Now two men marched down the red carpet to the stage as the music began again. A murmur of interest rushed through the crowd. One man wore a bright red suit and he carried a thin wooden box of highly polished wood. The man dressed all in green carried a smaller box. They showed the boxes to the men as the stage continued to rotate. Then a blast of trumpets ended the new music. The shouting and screaming from the men in the audience shut off at once, and in the sudden stillness Vice President Adams could hear the click of the latch as the red man opened the box he carried.
He lifted from the container a pearl-handled six-gun with a regular-looking barrel. There was a burst of trumpets and then silence again as the second man opened his box and took out a single silver bullet.
“Oh, no,” Adams moaned. The interpreter heard him and scowled.
“Mr. Vice President Adams. You agreed to come. It would be an insult beyond measure if you tried to walk out now. You must stay.”
The trumpets blared again, and the green man opened the weapon and inserted one round into the cylinder. Then he held the six-gun by the barrel and pushed the cylinder back in place. There was no way he could have put another bullet into the gun.
The hushed silence broke with applause and cheers as the red-dressed man handed the firearm to the woman on the stage. All this had happened Adams realized as the stage kept turning and turning.
“They wouldn’t do this for real,” Wally whispered into the Vice President’s ear. “It has to be a stunt. It will be all right, I’m sure.”
Adams shook his head. “I know this sort of thing happens in the Orient. I’ve never heard of it here. Oh, it’s going to happen, all right. With all that betting there would be a bloody riot if the event wasn’t concluded.”
The music blared again, and the girl took the revolver and spun the cylinder. She kept spinning it for a complete rotation of the stage. Again the music stopped. A gentle, sympathetic voice came over speakers, and the girl turned toward the red carpet listening. The voice crooned stronger and more hypnotic, and Adams wished desperately that he could understand the Wolof words.
Slowly the naked girl lifted the weapon and put the muzzle over her heart. Screams and yells erupted from the audience, then trailed off when she moved the gun. She held it easily in her right hand, lifted it, and put the muzzle against the side of her head. The voice continued as if directing her. The screams came from the audience. She moved the weapon again, staring hard at the black hole of the muzzle. Then she opened her mouth and pushed the barrel two inches inside.
Silence throbbed through the arena. The girl reached up with her left hand and spun the cylinder again. Then she closed her eyes. The voice came strongly, ending in a scream.
Adams couldn’t see the girl pull the trigger, but she must have. A second after the scream the weapon went off and the bullet exploded out of the back of the naked girl’s skull. Her head flopped over the back of the chair and the audience stared in agonizing silence. Then the screaming exploded in earnest as the bettors who had won charged the clerks, who had appeared around the stage, which had stopped rotating.
“We leave now,” the interpreter said. They stood, and were escorted quickly out a side stage-level door they hadn’t seen. Two men had to help President Kolda. Adams saw that the man was so drunk he couldn’t walk.
Wally touched the interpreter’s shoulder. “Take us to our hotel at once. The Vice President isn’t feeling well. Can you get us back to the hotel quickly?”
The interpreter smiled. “Is he ill, or is it just his soft-hearted feelings for the girl? Those girls get paid well. One pulled the trigger fifteen times and was never scratched. She retired with more than four million of your dollars. Some like the girl tonight lose the bet on their first try.” He nodded. “It is show business. Entertainment, no? Now I will get you back to your hotel.”
Twenty minutes later Vice President Adams sat heavily on the bed in the Presidential Suite in the Engaffe Hotel, the best in Sierra City, and tried to relax.
“I still can’t believe it. Those men bet whether she would live or die. She killed herself, and it was sanctioned by the highest elected official in this backward nation. There must have been three hundred people there screaming at the spectacle. That their President could know about such a terrible event is criminal. That he was there slopping down drink after drink and enjoying the thrill of seeing a young girl in a life-or-death exhibition is totally disgusting. How can we ever deal with these people again?”
Wally held a sheaf of papers he had picked up when they arrived at the hotel. He had started to speak, but let the Vice President have his say. Now he took his turn. “Some more bad news about President Kolda and his regime here. Our ambassador says that the country is in a shambles. That the President and every official the ambassador has investigated is hip deep in graft, corruption, and shows a cavalier abuse of power. One small item. Earlier this year we sent them twelve million dollars of hard currency, which was to be used to build houses and upgrade the buildings and farming technique in one area a half hour outside the capital with rich fertile land.
“The ambassador tells me that only one small building has been constructed and that the Farm Fund, as it was called, is down to a seven-thousand-dollar balance. Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else.”
Vice President Adams shook his head. “Did you see how those animals were screaming for the girl to pull the trigger? They were death merchants, most hoping that she would live since it was a safer bet, but the rest were bellowing and braying for her blood.” He shook his head and washed his hands over his face. “Sweet Mother of God, I’ll never forget the expression on that girl’s face just before she pulled the trigger. I’ll never get it blasted out of my memory for as long as I live.”
He took another deep breath. “What more do we have to do with these people? I’d like to cut out right now and fly to the next stop, but I know we can’t do that.”
“We have that tour tomorrow. We should see where they didn’t spend the money on the farming area.”
“So we cut them off at the pockets,” the Vice President said.
“There’s not much we can do, Mr. Vice President, about getting the lost money back. It’s probably in some Swiss bank account. We can make them aware that we know they stole the money and that there won’t be a cent more coming their way until they do what they promised they would.”
“Sounds good to me, Wally. I’ve got to have a long hot shower and see if I can wash some of that filth off my back. I’ll never forget that poor girl’s face. She must have been on drugs. High on coke probably. Did that interpreter say one girl survived fifteen sessions like that? What a mental nightmare that must be, knowing that your odds are one out of six that you’re dead. Damn, how do they find women to do that? Maybe they get druggers who are down and out and almost dead on the streets. Yeah, that must be where they get the girls.” He looked at his watch. “Is it eleven o’clock already? What’s for tomorrow? That tour?”
“The ambassador has arranged for us to visit several centers here. A ballet school, an industrial arts complex, something else, and the farm center where our foreign aid money was squandered. The head man of the army, General Kiffa Assaba, warned me that there could be trouble in that outlying area. It’s only twenty miles from the edge of town, but he said there had been vicious rebel murderers in that section from time to time. He suggested another place to visit in town. I told him we have been given specific instructions to visit that farmland. If he’s worried about our safety, he should send trucks filled with armed troops ahead and behind our two-car convoy. There will be one car filled with newspaper and media people right behind our limo.”