by Peter Riva
So Pero had decided it was Mbuno and Pero to meet Tom or nothing. If Tom wouldn‘t talk, Mbuno and Pero would go and take their chances. Pero introduced them.
Tom looked at Pero in silence and must have sensed determination and came to a decision. “Okay Pero, have it your way. I do trust you, you know. As long as he knows what’s at stake.”
“And exactly what is at stake Tom? I’ve never been compromised by your lot before, never been thrown to the dogs either. Or am I wrong here?”
“No, Pero, you’re right. After you were spotted and that fellow Simon got killed—it wasn’t an accident, I assume from your panicky transmission—and the target on your back has been allowed to glow a little.” He paused. “Well, perhaps more than a little.”
Pero, for all his nighttime resolve to take control, felt the bile of fear escape, “A little, a little?” His eye’s flared and he clenched, shook his fists at Tom. “Look, there’s a guy called Salim, resident in Nairobi, al-Qaida or al-Shabaab probably, reporting to someone, mysterious, in the Holiday Inn. He’s also got a fellow from up by where we all were, near Ramu, name of Nadir, assisting him in tailing me, so far just me.” He shook his head, slowly calming down, “They had me coming out of the embassy yesterday and tailed me all through Nairobi. This morning, it was only Amogh Ranjeet’s driving . . .”
“Yeah, very subtle, I heard that car five minutes before you arrived. Pretty fast, but too noisy.”
“It’s a rally racing car, no one could keep up . . . but that . . .”
Tom interrupted, “Okay, okay Pero, but my guess is we have a limited time before they follow you to the airport. Everyone here will know where that car dropped people off.” He was right and Pero was fairly sure they would have found out by now they were booked to fly out this morning with Mara Airways.
Now, feeling the need to hurry, Tom asked Pero to launch into a debrief. He didn’t ask questions, no recorder needed, Tom was trained to remember, “Just spill everything, go.”
Pero gave him the whole story as he knew it. Pero handed him the flattened .22 bullet. “There was never an approach to the encampment, no scouting recce, nothing. We filmed, I observed, but it was Mbuno who spotted them and almost by accident, Simon might have as well. I did later from the air, next morning. There was no one at Ramu, when we got there or when I asked, no one knew anything. When I spent tea time with Chief Methenge, it was clear he knew of no one in the region, let alone twenty or more people from whom he could get Park-use fees or call up the troops from down south. He wouldn’t have passed that up, you can be sure, he loves the attention, sees it as his ticket out of the desolate north.” Then Pero made a recap of the crew’s Nairobi stay and his plans for diversion to Arusha for Dr. Mary Lever and that was all.
Tom had to ask, Pero just guessed he had to ask, “And what do you think about all this Pero?”
Pero’s anger came back, full force. “Think Tom? Bloody think? Wasn’t it you who told me never, ever to think? To cut and run? Jesus bloody Christ Tom, first you and State paint a bulls eye on my, no our, backs and then you tell me to think, to break your rules?”
“Okay, calm down Pero, you’re getting too old for these histrionics. I didn’t paint the bull’s eye. What you need to realize is that you are no longer the Outside Asset here—you are the hunted. The bull’s eye, which bad luck painted on your back, has been enhanced, a little, maybe by the embassy snafu, to allow them to track you and thereby allow us to sneak a peek at their structure in Nairobi and encampment north of Ramu. Satellites have spotted the camp from your description, plenty of hardware, mostly mobile living equipment. There’s no plane, landing strip or helicopter, so it’s not a large cell. There are two truck cabs, but no sight of the trailers, but these could be underground. There is a bulldozer.”
Pero had seen a German news special on TV once that showed that, when in the desert, the IRA or al-Qaida always bought a bulldozer first. You could, literally, bury anything with a bulldozer. Buy an old forty-foot freight container, drop it on the sand, bulldoze up the sand and, voila, one sub-soil home or headquarters. No construction, plenty of speed, plenty of invisibility.
“Tom, there were six . . .” Pero looked at Mbuno, he nodded, “Six mounds, six containers?”
“Yes, they think so. Now you’re thinking. And there’s one other thing, they have no trace of any importation of explosive, weapons, or high-tech gear. Whatever they have, they brought with them from Ethiopia.”
