General Bazooka was in the mood for his gun pranks, but at the same time he did not want to quarrel with his wife in front of his men. He would have wanted his eldest son to shoot a few glasses, but the boy’s mother would raise so much hell that it would not be worth the bother. Those things the boy would have to learn later in the company of men. What does she teach the children? What do they learn at school? It is definitely not to shoot a piece of chalk out of a teacher’s hand or a pen from behind his ear or a cigarette from his mouth. It struck him that his children might have a different future, a more sedate life. His wife and mother seemed to prefer that to the rigours of army life. But he did not want a teacher for a son, a nurse for a daughter. Except if they were army teachers and nurses. I will look into that, he thought.
He looked forward to a long hot night. A groany, sweaty, satisfactory affair. He liked tilling familiar ground after weeks away. The waiting created a change, a razor edge. It made the familiar sex sounds rendered in his mother tongue, laced with his earliest memories of the act, all the more fulfilling. They would bounce, roll, turn and milk each other like donkeys. Then he would lie in her arms, a delicacy uneroded by the years, watch the light going out of her eyes like receding stars, and feel reconnected to the past in sleep.
At daybreak he would rise, the past night an oasis in an encroaching desert, a lingering of fatigue in his veins, a bunch of memories in his pulsating head, a trace of sweet pain on his sex skin. He would rise out of it tentatively, a plant shooting out of a swamp, and climb into the new day, rejuvenated, invigorated. Ready for business as usual.
COLONEL ROBERT ASHES OFTEN THOUGHT of himself as an airborne bird, an eagle cruising, surveying its domains. His meteoric rise felt like a huge thermal thrust keeping him in the air with minimum effort. He had settled into the fast life. He enjoyed the banquets, the fleet of Boomerangs, the cameras, the sabre-rattling, the marriage, the wealth amidst poverty, the envy he generated and wore like an eagle’s monstrous wings. Only in Africa, he continually said to himself, can a man be reborn this fully, this gloriously.
When he set out for Uganda on the trail of the elusive Irish bomber Williams, he knew that everything was on the line. It was the watershed in his frantic effort to enter Uganda, and at the same time it was like a death sentence. The cover of the delegation could get blown; somebody could cave in under pressure; they could be shot by trigger-happy soldiers; Amin could fail to take the bait. He remembered arriving in Kenya and thinking fleetingly that he had made a mistake and should have remained in Britain or gone back to South Africa. He remembered the sleepless nights in a Kenyan hotel while they waited for a plane. In those days he subsisted on whisky, cigars and biscuits, the food too unpalatable to swallow. He remembered stepping on the plane with the words of his handler ringing in his ears: “You are on your own. If caught, we will deny any knowledge of you. Your head will probably end up in Amin’s fridge, your balls on his breakfast fork.”
He remembered the flight, the glorious scenes outside the window, the rolling mountains, the snaking rivers, the blinding greens of forests. He kept thinking about paradise. He also remembered Williams’ Bombing of the Century, as the Irish Republic Army called the mainland campaign. He remembered hearing the news of the arrest of the bombers, and stories about men thrown from speeding cars, men with teeth pulled during interrogations. Then rumours that Williams was in Uganda and the massive thudding of his heart. It was like being struck by electricity, the muscles burning and tearing with excitement. He remembered the hours of waiting before getting to hear whether he would be sent to Uganda or not. He never believed for once that a man as important as Williams could risk hiding in Uganda; but what did he care? It was the break he needed. In those days there was fear that the IRA would export the campaign and start bombing British embassies abroad, but he did not believe it. The IRA knew what they wanted and how to get it. What did he care?
When he stepped on Ugandan soil, he had the feeling that he had done it before in some hazy past. He was not at all intimidated by the soldiers. He found the statues of Amin ridiculous and ugly. One of the things he remembered most clearly was the vicious urge to supplant Copper Motors officials as the top business force and its head as the top white man in the country.
A year later he heard that the famous astrologer had prophesied his coming messiah-style. The news was unbelievable to him because he did not believe in astrology. He believed in hard work and a lucky break or two, but not in omens read from the sky or from the livers of bulls. He had come across witchcraft in the past in southern and northern Africa, but he never paid it much attention. He was not going to begin now. He just made it a point to avoid the astrologer, which was easy since he was so reclusive; and he neither liked nor hated him.
According to Ashes, Amin welcomed him with open arms because, like many tyrants, he was lonely amidst a crowd of worshippers, sycophants, wives. He needed a confidant, somebody of his level, a mirror to make the enchanted nebulous world he inhabited real, a thorn to prick him with the occasional pang of inadequacy he needed to spur him on. His knowledge of the West and his ability to analyse it was just a bonus. In fact, it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of learned men who could feed Amin the information he needed. It was just that they could not get away from their high-couched language, the intricacies of their trade. They ended up confusing the Marshal, making him change plans he had approved, thus losing face. Ashes specialized in chewing cud for the Marshal; and he was ready to fulfil his role as cattle prod, keeping the generals on tenterhooks.
Robert Ashes was given the job of turning Amin’s bodyguard, the Eunuchs, into a specialized unit. The fact that they were all Kakwas and Nubians lessened the internal divisions. They knew that their life depended on Amin’s staying alive. Ashes found many of them dull, violent, predictable, but those were the qualities needed. All he did was drill them harder, teach them the necessary tactics, and let them loose.
Amin put them under the command of Major Ozi, increased their salary, improved their food and told them they were above all army officers and security agents. Both Amin and Ashes knew about the atrocities committed by them — robbery, kidnapping— but they turned a blind eye.They felt that a bit of leeway would only make them more loyal to their president. Ashes enjoyed stories of conflicts between the State Research Bureau and the Eunuchs. The Eunuchs liked to provoke the Bureau by driving them out of bars and night-clubs and taking their women. Ashes felt that divisions between the security agencies were always good. No conspiracy possible. Everybody on their toes.
Ashes was wearing it well. He loved to tease the generals and their men. They could hate him all they wanted but could not kill him, not without killing Amin first. He had the odd nightmare of waking up amidst a successful coup and finding Amin swinging from a tree by his balls. It always ended with a gun in his mouth. But he loved danger; he thrived on it. He had his own personal army now, and he liked to flaunt his status as a warlord. He had this thing with General Fart, as he called Bazooka in private. He knew that the man was insecure about his position, his future. He was cocksure that the man was infected with the vertigo of those who rose to prominence too early in life. He enjoyed teasing him, making him feel as if Amin was about to skewer his balls and make him eat them for breakfast. He could have made him beg over that Saudi deal; the rival prince had given him all the details. General Fart’s head could have rolled. But he had not liked the Saudi prince, a shapeless, unpleasant mass of a man. Nobody talked to him as if he were a messenger boy and got what he wanted.