“By now I assume the bodies have vanished.”
“Yes. They have gone to a better place—a mass grave.”
Pierce stared into the darkness. At length, he turned back to Bara. “How is Marissa?”
“As well as can be expected. You will see, tonight.”
Imagining Marissa, Pierce realized that the car felt hot and stuffy. “Can I open a window?”
Bara shook his head. “Best not to. We’re approaching the outskirts of Port George.”
Abruptly, they reached the edge of a shantytown, an enveloping web of garbage-strewn alleys between wooden structures with corrugated roofs. The streets were dirt and rutted with potholes.
Bara’s eyes darted from one side to the other. “Keep watching,” he instructed Pierce.
“For what?”
“Anyone. Even though the soldiers have come, the gangs may suddenly appear. They fight one another for territory, the right to kidnap people or tap pipelines, and their tentacles reach deep into the creeklands. They are what happens when impoverished people see their leaders getting rich.” As the road widened, cars passed in the opposite direction, weaving to avoid ruts. “For you,” Bara continued, “what I fear most is kidnapping. But if warfare breaks out in the street, we could get caught in the cross fire. Thirteen people died from gunshots last week, one inside her home when a bullet shattered a window.”
The city closed around them. They passed between two-story buildings and beneath tangled phone lines stretching from crooked poles. Dense smoke from what seemed to be a slaughterhouse fouled the air. On a corner Pierce saw a dimly lit gas station from which projected a line of perhaps twenty cars, surrounded by beggars or peddlers.
Bara followed Pierce’s gaze. “Ironic, isn’t it? We ship billions of dollars of our oil to America, while Luandians wait in line for gasoline. Port George is our nightmare.”
Pierce was gripped by the strangeness of it. “Who lives here?”
“The deluded. People who thought there was work here, and discovered that the work was violence, robbery, and prostitution.” He pointed ahead. “Look there.”
From the haze and darkness materialized a massive garbage dump, amid which raggedly dressed scavengers, their faces masked against the fumes, appeared and disappeared like ghosts. “That is their profession,” Bara said. “Grubbing through our offal.”
Beyond the garbage dump, Pierce realized, must be the Gulf of Luan-dia. Outlined in the torchlight of a gas flare was a massive complex of steel railings and satellite dishes seemingly suspended above the water—an oil platform no doubt owned by PGL. “Let’s find dinner,” Pierce requested. “I need to talk with you before I see Marissa.”
Stalled behind two cars, Bara accelerated past them. “Once you’re spotted with me,” he answered, “the police will mark you. But they camp outside the Okari compound, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. The real problem is that our dinner might end before dessert. The kidnappers know where white men go.”
Pierce strove for a certain fatalism. “Whatever I do, it seems the outcome is pretty random. Why be kidnapped hungry?”
Bara’s glance suggested disapproval of Pierce’s careless manner. In an arid tone, he said, “Then we’ll go where you’ll fit in.”
Abruptly making a U-turn, he sped down one side street and swerved onto another. “It’s best to reach our destination quickly,” he said. “The neighborhood draws trouble like flies. Even the locals are careful.” As they turned onto a thoroughfare dense with cars and Luandians hurrying on foot, Bara added, “They are going home. They fear the gangs and soldiers.”
Ahead Pierce saw the spire of what appeared to be a mosque. “Are there Muslims here?” he asked.
“Some. Not so many as in the north.”
The wail of a siren split the air. The taxicab in front of them screeched to a halt, Bara braking with a jolt to stop inches from its bumper. Feeling a spurt of nausea, Pierce saw an SUV convoyed by two police trucks speeding through a cross street, nearly hitting a pedestrian. Then the flashing lights disappeared, and the wails receded into the night. “Most likely an oilman,” Bara said tightly, “arriving on a business trip—they pay the police as though hiring their own militia. If this one’s smart, he won’t leave his hotel.”
At the side of the road Pierce saw a watery trench. “Is that an open sewer?”
“Yes. But then the shantytown we just drove through is a sewer of its own—no electricity or running water. Even here you have four or five or six people living in a room, sharing a toilet with thirty or forty others. Potable water’s hard to come by. So people get malaria, TB, diphtheria, typhoid, cholera, and, of course, HIV/AIDS.”
