The Laughing Monsters

by Denis Johnson

  * * *

  At three in the afternoon I once again entered the Bawarchi. The patronage was light, the place was quiet. At first I thought my contact hadn’t come, and when I located him, seated at one of the smaller tables, nothing before him but a pair of sunglasses, I thought he must be someone else, because I’d only seen him in business suits. But he was Hamid, the one I’d talked to several times in Amsterdam.

  He waved me over and I sat down with him. He gave the impression of being middle-aged and fond of comfort, in a loose white linen outfit with a tunic, more Arab than Euro, except for his eyes, which weren’t brown, but a washed-out gray. He had his sleeve pulled back as he checked his Rolex Commander wristwatch. He wore six jeweled rings, three on either hand.

  “Exactly on time.”

  He handed me his phony business card, and I handed him mine.

  “Do you want something to eat?” he said. “A snack of some kind?”

  “Nothing, thanks. Have you ordered?”

  “Won’t you join me for some tea?”

  “If you haven’t ordered—”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. Why don’t we walk on the beach?”

  “Nobody hears us. We can talk.”

  “I’m nervous indoors,” I said.

  “Come on, don’t be silly. Just tell me what you’ve got.”

  “You know what I’ve got.”

  “I want to know what I’m buying.”

  “Let’s walk. I don’t like it in here.” I wanted us out of the public eye, because I couldn’t be sure of his reaction to a bit of news I had for him. “Do you mind?”

  He sighed, and then he picked up his sunglasses.

  I donned my own as well, and we passed from under the roof and into a hot, steady breeze while the sunshine crashed onto our heads. Through the soles of my sandals I felt the beach burning. In our sinister shades, the only figures in view, I suppose we looked like nothing so much as a couple of crooks plotting mischief.

  When we got near the water’s edge, he stopped. “Now, before we get a stroke or dehydration or something—what have you got?”

  “Exactly what I told you I’d have. Maps of the US military fiber-optics cables throughout seven West African countries. Mali is one of them. Also I have a list of the GPS coordinates for twelve NIIA Technology Safe Houses.” Including, I might have added, the safe house in the basement beneath Elvis Documents.

  “You’re definite about Mali.”

  “Mali. Yes. That’s definite.”

  Mali was the current hot spot. With Mali I had him hooked. Talk about a thirsty face.

  “Let me establish something with you,” he said, “and please forgive me: Do you know what can happen to a party who sells false product?”

  “I would expect to be assassinated.”

  “Your expectation is precise.”

  “I’m not worried. It’s very good product.”

  “What about the transfer?”

  “A push of the button. I have things stored away.”

  “We can do it all digitally?”

  “Correct. You never have to touch the goods.”

  “Do you still stipulate cash payment?”

  “Correct. Cash only.”

  “And the price is twenty thousand US.”

  “No,” I said, “not twenty thousand. That’s no longer correct.”

  This was the bit I didn’t like.

  He started a retort, but stifled it. He must have been counting ten. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “The price is no longer twenty thousand. For you, out of your own pockets, the cost will be nothing—because we go in as partners.”

  “Partners for what?”

  “We’ll be equal partners in the sale you’re making. I’m providing the product, and you’re providing the client.”

  He bunched his mouth in an ugly way and made a sharp noise with his tongue. “It’s completely unacceptable.” He raised his sunglasses. “What are you thinking? You know nothing about my business.”

  “I think I do. The Chinese are all over this continent, and they’re paying ridiculous sums. If they’re not the people you’re selling to, you’re an idiot.”

  He replaced his dark glasses over his eyes. “I don’t like this conversation. You’re too forceful. You use a personal tone.”

  “I’m being emphatic, but only for the purposes of business. It’s nothing personal. I’m just saying the Chinese will pay plenty for something good. And this is good.”

  “It was agreed. Twenty thousand US. It was agreed.”

  “We’re beyond that point now. We’re talking about a partnership. This is excellent product with long-term potential. Very long-term. The loss of this material will never be detected.”

