by Jeremy Duns
They seemed just as interested in me. Within less than ten minutes of my entering the hall, a pattern of surveillance had closed in around me: two by the gates, one by the toilets, and a small, neat-looking man in a beret operating them with nods from next to the telephones. There was nothing I could do about it. I was a journalist, and any move I made would only make things worse. They had probably marked me out because I was a white man they didn’t recognize – the aid workers they would know. It was normal. Relax.
It was getting on eleven by the time I made it to the front of the queue. The clerk had a long, narrow face and thick glasses. Behind him was draped the country’s flag – vertical strips of green, white and green. He picked up my passport and started to leaf through it slowly. I wasn’t worried – the document had been made in precisely the same way as if it had been genuine. He stopped at the back page.
‘Press?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He looked troubled at this. He leaned down and took some papers from a drawer, then placed them in front of him and started reading, tracing the miniature lines of text with a finger. I had a mounting sense of unease. Had Dobson let me down? Surely my accreditation had come through?
The clerk suddenly glanced up at me, a pained expression on his face.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘What’s the—’
He was looking behind me. I turned. There were four of them. Quite a party. Broad chests and muscle visible under their uniforms, and patterns of scars down their cheeks. It was no use struggling – there’d be more of them elsewhere in the building, and I wouldn’t have a hope. They’d shoot me in the leg, or send a car to get me. And then I’d have a real job explaining my behaviour.
‘You come this way,’ one of them said, and pushed a rifle into my back.
Do nothing. They just want money, beer, cigarettes. Pay them, get out of here and get to work.
Do nothing.
*
They took me down a narrow, unlit staircase and shoved me into a sparse, harshly lit room.
‘Wait here.’
They slammed the door and I listened to their footsteps recede. I looked around the room: it contained two hard-backed chairs, a low table and some brochures advertising the International Year of African Tourism.
After ten minutes spent reading the brochures, the door opened and the small man in the beret walked in, followed by several of his men. His uniform was immaculate, his beret trimmed with a gold braid. In one hand, he gripped a riding crop.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I am Colonel Bernard Alebayo of the Third Marine Commando Division. Who are you?’
I took out my passport and offered it to him. He took it, but didn’t open it. ‘Your full name, please.’
‘Robert David Peter Kane,’ I said.
‘That is more like it. Thank you. Cooperate with me and we will get along.’ He smiled genially. He looked very young. ‘Are you in Nigeria for business or pleasure?’
I examined his face. He appeared to be serious.
‘Business,’ I said.
‘And what is your profession, Mister Kane?’
‘If you look at my passport—’
‘I am not interested in your passport at this particular moment,’ he said, smiling sweetly again. ‘I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were.’ He spoke English quickly and precisely, accentuating each word in an almost sing-song fashion.
I’d known who he was before he introduced himself: he’d been all over Pritchard’s dossier. Alebayo, ‘The Panther’, was the Nigerian army’s most famous commander. Trained at Sandhurst – like most of the military leaders on both sides of this war – he had a reputation for brutality and unpredictability. He was known to despise do-gooders, politicians and journalists.
‘I’m a journalist,’ I said.
He stroked his chin.
‘For which newspaper?’
I told him.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The famous Times of London.’ He walked around the table, his boots squeaking. ‘Of course, we have our own Times here.’ He swivelled and faced me. ‘Not perhaps as large a publication, or as renowned globally, but, nevertheless, quite respectable on a national level.’ He looked down at his reflection in his boots for a moment. ‘Yes, quite respectable.’
I murmured interest as best I could, and wondered where on earth this was heading.
Alebayo opened my passport, held it away from him as though it were contaminated, and squinted at my photograph.
‘Do you know Mister Winston Churchill?’ he asked, suddenly.
‘My colleague, or his grandfather?’
‘Are your articles as facetious as your speech, Mister Kane? Your colleague.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know him. I wouldn’t say we were friends—’
‘Well, then,’ he interrupted, ‘as your newspaper has sent you to “cover” events here, you have presumably been “boning up” on what Mister Churchill has already written about this country in your newspaper? Yes?’
‘Of course.’ It had been Churchill who had alleged that the Federal pilots were targeting Biafra’s civilian population. His articles had caused such an outcry that Parliament had held another emergency debate on the war – the same debate in which Wilson had announced his trip.
‘Your colleague appears to believe we are savages, Mister Kane,’ said Alebayo. ‘Cold-blooded killers, devoid of any moral sense.’
He suddenly held back his head and laughed, and his soldiers joined in, until he whipped the table with his crop, and the laughter abruptly stopped. It was like a very bad opera production.
‘Can you imagine it, Mister Kane? The cheek of the grandson of Winston Churchill to write such a thing! Has he forgotten Dresden?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to ask him.’ The analogy didn’t seem fair, somehow, but I wasn’t going to get into it.
He leaned in again. ‘Do you intend to file the same species of report as your colleague?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Lagos is four hundred miles from the fighting.’
‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘You are a sharp one, my friend.’ He was pacing around, confusing the flies buzzing about his face. ‘So what will you be writing about? Expatriate dinner parties? Our local cuisine? What are your editor’s orders?’
‘Colour stories,’ I said.
He bristled. ‘I am so sorry, I didn’t quite hear. Could you please repeat yourself?’
I reminded myself to choose my words rather more carefully. ‘A picture of life in the capital of a country at war. What the feeling is in the corridors of power, how negotiations are going, that sort of—’
‘Are those what you call “colour stories”?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘I could tell you a few others. But perhaps your readership wouldn’t be interested in hearing the reverse side of the coin.’
‘We’re interested in the truth,’ I said, and he laughed again.
‘Let me be honest with you, Mister Kane. I do not like journalists. In fact, more often than not, I find them repellent – vultures circling around others’ misery, looking for something to misconstrue.’ He said the word beautifully, savouring its syllables. He was watching me very keenly. ‘Are you certain you are a journalist? You don’t look much like one.’
‘What do I look like?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure.’ He used one hand to squeeze my right bicep through my shirt. ‘But this arm has lifted more than a Parker pen in its time, I think. Perhaps you are a mercenary? I could use a few decent mercenaries at this particular moment. Were you ever in the army, Mister Kane?’
‘Where’s this going?’ I said, cranking up my indignant civilian act. ‘I demand to see someone from the British—’
‘Were you ever in the army, Mister Kane?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A long time ago. But, look, I’m an accredited member of the press, I have all the necessary visas – why am I being detained?’
‘The British prime minister is visiting,’ I said. ‘On Thursday. I’m to report on that, too.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. Our dear and esteemed Mister Harold Wilson. I had heard mention of that. How fortunate for us all that he has decided to pay a visit. How newsworthy.’ He tilted his head and looked at me as though I were a Picasso he suspected had been hung upside down. ‘Do you know what the rebels call your prime minister, Mister Kane?’
‘No,’ I said, wearily. I was losing so much time it didn’t bear thinking about.
‘“Herod”,’ he said, grinning. ‘Or sometimes “Herod Weasel”.’ He walked behind my back now, his heels clicking loudly. ‘You maintain you are a journalist!’ he suddenly shouted into my ear, making me jump. ‘And yet your press accreditation only came through tonight. Please explain, Mister Kane!’ He whipped the crop against the desk again, almost as though he felt he had to.
So that was it. I hadn’t thought they’d be quite so hot on it.
‘A colleague at the front was due to cover the trip,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘He cabled yesterday to say he was ill and wouldn’t be able to make it back to Lagos in time, so my editor decided to send me out on the first available flight instead. That’s why I’ve only just been accredited.’
Alebayo was silent for a moment.
‘Are you perhaps a spy, Mister Kane?’ he said, quietly.
I looked up at him. ‘A spy?’
‘Yes. A secret agent like your Double Oh Seven, saving the world from villains and foes… Amusing that you British have taken so long to realize that you no longer have an empire.’
‘Isn’t this approach unwise?’ I said. ‘My readers will be most interested to know how the Federal army treats the citizens of valued allies.’
‘I think I will decide what is wise here – not you. There have been plenty of misleading reports about me in your newspapers already. I cannot imagine another will do any further harm. That is, if you ever succeed in filing a report on this little meeting.’ He turned to the largest of his thugs. ‘Is the transport ready?’ The thug nodded. ‘Good.’ He turned back to me. ‘Perhaps a visit to one of our prisons would provide some good material for your editor? Some “colour”?’
‘This is outrageous!’ I said, and now my indignation was only half-acted. ‘Call my office in London! Call the British High Commission! I demand—’
‘Please, Mister Kane, save your tantrums. They will not do you any good here.’ He stood a little straighter and adjusted his beret. ‘I must now return to Port Harcourt, where I have many things to attend to. There is the small matter of a war to win. But you will be well looked after by my boys here, I promise. And they may even discover what it is you came here for…’
There was a sudden banging at the door, and Alebayo glanced sharply in its direction. He nodded at one of the thugs, who walked over and opened it. Framed in the light was a large white man with a crumpled red face, wearing what looked to be a pair of pyjamas.
‘Let this man go, Bernard!’ he said in a booming English voice.
*
‘Geoffrey!’ said Alebayo through gritted teeth. ‘How delightful to see you again.’ He strode over to the door and gestured him outside.
The thugs eyed me warily – they were anxious for the order to tear me to pieces. I didn’t much fancy my chances with them.
‘Just follow your orders,’ I told them. ‘And we’ll all be fine.’
They glared at me, and I wondered if I shouldn’t try to make a run for it, after all. Then the door opened again and Alebayo shouted something at the thugs. They leapt up and ran out after him.
I looked in astonishment at the empty room. After about thirty seconds, I stood up myself, picking up my bag from the floor. At the door, I met the man with the red face. A hand was thrust out from a striped cotton sleeve.
‘I’m Geoffrey Manning,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Lagos.’
VI
As we stepped out of the airport, a mob of taxi drivers swarmed around us.
‘Where you go, mister?’
‘I offer you best price!’