The traffic began moving again. “How many people live here?” Pierce asked.
Bara’s brow furrowed. “Two million or so—no one knows for sure. After the oil boom, it grew without the government or the oil companies caring how. So Port George became the desperate place you see.” He pointed to the wall of a brick dwelling on which was painted, in white,
THIS HOUSE NOT FOR SALE
. “The latest fraud is selling houses that don’t belong to you. Home owners are wise not to go on vacation.”
Pierce sat back. “Hard to believe.”
“Why? Do you think a man can move here and start up a business? One needs money to buy a generator; or bribe our officials for a business license; or pay the police for the protection they won’t give.” He turned to Pierce, anger etched in his youthful face. “Our people lack what you Americans call a ‘social safety net.’ They are not criminals—they’re resourceful, intelligent, industrious, and determined to survive. So they do what they must. But all Westerners see, if anything, is oil and corruption . . .”
Bara braked abruptly. Pierce saw the police van speeding from an alley a split second before it sideswiped Bara’s car. Together they skidded to a stop, the van looming in their front window.
Bara froze behind the wheel. Two policemen with semiautomatic weapons jumped from the van. The taller one strode swiftly to the driver’s side, staring in at Bara as the second man stood with his gun aimed at the windshield. “Get out,” the first man ordered in English. “Both of you.”
When Bara cracked open the door, the policeman jerked him upright. Pierce got out, approaching them with the reflexive confidence of an American accustomed to having rights. Then he felt the second policeman put a gun to his temple.
Bara’s eyes widened, a warning to Pierce. All Pierce could do was breathe.
The first man grasped Bara’s collar. “You damaged our car,” he said. “You should go to prison.”
Bara slumped. “I was careless. Truly, I am sorry.” He hesitated. “Can we help with your repairs?”
Still clutching Bara’s shirt, the policeman studied him with rheumy, bloodshot eyes. Turning to Pierce, he demanded, “Who are you,
oyibo?”
Pierce felt the gun pressed harder against his temple. He forced himself to stay calm. “I’m a businessman.”
“American or English?”
Pierce hesitated. “American.”
Cars inched around them, their drivers’ eyes averted. At once Pierce understood that the policeman could shoot him in the middle of the street, and those near them would turn blind. Sweat glistened on Bara’s forehead.
“Five hundred dollars American,” the first man told Pierce. “Or your driver goes to jail. You can walk these streets alone.”
Slowly, Pierce reached into the back pocket of his khakis for the decoy wallet with some cash and a credit card, calculated to keep the police or robbers from searching him for more. Mouth dry, he counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills.
Releasing Bara, the policeman took them. “Disappear,” he said.
To disappear was Pierce’s most fervent wish. He waited with Bara as the two men drove away.
Bara expelled a breath. “By the way,” he said,
“oyibo
means ‘white man.’ You’re likely to be hearing it again, and seldom as a compliment.”
T
HE
R
HINO
B
AR
, B
ARA TOLD
P
IERCE, WAS A HANGOUT FOR EXPATRI
ate oil workers.
They sat at a table near the back, Pierce registering his companion’s distaste at the atmosphere around them. The floors were wooden and worn; the walls featured framed rugby shirts, beer signs, and a flat-screen TV broadcasting a soccer match; the sound system blared throbbing American dance music that drowned out the cacophony of talk and laughter and shouts from partisans of one team or the other. The men were white; the women black. Two of the women were dancing and grinding against white guys twice their age. Nearby a tall and stunningly beautiful Luandian woman in a shiny short skirt danced provocatively in front of a doughy man who sat at a table drinking and smoking and watching her as though appraising merchandise.
“They’re trolling for money,” Bara said. “Or, if one hits the jackpot, some man to take care of her. This place reeks of the corruption oil brings. But here no white men complain about the cost; here money buys what their absent wives won’t give them.”
“Seems like there
is
a price, though—the risk of kidnapping.”
“These are the addicted ones,” Bara answered in a sardonic tone. “High on the exotic strangeness of Luandia, the absence of rules. The saner ones now hide in walled compounds.” His voice went flat. “Luan-dian men do not come here. To see the women with these swine offends them.”
