Breen looked around. The bookshelves were full of thick books with weighty titles: Shakespeare Criticism 1919–1935, Hamlet and Oedipus, Ashanti and the Gold Coast, Tristes Tropiques.
“Cheated?” said Tozer.
“He has taken our money.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He called to say sorry. ‘I have lost sixty-two thousand pounds of your money. Please, Eddie. Save me. The police are after me.’ Go fuck yourself, Samuel Ezeoke.” He peered at the spoon and then put it down on the table.
“God,” said Tozer. “Sixty-two thousand pounds? Your money?”
“Not just my money. The committee’s money. All of us contributed. Expatriates over the world. Sam Ezeoke is our treasurer.”
“That’s a great deal of money for propaganda,” said Breen.
Okonkwo smiled.
“You gave him the money for Biafra and he embezzled it?” said Tozer.
“Oh, no, no, no. It is far worse than that. Embezzling it would at least have been an African thing to do. No. He lost it.”
“He was conned out of it,” said Breen.
Okonkwo banged the table loudly with the spoon. “Exactly.”
He stood, went to the front door and locked it, turning the sign that said OPEN round, so it faced the inside of the shop.
“There is nothing as dangerous as a man who imagines himself superior to the rest of us.”
“What is the money for?” asked Breen.
“What we were doing is not illegal.”
“What were you doing?”
“It is completely legal.”
“What is?”
Okonkwo spat into a dustbin. “How much do you know about Africa?”
“Very little.”
“You ruled us until eight years ago but you know nothing about us.” He smiled. “Our history and our culture mean nothing to you. You have heard of Rhodesia, I suppose?”
“Of course.”
“As a continent, we rarely agree with each other. However, one thing all black Africa agrees on is we hate Rhodesia. It is ruled by a white man. Ian Smith. And you have heard of him too?”
“Is he being lippy?” Tozer asked.
“Rhodesia supports Biafra. South Africa too. Ironic, don’t you think? White men in Africa suddenly find it convenient to support the cause of ethnic self-determination.”
“We’re in a hurry, Mr. Okonkwo,” said Tozer.
“Publicly we are raising money for propaganda. But we are also raising money to pay for mercenaries. Rhodesia supports us. Rhodesia supplies mercenaries.”
“So that party we went to. That was really raising money for mercenaries?” Tozer said.
“Yes.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Ezeoke is an idealist,” said Okonkwo. “From the start he has never liked the idea of us paying white men to fight our war.”
“You’re not an idealist, I take it?” said Breen.
Okonkwo opened a drawer and pulled out a small white stick, opened his mouth and dug it into a crevice between his teeth several times. “Of course I am. But the Rhodesians are the best mercenaries in Africa.”
The phone rang. Okonkwo ignored it. “We already have some Rhodesians in Biafra. The Federals are scared of them. We Africans have not had proper training. You English made sure of that. A few dozen properly trained men can run rings around a hundred Africans. And, with good reason, given what you have done to us, we Africans still fear white men more than our fellow black men.”
“You should answer the phone,” said Breen.
“It’s probably no one.”
“Pick it up.”
Okonkwo picked up the ringing phone. “Hello?”
He listened, then said, “I am closed, I am afraid. It will not be convenient. Try again in an hour.” He put the phone back down abruptly.
“Who was it?”
“Just a customer.”
Breen wondered if he was lying, but he could see nothing in his expression. “You were saying. Ezeoke doesn’t like the idea of giving money to Rhodesians.”
“Sam Ezeoke is a very passionate man. He wants Africans to show other Africans how we can create a noble postimperial era. We can control our own destiny. All we need is some guns. He does not understand the first thing about modern warfare.” He dug the stick between his teeth again. “The Rhodesian mercenaries are racist devils. But they are greedy racist devils. They are our racist devils. Sam has always argued against the rest of the committee. He believes in African solutions for an African continent.” Okonkwo sighed. “It turns out he had a better plan. One he didn’t want to tell us about because he thought we were not true Africanists. We had become corrupted. So he decided to use all our money to buy the arms himself. He met with an arms dealer. A supposed arms dealer.”
“Major Sullivan,” said Breen.
“Is that his name? I did not know this. You can always find a corrupt Englishman somewhere.”
“Major Sullivan?” said Tozer. “Oh God.”
“It’s my guess,” said Breen.
Okonkwo spat a wad of chewed stick into a dustbin at his feet. “You might expect me to hate this man for stealing our money,” he said. “I do not. The English are always the English. It is Ezeoke who I hate. I hate him for being stupid and not trusting his fellow Africans. It is the same with all these people, all these Pan-Africanists. Nkrumah. Nyerere. We Africans are all in this together. At least, we Africans are all in this together as long as you do it my way. And now look what happened.”
“Sullivan probably met Ezeoke through his daughter,” said Breen. “He was up to his eyeballs in debt. He may have strung Ezeoke a story about being able to get him guns.”
“I don’t know who he gave our money to. I don’t care. All I know is that he had our money. And all of it is gone. All of it.”
“Did you lose much?”
“Me. I did not have much. Two thousand pounds. I don’t care for myself. We all gave it freely. It was like a fever. ‘Take our money. Take all of it.’ Ezeoke gave the most, of course.”
“How many of you?”
“There are fifty-six of us. Some are rich. Others, like myself, are not. But we all gave what we could to the cause. And it’s all gone. Dogs eat shit, but it’s the goat that gets rotten teeth.”
“What?”
“An Igbo saying. It suffers a little in translation.”
“So what’s the connection with the girl?” Tozer asked Breen.
“What girl?” said Okonkwo.
“You said he wanted you to hide him?” asked Breen, ignoring his question.
“Yes.”
“And…?”
“Of course I refused. I am not a lawbreaker, Mr. Breen.”
Breen walked slowly around the shop. On one shelf, to the right of Okonkwo’s desk, there was a worn wooden board with two rows of little cups. There were beans in some of the cups and none in the others. Breen reached in and scooped up the beans and dropped them back into the cups, one by one. “If you were Ezeoke, where would you go now?”
“I am not Ezeoke.”
“If you were.”
“If I was Ezeoke I would go back to Biafra.”
“How?”
“I would go back to Biafra and let a Federal soldier put a bullet into my brain.”
A woman, head covered in a scarf against the cold, tried the door, rattling the handle.
“Go away,” said Okonkwo, waving his hand angrily. “I am closed. Can’t you see the sign?”
The woman disappeared down the street.
“Ezeoke told me it was only a matter of time before the Federal troops collapsed.”
Okonkwo laughed out loud. “We have lost Port Harcourt. We have lost Nsukka and Enugu, our capital. We are fighting from the bush. What does he think? This is some strategic retreat to weaken the enemy? Our only strategy is to prolong the war until the tide of opinion turns to our side.”
“But all those children are going to die,” said Tozer.
“It’s not us killing them. It is the Federals,” said Okonkwo.
“If you were Ezeoke, how would you go back?”
Okonkwo picked up his polish rag, poured some Brasso onto it and started polishing the metal spoon again. “The country is surrounded. The coast is cut off. There is only one way left to get there now.”