Gripping my laptop with one hand and my life with the other, I made up my mind not to ride one of these things again. The night’s rain had slicked the road going into town, and quick maneuvers around potholes or out of the way of death sent us gliding in zigzags over the red mud. Bursts of adrenaline drained me and calmed me. The forward charge slowed down as we mounted a long steep hill toward three large towers in a compound of low buildings, the Catholic communications center.

At the gate a uniformed guard searched me, and a laminated security pass went around my neck. The guard walked me over to the nearest of several adobe buildings, and there a kind woman in a nun’s habit led me to a large room and sat me down before one of three computers at a long counter against the wall. She took a chair by the door. For the moment, it was just the two of us. I logged on with a password and immediately logged off.

While I waited, I heard the roar of a soccer game drifting up from the school at the bottom of the hill.

Pretty soon a blue-uniformed Ugandan soldier entered the room. I sensed him coming but stared at the screen until he touched my shoulder and said, “Please come,” and led me to the Secure Communications Environment, the “SC lounge,” or the “SC café.” It looked like the room we’d just left. Only one computer console here.

This place had nothing to do with NATO, except in the way of “courteous exchange,” as it’s called in the business. The safe communications here were an operation of the British, MI4 or 5 or 6 … May I reveal a fact? I don’t know how many MIs there are. In any case, it was nothing to do with NIIA. As far as I’d been allowed to know, NATO maintained no safe sites anywhere in Uganda for communications. The Americans like to say “commo”—I think it’s silly. Using my own laptop, I checked my list of e-mails. One from NIIA. I didn’t open it.

Another one, from Tina: a photo taken in a mirror, her face hidden behind the camera and her breasts exposed. Not a word of text.

I sent her what I’d composed off-line, and added:

Nothing has happened since I wrote the above. I’ve spent my time listening to the BBC on a little radio or watching the images of Al Jazeera on the satellite TV, when the TV works. Emmanuel has permanently bested the hotel’s computer and it just sits there half dead. Nobody can use it now. It’s not a communication device anymore, it’s capable of making a few high-pitched noises understood only by itself. Therefore I just took a half hour’s trip across town to the Catholic radio station compound, where they have a media center with three computers & Wi-Fi.

Don’t forget to let me know if you hear from Sec 4.

— and felt I was hitting the thing too hard and deleted the last line and wrote:

I thank you from the bottom of my scrotum for the glimpse of your beauties. I hope I can assume they’re yours.

Nothing from Hamid. I’d expected nothing. It was my turn to talk.

I switched to my own keyboard. As he’d suggested, I didn’t use the American Standard. For a lark I used PGP, and in accordance with Hamid’s wishes I rotated my proxy after every fifteen words:

230K dollars US.

50-50 split.

Currently in transit.

Will return to site of previous meeting when we have a deal.

Suggest date exactly 30 days following previous meeting.

Sample product: Basement Elvis Documents Freetown.

NIIA safe site. Check and see.

Don’t answer until the answer’s yes.

Having suggested a date, I heard the clock start ticking. Today was October eleventh — I’d have nineteen days to wrap things up with Michael and find my way back to Freetown. An easy schedule. But Africa wipes its mess with schedules.

I opened the communiqué from my boss:

Let’s not overlook opportunities for filing. Check in daily. I don’t add “when possible.” Check in daily.

No amount of detail is too great. Err on the side of inclusiveness. Give us an abundance to sift through and ponder each day. Every day. Daily.

From this point forward, consider that a mission imperative.

I replied:

Nothing to report.

— and closed the window.

* * *

The rain came hard. The dining room’s fine vaulted ceiling apparently leaked profusely, and when Michael and Davidia and I entered that evening looking for dinner, the maître d’ came at us with a push mop, driving a minor flood before him out the doors. On a hoarding on the step, a list of the cocktails on special—“Safe Sex in the Forest,” mostly vodka, and one called “The Pussycat,” whose main ingredient was identified as Baboon Whiskey. Time to lift the drinks moratorium? My thirty-dollar Timex watch said not even close.

The musical fare had changed — today, fifties pop, specifically “Smile” as rendered by Nat “King” Cole. Nothing else. Just “Smile.” Over and over. “Smile” … “Smile” … “Smile” …

Michael had turned up two hours before, dangling a set of car keys. “Toyota Land Cruiser. Four-wheel drive. Full of petrol.”

At dinner Davidia wanted to know when we’d go riding. “Soon. It’s all ours.”

I wasn’t so sure. “Where did you get it?”

“From Pyramid Environments.”

“Pyramid? Who’s that?”

“Pyramid Environments. Security. I know all those guys. The manager’s office is in Arua. I know him from Fort Bragg.”

“Bragg? I thought you were at Fort Carson.”

“And Bragg — I told you that. At Bragg I trained Colombian commandos. The US assists them in going after the drugs racket down there. Everything was done through translators. Let me tell you something you already know … working in simultaneous translation is exhausting. It’s like walking everywhere on your hands, and never your feet.”

“So you’ve told me many times,” Davidia said.

“I don’t like the situation over there,” Michael said, meaning the situation at another table. “These guys don’t look right. They’re up to something.”

“Doctors Without Borders.”

“Then why don’t they go someplace and play doctor? First we see them at lunch, and now at dinner.”

“Good lord. Is it possible we’re following them?”

“Perhaps we should be.”

Davidia glanced at me as if to say Help.

“Nobody’s spying on you,” I told Michael.

“Wait a minute. That one is Spaulding. Remember Spaulding?”

“I remember. That’s not Spaulding.”

Michael got up and went over to them.

“I hope he’s not about to be rude,” Davidia said.

“He’s just being Michael.”

“He’s getting pretty crazy, Nair.”

“You know what? I think he’s right. It’s Spaulding.”

“Who’s Spaulding?”

Spaulding possessed a great mop of platinum hair. I wouldn’t have guessed such a thing, and I hadn’t recognized him. As it happened, I’d never before seen the top of his head.

