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Closer To God
VI
Iron Snake
I grabbed the extended hand, going into a double wrist-lock for additional support. Burt’s arm retracted like a hydraulic ram coming up out of a ditch, and I was pulled straight to the top step of the car. I stuck my head out into the increasing wind as the train accelerated out of the sharp curve. I was the last aboard. A well-groomed conductor retracted the stairs, and then stood looking at us as if viewing zoo specimens. We were at the end of the last car. He blocked the aisle without seeming to do so. I produced our tickets, which he examined, clipped twice and pointed forward with, before returning them to my hand.
We’d waited an hour for the train under Ficus trees, called Mugumo locally, that lined the tracks, with an assortment of natives impatient to clamber aboard with us. Apparently, once aboard, the conductors charged a lower, negotiated price, than could be had at the ticket station.
Our First Class sleeping car was located just beyond the dining car. Most of the overnight train configuration was spent on Fourth Class Fare, which meant four bunks to a room. Burt and I had only two, the extra space taken up by a bench seat with a long private window.
We made our way down the aisle, situated along the left windowed wall of the car. The only cars with center aisles were the dining and day-seat cars. The creak of wood and clicking of wheels were comforting sounds of security. The room was a welcome haven from events of the day. At least it was until I looked at the door. I moved past it, raising one hand to stop Burt. We stood on each side of the door looking at the holes around the handle. Small bore bullet holes. The kind slow, sub-sonic silenced rounds make when they enter wood.
I looked at Burt. Neither of us brought out any weaponry, although there was nobody in the corridor with us. There would be no one inside the room, which I confirmed by pushing the now unlockable door open with my foot. It swung wide, allowing us to see every inch of the space. No one waited because they would have been waiting inside an inescapable trap, in the event of problems. We were up against pros, who wouldn’t expose themselves to the whimsy of chance unless they had to.
I went around the inside of the room, poking my finger into holes on the far side wall and then the frames of our bunk beds.
“Why’d they shoot out the lock? The doors don’t have keys. You can only lock them from the inside.” Burt asked, pulling the bottom bunk down from the wall with a thud, and then sitting atop the mattress.
“Not anymore,” I answered. “Kind of gives me the idea that we’re gonna have visitors later, and they don’t even care if we know ahead of time.”
“Cheeky bastards,” Burt sighed. “Why they treating us like citizens?”
Citizens are regular people. People who have no knowledge of intelligence work, guns, pyrotechnics, or real violence. We call ourselves, and others like us, players. Once you are a player you can never be a real citizen again. Most of us think we can, but in truth, it just can’t be done. “Paranoia bites deep….” the song goes.
“Maybe that’s all the intel they have. Maybe we’re just a hit to them. Maybe they don’t have a formal organization behind them,” I mused, taking a place on the bench seat. The scenery going by was the outskirts of Southern Nairobi. Broken blocks, tile and brick, mixed in with metal sheets in a state of angled falling rust everywhere. And dust. Tons of gray dust runneled through with dark rivulets of muddy water. And native peoples everywhere. Three stone fires sending up hundreds of single plum smoke signals wherever I looked.
Our door flew open. My left hand slipped straight into left front pocket, the forty-five bearing on the door open through the cloth of my trousers. A woman stood in the door.
“Evening mates,” she said, loudly and cheerfully, her rough but attractive face broken nearly in half by a huge smile.
“Hi,” Burt mumbled.
My hand relaxed out of my pocket. I was staring at an ‘Earth Mother,’ as we term them. Young women, mostly from England or Australia, some from America, who come over to Africa and then wander about the countries in their comfortable boots. They invariably wear shorts, long sleeve shirts and carry packs that have to weigh more than seventy pounds. Their lack of fear and sense of adventure has always impressed us.
“We got wine if you got an opener,” she stated, with a great laugh.
I was taken aback for a few seconds. An Earth Mother without a Swiss Army knife? I couldn’t picture it. Then I realized we were being invited over for social reasons. The bottle-opener was cover.
“Sure,” I responded, assuming that Burt had more tools behind the padding of his multi-purpose coat.
“Americans?” the woman asked.
We didn’t answer.
“I know from the accent,” she went on, turning to lead us to her room, as both of us had risen to our feet. “’Hi,’ like ‘Hey’ is strictly American. Then there’s the ‘sure’ comment. Another dead giveaway.”
She was Australian, I knew, from her own heavy accent, but I didn’t reply, only following her two berths down the aisle, where another door was open.
