The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  Vickery hung up on his caller and swiveled his chair toward us. “Hello, Daniel. Who’s your friend?”

  “Nicky Bettencourt. I’m a photographer for Newsweek.”

  “I know who you are. When you worked for Reuters, you took a good shot in Rwanda. A severed arm lying in the middle of the road.”

  “That was a long time ago.” I stepped forward, then realized that Vickery’s right hand had been transformed into a bird’s claw—the thumb lost, the other fingers bent slightly and fused together. Embarrassed, I lowered my own hand while he watched me.

  “As you can see, I’ve been dipped in fire. All the base metal has been burned away.” Vickery hit another phone button. “Miss Patel, could we have a pot of tea and some digestive biscuits? The chocolate-dipped ones, if they’re still available.”

  Vickery pointed out some folding chairs and we set them up near his desk. I glanced at Daniel. His face showed neither disgust nor sympathy. He stared at Vickery as if the bureau chief was going to perform a magic trick.

  “What do they say about me in London?”

  “That you’re working here.”

  “Do they think I’m doing a good job? That’s why I wanted to see you, Daniel. To get the gossip, find out how I’m perceived.”

  “No one said anything negative.”

  “Nor should they. I’m still sending out an enormous amount of copy.” Vickery gestured with his injured hand. “I’ve got two or three stringers in every country and I can talk to them by phone twenty-four hours a day. I send them into battle, cheer them on, listen to the guns firing. It’s like moving pieces around a chessboard.”

  Someone opened the door. A patch of light appeared on Vickery’s cheek. With a clatter of dishes Miss Patel walked in carrying a wooden tray with a teapot, cups and saucers, and a dish of little round cookies. She placed the tray near the edge of the desk and poured some tea for her boss.

  “Do you find Miss Patel attractive, Daniel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to sleep with her? I’m quite desperate to, but I have a few physical deficiencies. My dream is for Miss Patel to take a lover and then allow me to watch her perform certain acts.”

  Miss Patel’s lips tightened slightly, but she mixed in the cream and sugar. “That will never happen, Mr. Vickery.”

  “Never say never, Miss Patel. Look at my own life. An infinite variety of joys and humiliations are possible in this world.”

  Miss Patel retreated out the doorway with a swish of her sari. Vickery made a harsh sort of gasp that resembled laughter. Daniel poured two more cups of tea.

  “Don’t worry. I can say anything to her. You can, too. She’s a college graduate and there are no jobs for college graduates in this town. She’s lucky I hired her.”

  “Tell me about the kidnapped tourists.”

  “I see you haven’t changed, Daniel. Fun and games in Rome, but hard work in the field. Do you even like being a journalist? I wonder.”

  “What are the chances of finding the Lord’s Righteous Army?”

  “Virtually nonexistent. And if you do find them, they’ll kill you.”

  “Sounds like a promising story.”

  Vickery raised the cup to his lips and slurped some tea. “The kidnapped tourists were bird-watchers. Can you believe it? Apparently Kidepo Valley National Park is a prime spot to view large raptors so they flew up there on a chartered plane from Entebbe. Bird-watchers are bloody insane. They all have lifetime lists of the species they’ve seen. The more birds on your list, the more sex you get at bird-watcher conventions.”

  “How did they get captured?”

  “The group spent a night at Apoka Lodge, then two armed park rangers and two drivers took them out in Land Rovers. About ten kilometers from the camp, the Lord’s Righteous Army ambushed them. The guerrillas killed both rangers and one of the drivers, then chopped off the right hand of the surviving driver and sent him back to tell the world.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “You mean chopping off the hand? Not really. It’s Samuel Okello’s trademark, like Mickey Mouse or the Coke bottle. I think he bases it on biblical law. The Book of Leviticus.”

  “Is that all you know about him?”

  “He was the top student at his Christian school, formed a religious youth organization, then got a two-year scholarship to attend Southern Methodist University in Texas. When he came home to preach in Kitgum there was friction between the members of his Acholi tribe and the southern tribesmen running the government. Okello got whipped by the district police for leading a protest so he took his parishioners and fled into the bush. He wants to take over the country and set up a government, with him as the supreme leader. In the last few years he’s moved north to the Sudanese border.”

