by Giles Foden
I heard Stone’s voice behind me. “That’s only a fraction of it. We’re getting reports that are quite disgusting. Unbelievable. They’re putting…things in people’s mouths. They’re actually cutting their things off ‘and putting them in their mouths.”
I turned round. Stone was carrying two steaming mugs on a round tin tray. He came off balance slightly as he pushed the door shut with his foot, and when he put the tray down there was a little pool of brown liquid in the well of it. I could hear the nylon crackle of his slacks as he walked over.
“It’s strange, that mouth thing,” he said, sitting down. “It’s as if they don’t want even those that die to talk. The State Research Bureau, you’ve surely heard of them, they have a speciality of shooting people there. An enormous amount of the skulls we have reported to us have broken jaws.”
“I didn’t know it was as bad as this,” I said, pushing the folder back towards him.
Stone put his hands on the desk. “Let me come to the point. Hundreds of people are dying every day, and what are you doing? Just carrying on as normal, just bumping along the bottom. Because if you don’t do anything, you are at the bottom: you’re in a cesspit, Nicholas, the whole place is, and you are one of the few people able to lift it out.”
“This is not fair,” I said. “It’s your fault, anyway. If you hadn’t put him in, none of this would have happened.”
He sipped his coffee. “It wasn’t us, not exactly. The Israelis as well…At the time, anyway, it was the right decision. Everyone said it was right for Britain, even the newspapers.”
“But that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s all just policy with you. Expediency: that’s meat and drink to you people. When I came to see you, you suggested that – anyway, the point is, I cannot do what you ask. He is a human being, after all, whatever crimes his regime has perpetrated.”
“He’s a lunatic,” Stone said reprovingly. “One with a lot of blood on his hands and the ability to get a lot more on. He simply shouldn’t be running a country. Look, he’s just sent a message to the Queen insisting that she send an aircraft to take him to the Commonwealth Conference, and a company of Scots Guards to escort him. His latest thing is to send the so-called Pioneers of the Uganda Navy to Guinea-Bissau to liberate it from the Portuguese. He hasn’t got any ships, Nicholas, and Uganda is landlocked anyway. It would be quite funny if it weren’t for the thousands of people who are dying. All these silly larks of his, it’s like pornography. If you laugh at it, you’re stepping over the corpses. And if you work with him, well, it’s worse.”
I felt extremely uncomfortable. “I don’t…work with him. I occasionally have to treat him. Look, it’s not like I’m going out killing people. There are hundreds of Ugandans in the same position as me.”
“You could do something to help them, and the whole country. You’d be doing Uganda a favour. You have the medicines for it. You’re the only person close enough. Let me be honest with you: we need you to do more than calm him down now – I have orders to ask you to kill him.”
“That’s out of the question,” I said, laughing at the preposter-ousness of it, but also deeply shocked. “Doctors don’t do that sort of thing. We take an oath, you know.”
“I know,” he replied, quietly, “but the purpose of that is to save lives, and think how many lives you’d save by this. You wouldn’t get in trouble, I’d see to that. Whenever you get the chance to give him some jabs, just pump him full of adrenalin and make it seem like a heart attack.”
“Impossible,” I said, getting up. Something was still niggling at the back of my mind, though. It would be rather grand to rid the world of a dictator. And then I thought of Amin – that brief moment at State House when he had appeared to open up to me – and what it would mean to kill him, to kill anyone.
“Please sit down,” Stone said. “I know what we are asking you to do is difficult. But it would be the right thing. What is it they say – it only takes one good man to do nothing for evil to triumph?”
Stone the preacher again. That was what annoyed me most, not what he was actually asking.
“You’ve got a very misplaced idea of the right thing,” I said, loftily. “You can’t talk to me like this anyway. You can’t order me about, certainly not order me to murder somebody.”
“Sit back down. Please – just listen to me. This is straight from London.”
Why did I do as he said, and not walk out? All this could go away, things could go back to normal. I didn’t need to go out and look for this kind of excitement.
Seated again, I folded my arms, waiting for him to speak. Stone stood up and walked slowly round the desk. I could smell the aftershave again.
“Sometimes,” he said,“ – and everything gets smoothed out in time – the moral path is the one that doesn’t seem so. It’s been like that throughout history. We’ll look after you, Nicholas. I’ve already arranged for a sum of money to be paid into your account in Scotland.”
“I do not want blood money in my bank account,” I said.
“You will,” he said from behind me, “mark my words. Fifty thousand pounds, and the same when it’s done.”
“You cannot make me do this,” I said. Yet it flashed through my head once again that he was right. I could actually kill Amin and get away with it. Who would be better placed? But there was, I conceded it to myself again, something in me that actually liked the man, monster though he was.
Stone sat back down in front of me. The sun was flooding the room with a deep red light.
“Think about it seriously,” he said. “We can get you whatever you want. Whatever you need. Women, money, a job somewhere else…”
I suddenly came to a decision. “I am not a killer,” I said. “I may be lots of things, but I am not a killer. Maybe it would be different if he were ill, and you asked me simply not to treat him. To let him die. But he isn’t ill, and I will not poison him.”