“Ever go see the Flamingos,” she inquired, but not waiting for an answer. “At that lake outside of town American tourists like to go to? Down there they always say the same thing when they see the birds: ‘Oh my God, they’re so pink.” She laughed heartily. I had to laugh too. Her impersonation of an American, totally over done, had been vividly descriptive and funny.
We filed into the room. The woman closed the door behind us, engaging the lock with a loud click. There were three other women in the room, all heavily tanned, all smiling broadly. I was humorously glad that I was armed. Burt produced his own Swiss knife, bottle-opener extended. He went to work on a bottle.
“Four of you in a two-bed First Class room?” I inquired.
“Sleeping bags,” the woman named Wendy, who’d invited us in, answered. “First Class room is two hundred shillings less than a four bed Fourth Class.” I marveled, as that amount of local currency was worth about three bucks, and then took a seat on the floor, my back to the outer wall so I could face the locked door. We’d already had a lesson in just how secure those were.
We drank two bottles of red wine. The label read ‘Terpenja Garnacha,” which I knew was Spanish, and surprisingly, not that cheap. Burt and I nursed ours in paper cups, knowing that there were other players aboard who’d have to be dealt with at some point in the night.
“They call this train the Lunatic Express, you know,” Wendy commented, her voice beginning to slur. “There was a lot of opposition to its being built by the British in the eighteen hundreds,” she slurred on.
“Iron snake,” Burt stated, speaking for the first times since we’d entered the cabin. We all looked at him. “Its what the natives call the train,” he followed, his expression showing surprise at our rapt attention. “Kikuyu. The natives are mostly Kikuyu, not Masai,” he finished, almost guiltily, eyeing the remaining wine in his cup.
I couldn’t believe that I had heard correctly. My formal education was in ethnology. Cultural Anthropology they used to call it, before they wanted everyone to think it was all about the study of fish or bugs. I understood the origins and interaction of the cultures in Kenya. I simply could not believe that a Knuckle-dragger, especially a huge dumb-looking one like Burt, would know anything about such things.
“Where the hell did you go to school?” I asked him, without thinking.
“Thornton Fractional,” he replied, proudly. I knew it to be a high school located somewhere in South Chicago. I didn’t know why I expected some center of higher education to come out of his mouth, but I had.
“You two don’t even know each other? Wendy inquired. “We thought you were companions.” The women all laughed, while Burt’s face grew red.
“I’m not gay,” he said, his voice small amid the raucous sounds filling the room around us.
“So, are you married?” Wendy asked me, directly, her first two words coming out as one.
I said I was.
“All the good ones…and all that,” she replied, then went on, “What’s her name?”
“Joan,” I answered, not having a clue as to why I lied, or used that name.
Burt almost laughed out load, held back only by the angry frown I sent across the room at him.
“Gotta use the loo,” Wendy said, unlocking the door. The other women paid full attention to Burt while she was gone, he having indicated that he was single. I presumed that they were merely practicing their skills, as Burt and I were a good fifteen years older than any of them.
Wendy re-entered the room. “Some Bogans down at your place,” she stated, offhandedly, before being surprised by Burt’s instant rise from the floor.
“What’s a Bogan?” he asked, opening the door a fraction, then drawing out his suppressed automatic. I joined him, the AMT Hardballer in my left hand, pointed down. The room went silent and still, the sounds of the train seeming to grow louder with each passing second.
“What have we got?” I whispered.
Burt held up one finger, then pointed aft, toward the dining car. His finger then tapped his own forehead.
“Okay, out you go. I’ll give you ten minutes.” I checked my wrist, but there was no Omega there. I cursed.
His gun disappeared. He was out the door and gone, seemingly more smoothly and quickly than a man his size could move. I slid the forty-five back into my pocket, then turned to face the women. They sat frozen, one with a cup of wine halfway to her lips. I slid down the door, sitting with my back to it.
“I wont stay long, just until Burt gets back. You’ll never see us again, once we hit Mombasa,” I said, my voice soft but flat.
“Mombasa,” Wendy replied, her voice no longer slurring. “It means ‘Battle City’ in Nandi,” she said, matter-of-factly. I didn’t reply, instead waiting for the inevitable question. It came, but not in the form I expected.
“Who are the others?” Wendy inquired.
“We don’t know,” I answered, truthfully. “They came at us in Nairobi because of something that happened in Mombasa. So we’re going there to find out. They don’t have good intentions.”
“That wasn’t a normal kind of gun, the one your friend has,” Wendy stated.