  “Are the hostages still alive?”

  “A few herdsmen have seen them. They all look the worse for wear, but Okello hasn’t killed them—yet. He’s been getting weapons from the Sudanese army because the army hates the Ugandan government. Sudan is the obvious channel for a deal, but no one has attempted it. I guess Reverend Okello makes his own rules.”

  Vickery picked up another cookie and shoved it in his mouth. The room was as hot and airless as a storage container. Sweat trickled down my neck, but Daniel looked comfortable.

  “I do love chocolate-dipped digestive biscuits. They’re one of my few remaining pleasures, along with codeine pills and porno tapes.” Vickery laughed again. “You know I can’t cry anymore? Something’s wrong with my tear ducts. When I go outside I have to put drops in my eyes.”

  “So how do we contact Okello?”

  “It’s not possible. Several journalists have flown up to Kidepo park, but no one’s crazy enough to go out into the bush. This is a lost cause, Daniel. Waste of time and money.”

  I saw myself returning to London without any photographs. “But we’re here,” I said. “We’ve got to do something.”

  Vickery smiled as if a trained dog had just jumped for a ball. “There’s a backup story at a refugee camp near the game park. Not as sexy as hostages and severed hands, but someone might run it. I assume you’ve heard of Richard Seaton?”

  Daniel and I both nodded. Seaton was the Englishman who owned the Riverside Bank. He had started out installing ATM machines on street corners, then took control of several regional building societies. There was a great deal of outcry when Seaton began sacking little old lady tellers, but he countered with an inspired ad campaign: “I Bought My Home with Richard.” You’d see some real-life family in their new house purchased with a loan from the Riverside Bank and Richard would be there, digging up the garden or kicking a soccer ball around like a favorite uncle. There was always one bit at the end where someone would give Richard a baby with a soiled diaper or offer him a towel to dry the dishes. Seaton would raise his eyebrows slightly—he was, of course, a very wealthy man—but then he’d smile, because he truly was part of your family. The ads became so popular that Seaton gave speeches during the last election.

  “Mr. Seaton is making a transition from capitalistic exploiter to world philanthropist,” Vickery explained. “He’s started his own relief organization called Hand-to-Hand. Catchy name, don’t you think? He’s sponsoring a refugee camp near the border for the Sudanese forced out of their country by the civil war. His girlfriend, Dr. Julia Cadell, is running the operation. I’ve heard that she’s damn good looking, but she might be the real thing. She’s also worked in Bosnia and Sierra Leone.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I’m not interested in relief work.”

  “Seaton is actually going to be at the camp for the next few days. I got a fax from his London PR firm giving me his schedule. It’s an easy story, Daniel. Write your own headline. BRITISH BILLIONAIRE FEEDS THE HUNGRY or, for the tabloids, DICKY DOES GOOD. Nicky can take a photo of the Great Man looking concerned as he holds a shriveled black baby in his arms.”

  Daniel glanced at me. “Nicky hates celebrities, and I hate articles about fa
mine relief. It’s always the same article.”

  “Emphasize the pain and tears. People in America and Britain always feel better about themselves when they can read how miserable everyone else is.”

  “I’m going to find Samuel Okello.”

  “Be my guest. If I were you, I’d fly to Kidepo park and start looking for people who’ve lost their right hands.”

  We finished our tea and left a few minutes later as Vickery began dialing his stringer in Zambia. It felt good to escape from that airless room. Daniel said he wanted a drink and we took a taxi down to the Day and Night Bar on Latema Road.

  True to its name, Day and Night was open twenty-four hours a day. I’d heard rumors that the front door hadn’t been closed in thirty years. Because of fights, the bar was surrounded by a wire cage. Two enormous bouncers strutted around with clubs thrust in their belts. The whole place smelled like spilled beer and bad plumbing, but there were friendly whores, dancing drunks, and a jukebox blasting out love songs in Swahili.