And then I left the room. Stone didn’t try to stop me. “The money will be in your account shortly,” he said, as I reached for the door. “It’ll stay there, but if you’re going to do it, get on with it, for Christ’s sake.”
As I walked over to the van, between the well-tended, sculptural plots of the Embassy garden, I regretted having come, and resolved that this would be the last time I had anything to do with Stone and his schemes. I had to keep to my own agenda – though I didn’t really know what that was. I drove home slowly, the sun on my hand on the steering wheel. When I got there, I made myself lunch. Delicious: avocado salad, some grilled perch, and a bottle of Pilsner.
29
As it turned out, I needn’t have troubled myself over any other business with Stone. The following week Amin expelled him, Marina and her husband, and most of the remainder of the Embassy staff.
“I have broken the backbone of the British spy ring in Uganda,” he announced on the radio. “Any other foreign embassies with spies in their midst will be dealt with accordingly. Especially if they offer bribes. Even me, the President of Uganda, they were offering bribes to.”
In his usual contradictory spirit, he also said that he had sent yet another message to the Queen, professing his undying friendship for her and declaring his intention to pay her another visit.
“I said to the Queen of England, I hope that this time you will allow me to meet Scottish, Irish and Welsh liberation movements who are fighting against your imperial rule. I am sending this message early, so that you will have ample time to arrange for what is required for my comfortable stay in your country. For example, I hope that during my stay there will be a steady supply of essential commodities because I know that your economy is ailing in many fields. Yes, Mrs Queen, you better believe it. I am coming to London and no one can stop me. Whether you like it or not, I am bringing two hundred and fifty Ugandan reserve forces as my bodyguards. I want to see how strong the British are and I want them to see the powerful man from the continent of Africa.”
Two things happened after the expul
sions, in rapid succession. The first was that my bungalow was broken into, and my journal stolen. Nothing else was touched. This frightened me. I thought about reporting it to the police, but decided against it. I suppose I knew, in my heart, that it had something to do with Amin. Ordinary burglars would never have dared enter the heavily guarded confines of State House.
The second thing, which happened early the next evening, was that Amin called me at Mulago. I was day-dreaming when the phone rang, looking at an old woman sweeping the courtyard with deliberate rhythmic strokes. She did it every evening, clearing up where the outpatients queued, so I don’t know why my gaze should have settled upon her. But it did, just as Amin’s gaze had settled upon me.
“Come immediately,” said his voice in my ear. It was harsher than usual, and my heart began to beat itself out of my chest.
“Doctor Nicholas? I have urgent medical business to discuss with you.”
Sweep sweep sweep. My eyes focused on the woman in the courtyard. “Yes…Your Excellency.”
“Very urgent. Nakasero.” The line went dead.
I did as I was told. Driving to the Lodge, my stomach turned over and over. The sweat was streaming off me, even though the cool of evening had settled, and my throat felt as if a lump of wood had been shoved down it. What did he know about Stone? The fact that I had seen Kay the evening before she had died? The journal – what had I said in it?
Night fell on the way, and the moon was soon high and bright over the swamps next to the road. Moving in the breeze, the mass of papyrus plants looked threatening and weird, their nodding, dandelion-like heads – some over ten feet high – making them seem like helmeted space creatures.
Calm down, I told myself as I entered the city, he’s asked to see you before, it doesn’t mean anything. He wouldn’t harm you. Not NG.
I drove on. When I got to Nakasero the guards showed me up to Amin’s living quarters as before. I walked through the door, and was greeted with the same familiar mess. The baseball bat, the pornographic magazines on the floor, the portrait of Lumumba, the floor-to-ceiling shelves housing the Proceedings of the Law Society of Uganda.
Dressed in military uniform – just plain khaki, not the bedazzling field marshal’s outfit – Amin was sitting in the antique chair. Next to it was the same gauzy four-poster water-bed with its twisted squall of sheets and pillow cases, and the mirrored wardrobes, vanity unit and escritoire. On the latter, I noticed, the cowboy holster was resting, the embossed handle of the gun sticking out of it.
He looked up as I came in and smiled pleasantly at me. There was a copy of the Sunday Times lying open at his feet, showing a picture of him holding a baby and grinning broadly.
“Ah,” he said, “my good friend Doctor Nicholas.”
“You called, Your Excellency?” I was still sweating heavily.
He looked down at the newspaper headline: THE BUTCHER IN THE BUSH.
“Though the English hate me,” he said, “I still love and respect the Queen. I was thinking of maybe writing to her once more.”
“Is that what you called me about?” I said, relieved.
“Yes,” he said, standing up. “And also no. I did call, but you did not hear. I gave you many things, but you betrayed me.”
I stared at him, speechless.
“Doctor, you have done badly because you have started to fight against me. Like an English, not a Scots. Very bad.”
My eyes flicked over to the escritoire, to the holster. But he was reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a tiny revolver of the type used by gamblers in Westerns. In his big fist, only the muzzle showed.
“This is your last day. You are to die. This is your end.”
I flinched, and then sank to my knees and began to babble. “Your Excellency, please. I have done nothing!”