“We’ve seen a lot of guns on our Walkabout. That one’s not normal,” she repeated.
I had nothing to say. I didn’t care about lying to the Aussies, but I could see no reason to add anything I didn’t have to, other than about Joan being my wife, and I couldn’t understand what had made me say that in the first place.
“He’s the killer, so what does that make you?” Wendy asked, the other women opening a third bottle of the wine, as if they commonly spent time in enclosed spaces with gun-toting hitmen.
I again did not answer, setting my cup aside.
“You’ve drunk our wine. We’ve taken you in. You owe us something,” she said, slowly, with quiet expressive meaning.
I looked at all four of them, trying to decide what to say. If there was a code for such encounters, then Wendy was right. Our taking up with them had, at the least, saved a potentially violent confrontation, which might not have worked to our advantage. And she had warned us. I took out the wad of local currency and peeled off two bills.
“Two thousand shillings,” I intoned, putting the money in front of Wendy’s feet, since she made no move to accept it with her hand.
“More,” she said, with no smile on her face or in her voice.
I took another bill from the roll, but she held out her hand.
“Enough money. Tell us more.” She pulled her hand back, then filled her cup to the brim with red wine.
I sighed and put the roll back in my pocket. “We’re agents. It doesn’t matter what kind of agents. One of us got killed in Mombasa. Burt and I came to redress that loss, but nothing when right. When I inquired, these guys, who we don’t know, came at us. Shooting. We can’t go back and we can’t go forward until we know more, which is why were going down to where we lost that agent.” I finished, hoping that my explanation would be enough.
“Can’t exactly go back to your berth, now can you?” one of the other women said.
I had no answer. The woman was correct in her assumption. Unless I could be certain that none of our pursuers were on the train, it would be very risky to stay in the berth we’d booked. But it wouldn’t be any safer elsewhere on the train, unless it was in a berth nobody knew about. Like the one I was in.
“Since Burt isn’t married, he can stay with me, if he doesn’t mind the hard floor,” the woman went on.
“What’s your name,” I asked her.
“Ruthie,” she answered. “Ruthie Jorgensen,” she fluffed her bright blond hair, as if to indicate the obviousness of her Scandinavian heritage, then went on, “but they call me Dingo, because I don’t talk much.”
“Well, that’s more than kind of you Dingo, but Burt’s much older than you. Women don’t take to men like us, and they usually have better judgment than to marry us,” I warned her.
“Except for Joan, that is,” Wendy said, drinking her whole cup of wine down, before going for another.
“I’m not married, since we’re trying to talk truth here. I lied, to fit in better.
Joan’s,” and then I paused. I could not minimize Joan, “Joan’s a real woman, but with somebody else. And yes, you’ve shared your wine, your room and your friendship with us. That deserves something, which is what I’m trying to give you. Our problems are not your problems, and our problems are very serious.”
“Than you can sleep in my bunk,” Wendy said. “I mean, since your not really married.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Far from rejecting us, the women were welcoming us into their lives, at least while we were all aboard the train.
“Listen to me. We lie for a living. Violence is our stock and trade. We’re not good men. We’re just tools, guided around out here by people who don’t necessarily have the best interests of humanity at heart.”
“Is that part the lying?” Dingo asked, her face serious. I massaged my face with both hands. I had never encountered Earth Mothers, except in passing, and I was finding the experience frustrating and difficult to deal with. I also noted, when I was done talking, that the two thousand shilling notes were no longer on the floor. Wendy smiled, as if in thanks. I wondered, by the time the train hit Mombasa, whether Burt or I would have any currency left between us.
There was a very soft single knock on the door. I felt it rather than heard it.
The bad guys would not be knocking, and there was also no way they could know which cabin we were in. I stood and opened the door. Burt slipped in, and then took his place near Dingo where he’d originally sat.
“What’d you find?” I asked him.
Burt looked at me, then at the women, then back at me, without speaking.
“They’re in,” I told him. “We’re staying with them. Don’t ask how or why. Talk to me.”
With an expression of reservation written across his face, Burt talked. “They had a Fourth Class room let. There were three of them, all Caucasian. They decided that it was in their best interest,” Burt stopped, looking around the silent room carefully, “to leave the train before we got to Mombasa.”
“This is a non-stop,” Wendy stated, analytically.
“Any blood? Clean-up? Disturbance?” I asked, ignoring her.
“No. They were in the last car. I popped the emergency latches on their window, and out they went. Had some duct tape, so the window won’t flap, or anything like that.”
