After an exhausting journey of some weeks, the Mandingos and their gems would arrive at the eastern rim of the great rain forest of the Republic that extends, without highways, nearly two hundred miles to the coast. There, as they touched the edge of the thickening savanna, they would let their brothers in the capital know they were ready to be picked up. How they did this without radio, telegraph, or timetables was a complete mystery. What we did know was that when we landed our bush planes on various obscure trails in the surrounding border countries, the Mandingos would materialize from the tall grasses by the road and pile in the airplane with their long robes billowing in the idling prop wash.
The doors would scarcely bang shut before the pilot, pushing in the throttle for maximum power, would roll away, scanning the road ahead for soldiers, cows, or trucks. As the wheels left the ground and the cramped, heavy plane lifted into the air and banked away, heading for the coast, praises to Allah would ring out over the engine roar.
Money is the necessary lubricant of this gem trail. From the president down to the lowliest civil servant, dash was paid in varying amounts. Occasionally, however, something would go wrong. Greed perhaps, or a failure to produce needed cash, or any number of other reasons, had probably trapped Little Billy. To free him would be no mean feat. The alternative, though, was his doing time in a West African prison. And that was fearful to contemplate.
“I want you to go up and talk to the commissioner,” Andre said, then waited for my reaction.
I thought about what he had said. It was a euphemism for springing Billy from jail on my own.
“Is that all, Andre? Just talk to him?”
“You’re the best I have, Ken. You know it.” Then, “The boys have Charlie Fox gassed up and ready.” Andre’s eyes were now narrow slits.
“Okay, what the hell. Let’s do it,” I said.
This task was not appealing on any level. Nevertheless, had the circumstances been reversed, I would want to see someone in Charlie Fox, the fastest and most battered Cessna we had, circling overhead at the commissioner’s compound.
Andre continued, “Why don’t you take Jack with you?”
Jack Dupree, a short, muscular Frenchman who seemed to have no visible means of support, spent much of his time hanging around the Airport Bar or running small errands for Andre. He was a quiet, not very noticeable member of the small fraternity of expatriates that collected around the airfield. His eyes bothered me most of all. They were flat black like non-reflecting painted windows.
I decided that I did not want him to accompany me in the right seat of Charlie Fox. Andre protested but, seeing my adamant refusal, did not press the point. Andre slid back the heavy drawer of the desk. Reaching in, he retrieved a large mass of worn, greasy US bank notes. Counting rapidly, he strapped a rubber band around five thousand dollars.
“Take it, get him back, and don’t leave two planes and pilots up there,” he said.
I took the thick bundle of dollars, thinking that here was a lot of cash, and hoping that the money was all that le commissionaire would want. At least money could always be negotiated, and Andre could supply that.
“Okay, I’m on my way. I’ll try to get back by tonight.”
I pushed through the office door and almost ran over Dupree who, standing silently in the dim outer office, must have taken in all that had passed between Andre and me.
“Good luck.” He smiled, but only his mouth moved. His expressionless eyes remained on me as though they were smearing me with something. For an instant, I felt a wave of menace sweep over me and I hesitated, but the moment passed.
“Thanks,” I said, turning to check my water bottle for the trip.
I busied myself with filling my water thermos from the stone filter. Dupree went into Andre’s office and softly closed the door. I concentrated on Little Billy’s plight. Being detained by an over-zealous officer and his soldiers in our neighboring country was not a unique experience. It was, certainly, an unpleasant experience, but one known to most of us. If one chooses to fly diamond smugglers across international borders without the benefit of paperwork, this was a natural hazard. It was, I thought, typical of our attitude toward such events that I would attempt to rescue Little Billy armed with only a one-liter water thermos and some greasy, ragged money. With no documents, passport, or flowery letters of introduction or guarantees of safe passage, I would try to free my colleague from the grip of a petty tyrant.
