An African Affair

by Nina Darnton

  He didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then he patted the seat next to him invitingly.

  “Why are you trying to do it alone? Let me help you.”

  Lindsay didn’t move. “I’m just so upset,” she said. “Everything’s happened so fast I haven’t had time to process it. I think I need a little time to myself. Do you mind?”

  He said no, he was exhausted too. He would go back to his hotel and return later to take her out for dinner.

  “See you later,” he said.

  She nodded and squeezed his hand.

  After he was gone, Lindsay tried to figure out her next move. She knew she needed proof, either to clear or convict him.

  She decided to go to his apartment to look around. But how? It was nearly five and he would be back at eight. Maybe she should surprise him, show up at his place. She’d never done that before, and he’d made it clear he liked to keep his hotel apartment exclusively for business meetings, but she could say she was disturbed by their visit. That would explain her strange mood and allay his suspicions.

  She walked into her garden to collect herself. She stood on the stone patio under the roof’s overhang, watching as the torrential rain flooded the cobbled pathways. Impulsively, she walked into the center of the garden and let the water pour over her, plaster her hair into her eyes, smash her clothes against her body. After a few minutes, she went back inside, leaving puddles wherever she stepped, and climbed the stairs to her bedroom to change.

  She drove to Victoria Island, pulled up at the hotel, walked past the front desk, bypassed the elevator, and climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. She knocked on James’s door and waited, but there was no answer. She could hear the air-conditioning unit and someone moving inside.

  “James, it’s Lindsay. Please open up. I really have to talk to you.”

  She could hear water running. She knocked again.

  “I’ll be right there. Hang on.”

  The water stopped and a few minutes later James opened the door. He was naked, except for a towel wrapped around his waist. He looked alarmed.

  “Are you all right? What’s happened?”

  Lindsay knew that barging in saying she was worried about their relationship would strike him as foolish but would be effective. He would put it down to “woman behavior,” which meant, in his view, emotional, irrational, insecure, and needy.

  “James, I have to talk to you, now, while I have the courage to say it.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “Come in,” he said. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing new,” Lindsay said. “I’m just shaken by everything that’s happened and everything that hasn’t happened. I feel so alone. And I started thinking that I always am alone, even when I’m with you. These last awful days, you didn’t even call.”

  “Call? You know how difficult that is. I didn’t think you’d expect it.”

  “Well, maybe it’s my fault if you don’t think I expect anything, because I do.”

  James looked irritated.

  “Maybe you ought to tell me what’s really bothering you,” he said, leading her into his sitting room. “But give me a minute, will you?”

  She sat on the couch to wait for him. Oh, if only she could tell him what was really bothering her. If only she could be sure that he would erase her doubts with the truth.

  She noticed his khaki safari jacket thrown over a chair. She got up and went through the pockets. She found a gum wrapper, a cough drop, and a crumpled piece of paper. She opened it and saw a handwritten receipt for N270,000, marked paid from an airline she’d never heard of named “Fly Right.” No destination was listed, but the flight was scheduled to leave in three days. She quickly slipped the receipt back into his pocket and was about to sit down when he walked back in.

  “I can’t sit down, I’m too nervous,” she said. “I’ll probably be expelled from here in a few days.”

  “Why?”

  “I filed a story about J.R.’s murder.”

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t file anything until after you left?” His voice was cold.

  “I did. But I can’t let J.R. disappear without anyone being held to account. If they want to expel me from the country, I’m ready to go.”

  James didn’t answer.

  “I was also thinking, given the political situation, you’ll probably be leaving soon too.”

  When he nodded, she said, “Well, do you know when you’ll be leaving yet?”

  “No,” he said. “I still have some work to do here. But I think I’ll probably go in a few weeks.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Our leaving won’t make any difference between us, you know. Is that what you’ve been worrying about?”

  “Well, yes,” she said, nervously. He strode over and pulled her to her feet.