  He clicked his tongue again and turned his back and walked toward the restaurant, leaving me by the shore.

  A dozen meters along he called out over his shoulder, “You’re a liar!” After that he didn’t look back.

  My head roared. Switching the price had felt like a bold move in a sport without rules, but what was bold, and what was stupid?

  I took a look at his card. CREATIVE PRODUCTIONS / Film Plus Internet / Hamid Faisel / Managing Director.

  In Amsterdam he’d had a different last name but had still been Hamid. He’d been chatty, sociable, kind of fun. We’d gone to a film together, Zero Dark Thirty, in English, the Hollywood action movie about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Afterward Hamid made jokes about the great martyr. “It wouldn’t be so funny to my relatives in Lebanon,” he said. “But why should I care? Because I’m not really Lebanese. My mother is French, my stepfather also. I was raised in Marseilles. I am French. France is a happy country. Lebanon has turned into shit.”—As I say, chatty. Today, in Freetown, neither of us had any jokes to make.

  I gave him time enough to get lost, if that’s what he wanted, and then I went through the restaurant toward the cars out front. Hamid was sitting at a table near the entrance with a cup and a saucer before him. I headed for the front without looking at him.

  “One moment, one moment. Come on.” He waved me in and I sat down with him once again. He had a pen in his hand. “How can I believe anything you say, when you’re a liar?”

  “You’ll have a small sample to work with, enough to understand that this represents an ongoing intelligence mother lode to anyone who taps into the cables.”

  “What have they got to detect such tapping?”

  “Nothing remarkable, unless there’s been an upgrade in the last ten years. And there hasn’t been.”

  “Give me back my business card, please.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You might decide to get in touch.” He licked the point of his pen and took the card for a minute and handed it back with an e-address written on its blank side. The domain was dot-UK. “Only if you want to honor the original agreement,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t use the twenty-five.”

  He meant the AES-25 encryption standard, known as the American Standard. “Of course not,” I said.

  “And rotate your proxy every fifteen words.”

  “Sure. I hope English is all right.”

  “English, French, Dutch. I don’t care. But choose your words—no red flags.”

  I tore a page from my notepad and borrowed his pen. “Here’s mine. Maybe we can exchange ideas and reach an understanding.”

  He stared down at my e-address, but he wasn’t reading. I waited. “All right,” he said. “Where’s the harm? Think about your price and let me know later.”

  And then I felt smug and thought: Of course, he can’t pass this up. Not when it includes Mali.

  “Send me your sample,” he said. “Maybe I’ll consider, that’s all I promise. But you can trust my promise, because let me tell you,” he said, “I’m not a liar.”

  Ending it on such a note, I didn’t offer to shake his hand. I went out to the beach again. The heat matched my b
lood, both were beating, simmering. I walked the shoreline toward other restaurants visible up ahead, where cars for hire congregated.

  I took off my sandals and wet my feet in the shallows, and I watched the ocean swell and shrink and listened to it sigh.

  Here the sea is warm, like a bath. It’s dark, not so blue, more like black, a lustrous black.

  You wade out into it until you can’t. You swim out farther until you can’t. Then it takes you.

  * * *

  At a table outside the Quonset hut from which the drunken Russian pilots administered their charter airline—with its fleet of one, a commuter jet—we dealt with a young Leonean man who spoke faultless English, and as he held Michael’s passport, I tried to sneak a look at it. Davidia was peeking too—at mine as well as Michael’s. “It’s US,” I told her. “I have a Danish one too, but I never use it.” Davidia’s was American.

  Davidia wore her safari garb, while Michael was dressed in a wrinkled suit and gray snakeskin boots. His outfit looked at first pink, but closer it was white linen with thin red stripes.

  When Michael got his passport back, he let me have a look at it—a wilted Ghanaian document. “I told you I saved the Ghanaian president.”

  “A couple of times. At a minimum.” I gave it back to him. “It’s got less than two months left on it, Michael.”

  “Never fear. I’ve got family in Uganda, and just as many in Congo. One of those places will claim me. I’ll make the necessary inquiries.”