I put on my sunglasses, pushed open the door, and stepped into the afternoon glare. The smoke and haze of the waning afternoon obscured the palm trees that fringed the airfield, and the visibility seemed worse than usual. It was bad enough when the gritty, super-heated winds of the Harmattan would blow down from the Sahara, but because the farmers chose to clear their farms in the traditional way, they exacerbated the situation ten-fold. They simply set fire to an edge of the dry forest and let fires alternatively smolder and rage until the first torrents of the wet season stopped the blaze. Wherever the blaze meandered, it would leave behind a blackened strip. That was where they planted the next year’s rice crops. Every small farmer did this, and the smoke from the fires combined with the airborne Saharan grit to form an often impenetrable blazing, heated, yellow wall. The dry season seemed to be the worst, but during the wet season, when your body and everything else is molding from six months of rains and dampness, you would gladly forfeit a month’s pay for the blessed heat and dust of the dry season.
I walked toward my plane, my boots making small puff balls in the orange dust. I reached the door and swung up onto the worn, grimy seat. It’s a bit like mounting a horse; the maneuver can only become graceful with practice. On the ground Charlie Fox squatted on its tail wheel, causing the floor of the airplane to tilt at an uncomfortable angle. This reduced many entering passengers to an awkward crouch and occasionally tripping them into a tangle on the floor.
“Mr. Ken!” It was John Zizzi, one of Paterson’s loaders, emerging from the shadow of the hangar. “Plee, can yo tay dis letta fo ma broddah’s part?”
He handed me a damp soiled envelope. It was addressed Honorable Joseph Zizzi, Kankan. The envelope bore no stamp or address. It was as if he expected Joseph to step out from the tall grasses along some nameless dirt road in the interior and ask if there was a message from his brother. I had carried other such letters around West Africa and would simply hand them to the nearest local at the destination. Amazingly, they would usually turn up in the hands of the addressee. The locals had no recourse; there was no reliable internal mail service in West Africa.
I put the letter in my hip pocket. John started to give me a verbal message for his brother, but I was rapidly pushing, pulling, and flipping the array of controls listed on the check list—a little like a priest performing a ritual. The starter grinded for a time then, sharply, the engine barked and started, drowning out John’s message.
The Russians had built a large and very powerful non-directional radio navigation beacon near my destination at Kankan and the idea of having this kind of assistance was very comforting. I climbed slowly and tuned the radio to the correct frequency but could not hear the identifying code. When I was able to identify the station, I planned to home in on it until I got station passage, then track a bearing from the station until I picked up Kankan visually. I continued to climb, reaching ten thousand feet, nearly two miles above the jungle. Long restricted to ground-hugging in our usual overweight short flights, the idea of flying at high altitude appealed to me and there was nothing or no one to say that I shouldn’t do it except the physical limitations of the plane. I urged Charlie Fox higher, to eleven thousand feet.
The plane burst upward, out of the haze, into crisp, clear air. Looking down, the haze now seemed as solid as earth. I was now flying in clear air with unlimited visibility and seemed to be skimming just above the surface of a vast plain of undulating brown hills and valleys, which vanished in ripples toward the horizon. It seemed solid enough to brush my wheels against. Far
away toward the horizon where the land and the sky met, a few cumulus clouds could be seen climbing upward like exploding columns of heavy steam. It was as if the entire Sahara Desert had been flung two miles into the air.
Soon, however, the spell was broken. I became aware of the sound of my high frequency radio—a tone similar to the screech of fingernails dragging over a chalk board. The grand spectacle outside my cockpit vanished and the flight was once again the serious business of rescue. The Kankan radio beacon caused the needle on my direction-finder to tremble and swing to the station. From the strength of the signal and flight time that had passed, I knew that the beacon was now very close. Nearly two hours aloft had brought Kankan within a short distance. To descend, I gently rolled the pitch trim wheel a few clicks forward.
Below, the haze had evaporated and the land was changing radically. The jungle had vanished, and here and there, black outcroppings of rock moved past slowly. I passed through seven thousand feet. It was good to look at the earth’s floor again through relatively clean air. The needle of my direction finder pointed decisively ahead, signaling that I was very close to the radio station now. I squinted to see the beacon station. There was a small shack, a few fuel tanks scattered in the sands, and a diesel engine. Then a stubby tower beacon repeating dash-dot in my headset passed under me.
