Formutesca shook his head, forcing himself to move. “No,” he said. “He’s mine. Get the guns.”
Manado nodded and stooped to wipe the knife blade on the dead man’s shirt.
Formutesca’s own knife was in a sheath attached to his belt and tucked into his right hip pocket He had felt good putting it on, felt like a commando.
He’d never killed anyone in his life.
The knife handle felt bulky and awkward in his hand. He went to one knee beside the Kasempa and then he saw he would have to turn the man over first. He put the knife on the floor, grabbed the unconscious man’s shoulder and belt, and heaved him over. He was heavy and he would go only halfway, his hips then resting against the edge of the elevator doorway where the doors were recessed. Every thirty seconds the doors tried to close, recoiling when the rubber leading edge struck the body.
Formutesca left the body lying on its side. He picked up his knife again, and with his other hand pushed back on the Kasempa’s forehead exposing his throat. He kept thinking, I can’t make a botch of this; I have to do it right the first time; I won’t be able to do it twice.
He held the knife against the throat. He could hear the man’s breathing; it sounded as though he had sinus trouble. He knew Manado was back up on top of the elevator again waiting to hand down the machine guns.
If only they could have gotten lethal gas. Gas murdered so much more cleanly.
Formutesca dragged the knife across the throat. It was very sharp, but in his desperation not to have to do it more than once he pressed as though it were dull. Blood spurted out as though he’d discovered oil, and he jumped back. It was on his trouser leg, his sleeve, his hand.
He looked at himself, looked at the knife, looked at the body. There was no more sinus breathing.
Shakily, Formutesca smiled. I did it, he thought. He wanted to say it aloud, but he resisted. He felt no more fear, no more revulsion. It was accomplished, and everything after this would be routine. He felt vast relief and a great deal of pride.
Now he knew what army men were talking about when they mentioned the baptism of fire.
Because he’d cut so deep there had been much more welling up of blood than with Manado. It was hard to get his knife clean; the handle was also smeared. He did what he could, wiped his hand on his corpse’s trouser leg, then put away the knife and went back into the elevator.
Manado’s face in the ceiling opening was the face of a brother. Formutesca smiled up at him and saw the surprise with which Manado smiled back. Then Manado lowered the guns to him and dropped back down again. Formutesca handed him one of the guns and led the way out of the elevator.
The stairs were in the middle of the building. They turned on no lights, the spill from the elevator giving them enough vague illumination as far as the staircase. From here on they would prefer darkness.
They were closer than they’d planned, the elevator having stopped on the second floor. They moved slowly enough to be silent.
As Formutesca was about to start up the stairs Manado touched his arm. Formutesca looked at him questioningly and Manado leaned close to whisper, “I’m all right now.”
Smiling at the silliness of that, Formutesca nodded.
“It was just the waiting,” Manado whispered. “But now I’ll be okay.”
6
Lucille Kasempa had been awake since the second explosion. She’d thrown a robe around her heavy body and come out to the hall to find her husband’s brother Ralph standing there wearing nothing but trousers and a pistol.
She’d said, “Where’s Patrick?”
“Went downstairs with Albert.”
The fourth brother, Morton, had come out then wearing even less than Ralph. Only the trousers, no gun. The three of them had stood around asking each other what had happened, and finally Lucille had gone down to the elevator and pressed the button to bring it up so she could go down and see for herself what was happening, but it hadn’t come.
And now she was beginning to worry. They’d been down there too long, and there wasn’t a sound.
She didn’t like this. She’d had a foreboding from the beginning, from the time Joseph had first come to her with his scheme for getting his money out of the country. “Why do it?” she’d asked him. “In Tchidanga you have everything. You’re president of the country, you have power and prestige, you’re rich. Why give it all up?”
But he’d said, “How much longer do you suppose I can hold on to this thing? If Goma doesn’t get me, Indindu will. The two of them are out there, both after my head, both after this job. Goma’s got the whites behind him, Indindu’s got the army and the diplomatic staff behind him. It’s only a matter of time a year, maybe less than a year. I’d rather be a Faruk than a Diem.”
And she was the only one he could trust. He’d said that, and she’d known it was so. But she’d left Tchidanga with a heavy heart, and it wasn’t just because she was giving up the life she loved, the social position, the importance of being the president’s sister. It was also this sense of foreboding, this fear that the scheme wouldn’t work. They were doomed; they were bringing down upon their heads a violence none of them would escape.
That was why she’d insisted on the children’s going to boarding school in Scotland. She didn’t want them anywhere around when it happened, if it happened.
If it was happening now.
She had always thought of the Blessed Virgin Mary as her special protector, her patron saint. She had always prayed to the Blessed Virgin. In her bedroom at home there was a small shrine to the Blessed Virgin. She had always come with all her troubles to the Blessed Virgin.
But how could she pray now? For a month that had troubled her. How could she ask the Blessed Virgin’s aid and intercession now? How could she say, “Help me help my brother rob his country, betray his trust, cheat the people who gave him his high office?” How could she ask that? All she could do was say, “Blessed Virgin, although you cannot condone what I am doing, still I pray you understand why I could not refuse, and for the sake of my children help us through this hour of trouble.”
Was help not to come?
She could hear nothing from downstairs. How long had it been now, ten minutes, fifteen minutes?
If only there were an intercom in this building. There certainly should be.
Maybe she would be able to hear something at the staircase. She started in that direction, and all of a sudden around the corner there she saw two men coming.
All in black.
With machine guns in their hands.
She shrieked and flung herself at the nearest door. She fell through, rolling, the door banging against the wall, and heard the sudden vicious chatter of the machine guns behind her. Ralph and Morton had been farther down the hall, exposed, vulnerable.
She had never moved so fast in her life. She rolled to her feet; she grabbed the edge of the door; she slammed it. There was a latch on the inside, and she locked it, even though she knew it could only delay the inevitable for a few more seconds.
She was in Patrick’s insomnia room. A game of solitaire was in progress on the table. A notepad there had obscure rows of numbers.
Patrick? He had gone downstairs. Those two men had come up from downstairs. Patrick could no longer be alive.
She shook her head, having no time to think about Patrick now, Patrick or anything else. She hurried to the window, flung it open to the cold damp air, and stuck her head out. “Help!” she cried. “Help!”
The fire escape was down to the right, three windows away. Even a circus performer wouldn’t be able to get there from here.
Would no one hear her? “Help! Please, help!”
No lights went on in the row of black buildings before her. Nothing happened.