Acts of faith (10 page)

“On account of we rescued his sorry ass a couple of weeks after that little incident,” Dare elaborated. “He pranged up in Somalia, flyin’ medicine to Baidoa for World Vision. Same place, same do-gooders we’ll be flyin’ for this afternoon. Them Russians are always crashin’. Good pilots, but their planes are about held together with Krazy Glue and thumbtacks.” He chewed, swallowed, washed the food down with iced tea, and added in an undertone: “Tell you another thing the Russians do. They sign up for three-month contracts, flyin’ hu-manitarian aid. Get a month off in between hitches. Know where some of ’em go on their vacations? Khartoum, to fly Antonovs for the Sudan air force. I’m talkin’ the Antonovs that have been converted to bombers. They stack the suckers in the cargo bay and just roll ’em out when they’re over the target. One day it’s bread, next day it’s bombs. It’s kind of a—what’s the word? Somethin’ that stands for somethin’ else.”

“Metaphor?” Mary ventured after thinking for a moment.

“Right. Now I ain’t sure what that metaphor stands for, bread and bombs, but a metaphor it is, sure as hell.”

Nimrod came in, frown lines layered on his forehead—cat scratches on ebony. A real worrier, Nimrod was.

“Bad news, Captain Wes. World Vision canceled this afternoon. There is fighting in Baidoa again.”

“Fine by me. One firefight per day is my limit. So is that all? Lookin’ at you, I think your mama died.”

“My mother died some time ago,” Nimrod said formally. “There is a man from DCA wishes to speak with you. He’s in the office.”

Dare set his fork down, feeling a sudden loss of appetite. A personal visit from the Department of Civil Aviation—
that
was the bad news. Or could be.

“Who and what about, or didn’t he say?”

Nimrod, reading from the man’s business card, said his name was William Gichui. He had not disclosed the purpose of his call; that was to be made to Dare himself.

“What do you think? The boss wants more cookies?”

“That would be my best guess, Captain Wes. I don’t understand—” Nimrod did not finish the thought, shaking his head with a look of distress.

“Well, we ain’t gonna find out what he wants sittin’ here,” Dare muttered, rising. Then to Tony and Mary: ” ‘Scuse me, y’all. Got the feelin’ we worked for taxes today.”

The tin-walled shed that he rented as an office, mostly so he could say to clients, “Call me at my office,” and thus claim their trust and respect, was attached to the rear of the hangar, like a shabby afterthought. Inside, two small desks, one for him and one for Nimrod, faced each other across a lane barely wide enough for someone to walk through. A phone, a fax, a laptop, a typewriter for use when the power went out, as it now did every day—another symptom of the country’s slow disintegration. Vinyl-bound volumes of Jepps aviation maps were scattered on the desktops. Hanging askew from one wall was a schedule board smeared with grease-pencil scrawl. Observing the expression on Gichui’s face made Dare embarrassed. The appearance of the place declared that African Charter Services was a fly-by-night operation, of no importance to anyone; that is, it could not be relied upon as a source of further under-the-table cash. Dare knew he would have to change that impression.

“Hey, Mr. Gucci!
Habari ya mchana. Hujambo
?” he said, extending his hand. Lay on the Swahili, let him know I’m not a baby who got here day before yesterday. “
Jina langu ni
Captain Dare.”

“It’s Gichui,” said Gichui, a pleasant-looking middle-aged man with a plump waist and a pompadour that reminded Dare of James Brown’s.
“Sijambo asante. Wewe je?”

“Nzuri,”
Dare replied, taking a moment to size the man up. White shirt, frayed but immaculate. Gray trousers, shiny from wear but neatly pressed. Cheap tie but with a Windsor knot. The most middling of midlevel civil servants, underpaid yet concerned about appearances and maintaining a certain dignity and decorum. A bagman who would not appreciate the blunt approach. “Yeah, I’m doin’ right well for a man about got shot out of the sky this mornin’. Business has been good, and it’s gonna get better. Have a seat,
tafadhali.
” He rolled his own swivel chair from behind the desk.