“You made them jump from the train?” Wendy asked, obviously stunned. “But the train is going a hundred kilometers an hour.”
“Would have been nice to talk to them. You didn’t question them, did you?” I interrupted.
Burt looked at me, his expression showing guilt.
“No, but I did get these,” he said, laying two RAP automatics on the seat between he and Dingo. She immediately caressed the surface of both pieces.
“Parabellum?” I inquired of him. He said nothing, confirming my analysis. The guns were nine millimeter’s produced by a small company in South Africa. That company supplied the local police forces. The weapons were not normally available on the private market outside of that country.
“Boers. Shit. What the hell do the Boers have to do with this?” I said the words to myself, thinking. “You find the suppressor?”
A gray, powder-coated cylinder joined the two automatics. I stared at it for a moment. “SAI,” I asked. Again, Burt did not answer. “Shit,” I said. At every turn with these unknown assailants we were being confronted with an abundance of capability and quality material. SAI was a company out of Denmark. They produced a ‘carbon’ silencer superior even to an oil-filled device, but they were usually more expensive than the weapon they were fitted to.
“Get rid of them,” I said, concluding there was nothing more to be learned from the weapons.
“Can I have one?” Dingo asked.
“Me too,” Wendy followed, instantly.
“Alright, take them, but not the suppressor. That goes out the window.” I was unable to keep the exasperated tone from my voice. I was traveling from Nairobi to Mombasa in the middle of the night aboard the infamous Iron Snake, trapped in a room with people equally as crazy as I, if not more so. The thought did not give me comfort.
“Way cool,” the supposedly silent Dingo intoned, using her caricature of an American accent. “What about dinner. You can’t go to the dining car can you, I mean with those others having gotten off the train early?” She stroked here new acquisition while she talked. Burt smiled at her, and then produced a magazine filled with cartridges. I looked from one of them to the other, wondering which one of them was in more trouble.
I took out my wad of shillings. “These seem to work wonders here. I think we can manage dinner in the cabin.”
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copyright 2009
For heaven’s sake, do something.
That’s the advice the president of the Illinois State Bar Association gives to those who have gotten word – or just suspect – that their home faces foreclosure. Read more about avoiding foreclosure...
The Huffington Post recently spoke with Senator Byron Dorgan, noting that he opposed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. This law kept investment banks separate from commercial banks. Its repeal opened Pandora’s box, unleashing a financial beast upon the American people.
Liberal pundit E. J. Dionne has an excellent column in today’s Washington Post. Regarding the ongoing health care reform efforts in Congress, there has been a lot of chatter about “perfect” becoming the enemy of the good. This has been a concern of mine for some months. Here is a link to Mr. Dionne’s column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111122256.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
If any kind of health care reform does get passed into law, the one certainty is that the final product will not be ideal by anybody’s reckoning. I have said in previous blog posts that the biggest obstacles to health care reform are those who insist that the bill contain certain characteristics, such as a “robust public option.” These people – including former Democratic Party leader Howard Dean and interim U.S. Senator Roland Burris (the choice of disgraced former Illinois Governor Blagojevich to fill the unexpired senate term of Barack Obama) – have made clear that they would rather see all reform efforts fail than to have what they believe is half-hearted reform pass. In a way, I have more respect for somebody like Senator Jim DeMint, who at least makes no serious pretense to being anything other than a political enemy of President Obama. If Obama’s presidency fails to achieve its major goals, it will be more due to his supposed allies (such as Dean and Burris) than to his overt opponents (such as DeMint). Reform can pass without any Republican support, but in order for that to happen, the Democrats have to able to unite behind something. As a practical matter, this means accepting the reality that many Democrats representing relatively conservative states and districts cannot support all the provisions favored by their more left-leaning colleagues.
If there is going to be any kind of health care reform bill that clears Congress, it will almost certainly contain some degree of restriction on taxpayer-financed abortions, and it will quite likely not provide for a public option, except perhaps one based on future contingencies. It would still be a major achievement, both in terms of politics and public policy, to get health care reform that extends coverage to all Americans, is fiscally neutral, and controls overall health care costs. This can be done, but not if side shows about the availability of abortions and the public option control the debate.
William Wise, a South Jersey resident and Vietnam War veteran, was homeless until someone told him about a temporary housing and rehabilitation program run by the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
Wise now lives at Veterans Haven, a two-year program in Winslow Township, after being homeless and a junkie and facing other physical and mental problems.
Read more about homeless veterans...
