Making Wolf (7 page)

Outside we watched fruit bats flying out of their baobab trees, away from the sun, looking for food.

“You’re not very bright, Weston,” Abayomi said finally.

“I’m lucky. I don’t need to be bright.”

A car pulled up to us, just one driver this time. Abayomi conversed with the driver quietly, and then pointed to the car. “Your pumpkin.”

“What’s your first name?” I asked.

“Abayomi. It’s a thing in my family. At least one male child has to have the surname as Christian name.”

I settled in the back seat, rolled down the window. Abayomi handed me my gun and holster along with an envelope. “Have you ever read
Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale
by D.O. Fagunwa?”

“Vaguely remember reading it as a child. Everyone did. There’s an English translation:
Forest of a Thousand Daemons
or something. Why?”

“In it the hero, Akara Ogun, goes through the enchanted forest and encounters various demons. I wrote a thesis on it in university. In this thing you’re trying to do, you are in a position not unlike that of Akara Ogun. A word to the wise: bright trumps lucky.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “You do know your boy is a thug, right?”

“Some people only respond to thugs, Weston. Have a safe trip back.”

There were twenty-two missed calls on my mobile, but I ignored them and phoned Nana.

“Hello?” Drowsy-sounding. But then, it was past midnight by the time I returned to the hotel.

“Nana?”

She yawned. “Weston.”

“Hi.”

“People sleep at this hour, Weston.”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier, but something happened. I’ve wanted to call all day.”

“I called the hotel. Didn’t they tell you?”

“I just got in. There’s only the night staff and they probably don’t know. Listen: I need you to come get me.”

“Ok. What time tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow. Now. This instant.”

She laughed. “Are you trying to make me put down the phone?”

“I’m serious, Nana. If you can’t do it, tell me now so I can get a cab.”

“Calm down.” I heard bedclothes rustling and a lengthy yawn. “Jesus, look at the time. You’re going to pay for this. I have an exam in the morning.”

“Can you be here?”

“Give me forty minutes.”

She hung up, and I checked my voicemails, which were all from Church and demonstrated varying degrees of agitation and displeasure, at one point threatening to decapitate me at the first opportunity. I called him back.

“Ore wa! Where have you been? I was worried,” he said.

“I went to see His Excellency Supreme Commander Abiodun Craig. I forgot to add Field Marshall.”

“That was fast,” Church said, not at all sounding surprised. “I knew they’d want to talk to you, make sure you were neutral, but…tell me everything first.”

I did. Except I didn’t mention the envelope that Abayomi gave me as I was leaving. That envelope contained fifteen thousand US dollars.

“You mixed it up with the Black Beret Brigade and lived. That’s highly unusual. They’re Craig’s personal bodyguard, picked from all other forces for their brutality and fanatical dedication to the cause.” He laughed. Church was the only person I knew who was comfortable laughing by himself when in company. He didn’t care that I didn’t get the joke. When he caught his breath he said, “You should be safe. We all want this murder solved so that we can go back to pushing their nyanshes back to Nigeria or Cameroon, whichever is more convenient.”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said. “I need to get some rest.”

Instead I packed everything, strapped on my gun and waited for Nana. Soon she flashed me with a text saying she was outside and I left the room, looking back to check if I forgot anything.

I used the stairs, and, when I reached the lobby, I could see Nana outside in her Benz. I put my things down on the floor and went to the dozing clerk first.

I tapped the counter. “Hey.”

“Hmm. Oh, hello, sir.” He was a kid. Neat hair, no chin fuzz, bloodshot eyes from interrupted sleep, tall, a face devoid of the lines of frustration that were inevitably in his future. “Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m checking out,” I said. “But I’m not checking out, you understand me?”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

I bent down and drew the gun and leaned its muzzle against the counter. With my other hand I spread three twenty dollar bills out. “As far as you’re concerned, I’m still in my room and I was there all night. If they happen to “discover” my absence, it didn’t happen on your watch.”

“I understand, sir.” He whisked away the money. He didn’t look at the gun.

“What’s your name?”