  We weren’t at the Freetown airport, but at an airstrip well east of the city and next to the ocean. Our aircraft waited in a field of tall grass. I said to our young man, “That’s a Bombardier Challenger, isn’t it? The Royal Danish Air Force uses them for cargo.”

  “Not this kind,” he said. “This is the 600, discontinued from 1982.”

  Davidia shaded her eyes with a hand and squinted. “Are you saying that plane is thirty years old?”

  “The one you’re looking at is a couple of years older,” he said. “But it’s a very good aircraft, so long as you don’t overload it.”

  Michael said, “Nair—remember the Russian airline? The Freetown–Monrovia run during the war? Something Airlines?—something Russian?”

  “It wasn’t an airline. It was a renegade charter, just like this one.”

  “They were the only ones bold enough to fly to Monrovia.”

  “You mean crazy enough. Eventually they crashed, didn’t they?”

  “That’s right, but not on the Monrovia run. That time the plane was coming from a secret rendezvous, loaded with processed uranium.”

  The clerk disagreed. “That’s unsubstantiated, and in fact quite false.”

  “Were you there at the crash site?” Michael said. “If you were there, you were five years old.”

  “Processed uranium?” Davidia said. “You mean enriched?”

  “Exactly right. The plane was overloaded with HEU stolen from Tenex.”

  “HEU?” Davidia said. “What’s HEU? Who’s Tenex?”—and as she seemed to be talking to me, I shook my head, and she said, “Where did it go down?”

  “That’s the beautiful part,” Michael said.

  “It’s never been found,” the clerk said. “But factually, it only had some inconsequential cargo aboard.”

  “U-235? Do you call that inconsequential?” But Michael couldn’t expect to be heeded. He looked like a species of gangster in his pinstripe suit.

  I tried a guess: “Highly Enriched Uranium.”

  “Nothing like that aboard,” the clerk said. By his expression, he seemed to have taken a special dislike to Michael.

  The runway was visible once you walked on it, packed red dirt hidden under tufts of beach grass.

  The aircraft would be booked to capacity—otherwise the Russians would postpone, and that’s why the weekly charter never flew weekly. With a couple of dozen other passengers, African, Indian, Arab, a few white Euros, we waited beside the terminal, a rusty ship’s cargo container open at one end, nothing in it but a row of four theater seats. Nobody would have sat inside—the heat it gave off was startling. Clouds blanketed the sky, but it was bright, and the sea reflected it so viciously you couldn’t look at the water.

  A white Honda Prelude arrived at the Quonset hut and stopped, and nobody got out. I recognized the backseat passenger. I said to Michael, “Look there. It’s Bruno Horst.”

  “Bruno, at our point of departure. Well—nothing funny about that!”

  “I can’t make out the man riding shotgun, but I don’t doubt it’s Mohammed Kallon.”

  I waved. Only the driver waved back. I recognized him too. It was Emil, who’d carried me to the Papa Leone my first day in Freetown.

  Everything I’d touched, they were touching.

  The clerk called our flight. As the others gathered their things I wandered over to the shore with my phone in my hand and, when the water stopped me, I opened the device and pried loose the SIM card and flicked it into the waves. If NATO Intel had a trace on it, let them trace.

  On second thought, I didn’t want the device, either. I made a wish and tossed it as far as I could out into the sea. I wished for magic armor, and the power to disappear.

  I rejoined our group. As we boarded, a young fellow in an olive uniform ran a wand around each passenger’s outline, fondling us in the places where it squeaked—that is, the men. He didn’t touch the women. We climbed onto the craft up metal treads salvaged from old passenger busses and welded into a crooked stairway. Ahead of us a frail person, an African so ill as to seem genderless and colorless and weightless, was being carried up the steps like a bolt of cloth on the shoulders of two young men. “Going home to die,” Michael said.

