Black Star Nairobi

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  We left two thousand dollars on Michael’s kitchen table with a note—For your Tuskers. We walked to a supermarket and hailed a cab. It was a Mexican driver, and Julio negotiated the price for what was going to be a long ride. They came to an agreement, we napped as the cab traveled down the length of California, and after the driver dropped us off a few miles from the border house, one of Julio’s men picked us up. Not long after that, we crawled through the tunnel back into Mexico and made our way straight to the airport. There were no surprises. I guessed we had drained Sahara enough so that soon it would be just him and us.

  CHAPTER 17

  JESUS ON STEROIDS

  With our adrenaline always pumping, we had been running on very little sleep. We were a mess, and so the two connecting flights were a blessing. When the Kenyan Airways flight attendant finally announced that we were about to land, we woke up still tired, but rested and determined.

  When we arrived at the immigration kiosk and the official, dressed in a faded blue cardigan, took us to his superior’s office after glancing at our passports, we weren’t worried. It meant that Hassan had come through for us. In the office, the man gave us a large duffel bag. O smiled as he pulled his trusty .45 from the bag. I retrieved my Glock and Muddy an AK-47 and an overcoat under which she was to hide it. Then we put on bulletproof vests and took some extra ammo. There were also cell phones and SIM cards in the bag, and I called Helen as the supervisor walked us through customs to where O’s Land Rover was parked—gassed, serviced, and ready to go. Helen had good news: she was about to break through the encryption.

  We entered the country, which was still trying to claw its way out of hell, as quietly as we had left it. On the whole, things had calmed down, except for some riots, which seemed liked a wedding celebration compared to the violence from just a few days ago. Reconciliation was looking possible, and the government and the opposition party had started talks about sharing power.

  What this meant was that, with enough care, we could move around and work on our case, which now hinged on finding Mpande and Sahara. It meant that, without the threat of a mob descending on us by surprise, we now stood a fighting chance against anybody trying to collect brownie points by killing us for our supposed terrorist affiliations. We had the terrain—the odds were almost even—and with O and Muddy by my side, I’d say the odds had even tipped in my general direction.

  We couldn’t go to O’s or to Muddy’s. We were too recognizable to slip quietly back into our old lives. Broadway’s was out as a safe haven—that was a place you went to when all bad and good things were equal, not when you were a cop in trouble. The delicate balance could not accommodate weakness. Our best bet was to find a discreet bar and some lodging in Kiambu. The Red Nova, the bar Joe Sherry ran, was close enough to Limuru, in case we needed to get to Muddy’s, and to Nairobi. Even though Joe Sherry had dated Mary long ago, they had maintained the kind of friendship that was strong enough not to need constant upkeep through birthday cards and the like—the kind where even though you might not see each other for years, the trust remains. Rare enough friendships—like Mo’s and mine. Joe Sherry and Mary had had that kind of friendship, and now we needed his help.

  In the United States, we had operated without the usual resources of a government behind us. In Kenya, we had had the run of the place until just a few weeks ago. Now we didn’t know who to trust, who the next police commissioner would be once the deals for the new government were reached, or if we would have a government, let alone one that might back us up when the accusations came and calls for extradition were tied to foreign aid. But we knew our way around the “black roads,” as O had jokingly called the underground Kenyan criminal life.

  Joe Sherry didn’t ask any questions. He gave us rooms and we went to bed.

  Helen and her timing—I hadn’t slept for more than an hour when my cell rang. She had broken through the encryption. She texted me a Web address and a password so I could access the file. Muddy and I woke O up, and we went to Joe Sherry’s office. After trying to connect a couple of times, we finally opened the file, which turned out to be an IDESC Project Assessment File put together by the New York–based African Open Society.

  It was a study of the military coups that had assassinated political leaders of all stripes, and the counter-coups that had in turn killed off the military leaders. It looked at revolutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America where sitting leadership had been tried, jailed, or simply killed off. It factored in the interference of U.S. and Russian governments in these coups and revolutions and the conclusion was always the same—the body cannot survive without its head, no matter how rotten. But even with successful operations, hundreds if not thousands of people would die before a new non-corrupt leadership could be formed and installed.

  The bottom line was that the study gave the IDESC Africa project a 25 percent chance of success. In the end, the good people at the African Open Society were asking whether that 25 percent chance was worth the risk of destroying a country and the loss of thousands of lives.

  Sahara and IDESC had answered yes; the future was worth a little blood-letting in the present. We looked over and over the document, trying to understand it—figures and percentages about human life. People playing the gods of change, life measured against life.

  Yet if I had been reading this document in the comfort of a classroom or bureaucratic office, I would have argued against it, but only to look for ways to improve the plan. It made sense, but only on paper. I had seen the idea in practice in the Norfolk bombing and the tea plantations of Limuru.

  Sahara and IDESC had to be stopped, if only so that we could continue living on in our undemocratic and corrupt societies, hanging out with thieves at Broadway’s by night and tracking them down by day. If only so that we could elect a black president every now and then, buying time until someone came up with a better plan. I printed out the ten-page document to show to Mpande.

