Soldier N: Gambian Bluff

by David Monnery

  Diba was not one of them. He had immediately realized that the suburbs of Bakau offered a better chance of avoiding detection than open country, and once he had gained the relative safety of populated streets Diba did not make either of the two mistakes most popular with his ex-comrades. Instead of beginning to believe in his own invisibility or instantly seeking out a ride to the haven of the poorer townships, he worked his way across the suburbs and out the other side, to where the mangrove swamps around Cape Creek offered a multitude of hiding places.

  Through the rest of the daylight hours he waited, daydreaming of possible futures far from Banjul, and occasionally slipping into sleep for a few blissful minutes. He would wake with hunger gnawing at his stomach, limbs cramped from their confinement within the mangrove roots, and the sun apparently no further across the sky.

  At long last night began to fall, and as soon as he judged it dark enough Diba started off on the three-mile walk which would bring him to the Denton Bridge. Working his way along the strip of broken country which lay between the ocean and the road was neither easy nor fast, but this route did keep him clear of checkpoints or patrols, and after less than an hour’s walking he found himself looking out over Oyster Creek, the bridge a hundred yards or so away to his right. Beyond it, on the same bank, were the tourist-boat moorings.

  He made his way down to the water’s edge and began following it towards the bridge, keeping a careful eye on the Senegalese checkpoint at its near end. As luck would have it, a minibus had just arrived, and the soldiers had their work cut out examining the passengers and their luggage. As Diba passed under the bridge he could hear a heated argument start up on the road above – something to do with a chicken, though he had no way of knowing what.

  There was no light on the small wooden jetty, and it was difficult to choose between the dozen or so dug-out canoes tied up against it. Diba had never been particularly comfortable in boats, but he was not much of a swimmer, and in Oyster Creek there was always the chance of meeting an undernourished crocodile. He untied the mooring rope of the best-looking craft, climbed gingerly aboard, and managed to sit down without tipping the boat over and himself into the water. Though the argument around the brightly lit bus on the bridge was still filling the evening air, he focused all his concentration on making no sound with the paddle until he was at least halfway across the wide creek.

  In midstream he crossed under the bridge, so as to reach the shore on the ocean side of the road. There was no checkpoint on the Banjul end, and he decided to risk walking straight down the unlit road into town. An hour later he was making a wide loop round a checkpoint outside the Banjul High School, crossing Box Bar Road and ducking into the backstreets of Portuguese Town. Another ten minutes and he was slipping through the gate of Anja’s compound.

  Her room was in darkness, so Diba simply let himself in, anger rising at the thought of finding her with someone else. But she was not there, and neither were any of her things. The room had been stripped bare of everything but the bedstead.

  He went in search of neighbours, and found two young men sharing some ganja in one of the other rooms. They looked at him blankly when he asked about Anja, so he dragged one of them across the yard by the ear to jog his memory. It worked, but not in the way he had wanted. Anja, it seemed, had moved out several days ago. And had not given anyone any idea where she was going. She had been frightened of someone, one of the young men volunteered, before realizing that he was probably talking to the frightener.

  Diba gave him a contemptuous look and went back to Anja’s old room to think. He had been savouring this moment for days, and now it had all been snatched away from him. He needed a woman, he needed to … to show someone who he was.

  He told himself to calm down and think. His clothes had survived the day without getting too soiled, which was good. His first need was money – enough of it to get clear of the country.

  He knew exactly where to go. Halfway down Jones Street, just by the intersection with Spalding, was the home of a money-changer who went by the name of The Christian. Diba had no idea what his real name was, but he did know the man kept his money at home, because he had once tailed him there from his pitch opposite the tourist market. In those days his ambitions had not extended beyond Banjul, and the fear of being identified had held him back from going ahead with a robbery, but now he was on his way out of the country. And in any case, no one was ever identified by a dead man.

  He arrived outside The Christian’s house, saw a light burning inside, and knocked on the door. The man himself answered it, his eyes growing rounder as he saw the automatic pointing at his chest.

  ‘Get in,’ Diba growled.

  The man backed away. ‘What do you want?’ he pleaded.

  ‘What do you think?’ Diba sneered, closing the door behind him and bringing the gun up to within an inch of his terrified face. ‘I want all the money you keep here, and it had better be a good sum. Or I’ll just blow your head all over the wall.’

  The man looked into his eyes, and did not like what he saw. ‘OK, OK,’ he said, ‘it’s in here, come, I’ll give it to you, all of it.’

  The money – a thick wad containing assorted denominations of dalasis, CFAs, English pounds, French francs and US dollars – was in a padlocked metal box under the table.

  Diba’s mouth watered at the sight. ‘How much is there here?’ he asked softly.

  ‘About two thousand five hundred dalasis – that’s almost a thousand dollars …’

  It was a fortune. ‘Turn round,’ said Diba.

  The man opened his mouth to speak, but decided not to. He turned round, and Diba swung the automatic against the side of his skull with all the force he could muster. After gathering up the money he put an ear against the man’s chest to see if the heart was still beating. It seemed not to be, but just to make sure he hit him again in the same place.

