A Dancer In the Dust (21 page)

“My apologies for entering your office unannounced, but I didn’t see a receptionist.”

“She’s not here today,” I said. “What about Seso?”

He smiled. “You are quick to come to the point, I see,” he said. “All right, I’ll get, as you say, down to business. You’ve been looking into this fellow’s murder, I understand.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“For a client, I was told,” Beyani said. “Something that Mr. Alaya wanted to show a client?”

Before I could answer, he smiled knowingly and a little cleverly, a man clearly accustomed to reading other men with great precision, perhaps because his own life had from time to time been determined by knowing the right card to play.

“It’s obvious that you wanted me to know this,” he added. “One does not leave so broad a trail if one does not expect it to be followed.”

“I wanted someone to know it, yes,” I admitted, now playing my own card as a trump to his. “What brought you to my friend, the tattoo artist?”

“That one is no friend of yours,” Beyani said. “Nor anyone else. The Kakwa do not walk, they slither.” When I offered no encouragement to this comment, he continued. “As to your question, it happened this way: once Mr. Alaya was identified by the police, Rupala was notified that one of our citizens had been murdered. That is, of course, only standard procedure in such a case.”

This was probably true, though I couldn’t be sure, and so recorded it in my mind as an unproved assertion.

“Like you, Mr. Campbell, I am investigating this murder.” His smile was razor-thin. “But I am here in a manner that is not to be made public. That is why I did not go to the police, but instead to Mr. Alaya’s hotel, which led me to—”

“Herman Dalumi,” I interrupted in order to demonstrate that I was probably one step ahead of him in almost everything.

But if this ploy had an effect, Beyani was actor enough not to show it.

“A colorful fellow,” he said. “He’d seen a picture of Seso, and noticed a tattoo. I surmised that Seso might have gotten this tattoo near his residence, so I walked around a bit. This led me to the Kakwa, who led me to you.” He seemed pleased by his gumshoe skills. “May I ask how you became involved in the case?”

“The police found my client’s name and phone number in Seso’s room.”

“Who is your client?”

“That’s confidential.”

Beyani did not press the issue. Instead, he drew a wallet from his pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to me.

I took the card and read it:
Nullu Beyani, Lubandan Security Police.

“Did you have this same position under Mafumi?” I asked.

Beyani ignored my question, which was answer enough.

“Concerning this ‘something’ Mr. Alaya claimed to have,” he said. “The Kakwa seemed more than happy to inform me that you know what it is.” He smiled like one guessing a punch line before it is delivered. “Or claim to know.”

“‘Claim’ is right,” I admitted. “Because it was just a hook to reel you in.” I countered Beyani’s smile with one as direct as his own. “I figured that if you were after Seso because you wanted to know what this mysterious thing was, you’d come to me, and now you have.”

Beyani’s smile was a sliver of ice. “You took quite a chance in putting me on to your investigation,” he said. “Since I might have been Mr. Alaya’s killer.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But it did bring you to me, and I had no other die to cast.” I sat back and looked at him doubtfully, as if I thought myself the object of some scam. “So, tell me, why did Seso come so far to bring this information?”

Beyani ran his fingers down the length of his bright green tie. “As we say in Lubanda, ‘Fear speeds the plow.’”

“What was he afraid of?”

“What we all fear: that our crime will be discovered and that we will be punished for it.” He took off his glasses, wiped them with a white handkerchief, and with that small task completed, returned them to their place. “Did you know that Mr. Alaya worked in the archive under Mafumi?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Our new president decided to allow him to keep his job,” Beyani said. “Many such people have been allowed to keep their posts. It is part of the president’s policy of reconciliation. But this does not mean that all earlier crimes will be forgiven.” Something behind his eyes abruptly darkened. “For example, the Tumasi Road Incident.”

I gave no hint of the inward shudder that went through me at that moment, but instead maintained what I hoped would seem a wholly professional demeanor.

“You are familiar with this tragic episode in Lubandan history, I believe,” Beyani said.

The word “incident” struck me as a political choice, proof enough that even after all these years, this crime was still reverberating through the governmental halls of Rupala.

