Kidnapped on Safari

by Peter Riva

  Pero understood. The relative of the great and revered father of their country could not—should not—be allowed to tarnish the population’s faith in their nationhood. Stephan Nyerere will, he had no doubt, have probably officially committed suicide. Pero wondered what was going to happen to the Schmidt family. He had one more message for Amar, which he hoped the major could pass on. “Major, can you relay a message for me? We will honor our silence on the postmaster, but ask him to look into the Treuhand Bank’s financing of Zanzi-Agroforestry. Treuhand is a bank riddled with ex-Soviet spies and sympathizers.” Then he handed the major the case that Madar had brought into the cab. “Madar nearly died protecting this; you might want to take it to Minister Singh. I had a look. This is the financial record of money paid through Zanzi-Agroforestry to Boko Haram and others.” The major said he would pass all that information along immediately, saluted, and cleared the Sea Knight for departure.

  As they crossed the border into Kenya, the pilot advised that two of the four Harriers and the F-18s loitering above were leaving them. The C-130 was still on station above, ready for refueling. The day was past noon already, and Pero could see shadows below as they passed over Tsavo West where that Piper pilot had contemplated setting down with only one engine. When was that? Pero wondered. Yesterday? No, two days ago. He shook his head to clear the mental cobwebs.

  Four hours and one exciting aerial refueling later, the Sea Knight drifted over the Oasis Lodge, its twin turbines and rotors shaking the roofs and alerting everyone there to their presence. The Harriers did a low fly-by and then zoomed up doing barrel rolls in celebration. Pero had already asked Central African Command to contact and ask Lewis to notify Wolfie. As the helicopter landed between the Lodge and the docks, a billowing cloud of dust settled as the Sea Knight doors opened. Nancy stood in the open doorway, turned, and joyously called out to all the girls sitting in the canvas seats, “Mu ne a nan. Abinci, da ruwa, da tsabta gadaje, likitoci da a cikin ‘yan kwanaki ka je gida!” (We are here. Food, water, clean beds, doctors—and, in a few days, you go home!) Some of the girls started clapping, some crying. The girl Bob had carried from the hut clung to him every time he walked past. Now he undid her arms from around his leg and offered his hand. He walked her off the helicopter and toward the Oasis.

  Strolling down the slight hill from the Oasis was a Nigerian giant with bulging muscles that Pero recognized as Kweno Usman, and a bull of a man, Reverend Jimmy Threte. Bob recognized Mary’s uncle, the famous pastor, immediately. Next to them were two women, both in traditional Nigerian buba and iro dress complete with headscarf. They started keening, and at once Bob’s young girl detached her grip on his hand and ran to them. As the girls poured from the Sea Knight, following the sound of the two women keening, a crowd formed with Jimmy Threte at the center. In his sonorous voice, he proclaimed, “The Lord has delivered them safe; what a joyous event. Blessed is the Lord!”

  After the girls deplaned, Nancy, Bob, Mbuno, and Ube left to join the happy reunion. Tone and Pritchett carefully unloaded and were greeted by Wolfie, who helped Tone hobble toward the Oasis. Pero could hear Wolfie exclaim, “I want all the details, you owe me that . . .”

  Pero was going to be the last to leave the helicopter, taking time to thank the crew and pilots. He also asked if he could speak to the remaining Harrier pilots and the C-130 crew. The pilot patched him through. “Fellows, from the bottom of my heart I thank you. You stopped an atrocity with your action and bravery. And, more important, you stopped my good intentions from turning into a God-almighty, international disaster. If you guys talk to General Tews, please thank him for me as well.” The cockpit speaker emitted a round of welcomes and Pero was about to leave when the pilot grabbed his sleeve.

  “Mister Baltazar, I really don’t know who you are, and I know I’m not supposed to ask, but let me assure you all of us are mighty proud to have rescued those girls. In aviation we have a saying: Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, good enough. Seems to me that you touched down just fine.” There was nothing else left to say, so Pero patted his shoulder, turned, and exited the aircraft.

  His foot hit the peaceful soil he loved so dearly in Loiyangalani, and, to complete the contentment, he saw Susanna waiting for him. She was holding Mary and Heep’s hands. Behind her, Mbuno and Niamba stood waiting, smiling. Pero could see that all their faces were streaked with tears and dust, brown trails they had no intention of wiping away. Happy tears are always that way.

  He walked up to Susanna and simply said, “Enough. That is enough.” He looked into his wife’s eyes and added, “You almost lost me. I know what it is like to lose someone. No more. No more.”

  Susanna was made of sterner stuff. She took her husband’s face in her hands and told him, “Mein dummer Mann, I could lose you if you did nothing. I could lose you if you do something. But never will I stop loving you. You are who you are.” And she kissed him.

