An African Affair (2 page)

He walked out of the room.

Vickie turned to Goren. “This is just the kind of thing Solutions, Incorporated does—acts of sabotage for a political goal. It’s not a wild idea at all, especially if the hit was ordered by the top guy.”

“That’s enough,” Albright said, standing up. “You’ll know more when you’re on the scene. I’d like to leave this meeting confident you and Dave will work well together.”

“Yes, sir,” Vickie boomed. “We’ll get along fine, won’t we, Dave?”

“Sure,” he replied. He looked Albright straight in the eye. “You have my word on that, sir.”

The ambassador stood up to leave.

“Don’t worry,” Albright said. “They always settle into a professional relationship. They challenge each other, but it generates results.”

Looking skeptical, the ambassador picked up his papers and withdrew. Dave Goren shook Albright’s hand and nodded at Vickie.

“Well, welcome aboard. See you in Lagos.”

“Thank you. Looking forward to it.” Vickie grinned.

Albright walked to the door, then turned to face her.

“I want to stay on top of this. I don’t have to tell you how important it is. You’ll report through regular channels. But feel free to contact me directly if there are any serious problems.”

“I will, sir. I have some ideas about where to start,” she began intently.

She was about to elaborate but he had left, his mind already on the next problem.

“You can count on me, sir,” she said to the empty space.

Downstairs, as his escort guided him through the front lobby, the stranger stopped to browse through a souvenir shop, much to the annoyance of his guide. The stranger picked up one of the coffee mugs for sale, turning it over in his hand.

It was meant as a joke. CIA was scrawled across the top. Below, large block letters proclaimed: “
SPECIAL AGINT
.” Acknowledging the misspelling, a thick black line was drawn through them. Below, a second attempt read: “
SECRIT OPERATIVE
.” That too was crossed out. The final line was a single word: “
SPY
.”

The stranger smiled and bought the mug. He carried it in his left hand as he shook hands with the little bureaucrat and turned toward the security check. Passing the wall of memorial plaques to the agents who had died in the line of duty, he wondered where the newest one would go.

A phone was ringing somewhere. Its shrill, insistent screech broke through Lindsay’s sleep, but she was sure it wasn’t her phone—that hadn’t worked in days. She sat up and threw off her sheets, which were damp with perspiration. There was that sound again. It
was
her phone. She scrambled to lift up the receiver.

“Lindsay,” a voice shouted. “What the hell’s going on? I haven’t heard a word from you in over a week.”

Joe Rainey, the foreign editor, sounded far away through the scratchy connection.

“The line’s been out,” she yelled back.

“Why the hell do you think we gave you a sat phone?” he asked.

“It’s broken. No one here can fix it. And the power keeps failing so I often can’t use my computer. It’s lucky I have an old manual typewriter, but I need a generator,” she said. “I’m waiting for the business side to approve it. Can you put some pressure on—” but before she could say another word, the connection was severed. The landline had expired as mysteriously as it had sprung to life.

She glared at the ticking clock: 3:00 A.M. There must be some unwritten law decreeing that editors would never be able to compute the time difference between them and their correspondents. She punched her pillow into a soft lump under her head and closed her eyes. But sleep wouldn’t come. The air was thick and muggy. The air conditioner didn’t work and the wooden blades of the ceiling fan weren’t moving.

A blackout. Again. She fumbled for a candle, lit it with the matches she kept on the bedside table and, half-asleep, groped her way downstairs to get some water.

Her friend Maureen was slumped at the kitchen table, her short brown hair plastered down with perspiration. Poor Maureen. Lindsay, a foreign correspondent for the
New York Globe
, had been in Lagos for four months, long enough to accustom herself to the frequent electrical disruption and the relentless heat. But Maureen, an AP reporter, had arrived only yesterday for a brief assignment.

Both had been based in London and specialized in West Africa. Half a year ago Lindsay began hearing stories about the corruption and cruelty of General Michael Olumide, Nigeria’s military dictator. Exiles said he made millions from drug dealing, that he used the country as his private ATM, and that the walls of his underground jails were stained with blood. When she learned that the paper was planning to open a full-time bureau in Nigeria, she had lobbied hard for the job. Rainey had been reluctant to assign her—she suspected that he thought it too dangerous for a woman but didn’t dare say so. Then, one of Olumide’s advisers, widely rumored to be working for the Americans, was found murdered. Olumide claimed that there was evidence pointing to The Next Step, an anticorruption movement that was an unlikely culprit since it believed in change by counting votes rather than cutting throats. The dissidents pointed to Olumide as the more obvious suspect. Others said it was the work of northern fundamentalists who had been agitating for Islamic law. Lindsay told her bosses that she had already developed a network of sources among dissidents. She insisted this could be a very big story, with international repercussions, a Pulitzer contender. Rainey relented. Pulitzer talk always brought editors around.

Maureen’s brief was more specific—a story on the main opposition leader, Femi Fakai, who had promised an interview with the Western press. Since the AP had no resident correspondent, she had also been assigned to write some features on the Nigerian economy and oil production.

The two women had been close friends since high school. They chose the same college—the University of Wisconsin at Madison—and joined the school paper together. In their senior year, both wanted the job of editor, and the board, finding it impossible to choose, split the job between them. Though different in many ways, they worked well as a team. Maureen, barely five feet tall, with curly brown hair and striking blue eyes, was feisty, outspoken, and honest to a fault. She could hone in on the holes in a reporter’s story but needed Lindsay’s diplomatic talents to communicate her criticisms. Lindsay, whose parents had changed their name from Kaminsky to Cameron, was lively, witty, flirtatious, and pretty. She had a tall, graceful body, long, straight auburn hair, and hazel eyes, qualities which made her popular in spite of her ambition and academic success.

