by Frank Coates
‘So you don’t know where the children go?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘We simply know they go on to complete their circle of life. These little ones commence that journey tomorrow.’
Riley sighed. It was pointless to continue the discussion. He was beginning to understand the term ‘blind faith’, with all its limitations. He gave up, but some questions remained unanswered.
‘I was here a couple of weeks ago,’ he said, ‘and the place was deserted. More than that, it looked as though it had never been used.’
‘That’s correct, Mr Riley. We close the orphanage when we have no children to place. These items wouldn’t last long in an unoccupied house in Nairobi,’ she said, indicating the various appliances. ‘We have them put into storage until Mr Koske takes another group of children from our headquarters in Mombasa.’
‘I see…’
‘Mr Koske is simply wonderful the way he can find homes for our children. They come in for a few days and then they fly away like butterflies to begin their new lives.’ She was beaming with pride. ‘In between times, Sister Margaret and I work with other organisations in Kibera.’ She peered into his teacup. ‘More tea?’ she asked.
‘No, thank you.’
‘So tell me, Mr Riley, now that you know about us, are you interested in joining the Circularians?’
‘I have to admit, it’s not the reason I’m here,’ he said.
‘Then why are you here, if I may ask?’
‘I was hoping to find one of your children, by the name of Jafari Su’ud—a boy of about twelve or thirteen by now, I suppose.’
‘Long gone, I’m afraid. As I said, the older boys are always quickly placed. I believe Mr Koske has a contact in Wajir who is always looking for Muslim boys to place with Arab families. But you’ve come from so far away—how did you hear about us?’
Without a thought of where the conversation might lead, he told Sister Veronica about Melissa and their discussion in Bali, but became diverted and found himself talking about their meeting in the supermarket; of how he’d loved her at first sight.
‘Oh, that’s so sweet,’ Sister Veronica said. ‘Did you hear that, Margaret?’ she asked her colleague. ‘Love at first sight.’
The other woman nodded and, smiling, took a seat beside Sister Veronica.
Riley became immersed in the details: the wedding photos on surfboards, their marriage ceremony. He roamed into recollections of other happy days in Australia, and smiled as he recalled the fun they’d had learning to windsurf; how Melissa would shriek with delight when she finally remained upright for long enough to catch the wind and run with it. The story meandered back to Bali and the day they’d discussed travelling to Kenya to see their foster child.
‘It’s the reason I’m here today,’ he said. ‘Melissa and I had been talking about coming here to find Jafari for some time.’
‘And I can see it was the love you share with your wife that brought you here. But where is she? Where is your wife, Melissa?’
As usual, he found a way to avoid the question. He strung more memories together, but soon he was recalling that terrible night in Bali: the forgotten hat; the ear-shattering explosion; the horror of Jalan Legian.
Sister Veronica’s hand went to her mouth.
He recounted the long moment of shocked disbelief; the mad, blind dash to where he’d left Melissa, and his frantic search for her among the ruins. And suddenly Melissa was in his arms—a lifeless, broken body.
Tears brimmed and he forced them away. His story was finished but he felt unsure if he’d told the sisters how much he’d loved his wife. He told them anyway.
The two nuns sat side by side, tears tumbling down their cheeks.
He was exhausted. Empty.
But it was over.
Kazlana sat in her empty office, reading the civil aviation report again. It all made sense now. Her father would never have landed the Cessna near the Somali border unless he had a compelling reason to do so. He had arranged a meeting with Abukar to get details of whatever he suspected was going on at the Nakuru medical facility, and Abukar had murdered him. Which meant she could never avenge her father’s death—Abukar was beyond her reach.
She dropped her head into her hands and groaned in frustration.
Her mobile phone rang. She ignored it.
A moment later the telephone at her receptionist’s desk buzzed. Who could be calling her office on a Sunday? She pressed the answer button.
‘Antonio!’ she said. ‘How are you? Is everything all right?’
‘Cara mia. You are a very difficult person to find, no? Everywhere I am calling you, here and there, and now I find you in your office! Never mind. I have some news about your father.’
‘You do? I’ve been going crazy here. I can’t understand what—’
‘Kazlana. Stop. Listen to me. I do not have a lot of time. Your father had a rendezvous north of Wajir. That is why he landed where he did.’
‘Yes, I know. It was with Faraj Khalid Abukar.’
‘No. It was not.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because…I was with Abukar that day. Neither he nor his men were involved.’
‘Then, who?’
‘Ah, that is the difficult part. I don’t know this person, but my information is that he’s—how you say?—a big noise in Nairobi.’
‘Antonio, wait. What are we doing? We shouldn’t be discussing this on an open line. You know how it is.’
‘There is no time. I leave for Somalia tonight.’
‘I don’t want to hear the name. For your own sake, hang up now.’
‘I don’t have the name, but maybe you can find it yourself. This big noise came here in a government helicopter. They arrived on—’
‘Antonio! For God’s sake, stop. I’m hanging up.’