  He let himself back out into the night, feeling the adrenalin flowing through his veins, a faint throbbing in his head. A woman cast a doubtful glance in his direction as she walked by, and his smile in return only served to hasten her steps.

  He needed a woman, he thought. And soon.

  McGrath heard a later airing of the same news broadcast as Sibou, and immediately telephoned Mansa Camara’s office to find out whether Diba was on the list of those killed or captured. The Field Force man was not there, but one of his subordinates told McGrath that he would try to get him the information. Ten minutes later he called back with the news that Diba had so far not been found, either alive or dead.

  McGrath packed up work for the day and drove the ministry jeep up to the Royal Victoria. The reception area was empty and she was sitting in her office, feet up on the desk, apparently deep in thought. She looked up with a start, and he caught a flash of disappointment where he had expected fear. ‘Waiting for someone?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘As well as can be expected.’ He sat down on the edge of her desk. ‘He may still be out there,’ he told her bluntly.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So I’ve come to take you home.’

  She smiled at him. ‘That’s very kind,’ she said, ‘but – I don’t know – I feel restless this evening …’

  ‘Then let’s paint the town red – what’s left of it.’

  ‘Oh … I don’t know … what have your English friends been doing?’

  ‘I don’t know the details, but they’ve been over in Bakau for the last couple of days. And probably running the whole show, if Caskey had anything to do with it.’

  ‘And now it’s over they’ll be going back, I suppose?’ she said, a little too obviously.

  McGrath’s face split into a grin. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘So which one is it? No, don’t tell me … Wynwood’s happily married and Caskey’s older than I am. It must be our Mr Franklin.’

  She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. ‘I like him, OK?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s great,’ he sai
d. ‘I was beginning to get worried about you.’

  ‘You’re impossible,’ she said.

  ‘So my wife tells me. Anyway, they’re staying at the Atlantic Hotel now …’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since this afternoon. I’m meeting Caskey up there in an hour or so. Want to come? Or would you like me to take your boyfriend a message?’

  ‘He’s not … And I can deliver my own messages, thank you.’ She smiled at him. ‘But you could drive me home, wait while I have a shower and change, and then drive me over to the hotel.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what’s in it for me.’

  ‘A double whisky?’

  ‘You could have had me for a single.’

  ‘I know.’

  Diba could not believe his luck. Not only had the doctor emerged with the Englishman McGrath, but he was able to flag down a passing taxi in time to follow them back to the house in Wellington Street. He saw them enter the front door as his cab went by, and by the time he had paid off the driver and walked back the fifty yards someone had turned on the second-floor lights.

  It was an old building from colonial days, and as far as Diba could tell its bottom two floors were occupied by a daytime business. Certainly there was no sign of life through their shuttered windows, and generally speaking this was a commercial rather than a residential area.

  He thought about simply knocking on the door and having one of them open it onto his gun. The trouble was, it might be the woman, and then he would have to find a way to deal with the Englishman. He knew from experience that was not likely to be easy. No, this time he had to be certain, and not give the bastard the slightest chance of a comeback.

  Fifteen minutes they had been up there now, and the only reason he had for supposing they were coming down again was the slapdash way the Englishman had parked the jeep, slewed halfway across the road. Diba examined the columned porch, and decided that it would be an ideal spot for an ambush if they did come down again.

  He went back into the road, looked up at the lights, and wondered if they were fucking at that moment. It made him feel hot thinking about it.

  One light went out, and then another. Diba hurried back into the shadows of the porch and waited for the hoped-for sound of feet on the stairs inside. The seconds stretched out until he was almost convinced that they had gone to bed, and then he heard her voice, sounding almost insultingly happy, and the door swung open. She came out first, and he caught a glimpse of her body profile as she walked past him. The Englishman followed, almost too quickly, but in one motion Diba took a single step forward and brought the automatic swinging down on the side of his head. Not as hard as he had hit the money-changer – he wanted this victim alive, at least for a while.

  Franklin examined himself in the mirror, took one last admiring look at the batik trousers he had just purchased in the hotel shop, and left the room. ‘See you later,’ he told Wynwood through the Welshman’s open door.

  ‘Not if you’re wearing those trousers,’ Wynwood said. ‘Have fun,’ he yelled after him.

  Franklin smiled to himself as he walked down the stairs. He could get to really like Wynwood, he thought. The Welshman did not get serious very often, but when he did it counted. He knew where the line was between being real and playing games, and in the work they were in it was a good thing to know.

  He left the hotel and briskly walked the few hundred yards which separated it from the entrance to the Royal Victoria emergency department. There he received his first shock – it was in darkness. He looked at his watch, which told him it was half-past eight. Somehow he had assumed she would still be working, as she had been on the other days. Why, he asked himself, had he not thought to phone her earlier?

  She must have gone home, he decided. He did not have her home telephone number, and he had no certain knowledge of the address, only a visual memory of where the taxi had stopped that night when he took her home. She had not wanted him to come up, and in the street he had been too busy kissing her goodnight to take much note of the surroundings.