Hi, Ola, Alo, Salaam, Shalom,
I have been focusing on the greatest journey of my life.That most amazing miraculous dream of one tiny little sperm carrying the worlds most heaviest load, the genetic information of generations and generations and generations....in order to enter into the dream world of a small egg awaiting for that wondrous moment to arrive. The greatest journey of my life. The greatest journey of my life, happening throughout the ages.Here i am, the dream of a tiny minuscule sperm who has touched, entered and combined into the amazing dream of an egg. Generations of dreams combining in ONE brief moment of time. Two different distinctive dreams combining everything together to co-create a dream dreaming.Within that brief small moment of synchronization of time and space. The combined wholeness of my dream was unified. Then began the second most amazing adventure of my life. From one miraculous cell to 100 trillion cells playing and dancing in a unified field of utopian nature.Then from being focused inside the womb to looking outward to this.We are all energy. Within a brief moment of time. The possibility of combining and integrating our individual unique miraculous creative genius energy TOGETHER to realize a totally new dream coming from the heart of reality seems so simple so easy.The Mass Group. E=MC2. Peace, love, freedom...pelodom.Within a brief moment of time is our ability to integrate our consciousness to form an amazing new creative dream unfolding. Within the empty space is the ability to integrate ALL our dreams simultaneously. By coming to the O table, by giving freely of our geniusness, our dreams shared, our consciousness expands. Our reality expands. Abundance is the dance. Within a brief moment of time, creation of a new life.. a new dream is owakened.
Dream Big Dreams
The SILENT MAJORITY must not be blind-sided by Republican, ‘Blue Dog’ Democrat and the Independent Senators’ hype about abortion and the public option when it comes to their pledge to STOP Health Care Reform. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ‘BENJAMINS’!
Senate Anti-Reform representatives will receive OVER A MILLION DOLLARS in contributions from the health insurance industry. (House Anti-Reform representatives received OVER HALF A MILLION DOLLARS in contributions from the health insurance industry - 15% more than Pro-Health Care Reform House representatives.) Go to The Center for Responsive Politics at www.opensecrets.org/ to find out more.
The SILENT MAJORITY must let Republican, ‘Blue Dog’ Democrat and the Independent Senators know how we feel about their placing a BOUNTY on our health care rights.
You know the drill.
www.senate.gov/general/contact information/senators cfm.cfm
www.congress.org
Snakes are generally misunderstood. Humans are not on the food chain of even the most poisonous ones. But they slink about on the ground, so some folks fear them.
I come here today to tell you of a new snake in our great union. Introduced here by third-world operatives. Funny thing about this snake - he walks upright. I kid you not. Has legs. No guts - but legs.
His name is JOE LIEBERMAN. He sound be considered armed and dangerous. He is a traitor. Lives in Connecticut and lives on piles of money left in his trash can by insurance executives. Well I presume they use runners. Joe the snake craws out just before dawn and gets the stash.
Snakes, even the Eastern Diamond Back which we have here in Florida, will not strike a human unless threatened. As I understand it, the rich cats at the insurance giants called Joe back to Connecticut and told him in certain terms - do nothing to make us less rich. If you do, you won’t get yours.
So Joe goes on TV and tells the wonderful worms (related) at Fox that HE will prevent a vote on health care unless HE (and Fox, and the insurance boys) like the bill. Trust me they won’t.
Joe - get set to take a seat “around the corner” at all future committee meetings - because you are about to be striped of all Democrat credentials.
Joe, you stink. Literally. You are less than a man. Well - we already have established you are a snake. Doing it for the good folks? HA My new crusade will be to reveal the amount of money you take from insurance companies. Below the table also. There are ways Joey. We call them snitches. They are getting in line. Better though that you be eaten by a larger snake. There to be digested in the tummy.
That would be all except for a story which just hit my Blackberry. Old man Murdoch of News Corp - Fox News - says he wants to be paid by Google for any story brought up about his children on any Google search. Google of course is not going to give him a cent. The reporter (bless him) asked the big M why he didn’t just remove Fox from Google - which he can do tomorrow. M turned ashen, coughed, and said maybe he will. That’s the boy. I would love to Google without Fox items. Actually few make it now - but why have any?
V
Have Gun Will Travel
The Yaya shopping complex came up quickly as Sam curved in off Argwings. The place was covered with local woods, all blonde, accented with near iridescent
blue lettering in bad English; “y go anywhere else” right up over the entrance. It was off hours at the Java House so we got a table. Two, after I pointed across the place when Burt and Sam walked up. I stopped Burt to halve the wad of shillings I carried, happy to get rid of the stuff.
