The Dark Chronicles (23 page)

I ran my hand along the wall until I found the light switch. We were in a large living room: two armchairs, a divan, a coffee table, a couple of dead house plants. At the far end, an integrated kitchen, long metal windows – and an air conditioner. I walked over and switched it on, but nothing happened.

Isabelle slumped into one of the armchairs and asked me if I had any cigarettes left. I tossed her the pack and lighter, and walked over to take a look at the windows. They were unlocked.

That was interesting. I rolled them back to find a veranda, complete with deckchairs and flowers sticking out of what looked like old petrol drums.

‘They had it good, didn’t they?’ said Isabelle.

I turned. ‘Who? Where are we?’

She laughed, her face momentarily obscured by a cloud of smoke. ‘You are very serious. “Who? Where are we?”’

‘Fill me in,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you all my knock-knock jokes.’

She sat up and ground out my sixth-to-last cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table. ‘We’re in the Shell–BP camp at Port Harcourt. I thought you knew – Alebayo is using it as his headquarters.’

Of course. While I’d been feverishly fantasizing about throwing myself into the road, we must have been waved through some gates. The windows were unlocked because it didn’t matter if we left the house: we wouldn’t be able to get past the perimeter. I turned back to the window: the moon was dim in the rain, but I
could make out a few more bungalows and, beyond them, the outline of a high concrete wall. I couldn’t see any machine guns in turrets, but it amounted to the same thing.

I had another look at the room. The Tilby-Wellses appeared to have left the place rather quickly. Magazines and paperbacks were still scattered across the coffee table: a two-year-old issue of
Life
featuring the lost notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci shared space with
The Collected Short Stories of Somerset Maugham
,
My Family and Other Animals
and a booklet about West African birds. Apart from the standard pieces of furniture, the only unusual items were a drinks cabinet and an antique radio set. The kitchen was home to a disconnected fridge and a rusty stove. The cupboards were empty, except for a couple of cockroaches and several tins of Bartlett pears. No tin-openers, though.

It was like a safe house, I decided. The thought comforted me somewhat, and I made my way back to the drinks cabinet, where I found the dregs of a bottle of Drambuie, a sliver of Tio Pepe, and about a quarter of a litre of lime cordial. A not-too-dirty shot glass was resting on the board, and I poured the lot into it and downed the result. It tasted vile: my teeth felt as though they were rotting away as they came into contact with the liquid. But for one exquisite moment it relieved the dryness in my throat. I also hoped it might contain enough sugar to send some much-needed aid to the pain surging through my lower back and thigh muscles.

Behind me, Isabelle announced she was going to find the bathroom to powder her nose. I investigated the radio set. It was in working order, so I tuned it to the BBC’s African Service. They were reaching the end of a bulletin – I wanted the headlines, to see if Pritchard had cancelled the PM’s trip. I turned the volume up as loud as it would go, and the weather report blared across the room. Cairo was hot. Oslo was cold.

‘What are you doing?’ Isabelle called from offstage.

I walked towards her voice. ‘The room may be bugged,’ I said,
taking a left at the kitchen. ‘You might want to watch what you say.’

‘You should check the plants. Isn’t that where they usually hide them?’

If there were microphones, they could be anywhere – in the ceiling, the walls, the furniture. It would take at least an hour to turn over the place, and I didn’t know how long we had.

‘The radio is fine,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Here!’ she said, leaping out from behind the wall. ‘So what do you think?’ Instead of her usual Zazou black, she was now in a turquoise ankle-length dress.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘You don’t like?’ she said angelically. ‘I could no longer wear those wet clothes.’ She scrunched up her nose in disgust, then raised a finger. ‘I find something for you also.’ She vanished behind the wall again for a few seconds, then reappeared clutching a pair of silk turquoise trousers and a white tennis shirt. ‘
Voilà!
You will match me perfectly.’

I took her by the wrist and exerted some pressure. ‘We’re not going to a bloody fashion show,’ I said.

She pulled away. ‘What happened to those jokes you promised me?’ she said. She walked back into the living room, seated herself in one of the armchairs and pouted.

