“Patricia,” she said and kissed him, and he couldn’t not hold her, he had to be aware how alive she was, how good she felt.
This is impossible, he thought. This is ridiculous. I’m on my way back to Ellen, there’s dead bodies around here like lawn statues, this can’t be happening.
But it was. After earthquakes people fall into one another’s arms; after ship sinkings, disastrous fires, pitched battles, the survivors reach for one another; after the dragon is slain, the damsel rewards the knight; after the danger, life surges.
She lowered her head to his shoulder. “I know it’s awful,” she whispered, then looked up again, half erotic and half defiant. “I can’t help it. Terrible things happened, I don’t know how I can feel this way, but I do. I was in Hell, there was no hope, and now I’m back, and I need something warm and friendly inside me.”
“I’m Lew.” he said.
73
“You understand, Mr. Chase,” said the smarter one, Obuong, “we can make no commitment now. There will still have to be a very close investigation.”
Chase understood a lot more than that. “I welcome an investigation,” he said, smiling his self-confidence. “All I hope for is the opportunity to be of service, to prove my worth to the government and people of Kenya.”
They stood in a close triumvirate beside the Mercedes, Chase and Charles Obuong and Godfrey Magon. Along the shore four rafts were now moored, their eighty feet of width using up all the available coastline space. The fifth and sixth rafts were even now being lashed to the lakeward edges of the first and second by a squad of soldiers. The remaining soldiers continued to sprawl on the ground, accompanied by a growing number of Balim’s bewildered workmen, who didn’t yet know if they were under arrest. Frank had been given permission to go off in a truck to the general store to make his important phone call, and Balim himself paced nervously back and forth in front of his unfinished hotel, gazing out at the lake, even though he knew his son wasn’t out there.
As for Chase, he had snatched—he was even now snatching—victory from the jaws of defeat. The most incredible day of his life this had been, ranging all over southern Uganda and now to Kenya, twice captured and in presumably hopeless circumstances, twice surviving to land on his feet. His Mercedes was gone, with the wealth hidden in its door panels. The Angel had failed in its mission about as thoroughly as it was possible to fail. Chase had been bound, beaten, pissed on, insulted, robbed, and betrayed; and yet at the end he would finish on top.
And why not? How could these tame bureaucrats resist a man who’d spent his life playing such minor officials as though they were toy drums? He spoke to them with assurance, insinuatingly, letting them know he shared with them the bureaucrat’s outlook and language. Also, he was a modestly famous man in East Africa; he had accompanied Amin here and there as a high-level official, he had been photographed with popes and presidents and prime ministers. Past troubles in another land had no importance here. It was true that Obuong and Magon were seeing him now in an unfortunate state, but his name and manner and background simply had to override his dirty face and torn clothes. They were minor civil servants, and he was the sort to whom they had learned in infancy to bend the knee; how could they hold back against him?
Without actually acknowledging any connection between himself and the Angel’s attempted piracy, he had led them to realize that if he’d been prepared to take charge of so much coffee he surely already had a customer for it. A customer at a good price, who would not be fussy about documentation.
He could bring these people together with Grossbarger. In fact, he would be delighted to.
They would also be delighted, of course, since their own shares would be proportionately higher, though Obuong did demur briefly, wondering about Balim, mentioning his name in an indecisive way. But Chase shrugged that off, saying, “The Asian? I’m not sure where he fits into this, if at all. He never owned the coffee. In fact, he’s never even had physical possession of it.”
“Still,” Obuong said, “still, Mr. Chase, one does feel a certain moral obligation.”
Meaning that to cut Balim out completely might have repercussions, might give Balim no reason not to make trouble. “If you want to be generous,” Chase said, admiring Obuong’s nobility with his smile, “I suppose some sort of emolument could be given to the Asian, to cover his expenses and so on. What should we call it? A finder’s free?”
Magon laughed, but Obuong gave the phrase serious consideration. “Perhaps tax credits on other transactions would be a better way to do it,” he suggested. “It would associate him not so clearly with this coffee.”
“Very good,” Chase said, and all at once realized it wasn’t the missing son that Balim was thinking about while staring out over the lake, it was Isaac Otera. Balim had to know he was being squeezed out of the deal, that it was happening here and now, but what could he do about it? He didn’t dare challenge Chase directly, not an Asian challenge a white man like Chase in this black country, no matter what Chase might or might not have done to him in the past. Frank Lanigan would be useless in a situation like this. Otera, Balim’s antibureaucrat, was the only one who might have been able to join this conversation and salvage something for his employer beyond a few vague tax credits. But Frank in his wisdom had placed Otera on the last raft; it would be half an hour at least before that raft reached shore, and by then it would be far too late.
In fact, the best thing for Chase to do at this moment, to cement the new alliance, was to leave these two alone to plot against him. Such plotting would of course presuppose the existence of the alliance, which would confirm it in their minds. He was confident there was little they could think of to do that would harm him. Also, his moving away now—opening the field, as it were, to Balim and Otera—would merely serve to underline his self-assurance. “I know you have other things to do,” he said. “I’ve taken up too much of your time.”
“No, no,” Obuong said, “you’ve been very helpful.”
“I hoped I could be. And tomorrow, after I’ve cleaned up, rested, had a good wash in a hotel, I’m sure we’ll all want to talk again.”
Obuong smiled. “We surely will,” he said.
Chase strolled away. Behind him, Magon excitedly began in Swahili, “He’s in no position to—”
There wasn’t even any necessity to eavesdrop, though it was nice to reflect that here he was in a new nation where all his secrets were intact.
There was a thick-trunked tree over near the smoldering oil-drum fire; Chase walked over there, sat down, and made himself more or less comfortable with his back against the tree, where he could look out over the lake and watch the rafts slowly arrive. Beside the Mercedes, Obuong and Magon murmured passionately together.
All that coffee, Chase thought, looking at the great wall of sacks, eighty feet long and twelve feet high. All in all, he was rather pleased at what he had wrought. All that coffee. All that money.
It’s pleasant to be a winner.
74
“I’m going for a walk,” Ellen replied, three different times. First she replied it to the night clerk, as she passed once more through the lobby. “Very late at night,” he suggested. “Insomnia,” she explained, and pushed through the glass doors to the outside world before he could say anything more.
Twenty minutes later, she replied it to the guard down by the planes parked beside the taxiway, who challenged her with a great deal of suspicion and perhaps even fright, though he was the one clutching the submachine gun. “No walk by planes,” he insisted, staring at her round-eyed. Pointing past him, she said, “Don’t be silly, I fly that plane. I can certainly walk around it.” He became uncertain, but clung to sureties: “No fly tonight.” She agreed: “No fly tonight. Walk tonight.” Then, hoping she looked a lot cooler than she felt, she simply stepped around him and went for a stroll among the planes, and he gave her no more trouble.