“Did you know that she used to be General Bazooka’s girlfriend? She was involved in a few nasty cases in the past, though of late she has been rather clean.”
“Do you think that the General put me in because of her?”
“I don’t know. It is possible that he planted her to go after you. You were one of his top employees, after all. But then again, maybe he did it for fun. Those guys are up to anything.”
“How did you figure these things out?”
“I have friends who know people who know things. When you disappeared, I tried to use them to find out where you were, but they failed. Don’t worry; my boys will be keeping an eye on Victoria. When did you last see her?”
“A fortnight ago,” Bat mumbled, feeling dizzy. That his brother knew these things made him nervous, afraid, angry. Another stasher of secrets? How many was the bastard sitting on? Now he was doling them out.
“What did she say about the threats?”
“That they were harmless, that she was deeply in love with me. She kept calling me her saviour and miracle-worker.”
“Don’t worry. Go and enjoy the wedding, big brother. Leave the rest to me.”
Bat was shocked to hear how mature and confident his brother sounded. He had fooled everybody with his silence, hiding his astuteness and toughness from the world.
THE WEDDING WAS MODEST in scale but very well done. The day began with the sort of rain which made a day in bed seem a seductive option. But the sun came out, created rainbows and dried the dampness off everything. There was a motorcade, dark cars tailed with colourful ribbons and flowers, slowly making its way past the golf course, the State House and the airport. Tayari exploded his last fireworks. The sound of music gently eased the evening into night. Babit glowed and beamed. All the people Bat cared about were present. It was a day that would haunt him with its beauty.
AS SOON AS TAYARI and his three friends got the money, they left the city and settled in the town of Bulezi, thirty kilometres from Kampala. One of them had inherited his late father’s house a few years back. They opened a car repair shop at the front. Two operated it while the others organized things behind the scene. The idea of a radio station had been a fiction from the start. It had been the only way to get Bat to release the cash. They had guessed right that an intellectual would not be thrilled by the truth, thus the sugar-coating. In the violent world of spying which they had been part of for years, words without action counted for nothing. They were sure that not even the dissidents would have respected the radio plan. The culture had changed.
They knew that they could have gone back to their families, married, had kids, taken jobs and waited for the regime to fall. But the bug of the times had infected them. Without their doses of adrenaline, without moving closer to the flame, without the feeling that they held their lives in their hands, they would have felt useless. Only with the instruments of death and destruction in their charge did they feel safe, in command. Disarmed, incapable of action, they were civilians, kids, women, the very symbol of the defencelessness they had been taught to despise. Yoked to the obscure cause of liberation, their bombs would be double-edged swords, soothing their personal demons and bringing them closer to the day when the regime would fall. They didn’t know what the fighters in Tanzania were up to, and what would happen when they came. They didn’t know whether they would be alive in a year or two or less. They were just determined to be in a position where they could not be ignored or kicked about.
Over the years, during the mysterious disappearances, Tayari had become a member of a spy ring affiliated with the Eunuchs. They were supposed to investigate certain individuals, especially government functionaries for signs of self-enrichment. Tayari had learned how to fire guns, make bombs and defend himself in every way. He had proven to be a gifted bomb-maker. His handlers had allowed him to make fireworks shows as a way of honing his talent, raising funds, and getting closer to his quarries. It was much easier to get inside people’s homes. It was much easier to see what they collected and how they showed off their wealth. Excited by the audience a wedding accorded, they often boasted about money, cattle, holidays, children in foreign universities . . .
In time, the ring had become very successful, and the army officers complained that as a result they spent too much time getting friends and family members out of the clutches of the investigator. They wanted the whole nonsense stopped. They had fought to bring the regime to power; they saw no reason why their families could not do what they pleased without the Eunuchs sniffing them out. When the Eunuchs were elevated to the status of a private army, Major Ozi, the new boss, disbanded the spy ring because Tayari and his friends were not Amin’s tribesmen and could no longer be trusted. Major Ozi also used the chance to exact revenge for friends in the army whose relatives the ring had reported to the Eunuchs. Tayari and his friends were arrested and locked up for a week, with no food. It was at that time that they decided to cross over to the other side and make themselves useful before the dissidents arrived.