Manning waved them away and steered us to a blue Peugeot on the other side of the road.
‘Did you catch the rugby on Saturday?’ he asked as he unlocked his door. ‘The Welsh seemed on good form.’
I climbed into the passenger seat. ‘I missed that,’ I said. ‘Do they show the matches out here, then?’
‘If only, old chap, if only. I caught the report on the World Service. Who’s your money on to win the whole thing?’
‘I haven’t really followed it, I’m afraid.’
He grunted and locked his door, gesturing for me to do the same. When I had, he said: ‘You’re Larry Dark’s boy, aren’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Fine fellow, your father. Never met him myself, but saw him break the land speed record in ’38. Extraordinary day – were you there?’
I shook my head dully.
‘Damn fine fellow.’ He placed his key in the ignition and started her up. ‘Anyway, glad you made it. Imagine you’ll be wanting to get that suit off in this heat.’
He gestured at the back seat, on which an outfit identical to the one he was wearing lay folded.
‘Pyjama party at the Yacht Club – any excuse for a booze-up.’
I told him I was fine as I was.
We turned onto the main road and he swore under his breath. ‘Not our night. Bad go-slow.’ He caught my look. ‘Traffic jam in the local argot. Marjorie will be furious – she was expecting me hours ago.’
‘Marjorie?’
‘The wife. Super girl. Don’t deserve her, really. Fine stock – Scottish blue blood, you know. Stuck with me through thick and thin.’ He mimed swigging a glass and winked conspiratorially at me.
Pritchard had said things were a little haphazard, but I hadn’t imagined they’d be this dire. I’d seen plenty of Manning’s type before. He was a spook of the old school: stockbroker parents, minor public school, army, Colonial Service. Most of them had been swept away in ’66 when the Service had taken over responsibility for the colonies from Five, but Manning had evidently managed to hold on.
I wound down the window and looked out. There was indeed a go-slow. The street was a mass of cars, trucks, motorcycles and bikes, the drivers of which were all either tooting their horns or yelling at the drivers around them. Many of the vehicles looked on the verge of collapse, either because they were overloaded with passengers and luggage or were missing vital parts: windows, wing mirrors, bumpers… The Opel Kapitän alongside us was short a door on the passenger side. Looming over the scene was an enormous billboard with a picture of a tyre: ‘GO BY DUNLOP – THEY LAST LONGEST!’ It seemed a little like trying to sell sticking plasters on a battlefield.
As Manning searched for an opening in the traffic, I considered once again his presence at the airport. I prided myself on my ability to think several steps ahead, but it had taken me totally unawares – I hadn’t imagined my colleagues would be anxious enough to want me on a leash for just one night.
‘When did London cable to say I was on my way?’ I asked.
Manning glanced across at me. ‘About half seven. I was just changing when the office called.’
Half seven. That was fast – it usually took them a month to agree to buy a lightbulb.
‘I told the driver to take the night off and drove straight out here,’ Manning was saying. ‘Your flight came in, but there was no sign of you. Then I spotted a soldier standing guard outside one of the doors leading to the dungeons. Thought I’d better take a look-see.’
I told him I was glad he had; he w
aved my gratitude away. ‘That’s my job. Can’t have our people thrown in the stocks the moment they arrive in the country! Especially not Larry Dark’s boy. Not on my watch. You were unlucky – Bernard’s only in town for a couple of hours. Well, I say unlucky. Depends on how you look at it, of course. A few months back a chap from the Telegraph thought it was a good idea to disagree with him. Bernard had the fellow’s head shaved, got him to do press-ups for an hour, and then forced him to write out the words “I am a crappy Englishman and have no say in Nigeria” a thousand times.’
He roared with laughter at this, yanking the car into an opening in the traffic as he did so. ‘“I am a crappy Englishman and have no say in Nigeria!”’ he bellowed out of the window at a startled motorcyclist, who nearly swerved into the drain as a result. ‘Bernard was always a damn fool,’ he continued calmly once we were safely ensconced in a line just as slow-moving as the one we’d left. ‘Even at Sandhurst. That’s where I first met him, of course, many moons ago. I was an instructor there. Know quite a few of the commanders in this war from those days, as it happens.’
‘What’s he doing in Lagos? I thought his division was miles away.’
‘Yes, he’s over at Port Harcourt. I asked him the same question myself, and he said he was picking up troops and supplies. Apparently he can’t trust the other divisions not to steal his stuff unless he comes up and supervises things personally. Typically African way to run a war.’
I remembered the soldiers I’d seen on the tarmac. ‘What’s he up to? Preparing for the final push?’
Manning snorted. ‘There’s been a final push every blasted month of this war. They’re calling this latest one the final final push – but nobody believes it.’
The traffic was at a complete standstill now, and it looked like we might be in for a long wait: Manning said it could sometimes take hours to clear. I took out my Players and watched as a mangy dog with great gaps of fur and a missing leg wandered up between the lanes of cars. Despite its limp, it had a strangely proud demeanour – almost as though it knew it would reach the centre of Lagos before us.