“I think you are wrong bwana.” Mbuno spoke softly.
Tom turned to face Mbuno, “Could you explain?”
“The lugger, north of their camp, is not possible for trucks, even if you make a road with a bulldozer. These men must have come from Somalia.” Pero had seen the lugger, a dry river bed, thirty feet deep carved on one side from rock, not sand.
“But that’s sixty-five miles or more . . .”
Mbuno was determined, his voice flat and calm, “It is the only way.”
“All right, I’ll take your word on that, but our guys in DC will not be pleased.” Mbuno avoided asking him who these “guys in DC” were. There was no need, Mbuno was already in bush mode, speaking only essential things, refining his thought process to the hunt, the now and the next step. Pero got the feeling Mbuno didn’t like being the prey and would, if it went that way, turn into the hunter, his natural instinct kicking in.
Tom went on, “I’ll double check it, this lugger. I’m headed up there with a group of UK Bristol Bird Watchers—it’s a hunt for the desert flycatcher, very rare, arranged two years ago. I’ve got orders to scout around, and I’ve taken some bird watcher’s place.”
“Be careful. Very, very careful bwana.”
Mbuno’s stern face worried Tom, “You think there is danger?”
Pero didn’t wait for a reply, but gave Tom the capsule version of Mbuno’s Kenya Troubles history, the Mau Mau, and the killing fields he witnessed or prevented. Pero told Tom that Mbuno called the people who chased them Arab Mau Mau.
“Well, well . . . mzee Mbuno, mimi nataka . . .” and Tom launched into fluent Swahili, to Pero’s surprise. Tom was always doing that, keeping one ahead of Pero, ever since they were at school. Superiority was his game, not Pero’s.
For the next few minutes, Mbuno answered in short clipped sentences. It wasn’t Mbuno’s way to steer a conversation, just respond, or tell Tom he was wrong. The language skills were partly beyond Pero, but Pero could tell, when they squatted down and drew in the dust of the hangar floor, that they were sketching out the mesa and the placement of the encampment. As Pero said, Mbuno was the real scout, his information accurate and fresh, yesterday fresh.
Tom was looking up at Pero, “Pero, Mbuno here . . .” Tom had that upper crust way of referring to someone, even when standing next to them, in the third person. He meant no disrespect, but it still irritated Pero. Pero was still on edge this morning, for good reason, and he looked away in disdain. “Pero, are you with me?” Pero looked back as Tom continued, “Mbuno here has a perfect memory for details, and it’ll make my job easier. You were right to include him. Is his family safe?” Pero told him about Giraffe Manor. Pero was desperately hoping Mbuno would not have to go through the loss that he had had, years ago, the pain still always fresh.
* * *
Lockerbie was the turning point of his life. His wife of just too few years was on the Pam Am plane returning to their home in Manhattan after seeing her folks in Wales. She had a lilting voice, looked slightly gypsy or Italian depending on her mood or playfulness. Addiena, which meant beautiful in Welsh, was exactly that. The tattoo of her name on his right forearm was there to place over his heart when he slept.
Addiena could have been a model or a pin-up. She was, instead, a determined woman with one desire, to belong to a partnership with her man. She had chosen Pero. They were “joined at the hip” as Pero’s mother always said. His job sometimes got in the way, so Pero was thinking of giving it up, especially when she got pregnant. Then L
ockerbie, the Pan Am they all trusted falling from the sky. It was after that when Tom approached him with the additional risk, ever so slight at first, to help State with little errands. Pero, alone without his Addiena to complete his life, simply agreed and used the excuse for extra work to avoid missing her too much.
* * *
Tom was still speaking about Mbuno’s family—Pero hadn’t been listening. “Okay, Pero, you get this? We can drop a hint that extra police, up there at Giraffe Manor for the next week, would be a good idea. Meanwhile, you go about your filming business. My guess is that you’ll be in the clear in Tanzania, out of the line of fire, so to speak. Whatever they are doing, it’s here in Kenya, of that our guys are sure, they’ve tracked tons of communications that indicate it’s Kenya, nowhere else, they are focusing on. And it’s soon. Make your way to Pangani and make a report if anything unusual happens or you spot something. But as I said, Pero, I think you’ll rid yourself of them when you go south. They have nothing going on down there we know of, for the moment.”
