It was airless. Only the insects broke the silence. I brushed the flies off my face so many times that it looked like I was waving goodbye to an invisible plane. A large insect flew an orbit around my head, recon-noitering a place to land, before touching down on my neck. I slapped at it, and the thing flew off sounding like a door buzzer with too much voltage. It was ten-forty am. If everything was running to schedule, the principals would be here in twenty minutes.
Ten minutes short of the aircraft’s scheduled arrival time, a black limousine drove onto the far side of the apron, followed by five others, plus a khaki-colored truck bringing up the rear. When the convoy got close enough, I could see little flags flapping from atop their front fenders. The line of vehicles scribed a wide arc around the ramp, eventually stopping opposite me, fifty meters away. Soldiers jumped down from the back of the truck, some of them wearing Vietnam-era fatigues but many more outfitted in what appeared to be Rwandan Army Class As. The men in the fancy uniforms were also holding shiny nickel-plated AK-47s, and they formed up in an orderly straight line to one side of the lead vehicle, then stood at ease. The guys in the greens carried more businesslike H&K MP-5 submachine guns with the blue anodizing worn off, and they fanned out around the cars. Aside from the fact that the folks in the limos were obviously important, I had no idea who they were. No doubt Travis would, but he was on the inbound plane. The front passenger door of the fourth vehicle opened and out stepped a man wearing a blue suit, blue business shirt open at the collar, and wraparound sunglasses. He walked casually toward me. When he came within ten meters, I could also see that he was wearing an earpiece, which tagged him as security.
‘
Bonjour
,’ he said, smiling without any kind of warmth.
I nodded. ‘Hey.’
He followed with some French I couldn’t follow, then summed it up by holding out his hand, palm up, wiggling his fingers, and saying, ‘Documents.’
I handed him my paperwork and diplomatic passport.
‘US Air Force,’ he said, reading the words off my shirt. He turned his attention to the forms, and raised his eyebrows at the firearms authorizations. Then he toed the bag at my feet and said, ‘I see this.’
I knelt, unzipped the bag, and let him take a peek. ‘This,’ he said, motioning at the locked case. Despite the Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Rwanda that okayed the weapons I was bringing in, he was clearly nervous about it. He wanted the case opened, so I opened it. There was a moment’s indecision on his face, and I knew he was considering one option that had me face down while his buddies with the submachine guns stomped me into the pavement. But he checked the documents again, looked me up and down once more, and decided that maybe I was who and what my documents said I was – friendly, legal, and not to be messed with. I could feel the sweat on my back forming rivulets.
‘Hot, isn’t it?’ I said, flicking the droplets off my forehead with a finger.
He nodded, pinched his shirt away from his body, and said, ‘
Oui, monsieur. Il fait chaud ici.
’ All of which I took to mean, ‘Yeah, hotter than fuck.’
He handed back my papers and said, ‘Twenny Fo
et
Leila,’ and with his hand mimed a plane landing.
‘Yeah,’ I repeated. ‘Twenny Fo and Leila.’
He gestured over his shoulder and said, ‘
Le président
.’
‘The president,’ I repeated and made a face that conveyed wonder, respect, and surprise all at once.
We stood there looking at each other.
‘
Alors
,’ he said finally, then turned and walked back to the car. He got in and shut the door.
An hour later, I was sitting on my bag, the engines burbling in the black cars opposite me, their air-con units putting in overtime. I burned some minutes wondering why the presidential party was hanging around waiting. I stood and scoped the airport’s open expanse. I couldn’t see any spinning radar antennae. Maybe they didn’t have phones here, either. Maybe Monsieur President was relying on the same worthless schedule I was.
The air was growing thicker, along with the humidity. The underbellies of the clouds were now dark gray and about to break open. My ABUs were sweat-logged. I should have mugged the woman with the flyswatter and stolen it when I had the chance. I’d capitulated to the insects, which were now the owners of whatever piece of me they could carry off. Where the hell were these people I had come to meet? Impatient, I walked to where I could see the end of the runway in both directions. I stood there for another ten minutes and was finally rewarded by the sight of landing lights shimmering to the west, the plane a couple of miles away on final approach.