“An outrage like that,” Beyani said, “it gives a terrible impression. That we Lubandans are animals. Especially when the victim is a foreigner.”

“Martine Aubert was not a foreigner,” I told him.

Beyani shrugged. “Anyway… white.”

“What could Seso have had to do with what happened on Tumasi Road?” I asked. “He was nowhere near the place where it happened.”

“This is so,” Beyani said. “Alaya did not, as we say, draw blood. His role was to provide information.” He watched me closely for a moment before he added, “Seso Alaya was a spy.”

Spy.
The word itself seemed to darken the air around us.

“His job was to inform on the white woman,” Beyani added.

“To whom?” I asked.

“Mafumi’s people, of course,” Beyani said. “The ones who had already infiltrated various villages in Tumasi. And for his work, he was later given a position in the archive.”

“Why would Mafumi have needed someone to spy on Martine?” I asked in as clinical a tone as I could manage.

“Because he needed to prove that he was an enemy of white rule.”

“Martine didn’t rule anything,” I told him. “She was just a farmer.”

“She was white—that was enough,” Beyani said. “To do such a thing to a white woman, it gave Mafumi—what is the phrase here?—‘street creds.’” He shrugged. “Besides, as you know, he immediately took credit for it.”

“He also took credit for the moon landing, which, by the way, happened before he was born,” I reminded Beyani.

Beyani laughed. “Mafumi had a somewhat exaggerated sense of himself, as we all know. But in the case of what happened on Tumasi Road, it was indeed Mafumi’s men who did this harm.”

“I thought it was Gessee’s men,” I admitted. “He hated Martine, after all, and he’d tried lots of things to intimidate her.”

I recalled the steps by which Gessee’s intimidation had grown ever more threatening, as well as the consequences of Martine’s refusal to give in to it, memories too painful to think about, as Beyani clearly saw.

“Gessee had nothing to do with what happened on Tumasi Road,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He was a schoolteacher before he became agricultural minister. He would never have been capable of such savagery.” His gaze hardened. “What happened to that woman was… uncivilized.” He watched me for a moment, then said, “I am aware that Miss Aubert was a friend of yours, and that it is hard for you to hear of such things, to have them returned to you in this way.”

When I said nothing, Beyani peered at me coolly, but with some effort, like a man trying to read a book in a language he only partially understood.

“Seso Alaya fled Lubanda because he knew we were closing in on him,” he said. “But he knew he would need a bargaining chip to stay here. Something that would buy him safe harbor. This is what he had for your client.”

Again I remained silent, the ploy that almost always works to keep someone talking.

“The names,” Beyani said starkly. “The names of the men responsible for the attack on Tumasi Road.”

I labored to absorb this in the calm, unflappable way of a seasoned risk analyst, the greatest risk always being that you uncover your own error. For surely, I felt, my name, by any reckoning of responsibility, should appear among those other names, perhaps at the head of the list.

The terror of that judgment must have glittered in my eyes, because I saw a certain hint of unexpected sympathy come into Beyani’s.

“I know that this is a difficult matter for you to discuss,” he said, “and I also know that it is difficult for you to believe what I have told you about Mr. Alaya. It is always hard to admit that one has been betrayed.” There was that ever-changing smile again, a little jagged this time, and not quite a match for the look in his eyes. “Especially by a servant.”

“He was a friend,” I corrected.

“No, he was not,” Beyani responded firmly. “He was a spy who gave information that led directly to the Tumasi Road Incident, and had he not fled here, he would almost certainly have been arrested in Lubanda.”

“Do you know who killed him?” I asked. “You had a picture, I believe.”

“The men in that photograph killed Mr. Alaya to silence him, as well as any others who might be tempted to expose them,” Beyani said. “But in doing this thing, they only confirmed what we already suspected.” He sat back haughtily, a little man puffed up by this recent accomplishment. “They are now in Lubanda, as I told the Kakwa. We will soon find them, and when we do, they will be brought to justice.” A dark irony glittered in his eyes. “And at that point, thanks to Mr. Alaya’s many treacheries, the case opened by the Tumasi Road Incident can, at last, be closed.”

