Within minutes he was at his destination. He parked, locked, and walked away from his car. He briefly thought about the prince’s Porsche 999. He could feel the vibrations that monster engine had given him in the desert. He walked quickly, hardly noticing the soldiers lying about in the grass, weapons held idly, now benign as sticks. Did this sort of boredom breed the killer instinct and fire up the explosions? The soldiers looked at him with supreme indifference. He was just another suit, another boss to many people in a certain office or factory brown-nosing with a general or colonel or somebody else of real importance. Nothing showed on the faces of the soldiers, which looked dead, buried in the depths where no man, except their commanders, could reach them. They seemed untouched by love, hate, passion, moved only by the order to act.
He entered the hotel lobby, which was empty and airy, making it look like any other hotel during the off-season. He relaxed, remembering the wonderful hotel he had slept in in Saudi Arabia, with its air-conditioner, Jacuzzi, huge rooms, obsequious room attendants and twenty-four-hour room service. As he was beginning to wonder where the hotel staff were, in an instant four soldiers in combat uniform, wearing helmets covered with jungle webbing, surrounded him. They twisted his arms behind his back, forced his head down, and frog-marched him toward the guest rooms. He was in such shock that he did not say a word. If he had seen such frightening faces before, it had been in his dreams. The time between his last moments of freedom and his present state had lasted barely over a minute. He was thrown in a very dark room. They tore the clothes off his back like hyenas ripping a kill’s coat. They left him in his underwear. Bad sign. Stabbed, shot, strangled in his underwear was common news. They marched out of the room without saying a word.
He stretched out his hands and felt his way around the empty room. An alarmingly musty smell was coming from somewhere. The windows had been blackened out with layers of cloth held up by tight wire mesh. The room was not soundproof, and he could hear army boots hammering the floor, army vehicles being parked outside, and army men barking orders in chilling harsh voices. He sat down on the floor, back against the wall, and tried not to think. His own pain he could deal with welclass="underline" the athletic spirit was still in him. It was the pain his condition was going to cause others — Babit, his family, her family, his friends — that sat on his chest like a sack of rotting potatoes. What was Babit going to do? Wait and wait, become desperate? In a land where anything was possible, imagining the worst scenario was the best antidote against optimism and the unnecessary pain it brought. Who was going to inform whom? Had somebody seen him? Of course. Would he or she risk talking? That was the question. Was this going to be passed off as just another disappearance? What would his staff do? He realized how little he personally knew them. He heard very loud steps. They reverberated in his chest, kicked off a cold sweat as they hammered past the door. Where was General Bazooka? When was he going to show his face?
Late in the evening the door was flung open. Bat was shaken by a scalding rush of fear. Soldiers entered, lifted him off the floor, blindfolded him and, twisting his arms behind his back, led him out. He felt his stomach fall to below his knees. Outside, the cold wind smacked his skin. He imagined the city around him eating, drinking, cowering in self-preserving indifference. A cold shiver of futility went down his back. They threw him in a Stinger and drove off. He could feel the vehicle going round and round, charging up hills and rushing down valleys. The city had long since become a catacomb, swallowing its people while keeping a straight face. Nakasero and Naguru hills housed notorious detention centres. Police stations had also become infected with the killers’ bug. People were kept there incommunicado while relatives went crazy searching the more well-known detention centres.
At last, the circuitous journey ended. They drove through a gate: he could hear the guards barking, growling, and the gate banging to a close. The vehicle then dipped and braked. They pulled him out and marched him up a flight of stairs, then down some corridors. They dumped him in an underground storage space, freed his hands, ripped the cloth off his face, and switched on the light. It was a large room with a single spring bed, a fingerthin mattress, a torn blanket and a basin. The window was shoe-box small and looked out onto the yard. He could see lights winking, beckoning from far away. So they were not going to kill him tonight. He sighed. He sat on the bed and tried to think. Was this about work? Did the General want him to leave, now that the ministry had been cleaned up? Maybe the Saudi prince had struck as he had threatened. Uganda was a runaway, slave to neither the slide-rule nor the crystal ball. Patience worked better than empty speculation.
Up till now there had been a thrill to living, each day a mystery, a package full of anticipation. The sting of guilt had intensified the thrill. Now that they had caught up with him, he felt calm and the calm decapitated his temper. Uganda was a land of guilt, where sons were sometimes held accountable for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers. Guilt was not altogether negative. Admitting it could help you work out a plan of survival. Right now innocence was the foe. It tempted you down the slippery road of sentimentality and self-pity, a lethal combination at the best of times. By thinking that he was paying for his sins, Bat found the strength to go on. After all, his punishers were not in any moral position to judge him. By taking his punishment like the guilty man he was, he was giving pain its proper place in the scheme of things, and with his burden lightened, his inner strength increased or remaining level. He felt abandoned, like many other Ugandans, left to fight for his life all alone. He wasn’t the first; neither would he be the last. He had no personal regrets. He did not wish to flee the country. He only wanted to get out of detention with as little damage as possible.
Contrary to expectation, he slept. In the morning a soldier opened the door and ordered him to take up his basin. Was he going to be forced to breakfast on his faeces? On the turd that now swam in his urine? He could of course empty the basin on the soldier, get kicked and rifle-butted to a pulp, and dangle on the lip of his own grave. But he marched out of the room, his evidence of mortality carried out in front of him like some holy sacrifice.
On the way he saw other prisoners, some dressed, some in different stages of undress. Some looked fat, some skinny, bones glaring. Some were injured, limping, swollen, bruised; some looked scratch-free like presidential Boomerangs. They were all joined together by the sounds of silence, water splashing, the wheezing, the sneezing, the coughing.
After disposing of the faeces in the latrines and washing up in the common bathrooms, he was led back to his room. He looked out the window and could see part of a compound, a concrete wall and leaves of a leafy tree. Beyond was part of a lane, chalky buildings, movement. The familiarity of it struck him. It dawned on him that he was in the basement of the Parliament Building, a mere hundred metres from his office! Is this a joke? he asked himself.
The building had a long history of detention and misuse. Amin’s predecessor, Obote, had his offices here, security agencies on floors above and below him. Political detainees were held here, and he could listen in as his boys worked over his favourite prisoners. On the steps of this building, somebody shot him in the jaw, but the grenade thrown to finish him off did not explode. In the turbulent sixties, four cabinet ministers were held here. The main difference between then and now was that prisoners were more likely now to receive a speedy death. Amin did not like wasting the taxpayers’ money on feeding people destined to die.