Gichui declined, stating that his business would not take too long—a polite way of saying that he had the leverage and was not about to sit while Dare remained on his feet.

“So what is your business? How can I help you?”

“By clearing up a few details.” Gichui withdrew a folder from his briefcase and glanced at one of the papers inside. “Just to make sure, you are the operator of a certain aircraft, a Gulfstream One, identification number Five-Y-ACS?”

“Owner and operator.”

Gichui lay the folder on Nimrod’s desk and put on a little stage business, thumbing through the documents. “It seems we have no record of issuing an AOC to you,” he said, and raised his eyes to regard Dare with an expression of studied neutrality. “Perhaps that is our fault. You have a copy you could show me?”

Dare leaned against the door, reached for a cigarette, remembered his rule, and pulled out his sunglasses instead. Twirling them to give his hands something to do, he glanced sidelong at Nimrod, who had taken the chair and looked like a suspect undergoing an interrogation. Dare was not encouraged.

“The problem of the air operator’s certificate was resolved with the director some time ago,” Nimrod said with a confidence he did not feel, judging from the way he was nervously fidgeting with a pen. “I saw to it myself.”

“With the former director?” asked Gichui.

“And with the present one,” said Nimrod. “I made sure to call on her after she took over. To inform her of—arrangements we made with her predecessor. She is very fond of cookies.”

“Yes. Chocolate chip, I believe?”

“She asked me to bring her some peanut butter cookies. There is a kind made in the United States that she likes very much.”

“And of course you did.”

“Of course,” Nimrod affirmed, seeming now to feel surer ground beneath him. “A large box of peanut butter cookies to, you understand, welcome her to her new post.”

“A gesture,” Gichui said.

“The very thing. She appreciated it. I think if you speak to her, she will tell you what you need to know about the AOC.”

Gichui replied, without a crack in his bland look, “I would not be here if I had not spoken to her first.”

Nimrod said nothing for several moments; then, his newly won assurance crumbling, he asked what the upshot of that conversation had been.

“Precisely what I stated,” Gichui said. “Captain Dare is an air operator without a valid AOC, according to our records. So once again, if our records are incomplete, you could perhaps show me a copy?”

The nature of the game was becoming clear, though not as clear as Dare would have liked. He shook his head, both to tell Gichui that he did not have a certificate, valid or invalid, and to signal his weariness with the way things were done in Kenya. Though he had never expected even a semblance of integrity from the country’s officials, it did not necessarily follow that he had ceased to believe, or hope, that there was an end to their double, triple, and quadruple dealing. Most places you paid your bribe, and that was that. Not here, where bribery came on the installment plan.

“Captain, the penalties for—” Gichui began.

“Yeah, I know.” Dare pushed away from the door to sit on a corner of the desk, sunglasses spinning in his hand. “Anybody ever tell you you look like James Brown?” He was stalling for time and trying to put Gichui off balance. “The soul singer? Y’all look like him. The way you wear your hair.”

“I don’t know this James Brown.”

“I flew James Brown on tour for a spell. Had a company back in the States, flew big-name rock-and-roll acts. Brown. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Now there was my main man! Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Double Trouble band.”

“I know none of these people.”

“Stevie Ray autographed a couple of old-time vinyl albums for me. He died on tour. Plane crash. Not my plane, of course.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“No?” Dare gave him a crocodile’s grin. “Well, I’ve got a good idea what you’re talkin’ about. You’re about to tell me that you do have a record of an AOC issued to a Kenyan guy, Joseph Nakima. Right?”

“I don’t know him, either.”

