Changa

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Who’s that white woman with her? The one in lesbian chic?’

  Gaby shrugged and sipped her drink. ‘Must be a friend.’ You’ll find out soon enough, she thought. When Abigail went to the toilets, Gaby took her bag and accompanied her. Miriam and Oksana left their table a moment later and followed her in. They were waiting when Abigail came out of the cubicle. It was very quick. Oksana took the right side. Miriam took the left. Gaby bent her over the basins and pulled her head up so she could see both of them in the mirror.

  ‘What you have to understand is that I’m with Shepard because of what he is, not what he can do for me,’ Gaby said. ‘I know you may have trouble with this mode of thinking, but you should make the effort. It really can change your outlook on life. Another thing you should understand is that I’m not envious of things I can’t have. I know you’ve been pushing your tits in Shepard’s face long before I showed up, but what you don’t seem to grasp is that men are intelligent, men can choose, men aren’t just dicks with just enough motor system attached to get them to the next pussy. If Shepard had wanted you, it would be your underwear in his laundry basket, but he didn’t, and it’s mine, and it’s going to stay that way. Now, if we’ve got points one and two, maybe we can push on to point three. You do not go around spreading stories behind people’s backs that they’re cunt-brained gold-diggers who will stop at nothing to sleep their way to a good story. Because everything I have, I got on my own merits, by my own sweat and smarts. I don’t owe anyone anything. I see what I want, I take it with my own hand. Last thing to understand: I’m a Celt, we’re a people who prefer direct action to whispering campaigns. If something riles us, we do something about it. And we are people with very, very long memories and very, very short tempers. That’s it. Speech is over. Show time.’

  She took the electric shaver from her bag.

  ‘You would not dare!’ Abigail Santini shouted.

  ‘Wouldn’t I? I’m T.P.’s green-eyed girl, I’m fireproof.’

  She clicked the razor on and shaved a beautiful grey stubbled strip up the back and over the top of Abigail’s skull to the forehead. Softly curled black hair fell to the washroom floor. Abigail Santini struggled and swore expressively in Italian but Miriam and Oksana held her firmly. Gaby admired her handiwork. She had originally intended to shave everything off, but a Union Jack pattern of stripes was more satisfying. Abigail Santini would be forced to shave the rest herself. She pushed her enemy’s forehead against the raised rim of the basin and readied her weapon for a second pass from ear to ear.

  A gloved hand stayed hers. The back of the glove was studded with Gothic spikes. There were silver rings on the fingers. The hand took the razor from Gaby and switched it off. The ladies’ powder room was full of young black women in serious leather.

  ‘Leave us, please,’ said the leather girl who had stayed Gaby’s vengeance. Abigail Santini turned at the door for a parting vow of hatred. A woman in leather pouch and pads over a ribbed bodysuit pushed her ungently out into the bar. The murmur of table chatter ceased immediately.

  ‘I stay with my friend,’ Oksana said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Gaby said. ‘I promise.’

  Oksana and Miriam left. The possegirls struck poses to match their clothes. Haran entered the women’s washroom. With him was the fattest black woman Gaby had ever seen. She wore a voluminous kanga dress printed with scenes from Kenya’s political history that made her look larger still. M’zee Jomo Kenyatta, father of the nation, peered from the folds of her matching turban.

  ‘Your peace negotiations have progressed since we last met,’ Gaby said. Haran smiled thinly and tapped one of the leather girls with his cane. She took up sentry duty outside.

  ‘Mombi and I have reached a position of mutual understanding. At the moment we are engaged in a process of assimilation and rationalization of our operations and clients.’

  The big woman did not speak. She had most beautiful eyes. They should not be beautiful, Gaby thought. They should be piggy and cold in rolls of fat.

  ‘Ten drive-by shootings in as many days is assimilation and rationalization?’ Gaby asked. Mombi laughed silently but did not speak.

  ‘We kill those who require killing,’ Haran said. ‘These rude boys litter the streets; we are only doing the public a service, making the city safe for honest citizens.’ He perched on the edge of the sink unit and balanced himself with both hands on the knob of his cane. ‘Concerning our arrangement. I have made some progress in both your requests. It seems that both lines of enquiry lead to the same place.’

  ‘Unit 12? Peter Werther’s in there as well as William?’

  ‘He was taken there directly from the What the Sun Said community. That is our arrangement satisfied. However, knowing you would not be content with confirmation that he has been taken, and where he has been taken to, I have been conducting further enquiries on your behalf into the nature of this Unit 12.’

  ‘Which you are adding to the account.’

  Haran smiled. At his signal, one of Mombi’s possegirls set up a PDU on a wash-hand basin. The screen showed a green and white wireframe CAD animation of an architectural plan. It looked like three of those romantically impractical wheelie space-stations from 2002 stacked on top of each other, turning slowly in dark green cyberspace. Gaby bent to the screen, trying to decipher scales and annotations. A tiny box was balanced on top of the central spindle. She knew what it was, and the whole thing leaped into proportion.

  ‘We obtained the schematics for the underground structures from Nairobi Central Planning department,’ Haran said. ‘They are much more amenable to inducement than UNECTA.’