‘At
fucking
last,’ I said aloud to the insects.
Five minutes later, a United Airlines 767 kissed the runway and its engines screamed in reverse. It came to a stop at the eastern end of the strip, slowly turned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, and taxied back.
In response to its arrival, the doors of the two limos at the rear of the convoy flew open. Secret service types jumped out, then moved to the front two cars and held open the rear passenger doors. Apparently, the security was traveling in a separate vehicle from the principals’. In a PSO sense, I didn’t like what I was seeing, but I had noticed that, as a general rule, foreigners do pretty much everything wrong.
First to exit were a perfectly groomed man and a woman, the president and first lady. The protection detail bowed. Two more men climbed out of the vehicle. The heads of the security detail were on a swivel, either looking for non-existent threats or trying to make it difficult for the flies to land. The president was in his mid-forties and wore an expensive navy blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. His wife was about the same age he was, but taller. She was wearing some kind of African dress in bright reds, yellows, and greens, and a matching scarf. The two overweight men who’d been sitting with them in the lead car were also in their mid-forties. I pegged them as high-ranking bureaucrats – fat cats who looked the same no matter which government they served. Out of the fourth limo spilled four kids – two boys and two girls – ranging in age from around five to ten, dressed in what I’d call their Sunday best. A young woman in loose white and gray clothing – a nanny presumably – chased them around the car. It must have been hell for her, cooped up with those kids all this time. I waved. The kids waved back.
A man holding a wand in each hand marched out of the arrivals hut and walked onto the ramp to a spot roughly midway between me and the presidential welcoming committee. The 767 turned onto the ramp and taxied in the direction of the man with the wands, who directed it to veer a little toward the limos over the last twenty meters. Then he crossed the wands over his head. The pilots hit the brakes; the plane dipped on its nose wheel, and then sprang back. An instant later, the engines died, and the man with the wands became the man who drove the pickup with stairs mounted on the back that would go to the aircraft’s front door. One of the president’s men ran to the trunk of the third limo, pulled out a bolt of red carpet, and unrolled it from the base of the stairs.
I looped around to the front of the plane, as the action would be happening on the side facing the president and his people, then stood out of the way. With the stairs and red carpet in place, and the honor guard now standing at attention with their gleaming rifles over their shoulders, the aircraft’s front door cracked open and swung inwards. A US Army lieutenant colonel appeared in the doorway, stooping slightly, and stepped out on the landing of the mobile stairs. A split second later, a woman barged past him as if the doors had just opened to a fifty-percent-off sale. I recognized her instantly – Leila was dressed in tight jeans, tan boots, and a pale green jacket. A pair of Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses sat on her face, and her long jet-black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She stormed down the stairs, gesticulating with her hands above her head, followed by two black women who were having a hard time keeping up with her. The one immediately behind her had buzz-cut blond hair and wore jeans and boots, and a photographer’s shirt with lots of pockets. The third woman was tall, black, and wore a tailored safari suit and pith helmet. They looked as if they’d been dressed by
Vogue
for a photo shoot with Tarzan.
Leila’s rant became audible.
‘Shaquand, I don’t see why – this concert being so damn important – we couldn’t have been given a private plane so that I could have brought all my people,’ she said to the taller of the two. ‘I am
completely
exhausted.
Look
at me! I’m a mess! The paparazzi will have a field day with this.’
‘I don’t see any of them around,’ Shaquand said, a hand above her eyebrows as she scanned the ramp. ‘Maybe they hiding. Using those long lenses, y’know.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Leila said. She stopped to examine the ends of her hair. ‘Lord, I
hate
this
humidity
. We need to get inside before it rains. Is this what it’s going to be like the entire time? My hair will turn into frizz.’ Over her shoulder, she said, ‘Ayesha, I hope you brought plenty of moisturizing treatments.’