“Oh, sure you don’t. Like you don’t know that he used to be with Kenya Airways, been a businessman for the past few years. Aviation mostly, but construction, real estate, import-export, most of it aircraft parts. Like you don’t know he’s my silent partner. Silent and invisible. Seen him but once the past two years. He’s got wires into all sorts of places, and I was told that it would be a good idea to take on a Kenyan partner when I got here, and that Joe was a good bet. He helped me incorporate this outfit. Fact is, he’s the president. I’m telling you in case you don’t know that either. Would of taken me forever and three days if I’d tried to go through channels. That left the AOC. Well, it would of taken another forever and three days to get one on my own, so we made a little arrangement. That I would fly under his certificate, which I’ve been doing, and the director knows about it, and last I checked, it was all right with her. Or is that another thing you don’t know?”

Gichui sat on the opposite corner of the desk, and the two men faced each other, like bookends.

“That is highly irregular.” Long practice had given him the ability to feign shock with a good deal of credibility.

“Sure is. And I reckon it’s irregular that every month, my friend Nimrod here sends a share of our gross profits to Joe. We’re leasing his AOC, you might say, twenty cents per mile, a commission sort of. It ain’t cheap, but it’s cheaper than scratchin’ all the backs I would of had to scratch and greasin’ all the palms I would’ve greased if I was to try for an operator’s certificate on my own. Anyway, it was all set up, so what’s the problem?”

Gichui’s brows knit. The slang—scratching backs, greasing palms—appeared to confuse him.

“I’ll put the question a different way. What does the director want me to do?”

“To show that you have a valid certificate. If you cannot, then you will not be permitted to operate an aircraft in our country.”

He had dropped the pose of pleasant impartiality, becoming deliberately, maddeningly obtuse, as if to tease Dare for his own amusement. How could he be made to reveal what the demand was?

“All right, fine, then I reckon I’ll have to operate it in some other country,” Dare said, playing the only card he had, and it wasn’t much. “Which is what I’m fixin’ to do in just about three weeks.”

“How would you do that, captain?”

“By flyin’ the goddamned thing out of
this
sorry-ass country, that’s how. We’ve got a contract for—”

Experiencing a flood of sudden and painful light, he stopped himself, sprang from his seat, squatted in front of the safe, opened it, and pulled out the Gulfstream’s certificate of registration and ownership.

“That’s a Sierra Leone registry,” he said, waving the document in Gichui’s face. “You’ll notice that my name’s on it.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Y’all mind if I take a look at what you’ve got in that file?”

“I mind very much,” Gichui said. “It’s an official file.”

“Right. Y’all don’t have a Freedom of Information Act over here. But hell, I don’t need to see it to tell you that’s there’s two pieces of paper in there, one de-registering the plane in Sierra Leone, and another one re-registering it in Kenya—under the name of Joseph Nakima. What do you say? Right or wrong?”

Dare’s seeming clairvoyance upset Gichui’s equilibrium, and he stammered that he had not looked through the entire file, so he couldn’t say one way or the other.

“Why don’t you take a peek, then? Go on.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Recovering himself, Gichui slipped the folder back into his briefcase. “The plane’s registration is not what my business is about.”

“You oughtn’t to have asked me that, how was I gonna fly the plane in another country. That question did this.” Dare brought two fingers to his temple and mimicked turning on a light switch.

Gichui shrugged and, tucking his case under his arm, stood to leave, warning Dare that he would be prohibited from flying in Kenya. Written notification to that effect would be forthcoming from the DCA.

“Thanks. I’m gonna treasure that piece of paper. Y’know, I’ve always been dumb, but I must be gettin’ downright ignorant in my old age. Should of figured out from the get-go that y’all came here wearin’ two hats.”

“Pardon?”

“The DCA might of sent you here, but you’re really representing Joe Nakima.”

“I don’t work for any Mr. Nakima.” Gichui’s offended tone was almost believable. “I told you I don’t even know any such man.”

“That’s insultin’ my intelligence, William, so either you kiss my ass or get yours the hell out of here.”

The human comedy,
Dare thought,
and right now I’m the butt of the joke.
He fell into his chair, at a loss as to what his next move should be. He wasn’t sure if he even had a next move. Nimrod was of no help, sitting in a silent, sorrowful daze. The hope of Africa? Trouble was, there was all of Africa and only one of Nimrod.