  ‘It’s incredible.’

  ‘The largest piece of civil engineering in Kenya in the past five years. I can show you the construction details and costings. They are impressive.’

  ‘How could they keep something this big quiet?’

  ‘It is not so hard when the United Nations runs your country,’ Mombi said. Her voice was high and musical, another incongruity with her huge body.

  ‘What is it for?’ Gaby asked. Whatever price Haran asked of her, it was worth it to bust this secret subterranean citadel wide open.

  ‘That is where we have run into difficulties,’ Haran said. ‘It works to different protocols and passwords from the rest of the system. My operatives cannot get direct access to it. Our information is deduced from secondary sources like revenue, accounting, power consumption, logistics. From the engineering specification, which we obtained from the firms who constructed the unit, we have concluded that it is designed to be a self-contained environment. A comparison of catering costs with wages figures reveals an interesting discrepancy. There are fifty full-time staff on the unit pay-roll - most of them have medical qualifications, significantly. The amount of consumables passing into the unit system is sufficient for many times that figure.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Approximately six times.’

  Three hundred people, down there under the earth, in those circular corridors, going round and round in artificial light forever. Peter Werther’s tan would have faded under the fluorescents. To him it would be just another strange place. To William, who had lived most of his life outdoors, under the sun, without walls, he would wither and despair, thinking that he would never be let out again. What had his experience of the Chaga been that they took him away and shut him up in these curving corridors?

  ‘Who are these people?’ Gaby asked.

  ‘We do not know. UNECTA keeps no lists. This place does not exist, remember.’

  ‘How can we get them out?’

  ‘You cannot,’ Haran said. ‘No one has ever come out. How can you get people out who are not officially in?’

  ‘Only one thing comes out,’ Mombi said. ‘Blood. Every three weeks, a consignment of two hundred and eighty-three samples is sent by courier to the Kenyatta National Hospital Department of Haematology.’

  ‘We know this by the shipping document
s,’ Haran said. ‘One of my posse members has a relative who works in the hospital reception.’

  This is how it gets done in Kenya, Gaby thought. By a relative of a friend, or a friend of a relative. They had information networking in this land long before the worldweb spun its silk lines across the globe. Blood. Two hundred and eighty-three drops.

  ‘Which section?’

  ‘The GAPU HIV 4 research section,’ Mombi said. Haran laughed. Gaby had never heard him laugh before. It was like the bark of some feral animal scavenging along the lanes and hovels of the townships.

  ‘For so many months, you were living in the same house as the answer to your mystery,’ he said. ‘You moved too soon.’

  ‘Haran’s man has gone through the records,’ Mombi said. ‘The GAPU Haematology unit has been processing samples for twenty-seven months.’

  ‘They are testing them for HIV 4?’

  ‘It seems that this is so. As my partner has said, it is difficult to penetrate the security of these organizations. We have reached the limits of what we can find out. Now you are uniquely placed to learn the truth. When you do, I hope that you will share it with me, for, unlike my friend Haran, I am a woman who loves her country.’

  Haran laughed again and pushed his cane forward. At the sign, the watekni moved from their positions to the door to cover the withdrawal through the Thorn Tree bar. Mombi inclined her head to Caby as she swept out. Haran paused a moment.

  ‘Most uniquely placed, Gaby. The truth may be closer even than Miriam Sondhai. If UNECTA’s Peripatetic Executive Director does not know what is happening in his own organization, who does?’

  He touched the tip of his cane to his planter’s hat and Gaby was alone in the women’s room.

  ~ * ~

  T.P. was at the table by the street. The others had all left. He did not look like a happy owl.

  ‘I can’t have this, you know.’

  ‘T.P., T.P., listen, it’s a conspiracy . . .’

  ‘Heard it before, Gaby. Journalists report the news. They do not become the news. It’s not professional. I don’t care who started it, but I will not have the press community thinking I’m running some kind of female mud-wrestling stable. This is a disciplinary matter, Gaby. I’ll overlook entertaining heavily armed watekni in the ladies’ jax. But you do not try to turn the senior On-line editor into Sinead O’Connor.’

  ‘Fuck, T.P…’

  ‘I’m prepared to let it ride this once, provided you donate a month’s wages to a refugee aid charity of your choice.’

  ‘Jesus. T.P.’

  ‘And I want to see the receipt. A written apology wouldn’t go amiss either. You’re dangerous, Gaby. Not just to yourself -that’s par for the course for a reporter out here - but to everyone who comes into contact with you.’

  ‘Trust me, T.P.’

  He left some shillings on the table. ‘I can’t. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘T.P.!’ He stopped on the step down into the street. ‘I’ve got the diary, T.P.; She’s alive. And I think I know where I can find her.’

  ~ * ~

  37

  In the anonymous hired Toyota pick-up, Gaby McAslan watched the figure in the red onepiece turn out of the gateway and run along the grass verge. Fifty-five minutes. She waited until the woman turned on to Ondaatje Avenue and got out of the truck.