Michael brought him over. Spaulding didn’t sit down. Pretty soon Michael would tell us he’d been the one to give Spaulding his very first sight of death. He’d told me this story many times.

“Here’s Spaulding.” To Davidia: “Spaulding is MI6.”

Spaulding didn’t mind. “He introduces everybody as some kind of spy.”

“Have you chucked your turban?” I asked Spaulding.

“A turban’s all right in Afghanistan, in the winter.”

“So you were never actually some kind of Sikh?”

“Just keeping my head warm,” Spaulding said.

“What’s your religion, then?” Michael said.

“Lapsed Catholic.”

“I myself,” Michael said, “am a lapsed animist. This is Davidia, my wife-to-be.”

“Congratulations, then, the two of you.”

“Davidia — Spaulding is with MI6.”

“I don’t hang out with MI6,” Spaulding said, smiling. “They’re all homosexuals.”

Michael said, “I showed Spaulding his first dead body. In Mogadishu.”

Spaulding said, “It was more like two hundred dead bodies. All laid out neatly side by side in the street. Fresh-cooked.”

“Remember the dust devils? Two kilometers high. That’s where the legends of genies come from.”

“You couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. Your voice hadn’t changed.”

Michael produced a soprano: “Ayeeeeee! — My voice will never change,” he went on in his man’s baritone.

“I didn’t meet Spaulding till Afghanistan,” I said.

Spaulding studied me. “Really. Have we actually met?”

“Here comes our food,” Michael announced. “None for Spaulding.”

“Have a lovely evening,” Spaulding said, mainly to Davidia, and rejoined his table.

Davidia said, “Jesus Christ. You people!”

I looked at Michael — looking back at me. “And there you have it,” he said. “It’s already time to leave town.”

* * *

The White Nile Palace Hotel had proved in one respect far too proper for my taste, but that afternoon, as I sat at a table near the bar trying to make sense of the hamburger I’d just been served, a little brown slut with a wig of short red hair came in and stood within reach of my arms and started wrapping and unwrapping the skirt that covered her bathing suit as she queried the bartender, ignoring me and inflaming me, and I thought, Thank goodness, at last, a reasonable woman. I got her to sit down with me and asked her name. It was Lucy. She was friendly enough. I felt us on the brink of striking an arrangement.

The PA played “Jingle Bell Rock.” Two American-sounding women swam up and down the pool with gentle strokes, side by side, conversing about the Bible and God and spiritual challenges.

Michael Adriko turned up at the pool’s far end. He wore black bathing trunks. I supposed he could swim, but I’d never seen him at it.

He was talking to a Euro, a white man. It was rare to see Michael looking serious, rare to see him listening intently. I wished I could read the man’s lips. He was of middling height and middling all around, mid-thirties, with thinning, colorless hair. Rimless spectacles, a short-sleeved dress shirt tucked into dark corduroys and come untucked at the back — a civil servant sort, he seemed to me, except that he wore the shirt half unbuttoned to display a thick gold necklace.

I moved to the bar and tried to catch Michael’s eye, wondering if I should be introduced. I didn’t catch his eye. I wasn’t introduced.

I took up my cell phone and asked Lucy to excuse me, I had to make some calls. She said, “Maybe you need to call your boyfriend,” and went to the bar to pout and say nasty things about me.

The two men each sat on the edge of a recliner, heads bent toward one another. I took a stroll around the pool pretty much in the manner of someone who had no idea what he was doing, passing behind them in order to — what? Smell what might be brewing — hostility? Conspiracy? Conspiracy, I thought.

I walked past them and out the back gate onto the grounds, and I took note again of the man’s heavy necklace, which had tainted his neck’s flesh with a greenish collar. I walked around a bit, then came back past the pool and through the bar, heading for the restaurant.

“Just give me a minute,” I said to Lucy as I passed her. “I won’t be two minutes.”

I took a table in the restaurant and kept an eye on Michael and the other. Again the PA was playing “Smile” and had been playing it, I realized, for quite some time.

After one more full turn through the song, the man got up and came toward me through the patio door, staring at me hard. He looked no more dangerous than a mathematics instructor, but my face flushed, I felt it — he passed me by and went out the front way. I watched out the window as he left the grounds by the gate, waving to the guard.

Michael was coming into the place.

“Join me for one second,” I said.

He glanced around strangely, apologetically, and I realized that in his swimming shorts, he felt undressed.

I said, “Michael. What-what?” He sat down across from me and I said, “Who was that guy?”

“Well, he’s a businessman.”

“Are we in business with him?”

“Exactly.”

“Do you want to tell me what it is?”

“Right. Things are in motion. It’s time for full disclosure.”

“Tell me.”

“Come to my room in ten minutes.”

I nearly exploded in his face. “If now is the time, why ten fucking minutes?”

“What’s your hurry?”

“There’s a girl I want to talk to.”

“This is slightly more important.”

“Why ten minutes?”

“Davidia’s napping. I’ll kick her out.”

After he’d gone, I went back to the pool after Lucy — she was lying in the big rope hammock cuddling with a fat African fucker.

* * *

At the Palace the rooms occupied circular bungalows modeled after the local huts, but a great deal larger and roofed with rubber shakes, not straw; four rooms to a bungalow, each room a quarter circle, each with a verandah, a door, a bathroom, two windows side by side. This one had a bed, a desk, a TV, and a standing electric fan, just like mine. A couple of shelves and hangers on a rod — no closet.

I looked around for evidence of Davidia. The room had been cleaned, and everything was stowed, or hanging. It didn’t look as if anybody could have been napping here.

“Full disclosure.”

Michael unfurled a black shopping bag and dumped the contents on the bed: bright yellow electrician’s tape wrapping a package the size of an American softball.

“Pick it up.”

It was heavy for its size. “Feels like a couple of kilos.”

He went hacking at the tape with a penknife and soon laid out before me a shiny lump of metal no larger than my thumb, on a rag of odd-looking material.

It looked like gold. I assumed it was gold. I prayed it was gold.

“What’s this stuff it’s wrapped in?”