I didn’t have time to waste on games – somewhere in this compound, Gunner and his men were being interrogated. And any minute now, it could be our turn.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Do you have your press accreditation from Lagos?’

She looked up. ‘No – it was in my bag. Why?’

That was what I’d been afraid of. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ I said. ‘I’m working with
The Times
, but at the last moment I got ordered to the front, and we decided to work together. All right?’

She took it in, then nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I think you
should relax. We’re not in danger now. It’s a story for your friends back in London, I think. A story for myself also – my office will be very pleased to hear it. Some of the photographs I took in the hut may change the course of the war. This level of suffering – it will shock people into action.’

She looked so smug, I could have smacked her. I pointed out that Alebayo might not be too keen to let her call her office, or hand back her camera. She didn’t hear me, so I moved closer and said it again.

She laughed, smoothing the pleats of her new dress with one hand. ‘I think he will give it back. He can be tough when he’s ordering his men to kill innocent Biafrans – I would like to see how tough he is in front of a member of the world’s press.’

‘These ones aren’t all innocent, though,’ I said. ‘The men are deserters.’

She looked at me, aghast.

‘Did you see the condition they were in?’

The silly bitch seemed to have forgotten we were in the middle of a war. It was bad news – if she tried to take Alebayo on, she’d really put the cat among the pigeons.

‘Alebayo hates the world’s press,’ I told her. ‘In fact, he hates anything that smacks of interference by the West. If you want to help the Biafrans, and yourself, you would do well to remember that.’

We listened to the football results in sullen silence for a few minutes. Finally, the familiar notes of ‘Lilliburlero’ whistled merrily into the room, and I turned it down slightly so we could listen to the bulletin more comfortably. Pakistan had a new president, there was fierce fighting in southern Vietnam, and John Lennon and his new wife were staging a protest in bed in Amsterdam. No mention of Nigeria or the British prime minister. I wondered where Pritchard was – probably a deal closer to Anna than I was.

‘That was about your operation, wasn’t it?’ said Isabelle when
the report had finished and I’d turned the volume back up. ‘There was a coded message in one of the items!’

I shook my head. ‘We don’t do that any more.’

‘What, then?’ she said. ‘You might as well tell me now.’

‘The less you know, the better.’

It was a shame to have to treat her like a child, but she had a glint in her eye and it was worrying me. She was notching it all up for her exclusive report from the Biafran front, where she had been imprisoned in a bugged room with a British secret agent on a mysterious mission. It would make thrilling reading at breakfast tables across France – if we got out of here in one piece.

We listened to the radio for a while longer, and she cadged another of my cigarettes. I went over the story with her one more time, and then the door opened and Scarface marched in.

‘Move,’ he said, gesturing with his sub-machine gun.

*

The streets of the compound were quiet and deserted, but I caught a few glimpses of the site’s new purpose: a couple of camouflaged armoured cars and a Land Rover parked outside one of the bungalows, and a small obstacle course that had been set up on the other side of what had once been tennis courts. It was still raining, and Isabelle was having trouble with her new outfit, which was sticking to her in all the wrong places. God knows what Scarface made of her get-up; he didn’t say a word, just gestured which turnings we were to take and kept a close eye on our movements in case we decided to make a run for it. There was little chance of that, unfortunately – the only thing to do now was to talk Alebayo into letting us go as soon as possible. At one point, we passed a street that led to the entrance into the compound. It was a massive iron gate, and I managed to count eight guards before we had to make a turn.

After about a ten-minute walk, we arrived at our destination: a grand villa standing on the crest of a small hill. We walked up a
path through the large and well-kept garden, passing jacarandas and palm trees. As we got nearer to the house, the sound of music spilled out onto the lawn, an American soul number with swishing drums and a plangent male voice singing about the end of the world. The doors to the place were open, and a handful of soldiers were pulling crates off a jeep in the forecourt. It looked a little like preparations were being made for a party – I half-expected to see a marquee being erected.

Scarface took us into the house, which still had the appearance of a private home – presumably this was where the managing director had lived. The paintings and mirrors still hung on the walls and there were vases filled with flowers. We walked down a short corridor, passing several soldiers on the way, their boots pinging off the tiled floor as they went about their business. Nobody gave us a second glance.