  Hassan, as we had requested, had picked up Mpande but couldn’t officially take him into police custody. He also couldn’t hand him over to the Americans, because we didn’t know how deep his connections ran, or worse, now that Hassan was out of favor, how deep his enemies could reach. Therefore, after providing Mpande with a cover story so that his wife wouldn’t worry—the Kenyan government had asked him to help set up a truth-and-reconciliation program, South Africa–style—Hassan had stashed him in a safe house out in Runda Estate.

  “Like the aristocrats in fucking England—holding other nobles as prisoners of war in castles, with servants and everything,” Muddy exclaimed as we wound through an island of wealth and calm—the violence hadn’t touched Runda.

  Dandora slum, en route to Runda, was still smoking from the fires of a few days ago. The debris and trash along the road to Runda was much worse than it had ever been before, and hundreds of people now stood there despondently, looking at the passing cars. Runda was clean—clean security company cars parked by the gates manned by armed guards in clean blue uniforms. In Dandora there was no vegetation—Runda was like being in another climate, where manicured green hedges sprouted from the ground.

  “This is the no-in-between country,” O said philosophically, making me suspect he had sneaked in a puff or two.

  The cop at the gate let us in after we showed him our badges. We were led to the back of the house by a maid dressed in a blue-checkered uniform, where we found Mpande in a white T-shirt and shorts, drinking orange juice and reading the paper. There was an extra tennis racket on the table and it made me wonder with whom he was playing. He didn’t look surprised to see us—he offered us chairs like he’d been expecting us all along, and called to the house. Before we had even sat down, an old man dressed in a chef’s uniform shuffled over to us.

  “Breakfast?” he asked.

  We were okay—Joe Sherry had allowed O into the restaurant kitchen and he had stuffed us full with his yet-to-be-perfected omelette, but we asked for coffee. We sat around for a bit talking about the wea
ther, the violence, how Kenya compared to South Africa, how his family was, and how he was coping with being Kenya’s most famous Norfolk survivor. We had the kind of bond that comes from having gone through an extreme situation together—like two soldiers from the same violent campaign who, years later, find themselves on opposing sides.

  “Listen, guys. Even without Hassan’s kind intervention, I would have contacted you,” he finally said, after the general conversation had petered out. He started to explain.

  Two years ago, Amos Apara had come to him with some disturbing news. IDESC was planning to set off bombs in Kenya. The purpose: to destabilize the government by targeting leaders from all the political parties. In the absence of the leadership class, IDESC would take over stewardship of the country and cultivate a new leadership recruited from the youth who respected democracy—a second independence, Mpande explained.

  “Like things in Afghanistan and Iraq have worked so well,” Muddy said.

  “That’s not our work—it was a stupid and foolhardy move. In Iraq, Afghanistan, the policy is: invade, destroy the sitting government, then try to build an opposition, or a new government from the opposition and the leftovers. It is like trying to cure cancer with cancer. No, our goal was to eradicate all of them, the sitting government, the opposition—leave the country without leadership, scoop out the cancer, and then let a new leadership emerge from the people themselves … with a gentle guiding hand from IDESC.”

  “Obviously things aren’t working out …” I started to say but he interrupted me.

  “Ours was not to create the circumstances; it was to take advantage of them. At the right time, take out the opposition and the ruling party and then offer interim stewardship that comes with economic assistance, security, and nurturing of leadership by forward-looking youth … As you can see, we weren’t wrong about Kenya. All the signs were there—I don’t need to tell you that …” he said as he pointed in the direction of Dandora.

  “Look, Bush was right about one thing, the principle of preemptive strikes—take them out hard and take them out early—but he didn’t have the intelligence or vision. He didn’t have the heart for it—the conscience, the love for balance and democracy. We would have taken him out if we could,” Mpande said with conviction. It was hard to tell whether he was out of IDESC or still in it—a man waiting for an opening, waiting for us to eliminate his enemies in an organization whose goals he still believed in.

  “What is Delaware’s next move?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know where, or how—but Delaware is a believer. He will carry on. You can be sure he is after the political leadership now.”

  Martin Kimani too had said that Sahara was a believer, and he hadn’t lied about the political wing not knowing what the armed wing was doing.

  “What happened after Amos came to you?” O asked him.

  “I agreed that we needed to rein in the armed wing and the radical elements. They were supposed to follow our lead and not us theirs. We wanted to call the whole thing off, but you don’t just call off something put in motion by the most powerful organization in the world,” he said, trying not to sound proud.

  “I didn’t think Delaware suspected that Amos had come to me. It had been business as usual, when out of the blue Delaware called an emergency meeting in Nairobi. He said the political and armed wings needed to synchronize, because things were deteriorating fast in Nairobi and we needed to make a move. I thought the rest of IDESC was booked at the hotel. If I suspected anything, I wouldn’t have brought my family with me.”

  “Do you know what ‘capture the king and kill the queen’ means? Some sort of code?” I asked Mpande.

  “No, why?” he asked.

  “Something Sahara … Delaware said,” I answered.

  “Listen, O, I’m very sorry about your wife—and Amos, I was too late,” Mpande said. O didn’t respond. I produced the document and let Mpande peruse it. When he was done, he handed it back to me.