“That’s a bit cut from the smock you wear when you get an X-ray. It’s lead-lined.”

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Uranium.”

“Very correct.”

“U-235?”

“No. It’s polished, but it’s just ore. As long as it fools a Geiger counter … Superficial authenticity, that’s all we’re looking for. It comes from southern Congo. The Shinkolobwe mine.”

“Not from a crashed Russian cargo plane.”

“No.”

“You don’t actually have a planeload of enriched uranium.”

“I told you — full disclosure. There’s nothing else. Have you heard of the Manhattan Project?”

“Sure.”

“The uranium for that came from the same mine, there in Shinkolobwe.”

“Looks as if a dog just squeezed it out its ass.”

“A little lump can make a very big bang.”

“If I touch it, will I get cancer?”

He laughed. I held it in my hand.

“I’m in the process of parlaying that bit of dog business into one million dollars US.”

As if he’d opened a gash in me, all the tension ran out. I dragged the chair away from his desk and sat down. “So it’s a scam.”

“Of course it is. Do you think I’m running around with enriched uranium? If there was any U-235 on the market, New York City would be nothing but a crater already.”

“And who’s our friend, with the fake gold necklace?”

“Fake?”

“Didn’t you see his neck? He’s probably poisoning himself with gold spray-paint. I didn’t like the way he came at me in the restaurant.”

“He’s calling himself Kruger, probably because he’s South African. He saw you cruising around us. And Nair, it’s genius. The minute he saw you, I improvised something: you’re the bad scientist.”

“I’m the mad scientist?”

“The bad, the bad, the bad. You’re the renegade engineer who recently examined the crash site for the Tenex corporation. You reported to Tenex there was nothing there. No uranium material. But you lied. It’s there. You kept the truth to yourself, and you’re selling the crash site’s coordinates. Just a few numbers on a piece of paper. For one million cash US. It’s too brilliant, Nair.”

He paused for my reaction.

I couldn’t see where to begin. A bit of rain started on the roof above and the leaves outside, and we listened to that for a while.

“You’re the verification,” he said. “We meet with Kruger and his partner, who’s bringing a Geiger counter. We give them this shiny radioactive object as proof of possession, and you verify what I say about the crash site. Then on to the big swap. One million.”

“But, Michael, have you thought this through? Or thought even a little? How would this scam work? Take me through it, step by step. What are the steps that lead to the moment when the money’s out on the table?”

“By the time the money’s on the table, we’ll have a lot of guys to help us. After our meeting with Kruger and his partner, we’ll have twenty-five K US as our payment for proof of possession. With some of that money, we’ll get a squad together. Congo is full of brigands. M23, Lord’s Resistance — plenty of warriors, and nothing to do all day.”

“And then what? Cowboys and Indians? The money’s on the table, and a bunch of guns come out?”

“I’ll handle that part. You’ll just handle the oily parts, because you’re good at that. But the answer is yes. Armed robbery.”

“You skipped over my real question. How do you get the money on the table?”

“When we meet with Kruger and his partner, we’ll tell them that as soon as they have the big payment prepared, we’ll be prepared to turn over another X kilos, say five kilos, and that’s all we could carry from the crash site. We promise them the coordinates to the rest.”

“And for telling them this fairy tale they’ll give you twenty-five K?”

I heard him say, “Twenty-five,” and then the rain outside came harder and washed out his words. I said, “What? What?”

“Twenty-five K immediately, Nair. In our pockets. Then we go from Arua to Congo and we find my villagers, my family. A beautiful wedding takes place. Then we make arrangements for the final contact and the rest of the payment. It’s going to be a big payment, Nair, very big. Big.”

“Right. One million. You already said.”

“I haven’t said it to them yet. Maybe I’ll say two.”

“Who’s going to let you string them along all that way with just this little piece of dogshit?”

“The question to ask is — who could pass it up? Who could say no? If the claim is at all credible, they have to give it the full treatment.”

“Credible? It sounds completely and obviously false, Michael — can’t you see that? What words can I use? Nonsensical. Impossible. Out of keeping with reality.”

“Reality is not a fact.”

“Around here it certainly isn’t. God.”

“Reality is an impression, a belief. Any magician knows this.” Like a cartoon villain, he rubbed his hands together. “Oh my goodness, Nair, you just tickle them in their terrorism bone, and they ejaculate all kinds of money. If you mention the name of one of the Muslim Most Wanted — boom, they put on a circus for you.”

“You’ve skipped another question, haven’t you?”

“What. What’s the question?”

“Who is this ‘they’? Are they a fantasy too?”

“Of course not. Kruger works for them.”

“Who? Who are we dealing with besides this Kruger? Do you even know?”

“We’re dealing with the Israelis.”

If I’d had to stand up from my chair at that moment, I’d have failed. I was that shocked, and that much afraid. “Then you’re dealing with the Mossad.”

“Their involvement is likely.” And he seemed proud of it. He smiled with all his teeth.

“You’re scamming Mossad.”

“They know me. If I say I have it, they’ve got to take me seriously and get together the cash.”

The rain roared, or it was my head, but in any case the sense of things rushed away on a flood. “Michael … Michael…”

“Nair. Nair.” He got his face close to mine as if he thought I couldn’t hear. “I know those people. You know I know them. I was trained by them.”

“Michael, be quiet.”

“Let me tell you about it.”

“No. I’m feeling bewildered. Please shut up.”

He complied. I didn’t say a word. In the silence, which was nevertheless quite loud, his folly bore down on us like a tremendous iceberg. Its inertia was irresistible. In this room, in Africa, reasonable arguments were just mumbo jumbo.

“Is that enough quiet? Can I talk now? Because I want to explain one thing: I’ve got contacts, I know Mossad — ever since my training in South Africa. I can call them anytime that we want to cancel, and the whole thing’s canceled. Never happened.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, man — call them now, and call it off. Cancel everything. Mossad? You’re insane.”

“All right. I’ll cancel if you say so.”

“I just said so.”