  I sat against the window overlooking a wing and one of the two jet engines. Michael and Davidia took the seats one row behind and across the aisle. After the engines started, one of the crew—I assumed there were two—a blond man wearing denims, white T-shirt, and flip-flops, came out of the cockpit and wandered down the aisle, saying, “Is English okay? Okay, let’s try it. I want to warn you of the safety features of this aircraft. Has everybody got the seat belt buckled? It’s your choice, I’m not your mother. Okay,” he said, “it’s a trip of sixteen and one-half hours, stopping once at Kotoka International in Accra and once more at Yaoundé, and the final stop will be Entebbe. You’d better have a visa for Ghana or else for Cameroon if you think that’s where you’re going. If you need to get a visa for Uganda, it’s all right, they can fix it at the airport without a big problem. Wherever is your destination, I think you can expect the customs to be serious. They’re always serious with our passengers. They’re too serious.” He waved goodbye and re-entered the cockpit and closed and locked the door, leaving behind him an atmosphere of vodka.

  I’d spent five days in Freetown and learned nothing—except that I could have landed in Uganda to begin with.

  The craft took off over the sea, made a tight, nauseating turn, and came in so low it bent the grasses in the field beneath. We had a close-up view of the highway heading north, and one last snapshot of Freetown: an accident on the road—a farmer talking with both hands, a twitching bloody goat at his feet, a car with all four doors open, a sign stuck inside its rear window—SPLENDID DRIVING SCHOOL.

  TWO

  We got our Ugandan visas at the Entebbe airport without any trouble. Hungover from the long, rocking flight, with the two stops in between, at both of which they kept us suffocating in our seats for upward of two hours while the cabin’s temperature rose to match that of the surrounding tropical darkness, I, for one, wasn’t sure I was still alive, felt I might have entered some intermediary realm on the way to oblivion, and the smoothness of our passage among the Entebbe officials and through the terminal and out to the hired cars only mixed me up all the more. I thought we should go back inside and double-check these visa stamps. Michael said, “My people don’t like senseless trouble. It’s not West Africa. Relax.” He got us into a car, where Davidia f
ell asleep instantly, her head on his shoulder, and we sailed toward our beds. Cool air reached our faces through the driver’s open window—cool. From Lake Victoria, I gathered.

  Thanks to Michael’s budgetary strictures we stayed at the Executive Suites, a place with resale-shop paintings hung crookedly, but in all sincerity, on some of its walls, a “bed-and-breakfast,” as Michael called it, a good two kilometers from the lake and from the real hotels. On a tour of its single story, looking for a bed that wasn’t broken, I counted fourteen rooms. We arrived a bit too late for the breakfast.

  I spent much of the day wandering muddy lanes in search of a phone and soon got one, another Nokia. I took a late lunch at a table in front of a quick-shop calling itself Belief Enterprises and loaded the device with minutes and sent Michael a text: “Note new phone. Have lunch without me. I’m at a table eating chicken, while chickens wander around at my feet.”

  Later Michael woke me from a deep nap by slapping at my door crying, “Nair, dinner is mandatory.”

  For three seconds I was awake, felt ready for adventure, very nearly got my feet on the floor—woke again still later with no idea where I was.

  I checked my new phone. Another hour gone. Hymns filled the air outside my window, some nearby congregation worshipping in song, and then the unintelligible reverberations of a sermon through loudspeakers. By the time the preaching was finished I’d taken a cold shower and located myself in Entebbe, and it was Sunday.

  I found Michael and Davidia at a round white table in the patio restaurant embracing and cooing among the remains of their dinner, spaghetti, probably from a can. I wasn’t hungry. The happy couple drank Nile beer from the bottle and I had an orange soda and Michael told us we’d traveled southeast from Freetown about five thousand kilometers and had landed five kilometers north of the equator and twenty kilometers south of Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and three hundred kilometers east of the Mountains of the Moon and the headwaters of the Nile River; that the elevation was some twelve hundred meters, that we couldn’t expect temperatures to get above 30 Celsius, and that we’d better set our watches ahead to 8:42 p.m., because we’d lost an hour heading east; and then in a clear, sweet tenor voice he sang most of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to his fiancée, accompanying Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, whose voices issued from the bartender’s boom box.