After college, they went into journalism and became indefatigable reporters, but at thirty-six, Maureen had achieved a more well-rounded life. As Lindsay’s mother never tired of pointing out, Maureen was married—to Mark, an American diplomat she met in Warsaw. Her mother might have changed her name, but she still had Kaminsky values. Even after her divorce from Lindsay’s father, she had absolute faith that marriage and babies defined success for a woman.

“Hi,” Lindsay said, coming into the kitchen. “You just get up?”

Maureen shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep. Any tricks for dealing with this heat?”

“Yeah,” Lindsay answered. “Go back to London.”

It wasn’t really funny, and Maureen was too tired to pretend.

“The only thing I’ve found that helps is a bath,” Lindsay said. “The water isn’t cold, but if you don’t dry off, the evaporation cools you off.”

“I’ll try it,” Maureen said, obediently trudging upstairs. “They never told me about this in journalism school,” she added over her shoulder.

Lindsay started to laugh. “No? Jesus, I had a whole course in it. It was called ‘Resourcefulness in tight spots.’ Go back to bed as soon as you can,” Lindsay called after her. “You’ll need all the sleep you can get. You’re in West Africa. You never know what this place is going to throw at you.”

Lindsay awoke at 7 A.M., hot and sweaty. She showered and dressed in a pair of cotton drawstring pants and a white linen shirt and pulled her long hair back into a ponytail.

Walking down the hall, she quietly peeked into the guest bedroom. Maureen was still asleep, her face damp with perspiration. Sensing her friend’s presence, Maureen opened her eyes and immediately shielded them from the bright sunlight streaming in through the window.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Lindsay said.

In the kitchen, she boiled the water and poured it into a large fourquart tin filter to eliminate the silt. Maureen staggered in and sat at the table.

Lindsay poured two cups and handed one to Maureen.

“I’m impressed,” Maureen mumbled, her voice still thick with sleep. “And just think—I used to say that you couldn’t even boil water.”

“Yeah, well, next time check your facts. I happen to be a gourmet water boiler.”

They moved to the living room. The power had come on and the ceiling fan was slowly turning, moving the torpid air without cooling it. Lindsay sat on a rattan couch surrounded by plump brown and orange tie-dyed pillows, resting her feet on a brown leather ottoman decorated with gold-stitched geometric designs. A stack of clips was piled before her and she began reading them.

“I’ve got a lot of background material here,” she said. “You’re welcome to read whatever you want.”

“Thanks, Linds,” Maureen answered. “I’ll look through it, but I did a lot of research in London.” She paused, then smiled. “You seem as cool as a cucumber.”

“You should have seen me when I first arrived. I stared out the cab window at the open sewers and crowded streets and thought, ‘This is terrible, but soon I’ll be in Ikoyi, where the foreigners live.’ As we kept driving, the houses got bigger and nicer, but the smell never changed and the garbage mounds were just as high. And then the driver pulled into our driveway and I realized that this was as good as it gets.”

“Well, you can’t really complain,” Maureen said, gesturing to take in the spacious room. “You live better than ninety-five percent of the locals.”

“More like ninety-nine percent. When I saw the servants’ quarters, where our steward Martin lives with his family, I actually cried. Two small rooms off a dark hallway running along the outside of the house. There was no electricity and the outhouse was just a hole in the ground. I tried to imagine what the British colonialists were thinking when they housed the people who worked for them, what it said about how they viewed them.

“So I had Martin’s quarters painted and wired for electricity. They have the right to the same blackouts we have, right? I put in fans, installed a bathroom, and paid some local guys to cart away the garbage. I felt great for about a week. Then one day I was standing in the garden and I saw a huge pile of garbage floating right past the house. Those guys had just dumped it all in the creek. Soon the garbage was piled as high as before. Only now I don’t notice it so much.”

Martin came into the room as they were talking. A slight man of forty-two, he was dressed neatly in his customary brown trousers and white shirt. He had the slightly self-effacing manner of someone who had worked as a servant for most of his life. Though not formally educated past sixth grade, he had learned Western customs and had almost erased the pidgin English he’d grow up with.

“Good morning, madam,” he said, tilting the blinds to protect the furniture from the sun.

“Good morning,” she answered cheerily. “Martin, this is my best friend, Maureen. Maureen, this is my savior, Martin. Not only does he cook and shop and make my life here possible, he’s also my best source of information on everything from politics to local events.”

Martin looked abashed. “I know nuttin’ about politics,” he said uncomfortably. “Welcome to Lagos, madam,” he said, raising his eyes to look at Maureen. “You arrive okay? No big palaver at the airport?”

“Yes, yes, it was fine,” Maureen said, trying to shake his hand, but he ducked his head and quickly withdrew into the kitchen.

“Actually, it was horrible,” Maureen said to Lindsay. “The immigration guy sits up so high you strain your neck while being interrogated.”

“They do that to make you feel like a supplicant. So what did you say?”

“I didn’t. I just quietly showed my passport and answered their questions in a matter-of-fact way,” Maureen said. “Unfortunately, that seemed to work, because here I am.”

“Sometimes I get through it by imagining I’m in a movie,” Lindsay said. “And it is kind of like that, isn’t it? The guards, with their eyes curtained by dark shades, the demand for papers and visas, the long delays while they wait for the bribe you end up fumbling for.”

“They make you show your return ticket to be sure you plan to leave, like it’s so wonderful here, you might want to stay forever.”

“Once I was in, I knew what to do because I was prepared by Jimmy Garner. Remember him?” Lindsay asked.