  “That, we never saw—we didn’t know it existed. But I doubt it would have changed my mind—I am as guilty now as I was then. Last year there were over half a million deaths from malaria. Half a million! Do the math,” he said with a sigh. He leaned back in his chair and looked up to the sky as if searching for some sign. His disagreement was not with the principle, but how to implement it.

  “Can I ask you something?” Muddy said, and he looked at her in surprise.

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  “Why did you stay?”

  “I wanted to bring them down quietly—from the inside,” he explained, sounding like he was trying to convince himself as well. Judging from the postcards we found in his room, Amos had been ready to bring down the organization from the outside and it had earned him a spot in Ngong Forest. And Mpande had barely escaped with his life. If they hadn’t made the mistake of coming after us, their plan would have been almost foolproof.

  “The road to hell is paved with idiots like you,” Muddy said angrily. Mpande looked at her, then away, but he didn’t say anything.

  Needed to make a move, move fast, business as usual—ordinary language to explain the planning of terror and death, I thought to myself. I had a fuller picture now—imagine all you want to do in this world is some good. You go from trouble spot to trouble spot and do your best to make a difference. You start in the Peace Corps in some village somewhere, drilling wells and building makeshift schools. When you leave, in spite of your efforts, the well dries up and the school decides to stop admitting girls because a local fat cat angling for political office has decided it is against African culture. You get another job where you have more power and you continue up the do-gooder ladder until you land in some of the most powerful offices in the world—of former U.S. presidents, world monetary organizations, the United Nations—and still nothing is changing.

  You start dreaming of taking over one of these countries one day and showing the world how it can be done right. You realize that, with others like you, other people in the powerful offices who are in it not for money or glory, just to do some good, that you can in fact change the world, not one person at a time, but country by country.

  Because you can, you decide to do it. If the cancer could be gutted out and replaced with Kenyans who really cared for their country, would that be so bad? It would be a revolution.

  In my line of work you come across many things—murders committed for money, sex, drugs, and just as often for power—but to take out not just a single politician, not just the president but also the opposing candidate, to wipe out the leadership of all the political parties regardless of where they stood was something new.

  The deadly and efficient Sahara was stalking Kenya’s corrupt leadership to create a vacuum. With the ethnic tensions still high, his move wouldn’t leave a Kenya open for reconstruction. It would only lead to a Somalia-like implosion. We had to find him.

  It was close to midday when we left a deflated Mpande. As we drove back to Nairobi, debating about where to look for Sahara, the news filtered in: a crazy old Vietnam vet, in what appeared to be a random shooting spree, had stormed two separate offices in Oakland, California, killing two mid-level managers. At a third office, armed guards had shot him down as he drew his weapon. He was also being blamed for the shooting of a Kenyan national at the Hilton—one Martin Kimani. It wasn’t difficult for us to surmise what had happened. The remaining members of IDESC knew the shootings weren’t random, and they took him out at the first opportunity. But the pundits had already diagnosed him as suffering from latent post-traumatic stress disorder.

  “We should have taken care of Mpande—we really should have,” Muddy said, bringing me back to the journey into Nairobi.

  “But we saved him,” I said, not sure how that made sense. But it did.

  “These motherfuckers are like Jesus on steroids,” O said.

  CHAPTER 18

  FINDING SAHARA

  As we drove back into town, we kept trying to figure out what to do
next. We hadn’t contacted Jason or Paul yet—one of them had sold us out back in Mexico and the U.S. But we were desperate, so in the end we decided that I should call Jason. In any case, Julio would have told him we had returned and he didn’t pretend otherwise.

  “Have you found him?” he asked, on hearing my voice.

  “No, that’s why I am calling,” I said.

  “I’ve got nothing here. My hands have been tied—pressure, trying to find the next targets in Somalia,” he said, sounding frustrated.

  We heard a news alert come on over the radio: the president and the prime minister, their ministers, and their key supporters had agreed to meet today at the Kenyatta International Conference Center to discuss forming a unity government.

  “That’s Sahara’s target,” Muddy called it as I hung up on Jason.

  The whole leadership, opposition and incumbents, were meeting there to build what the Kenyan media now dubbed a “road map to peace.” There would be no other opportunity like this to scoop out the cancerous cells and graft in what remained of IDESC. Sahara was going to go for it. And I wasn’t so sure I wanted to stop him. I remembered the letter from Amos to his parents—this was not abstract preemption. This meeting—it was a meeting of the worst of Kenya.

  “Jomo Kenyatta is the bomb,” O announced. Muddy and I looked at him.

  “You mean he is phat? The coolest cat?” Muddy asked, breaking into laughter, as I thought how irritating O and his Americanisms could be at times.

  “No, I mean his statue at the KICC—it’s the bomb,” he said animatedly.

  It was so simple, the kind of simple that you have to go through hell to get to: the bomb was concealed in the massive statue of Jomo Kenyatta in the convention center.

  We had an hour before the meeting started. We thought over all the hotels that would give Sahara the cover of whiteness and at the same give him access to the KICC. There were several hotels around the KICC like that—we needed to narrow them down to one.