Suspicion is a spade that never tires of digging, and so I suddenly found myself recalling all the times Seso had found it convenient to straighten my desk, where my letters to Bill Hammond lay open and available to his eyes. The last one had been short. He could have read it at a glance:
M.A. to Rupala, via TR,
and by which he would have known that Martine was on her way to Rupala by means of Tumasi Road.

“I would never have suspected Seso of working for Mafumi,” I admitted. “And certainly never of betraying either me or Martine Aubert.”

“Yes, well, you should keep in mind that Mr. Alaya was Lutusi,” Beyani said by way of explaining Seso’s treachery. “They are a rootless people, wanderers who live by trade, and, as we know, traders are by nature deceivers.” He seemed suddenly to see the two of us as old comrades in arms, equally shaped by the dark forces of Lubanda. “Stay safe,” he said, as he rose and offered his hand.

I shook it like one sealing a friendship. “Thank you.”

He turned and left my office as quietly as he’d entered it, leaving me alone to sit and think. There was a lot to absorb in what he’d told me, a lot to consider and put into order, a procedure in which I was well trained.
Return to first principles,
I reminded myself.
The devil is, indeed, in the details, so examine them carefully
.

The process that followed took only a few minutes, but at the end of it I felt sure I’d covered the ground and come to a reasonable conclusion.

Point one was that Beyani had given a credible account of both himself and Seso. The motive he’d given for Seso’s being in league with Mafumi, for example, was entirely believable. Men had betrayed others for far less cause, after all. What was it that Zhivago’s brother says? That he has killed men far better than himself with a small pistol. Surely it was possible that Seso, anticipating that Mafumi might well take charge in Lubanda, had been enticed into providing information to his local agents. He had probably had no idea that such harm might flow from his betrayal of Martine. He had simply passed information on to a higher source, which was no different—at least at the beginning—from what I had done. Later, with Beyani closing in, he’d tried to make a deal with the only real power he knew, Bill Hammond. The names had been his last chips in a desperate game, and he’d gambled that Bill would not pay dearly for them.

Such were the salient details of Beyani’s story, and as I reviewed the risks of believing it, I could find only one false note. It had sounded at the very end of our meeting, and yet its faint echo had continued to ring in my ear:

The Lutusi are by nature deceitful.

Seso was Lutusi.

Therefore Seso was deceitful.

The problem was that the truth of the third, concluding proposition could not be inferred, because the first one was false.

I knew this because of a chance encounter I’d had while traveling north of Tumasi. By then I’d given up the idea of a well, and was now exploring the notion of creating “nomadic schools,” as my later proposal called it, to be manned by a troupe of traveling teachers. It was an absurd idea, patterned on my romantic understanding of the way medieval actors had roamed from village to village, put on their shows, then departed for the next village. It could not have been more ridiculous, as Seso must have known, and yet he’d given no hint of how he felt as he’d traveled with me on this occasion, translating my proposal to a group of Lutusi elders.

The elders had listened silently, then asked what they should give in return, and when I’d replied, “Nothing,” they’d briefly talked among themselves, then walked away.

It was one of the few times Seso had shuffled off the gloom that usually surrounded him and broke into a smile. “They think the school you offer is worthless,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you ask for nothing in return,” Seso explained. “It is only nothing that is worth nothing in return, so they think you are dishonest in what you offer them, that you are a deceiver, and they will not associate with such people.”

That is why the Beyani syllogism did not hold. The Lutusi were traders, but they were not deceivers. Beyani had constructed a flawed syllogism. Therefore, I could not believe him.

But where did this doubt leave me?

I didn’t know, save that Beyani could not be trusted, might not be at all what he purported to be, might, in fact, be one of those very men he claimed to hunt, himself one of those who’d clicked the shells on Tumasi Road.

And if this was true, how might I find evidence of it sufficient to warn the current leader of Lubanda that there was a viper in the grass, and not a defanged one by any means, but a member of his own security force.