THE SAUDIS WERE as good as their word. They started delivering construction equipment, large aggressive machines which tore up the earth to make room for military barracks and installations. By now Bat knew that the Ministry of Power had been used to divert resources from other ministries for military purposes. The leeway the Saudis enjoyed was immense. Was this the beginning of the prince’s island-buying spree? Were the islands going to be used for military purposes? Nobody seemed to have the answers. The situation was made hazier by rumours that Amin had given the green light for the demolition of the king’s palace, which would be replaced by the biggest military barracks in the country, with mosques, playgrounds, swimming pools and gigantic hangars to house MiG 200 fighter-bombers. It was said that he wanted the grand project finished in time to mark ten years since his defeat of the king’s forces in 1966. There were rumours of impending civil unrest among southerners if he dared go through with the plans. There were threats to poison food and water used by the military and to flood their barracks with dysentery and diarrhoea. The country was awash with fictions and fabrications, with both opponents and proponents chopping up scanty fact and liberally mingling it with fantasy.
The feverish rivalry between the Saudi princes was bound to surface and bear consequences locally. Trouble took an indirect route. One day at a state banquet Robert Ashes called General Bazooka aside and confronted him with the fact that money had changed hands before the elder prince had been awarded the contract. The news hit the General like a scalding gust of foul wind. The fact that it was his arch-enemy who broke the news to him made him mad. Is there no limit to the power this bastard wields?
Since taking over the Anti-Smuggling Unit, Robert Ashes’ power had multiplied tenfold: he now also investigated corruption, whatever that was. What if he told the Marshal about all the money? Was the man trying to blackmail or threaten him? Or was he just flaunting his powers, rubbing it in? More troubling was the fact that he had failed to plant spies in this snake’s camp. How long would this imbalance of power remain unaddressed? Why weren’t other disgruntled generals taking action against this reptile?
Within a very short time Robert Ashes had become the Marshal’s darling confidant. General Bazooka had hoped that the relationship would cool down after a year or so, but it was just gaining momentum. Ashes had added the role of court jester to his repertoire. He cracked jokes and played pranks nobody would get away with. He made generals unwittingly sit on balloons which made prolonged farting noises at big functions or meetings of the Defence Council, which he dared call the Farting Council. The Marshal loved it.
One day he drove to a state banquet in a dirty lorry which carried four Englishmen dressed as eighteenth-century nobles, complete with white wigs, powdered faces and knickerbockers. The Marshal laughed loud and long as the clowns held a beer-drinking and beef-eating competition. When it was discovered that the clowns had eaten pork instead of halal meat, the Muslim generals were scandalized and wanted to use the case to get rid of Ashes. But the cocaine-snorting, whisky-swilling Marshal only made Ashes apologize, and the matter was forgotten.
Another time Ashes brought three white nuns dressed as Kakwa traditional dancers. They wore flamboyant headgear, skin loincloths, beads and amulets, and carried spears and bull-horns. They leaped and swayed clumsily while the scandalized audience clapped and whispered. A large bathtub was brought and they held a mud-wrestling contest. Afterwards the Marshal found out that the women were not nuns but the wives of Copper Motors officials. He loved Ashes’ creativity and improvisation.
On another occasion Ashes came wearing a gorilla suit with axe teeth and red lips. The audience froze, expecting Amin to take grave offence. The gorilla hopped about snatching hats from the heads of appalled generals. Amin clapped loudest. Some generals suspected that the Marshal had ordered the hat-snatching just to humiliate and unsettle them. Maybe they were the gorillas. In a world of shifting loyalties and acute uncertainty, Robert Ashes seemed to be the only person above it all, if you disregarded Dr. Ali, who alternated as God or Satan and came and went as he pleased. He could do no wrong. He was a loaded gun which could go off in anybody’s face. To cap it all, the Marshal had promoted Robert Ashes to the rank of colonel in the Uganda army, as a reward for his tireless efforts to stamp out the cancer of coffee-smuggling. This, General Bazooka thought bitterly, at a time when the cancer was grinding to its climax. And why was he not promoted for putting down the most recent rebellion in the army?
Up to this moment General Bazooka had feared only one man: the Marshal. Now he discovered that he also feared Colonel Robert Ashes. How long would it take before this reptile got promoted to general? And how much more dangerous would he become?
“General, I am thinking about investigating this affair properly,” Ashes said, grinning, savouring the fact that he had made the word “general” sound like it meant “pus.” He lit his Cuban cigar and pulled a large volume of smoke into his lungs. “Uganda cannot afford to be in the bad books of the Saudi royal family. Those people can topple this government in the blink of an eye.”
General Bazooka overlooked the insult and started panicking. He really did not know what to do. He thought about begging Ashes for time, for mercy, for any scrap of benevolence out of desperation. “Take it easy, Colonel. It is nothing serious,” he said, mustering up his courage.
“Marshal Amin will decide what is serious and what is not, General.”
By now General Bazooka was sure that there was a spy in his ministry, just like he planted spies in other ministries. He was determined to take swift action. With the spy, or spies, gone, he knew that Ashes would be stalled.
“Enjoy the party, General,” Robert Ashes said enigmatically, and walked away.
General Bazooka became so angry that he almost had a fit. His lower lip quivered and his hands shook. He was losing touch. What had become of the Victoria woman? Nothing. He had sent her on a mission and instead of doing her job she had become pregnant. He could have set things right, but he had just ignored it. He had become soft and lost sight of his priorities. Perhaps that was why he had lost his beautiful islands and crocodiles and the command of the prestigious Anti-Smuggling Unit. Perhaps the Marshal saw that he was no longer as sharp as before and had decided to teach him a lesson and send him a big warning. This had to end. Now. He had to nip it in the bud. He had to show that he was still the best commander, or one of the best commanders, in the country.
AT A FEW MINUTES PAST FOUR that afternoon, Bat got a phone call summoning him to the Nile Perch Hotel. It was not unusual to be in the middle of something important and then be called away. On his cynical days Bat said that he was nothing more than a messenger boy for the General. It always put him in a temper to be torn away from something, but he was learning to live with it. He set everything aside, slid on his coat, straightened his tie, and walked out. Cursing, he got into his car and drove off. It was a fine day: clear, hot, windy, not a trace of humidity in the air. The Parliament Building looked majestic, a monument to power carved out of ivory. The soldiers at the gate were statuesque, the smoke coming from their cigarettes adding a grotesque touch to their figures. A string of Boomerangs swept past, horns blaring, tailed by Stinger jeeps with swaying aerials.