Until independence. The nation of Dhaba was spared the more gruesome birth pains of many of the new African states, but even in a land of peaceful turnover one fact could not be gotten around: the white ruling class had to go.
Daask had been in London at the time, doing postgraduate work at the university, and he hadn’t known anything was wrong until his father phoned him from London Airport to come out and pick him up. Their land had been taken from them, not by spear-waving cannibals but by paper-waving bureaucrats, bland men with empty smiles.
The number of ex-colonists in London and in other parts of Europe continued to grow. And the idea of counterattack grew, from men like Aaron Marten, whom Daask had known since childhood, who were determined to get their own back one way or another no matter what. And from men like General Enfehr Goma, the unsuccessful first candidate for president of Dhaba, who would be willing to live the life of a comfortable figurehead if the Aaron Martens could put them on the throne.
They could do it. There was nothing strategic about Dhaba, not in minerals or geographic location or rivers or anything else, and so no European power would intervene. The neighboring African states all had sufficient internal problems to keep them from doing anything more than complain at the UN. All they needed was the money to mount the offensive. The current president, Colonel Joseph Lubudi, was so patently corrupt that the masses of the nation might even welcome General Goma, or at least wouldn’t be violently opposed to him.
But it couldn’t be done without money. And from where would the money come? The ex-landowners had lost practically everything. General Goma had no money of his own and couldn’t attract the support of anyone with money. So where would they get the money?
From Dhaba. From Colonel Lubudi. From the Colonel’s brother-in-law, Patrick Kasempa.
Daask again looked at the woman Claire eating a third bowl of cereal. If he were Parker, and this Claire were his woman, he would trade Gonor and the diamonds for her in a minute. Parker would cooperate; Daask was sure of it.
She became aware of his eyes on her and abruptly stopped eating. “That’s all I want,” she said sullenly, pushing the bowl away.
“You must still be hungry,” he said, trying to sound gentle and friendly. He knew it was absurd, but he wanted her not to dislike him.
And it was true that she had to still be hungry. She hadn’t eaten since the drugged dinner at the hotel in Boston last night at around seven o’clock, and here it was nearly midnight. Twenty-nine hours without food. Bob had insisted they not offer her anything to eat until she asked for it, so all she had had at first was the aspirin and water he’d brought her this afternoon. When she’d finally knocked on the door and asked for something to eat it was clear she hadn’t wanted to ask for anything at all but had been driven to it by hunger.
And something in his expression when she’d met his eyes just now had driven her away from hunger again. “I don’t want any more,” she said and folded her arms as though she were chilly, though it was warm here in the kitchen.
Bob Quilp was out in the living-room waiting for the call from Aaron saying that Parker would cooperate, that everything was going to be all right. Daask had a very strong feeling about the closeness of this kitchen, his solitude with this woman, the persistent sexual overtones of the relationship thrust upon them. He couldn’t help it, and he didn’t intend to do anything about it, but the aura itself was pleasurable and he wanted to prolong it.
“A glass of milk,” he said. “Would you like that?”
“I want to go upstairs again,” she said. She got to her feet and stood there waiting.
Daask was suddenly irritated by her. Didn’t she feel the ambience between them? Wasn’t she aware of what sort of person he couldbe, how lucky she was that he was gentle? He wanted to say something about it, to point it out to her, but he couldn’t find any phrasing that didn’t sound silly somehow. Or threatening.
He shrugged and got to his feet. “Up to you,” he said. “You go first.”
They went up to the second floor, and she went willingly into her room. He stood in the doorway a minute, watching her go over to the bed and sit down with her back to him.
Then he said, “In a little while we’ll have to tie you up.”
She turned her head, and it pleased him to see a little glint of fear in her eyes. “Why? I won’t try to get away.”
“We’ll be leaving,” he said. “We’ll tie you when we go. But we’re going to tell Parker where you are, so don’t worry. He’ll probably be here before morning.”
She shook her head. “He won’t do what you want him to do.”
“Of course he will,” Daask said reasonably. “You’re more important to him than Gonor is; it only makes sense.”
“He can’t stand to be pushed,” she said.
“He’ll cooperate,” Daask said. “It’s only sensible.”
She shrugged and turned her back again.
Daask was about to say something else, but from downstairs he heard the ringing of a telephone. “That’s it now,” he said and shut the door. He locked it and hurried back downstairs.
3
William Manado sat on the floor in the back of the truck and fingered his machine gun. It was too dark to see anything except when an occasional automobile drove down Thirty-eighth Street from Park Avenue and its headlights shone through the windows in the rear doors, illuminating himself and Formutesca sitting across the way. Formutesca smiled encouragingly at him every time there was light that way, but in the intervals of darkness there was no encouragement from anywhere, and Manado was frightened.
He hadn’t shown it; not to Formutesca, not to Parker, certainly not to Gonor. He hadn’t shown it, he wouldn’t show it, and he wouldn’t let it interfere. But he couldn’t deny it either he was afraid.
Unlike Formutesca and Gonor, unlike most of the governing class of Dhaba, Manado was not from a professional family. There were no doctors, lawyers, civil servants or engineers in his background. He had come from a village family, a very poor village family, and he would be a very poor villager himself today if it were not for one thing. Manado could run.
He was fast, and he was tireless, and he could pace himself. He had run himself on to the track team at Tchidanga School, and he had run himself into an exchange scholarship for a Midwestern American university. Fortunately, his brain was as fast as his body, and he’d been able to take advantage of the advantages his running had brought him. He majored in political science at the American university, mostly because all exchange students were expected to major in political science, and took his minor in mathematics, because he liked to watch numbers run. As for America, what that country offered him because he had brains and speed baffled him almost as much as what was refused him because he was black. Afterwards, when people at home asked him about that, what it was like to be a black man in America, he always said, “Well, it takes some getting used to.” What he meant was, “I’m not sure, but I think maybe it’s worth getting used to.”
His experience of the United States got him offered the post at the UN mission, and the ambivalence of his feelings toward the United States made him accept. Would it be different in New York City from in the Midwest? Would it be different for a member of a UN mission rather than a student? Not much.
In a way, it was America’s ambivalence toward him that first made him consciously a patriot about his homeland. He saw that Dhaba with idealistic men at her helm could eventually offer everything America offers, and without the left-handed taking away. He wanted that; he wanted it badly.