“Yes, I did.”
“Describe him.”
“Canadian. Ugandan citizenship, I believe. A nasty piece of work, I suspect. Very close to Amin.”
“He has been in touch viss me.” Grossbarger watched the last of the second bottle of Moselle poured by the waiter into the three glasses, then went on, “Indirectly. He suggests zat ve might make a deal. I do not know vat he can possibly have in mind, but ven you return you vill contact him on my behalf.”
Technically, Sir Denis could only represent the International Coffee Board in this transaction, but since the Board’s only purpose was to assure a reasonable level of honesty and consistency in these large-scale coffee deals, it was not at all unusual for one side or the other to employ him at some particularly delicate stage of the operation. He possessed four qualities unlikely to be found anywhere else: he was knowledgeable, trustworthy, dispassionate, and discreet.
“I’ll be happy to,” he said. “Is it a bribe, do you think? To assure a smoothness of the flow?”
But Grossbarger shook his head, poking at his remaining fish. “It doesn’t have zat feeling. Ve are already paying chai to a number of minor officials zere. Zat’s vat zey call it in east Africa, you know.”
“Chai?”
“It is Swahili for ‘tea.’ I had my research people look it up.”
“A bribe is tea,” Sir Denis said, frowning. “I don’t follow the derivation.”
“Ven you vant somesing from ze government,” Grossbarger explained, “you invite ze official concerned to join you in ze shop across ze street from ze government building for a cup of tea vile you discuss ze situation.”
“Chai,” Neudorf said, seating himself again at the table. “You two are planning a bribe. There’ll be none of that in the Fourth Reich.”
Grossbarger raised his glass in cheerful mockery. “To ze honest and simple Aryan,” he said. “And to ze blitzkrieg of ze dreaming old men.”
9
The shower stall was a concrete-block closet painted a blurry pink, with a mildewed white plastic curtain and a gray cement floor featuring the rusty beauty spot of the drain. Light oozed fitfully through a fixed Lucite panel in the ceiling. The water, which came from a concrete cistern on the roof and was heated by the sun, was a lukewarm trickle in which Lew found it almost impossible to rinse. Elephant Soap was the brand, and it lathered wonderfully, which was a pity.
He finally gave up, stepped out to the other part of the bathroom, and finished with a cloth dipped in the cold water of the sink. Then, shaved and clean and shivering, he padded wet and naked to the kitchen, where he found Ellen, dressed in tan slacks and a Chorus Line T-shirt, drinking bottled Coke with a small dapper young Asian in a Mondrian silk shirt. The Asian stood, smiling at Lew’s nakedness, his black-olive eyes dancing with mischief. He said, “And you will be Lew Brady.”
“I not only will be,” Lew said, shaking water drops off his fingertips in case this was someone he should shake hands with, “I already am.”
“Coke?” asked Ellen, also amused. “This is Mr. Balim’s son.”
“Bathar Balim, at your service.” He was a few years younger than Lew, and he bowed to emphasize the difference. “I am here with the car,” he said.
“Yes,” Lew told Ellen, then said to Bathar Balim, “I’m not quite ready.”
“No hurry.”
The refrigerator was small and very rusty, both within and without. Ellen took a Coke from it—it seemed to be filled to capacity with nothing but bottles of Coca-Cola and White Cap beer—opened it, and handed it to Lew, who pointed at the elaborate watch on Bathar’s slender wrist, saying, “Could you tell me the time? Our watches stopped.”
“Seven minutes past one. Do you need the date?”
“No, thanks.” And not the barometric pressure, either. Lew carried the Coke and the information to the bedroom, where he set his own watch and put on his clothes.
They had awakened several times, separately or together, in the filtered daylight of the bedroom, but none of the attempts at consciousness had taken until at last Ellen had pounded his hip with her fist, crying out, “We have to get up!”
So they’d gotten up. In the kitchen—small, cheaply outfitted, with a light-green tile floor—there had been a note on the Formica-and-chrome table: “Lew. Phone 40126 when you’re ready. Frank.”
The phone had eventually been found in the living room—rickety red Danish sofa, massive Victorian armchair, a white-elephant sale of mismatched tables and lamps—and when Lew had dialed the number, a crisp male voice had answered in Swahili.
“Frank Lanigan,” Lew said.
“Mr. Brady?”
“Yes.”
“This is Isaac Otera, Mr. Balim’s assistant.”
“Hello.”
“Shall I send a car for you now?”
“Give us half an hour.”
“Of course.”
But half an hour hadn’t been quite long enough, not with the soap problem in the shower. Dressed, Lew filled his pockets: wallet, Zippo lighter, three-inch spring-action knife, sunglasses, leather folder containing passport and driver’s licenses and inoculation record and (false) Interpol membership card, Swiss Army knife, ball-point pen, pocket flashlight with a twenty-dollar bill wrapped around the two triple-A batteries. Finishing the Coke, he walked back to the kitchen, where Ellen was laughing warmly at something Bathar Balim had said. The Asian turned his smiling bland face when Lew entered. “All ready?”
“All ready.”
Lew put the empty bottle on the table, but Ellen at once picked it up, saying, “Bathar says this is our house now.” The small garbage can had a foot pedal–operated lid, which squeaked when she opened it to throw the bottle away.
“Home sweet home,” Bathar said, smiling at Lew.
Lew bared his teeth back. “I’ll have to put up my hunting prints,” he said.
Outside the house, the humid heat was a surprise. A white haze veiled the sky but did nothing to cut the glare of the sun. The house, a low yellow pillbox on a dirt street lined with similar structures, was surrounded by hard-baked dry earth in which only a few sawtooth weeds could grow. This section wasn’t a neighborhood but an encampment; there was no sense anywhere that anyone thought of this place as home. The two tiny black children playing with toy airplanes in the dirt several houses away seemed to be merely idling away the time until the moving van should arrive.
The car was a white Nissan safari van, rather cleaner than Frank’s Land-Rover. Ellen rode beside Bathar, Lew behind her. Bathar was as fast a driver as Frank, but much smoother. He seemed to be saying, If anyone could lead a camel through the eye of a needle, it would be me. Lew kept track of the turnings, surprised that his mind contained absolutely no memory of the initial drive here with Frank.
At Balim’s blue headquarters, Bathar smiled at Ellen and said, “Nice to meet you both.”
“You, too,” said Lew.
Smiling, Bathar drove away, as Frank came out the front door, grinning like a Derby winner and saying, “Had your beauty sleep?”
Lew was feeling generally irritable. Trying for the light touch, he said, “Don’t we look it?”
“She does. Come on inside.”
Inside was a cluttered warehouse, piled with cartons, crates, mounds of machinery parts. Because the windows were so dirty and the stacks of goods so messily high, the light was very dim, which gave a first false impression that it must be cooler here than in the glare outside. In fact, it was just as humid and possibly more hot and certainly stuffier. A few blacks, seated on the floor, playing some sort of card game, moved with the slow economy appropriate to the climate.