Billy was being held in a village outside of Kankan. It was about twenty miles northeast of the radio beacon and relatively familiar to me. I started hugging the ground at about one hundred feet. Suddenly, tire ruts swept past my undercarriage and turned away to the east. This track was what I was looking for, and by rolling the control yoke over and pulling back steeply, I followed every turn of the twisting road. A stunted cottonwood tree stood at a bend. I banked again, and the glint of tin roofs flashed in the distance. I reduced the throttle slowly and circled the village. I noticed a jackal below at the edge of the village, sniffing the wind.
The village was fairly typical, although larger than most. There was a circle of round huts clustered near a larger building that I took to be the commissioner’s house. A long airstrip, narrow and rutted, pointed directly toward it. A small airplane sat near the end of the airfield; it was Little Billy’s Cessna, Foxtrot Papa. I applied full flaps and rolled in a tight circle to a short final approach. I pumped the throttle several times, causing the engine to backfire, hoping to alert Little Billy.
Darkness was now little more than an hour away. If I could free Little Billy from the commissioner’s grasp today, a night flight to the coast in poor visibility was possible, but not something I looked forward to. I taxied slowly toward the large house. The villagers had formed a solid wall of humanity at the end of the airfield. They were a solemn, silent lot—very different from the animated crowds that usually welcomed unannounced airplane arrivals.
I cut in by Little Billy’s plane, pivoting hard, swinging the tail around and pointing the nose down the dirt runway, then shut the engine down. The silence was strange and unexpected. The villagers slowly, silently surrounded the plane and stared at me, not menacingly but not friendly either. Then the crowd parted and a soldier pushed through and banged the butt of his rifle against the side door. He shouted in French that I must come out. I opened the opposite door, jumped out of the airplane and followed him through the crowd. I approached the commissioner’s front door a few feet behind the soldier and entered a long, low, dark building. Along one wall was a rail separating the main room from a knot of spectators. I walked forward alone toward a wide table. Another soldier came up to my side.
“Attends! Attends! You way hee. Le commissionaire viens. He come soon,” he said in a voice that sounded like it started at his feet.
I waited, silent. Feet shuffled in the thin dust on the floor; someone coughed. The roof creaked in the dim light. A soldier came and lit a kerosene lantern on the table. Dusk was making more shadows in the dimly lit building. The lantern revealed a small automatic pistol lying on the table, its barrel pointed directly at me. The silence was becoming uncomfortable, and still no sign of Little Billy. Finally, the commissioner appeared through a curtain behind the table. He was a short, stocky man, somewhere in his thirties with a muddy complexion. He stared at me for a while. I couldn’t help staring at his patchy hair, little yellow bloodshot eyes, clammy-looking malarial skin, and the yellow palm oil and bits of rice that soiled the front of his shirt.
“You have been hee before?” he asked. It was an accusation, a way of taking me off my feet.
“Monsieur le Commissionaire, I have never been here before,” I said, trying to look firm and unyielding. We stared at each other, a big man’s game, but very serious.
He turned his eyes slightly, not meeting mine anymore.
“Your ami is under arrest for violating our frontier and for grand crimes against the Peoples Republic of Guinea.”
“Perhaps we can settle this palaver,” I suggested, knowing that he would understand that this was the preliminary for a money exchange.
“Zat is not possible. He ha violated ze law o ze People’s Republic. He mus be made to answer for zis at Kankan.”
This was not good. If Little Billy was taken the forty miles to Kankan and imprisoned, it would take the matter out of my hands and Little Billy would surely die. Men didn’t survive long in African prisons. I tried to change the subject.
“Where is the pilot?” I asked. If Little Billy was close, perhaps a desperate escape might be the only way. I eyed the pistol on the table and wondered if it was loaded.
“Your ami eez safe in our custody,” the commissioner said.