“But let’s wait until we take it one tiny step further along. Let’s meet with these guys and their Geiger counter, and walk away with twenty-five K. Then no more. Nothing further than that.”

“No brigands versus Mossad. No showdowns at the table.”

“Exactly. And if they don’t like our lump of shit tomorrow — no loss. At least we tried.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes — tomorrow. I told you, full disclosure.”

“Fuck it, Michael. I’m done.”

I got up, making a loud noise with my chair, and headed out the door toward a place to be determined later.

“How done?” Michael called after me.

* * *

In two minutes I arrived at the bar pretty nicely drenched. I took a table where I could watch the storm.

At the bar sat Spaulding, his cranium wrapped in a big white turban. He pointed at it. “What do you think?”

What I think — I thought to myself — is you’re spying on me.

I checked my watch. Time to lift the drinks moratorium. An hour past.

As I looked around for the barman, Spaulding came over to me. “Shit, Nair, I sort of didn’t recognize you yesterday. You know — without the uniform.” He set a full drink before me, saying, “Cheers, mate. It’s made with Baboon Whiskey.”

Like that, I drank half of it down. “Have a seat.”

“I really can’t. Car’s waiting. I’m checking out.”

I nearly said, Good. “Where are you off to?”

“Oh, God knows. The itinerary’s a bit complicated. Entebbe to start. What about you?”

“Just here. Then home again.”

“Home again to—”

“Amsterdam.”

“Amsterdam! I love the hash. Do you go to the coffee shops?”

“Every day. Wrap up in my turban and get out my hookah and set fire to all manner of shit.”

He laughed and said, “Happy trip, Nair,” and headed off briskly, with a sort of half salute that knocked at his stupid head-wrap.

A bit sweet, but the drink had a kick. I signaled the barman. “Let’s try a vodka martini.”

Rain swept across the pool’s face, and then it stopped. The sky was half-and-half — one storm had passed, another was coming. My first drinks in three days were going to my head, expanding my consciousness. I didn’t like it. I gulped the vodka without tasting it and made my way to my bungalow and changed into shorts and a long-sleeved shirt and lay down. The TV lit up when I tried it. I watched Ugandan news, a report about a pair of twins conjoined at the shoulder — in other words, a two-headed baby — who had died, and then one about a child whose face had been eaten by a pig. Its fingers as well.

This information drove me out to a chair on the verandah. The sky was stuffed with thunderheads nearly black. I shut my eyes yet felt aware of the garden at my elbow, the blooms opening as if in a time-lapse, the stalks lengthening. Blossoms like dangling red bells, blossoms like tiny white fountains, fuzzy yellow caterpillars on brown twigs, a squad of snails lugging their small shelters up the spears of a plant.

The moment was dark as evening, but all was bathed in a great vividness. The rain shot out of the sky, hard as hail. A wondrous assurance lifted me, a force positively religious invited me to stand and shed my shirt, to drop my shorts and kick them from my feet. No need of clothes when clothed in African magic, and I walked naked across the grounds through the booming and the lightning with the sweet rain pouring all around, and soon I stood looking down into the swimming pool. Everybody else was indoors, and through this whole experience no other person was visible anywhere in the world except the bartender, all alone behind the bar under his awning a few yards from the poolside, watching as I jumped into the water and drowned.

From this dream I woke to another: I lay on my back beside the pool while Michael Adriko kissed me, breathed fire into my mouth and down my throat. I rolled over retching and coughing, my lungs tearing.

I came awake again on a lower rung of reality, still lying on my back, but now in my hotel room, wrapped in a shroud, shivering. Michael sat beside me on the bed.

I said, or tried to say, “You spat in my mouth.”

“What happened to you, Nair?”

“Somebody drugged me.”

“You didn’t drug yourself?”

“I had one whiskey and one martini. Maybe the olive was bad.”

“Bad? You mean evil?”

“What? Stop talking to me.”

“Davidia is here,” he said.

“Where?”

“Where? Here!”

“I’m not there,” her voice said, “I’m here, on the verandah. Can you hear the crickets? Are those crickets?”

All around the music, like little bells. “Some sort of insect, yes,” Michael said.

“Spaulding did this to me. Was it Spaulding, do you think?”

“It could be anything. A virus, a bite from a spider, or even a spell, a curse — people have such powers. I’ve seen too much to laugh at it.”

“That fucking towel-head dosed my martini.”

Michael laughed with such vigor that Davidia came in and looked at his face and said, “Are you all right?”

“You should have seen Fred’s expression!” He meant the bartender. “Like the aliens were landing in his pool! Seriously,” he said, “he must have dragged you from the pool himself. He was wet to the waist. His shoes are ruined.”

“I’ll give him some money,” I said.

The rain had stopped, and Davidia was correct — the creatures had resumed, the bugs that chimed like porcelain, frogs that belched like drunkards, and now more frogs, snorting like pigs. A suffocating sleep fell over my face. I came under its shadow convinced that Spaulding had poisoned me.

* * *

The next morning I asked for Spaulding, and Emmanuel, the manager, said he’d settled his account and left in a taxi for Arua’s small airfield. Flying where? No commercial planes this morning, according to Emmanuel. Only the UN plane to Yei, in South Sudan.

I continued on to the restaurant for my appointment with Michael Adriko. I’d promised to meet him there and tell him my decision.

There he was, near the blaring television, doing nothing, not even watching it. “Well?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Take your time. Up to ten more minutes. Don’t sit down. Walk with me,” he said, already moving, “I’ve got to see about the gas.”

“Is it a long drive?”

“Just into town, over by the market, but you know the rule — half a tank is empty. You remember the rule.”

I remembered.

When we came to the parking lot, he paused. “As of right now, the process is halted. You see how easy it is?”

“I get uncomfortable when you stop in the middle of walking to make a point.”

“At any moment in the procedure, we can say ‘enough.’”

“I understood the point.”

“Then understand this one: Do you really want to go back to that boring existence?”

“Never.”

This much was true, the only true thing between us.

