The news slowly seeped into Uganda. The British Embassy was reluctant to take up the case. There were heaps of similar cases involving more distinguished Ugandans lying unsolved. What was so special about this one? Villeneuve was insistent. A Member of Parliament usually got his way; the news finally reached the right ears. Amin asked Colonel Robert Ashes to look into the affair.
At the time Ashes was busy putting together another megadeal with Copper Motors. Big Bossman had been replaced by a more sensible fellow, and big bucks were in the making. The last thing Ashes wanted was interference from back home. He felt he had suffered enough over the Bossmans affair, explaining himself to embassy people he despised, people who had threatened to bring in Scotland Yard to investigate the disappearances and claims of fraud. Nothing came of the threats, but now he wanted nothing to do with the embassy. Besides, people were disappearing every day. Over trivial things like offending the wrong person, land disputes, women, grudges, politics, business. Why should he get involved in this case?
When Ashes discovered that the missing man used to hold a key post in the Ministry of Power, a jolt of excitement cut through him. Here was a golden chance to deal General Fart a blow. He had threatened to investigate the bastard but had let him off the hook. Not this time.
Colonel Robert Ashes called and promised to look into the matter with immediate effect. His first course of action was to send his men, the Acolytes, to the headquarters of the Ministry of Power and arrest everyone in Bat’s department. In the early afternoon, without a warning, Stingers swooped onto the place. Men jumped out, guns drawn, dashed into the offices and came out with eight people, including Bureaucrat One.
By the time General Bazooka received the news, two hours later, the damage had already been done. It was unclear who had captured his men. Word was his office had been attacked by armed men in Military Police uniforms. Efforts to find who they were had so far failed. He dispatched emissaries, made frantic phone calls to all security agencies, to no avail. His first guess was that he had fallen out of favour with Marshal Amin. He had not seen the Marshal lately, and he wondered if somebody had betrayed him. Had some envious back-biting general accused him of treason? Plotting a coup? Corruption? Had some astrologer seen him in his dreams and accused him of political ambition? Where was the Unholy Spirit? Was he in the country or abroad? What he said nowadays the Marshal swallowed. General Bazooka’s hands started shaking. He lit a joint and puffed on it nervously.
In this unruly time, favours were gained and lost in the blink of an eye. At the start it had been exciting to find his way through the confusion; nowadays the game had become lethal as a mine field. General Bazooka felt his chest tightening. His wife could become a widow, his children orphans. In a fit of panic he called friendly officials hoping that at least one would tell him the truth before it was too late for damage control. Nobody seemed to have seen or heard anything. Are they lying to me just to keep their distance, or have I become too paranoid? But you cannot become paranoid enough these days; you cannot trust anybody for more than two minutes, he said to himself. Then one colleague suggested Ashes might be behind the mess.
“That dog again!” he swore, relief spreading in his body. It all smelled like Ashes. “I want to tear out his entrails with my bare hands.”
In his helicopter he flew to the desecrated office. Phones were ringing, unfinished work was strewn on desks, employees were moving about with no idea what to do next. He berated the guards and every person he came across. In a rage, he called Ashes’ office, but he was out and nobody knew when he would return. He called the Office of the President, now run by the Eunuchs, and heard that Ashes had been authorized to find the missing man.
“I want to beat that goat-fucker to a pulp,” he told his advisor.
“Not yet, General,” the colonel said. “A man acting on behalf of the Marshal cannot be taken lightly. Especially not when he is the boss of the Anti-Smuggling Unit. He can easily ruin us completely.”
“What am I supposed to do? Sit here and wait like some dog’s dick trapped inside a bitch’s pussy?”
“Ah. .”
“I auctioned that man some time ago, Colonel. I offered you ten thousand dollars in cash for his worthless balls. Why is he still alive? Are there no men hungry enough to take him on? Why do I still have this cross to bear?”
“You saw what we did to his house, General. I have got another trap nicely laid out for him. At the lake. I will nail that shit-eater this time,” said the colonel, thinking that ten thousand dollars was too miserly a price on the head of a man like Robert Ashes, and that if the General wanted a symbolic gesture to show his disregard, he should have auctioned him for a dollar. Now that would be something.
“How long do I have to wait inside this bitch’s pussy? How long? My Bureaucrat One is gone. What greater humiliation is there for a minister than to have his biggest official carted off like a bucket of shit?” He hit his chest, flailed his arms and finally rested them on his hips. “I participated in the coup that launched this royal family. I have defended the government against all its enemies. And now I have to grovel at the feet of this stinking turd?”
“Things change, General,” the colonel began tentatively, thinking that it should be the General, such a powerful man, saying these words, not him. “You can never tell what Marshal Amin in his deep wisdom is thinking. Otherwise, why didn’t he inform you of that reptile’s order? How long has it been since he invited you to his home to play hide-and-seek with his children?”
“You are right. There must be something going on, somebody poisoning the Marshal’s mind. What do you think I should do?”
“Caution while we work out the next move.”
“Caution! Caution! Again! How long am I supposed to be cautious? When will you bring me his head on a stick?”
“Soon, pretty soon. He is aware that we are after him. He switches cars at the eleventh hour. He goes by air when everybody expects him to go by boat. It is hard to nail the dog-fucker, but it is just a matter of time, General.”
“I should have killed that Cambridge turd and it is you who stopped me. He should die before Reptile gets to him. It will rob his victory of meaning. A coffin will be a good reward for his investigations.” The General looked outside his office at the Parliament, rising squarely out of the ground to symbolize the power of the nation, or rather of those at the helm, and thought about the man held in its bowels. Things have indeed changed in a bizarre way, if a general can’t get his way in matters like this, he thought, feeling angrier by the minute.
“It won’t help, General,” the colonel said, knowing that his boss was not thinking straight at all and was too caught up in his vanity and sense of power to see the big picture. “Ashes knows where he is by now. He wants to use this incident for personal profit. If you thwart him at the eleventh hour, he is going to come down hard on us. He could even tell the Marshal about it. If he doesn’t, he is going to hurt us badly in some other way.”
“You are right. I am going to wait,” General Bazooka hissed, and stormed out. He realized that a prince was no king: he still had to take crap from his king, especially if he was a self-declared king of Africa. As a prince, he could piss on the heads of peasants, but he could not get his way all the time. Princes tended to be disposable and they often destroyed each other. Ashes was a prince too, with equal powers of destruction.
THE ACOLYTES LOCKED Bazooka’s men in a villa in Nakasero. Under interrogation, they revealed what they knew. Ashes learned that Bat was called away to the Nile Perch Hotel ostensibly to meet his boss. The motive for the disappearance remained unclear, which was common among these incidents, and he could only guess. The news that the man was still alive cheered him. The mission was going to end more quickly than he had expected.