Shaken and annoyed by Antonio’s recklessness, Kazlana went immediately to her computer. Logging on to the Daily Nation website, she drummed her fingers while the archives page took an age to download. There was another agonising wait after she’d searched for news reports for the day her father’s plane crashed.
She perused every article on that day and every day of the following week, but there was nothing about a member of the government arriving in Wajir. Maybe it just wasn’t newsworthy.
She was about to close the site, but on a hunch called up the page covering the day before the crash. There it was. A small piece in the Gossip Around the Nation column:
Wajir. Thursday. Despite all the chest-beating the government is doing about the need for economising, our spy in Wajir has informed us that a government helicopter with one official aboard arrived in Wajir today. Junior government minister Mr Gideon Koske was on a flag-flying mission. Anyone would think there was an election in the wind!
Henry, the doorman, met Riley as he was parking the Land Rover and took the suitcases from him. ‘Would you like me to help you to your rooms with them, Mr Mark?’
‘Don’t bother just now, Henry. Put them in the luggage room. I need a drink.’
The talk with the Circularian nuns had shaken him. He felt exhausted, but strangely relieved, as if a huge burden had been lifted from him.
He entered the bar and, when the waiter asked, ordered a whisky and soda. Then he changed his mind. ‘Better make it a coffee,’ he said. It was a first, but Charlotte was right: he was drinking too much.
He took a newspaper to a table and flicked through the pages. A small headline on page five caught his eye: UNICEF Hearings Off to a Shaky Start.
The UNICEF committee meeting now in session at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre has heard that Kenya is neglecting her responsibilities under a UN agreement to protect the rights of children.
The chairman, Judge Hoffman, has requested a witness protection program to overcome the apparent reluctance of people to come forward with important information.
‘I have been given a number of first-hand accounts of matters clearly at odds with t
he UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child,’ Judge Hoffman said today outside the KICC. ‘But most witnesses have refused to go public,’ he added.
A spokesman for the Justice Department said that it was unlikely that a witness protection program could be set up before the hearings are due to end.
Meanwhile, the Chief Inspector of Police said that it would be most irregular to establish such a program for an international authority such as UNICEF. ‘Witness protection programs are seldom established, and when they occur are exclusively the prerogative of the Kenyan police force.’
Riley folded the paper and took a mouthful of coffee. If Judge Hoffman’s committee could nail a few big names it would be the perfect vehicle to launch his article.
He called the committee’s secretariat. Hoffman wasn’t available but he left a message for him. Then he called Kazlana to fill her in on what he’d discovered about Koske’s orphanage and his supposed success in placing orphans in Somalia. If she agreed to testify with him, together they could offer the committee information on Koske’s links with the Circularians in Mombasa who collected orphaned children from its streets, his orphanage in Kibera and the supply line of children to Somalia. He was sure there was some link to the Nakuru medical facility as well; if that were so, then Kazlana’s paper trail showing Koske had financed the delivery of medical supplies to Nakuru could be vital evidence.
But there was no answer on either Kazlana’s office or mobile phones when he called. It worried him, and he decided to check that she was okay.
Riley had taken a taxi to avoid the need to find a parking space, but he needn’t have bothered. Nairobi’s central business district was quiet. In fact, he thought it abnormally quiet, even for a Sunday, and vaguely ominous.
Iron grilles barricaded most of the shopfronts and office buildings appeared deserted except for nervous security guards who peered from alcoves. He could not recall a time when he hadn’t seen throngs of people crowding the footpaths and roadways. Even the ubiquitous traffic police were missing.
He took the elevator and made his way along the tenth-floor corridor, where not even the hum of the air-conditioning plant broke the silence.
The entrance door to Kazlana’s office suite was unlocked.
‘Hello?’ he called.
There was no response.
He slowly opened the door to Kazlana’s office. The diffused light from the curtained window made it difficult to see, but the scent of fresh tobacco smoke hung in the air, and a moment later the red-hot tip of a cigarette glowed in the dimness. She was sitting on the sofa that occupied the best part of a wall.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I had the right office.’
‘Would you care to join me?’ she said, and indicated a bottle of whisky and a pitcher of melting ice. Condensation had left a puddle on the timber coffee table. He noticed a near-empty highball glass in her hand.
‘Thank you. And you?’
She held out the glass and he poured in a measure of whisky.
‘More,’ she said.
Her voice was hard and he looked at her, but she was smiling.
‘Please,’ she added.
He filled it. A drop of condensation fell from her glass onto her bare knee, but she ignored it.
He sat at the other end of the sofa and turned half-on to face her. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
‘To love and glory,’ she replied, and took a long pull on her drink. ‘Why are you here in Kenya, Mark?’
‘I think I’ve already told you. To find a boy I used to support through one of your local charities.’
‘Is that all?’
She was drunk, but her eyes were bright and acutely focused on him, and her voice was crisp and concise.
‘To find the boy and to do a little sightseeing,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘Kazlana,’ he said, ‘I came here to tell you what I’ve learnt about the orphanage and the Circularians. It seems Koske may be smuggling kids into Somalia. God knows what happens to them there. Don’t you want to hear about it?’
