Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

  And why not? How could these tame bureaucrats resist a man who’d spent his life playing such minor officials as though they were toy drums? He spoke to them with assurance, insinuatingly, letting them know he shared with them the bureaucrat’s outlook and language. Also, he was a modestly famous man in East Africa; he had accompanied Amin here and there as a high-level official, he had been photographed with popes and presidents and prime ministers. Past troubles in another land had no importance here. It was true that Obuong and Magon were seeing him now in an unfortunate state, but his name and manner and background simply had to override his dirty face and torn clothes. They were minor civil servants, and he was the sort to whom they had learned in infancy to bend the knee; how could they hold back against him?

  Without actually acknowledging any connection between himself and the Angel’s attempted piracy, he had led them to realize that if he’d been prepared to take charge of so much coffee he surely already had a customer for it. A customer at a good price, who would not be fussy about documentation.

  He could bring these people together with Grossbarger. In fact, he would be delighted to.

  They would also be delighted, of course, since their own shares would be proportionately higher, though Obuong did demur briefly, wondering about Balim, mentioning his name in an indecisive way. But Chase shrugged that off, saying, “The Asian? I’m not sure where he fits into this, if at all. He never owned the coffee. In fact, he’s never even had physical possession of it.”

  “Still,” Obuong said, “still, Mr. Chase, one does feel a certain moral obligation.”

  Meaning that to cut Balim out completely might have repercussions, might give Balim no reason not to make trouble.

  “If you want to be generous,” Chase said, admiring Obuong’s nobility with his smile, “I suppose some sort of emolument could be given to the Asian, to cover his expenses and so on. What should we call it? A finder’s fee?”

  Magon laughed, but Obuong gave the phrase serious consideration. “Perhaps tax credits on other transactions would be a better way to do it,” he suggested. “It would associate him not so clearly with this coffee.”

  “Very good,” Chase said, and all at once realized it wasn’t the missing son that Balim was thinking about while staring out over the lake, it was Isaac Otera. Balim had to know he was being squeezed out of the deal, that it was happening here and now, but what could he do about it? He didn’t dare challenge Chase directly, not an Asian challenge a white man like Chase in this black country, no matter what Chase might or might not have done to him in the past. Frank Lanigan would be useless in a situation like this. Otera, Balim’s anti-bureaucrat, was the only one who might have been able to join this conversation and salvage something for his employer beyond a few vague tax credits. But Frank in his wisdom had placed Otera on the last raft; it would be half an hour at least before that raft reached shore, and by then it would be far too late.

  In fact, the best thing for Chase to do at this moment, to cement the new alliance, was to leave these two alone to plot against him. Such plotting would of course presuppose the existence of the alliance, which would confirm it in their minds. He was confident there was little they could think of to do that would harm him. Also, his moving away now—opening the field, as it were, to Balim and Otera—would merely serve to underline his self-assurance. “I know you have other things to do,” he said. “I’ve taken up too much of your time.”

  “No, no,” Obuong said, “you’ve been very helpful.”

  “I hoped I could be. And tomorrow, after I’ve cleaned up, rested, had a good wash in a hotel, I’m sure we’ll all want to talk again.”

  Obuong smiled. “We surely will,” he said.

  Chase strolled away. Behind him, Magon excitedly began in Swahili, “He’s in no position to—”

  There wasn’t even any necessity to eavesdrop, though it was nice to reflect that here he was in a new nation where all his secrets were intact.

  There was a thick-trunked tree over near the smoldering oil-drum fire; Chase walked over there, sat down, and made himself more or less comfortable with his back against the tree, where he could look out over the lake and watch the rafts slowly arrive. Beside the Mercedes, Obuong and Magon murmured passionately together.

  All that coffee, Chase thought, looking at the great wall of sacks, eighty feet long and twelve feet high. All in all, he was rather pleased at what he had wrought. All that coffee. All that money.

  It’s pleasant to be a winner.