Behind the car repair shop they made plastic and fertilizer bombs. The first bomb to go off was planted in a car driven by a notorious State Research Bureau man. Tayari and his friends recognized well the licence plates allocated to security agents. Sometimes these people travelled in unmarked cars, which just gave them away. This car was parked outside a bar on Bombo Road in the middle of the city. On a warm evening Tayari placed the device underneath the car and walked away. Six minutes later the explosion happened. It lifted the car off the ground, scooped out its entrails, and left the shell to burn. A war of attrition had been declared.
The second target was a big shop in the city centre, owned by Major Ozi. The device went off, blew out all the windows, the merchandise caught fire and the building burned all night. The fire brigade was called, but the big red machines could not come because of lack of fuel. By the time Major Ozi had used his influence to secure fuel from the nearest military depot, the shop was beyond salvation. Nobody claimed responsibility. The men on patrol had seen nothing to arouse suspicion. The finger was pointed at the dissidents, and a promise was made to crush them with maximum force. More soldiers were deployed to patrol the city in Stinger jeeps, shooting whenever something frightened them. Far away from the city the quartet drank a toast to their success and debated what to do next.
The repair shop went nowhere, but that had been the intention from the start. The boys spent most of the time idling, pretending to work, preparing themselves for the next mission. Tayari felt a bit guilty about not telling his brother the truth. But he did not blame himself much because he knew that his brother wanted to get back at the regime and would probably sympathize. He only hoped that Bat was not spending sleepless nights over the current turn of events.
The boys travelled to the city and observed how well patrolled the city centre was at night. They decided to try an easier target: Jinja. They had operated there in their spying days, tailing the bosses of big factories. They loved the place, its roominess, the weather. They decided to plant at least five bombs and deflect attention from the city before attacking it again. A bomber needs luck to go along with technical skill because so much can go wrong; theirs held well. There were lots of targets to choose from and high-ranking officers in the area.
In one explosion, the fifth and last one, General Bazooka’s wife lost an arm and was severely burned. She had gone to Jinja to visit the General’s mother and a few relatives, one of whom worked for the Bureau. The only mistake she made was to borrow the Bureau man’s car for the afternoon while hers got a tyre change. She always drove by herself, refusing to be herded like cattle by her husband’s bodyguards. The recent explosions had convinced her more than ever that anonymity was the best way to escape trouble. The car exploded when she started the engine. There were no fire extinguishers around, and the ferocity of the flames kept every rescuer at bay for some time. She was finally pulled out of the wreck, the fumes almost choking her to death. Bystanders gave her jus
t a few days to live.
GENERAL BAZOOKA WAS CONFRONTED with a unique situation. In all the preceding years he had managed to escape untouched. The few people he lost he never mourned. In fact, he did not know what mourning was. Life seemed to come and drift away. A real man, a real soldier, never let anything get to him. He had been in all kinds of shoot-outs, ambushes, and had come out on top. He had killed robbers, soldiers in purges, civilians caught in crossfires. He had ordered bodies thrown away or drowned, and it had never bothered him. All this just cemented his belief in his own invincibility. Above all, his family was out of the game. Even Ashes seemed unlikely to dare touch his dear ones. It was a border nobody easily crossed.