‘Oh, poor Mark,’ she said, placing a hand on his thigh. ‘Of course I do. Please go on.’
Mercifully, as he started to relate the story of the Circularian sisters, and the religion’s odd beliefs, she removed her electrifying hand to light a cigarette. She didn’t appear to take any interest in what he was saying until his mention of the distant Kenyan town where many of the children were sent before crossing the border into Somalia.
‘Did you say Wajir?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Apparently it’s quite a frontier town.’
‘Outside the law,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Even for Kenya.’
She took a long pull on her drink, emptying the glass. She held it out for more. Riley filled it.
‘Aren’t you interested in finding out more about the Wajir connection?’ he asked.
She slowly shook her head. ‘Thank you for your help. I only wanted to find out why my father was murdered. And now I know.’
‘Tell me.’
‘No.’
‘Kazlana,’ he said, trying to keep the exasperation from his voice, ‘this racket is a crime. Kids are involved. It needs to be exposed.’
She turned to face him, expressionless. It was as if having discovered the circumstances of her father’s death, she had already put a distance between herself and the fact.
‘And I need to know what happened to the boy my wife and I sponsored,’ he added. ‘It’s…important. And personal.’
‘I don’t know what happened to your boy,’ she said at last. ‘But I can tell you what happened to my father. The rest is up to you.
‘Papa was lured to the desert beyond Wajir. He had found out something about Koske’s racket, I suppose, but was keeping quiet about it until he knew the whole story—the story that you also want to know. He must have thought the meeting in the desert would give him what he needed. The problem was, he didn’t know that the man behind the scheme already suspected him. It was Koske. That explains why Papa didn’t immediately take off at the first sign of trouble—he knew the person who met him out there.’
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ Riley said. ‘But what about the children?’
Kazlana looked quite composed now; far more peaceful than he’d ever seen her.
‘Maybe it would be better not to know about the children,’ she said.
‘What do you mean? I must know. And UNICEF needs to know too.’
He told her about the UNICEF hearing and the call for more information to help prosecute those involved in the abuse of children. ‘If you tell the committee what you know about Koske’s connection to the Nakuru operation, the police can do the rest,’ he said.
She began to laugh. ‘The police? Mark, don’t be so funny. Of course the police won’t help. They were in Wajir to investigate my father’s death and did nothing. Don’t tell me about the police. Someone has been filling their pockets for years to keep this quiet.’
‘Then give me the papers you have. I’ll take them to the UNICEF hearing.’
‘Antonio suggests I forget the whole matter,’ she said, ignoring his request. ‘He says I should get on with my life.’ She looked at him. ‘What do you think?’
‘I say he’s wrong. We have a duty to the innocent to avenge their deaths.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Don’t you agree?’ he asked.
She replaced her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I do,’ she said, and put a hand around the back of his neck, drawing him to her. She kissed him, lingering on his lips for a long moment. Her closeness and fragrance drove him mad. He took her in his arms and covered her mouth with his. Her tongue explored him and he tasted the delicious spicy flavour of her tobacco.
Then he moved away from her, breaking the embrace. ‘Kazlana, this is…I can’t do this.’
She smiled. ‘You know me too well. I frighten you.’
‘Look, I only came here to get your agreem
ent to testify—’
‘You will never catch Koske by any of these legal tricks,’ she said. ‘He is too smart and has too many corrupt people in his pocket. The children are gone. They cannot come back from where they are.’
‘Maybe, but we can stop what Koske’s doing and make him pay.’
‘There is only one way to make him pay.’
‘How?’
She rose unsteadily to her feet and went to a filing cabinet and unlocked it.
‘Here. Here are the papers you want.’
He took them. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Is this what you meant by the only way to make him pay?’
She smiled again. ‘No.’
He stood and put the papers in his pocket. He thought about saying something like, Be careful. You know how dangerous Koske is, but he knew he’d be wasting his breath. Kazlana Ramanova was incapable of being careful.
CHAPTER 32
Joshua took Charlotte to a high point called Kamukungi to see the extent of Kibera. Surrounding her was two and a half square kilometres of bustling, dirty, crowded tangles of ugly buildings, smoking rubbish heaps and foul odours where Joshua said over a million people lived, most of them without toilets and running water. They loved, they laughed, they ate, squabbled, prayed and ultimately died there. Very few had experienced any other home.
On the western horizon the sun peeped from behind a fragment of cloud, sending piercing shafts of gold through the smoky atmosphere to highlight the vast fields of rusty iron roofs. She could see thousands of them, but knew there must be tens of thousands more in the squalid alleys and laneways, where children played in mountains of garbage or in foetid drains with odours of excrement and filth.
A few substantial buildings, like churches and a government centre, poked above the sprawling shacks. There was a radio mast and scores of power poles, some leaning at alarming angles. Telephone cables radiated from any high point, including trees and tall struts attached to roofs. In some places they hung in coils like dead snakes.