By now we’d reached his borrowed Land Cruiser. We both got in. The engine caught quickly, first try.

The guard held the gate wide open for us.

It was a years-old model, much like the blue-and-white Land Cruisers we’d often borrowed from the UN in Jalalabad, sometimes Kabul. Too much like. It even smelled the same inside, like spilt gas and dirty clothes.

“Are you ready?”

“No. For this? No.”

* * *

We stopped at a filling station where a woman topped off our tank, and we waited.

“Near the market, you said?”

“That’s all I know. They’ll call me with the meeting place. What time is it? — eleven-thirty-three,” he informed himself. “They’ll call me in the next half hour.” We sat side by side on the vehicle’s rear bumper, Michael studiously smoking, blowing white puffs upward through the brown fumes and the red dust, under the yellow Shell insignia. After the call, he pocketed his phone and threw down his cigarette and stomped it like an insect. “We’re off.”

We left the SUV in front of a place called Gracious Good Hotel, under care of the taxi drivers loitering there. Michael, a bright red zippered daypack slung over his arm, guided me across the street toward the market by way of a narrow alley with light at the far end, its crevices roiling with crippled beggars — many were blind, and as for the others, they seemed to look through your own eyes and down your throat. Ahead of me Michael was a bent silhouette, handing over a crumpled bill. “My name is Michael,” I heard him say, “pray for me.” An old woman caught the money between her leprous paws and turned her sightless eyes up toward him and her lips moved below the noseless hole in her face, praying, “Michael, Michael,” not for him, but rather to him, to the deity Michael … And crash, back into the daylight — it never happened …

I caught up with Michael at a clothier’s stall. He was looking at a coat of fake black leather too hot for this region. He set his mirrors on his scalp, gripped the sleeve, touched the fabric with one finger. I didn’t know if he was trying to buy something or just delaying, looking out for a tail.

The latter. When we left the market square he led the way into a dry goods store across the street. Inside we made our way directly down the center aisle to the back of the store, where a woman napped in a collapsible chair, and we asked her for another entrance. She pointed through a curtain, we passed through it and out into a side lane, then up to the left — and I recognized the street, and saw our Land Cruiser parked just a block away.

He handed me his daypack. “Take charge of the little morsel.”

“Of course.” Lethargy and nausea overtook me. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

Michael said, “I go first. Wait until you see me come out again, then you’ll come and join me. It may take a few minutes.”

“What’s going to happen in there?”

“Before I bring you on the stage, I’ll say I want to see the cash. They’ll say no, but this way I get to review the environment.”

“And then what?”

“It’s two South African guys — Kruger is one, you saw him. You’ll verify everything I tell them, right? Then I’ll go with them. You can stay there — it’s that café there, you see it? I’ll go with them, we’ll sit in their car or something with the sample and their equipment, and we’ll make the exchange. And I’ll come back in and collect you, and then back to Nile Palace.”

“Where’s their equipment, do you know?”

“Ah — you’re thinking smart now. If it’s not in their car or somewhere we can walk, I’ll make them go get it. I’m not driving off with them.”

On this sunny street, where earth-moving machines worked over piles of red dirt, improving the surface, and generators clattered in front of the shops and schoolchildren in green-and-white uniforms walked home for lunch, all this sounded reasonable.

“Stop breathing so fast,” Michael said.

“I’m fucking nervous.”

“Good. It helps you look the part. Just don’t faint.” He left me standing there and in order to keep my mind off itself I studied the nearby billboard exhorting the use of condoms and followed the progress of a small car over the ruts and small boulders from one end of the block to the other, its horn playing the first six notes of the “Happy Birthday” song. Looking around for something else, I spied Michael already back outside, standing in his own spotlight in his aviator sun shades as if in support of the warning stenciled beside him: DO NOT URINE ON THIS WALL 30,000 FINE. And he wore the fake black leather duster from the market. I was nervous to the point that I hadn’t even seen him make the purchase.

Michael must have sensed it. He took my arm and kept me going as we went inside. I was living one of my persistent nightmares: I step onto the stage, it’s time to speak, I don’t know my lines. In this particular bad dream the stage was a four-by-four-meter dirt space enclosed in ironwork and roofed with tin, with a sign on the left saying SIMBA DISCO / PHONE CHARGE ACCUMULATOR AVAILABLE and on the right a Bell Lager clock with one hand, counting only the minutes, and wooden tables and benches. We sat down across from the South Africans.

They were a half-and-half team, like Michael and me. The black one, I assumed, was Zulu, and could have been one of Kruger’s math pupils, but he looked in his thirties too. He wore his sunglasses on the back of his shaved skull. In most other respects he seemed to be trying to resemble an American rapper: a hooded sweater, baggy hip-hop shorts I hadn’t seen anyone wearing in Uganda. A word about this Zulu’s shoes. They were purple joggers, elaborately designed and, by the look of them, enclosing enormous feet. There’s no explaining why I should have been so penetratingly aware, at this moment, of anybody’s fashion choices. Kruger suggested a drink, and I certainly concurred, and now came the moment when I discovered the East African quick-shot — a square plastic envelope that would fit in your palm and holding one hundred milliliters of, in this case, Rider Vodka — Sign of Success. You chew off a corner and slurp. I bought several, several. The floor was tiled with discarded packets.

Michael produced a cigarette and called for a light, and the barman brought over several for sale. Michael had to try three or four of them before he got one that worked.

Kruger said, “Everything here is fake.”

Michael said, “Only my heart is real,” and put away his cigarette.

I wasn’t taking in much, only the Rider Vodka. Remarks were delivered, there was talk of a Geiger counter, the location of their car, mention was made, in fact, of roentgens, but of all this I registered one exchange only: Michael said, “Nice necklace, brother,” and Kruger said, “I like yours too,” and when Michael thanked him, Kruger added, “It looked good on my friend before you stole it,” and Michael said, “Who? What friend?” at which point, as if time had skipped forward, the three of them were standing up and fighting. The Zulu had Michael from behind in a bear hug, or was trying to pin his elbows, while Michael twisted side to side and the Kruger fellow thrust with a knife at Michael’s chest and belly, then at Michael’s throat.