Bara signaled a waitress for two beers. Though the light was dim,
Pierce could study him more closely: he had the look of a scholar—thoughtful and sober, yet careworn by a constant anxiety that Pierce had begun absorbing. “That policeman,” he asked. “What were the odds he’d put a bullet through my brain?”
Bara’s look of abstraction was so deep that Pierce did not know if he had heard. “Hard to say,” Bara responded slowly. “The army and police are jumpier than before. Port George and the creeklands are spinning out of Karama’s control. He still seems to believe that fear and death will pacify the delta.”
“And it won’t?”
“It’s made the problem worse. Last week one of our radio stations gave a ‘shooting forecast,’ predicting the next week’s toll of death and injuries from warfare in the streets. Okimbo arrested the disc jockeys at once.” Bara began peeling the label off his beer bottle. “What Karama has done to the Asari and to Bobby will strengthen those who steal his ideas to justify their violence. You have heard of FREE?”
“No.”
“It’s an acronym for Force to Reclaim Our Economy and Environment—the most powerful militia group. FREE hides in the creeklands, arming itself with money from kidnapping and stolen oil. When it’s opportune, they raid Port George. You will hear more of them, believe it.” With a fractional smile, Bara added, “I assume that you’re still hungry.”
Without awaiting an answer, Bara ordered snails in red sauce as Pierce watched the crowd and drank from his long-necked beer. All around them the music pulsed; the liquor flowed; women focused on the men so intensely that Pierce could almost smell their desperation. When one approached him, smiling, he slowly shook his head. Bara watched this interchange without comment or expression.
“What do you think Karama will do with Bobby?” Pierce asked.
Frown lines creased Bara’s forehead. “That depends on many things—some unknowable, most beyond our control—and, to some extent, on Bobby. I know him well enough to guess how little he will kowtow to Karama.”
“When did you meet him?”
“Six years ago. It was kismet, of a kind—my wife curses the day. I was still at Cambridge, about to become its first Asari graduate in law, when Bobby came to see me and Maryam.” Bara’s smile was reflective. “He was
giving speeches, raising money and support anywhere he could. I knew who he was, of course—they already called him the Asari Mandela. But I was not prepared for him to sit down on my couch, look deeply into my eyes, and say that the Asari movement required more of me than a glittering degree. They needed my brains and my heart.
“’On a platter?’ my wife could not help but ask.
“At first Bobby ignored this. ‘You have written well about injustice,’ he told me. ‘Someone of your abilities can help me build a grassroots movement that turns your words into action. I cannot do this work alone.’ Then he turned to Maryam, his voice gentle yet impassioned. ‘Yes, there will be the risk of imprisonment, or worse. But unless we who are privileged seize this moment, our only success will be in stealing enough but not too much; biting our tongues as our neighbors disappear; leading lives so innocuous in the face of evil that, should we survive, our legacy will be the contempt of those not moved to imitate our cowardice. Can you wish for yourselves such quiet misery?’
“’I wish to sleep at night.’
“’A vain hope,’ Bobby told her. ‘All you can choose is the reason to be sleepless.’ Turning to me, he said, ‘Sleep is the thief of enterprise. There will be time enough to sleep once we free Asariland.’”
Bara shook his head. “That night I did not sleep at all. The next morning I told Maryam that history had walked into our living room.”
Pierce struggled to imagine choosing a course so risky and profound. “Do you regret it?”
Bara contemplated the droplets of condensation running down his beer. “It has not been easy, and not just because of fear.” He turned to Pierce with an air of curiosity. “There was a time when you must have known Bobby Okari well.”
Pierce weighed his answer. “I was closer to Marissa. What I saw in Bobby was the sense of destiny you describe.”
Something in Pierce’s response made Bara study him more closely. “Bobby,” he said after a moment, “has the defects of his strengths. If you resist him with a well-considered argument, he will listen. But once he chooses a course, his mind is difficult to change.” Bara took a quick swallow of beer. “A man too convinced of his own selflessness too easily attributes opposition to baser motives. And for vanity or pride of place, so prevalent among our chiefs, he has little patience. Less so irresolve.
“In a leader whose movement needs friends, turning potential allies into enemies is a weakness. We saw that on Asari Day—and after.”