“Sulaiman, sir.”

“Sulaiman, I know you give information to some…friends. This is one time you don’t want to do that, sho gbo?”

“Mo gbo, sir.” Understood.

Maybe it wouldn’t make any difference, but I felt better. For all I knew, he’d be on the phone the minute I drove off. I picked up my bags and went out.

Nana’s Afro was flat on one side. She looked tousled, beautiful, and so completely concerned about me that I bent down to the window and kissed her hard on the lips. I felt tender toward her at that moment, like there was nowhere else for me to be at this time but with her mouth on mine. Her breath tasted of saccharin and menthol from toothpaste. I felt her pull back, and I opened my eyes.

“It’s late, Weston. Get in the car or we’ll be set upon by bandits.”

I waited a while, watching her. I could feel the pulse working on my neck. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

She winked at me and popped the trunk. There was no moon, and the world outside the splash of light from Nana’s headlights seemed dark and forbidding.

“Don’t worry, Weston,” she said when I got in. “I will protect you.”

I do not remember the journey from the hotel into her arms that night. I know that my spirit was tired and I drew comfort from her. She was wrapped in shadows and soft places, in smells of jasmine and musk, in silk and the road to Beulah land.

The sun announced the day.

There was a note on the pillow from Nana. She’d gone for her exam, but she’d be back immediately afterwards. I could eat whatever I wanted but best not to leave the flat. Three
X
s I smiled, pursed my lips in a kiss, fell back on the bed. The ceiling was patterned like a sea shore, momentarily disorienting. Sand, sea shells, star fish, seaweed, all above me. I later found out that the whole unit had to be crafted first, then inverted and attached to the ceiling.

I had two courses of action. I could divert the considerable financial resources of the LFA and the PCA to finding myself a way out of this demented country, or I could investigate the death of Pa Busi. I had zero curiosity about the old man’s death. I literally did not give a fuck whether he stepped on a landmine by mistake or his entourage staged an Et tu Brute. From my brief interactions with the two factions, they didn’t seem overly concerned with the solution, as long as the other side was found responsible. They were both paying me not to find them guilty. Which could mean either they were guilty or suspect the other side or absolutely nothing. In other words, I could not infer anything from this information. Bribery was a way of life in Alcacia, and it was as expected as a handshake and how-d’you-do. In a sense they were being polite by giving me cash.

So.

So, maybe they expected me to investigate indefinitely.

They could tell the press or their own people that an independent investigator, truly neutral (from London!), was looking into it. The story would die a natural death, and all involved could go back to casual genocide or whatever the hell it was that rebel factions did for entertainment. All that would be required of me would be to go through the motions of an enquiry. If I could do that and stay alive.

I thought of my life in London. No way would I be in possession of twenty-five thousand dollars, tax-free back in Jand. I’d be stuck in a dank studio flat in Hammersmith, eating baked beans out of the can and watching reality television, wondering which uniform I should wear to work the next day to my impotent job at the supermarket where I’d have to watch crackhead shoplifters walk away with merchandize and do nothing, and take a succession of intoxicated white women to bed or play ambivalence games with pseudo-Christian Nigerian girls looking for husbands or sperm-donors. I’d phone Lynn once a month and pretend that it hadn’t been six months since I last eyeballed her, and I’d take a series of useless courses at the Open University, telling myself it was improving my chances at self-advancement, but knowing deep inside that I was marking time, waiting for my real life to begin. This was my real life.

Jandon la wa yi. This is London we’re in.

I’d need to print business cards, get whatever passed for a permit in Alcacia and organize some kind of identification. Something flashy and official-looking to impress the receptionists of unwilling demigods.

Thus, lying on the downiest pillows I had ever experienced in my life, did I decide to take the job.

I worked all morning, sorting through the data on Pa Busi, everything spread out on Nana’s dining table. I had one pile for what was common, freely available knowledge garnered from newspaper clippings and such; one for restricted access information; and a final pile for conjecture and doodles. Not that I intended to solve anything; I just wanted to be convincing in case anyone inquired about my progress.