  Pero was thoroughly confused. The impact of what they had risked and achieved, the full geopolitical implications that he hadn’t understood until it was almost too late—all of it was making him feel guilty for the risks he had taken. He found it oppressive to his very soul. Mbuno’s perspective was simple: Rescue the girls. Pero didn’t have the luxury of that simplicity. The threat was not just to themselves, but to the very stability of Africa and, by extension, world affairs. Pero knew thousands could have perished—could have been faced with war and instability—if his do-gooder action had fallen into the trap that had been set. Those thousands of lives would have been on his conscience; they would have been his fault for agreeing to the instinctive decision to rescue the girls. Damn the Kremlin, he thought angrily.

  And yet, the girls. They were safe. And the Tanzanian coup failed. Wasn’t that worth the risk? Wasn’t it? Pero feared he might never be able to weigh out the answer. It seemed an unsolvable puzzle with his guilt at the middle.

  Mbuno and Niamba shook their heads, waved to Pero, and slowly ambled back up the hill holding hands. Watching intently, Pero felt the two Liangulu formed the perfect image of the hunter safely home from safari, reunited with his loving wife.

  Susanna, Mary, and Heep were studying Pero’s face, seeing a familiar pensive look. They knew Pero well. They knew that his reaction was not one of anticlimax or self-doubt. They knew his mental capability; in Heep’s case, he knew his partner would be evaluating the overall risk and judging his past actions accordingly. Heep had seen it repeatedly on location shoots. Pero always took responsibility. He always put himself at risk emotionally and philosophically because, as Heep knew, Pero was a micromanager. Micromanagers rule themselves with an iron hand.

  Pero allowed his friends to walk him, deep in thought, back toward the lodge. Suddenly, Pero felt exhausted. He told them so, and Mary said soothingly, “Yes, Pero, just as Mbuno has already gone with Niamba to eat and sleep. We’re taking you . . .” she let the end of the sentence hang.

  Pero had no idea where they were going, which hut they were lodged in. He imagined the rooms were all packed, couples doubling up. That’s okay, I just need sleep.

  Pero felt a nudge, then he was falling into the refreshing cold water of the pool. He looked up when he surfaced. “What the hell?” And Mary, Heep, and Susanna, all still dressed, jumped in next to him.

  Susanna paddled over and, in her Geman accent, said, “You think too much.”

  Heep and Mary were laughing as they chimed in together, mimicking Susanna’s accent, “Jawohl, you zink too much.”

  Pero laughed, the tension ebbing. He felt, at last, that it was good to feel safe and be with the people he loved. Besides, he suddenly realized, he was hungry. “Hey, I’m hungry! Is there any toast?” And he burst out laughing at the childishness and the emulation of Mbuno in that question. Maybe it’ll be all right . . .

  As could be expected, the next few days were chaotic at Wolfie’s resort at Loiyangalani. Kenyan authorities, with the assistance of Central African Command, kept all aircraft an
d transport away from the lakeside retreat except for doctors and experts that Jimmy Threte had commanded to appear. The Nigerian ambassador in Kenya was brought in by a small Kenyan Air Force plane. He met with the girls, the doctors, and Heep’s video team. He held Nancy’s hand the whole time he was interviewing the girls, patting it, and saying what a wonderful American she was. An uncomfortable Nancy kept looking about, wondering what his motivations were. In the end, Mary tipped off Jimmy Threte, and Kweno Useman walked the ambassador back to a Land Rover to take him back to the airstrip and then Nairobi. Threte and his bodyguard, Kweno, could be quite forceful and protective that way.

  The Nigerian girls were reclothed in Kenyan kangas, which were almost like their national iro skirts, but without a blouse. So, Mary and Nancy went through all the women’s clothing that the tourists, who were staying in the other wing, had donated from their luggage. Even Mary, Nancy, and Susanna came up with blouses and T-shirts to serve as buba.

  Meals for the girls were initially in their huts, delivered via room service, but within a day Wolfie had gotten rid of any other guests, and the dining hall became a place of giggles, tasting of long-withheld treats, and incessant talk.

  “Ach, it is too noisy now, I eat in my room,” said Wolfie as he marched out of the dining room at lunch. Pero knew Wolfie didn’t mind the girls being happy and talkative; he just minded not being able to have dining room behavior as he expected it to be. It was almost as if he felt they were taking over his place. Which they were, until they would leave, and then Wolfie would equally hate the goodbyes.

  Tone and Pritchett left on the third day, sworn to secrecy, and flew back to Wilson Airport and to their families. Before they left, Wolfie patched them and the whole crew through on the RT to Virgi Singh. First Virgi reported that the locomotive driver was given a formal burial and that his family would be getting a pension for life. Pero and Mbuno were especially pleased with this news. Virgi then went on to tell them that not only was Madar recovering well, but that he had made his full report, and both of the ex–white hunters were being awarded honorary Tanzanian citizenship. Tone asked, “What about the rest of the team?” Virgi told them the Tanzanian government had something special planned for them, as well, perhaps a parade. Pritchett, ever the joker, pretended to be offended. “What, I don’t get to be the grand marshal of my very own parade?” Tone smacked his arm, smiling.

