As he drove away from Muhammad Benir’s shop, Andrew’s spirits began to rise.
The young woman smiled. Attractive, in her middle twenties, she wore a sleeveless bright yellow European-style dress, buttoned up the front and belted. She said to Andrew through the opened door: “My grandfather prefers to talk to guests in the shamba.” The garden. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Andrew told her.
Another smile. “That way then,” pointing to the right. “I’ll go fetch him.”
“Thank you,” said Andrew, and went round the small cinder block house, following a sandy pathway worn in the sparse grass.
Unlike most of the African shambas in the Township, this one was devoted not to vegetables and fruits but to flowers. The small square yard was fenced in by a tall wooden latticework on two sides; the third side, facing the house, was a cascade of roses, an explosion of color in the clear tropical sunlight, reds and pinks and whites and yellows so vibrant they seemed to shimmer.
In the shade of a trellis heavy with more of them, startled bursts of red against the glossy green, sat a round white metal table and four white metal chairs, paint flaking from all. Andrew had barely seated himself when the back door opened and the old man shuffled out. Andrew sprang to his feet: legends, face to face, deserved respect.
At least eighty years old now, tufted hair white, face eroded, cheeks sunken, the old man still held himself erect, a triumph of will over gravity and time. He wore black slacks, a pair of imitation leather slippers. A white European-style shirt, tieless, buttoned at the knobby wrists and at the corded neck, cuffs and collar both too large.
“Sergeant Mbutu,” said Daniel Tsuto, and held out a hand ropy with vein and ligament. Andrew took it; the man’s grip was firm, like his voice. “Sit, sit,” said the old man, waving Andrew back into his chair and then lowering himself into the chair opposite. Slowly, stiffly: Andrew could hear, almost, the old bones creak.
“I knew one of your teachers,” said the old man. “David Obutu. He was a student of mine, you know.”
“Yes, m’zee, I know.” M’zee a term of honor granted to elders.
“He was disappointed when you left the university.”
Andrew nodded. “Yes, m’zee. I had no choice.”
The old man returned the nod. “Yes, yes. Choice is often a luxury, eh? Beyond a certain point, only the gods have choices, and perhaps not even they.” He placed his hands, one atop the other, in his lap. In Swahili, he said, “How may I help you, sergeant?”
Andrew answered in the same language. “M’zee, I come to ask you about Robert Atlee and Abraham Mayani.”
The old man smiled. His teeth were large, rectangular, pale yellow like old ivory: dentures. “The constabulary is investigating legends now, sergeant?”
“Early yesterday morning, a man was found murdered at the Sinbad Hotel. The man was Robert Atlee.”
Daniel Tsuto’s smile vanished and his head darted suddenly backward against the collar of his shirt. “Robert Atlee? Here?” Clearly surprised.
“Yes, m’zee. He was stabbed.”
The old man frowned. Thoughtful, he looked off for a moment, as though eyeing the splendor of his rosebushes. He turned back to Andrew. “There’s no question that the man was Robert Atlee?”
“None. His fingerprints were sent to the Ministry of Records. Because all members of the G.S.U. had been fingerprinted, his were on file.”
Another frown. “They found them so quickly? In one day? Fast work for bureaucrats. And you are investigating his death?”
“Not exactly, m’zee. I am conducting a related, but separate, inquiry.”
“And what might that be?”
Discretion. “There are certain individuals in the government who believe that Robert Atlee returned here for a specific purpose. I have been assigned to determine—”
“The gold,” said Daniel Tsuto. Abruptly, he smiled. “This was the reason the secret ministry helicopter came here last night?”
Truly, certain secrets were hopeless in a township this size. Andrew smiled back. “Yes, m’zee.”
Daniel Tsuto’s laugh was raspy, smoky. “If they wanted to keep it secret, why land it at the airport, where the entire Township might see it? Why not land it somewhere outside?”
Andrew shrugged. “I don’t know, m’zee.”
The old man shook his head. “Fools. That fat swine Ronald Nu, I suppose? He still searches for the gold?”
“Still?” Rather unsettled at hearing a minister called a fat swine, no matter how aptly.
“He was here, in the Township, during The Troubles,” said Daniel Tsuto. “After Abraham took the gold. He sat, in fact, exactly where you sit now. And he was conducting—” another smile “—a separate inquiry, just as you are. He’s very fond, you see, of separate inquiries.”
“He was here in what capacity, m’zee?”
Just then, the door to the house swung open and Daniel Tsuto’s granddaughter emerged into the yard, carrying two large glasses of limeade. Smiling, she gave one to Andrew, who thanked her, and gave the other to Daniel Tsuto. “I had to go to the duka,” she said. The shop. “We were out of limes.”
“That bandit overcharges,” said the old man.
“Limes cost four times as much in Sweden,” she said cryptically.
“Because they make them out of snow.” He turned to Andrew. “She spent an exchange year in Sweden. Eating snow and counting her toes to make sure they hadn’t fallen off.”
She smiled at Andrew. “Grandfather doesn’t approve of Sweden.”
“Free love and snow. No wonder they kill themselves so often.” He smiled at the young woman. “Thank you, Joanna.”
She nodded, smiled again at Andrew, and left.
Daniel Tsuto turned to Andrew. He sipped his limeade. “In what capacity, you ask. He’d been here earlier that day, part of the official G.S.U. investigation, asking whether I’d seen Abraham. I’d told them no. Later he returned by himself. Told me he was seeing some girl in town, a nurse, who swore she’d seen Abraham near my house. Then he hinted he was more than he seemed. Well, that much I never doubted. He looks and acts like a buffoon, but he’s as sly as a jackal. A very dangerous man, sergeant. Take care with him.”
“What did he mean, ‘more than he seemed’?”
“He was implying that he was an officer of the secret faction within the G.S.U., the ‘freedom fighters.’ ” The old man’s lips curled with scorn as he said the phrase. “He suggested that his only concern was Abraham’s welfare. If I could help locate Abraham, Nu would help him escape.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The same thing I’d told the others earlier. That I hadn’t seen Abraham.”
“Do you think it likely he told the truth? About being an officer of the secret faction?”
The old man shrugged. “I know he told the truth. He was the man who tried to recruit Abraham into this group.”
Andrew took a sip of limeade. “Abraham Mayani told you this?”
A small nod. “Yes.”
“When?”
The old man lifted a hand and waved it vaguely. “Sometime long before.” He leaned slightly forward. “Did you know, sergeant, that Abraham’s father and sister were murdered?”
“Yes. No arrest was ever made.”
The old man nodded. “They were murdered only two weeks after Abraham refused to join Nu’s organization.” He sat back.
Andrew sipped again at his drink, found that it tasted suddenly sour. “You think,” he said, “that Ronald Nu ordered the murders.”