  74

  “I’m going for a walk,” Ellen replied, three different times. First she replied it to the night clerk, as she passed once more through the lobby. “Very late at night,” he suggested. “Insomnia,” she explained, and pushed through the glass doors to the outside world before he could say anything more.

  Twenty minutes later, she replied it to the guard down by the planes parked beside the taxi way, who challenged her with a great deal of suspicion and perhaps even fright, though he was the one clutching the submachine gun. “No walk by planes,” he insisted, staring at her round-eyed. Pointing past him, she said, “Don’t be silly, I fly that plane. I can certainly walk around it.” He became uncertain, but clung to sureties: “No fly tonight.” She agreed: “No fly tonight. Walk tonight.” Then, hoping she looked a lot cooler than she felt, she simply stepped around him and went for a stroll among the planes, and he gave her no more trouble.

  Not quite an hour after that, she replied it to the pleasant overweight girl who ran the empty coffee shop. “You be careful,” the girl told her, “and don’t go far away.” “No, I won’t,” Ellen promised, fortified by her two cups of coffee, and went back out.

  The late-night air was as humid as ever, but with a chill in it off the lake. Turning the collar of her Burberry up, putting her hands in the pockets, Ellen strolled along through pockets of light and shadow, moving this time toward the main entrance from the highway.

  The problem was, Frank had said twenty-four hours and that was just nonsense. If Lew was going to make it here at all, it would have to be before daylight; after that, a lone wanted white man wouldn’t be able to move an inch without discovery. And tomorrow night would be too late; Ellen couldn’t possibly refuse to leave with her plane.

  So it was tonight that Lew had to get here, and the main questions were: How would he arrive, and how would he make contact? Poor Agatha Christie had had no hope of attracting Ellen’s attention after that phone call; she’d tried to read, but her eyes failed to focus on the page. And when she came to the conclusion there would be no way for Lew to signal her in this room—the night clerk received and listened to all calls coming into this building—she put the Christie down, shrugged into her Burberry, and went out to answer three times the question, “Where are you going?”

  The two extremes of her walk were the main entrance and the runways. If Lew came boldly in via the main road, as she fully expected him to do, they would meet right here along the road and could make their plans. If his presence in Uganda were known, if he were being hunted, he might choose a less visible route, in which case he would surely head for the planes, and she would meet him there.

  In the meantime, the wait was equal parts tension and boredom. Entebbe, which was perhaps the most underutilized commercial airport in the world by day, became an absolute desert of inactivity by night. The coffee shop was kept open very late, as though in deliberate defiance of reality, and here and there a slow-moving janitor cleaned, and the occasional soldier or sentry passed, but that was it. And for all Ellen knew, she would walk back and forth in this empty airport another six or seven hours, until well after sunup; for all she knew, she would walk here uselessly. Lew might not appear at all.

  What would she do if daylight came, and no Lew? Thoughts of borrowing a car; but to drive where? She had no idea where he was, what had happened to strand him when the others left, what condition he was in. Either he had some sort of vehicle or he would certainly steal one. Eith
er the Ugandan authorities were searching for him or they didn’t know he was in their territory. Either—

  He’s a soldier, she reminded herself. He’s trained to survive in bad situations. He even trains others. He’ll get here.

  At the traffic circle—the road signs, inspired by Uganda’s British former owners, called it a roundabout, a word Ellen thought very well described the night she was having—she turned about and strolled slowly again toward the low stucco-faced buildings of the airport. The few sharp lights and the low pale flat-roofed buildings made her think of prisons or prisoner-of-war camps.

  A car came purring toward her from the roundabout. She glanced back, hoping against hope, stepping off the blacktop onto the packed-dirt verge, and when the black car slowed she had a moment of absolute assurance, was already smiling when she saw it wasn’t Lew at the wheel after all but a woman. A very attractive black woman, under thirty, quite elegant. If it weren’t for the strain lines around her eyes and mouth, she would be absolutely beautiful. But she wasn’t Lew.