Another skip — the Zulu lay on his back, wide-eyed, struggling to take a breath. Michael had hurt him somehow. I had an impulse to act, an image flitted through me, I saw myself taking two steps, jumping onto the man’s chest, standing on him, keeping him down. No part of me acted. I experienced it as a question only — shouldn’t I, shall I. I didn’t. Now the seconds passed more fluidly, as if a stuck film had caught in its sprockets, and I watched the movie, which wasn’t like the movies after all, not even like a boxing match on TV. I heard the initial thumps, then my hearing turned cottony, and I remember Michael’s eyes — they watched, they looked, they moved here, there, they gauged — when he had his target, he locked on Kruger’s face, not on his hands, though one hand gripped the knife in preparation for downward thrusts—

Michael danced backward, knocked a bench over between them, plucked at the table — a salt shaker in his hand; he threw it hard, it struck the man’s chest, and Michael followed its arc, picking up the bench as he closed on his opponent, ramming the flat seat against him. Kruger fell backward as Michael’s feet left the floor, one hand at Kruger’s throat, the other still holding the bench in place, and his weight stuck the man to the table. His fingers closed on the carotid arteries, and Kruger lost conscious swiftly — a matter of a few seconds — managing to slash at Michael only once with the knife, which sailed to the floor, along with the bench, as Michael stood and snapped Kruger’s arm over his knee. The breaking of the bone was quite pronounced. Deaf with adrenaline, I nevertheless heard that sound crisply. I heard it echo back into the room from the surrounding hills.

Michael wasted no time continuing the contest. He signaled me, I stood still, he came close, gripped my wrist, and before I formed even my first thought about what was happening, we were both in the Toyota and moving along as Michael steered with both hands, saying, “Wrap my arm, wrap my arm.” His right forearm bled in spurts. He extended it across his chest toward me, steering with his left hand, and I understood at last, and found my bandanna and wrapped it around a long gash that showed the yellowish bone. I tied it with a square knot. “That’s going to need stitches,” was his first remark since the action had begun. “So much for South Africa,” was his second.

* * *

Michael pointed out the White Nile Palace as we passed it. “I want you to drive back here after you drop me at the hospital.”

“Where’s the hospital?”

“I’ve seen the signpost up here a couple of kilometers. We go to the right. After that I don’t know.”

We rumbled across a wooden bridge. Ahead of us a pedestrian, an old man, jumped up on the railing to save himself.

“Well,” I said, “I wasn’t much use to you, was I?”

“But, Nair — what’s there, between your feet?”

“For goodness’ sake.” His red daypack.

“You grabbed my bag. You saved the most important thing. The valuables.”

A couple of minutes off the main road we found the hospital, a campus of one-story structures of concrete and brick, the Church of Uganda Kuluva Hospital, according to the sign at the guard post. The guard waved us down and peered through the window and waved us through when he saw the blood. “Nurse is coming,” he said. “Proceed to Minor Theatre.”

The door to the building called Minor Theatre was locked. Michael squatted on his haunches with his spine against the wall, smoking, while the blood seeped from his bandage and pooled between his feet. His eyes were bright and he gave off a certain energy.

He looked, I have to say, in better shape than I felt. I stood upright, but only to prove I was able. “I wish I’d made one tiny fucking move to help.”

“I didn’t need help. Did you hear his bone breaking?”

“God. I didn’t even drive the car. I’ve always known I’ve got zero courage, but I don’t like to be reminded.”

“There’s no such thing as courage. It’s a question of training. You know, I’m not merely trained in unarmed combat — I’m the instructor.”

“Maybe you should instruct me.”

“I instruct you to stay by my side. You’ll win more fights that way.”

At the entrance to the grounds a car came to a sharp halt, and the man calling himself Kruger more or less fell out of the passenger door into the arms of his driver and the guard. The guard dragged the chair from his shack and sat Kruger down in it, and he and the driver — who was not the Zulu — carried Kruger in it toward another building with his shirt off and his arm bound up in it all bloody.

Michael waved with his own wounded arm. “No hard feelings, mate — next time I’ll kill you.”

Kruger sailed past in his chair with his eyes closed, chalk-faced and uncomprehending. His partner was nowhere around.

“I don’t know what kind of mess we’re in,” I said.

“I think we’re better off in Congo now.”

“How did all this come about, Michael? Who were those characters?”

“I’m sure of this much: they weren’t Mossad. Just a couple of jokers Mossad has on a string.”

“In other words, Mossad has you marked for death.”

“If Mossad wanted me dead, I’d be dead. Mossad works very tight. They use teams of six or seven or even more and they train and plan very carefully, and they get it done every time. They don’t use idiots who attack you in a café. These guys were just associates, like me. But I believe them this far — I believe Mossad gave them money. That’s why that fool pulled a knife. They wanted to keep my payment for themselves.”

“This scam is over,” I said, “finished, okay?”

“Agreed.”

“Because it pisses me off when I go along with stupid ideas.”

“You’re pissed off now. I see that. Okay.”

“I wish I had transcripts of the conversations that led to this,” I said, “the conversations you had with those guys. I bet I could show you a dozen places where they were obviously — obviously — playing you.”

“In the end, you have to go by instinct.”

“You trust too Goddamn much.”

“Is that really a fault?”

“What? Yes. A fatal one. The life you lead, the people you deal with — do you think it’s just teddy bears hugging marshmallows?”

He laughed at me.

I wished Kruger would stab him again. “You trust the wrong people,” I said. “Believe me.”

* * *

This hospital had been established in 1848, according to the sign at the entrance, and originally as a place for lepers, according to Michael’s nurse, who prepared the sutures and such on a tray. No doctor arrived. She stitched the wound herself. “We will close the laceration in two layers,” she told Michael. “It’s deep.”

“How long do you think this will take?” I asked.

She was jabbing a swab down into the damaged area. “The sutures must go close together.” I took this to indicate a lengthy procedure.