  We pushed our money through a slot in the cage, got two bottles of White Cap, and retreated to the back room. Daniel gave one of the bouncers a few shillings, and the man told the working girls and hustlers that he’d knock out their teeth if they didn’t leave us alone. For a few minutes we just sat quietly at our table and let the energy flow around us. There was a Somali girl there, probably about fifteen years old, with dark skin and seashells knotted to each braid of her hair. I figured that she probably had AIDS and was going to die in a few years, but that evening she was full of life and didn’t care. Clutching a bottle of changaa—the local bootleg liquor—she danced around the tables, and the seashells clicked together as she moved her hips. She was a good photograph, but I didn’t want to play the tourist and pull out my camera.

  “Matt had a Lebanese girlfriend when I first met him,” Daniel said. “It looked like they were going to get married.”

  “I guess he’s changed.”

  Daniel drew an invisible pattern on the table with his forefinger. “I’m not going to end up like that, Nicky.”

  “Everybody wants to get off the train at the right moment, but for some reason we stay on too long.”

  I finished my beer and went over to the cage to get two more bottles. Some drunks started fighting, but I managed to dodge them without spilling anything. Daniel looked a little more confident when I returned to our table.

  “I’ve gotten enough background today,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll fly to Uganda.”

  “Have you figured out what we’re going to do if we actually find Samuel Okello? I don’t want to get killed.”

  “Don’t worry, Nicky. Everything’s negotiable. You know that.”

  I heard the soft thud of a club landing on someone’s back. A woman shouted in her tribal language and a bottle hit the wall. Both of us turned to watch as the bouncers hunched like rugby players and pushed three people out the door.

  WE WENT BACK to the airport the next morning and flew to Uganda. Daniel sat in an aisle seat, checking a list of names in his leather notebook. I gazed out the window and watched as the yellowish brown colors of the Kenyan savanna disappeared and were replaced by a tropical landscape. The airplane’s shadow glided across the earth, and we passed over the northern edge of Lake Victoria. There were little whitecaps on the waves and I saw two fishermen sitting in a narrow boat. The plane banked to the right, landed at Entebbe airport, and taxied to the small terminal.

  One of Daniel’s lunchtime companions at the Stampa Estera had given him the name of a local driver used by journalists. A big man wearing a satiny blue shirt was waiting for us on the tarmac when we got off the plane. He deftly separated us from a group of German tourists, then smiled and shook our hands.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. I’m Winston Kanyara. Please, come with me.”

  Winston knew every police officer and customs official at the airport. He told jokes in English and three tribal languages, handed out free cigarettes and a few small bribes. Five minutes later, we were out of the terminal and sliding into the back of Winston’s ancient Mercedes-Benz. “Once owned by a general,” he explained. More cigarettes were distributed to a trio of young soldiers carrying assault rifles and then we glided away from the curb.

  The dashboard had been turned into an altar with an ivory cross and a plastic statue of a black Virgin Mary. Instead of the Christ child, a tiny lightbulb burned in her arms. Tropical air flowed in through the open windows as we traveled past small farms and an occasional coffee plantation. Wild orchids were growing in the road ditch and there were stick-and-wattle huts with rusty sheet-metal roofs the color of dry blood. Every mile or so we encountered an old woman or a child sitting on the roadside with something for sale—a bunch of plantains or a pile of yams, two AA batteries or a single bottle of beer.

  Winston drove with one elbow on the window frame. He looked happy that he had two paying clients and that it was such a pleasant morning. “What is the nature of your article?” he asked. “Our country’s economy? The national parks? This terrible AIDS disease?” He guided the Benz around two long-horned African cows standing in the middle of the road. “Perhaps you might want to interview our country’s contestant in the Miss Universe Pageant. She’s quite pretty.”

  “We want to interview Samuel Okello.”

  Winston looked disappointed. “This is not possible, Mr. McFarland. Okello is a crazy man. He steals children and teaches them how to kill.”