The music became louder with every step, and the instruments and voice started to mesh together. Scarface pushed open some double doors and we entered a large hangar-like room. It was dark, but I could make out desks, chairs, filing cabinets, telephones, several standard radio sets and a few SSBs. I could make out a faint glow from the rear of the room, and Scarface indicated we should head for it. As we got nearer, I saw that the light was emanating from a small area sunk a couple of feet into the floor. There was a campbed, a wardrobe and a mahogany table. On top of the latter was an antique gramophone player, from which the closing notes of the song blared, and a lamp, which cast a small pool of light on the tatty leather armchair in the centre of the ‘room’. Seated in this was Colonel Alebayo, his head tilted back, apparently asleep. He was wearing a black and gold kimono-type number and matching slippers. His uniform lay folded neatly on the bed, his cap resting on top of it.

We stood at the edge of the pit for a few seconds, watching him. Then Scarface coughed. Alebayo’s eyes snapped open, his head jerked upright and he jumped to his feet. Without looking at us,
he strode the two feet to the table, stopped the needle and replaced the record in its sleeve.

‘The prisoners are here, sir,’ said Scarface unnecessarily, and gestured for us to walk down the three steps that led into the den.

Alebayo turned. ‘Thank you,’ he said, with a hint of a smile. ‘I can see that.’ Scarface thought about replying, but Alebayo waved him down. ‘At ease, at ease.’

Isabelle and I took up position side by side in front of the armchair, like two schoolchildren summoned before the headmaster. As he and his men had done earlier in the aircraft, we silently dripped rain onto the floor.

Alebayo seated himself again and looked us over. It was very quiet in here, more noticeably so after the din of the music. Alebayo’s face was as smooth and placid as a marble bust – it reminded me of the masks I’d seen in the market in Lagos.

‘Mademoiselle Dumont…’ he said, finally, and his voice was lilting, almost tender. ‘I’m sorry – are you married?’

She shook her head. Alebayo stretched an arm out from the depths of a satin sleeve and plucked a piece of paper from the table. His voice rose: ‘Mademoiselle, this is your authorization to be at the front. Is that correct?’

She glanced at it. ‘Yes.’

‘You have been a reporter for a long time?’

‘Four years,’ she said.

Alebayo nodded, and turned to me. ‘And how about you, Mister Kane? Where is your authorization?’

‘He’s my photographer,’ put in Isabelle.

Alebayo pursed his lips. ‘Really?’ He looked back down at her papers. ‘But it says here that you work for Agence France-Presse. Mister Kane told me in Lagos just the other day that he worked for
The Times
, and that he was covering the visit of the British prime minister there.’

‘That was true then,’ I put in. ‘But I got a cable from my editor this morning telling me to get out to the front and find a more
interesting story. I proposed teaming up with Miss Dumont here. She agreed to it, as did my editor.’

Alebayo lightly waved Isabelle’s authorization, as though fanning himself. ‘They may well have, Mister Kane. But the Press Office of the Ministry of Information in Lagos did not. If they had, your name would also be on this piece of paper, or you would have your own.’

‘Here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I did have my own, but we had a very bumpy landing and I couldn’t find it afterwards. I must have dropped it.’

‘How terribly careless of you,’ said Alebayo, amused at the flimsiness of the excuse. He folded Isabelle’s paper and placed it back on the table, then gave me a searching look. ‘Do you know David Ashton of
The
Daily Telegraph
?’

This game again. He’d tried it with Churchill back in Lagos.

‘By reputation,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him.’

Alebayo pressed his fist against his chin as if thinking. ‘How about Bill Turner of
The
Express
?’

‘Don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Jack Stern? He’s at
The Observer
.’

I shook my head apologetically. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very sociable – I tend to stick to my work.’

He nodded. ‘I quite understand. I am much the same.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘But here’s the
thing
, Mister Kane. Those three gentlemen are all staying at a hotel very near here. So are several other British journalists. I took the liberty of calling earlier and asking if any of them had ever heard of or met a Robert Kane of
The Times
. And do you know – not a single one of them ever had?’ He eased back into his chair. ‘You must be
very
unsociable.’