“Two Kenyan double ‘A’ class ones,” I said to his departing back. I wondered if he’d heard me, but then, the man had proven to be anything but a conversationalist. I took the available corner seat, so I could cover the front. I knew Burt would cover everything else. I wondered if the kid had a gun, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly as I had it. Stevens wouldn’t send one of his men into the field unarmed.
“You wanted coffee?” I inquired of Joan, attempting to gauge her mood.
“Ah, doesn’t look like what I want is at issue,” she said back, stiffly.
“I apologize, “ I said, with a sigh. It had been a long day, and the evening ahead didn’t look much better. Burt and I had to get on the train while avoiding
surveillance, which would certainly be on hand. Quite possibly it would be safer to take the car, now that drone strikes guided in from some secret Texas location were not in the cards. But I needed a night’s sleep, and so did Burt. The kid could handle the all night drive.
“Doesn’t matter, really, but its why I generally find people like you pretty disgusting. Women are not some service instruments to be led and controlled by ‘Promise Keeper’ males.”
I had heard those words before, from the Reborn Christian movement, wherein men sought to gain control over their family life, which really meant their wives. I thought it a bit more complex than she was portraying it but I let it go. I knew I had a habit of calling women ‘girls,’ and telling them what to do. I didn’t like it in myself, and I was working on it. But I was stung by her words, nevertheless.
“You know people like me? I thought I was in pretty rare territory, being what I am with the Agency and all, not to mention the military, the combat, the travel and tragedy. “ I stopped myself. I was there to get information, not attempt to win an argument that was unwinnable. That I liked her had no bearing, and it was not going to make her any more predisposed to like me.
We looked at one another across the table. I noted that her mouth naturally curved up, like it did a lot of smiling, even when she was not, like right then. She was just South of forty, I guessed, and with her looks, had had a tough time passing that milepost. Divorced less than two years ago. I wondered whether age had had anything to do with it. But I didn’t have any experience in marriage. Divorce was all around me. I tended to ignore it. There was nothing more boring than listening to someone detail just how rotten and evil their former partner-for-life was. I had always wanted to blurt out ‘so you’re saying that you are terribly shitty at selection?’ but I never had. I had maybe three friends on the planet, if I counted Burt, and I was topping the forty mark too.
“Do you like Africa?” she asked, speaking just as Burt showed up with two coffees, served in beautiful ceramic mugs, with containers of cream and old-fashioned cubes of sugar on the side.
I inhaled deeply, and then looked around, as I put a dollop of cream into my cup. “The place stinks. Nobody uses deodorant, except for the Wazungu, like us.”
I hated the Swahili term for white person. It reminded me of my childhood, when I had had to endure the term ‘Haole’ every day at school. The ‘H’ word we later called it. In Kenya, it was the ‘W’ word. “And there are parasites everywhere, once you get out of town. The dust is awful, almost all the time. The heat is oppressive, and the rain is seldom cooling or satisfactory at all.” I quit talking for a moment, to stir in my cream and sugar.
“I love it,” I finally concluded. “I don’t know why.”
Joan smiled, and then laughed for the first time, flipping her lovely hair when she did. It bounced several times. “There’s a phrase here that I don’t think you’ve heard. One that explains just what you just said.”
My eyebrows shot up. I thought I’d been pretty damned original, and I also knew I’d been around the Dark Continent for a bit.
“Africa is closer to God. That’s why you love it. That’s why I love it. Its impossible to explain to people who don’t live here.”
“Africa is closer to God,” I repeated, liking the words as they came out, but not really understanding how they applied.
“Who got shot?” she asked, catching me off guard. Her light inflection of the words told me that she didn’t really believe it had happened.
“You were shot at, in the car, as we left the Safari Park,” I reminded her, for credibility’s sake.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, again surprising me.
“The glass blowing out of the windows. I don’t think you missed that part, as you screamed loud enough to deafen Burt and I. The glass reacted to a bullet, fired from behind us by a silenced weapon.” I watched her slowly lower her coffee to the table, her complexion going like the song, a whiter shade of pale.
“I thought you broke the glass out for some reason,” she said, her voice shaking, her ceramic cup doing the same thing. I moved my head back and forth slowly.
“Something happened here. I don’t know what. But its important enough for people to have hired professionals to go after me. And now Burt. And they don’t seem to care that they might kill the DCM of a major United States Embassy as collateral damage. I need to know what you know. All of it, and I need it now.”