  “I love you, Lindsay, don’t you know that? It will be easier once we leave.” He took her in his arms. “I know we need to talk,” he said, “and you’ll want to make plans for the future. But we don’t need to make them right this minute, do we? I thought we’d talk about it later, over dinner.”

  Only a day ago, those words would have made her very happy. Now they weren’t important anymore, not if her suspicions were true.

  “You’re right,” she said, “I’m sorry. We can talk later.”

  They moved to the couch and he started to unbutton her blouse. “So,” he said, “if we’re not going to talk, I wonder if we can think of anything else we can do.”

  He was going to make love to her and, in spite of everything, she wanted him to.

  CHAPTER 35

  It dismayed Lindsay that she could make love to him, and mean it, while plotting to deceive him. She had climbed onto his lap, straddling him, deliberately teasing and arousing him. She felt his body stir under her as she pressed against him.

  She was more excited than she had ever been. For the first time she was taking what she wanted from him, not worried about what he wanted. But she realized too that the other aphrodisiac was the deception itself. It was exciting. It was dangerous. This is what he feels, she realized. This is how he lives. It had taken this for her to understand something deep and distasteful about him—and about herself.

  When they finished and he got up to go to the bathroom, she walked directly to the door, releasing the button on the knob to ensure that it didn’t automatically lock when closed. Then she dressed and waited for him to return.

  “I’m starving,” she said, when he appeared.

  “Sex always makes you hungry,” he smiled. “Like dope.”

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door. “Who you callin’ a dope?”

  He rolled his eyes indulgently.

  Just as he was closing the door, he automatically jiggled the handle to be sure the door was locked, and when he found that it wasn’t, a puzzled look crossed his face, but he simply pressed the button to set the lock. He dropped his keys in his pocket as they walked to the elevator.

  “Where do you want to dine, madam?” he asked.

  “Let’s go back to my place,” Lindsay said. “We’ll eat, we’ll drink . . .”

  “And be merry?” he finished.

  “I’m always merry when I’m with you.”

  “Not true. But well said.”

  Lindsay arrived home first, and went to the kitchen to see what she could cook, but when James arrived a few minutes later, she met him at the door saying, “New plan. Let’s get some Chinese food and bring it home. Martin’s taking a few days off and I don’t have any food in the fridge.”

  It was odd, she reflected, that the circumstances that should have poisoned their relationship heightened the electricity between them.

  They stopped at the Chinese restaurant, ordered shrimp and lobster sauce and chicken with snow peas, and brought the meal back to Lindsay’s place. Asking him to choose the music while she laid out the food, she went into the kitchen. She took a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge and poured the drinks. The
n, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she opened the spice cabinet and reached for the bottle she had hidden there. Glancing over her shoulder, she put three drops into James’s glass.

  He had chosen one of her favorite songs—Otis Redding:

  I’ve been loving you

  A little too long . . .

  “Good choice,” she said, carefully carrying his glass and a plate heaped with Chinese food to the dining table and putting it in front of him before returning to the kitchen for her own plate. She placed her food and wine on the table, sat down, and lifted her glass for a toast.

  Lindsay had never done anything like this before but she knew everything that might go wrong. “To us,” she said, taking a long sip of wine.

  “To us,” James repeated. He raised the glass to his lips and drank.

  She suddenly felt scared. She didn’t know how long it would take for the drug to work or how much he had to drink for it to be effective. She wasn’t even sure what to do if he actually passed out. Right now he was showing no signs of slowing down. Maybe she hadn’t put in enough drops. In any case, the important thing was to keep talking, to keep the conversation going, keep him believing nothing had changed.

  “I’m worried about J.R.’s family,” she said. “The police said they were back in their home village, but they could be lying. I should try to see them.”

  “The police had no reason to lie. It was him they wanted. Now that he’s dead, his family is no use to them.”

  James finished his wine and poured himself another glass. Lindsay wondered if she should try to add more drops, but decided she couldn’t pull it off.