  Idly, Ellen wondered what such a person could possibly want at this airport at this hour. Surely she wasn’t the graveyard-shift counter girl in the coffee shop. There were no passenger planes scheduled, either in or out. Could she be a hooker? If so, for whom?

  The car having stopped beside her, the woman smiled out her open window, saying, “Excuse me. Could you direct me to the transient aircrews quarters?”

  “Of course,” Ellen said, and did so, pointing, and the woman thanked her and drove off, the black car humming to itself, in no apparent hurry.

  So she was a hooker, summoned by one of the pilots. Ellen was surprised, not because this looked like a “good girl” or anything like that, but because as a hooker she would be far more expensive than most pilots would be willing to pay.

  Ellen walked. Ahead, the car’s brake lights flashed on, and it came to an abrupt stop. Then the white backup lights gleamed, and the car backed hurriedly toward her, whining, weaving from side to side. Now what?

  Again the car halted beside her. Ellen looked in, frowning, and behind the beautiful black woman, up from the floor in back, reared the smiling, sheepish face of Lew. Ellen stared from his smile to the woman’s—very knowing eyes, that woman had—and back at Lew. “I might have known,” she said.

  Wishing her flight bag were full of rocks, Ellen flung it out her room window at Lew’s head, twelve feet below. He caught it, the bastard, waved to her, and scampered away into the darkness. I really ought to leave him here, she thought. The man’s incorrigible.

  At the same time, she was trying to be fair. In the car, in a dark corner of a parking lot, they had described everything to her—well, perhaps everything—and it wasn’t his fault that Patricia Kamin had needed rescuing just as he was driving by. Nevertheless, she rebelled at the inevitability of it, and was annoyed by the knowledge that Lew Brady would always find some beautiful woman who needed to be rescued, whether from the hopelessness of life like Amarda or from physical assault like Patricia. The calls for help would just keep coming, and one thing you could say for Lew: he would always get it up.

  Well, he never rescued me, she thought as she left her room and headed for the lobby, and she was surprised at how comforting she found that idea. It was true. She had often wanted him, but she had never needed him, and that made a difference. There was some comfort at least in the reflection that their relationship was a break with tradition.

  In fact, come to think of it, she was the one rescuing him. Take that, Lew Brady.

  The night clerk was astonished by her. “Out again? You need your sleep.”

  “I’m a copilot,” Ellen told him. “I’ll sleep tomorrow in the plane.”

  He laughed politely, and out she went, turning once more toward the parked planes.

  It was very hard this time to maintain a strolling pace. She reached the taxiway, and her old friend the insecure guard passed by, and she gave him a big smile. He was getting used to her; he actually flickered a frightened smile of his own in response. She moved on, ambling, hands in pockets, smelling the night air fragrant from the exotic specimens in the botanical garden, and when she reached the Uganda Skytours plane there was no one at all in sight.

  Poor Mike. He had known it was coming, some sort of bad ending was coming, but he was tied to his property. The authorities would have let him and his wife leave Uganda at any time, but not with the plane. He could fly the plane out, but not with his wife aboard. He had tried to keep everything, hoping for the best, and in the end he had lost it all, including himself. But how do you know for certain that moment when your way of life has become a sinking ship that must be abandoned? Jews in Hitler’s Germany; intellectuals in Stalin’s Russia; Christians in Amin’s Uganda. People were imprisoned most securely by who they had chosen to become.

  Ellen unclipped the three mooring ropes, and opened the Cessna’s only door, on its left side. Climbing up into the pilot’s seat, leaving the door ajar, she touched the controls in the dark, reacquainting herself with a breed of plane she hadn’t flown in about three years.

  How long would it take the engines to turn over? Ellen remembered Mike’s boast—”I keep her gassed up and ready to go”—as though the plane were a lucky talisman, as though his attentions to it were a kind of offertory to the gods to guarantee his safety. Would that attitude have included careful engine maintenance? It would be ignominious to be caught on the ground here by her friend the nervous guard as she fruitlessly ground the starter, over and over.

