He turned to another of the men, but what he would have said was drowned out by the sudden roar of a low-flying plane skimming past, barely above the building roof. Everybody in the room instinctively ducked his head and hunched his shoulders until the roar faded. Then Lew saw his students exchange an amused and knowing glance, and he shook his head.
As they all knew, he was living with a pilot named Ellen Gillespie, who worked for the pipeline construction company. She always buzzed him on her return flight so he could drive out to the airport and pick her up.
Which made it seem like he was pussy-whipped or something—that’s what these clowns were grinning about—but it wasn’t like that at all. Ellen was Grade A; they fit together terrifically; everything was or should be fine. Would be fine if he would line up a real job somewhere.
Okay. The plane’s roar had faded, and he had another few minutes before leaving for the airport. Standing close to his next victim, a very broad-shouldered black man named Woody, Lew said, “Okay, Woody. You know the move?”
“Yes, sir, I do.” There was a gleam in Woody’s eye; he was really going to try for it this time. Lew hoped the man would succeed, to give the entire class a lift. He also hoped the wall he was run into wouldn’t be the one with the mirror.
“You’re about to get punched,” he said, reared back his fist, and felt a sharp pain in his shin. “Ow,” he said, his concentration broken, and Woody punched him smartly in the eye. Then Lew threw his own punch; Woody plucked his fist out of the air, spun him, twisted his arm up his back, and ran him into the side wall.
Suddenly older and a lot more tired, Lew picked himself off the floor as his students yelled and cheered and clapped Woody on the back. The son of a bitch had kicked him in the shin!
When the celebrations and congratulations at last died down, Lew said, “There. That’s what I’m talking about. Woody, you’re the first guy here to figure it out. The rest of you guys think it over, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He stood ramrod-stiff while his class trailed out, chatting and chuckling and offering to buy Woody any number of beers. Then, alone at last, he permitted himself to groan and to rub the various parts that hurt.
“Something,” he muttered, massaging himself and limping over to his outer clothing on one of the folding chairs. “Something else,” he mumbled into the musky wool of a sweater he was pulling over his head. “Something has to happen.”
2
Baron Chase, a man so steeped in his own villainy that the evidences of his evil now only amused him, paced the hotel-room floor like a pirate captain on his quarterdeck. “I am talking,” he said, “about stealing a train.”
“You must forgive my English,” Mazar Balim requested. He spoke better English than most men of any nationality. “You are suggesting the holding up of a train? Pursuant to its robbery?” A well-off merchant of fifty-three, he sat on the bed, round body and short legs, like Humpty Dumpty, blinking up at Chase.
“I am suggesting stealing a train,” Baron Chase said, smiling around his cigar, “pursuant to its rape.” Secure in his power, giving Balim a moment to think, he paused in his pacing to look out the narrow slatted window with its view of the alley leading to Standard Street, where a rag-dressed woman now walked in the bright sunlight, balancing on her head a rusted five-gallon drum filled with bits of wood and metal.
In taking this modest room in the rear of the New Stanley Hotel, away from the conversational chatter of the Thorntree Café and the traffic noise of Kimathi Street, Chase had registered as James Martin, U.S. citizen, of Akron, Ohio, representing the Monogram Bicycle Tire Company of that city, and furnishing a passport, American Express card, and other documents in support of this identity. However, he dared not meet with Balim in either the first-floor cocktail lounge or the outdoor café, as “James Martin” would normally have done, but was forced to discuss the scheme with him here in this claustrophobic room, with its one comfortable armchair that Chase scorned, while Balim sat like a fat obedient boy on the edge of the bed, watching with round-eyed patience.
There are several first-rate hotels in Nairobi, but none of the others would have done. The Hilton and the Intercontinental cater to the package tourists, mostly American but also European, while the Norfolk caters to Britons in whom the spirit of the Raj still lives, as well as to those Scandinavians and Germans who like to pretend they’re English. In the bars and restaurants of those hotels the customers’ faces are all white. Only in the New Stanley, the businessman’s hotel, the politicians’ and journalists’ hotel, are the customers—and their visitors—a mixture of white and black and Asian.
But even here Chase had to be wary. There was too much danger, in any public place, of his being recognized by a reporter or a civil servant as not James Martin of the bicycle tires at all but Baron Chase, of Canadian birth but now of Ugandan citizenship, an official in the government of Uganda and special adviser to Idi Amin himself. His presence here in Nairobi, in discussion with an ex-Ugandan Asian businessman, would be bound to cause questions; and if the questions were to reach the ears of Amin, it would be too late for answers.
“Where is this train?”
Turning from the window, withdrawing from his mouth the cigar he’d brought from Kampala, Chase allowed himself to look both surprised and amused. “Where is it? Don’t you want to know what it carries?”
“Not necessarily,” Balim said. “I am a businessman, Mr. Chase, which is a very small and cautious form of thief. I am prepared to remain small and cautious the rest of my days. I had enough of drama in ’seventy-two.”
Five years before, in 1972, Amin had driven from Uganda the sixty thousand native-born residents and citizens of Asian heritage, forcing them to leave behind all their holdings and personal possessions except for cash to the equivalent of one hundred dollars U.S. Balim had been among those deported; because his mercantile trade had previously expanded into Kenya, he had been luckier than most.
“That was before my time,” Chase said. “I had nothing to do with that.”
Balim shrugged. “You would have,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I was in Angola in ’seventy-two,” Chase said. “Working for one faction or another.”
“Or even two at a time,” Balim suggested.
“It carries coffee,” Chase said. His grayish pocked cheeks grew gaunt when he drew on the cigar. “Current market value, about three million pounds U.K.”
“Six million dollars.” Balim nodded. “A train full of coffee. The border between Uganda and Kenya is closed.”
“Of course.”
“This is Ugandan coffee.”
“There will be an airlift,” Chase told him, “operating out of Entebbe. It’s being laid on by a British-Swiss consortium, selling our coffee to the Brazilians to make up for their shortfall.”
“My knowledge of the world does not extend to South America,” Balim said. “I apologize for that. Why would Brazil have a shortfall in coffee?”
“Frost hit the crop.”
Balim sighed. “God’s diarrhea falls with equal justice everywhere.”
“The train will cross the northern uplands,” Chase told him, “stopping at each plantation to pick up the crop. By the time it reaches Tororo it’ll be full. Then it travels the main line west to Entebbe.”
Balim patted his soft palms against his round knees. His eyes were bright as he looked at Chase. He said, “And somewhere along this line, between Tororo and Entebbe, something happens.”
“The train never reaches Jinja,” Chase said.