“If I had some water, maybe I’d clean up the car a bit.”

“There’s a stream there”—she pointed with her chin—“running behind the morgue.”

“Where’s the doctor?”

“The doctor is sick.”

The guard abandoned his post and found me a bucket and led me to the creek behind the small brick mortuary, the stink of which came over the transom and into the afternoon, but nobody seemed to notice. I went back and forth with the bucket until I’d flooded the car’s floorboards and turned the bright red mess into a faint pink mess, and then I went about peeping in windows. In a dirty concrete room behind a door labeled MATERNITY WARD, I saw Michael’s assailant, the fool who’d pulled a knife, true name unknown, stretched naked on a bare mattress on a metal bed. He was alone in the room, the only occupant of a dozen such beds. The maternity ward’s only patient. He had a round, simple face, and he breathed through his mouth. His arm lay out beside him, still bandaged with his shirt.

Michael’s nurse, when I returned to them, was being assisted by a young girl dressed in the green skirt and white blouse of the local schools. Work on the wound seemed to have ceased while Michael chatted with a police officer in a close-fitting uniform, all of it — even boots, belt, and helmet — crisply white. His large sun lenses gave him the face of an inquisitive insect.

“Officer Cadribo is making a report.”

“Ah,” I said. “Good.”

“My friend Roland,” he told us all, “will bring my fiancée. Did you see the route? It’s just through the gate to the road, then turn left, then right at the main road.”

“Hannington Road,” said Officer Cadribo.

Michael told him, “We’re staying at the White Nile Palace. We’ll meet you there around suppertime, all right? The incident is hardly worth mentioning, but you have to make a report, we understand that. Let’s make it an occasion. We’ll buy you dinner.” He wrapped my shoulder in his good hand and drew me close. “Go to the hotel, collect our things, and get Davidia. Check out and come back here.”

Just to be talking, I said, “How’s the wound?”

“We’re waiting for just a few more cc’s of Xylocaine,” the nurse said.

Michael said, “We tried finishing without it, but God — it hurts! I can’t hold my arm still.”

Michael and the cop began talking Krio or the local one, Lugbara, faster and faster, laughing, their remarks ascending to the tenor register.

As I left them, Michael said, “Remember — you’re driving on the left!”

* * *

Packing was nothing, three changes of clothes — and now one less, as my bloody jeans and T-shirt went in the trash. I called the desk and asked how to call a room and they said they’d patch me through.

Here, as in West Africa, land-line phones were answered by saying, “Hello?” and then taking the receiver away from the ear and staring at its silence before replacing it to the ear to listen a little more to the silence.

“I said it’s Nair.”

“Nair. I hear you. Where are you?”

“I’m in my room.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can you handle it if things get a bit more up-tempo?”

“What are you saying?”

“Well — just that we’re breaking camp. Would you mind getting all your gear packed in the next few minutes? I’ll help you carry everything to the jeep.”

“What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“Michael’s moved up the schedule a bit, that’s all.”

“Moved it up. What schedule?”

“We really should leave in the next few minutes.”

“God. God. God. Is Michael there? Let me talk to him.”

“He’s tidying up some loose ends. I’ll come round as soon as I’m packed.”

“Nair, this is ridiculous. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then at least pack Michael’s things for him, will you, please? I’m coming to your room. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

When I knocked on the door, she said, “It’s open,” and I found her sitting sideways on the bed. She was dressed, except for shoes.

I saw no evidence of packing. “Do you mind if I shut the door?” She gave a little wave, and I shut us in and said, “The journey resumes.”

“I don’t think so.”

“If we’re going at all, we really should be pretty brisk about it.”

“I’m not kidding. I’ve had it.”

“All right. But I’ve got the Land Cruiser, and if we’re going, now’s the time.”

“Where’s Michael?”

“I left him in conference with some of his cronies. We’ll stop and pick him up.” She didn’t move. “I’m your chauffeur.” Not even her hands. “Sorry if the news is sort of sudden.”

“So here’s a piece of news,” she said. “The lyrics for ‘Smile’ were written by two guys I’ve never heard of named Turner and Parsons.”

It seemed to me they had two soft suitcases and two knapsacks. “What if we just shovel your worldly goods into your luggage?” I took some shirts off the rod. “Do you want the hangers? Let’s leave the hangers.”

“But the melody was written by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 film Modern Times.”

I stopped messing around. “How did you find this out?”

“I went online in the manager’s office. It was driving me crazy. I thought maybe Irving Berlin — I was rooting for Irving Berlin, I don’t know why. I guess I’ve always liked the name.”

“I see. Did you get a chance to catch up on your e-mail, then?”

“No. Michael doesn’t want me to. You know that.”

“Have you been in communication with anyone?”

“No! I just said no!”

“Right. I just wondered.”

“Is it any of your business?”

“That’s just the thing, Davidia. Our business is getting all mixed up together now. Yours and mine. I hope you realize that. If you realize it, this is going to be a whole lot easier.”

“What is? What’s going to be easier?”

“Can I take a chair?”

“You’re taking my things. Why shouldn’t you take a chair?”

I sat down. “There’s a lot you haven’t been aware of. Nothing sudden is happening here. More is just suddenly being revealed.” I took a moment to frame my thoughts. I don’t know why. I’d imagined telling her this many times. “We talk about how the world has changed since the Twin Towers went down. I think you could easily say the part that’s changed the most is the world of intelligence, security, and defense. The world powers are dumping their coffers into an expanded version of the old Great Game. The money’s simply without limit, and plenty of it goes for snitching and spying. In that field, there’s no recession.”

“That field? Your field. It’s obvious you don’t work in some bank. It was obvious all along. You’re CIA.”

“Goddamn it. Ma’am, I am not in the Goddamn CIA. Don’t lump me in with that lot.”

She seemed about to speak, then didn’t. I got up and sat beside her on the bed.

“You’re sitting too close.”