“You said that Rajic tried to get my husband killed.”
“You ex-husband,” I reminded her, looking at the wedding ring still on the appropriate finger of her left hand.
“That’s none of your business,” she fired back, covering her left hand with her right. “He tried to kill Paul, our Ambassador. What craziness is that? You’re just agents, you and that gorilla, but he’s an Ambassador.”
“You’re Ambassador?” I quipped, not being able to stop myself.
Joan’s color went from pale to red in an instant.
“Who do you think you are? Who do you think you’re talking to. No little puissant like you is going to insult me.” She started to rise to her feet.
“Please,” I begged, touching her left arm. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. My life is at stake here. I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. But I know that I’ve now dragged Burt and Sam into it, as well. And you. I’m a good agent, but I’m used to working with a script. I’ve got no help at all. Help me.”
She sank back onto the solid mahogany chair. The hushed sound of her clothing adjusting to new positions denoted the expensive nature of their fabric.
The woman was one class act and I was being forced to treat her that way.
“Call the goddamned CIA. Don’t you have some ‘Control Central’ or something?” She sipped her coffee after speaking, which, for some reason, I took to be a good sign.
“Control Officer. His name’s Lee, “ I blurted out, for no good reason at all. Just another of many violations of protocol and procedure I was wracking up since flying into Jomo Kenyatta Airport only the day before. “I can’t call. What am I going to say? That I violated orders in speaking to Rajic? That I’m responsible for an attempt on Paul’s life? That I’m trying to find out what really happened to Smith, who was a friend of mine? That I’m not going to let these new clowns shoot at me without killing them?”
Joan shook her head, frowning deeply. I noted that she didn’t use Botox. I liked that. Except for the fact that she held my very existence in contempt, I liked everything about her.
“I can’t reach Lee. Not yet. He’d have to recall me instantly. I won’t be listed as having gone rogue, but they won’t provide me any support until things get a bit more sorted out. They’ll be mad as hell that I’m not filling them in on anything. They lust for data. Any data. All data.”
“Oh,” was her only response, her eyes refusing to meet mine.
“Tell me about Rajic. I was informed that he had a jewelry business by the Airport here. Hell, I dumped him not far from there this morning.”
“He does, or rather his cousin or uncle does. I don’t really know. His main business, and his place of residence, is a ferry down in Mombasa, and he goes by Raj, not Rajic.”
“Raj owns the private ferry running out of Likoni?” I asked. There were three ferries joining the island of Mombasa to the mainland at the South end. Only one was private. It was a ramshackle ferry. I knew because I’d ridden it. Old, steam powered, rusting away, but filled with people bustling and laughing for every cruise. Mombasa had been trying to get rid of it for years but it was grand-father’d in.
Mombasa had a population of nearly a million, as much as that of San Francisco, but piled onto an island one fourth the size of Manhatten. All three ferries were jammed during daylight hours.
“And you know him how?” I continued.
“He’s come by at least once a week, to the Embassy, for over a year, although he’s been known to disappear for months at a time.”
“You know him? Talk to him? What?” I asked, in some frustration at the woman’s reticence to give any detail.
“I’m Deputy Chief of Mission, for Christ’s sake. I know just about everything that goes on there. Keep your shirt on.” She scowled, taking in more Kenya double A, some of the finest coffee on earth as long as you got the biggest ‘class one’ beans.
“Doesn’t seem like you know much about what Paul has been up to? People are trying to kill him, me, possibly even you. So give me what you have.”
Joan colored, her cheeks going to what I knew had to be some shade of red. I liked it, even if I couldn’t really identify the color.
“He’s a little scum-bag of human detritus, who’s never spoken to me. He’s only capable of leering at women. One of those.”
“Maybe he found you attractive,” I offered, instantly wishing I hadn’t.
“What are you? One of those men who a woman can’t even wear a skirt around? One of those animals who find women to be merely receptacles for their inadequate deposit?”
A silence descended over the table. I drank the cooling coffee, admiring my thick ceramic mug, the letters ‘J.H.’ glazed to its surface. I’d of considered stealing it if it the letters were ‘J.D.’
“You’re right,” she relented, after a few minutes. “I don’t know anything about any of this. I’ve never had anything violent happen during my service. I’m going to talk to Paul. He’s not a bad man, but he’s a fool.” She once again touched her wedding ring.
“Haggerty. You going to keep the name?” I risked, waiting for her to strike.