Then came the news he had never even dreamed about. His rage failed to protect and numb him. He was looking into the abyss of helplessness for the first time in many years. He was pricked by thorns of self-pity; he felt the chill of loneliness, utter isolation. He simply didn’t know what to do. In the meantime, he received a message of condolence from the Marshal, who praised his wife as a woman the whole country should be proud of. It was as if the Marshal believed that she was dead. The language was so bombastic that somewhere in his heart, a small troublesome region now packed with intrigue and suspicion, he had the sneaky feeling that this might have been a plot executed with the Marshal’s blessing. But why? Had somebody accused me of treason? If so, why hadn’t they targeted me? Why have I heard nothing of it from my spies in the Marshal’s office and among the Eunuchs? he wondered.
In his heart of hearts he believed that Reptile was responsible, using the cover of the recent bombings. It felt like Ashes, that reptile. He would not come out directly and shoot her on the street, or abduct her and pound her to death like he did to Mrs. Bossman. No, he had to hide behind something in order to show his tact, and then sit back and howl with laughter because nobody could link him to the deed. Reptile definitely knew who had tried to kill his wife. This was no random bombing, especially because my wife had been driving somebody else’s car, the General thought bitterly.
General Bazooka had his wife transferred to Mulago Hospital for the best medical attention available and for proximity to her children. He planted guards on the hospital grounds and on each floor to protect her. In the hospital he was introduced to all kinds of deformity disease could inflict on the body. He saw cheeks blown out by boils, eyes runny with pus, lipless, legless, armless wrecks. He caught sight of patients with limbs caught in networks of pulleys and levers like flies in spider webs. He was especially troubled by children with single limbs playing in the hospital’s corridors, lost to the stink of formaldehyde, and the crush of visitors, nurses, doctors, cleaners. He saw victims of fires and wanted to look away. He realized that the hospital was the worst place he had ever visited: It brought him too close to his own mortality. It dispensed with all the myths of invincibility he cherished. He was no longer possessor and flaunter of life-and -death powers: the doctors and nurses were. He had to bow down to them, and listen when they talked.
On a number of occasions he had tried to commandeer the only lift in operation. It had not been worth the bother. It often transported corpses neatly covered in translucent sheets, or victims of car crashes bubbling in their blood, organs all over the place. He stuck to walking. He did it quickly, unseeingly, the burden of the effects of Marshal Amin’s policies—poverty, lack of medicine—ambushing him on every floor. The load became heaviest on the sixth floor, and outside his wife’s door. What if she was dead? Would his body be able to support the resultant rage? At such moments the country seemed to be full of enemies, conspirators, dissidents.
In the plain gaze of timid patients he seemed to detect fear and pity; the former because he could destroy them, the latter because he had come down from his high horse and, like them, he was dependent on doctors and nurses. It seemed as though they had seen the likes of him before and were ready to receive and outlast even more. Here at the hospital they used unsightly toilets, drank bad water, and could hardly afford to bribe doctors for treatment and drugs, and yet they looked at him as if he were already dead.
He suddenly remembered the artificial lake the Marshal had commissioned. An artificial lake to grow fish and dump garbage in! The bulldozers had huffed and puffed for two months, and now the project had crash-landed. No more money. Gaddafi had refused to finance it, even if the Marshal had promised to name it after him. Lake Gaddafi! All the money wasted! When he had asked for money to buy new dam equipment, he had been denied. All of a sudden, he felt disillusioned. He had been approached for help on two occasions by coup plotters. They were now dead. He felt he should have supported the second group. He suddenly wondered where he would be in ten, twenty years.
General Bazooka’s stomach turned when he saw his wife again. It occurred to him to shoot her and end her misery, but he didn’t want her to go. He wanted her around, in whatever shape. Marshal Amin had sent his team of doctors to look at her; there was little they could do for her. He went to her bed, sat down, held her hand and talked to her. He told her stories of his youth. He reminded her of the day they met. He recounted the events leading to the birth of their first child. He talked about the future of the children and his plan to build her a mansion bigger than his mother’s. He promised to buy her cattle, goats, sheep.
