Jake, the older of the three, said, “Well, I can’t find out anything about him. Nobody seems to know if he’s an Egyptian, a Nigerian, a MOR … or an Eskimo, for that matter.”
“Did you check with headquarters?”
“So far they have nothing on him, except for some other inquiries from field workers.”
Below them, the river was widening out to the point where it resembled swampland more than a waterway. There were large numbers of waterbirds, and occasional herds of hippopotami. Isobel didn’t express her thoughts, but a moment of doubt hit her. What would all this be like when the dams were finished, the waters of this third largest of Africa’s rivers, ninth largest of the world’s, under control?
She pointed. “There’s Kabara.” The age-old river port lay below them. Cliff slapped one of his controls with the heel of his hand and the craft began to sink earthward.
They took up quarters in the new hotel which adjoined the new elementary school, and Isobel immediately went into her routine.
Dressed and shod immaculately, her head held high in confidence, she spent considerable time mingling with the more backward of the natives and especially the women. Six months ago, she had given a performance similar to that she had just finished in Gao, several hundred miles downriver.
Now she renewed old acquaintances, calling them by name—after checking her notes. Invariably, their eyes bugged. Their questions came thick, came fast in the slurring Songhoi and she answered them in detail. They came quickly under her intellectual domination. Her poise, her obvious well-being, flabbergasted them.
In all, they spent a week in the little river town, but even the first night Isobel slumped wearily in the most comfortable chair of their small suite’s living room.
She kicked off her shoes and wiggled weary toes.
“If my mother could see me now,” she complained. “After giving her all to get the apple of her eye through school, her wayward daughter winds up living with two men in the wilds of deepest Africa.” She twisted her mouth puckishly.
Cliff grunted, poking around in a bag for the bottle of cognac he couldn’t remember where he had packed. “Huh!” he said. “The next time you write her you might mention the fact that both of them are continually proposing to you and you brush it all off as a big joke.”
“Huh, indeed!” Isobel answered him. “Proposing, or propositioning? If either of you two Romeos ever rattle the doorknob of my room at night again, you’re apt to get a bullet through it.”
Jake winced. “Wasn’t me. Look at my gray hair, Isobel. I’m old enough to be your daddy.”
“Sugar daddy, I suppose,” she said mockingly.
“Wasn’t me either,” Cliff said, crisscrossing his heart and pointing upward.
“Huh!” said Isobel again, but she was really in no mood for their usual banter. “Listen,” she said, “what’re we accomplishing with all this masquerade?”
Cliff had found the French brandy. He poured three stiff ones and handed drinks to Isobel and Jake.
He knew he wasn’t telling her anything, but he said, “We’re a king-size rumor campaign, that’s what we are. We’re breaking down institutions the sneaky way.” He added reflectively. “A kinder way, though, than some.”
“But this—what did you call it earlier, Jake?—this Cinderella act I go through perpetually. What good does it do, really? I contact only a few hundreds of people at most. And there are millions here in Mali alone.”
“There are other teams, too,” Jake said mildly. “Several hundred of us doing one thing or another.”
“A drop in the bucket,” Isobel said, her piquant sepian face registering weariness.
Cliff sipped his brandy, shaking his big head even as he did so. “No,” he said. “It’s a king-size rumor campaign and it’s amazing how effective they can be. Remember the original dirty-rumor campaigns back in the States? Suppose two large laundry firms were competing. One of them, with a manager on the conscienceless side, would hire two or three professional rumor spreaders. They’d go around dropping into bars, barber shops, pool rooms. Sooner or later, they’d get a chance to drop some line such as did you hear about them discovering that two lepers worked at the Royal Laundry? You can imagine the barbers, the bartenders, and such professional gossips, passing on the good word.”
Isobel laughed, but unhappily. “I don’t recognize myself in the description.”
Cliff said earnestly, “Sure, only few score women in each town where you put on your act really witness the whole thing. But think how they pass it on. Each one of them tells the story of the miracle. A waif comes out of the desert. Without property, without a husband or family, without kinsfolk. Shy, dirty, unwanted. Then she’s offered a good position if she’ll drop the veil, discard the haik, and attend the new schools. So off she goes—everyone thinking to her disaster. Hocus-pocus, six months later she returns, obviously prosperous, obviously healthy, obviously well-adjusted. Fine. The story spreads for miles around. Nothing is so popular as the Cinderella story, and that’s the story you’re putting over. It’s a natural.”
“I hope so,” Isobel said. “Sometimes I think I’m helping put over a gigantic hoax on these people. Promising something that won’t be delivered.”
Jake looked at her unhappily. “I’ve thought the same thing, sometimes, but what are you going to be with people at this stage of development— subtle?”
Isobel dropped it. She held out her glass for more cognac. “I hope there’s something decent to eat in this place. Do you realize what I’ve been putting into my tummy this past week?”
Cliff shuddered.
Isobel patted her abdomen. “At least it keeps my figure in trim.”
“Um-m-m.” Jake pretended to leer heavily.
Isobel chuckled at him in a return to good humor. “Hyena,” she accused.
“Hyena?” Jake said.
“Sure, there aren’t any wolves in these parts,” she explained. “How long are we going to be here?”
The two men looked at each other. Cliff said, “Well, we’d like to finish out the week. Guy named Homer Crawford has been passing around the word to hold a meeting in Timbuktu the end of this week.”
“Crawford?”
“Homer Crawford, some kind of sociologist from the University of Michigan, I understand. He’s connected with the Reunited Nations African Development Project, heads one of their cloak-and-dagger teams.”
Jake grunted. “Sociologist? I also understand that he put in a hitch with the Marines and spent kind of a shady period of two years fighting with the FLN in Algeria.”
“On what side?” Cliff said interestedly.
“Darned if I know.”
Isobel said, “Well, we have nothing to do with the Reunited Nations.”
Cliff shook his large head negatively. “Of course not, but Crawford seems to think it’d be a good idea if some of us in the field would get together and… well, have sort of a bull session.”
Jake growled, “We don’t have much in the way of cooperation on the higher levels. Everybody seems to head out in all directions on their own. It can get chaotic. Maybe in the field we could give each other a few pointers. For one, I’d like to find out if any of the rest of these jokers know anything about that affair with the Cubans over in the Sudan.”
“I suppose it can’t hurt,” Isobel admitted. “In fact, it might be fun swapping experiences with some of these characters. Frankly, though, the stories I’ve heard about the African Development teams aren’t any too palatable. They seem to be a ruthless bunch.”
Jake looked down into his glass. “It’s a ruthless country,” he murmured.