  Bob and the Okiek brothers, Teddy and Keriako, spent most of every day fishing for small tilapia from the dock. Bob said that he had “thinking to do, and fishing helps.” The brothers were happy simply to be fishing with a man they looked up to. Besides, they were pestering him to invite them to this “pencil vania” he talked about. Bob considered them fast friends—they had been through a baptism of fire together.

  Every day, Heep and his team, rejoined by Nancy, videotaped interviews and statements. Jimmy Threte’s experts, all of whom spoke Hausa, worked to reassure the girls, to assuage them of any guilt for anything they had done or said and anything that had happened to them. As Jimmy Threte put it privately to Pero and Bob one evening over Tusker beers, “You see, kidnapped kids feel they deserve to be treated badly. Our job is to make them realize that they were doing good, the Lord’s good, that they did nothing wrong, ever. The girls were not being tested by God. They don’t have to feel guilty. God loves them; God provided you to rescue them. They are survivors, not victims.” Pero thought it was partly psycho-babble and partly sound reasoning. Anyway, he thought, I know nothing about that area, so as long as the authorities and survivor experts he’s brought in are happy with Jimmy Threte, then so will I be.

  Pero recognized that it had become a Jimmy Threte show. No one seemed to care if he, Susanna, Mary, Mbuno, Niamba, Ube, or Bob were even there. Not even Lewis was in contact. It was as if the raid to rescue the girls had never happened, and Pero was being ostracized by the CIA for having risked so much. Pero knew that their luck had held, but he also recognized that it had been luck and Mbuno’s skills that had prevented them from falling into a trap—a trap Pero had not anticipated. As a producer with overall responsibility he felt he had clearly failed.

  Pero was not depressed, but he was a realist and spent his days staying close to Susanna and Mbuno, knowing they understood both his feeling of elation at having succeeded, as well as his dismay at having miscalculated. As Susanna assured him, “Ach, give it time. You won, that is the truth, nothing else counts anymore. See the girls? It was worth it, nein?” Pero hoped that, in time, he, too, would feel like Susanna and Mbuno—that rescuing the young women may have been worth the greater potential risk.

  The fourth morning after they got back, Pero could not find Ube, Mbuno, or Niamba. He asked around, but no one had seen them coming or going. Around noon, a Land Rover drove back up to camp, and Pero went to see who was in it. Mbuno stepped out of the driver’s seat, smiling. In the passenger seat, Niamba fiddled with and failed to open the latch handle, so Pero opened the door for her. She alighted, patted Pero’s arm, and slowly started making her way back to the Oasis Lodge.

  From the back of the Land Rover, Ube emerged, and asked Pero to give him a hand. Pero rounded the corner of the car, peered inside, and asked, “Spearfishing in the croc-infested reeds?”

  Ube nodded. There on the floor in the back of the Land Rover was a Nile perch, about fifty pounds, with a broken spear stuck in its side. Pero looked inquisitively at Ube, who explained, “I never caught one, bwana. Baba said we could try.” Mbuno, Ube, and Pero jointly lifted the fish and started up the hill to the Oasis, following Niamba, who was proudly leading the way. Ube, looking at his mother’s back as she walked ahead, lamented, “But Mama said she only came to watch.”

  Confused, Pero jokingly asked, “And I suppose Wolfie is going to charge full price for the fish that we’ll eat at dinner?”

  Mbuno shook his head, “Oh no, brother, it is not for us. Niamba has told Ube it is her fish now. Niamba loves fish. We may get nothing.”

  Ube pretended to sulk, saying, “Big Fish! Small Mama.”

  Niamba turned and addressed her son, her voice exaggerating a stern tone, “Ni samaki wangu. Napenda samaki.” (It is my fish. I like fish.) Then, giggling, “Ha, Kwa hiyo sasa huwezi kuwa na kitu chochote.” (Ha, so now you cannot have any.) She marched off, clearly amused.

  Mbuno paused in his steps, causing the other two men to stop walking. He smiled at Pero. “Brother, sometimes, it is better that way. You plan a safari to catch fish, and then, if you are lucky, you get to catch fish . . . maybe even a big one, like this. Bigger than you expected.” He hefted the fish a little. “Ndiyo, yes, like this maybe. More than you expected.”

  Mbuno paused further, squinting in the noonday sun, eyes fixed on Pero’s. “Ah, but brother, sometimes someone else gets to eat the fish, and maybe not even thank you.” He paused, then added with emphasis, “It does not matter.” Sharpening his gaze he added, “Remember, brother, there is always the honor of the safari, fish or no fish. Honor cannot be taken away here.” He waited, with effect, to add, “Or in Tanzania.” Then he smiled. Knowing, as only a brother could, that his message had hit home, he changed the subject, chuckling, “Now, our only problem is we may have to beg Niamba for a share of this fish.”

  Starting back up the hill, lugging the huge fish, a silent, resigned, and yet-now-happier Pero knew, as always, that Mbuno was right.

  About safaris, fishing, and, above all, living.

  End