She could not talk, nor was he sure that she had heard him. She looked like a piece of cinder interrupted here and there by red patches and bandages. He brought the children to her and made them hold vigil, promising them to bring the criminals to justice. They had never seen their father looking so distressed. They had always seen him in his glory, in the glow of youth. Now he looked old, harassed, deranged. They knew that his future plans had been derailed, which meant uncertain days ahead. What if something happened before their mother got well? Would she survive a helicopter journey to the north? What if the helicopter was not available?
General Bazooka’s mother remained his only rock. She consoled him and urged him to shoulder his burden and move on. She wanted him to take his wife to Arua as soon as possible. He, however, preferred to wait a little longer and see what the specialists could do.
IT TOOK THE QUARTET sometime before they heard who was injured in the last blast. They celebrated but at the same time knew that they would have to be extremely careful. The stakes had risen to incredible levels, thanks to coincidence. General Bazooka had a reputation; he wasn’t going to take this lying down. They suspended operations while trying to find out the counter-measures the General or the security agencies were going to take. During that time Tayari suffered bouts of hellish worry: What if Victoria sold him to the General? Wouldn’t the General arrest Bat in order to make him tell where he was?
AT A STATE BANQUET a few weeks later General Bazooka could not bear the sight of Colonel Ashes any longer. He went over and confronted him. The white man was holding his favourite cigar while talking to a friend. He laughed loudly, a hacking sound that spread across the room, tipping his head far back to allow the merriment to gush out of him. It was this cocky, self-assured laugh that incensed the General so much that he feared he might have a fit. Ashes looked so inaccessible, a cut above every guest present. He continued talking and laughing even when he saw the General striding towards him as if he intended to go right through him. They were in the gardens of the Nile Perch Hotel, the city at their feet. The sun was going down with a dazzling display of deep reds and oranges set against a pale high sky. Colonel Ashes always made sure that he observed sundown because it was so dramatic and so quick. It made his spirits rise and he toasted it with a stiff drink except when he was at receptions where alcohol was forbidden.
“You will not get away with this, I can assure you, Colonel,” the General spluttered, pointing his finger at his arch-enemy.
“I don’t understand. Do you want a drink, General?”
“The cowardly attack on my wife . . .” he hissed, too furious to finish the sentence.
“It was a bloody shame what happened t
o your beloved wife,” Ashes said, emphasizing “beloved,” hardly able to hide his glee. The fact that fire was involved made it all the more delectable to him. How he would have liked to watch! “But you can take it from me that I had nothing to do with it. It must be one of those pathetic dissident groups you boys seem unable to take care of.”
General Bazooka reached for his gun but remembered that it was empty. Nobody had been allowed in armed, even if it was only Marshal Amin’s double in attendance. The Marshal’s favourite double had been shot in the stomach a few months before, and ever since, the rules had changed. “You will pay for this, I can assure you.”
“I don’t understand you people. Some small guy lays a finger on your tit and you start screaming as if he were cutting off your nuts. My wife’s house was attacked some time ago, but I never uttered a word. It is part of the game. You can’t play a man’s game with that boyish mentality of yours. You should have known that from the beginning, General. As one musician put it, ‘Too Much Love Can Kill You.’ ”
General Bazooka was shaking with exasperation. His forehead was covered in beads of perspiration. He wanted to strike the Englishman, but he knew that it would be of little use. Many dignitaries at the party knew about the bad blood flowing between the two of them, and it would serve no purpose to fuel their gossip machines. “I—I—I . . .”
“If I were you, I would be in hospital holding my wife’s hand instead of hanging around here drowning in self-pity. Men who have tasted the power of life and death should never degrade themselves with such sentimental pooh. It all makes me wonder whether you have ever been shot, General. I have, on a number of occasions. It hurt like hell, but proximity to death breeds fortitude. I have pain in my legs, but I don’t complain. I love it. Why don’t you try it? You could begin by, say, plucking out your sinning eye, as your Bible tells you.” He grinned at the younger man, who looked totally confused.
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