  Daniel opened up his notebook and studied his list of names. “Nicky and I will look for someone in Kampala who has contacts with the Lord’s Righteous Army. In the meantime, I’d like you to find a pilot that can fly us up to Kosana refugee camp. There has to be someone there who has met Samuel Okello and knows how to find him.”

  Winston extended his right hand and touched the Virgin Mary’s plastic feet. “Miss Uganda is a much better story. She’s a princess from the kingdom of Toro, a Catholic, and virtuous—or so I’ve been told.”

  “We’ll go to the Parliament building first, then we’ll talk to some aid workers who have been in Okello’s area.”

  Kampala was built on a cluster of low hills and there was enough rainfall during the year to keep everything green. Bamboo grass and jacaranda trees grew everywhere and the vegetation softened the hard edges of the modern glass-and-concrete buildings. Thousands of people were out on Kampala Road that morning, heading to work or to the open-air market. Ugandans from a dozen different tribes mixed with the Nubians from the north and the Tutsis from the south. These days there was a separate tribe of those dying with AIDS. Both men and women had the same appearance, slender and frail, their clothes hanging on their bodies. They drifted down the sidewalk, often with a small child to help them along.

  We left our bags with the desk clerk at the Speke Hotel, changed some money at a Forex bureau, then walked over to the Parliament offices. We talked to the Ugandan members of Parliament who came from the northern area that had been ravaged by the Lord’s Righteous Army. No one knew how to contact the guerrillas, but some of the office staff were related to the kidnapped children. Rummaging through their desks, they pulled out First Communion photographs of little girls in white dresses and black-and-white snapshots of boys wearing their school uniforms. If you see these children, let us know, they told us. We pray for them every day.

  I asked for permission to take pictures, then moved my chair to an angle slightly out of the subjects’ sight line. I took my time and tried not to make a lot of noise. Sometimes I thought that I never actually saw anyone unless I was trying to get a photograph. Most people wear a public mask when talking to strangers, but then suddenly they lower their eyes or tighten their lips and their face changes and you see something real.

  My ambition had placed me in this situation, but when I started taking pictures all that had to disappear. Successful photographers blend into the scenery. You try not to frighten dogs and babies. You instinctively know where the light source is while your eye search
es for an image with something interesting at the center. Since you’ve spent your life watching other people do things, you can anticipate their movements. A good photograph is rarely the first thing you see in your viewfinder. It’s the moment that’s going to occur a few seconds later. As I watched, a Ugandan woman held up a photograph. I raised my camera when she kissed her forefinger, then squeezed the shutter when she touched the image of her lost daughter.

  Late in the afternoon we ended up at a bar on Kampala Road that was run by the wife of an Italian aid worker. We sat outside at white plastic picnic tables and Daniel bought beer for the young reporters who wrote for the New Vision, the government newspaper. Most of them believed that Okello had moved north into Sudan. No one had seen the hostages for several months. It was rumored they were dead.

  Winston’s Mercedes-Benz pulled up to the curb and he got out with a young white man and a Ugandan wearing a green ranger’s shirt. Daniel bought one more round for the journalists and I followed him over to another table.

  Winston made the introductions like a diplomat. “Gentlemen, this is Paul Rosen of the World Wildlife Fund and Tobias Magazi from the National Parks Service. They’re flying up to Kidepo park and could possibly take you along.”

  Everyone shook hands and Daniel ordered more beer. I found out later that Paul Rosen’s father owned 30 percent of a large corporation in the States. Instead of living off his trust fund, Paul had flown his airplane to Uganda and started an antipoaching task force with Tobias. The two friends were in their twenties, good looking and energetic, filled with plans to save the world.

  “We need your help,” Paul said. “It would be great if we could get some coverage in the Washington Post.”

  “I’m not in the helping business,” Daniel told him. “Neither is Nicky.”

  “Of course. We understand.” Tobias leaned forward in his chair. “But this is a big story. People in America and Europe will be very interested.”

  “The Sudanese army is crossing the border to kill elephants,” Paul said. “They’re using grenades and assault rifles.”