I moved closer. “But the truth of it is you’re partly right. I don’t work in a bank. I’m still with NATO intelligence. I’m here on assignment, actually, and the assignment is Michael Adriko.”

“What? Why?”

“Michael’s in trouble.”

“Oh, Jesus. What’s he done?”

“He may get out of it. You know Michael. But I think we’d better get out of it first. You and I.”

“You and I?”

“I’m leaving on my own, and I think you’d better come with me.”

“What for?”

“For whatever it’s worth.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it lasts.”

“As long as what lasts?”

“Let me get you out of this.”

“To where?”

“Back to Freetown. For a start.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got business there. I can set us up.”

“Nair, there’s nothing between us.”

“Come here. Let me hold you.”

“Are you crazy? Stop touching me.”

I had to stop, or I couldn’t talk. The feel of her skin took my breath away. “I’ve known Michael for almost twelve years, and all this time I’ve thought I was infatuated with him, and I was wrong. All the time I’ve known him I’ve been infatuated with you. Waiting in infatuation for you to materialize. For him to produce you, conjure you, bring you, fetch you.”

“Oh God,” she said, “you’re complicating this impossibly. You’re making it impossible. Why do you have to be crazy too?” She stood up and started piling things on the bed. “What’s Michael’s plan? If any.”

“He’s going to Congo.”

“And you’re not.”

“That depends on you.”

“I think I’d better go.”

“I think we’d better not. There’s no law over there. The government has no writ. The cops, the army, psychotic warlords — they all take turns robbing anyone who’s not armed.”

“Then why don’t you leave us now?”

“Because I can’t. I couldn’t bear it. Not without you.”

“This is awful. Shut up.”

“Once you’ve had a look at the place, you’ll want to come with me.”

“I’m going with Michael. Take me to Michael.”

“I’ll take you wherever you want.”

“I’ve got to. I can’t just disappear. I have to hang on till Michael’s situation is … stabilized or something. Or at least clarified.”

She put a bag on the bed and started filling it like a pit.

“Hold up for a bit. Will you? Okay?” She didn’t. She kept packing. “Davidia. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, you did scare me. I’m scared — of you.”

“I got crazy. I don’t want to make you crazy too.”

“Too late.”

“Have I forced you into this decision? Because I didn’t mean to put you in a corner. Wait a minute.” She didn’t pause. “Stop packing for a second.”

“I’m going with Michael now, and I think you’d better take me to him.”

“Are you sure? Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“All right, fine. Just a minute. Look at me.” She settled down. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

“I agree.”

“I’m crazy.”

“I said it first.”

“So we agree on that too. So will you keep all this quiet?”

“Quiet?”

“Don’t tell Michael.”

“I’ve promised Michael I won’t talk to anybody, now I promise you I won’t talk to Michael — is that what you’re saying?”

“Let me be the one to come clean with him, that’s all.”

“When?”

“Not right away.”

“How long do I have to betray him, then?”

“Not long.”

“How long exactly?”

“Two days exactly.”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Correct.”

“Promises to him, promises to you, and everything is secret from everybody else. This is what we call a situation.” She seemed to see some humor in the thing.

* * *

To make ourselves more visible I lit the headlamps. Nobody else did such a thing, none of the bikes or vehicles set themselves apart.

Davidia said, “This is blood, isn’t it? How badly is he hurt?”

“He needed quite a few stitches.”

“Where’s the hospital?”

“Actually it’s back that way.”

“Then why go this way?”

“Couple of errands.”

For these conditions I drove too fast. It was nearly 4:00 p.m. I had no idea how late the Catholic communications center might be open. Nevertheless I stopped at a vendor’s shack and bought all his hundred-milliliter packets of spirits. Then I stopped at another vendor, and I did the same thing. Still I had less than a couple of liters. Before I left the hotel I should have gotten the biggest bottle of rum, or tequila, whichever had the bigger proof. Baboon Whiskey, if that’s all they had. But I’d forgotten.

On the way up the long hill in the middle of Arua I nearly stopped again for another such transaction, but the sight of the towers at the top lured me on. “I’m stopping up here at a place with internet,” I told Davidia. She said nothing.

Across the road from the gates, I turned off the engine and said it again. “If you have someone you want to communicate with, here’s the place to do it.”

“Just hurry up. I’m worried about Michael.”

“You can wait with the guard.”

“I’m fine right here.”

When I got out, I went around to her window. She didn’t roll it down. “Will you be all right?”

“Will I?”

“If you get uncomfortable, lock the doors.”

I heard them locking even as I turned away.

* * *

I had two e-mails, the first from Hamid:

Firm and final offer is cash funds 100K US for you.

If your answer is yes, we meet same place same hour.

Cash takes time.

Your share 100K US. Final offer.

I liked his figure. I didn’t like his next one:

Will meet 4 weeks following date last meeting.

Not 30 days. 4 weeks exactly. No fallback. One chance.

On the one hand, the money was set, and it was good money. But with his other hand he’d ripped two days from the calendar. I closed my eyes and set about composing a comeback, a counteroffer, and then scotched it. I had nothing to offer.

I opened the second e-mail: several hundred angry words from my boss at NIIA. Before I’d read half, I deleted it.

I banged at the keys: “Hello, you idiotic shits. Are you waiting for my report? You can wait till Hell serves holy water.”

I pressed DELETE.

Again I banged on the keys, this time at some length:

Goddamn you. You smiled sweetly while slipping a rocket up my ass and lighting the fuse. Now you want to dress me down?

Would you cunts please explain what British MI is doing at my hotel?

Would you cunts care to describe Mossad’s involvement in — what shall we call it — this affair? Investigation? Cluster-fuck?

All of you, go fuck yourselves. Fuck each other.

I hold the rank of captain in the Army of Denmark. What has any of this got to do with Denmark? What has any of this got to do with me?

Why have you put me in a position to be murdered?

For three seconds, four seconds, five, my finger hovered over the DELETE key, and then I pressed SEND.

I logged out, plugged in my own keyboard, and went to PGP. I wrote back to Hamid:

Sold.