The mouth of the gun was right in front of me. I could see the wrinkles in Amin’s hand.
His voice echoed above me. “So you want to leave me, do you?” Then he squatted down, his face close to mine. “What is wrong that you do not love me?” he whispered. “Why are you no longer my friend?”
“Please,” I said, hoarsely. “Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.” I was trembling uncontrollably, and I felt that I might soon void myself.
Then suddenly Amin had stood up and his head was raised and he was laughing, laughing up to the ceiling. “Kill you? Why on earth should I want to kill a man like you?”
I looked up. There was something stunned and child-like in his face.
“No, I wouldn’t want to kill you, Doctor Nicholas. I thought you wanted to kill me. But I know you wouldn’t. I won’t take vengeance on silliness.”
I remained on the floor, panting like a dog, as Amin put the little gun back in his pocket. He walked over to the escritoire, and pulled open a drawer. I could see myself in the mirrors – crouched, panting, panting – and behind me the ranks of bookshelves.
“I am sorry to have frightened you,” Amin said, coming back over. “The fact is, my good friend, that I have heard from my intelligence operatives in the State Research Bureau that you have been engaged in activities against the state. According to this report…”
He waved a pink piece of paper in the air above me.
“…which was written by my good friend Major Weir, who has sadly had to go now – you have been told to give me bad drugs by the government of her Majesty the Queen.”
“I…” I croaked, confused. Weir? I thought of his limp and his turkey-wattle neck, the insistent buzz of the radio-controlled helicopter.
“There is no need to deny it. I know everything, you see. Including this I know – that you are too good a doctor, and love Idi Amin Dada too much to do this thing.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I wouldn’t do it, you know that I wouldn’t doit.”
“So,” he said, a cunning look coming into his eyes, “they did ask you, then?”
“I refused,” I said. “It is not right.”
“Good,” he said, and walked over to the escritoire and sat down.
“Good,” he repeated, reaching into the desk. “Because then I am able to forgive you this other matter.”
He held up the black notebook in which I had been writing my journal. I looked up at him in horror. I had forgotten about it while he had been threatening me with the gun, and now a new wave of fear surged through me. There was silence for a moment in the room, as he turned the pages. I feverishly ran over in my mind what was in there.
“You are a very good writer,” he said, after a while. “I can see that plain. But when I talked to you about my journey to become head of state of Uganda, I did not know you would be writing these things down in a book.”
“It’s just a journal,” I said. “Like a diary.”
“You are a very clever man,” he said. “But I do not like what you write here about my mother. Her name was Fanta, not Pepsi Cola. And what you write about my fourth wife is insulting. You should know that I am a sexual lion and that I have fathered over fifty children in Uganda and all over the world. If you continue to write things like this, you will be dead. Straight. From now on we will have radio-cassette and press button. Whenever you write, you will take the words from my mouth. Exactly. Because the mouth is the home of words.”
He turned over a few more pages. I prayed again that I had not noted in detail any connection with Kay. I didn’t think I had, but I was not in a state to remember.
And then Amin said something that threw me totally. “Now, this is very important. This fellow, Waziri, noted here. You say he was your friend?”
“Well,” I said, thinking rapidly where this was leading. “He worked at the clinic in Mbarara.”
Amin fixed his eyes on me. “He was not a good doctor – and thus I do not think he could be your friend. Because he is not my friend, and if he is not my friend, he cannot be your friend. It is true?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Amin got to his feet, walked round the desk and pul
led me up.
“Follow me,” he commanded. “I have something very important to show you.”
He walked over to the bookshelves and pushed against one of them. A dark space came where one stack of the leather volumes went in on itself. He pushed again. The stack swung in farther, revealing a long, damp passageway, dimly lit with strip lights. There were pools of water on the concrete floor, and all around a smell of dead and standing air.
Amin turned to me, his eyes gleaming avidly. “Come,” he said.
There was no question of my refusing to do as he said. I followed his burly figure as it ducked through the entrance, and went down some steps. My pace fell in with his, splashing through the water. I felt an oppressive sense of dread.
We walked on, the braid on Amin’s shoulders flashing as he passed under the lights. My heart beat painfully again (medically, I suspected I was tachycardic, running at over ioo bpm). The echoes of our footsteps sounded in the tunnel – and then another sound came.
Two sounds. The first was a thump thump thump, reminiscent of the women pounding millet back in Mbarara. With its slow relentlessness, it mocked my sore-speeding heart. The other sound was more disturbing still – a faint yet piercing scream, or howl. I’d only once heard anything like it before, when I’d come across a weasel caught in a snare in the pine woods above Fossiemuir. I felt my bowels loosen.
We entered a chamber. It had several partitioned walls and alcoves. In one of the latter was a cubicle with glass sides, and filled with electronic equipment. Shifting in the glass, the dials and LED levels flickered in the dim light.
Amin crossed to the other side of the chamber and looked through a spyhole in the wall. Then he pressed a button and a big metal door slid open.
“Kila mlango kwa ufunguo wake,” he said, grinning back at me. “Every door has its own key.”