  But he did remember the name of the street.

  Franklin walked down to Independence Drive, still cursing himself for his stupidity, and managed to find a taxi.

  He climbed into the front seat. ‘Wellington Street,’ he told the driver.

  ‘What number?’ the man asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Just start at one end and drive slowly down.’

  The driver gave him an odd look and pulled away. In not much more than a minute they were at the head of the street in question, and about half a mile down Franklin spotted the tell-tale clue – McGrath’s Ministry of Development jeep. It was possible that the Ministry had more than one jeep, but highly unlikely that they employed two men with such indifferent parking skills.

  It was now about twenty minutes since Diba had knocked McGrath unconscious and pressed the barrel of his automatic between Sibou’s lips. Pulling the Englishman up two long flights of stairs had taken up quite a time – the man was heavy and Diba could only use one hand, since the other was needed for keeping the gun on the doctor.

  She was worried that McGrath might be dying, but Diba would not let her examine him. In any case, it probably did not matter, she told herself, because the maniac was going to kill them both anyway. She fought back the rising tide of panic which accompanied this realization, and a second – that Diba had been so humiliated at their first meeting that the likelihood of him making any mistake at all was extremely slim.

  But he might, she told herself, he might. And if he did she had to be calm enough to make the most of it.

  They finally reached her flat on the second floor. After she had turned on the lights he dragged McGrath to the middle of the carpeted floor and then went back to lock the door, all the time keeping the gun pointed at her.

  ‘Nice place,’ he said, walking to the open window and looking out. The sky was full of twinkling stars, and the lights of Barra, two miles away across the river, seemed dead by comparison. Tomorrow he would get a taxi from there to the Senegalese border, and try and find some way round the border post. But that was tomorrow … He turned back to her.

  ‘The house belongs to my father,’ she said, thinking that any conversation was better than none.

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘He lives in New York. He used to own the business downstairs.’

  ‘And he gave his little rich-girl daughter all these rooms just for herself.’

  ‘There are only two.’

  ‘Two is a lot,’ he muttered. His eyes were darting to and fro, as if looking for something. ‘Find something to tie him up with,’ he told her.

  ‘I don’t have anything.’

  ‘Take off that dress and tear it into strips,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘I have another dress,’ she said, turning away.

  ‘That one,’ he said, ‘or I kill him now.’

  She gave him a contemptuous look, pushed the straps from her shoulders and stepped out of the dress. She was shaking inside but trying hard not to show it.

  ‘I thought about your body such a lot in prison,’ he told her.

  ‘It’s only a body,’ she said, wondering how long it would be before he asked her to remove her underwear.

  He tore the dress up himself, and braided several strips until they were strong enough to hold McGrath’s wrists together behind his back. Then he used the Englishman’s belt to loop his tied wrists to the leg of a heavy wooden table. ‘Now you can take a look at him,’ he said. ‘And bring him back to life. I want him to be able to see it all.’

  She knelt down to examine the head wound. It was not as bad as she’d feared …

  The bell rang in the hallway outside. Someone had pulled the rope at the front door.

  ‘What’s that?’ Diba hissed.

  ‘Someone at the door,’ she said. She could only think of one person it would be, and the sudden feeling of hope almost overwhelmed her.

  He stood there, uncertain what to d
o.

  ‘They’ll have seen the lights,’ she said.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He slapped her with the back of his hand, almost knocking her off her feet. ‘I don’t know!’ she half-shouted.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her alongside him out through the door and down the stairs, just as the bell rang again above them.

  He stopped and swung her round at the first-floor landing, intending to say how he expected her to get rid of the caller at the door, and remembered she was almost naked. ‘Fuck!’ he muttered violently. ‘OK, you’ll get behind the door,’ he hissed. ‘And if you make a single sound both you and whoever it is out there are dead.’

  Franklin had spent a few minutes wondering what to do. Sibou had told him that McGrath was only a friend, and he had believed her, but standing out there in the street, the man’s jeep in front of her house, he had begun to fear the worst.

  You’re being stupid, he told himself. Go and knock on the door.

  He found an old-fashioned bell-pull and tugged on it, causing a bell to ring somewhere high in the house. For what seemed like an age nothing happened, so he pulled again, and then footsteps could be heard, which seemed to stop and start again, bringing all his suspicions back to life.

  And then the door opened and an African face appeared, that of a man in his mid or late twenties, with a smile on his face and eyes that seemed not to match it.

  Franklin had never seen Diba, never heard him described, but in that moment he knew that this was the man who had attacked her, the man whom McGrath had disarmed, and that he was holding a gun in the hand hidden from view behind the door.

  Diba, for his part, had opened the door not only prepared for trouble, but also assuming that it would wear a white face. The sight of a man with a black face and batik trousers instantly eased his mind. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Taxi,’ the Englishman said creatively, making a fair stab at delivering both syllables with a Gambian accent. He looked at Diba, waiting expectantly. ‘Woman called,’ he added helpfully.