Pero rounded on him, determined to make a dent in his unflappable demeanor. “Okay, Tom, but get this and get it clear. You guys changed the rules, don’t expect us to play by them. If it comes to your goals and mine, I’ll choose us over you from now on.” He took a breath and added, “And I didn’t like Arnold Phillips being openly selected in that sieve of an embassy . . .”
Tom interrupted, “What do you think, we’re nuts?” He laughed. “Phillips only thought it had gone around, that’s all, it’s what they wanted him to think, to keep him in the dark. They asked him in front of his secretary as if it was all down to him finally. They know she has a brother who’s connected with the Red Star, local al-Qaida sympathizers. Your Mr. Mustafa is their leader by the way and Salim is her brother. They needed you to run, as you are supposed to do.” Tom was getting up a full head of steam now, “But did you run, you idiot, as you were told to do? Oh, no, you went shopping and, now we find out, had Mustafa and his minion Salim spotted and this guy from up north watched and spied on. You made your bull’s eye glow even more. And you put the Ranjeets all at risk.”
“Your point is? I was supposed to be the only one at risk, right Tom? You provoked me into action, or dropped us, the whole crew, deep in it, more likely.”
“Yes, that’s right, DC are opportunists, and your point is? You were spotted up north, we didn’t paint the bull’s eye. And, Pero, you didn’t follow training.”
But now Pero had him. “Bullshit Tom, you knew I wouldn’t, or else you wouldn’t be at this meeting. Your flight was already arranged—yesterday.” Pero had him and he knew it. The time line of Tom’s departure at least fifteen hours earlier sealed the truth. Tom looked slightly sheepish.
Mbuno had been standing patiently while they bantered, listening. Suddenly, he moved Pero aside behind the pillar they were standing next to and kicked off, launching himself at Tom. Tom and he went down, but Mbuno had his hand over Tom’s mouth and was pointing with his free hand. Pero peeked around to see a boy, with a broom, open a closet door, extract a bucket, and go back out a door at the far end of the hangar one fifty feet and six planes away. The sound was faint and, with all the angled surfaces of the parked planes in here, Pero would never have known where it came from.
Tom and Mbuno got up, Tom looking down at the slight man with clear respect. “Okay Pero, good decision.” He was referring to the decision to include Mbuno. “Care to lend him to me?
“Mbuno goes where he wants. This time I need him, the crew may need him to keep us safe.” He paused and smiled at Mbuno, Besides, he’s saved me before.”
Mbuno looked at Pero and said, “And you’ve saved me before bwana.” If Pero said it, Mbuno always said it, to even the score. It was part of their friendship, that exchange.
It was many years since their first safari together. Back then, Pero was new to East African filming and they were setting up a water shoot with hippos near Tsavo West Park. Hippos are notoriously dangerous on land and, if you disturb them, also in water. That big mouth kills more Africans every year than crocodiles or any other creature, except maybe snakes. Pero was setting up the cameras on a raft, to float out into a herd, over clear water, one camera on top of the water, one in a plastic bag below, when a female on land spotted Pero and made a charge. Mbuno, showing no fear ran straight at her yelling at the top of his lungs and never flinched, never wavered. At the last second she veered off and brushed him and Pero—sending them reeling like leaves in the wind—as she dived, exploded, into the water. If Mbuno hadn’t taken action, quick action, Pero would have been run over by a one-ton cow and eaten. Hippos have big teeth. They eat meat as well as greens. One bite, you’re dead, end of story.
Three days later, Mbuno was surprised by a puff adder as he was finishing his business in the bush. Puff adders are deadly creatures, spitting venom six feet or more. The venom was meant to blind, but with his quick reactions, it hit his hand and arm only. Pero killed the snake. The pain was excruciating, the necrosis of the skin and tissue immediate, almost as if nerve acid had been poured on him. He would have died except for the Flying Doctor service that Pero radioed to come and rescue him, money no object. The hospital in Nairobi (the better one with an Italian surgeon flown in specially) became Mbuno’s home for a three-week recovery, skin grafts and all. The nurses loved him. His wife made his favorite chai with goat’s milk on a Campingaz stove until the fire alarms went off. Nobody complained—he was that popular.