He seemed reluctant, uneasy, and I wondered for a moment whether they had already killed him. The commissioner was an enigma. Was he not corrupt? Was he not without a price, or was he a true ideologue intent on serving his country? There was no way I could deal with an honest official. The concern must have showed on my face.
“Unnastan, yo frenn ees in ze compound in ze back o ma house, an you weel hear ze charges agains him.”
The commissioner produced a tattered, dog-eared handbook and started to speak. After a minute I realized something was wrong. He was holding the book upside down. He couldn’t read, instead reciting the statute from memory.
I resisted the impulse to grab the gun on the table and shoot this little dictator. He droned on. I touched my pocket to check the bribe money, just in case. Instead, I touched a letter I had recently picked up at the post office. It was a rejection letter. The American Express Company had denied me one of their credit cards. Dear Mr. Vigrier, it read, grossly misspelling my name, perhaps assuming that I was an itinerant tribesman who would dare presume to ask such a great company for one of their cards. Maybe it would work—a letter from a Big Man is the next best thing. I remembered M. Mammadee Swaree, a rich diamond merchant reputed to have powerful connections in the Peoples Republic of Guinea. The name of M. Swaree emerged everywhere in the diamond business. Perhaps this could be a letter of persuasion from him. The long arm of the powerful could reach out and ensnare this parochial, overinflated tyrant. In Africa, all ran scared, and sometimes terrified, from the Big Men.
“Yo see,” the commissioner was saying. “Eet is hopeless. Yo frenn mus go to Kankan on ze nex lorry. I also fine you, yoself, guilty o landing here widdout un clearance an ah fine you one tousand dolla.”
“Commissioner,” I said, “I have a letter here that I must show you. It is from my good friend Honorable Mammadee Swaree.” I unfolded it and held it toward him. The elegant large blue crest seal of American Express was highly visible.
He looked somewhat shocked and bit his lip. “Yo!” he snapped. “Yo mus read it.”
“Of course, Monsieur le Commissionaire,” I said, clearing my throat. “From the Ambassador Extraordinaire and Plenipotentiary, M. Mammadee Swaree.” Then I made up some gibberish about M. Swaree personally guaranteeing me and my companion’s safe passage and safety in this Republic. I made it sound as if we were old acquaintances.
“Ah know
M Swaree!” the commissioner shouted. “Yo cannot frighten me!”
It was obvious he didn’t know him, and was now wary, uncertain of his ground. Instantly, the whole scene changed. The little despot became affable, called for a chair for me.
“Mon ami.” He shrugged. “Ah did na know yo were Honorable Swaree’s fren. Dese people hee are bush, ah mus deal wit dem harshly sometime, don ya know?” He spoke softly, conspiratorially, as though to a fellow insider. I half expected him to wink.
“Monsieur Commissionaire, may I see my friend now?”
He clapped suddenly and spoke to one soldier in French. Little Billy turned up a few minutes later, slightly disoriented and escorted by a soldier. He was not wearing his Stetson hat, his boots, or his belt. I now wanted to leave in the worst way, certain that Billy would say the wrong thing, or someone would read the letter, which still lay on the commissioner’s table, or the ugly little man would have a change of heart. But he sent for beer and custom dictated that we stay and drink. It soon arrived, warm, in tall bottles. We sat quietly, looking at each other in the pale light of the lantern, fanning away swarms of insects, and drinking the commissioner’s warm beer.
After a while the commissioner was beginning to feel the effects of the beer, and I was afraid he would turn ugly and not allow us to leave. Every minute’s delay put us in greater danger, and I also needed to relieve my bladder.
“Monsieur Commissionaire, we must be on our way, but I must repay you for your hospitality.” I laid five hundred dollars on the table. Little Billy started to speak and I stepped hard on his foot. The man stared at the money and scooped it up quickly. I thanked the commissioner for his kindness and consideration, and Little Billy and I strolled casually to the airplanes. It was best not to be seen hurrying.
The Dung Beetles of Liberia Page 18