  God, what if she has got a new code for the alarm? Gaby McAslan thought as she walked down the brick drive to the front door.

  Three. Eight. Four. Four. Two. Seven. Four. Nine.

  And pray.

  And turn.

  The door opened with the silence of aged mahogany on well-oiled hinges. It was in here. Miriam Sondhai was the icon of many virtues, but not the Madonna of memory. Her attention was turned to loftier things than the numbers that define modern life. She got her cashcard swallowed every week. As she jogged across the Dental Hospital car park toward Mandella Highway, she would have the door code tucked into the tongue pocket of her running shoes. Gaby’s entire scheme rested on the theory that Miriam was similarly lax with her passwords to the Global Aids Policy Unit system.

  Where to look? The filofax on the table. Too obvious. She had a bad memory but she was not stupid. Same for the PDU. The handbag, hanging from the teak and antelope horn coat rack.

  All truth is in the handbag.

  She would be past the new Sirikwa Hotel now, waiting at the keepie-leftie for a gap in the traffic. Forty-five minutes.

  Lip gloss. Small change. Stamps. Card for the hospital car park. Keys. Other people’s things. An envelope with a Somali stamp, franked Mogadishu. Silver propelling pencil. Paracetamol. Madonnas do not need paracetamol, or feminine hygiene products. A little flat address book, corners reinforced with Scotch tape. On the cover a brown man with kohl and a curling black moustache groped under the dress of a brown woman with kohl and no moustache. Indian Erotic Art Birthday Book.

  Madonnas certainly do not have Indian Erotic Art Birthday Books.

  She took the book to the coffee table, flicked through the pages of exquisite tantric couplings and anniversaries. Don’t Forget above a miniature of a green-skinned woman having her vulva licked by a man with his little fingers crooked in a spiritual attitude. Underneath, long codes of letters and digits.

  Thirty-six minutes. She would be coming up on the big intersection at the bottom of University Road.

  Gaby pulled up the PDU’s rollscreen and hooked it to its frame. The liquid crystal-impregnated plastic blinked start-up icons at her. She stroked the touch panel and opened up the directory. The call connection to the Kenyatta Hospital was made in seconds. A cigarette would be desperately good, Gaby thought. For a fatal instant she almost succumbed. She clicked for the Global Aids Policy Unit. Password queries interrogated her. She typed in the first of the codes in the birthday book. She went straight through to the Virology Department. Jesus, Miriam, take more care. It’s a sharp-toothed world that you’re running through in your red lycra suit. Another interrogative. Try the next on the list.

  Invalid password.

  Number three, then.

  Invalid password.

  Sweaty palms moment. Three strikes and you are out. Dare she run the risk that the next code on the list would be wrong too and alert the firewall defences? Fuck it. She’d faced down Azeri BTR 60s and Hart Assault helicopters.

  HBP37FFONLHJC162XC.

  No wonder she wrote them down.

  The rollscreen filled with icons. Miriam’s workspace volumes pulsed hot. The answer could be in them, or it could be in any of the other hundreds of nested files. Up to now it had all been balls and adrenalin. Now came the work, to the metronome footfalls of Miriam Sondhai on the streets of Nairobi.

  Gaby pulled down a find menu and typed in blood and/or samples. Twenty two files found, the PDU told her. She picked the first from the pop-up menu. It was a database of cell culture samples from an ongoing experiment into the relationship between the HIV 4 virus and the nuclear material of helper T-cells.

  File two. Monthly staff blood test results. Joseph Isangere; confirmed antibody reaction. Jesus.

  File three: blood types and organ-donor registrations.

  File four: a locked file on the results of staff blood and urine tests for drug use. They’ll let you know someone has caught the terrible thing they work with, but it’s top secret if they toke a little sensimilla of an evening to get the damned viruses and the things they do out of their minds.

  Twenty-three minutes. Miriam Sondhai would be on Uhuru Highway, beating along the earth sidewalks past the bus queues and the matatu touts, the city on her left; the bleached, dismembered park on her right: liquid and beautiful as Gaby had seen her that first morning from T.P.’s Landcruiser.

  File five. Open sesame.

  HIV 4 test referrals. Promising. It was a hell of a database. Fifteen thousand entries. Gaby set up search parameters for Kajiado, UNECTA, Unit 12. She held her breath as the command Find any went through to the hospital. Do not think abou
t how long it will take to come through the cell net onto the PDU, she told herself. Do not think that at the end of Uhuru Highway Miriam Sondhai is on the way back. Do not think that there may be a hundred watch-dogs set to bark at the scent of any of these parameters you have set.

  The search failed on Kajiado and Unit 12, but on UNECTA it threw three hundred names at her. Some had been found under UNECTA as accommodation address or employer. The majority - two hundred and eighty-three - cited UNECTA as source of referral.

  ‘Result,’ she whispered. Seventeen minutes. Ticking clock, pounding feet, heaving breath, hammering heart. She could copy the data onto the discs she had brought and be safely back at Shepard’s before Miriam Sondhai stripped down for her shower. But if they were the wrong records, she would have to break in to the hospital system again.