  “You’re probably right,” she answered. “It’s weird, you know. J.R. is dead. His home is wrecked, his family has disappeared, and I have fixated on a dead dog. I can’t get it out of my mind. I keep tearing up when I think about it.”

  “I know what you mean,” James said. His eyes looked tired, suddenly heavy, and his words slurred. He started to get up, but rose only halfway and then sat down again heavily.

  “Whoa,” Lindsay said. “I guess you had a bit too much wine.”

  “I didn’t think so,” James answered groggily. “I hope I didn’t pick up some . . .”

  He stopped mid-sentence and pitched forward, his head on the table, out cold.

  Lindsay called his name, softly at first, then louder. When he didn’t respond, she slipped her hand in his pocket and took his key. Vickie had said she had two, maybe three hours. She’d better count on two.

  Traffic was unaccountably light, and she arrived at James’s hotel in less than fifteen minutes. She entered the lobby, looking around quickly to be sure she didn’t see anyone who knew her, skirted the front desk and the elevator, and climbed the stairs. When she reached his floor, she saw a group of businessmen emerging from the elevator. She darted back into the stairwell until the coast was clear. At James’s door she pulled out the keys. She tried a few before finding the right one. But there were two locks and she had to repeat the process. Finally, she opened the door and slipped inside.

  She checked her watch, determined not to spend more than an hour searching the suite. Vickie had said she wanted papers, lists of contacts in Europe, maybe a ticket that specified his destination. He’d had this suite reconstructed to his own specifications. Would he feel safe enough here to just keep everything in his desk? She walked over and opened the drawer. Inside was a neat arrangement of pens, stationery, envelopes, and an engagement calendar. She leafed through the date book and saw a record of his buying trips to Ibadan, his Oshogbo purchases, his lunch and dinner dates, including those with her. She closed the book and put it back in the drawer. Across the room was a chest of drawers and, next to that, a bookshelf unit with four drawers. She noticed a cup that said CIA across its top. Below the first line, SPECIAL AGINT was written and crossed out. Below that, SECRIT OPERATIVE—also crossed out. And finally, in all capital letters, the word SPY. She could imagine him thinking that was funny. She pulled open the drawers, one at a time, and carefully looked through each. They were all neatly organized and sparsely filled, so it was easy to see what was in them. In the top one, she found another set of keys, loose change, a cigarette lighter, a Mark Cross fountain pen still in its black leather box, and a Swiss Army pocketknife. She held the keys next to the ones she took from his pocket and satisfied herself that they were copies. In the next drawer was a neat pile of leather-bound pocket diaries, each marked with the name of a different country: Spain, Italy, England, U.S. She rifled through them and found what appeared to be client lists and orders from each country. But there was no way to tell who the people were. Besides, she couldn’t take the books with her and she had no time to copy them. She jotted down some of the names and numbers and then moved on. The other drawers contained more notebooks, a box of candles, spare batteries, tubes of toothpaste, and cans of shaving cream, all packed away so neatly that it unnerved her. It was almost as though he didn’t really live here.

  It was getting late and she still hadn’t checked out the bedroom. She moved to the bookcase and started going through the drawers under it. The first drawer was full of neatly stacked shirts, still in their cellophane wrappers. The second drawer was hard to open; it seemed to be off its track and she had to jiggle it out. There were more client files but she decided to skip them. As she tried to close it, the drawer fell off its track completely. She reached her hand in to lift the drawer back and felt a small lever. She pulled it.

  A book on the shelf above trembled and then fell off, revealing a small trapdoor that had swung open. Behind the door was a cabinet about the size of a small safe. Excited, she reached up and inserted her hand, withdrawing the items one by one.