  It would be worse than ignominious. Much worse.

  Were Lew and his doxy in position yet? (Ellen didn’t feel like being fair. On the other hand, Lew’s reason for being here in the first place was certainly a credit to him. Already safe, he’d come back in a vain attempt to find the missing Bathar, not wanting to have to face Mr. Balim without the boy. Poor Mr. Balim. And poor Bathar, come to that. And very noble and heroic of Lew, which Ellen found very irritating to have to admit.)

  She sat there, touching the controls, until she realized she was merely stalling, she was reluctant to make that step beyond the point of no return. All right; taking a deep breath, she punched her thumb to the left starter.

  Good Mike. That engine turned over at once, and a few seconds later so did the right. Easing off on the ground brake, she rolled forward onto the taxiway, swung left, and trundled rapidly toward the nearest north-south runway. Tonight’s breeze was slight and fitful, but its general trend was from the lake, south of here.

  They were supposed to be waiting in the bushes along the right side here, near the chain link fence. Her engines would already have alerted whatever sentries were nearby; she flicked on her landing lights, and in the white glare she saw Lew running over the coarse grass from the shrubbery, Ellen’s flight bag clutched in his right hand, pulling Patricia Kamin along with his left. They’re holding hands; isn’t that nice.

  They had to run across the taxiway in front of the plane to get to the door. Ellen stopped, moved to the right into the other seat, and folded down the pilot’s seatback so they could climb aboard. They’d both have to ride in back, which Ellen didn’t much care for, but the only way to get Lew into the front seat beside her would be to deplane, let him board, then clamber back in herself, which would take too long.

  The woman came in first, out of breath but smiling, gasping, “Thank you.”

  “Please don’t mention it,” Ellen said. “I’ll get the door, Lew.”

  “Right.” He stopped his contortions, trying to board the plane and shut the door behind himself at the same time, cleared her seat, and thumped into the other space in back. Ellen flipped the seat up, got again behind the wheel, and accelerated.

  “They’re shooting at us back there,” Lew said conversationally. “I can see the flashes.”

  Why did I have to meet this man? Shoulders hunched, Ellen steered the plane to the beginning of the runway, braked hard, turned hard, and accelerated before she was really set. The
earphones hanging from a hook in front of her squawked away, but she paid no attention. Glancing to her left, she saw headlights—two pairs of headlights—racing toward her across the grass, bouncing on the uneven terrain.

  Leaning forward near her head, his voice a bit more urgent, Lew said, “They’re trying to cut us off, Ellen.”

  “I see them.”

  The plane had its own speed, its own system, its own way of doing things. She must simply roll forward, accelerating, watch the tarmac flash by under her wheels, and wait for the plane to be ready to lift.

  A British-style jeep was over there on the grass to her left, running at a very long angle to the plane, almost parallel but not quite, as though the driver intended to meet them just this side of infinity. Quick bright spots of light from the interior of the jeep must be the flashes Lew had been talking about; they’re shooting at us!

  It was hard to hold the wheel steady, hard not to pull back too soon or too much. A botched takeoff, leaving them on the ground with too little runway left, would be the end. They would get no second chance.

  Patricia Kamin said something Ellen didn’t catch, her voice uneven with tension. Good, Ellen thought, she’s more scared than I am. “No” Lew answered her, “I think they’re probably shooting at the wheels. It’s what I’d do.”

  The plane lifted fractionally; its tires still ran on the tarmac but carried less weight. “Come on,” Ellen whispered, remembering how far Mike had had to run this plane to get it airborne. “Come on, come on.”

  The wheels, still spinning, lost contact with the ground.

  Turning lazily, they skimmed along just above the surface of the runway, two fat black doughnuts riding so low a two-by-four couldn’t have been slipped in beneath them. Ellen, every muscle tense in her arms and chest and neck and back, drew the wheel minutely toward herself, and the plane, though still looking at the ground, inched higher into the air.