What exactly did the fellow mean, His Excellency wondered. I handled him pretty well, though. I certainly won't stand for my commissioners sneaking up to me with vague accusations against their colleagues. It's not cricket! No sense of loyalty, no esprit de corps, nothing! And he calls himself a university professor. No wonder they say he now heads a handclapping, spiritualist congregation on campus. Disgraceful. Soft to the core, that's what they all are. Professor! My semi-literate uncle was right all the way when he said that we asked the white man to pack and go but did not think he would take with him all the utensils he brought when he came. Professor! The white man put all that back in his box when he took his leave. But come to think of it whatever put it into our head when we arrived on this seat that we needed these half-baked professors to tell us anything. What do they know? Give me good military training and discipline any day!
'Come in, Attorney-General… Sit down. I sent for you to ask you a direct, simple question. I realize that you are a lawyer but I am extremely busy and I want plain speaking and to the point. Right? I have received intelligence from various sources indicating that the Commissioner for Information is perhaps not as loyal to me as he might be. Now as you are well aware this is a very serious and very sensitive and very delicate matter and I am asking you in the strictest confidence. Nothing about this must get outside these four walls.' He indicated the four walls two at a time like an airline hostess pointing out exits in emergency drill before take-off. The Attorney-General nodded four or five times in quick succession.
'Fine. What would you make of such intelligence?'
The Attorney-General was perched on the edge of his chair, his left elbow on the table, his neck craning forward to catch his Excellency's words which he had chosen to speak with unusual softness as if deliberately to put his hearer at a disadvantage; or on full alert on pain of missing a life and death password. As he watched his victim straining to catch the vital message he felt again that glow of quiet jubilation that had become a frequent companion especially when as now he was disposing with consummate ease of some of those troublesome people he had thought so formidable in his apprentice days in power. It takes a lion to tame a leopard, say our people. How right they are!
As he savoured this wonderful sense of achievement gained in so short a time spreading over and soaking into the core of his thinking and his being like fresh-red tasty palm-oil melting and diffusing itself over piping hot roast yam he withdrew his voice still further into his throat and, for good measure, threw his head back on his huge, black, leather chair so that he seemed to address his words at the high, indifferent ceiling rather than the solicitous listener across the table.
Suddenly suspicious like a quarry sniffing death in the air but uncertain in what quarter it might lurk the Attorney-General decided to stall. For a whole minute almost, he stood on one spot, making no move, offering no reply.
'Well?' His Excellency was stung into loudness by the other's delay and silence. He was also now sitting bolt upright. 'Did you hear what I said or should I repeat?'
'No need to repeat, Your Excellency. I heard you perfectly. You see, Your Excellency, your humble servant is a lawyer. My profession enjoins me to trust only hard evidence and to distrust personal feeling and mere suspicion.'
'Attorney-General, I sent for you not to read me a lecture but to answer my question. You may be the Attorney but don't forget I am the General.'
The Attorney-General exploded into peals of laughter, uncontrollable and beer-bellied. Through it he repeated again and again whenever he could: 'That's a good one, Your Excellency, that's a good one!' His Excellency, no doubt pleased with the dramatic result his wit had produced but not deigning to show it, merely fixed a pair of immobile but somewhat indulgent eyes on his Attorney-General, patiently waiting for his mirth to run its course. Finally it began to as he took the neatly-folded silk handkerchief out of his breast-pocket and dabbed his eyes daintily like a fat clown.
'You will now answer my question?' said His Excellency in a slightly amused tone.
'I am sorry, Your Excellency. Don't blame me; blame Your Excellency's inimitable sense of humour… To speak the truth, Your Excellency, I have no evidence of disloyalty on the part of my honourable colleague.' He paused for effect. But nothing showed on His Excellency's face. 'But lawyers are also human. I have a personal feeling which may not stand up in court, I agree, but I hold it very strongly and if Chris were here I would say it to his face. I don't think Chris is one hundred percent behind you.'
'Why do you think you have that feeling?'
'Why do I have it? well let's put it this way. I have watched my colleague in question closely in the last year or so and my impression is that he does not show any joy, any enthusiasm in matters concerning this government in general and Your Excellency in particular. I was saying precisely that to him only a few minutes ago. Why do you go about with this tight face all the time, I said. Cheer up my friend. But he can't cheer up. Why? The reason is not far to seek. Two of you were after all class-mates at Lord Lugard College. He looks back to those days and sees you as the boy next door. He cannot understand how this same boy with whom he played all the boyish pranks, how he can today become this nation's Man of Destiny. You know, Your Excellency it was the same trouble Jesus had to face with his people. Those who knew him and knew his background were saying: "Is it not the same fellow who was born in a goat shed because his father had no money to pay for a chalet?"…'
He was going on and on, but His Excellency's mind was now divided between what he was saying and the echoes of old President Ngongo's advice: 'Your greatest risk is your boyhood friends, those who grew up with you in your village. Keep them at arm's length and you will live long.' The wise old tortoise!
A new respect for his Attorney-General was now reflected on the mirror of his face where the shrewd lawyer saw and caught its beams in both hands. This giant iroko, he thought to himself, is not scaled every day, so I must get all the firewood it can yield me now while I am atop.
'As for those like me, Your Excellency, poor dullards who went to bush grammar schools, we know our place, we know those better than ourselves when we see them. We have no problem worshipping a man like you. Honestly I don't. You went to Lord Lugard College where half of your teachers were Englishmen. Do you know, the nearest white men I saw in my school were an Indian and two Pakistanis. Do you know, Your Excellency, that I was never taught by a real white man until I went to read law at Exeter in my old age as it were. I was thirty-one. You can't imagine, Your Excellency how bush people like me were. During my first year in Britain I saw Welsh Rarebit on the menu one fine day and I rubbed my hands together and my mouth began to water because I thought I was going to eat real bush-meat from the forests of Wales!'
His Excellency was now definitely amused and smiling. The Attorney-General was dazzled by his own performance and success. Who would have believed His Excellency would listen this long to a man talking about himself and even smile at his jokes?
'I say this, Your Excellency, to show that a man of my background has no problem whatsoever worshipping a man like you. And in all fairness to my colleague — and I want to be scrupulously fair to him — he does have a problem; he wants to know why you and not him should be His Excellency. I don't mean he has said so in so many words to me but it is in his mind. I am not a mind reader but I am sure it is there, Your Excellency…'
'Thank you. You have no evidence, only a rather interesting theory. I appreciate it. You know I don't as a rule go about snooping for this kind of information, or setting my commissioners to spy on each other. I can assure you there is a very special reason, reason of state, why I put that question to you. And I appreciate your candid answer. In a way I am relieved and very happy that there is no evidence whatsoever. Now, you must forget we ever talked about it. As I said before, not a word about this to any living soul, you und'stand?'