He still had the scars, but he lived, that was the main thing. It made a bond between them that they were both shy and yet proud about.
“Okay, it’s probably better Mbuno here, stays with you. He can be your eyes and ears while you do that filming you’ve planned. With Mary Lever in tow, you’ll have your hands full. Is she showing up with that husband of hers?”
“Not that I know of. She said one seat for the plane pointedly. Rumor has it that relationship is over anyway.”
“Good thing too. That ass was too well connected and arrogant.” Tom was probably referring to the media stories last month when Lever’s husband got an elderly couple thrown off a plane. They had “mileage tickets” and he was first class, all cash. The media ate it up. He couldn’t have cared less. It was Lever’s money and his social position. If Mary Lever was rid of him, so much the better. “So, Pero, get your crew to the beach in sunny Tanzania and do your filming. I’m off north to see what you found. Anything happens, radio in, there’s a sensible fellow. Don’t take the embassy thing too hard, it was necessary and the damage is past now.”
Pero had calmed down. “Okay, Tom, going away to film suits us fine. You shouldn’t be doing fieldwork either; you’re no damn field agent, so keep your damn head down. They have already killed, quickly and very expertly. Two shots, moving—no flying—target, range over a half mile, .22-250 or no .22-250, that’s expert shooting. So, as I said, keep your bloody head down.” Pero stuck out his hand. They shook. Then he nodded and walked out the side door.
Mbuno and Pero carried their bags and walked down the flight apron to Mara Airways and found their plane from the day before sitting there, door open, a customs inspector guarding the steps. Pero asked Mbuno to wait and walked to the office to talk to Sheryl. Past the loading doors, Pero had to squeeze past people, every inch of the hall and waiting room was full, the place was jam-packed.
Over their heads Pero called, “Sheryl, Sheryl, what the hell is going on?”
“Mr. Baltazar, she’s here, with him!” And she turned around in a flourish and, voila, her arm movement said. There they sat, on Sheryl’s red plastic couch (reserved for dignitaries—who later always stood with a wet bottom from perspiration) talking as if they were in Hyde Park on a bench by the Round Pond: the holy man, Jimmy Threte and his niece, Mary Lever. They looked up and smiled. His smile filled the room with the charm, the sincerity, the oneness with everything he preached so often. It was either very, very good or very, very bad. Pero hadn’t made up his mind ye
t. He was a big man with the slick media hair of his TV evangelical vocation, going gray at the temples just like Pero’s plus a broad forehead and broader shoulders to carry the responsibility. With over 100 million followers, that burden was awesome indeed.
Her smile was as Pero remembered, assured, confident, and open, nothing was hidden there. There didn’t need to be. Her frame was slight, trim and a bit tomboy, yet without any hint of anything except womanliness. At forty, her face, with the bright green half-moon spectacles that serve as her trademark, is still that American every-girl next door classic, even down to the freckles on her nose. Heep’s camera would love her, of that Pero was certain. Problem was, would she love the new TV cable company proposition?
CHAPTER 8
Arusha
Pero looked at each of them in turn, “Reverend Threte, Mary, glad to see Sheryl is looking after you.” Sheryl giggled again. She was totally star-struck—it was almost embarrassing—almost, but not quite.
JT spoke first as he got up. “Good to meet you finally, Mr. Baltazar, I’ve met your folks, good people, good people.” The parents’ stamp of approval, the Reverend Threte believed in evolution and genetics, but he qualified his approval with, “They should find time to pray a bit more, but then survivors of that terrible war,” he meant the second world war, “often feel God has forsaken them. They spoke about it and they told me their faith rests with you.” He raised his eyebrow, “Curious notion, but good people. And my Mary here,” he gestured to her, “speaks highly of you,” he paused for effect, locked eyes with Pero’s, “So, I trust you are going to look after my niece?” It was clear he meant protect her or, God forbid, he’d come after Pero.