The ambient noise was disorienting. Faint buzz of mosquitoes trying to escape the flat after a hard night’s bloodsucking, chickens clucking their hunger, two women arguing over conjugal rights with their shared husband, a few traders melodiously calling out their wares—oyin l’adun osan (honey is the sweetness of these oranges) was a personal favorite. At times when my eyes hurt from reading too much, I would look out of the window to see a barely pubescent girl balancing a tray on her head, one source of the advertisements.

What it looked like was this: Pa Busi, elder statesman of Alcacia, had been acting as peacemaker between warring rebel factions and as a conduit between them and the federal government. It was a last-ditch response before the mercenary-reinforced Alcacian army napalmed both rebel sides into barbequed revolutionary choplets. The two major groups had arisen more or less simultaneously a decade ago at a time of particularly harsh economic hardship. The PCA appealed to the largely Christian populace, emphasizing the essential godlessness of the current regime, but having no qualms about alliances with communist foreign powers for weapons and finance. The Liberation Front laid no claim to such lofty ideals. The original leader (revered, but rumored to be HIV-positive and long-since beheaded by federal troops) cited the Baader-Meinhof Gang as inspiration. The Front seemed dedicated to mayhem. The two worked in parallel as steady thorns in the side of the government for years. All three lived in an unsteady equilibrium since no real damage was done. In fact, the extensive property damage served to keep the government in power, if anything. The defense budget tripled each year.

Then there was an incident that some say State Security engineered. PCA troops killed eleven unarmed LFA soldiers. PCA said the LFA had fired first, and, after killing them, the weapons had been stripped by the PCA for the “war effort”. Which is when the rebels began to fight each other.

More recently, the battles and explosions had become bloodier and more sinister, with forced auto-cannibalism, rape, and the ubiquitous ethnocide. One government official was quoted as saying, “The enemy of my enemy in this case is still my enemy, but by God, do I love it when they cancel each other out like this!”

All things must come to an end, and a public and international outcry led the government to start the INTERN-POL initiative, which was basically a death squad that ran seek-and-destroy missions against both rebel sides. Minor rebel groups based on flawed pseudo-Islamic ideologies were quashed within weeks. Both major factions suffered heavy losses. Blood flowed wilder than the rivers of Babylon.

Enter Pa Busi, coming out of retirement to serve his people one last time. As soon as he declared his intentions, Supreme Commander Craig declared an immediate ceasefire pending the conclusion of talks. The Front stopped all hostilities. They talked. They made progress.

Then, in neutral territory during a time of relative peace, Pa Busi was blown up by unknown persons. I went over the police reports and photos. It was dull, intensely dense technical prose that would make sense to an expert in ballistics or forensics. There were summations that came to this: an explosive, possibly a mine, detonated under the jeep carrying Pa Busi and his entourage. He survived long enough to crawl a short distance from the wreckage, burning. And then, over a period of minutes, he died. All other men in the jeep died, too. From shrapnel wounds. I scribbled in my conjecture notes: why was there a mine in a so-called neutral zone? Talk to mortician. See post mortem for all occupants in jeep. Speak to witnesses. Unanswered questions: Who discovered the wreckage? What were the last communications on all the occupants’ mobile phones or Blackberrys?

Next was a file that detailed Pa Busi’s survivors. He had a young wife, his second. She was thirty years old and something of a local celebrity. Active in charities and civil rights right up till the death of her husband, after which she dropped from the public eye. I looked at her photo: exceptionally beautiful in a European way—clear, fair skin, pointed nose, large eyes with light-brown irises, slender-looking, long hair straightened, mouth kept slightly open. She was heavily made-up, but in a good way, like the women we used to watch and lust after in Indian films. I thought she might have some white blood in her a few generations back. Her name was Diane Olubusi.

Interview Diane Olubusi. Trace Pa Busi’s finances. Children? First wife?

Nana announced her return with closing doors and singing. I stopped scribbling and put the pen down; I was fatigued in any case. She fluttered into the dining room and beamed when she saw me.

“How was the exam?”