  When she found the money, she gasped. She removed stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Her heart sank as her last hope for his innocence faded. Behind the cash she found a folder. Leafing through it, she scanned a note from Roxanne Reinstadler, decorated with an ink drawing of one of her sculptures. “Special Order,” it said. “Hollow Oshogbo dolls for immediate delivery 8/16.” Behind Roxanne’s note was a receipt from “Fly Right: African Airlines: private flights.” It was stamped 8/17 and confirmed a flight and delivery of freight from Kaduna airport to Paris. She pulled out another receipt for carrying freight from Oshogbo to Kaduna. On the bottom were some numbers jotted in James’s handwriting. It looked like he was figuring out costs. They were very high.

  Folded into an envelope was a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers in Paris, London, and New York. Many were Russian, and next to each, someone had jotted down what Lindsay assumed was the territory of the person receiving the shipment as well as the price for each delivery: “Maxim Stepanovich, 50 kilo. New York. Payment on delivery.” Payments were each in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was about drugs, Lindsay realized, her heart sinking; this was his contact sheet for the drug cartel. Last, she found a leather case containing several passports under different names and photos: James with a mustache, James with his head shaved, James with blond hair and glasses, as well as one as she knew him. Tucked inside were two tickets to Paris on a Fly Right charter leaving from a small airport outside Lagos in three days’ time. Attached to the tickets was a copy of the receipt she had found in his jacket pocket.

  She swallowed hard as the pieces fell into place. The statues at Roxanne’s, that’s where he stashed the drugs. What a perfect foil—delivering African art for sale in the West. Mike must have been on to them—that’s why he held one of the contraband statues. But she was confused by having found the carton of statues in the shed used by Olumide’s thugs. If Olumide was involved, why was James dealing with Abdul Abdeka, Olumide’s enemy? Was he a double agent, working for both of them? The two tickets to Paris simply said “one-way passage to Paris,” and she wondered who was going with him. She pulled out her notebook and copied as much information as she could before realizing that an hour and a quarter had passed since she’d left James. She wrote fas
ter, gripping her pen so tightly that her third finger hurt and she could see a small indentation where the pen pressed tightly against it.

  She carefully put everything back in the safe, closed it, and put the drawer back in place, taking care to leave it slightly off-track as before.

  Then, as she was replacing the fallen book, she heard a murmur outside the door followed by a knock. She didn’t move, tried not to breathe.

  “James, open the door,” said a man urgently. “We need to talk.” The accent was British, but tinged with the musical lilt of an Oxbridge-educated Nigerian.

  “Let’s open up and let us wait for him inside,” said another voice.

  Lindsay froze. She looked around for a hiding place, her eyes darting from the closet to the bedroom. Someone was fiddling with the doorknob.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said a third voice. “Mr. Duncan doesn’t allow anyone else to hold his key. Perhaps you can wait downstairs.”

  More mumbling, and then footsteps receded down the hall. Lindsay waited a few more minutes, knowing she had to leave quickly. She cautiously cracked the door open and peered out. No one. She stepped into the hall, closing the door and making sure it was locked. She darted down the stairs and hurried into the parking lot.

  The traffic was moving slowly, but it was not at a standstill. Thinking she’d get home with time to spare, Lindsay crossed the bridge onto Ikoyi only to be forced to stop by a massive go-slow. She got out of her car to peer down the line of cars, but saw nothing to explain the sudden traffic jam. She sat at the wheel, checking her watch every minute or so, desperately trying to think of what to say to James if he were awake when she got home. Finally, she pulled over and drove on the shoulder—a violation punished by a police whipping in Lagos. She drove freely for about half a mile until she saw a police car ahead of her and signaled one of the cars to let her back in line. Luckily, a woman complied and Lindsay avoided being seen by the authorities. Gratefully, she waved at the woman, who waved back. The police were letting the cars through a makeshift barricade, checking identity cards. Almost two hours had passed since James fell asleep when finally her turn came. She nervously showed her passport, unsure whether or not to offer a dash. This time a bribe wasn’t necessary. The officer abruptly waved her on. The road cleared and she stepped on the gas.