The buzz-cut blonde nodded emphatically, as all three women stopped abruptly when they reached the bottom of the stairs, all forward movement blocked by the official welcome.
Finally the lieutenant colonel, who I figured was Travis, came rushing down the stairs and squeezed past the women.
‘Mr President,’ he said. ‘We are all so thrilled to meet you and your wife, Margaret, who is well known the world over for her style, elegance and graciousness. I am pleased to introduce Leila, our international star, her stylist, Shaquand, and makeup artist, Ayesha.’
The first lady was no Miss Universe, or even Miss Trenton, but after several tours of the Middle East, I was used to hearing extravagant compliments.
‘On behalf of my people,’ the president said with a heavy French accent, ‘I bid you welcome to Rwanda, the most beautiful country in all of Africa.’
‘I kindly thank you, your wife, and your people,’ said Leila, now with a beam that I was sure could be turned on and off like a flashlight. ‘I love your dress,’ she said to the first lady. ‘Those colors . . . they are gorgeous! Please accept these gifts as a token of my appreciation of your hospitality.’
Shaquand placed a number of CDs in Leila’s hand, which the star then distributed among the Rwandan VIPs. ‘They’re all personally signed,’ she let them know.
Meanwhile, Ayesha handed out posters to the kids. One of them unrolled and I saw a head-and-bust shot of Leila, hair tousled, her bulging cleavage slick with perspiration. The hunger on her face suggested a long period of sexual thirst about to be quenched. The four-year-old boy squashed it under his arm and went back to sucking his thumb.
Now emerging from the plane were two men in army combat uniforms, one black and one white, both NCOs, with eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. From Arlen’s briefing notes, I knew that the black guy was Cy Cassidy, a massive human being two pick handles across the chest with arms as black and thick as a couple of truck tires. His buddy, Mike West, was white and more reasonably proportioned – maybe two hundred and ten pounds, a shade under six feet tall, with dark hair and serious acne scars.
Behind them was a black man who towered over everyone. He was at least six foot six and fast-food-addict soft, the International House of Pancakes written all over his three-hundred-plus pounds. He wore loose basketball gear, several layers of t-shirts from a number of eastern conference teams, a fat gold chain around his neck, a bowler hat on his head, and a sneer on his lips. He was followed by Twenny Fo, rodent thin and of medium height, wearing a blue Adidas training suit, sunglasses with small, round red-tinted lenses, and a white Nike baseball cap with gold pinstripes. He spat the toothpick he was chewing over the stair railing. Behind the rapper was a medium-sized version of the behemoth with the bowler hat, all round shoulders and girth, and a big fan of the Denver Nuggets if the logos plastering his clothing were any indication. The guys waved at the gathering in a way that reminded me of the Queen of England.
Twenny Fo’s third and final ‘blood’ had a goatee on his chin and looked part black and part Hispanic, his hair tightly braided into roughly parallel rows across his head. He wore a combination of green and gray Everlast gear and a tattoo of a pit bull was on his neck. His body was compact and hard, and he walked like a street fighter, a threat in every step. He came down the stairs, lighting a cigarette.
Bringing up the rear was Captain Duke Ryder, short, slightly stooped and a little overweight, and Lex Rutherford, the blond Brit on loan from the SAS, who reminded me of a baby-faced choirboy.
Ryder caught my eye and tipped a finger to his brow in greeting, which I returned. Then he gestured behind him with a tilt of his head and gave me the thumbs-up sign. I took that to mean that the staging personnel and all the dancers mentioned in Arlen’s briefing notes were still on the plane and doing okay. The PSOs would have given them the standard operating procedure – wait on board until the principals were secured inside the terminal, after which they too would be escorted to the safety zone.
A traffic jam was forming at the base of the stairs. Travis steered Leila and her people away to make room for Twenny Fo’s crowd.
‘Ah, Mr Twenny Fo,’ said the president. ‘How wonderful it is to meet you.’