“Kilkenny. I’m taking back my maiden name when I get to the States. I never liked the ‘hag’ connotation of his name. I suppressed a laugh, covering my mouth with one hand, as if to wipe away a speck of foam. The ‘kill’ part of her maiden name had blown right by her. I was relieved my name wasn’t Kenny.
“What if they’re on the train?” She asked, after a moment.
“They probably will be,” I answered. “They’ll have the airport staked out, the rental car agencies, the major roads and yes, the train. They think we have to get out of the country any way we can, and we don’t have Agency help. So, some will probably be on the train.”
“Why don’t you just come to the Embassy and stay there. Nobody can get you there. When this all blows over you can leave.”
I laughed. “Now, who’s the Ambassador again? And how did we come to be targets in the first place? Paul had something to do with that. Stevens is cool, maybe Tyrell is okay, but I don’t know that, and I’m going to find out what happened to Smith.”
“You’re not a believable man,” she answered, forcefully. “I don’t think for a minute that Paul would have anything to do with violence. Certainly not terminal violence, and now I’m starting to sound like you.”
“That would be me,” I raised my cup to her, “the man who disgusts you.”
“I didn’t say that,” she retorted. “I said that men like you disgust me. That’s different.”
I couldn’t see the difference, in listening to her, but also knew that she had no helpful information to give me. I got up.
“What’s your plan?” She asked.
I ignored her. Burt and Sam were deep in discussion across the room, which was beginning to fill up with late afternoon patrons. Work ended early in Nairobi, or not at all, down in the sweatshops South of city central. I walked away, to have a moment with them.
I joined both men, taking a chair with my back to Joan. “She’s quite an amazing woman,” I said, for no good reason at all.
“Yeah,” Burt replied, “She’s a real sweetheart.”
Sam said nothing.
“Take her back to the Embassy, no matter where she wants to go. This thing that’s going on is hot. She’d make great hostage material, and I also get the idea that not everyone knows she and her ex-husband are not close anymore.”
“Yes, sir,” the young Marine responded. “When I make the run down Mombasa road, do I take out any opposition, or what?”
I liked the kid’s attitude. He had to be all of twenty, and he was ready to take on the world, even when he didn’t have a clue as to what was going on or whom we were opposing. But then, he knew about as much as we did.
“You packing?” I asked him, as quietly as I could.
“Duty nine. Sixteen in the back, with a Remington twelve.”
My eyebrows went up. Stevens was not messing around. Nine millimeter hand gun, M-16 automatic, and a twelve gauge shot gun. God, I loved Marines. There was nothing to be said. The kid would have to make decisions on his own. It was his life on that dark hard road, not ours.
“How you gonna get on the train?” he inquired, changing the subject.
Sam Hill did not need any more data so I didn’t answer his adolescent question. I rose from the table. “Hit it. Zero seven hundred tomorrow, or so, expect our call, or come looking.” I went back to Joan.
“Sam’s gonna take you wherever you want to go,” I lied. “I’ll call you sometime, maybe when this is over.
She stood, brushing non-existent lint from her beautiful clothing. The bottom was a skirt, and it allowed for her shapely legs to be seen. I looked away before she could notice me taking any interest. I’d had enough pain, not that she was done giving it out.
“Casablanca. This is the scene at the airplane, right?” She smirked.
I took the hit with barely a grimace. We did not say goodbye. Joan and Sam simply left. I turned away in case she looked back. I didn’t want her to see me watching her leave.
“What now, Old Hoss,” Burt intoned, when we got back to the table, making me feel like Michael Landon on Bonanza.
“Is that my name on your cell phone?” I asked back, still irritated with the woman. The Casablanca shot had hit home. She viewed me as some kind of phony macho cowboy, like Tyrell, only worse.
Burt pulled his phone out, flipped up the cover, punched some buttons, and then turned the lit screen to me. It read; “Paladin,” in small black letters, before the number to my phone.
My eyebrows went up. “Have gun will travel? From the old western television series?” I asked.
“A knight without armor in a savage land,” he responded, with a deadpan expression.
I still didn’t know what to make of the big man. Knuckle-draggers were named for the walking appearance of upright Great Apes. When they moved, their knuckles dragged on the ground. Burt was an enigma, and the mystery of his behavior bothered me, not that I could do much about it.
“You figured out the train?” he asked.
“Bus. We’re gonna take a bus to Murthurwa terminal. The tracks take a ninety-degree turn down the road from there. Train slows to five miles per hour, or so. We jump on and we’re gone. Lots of people get on and off at that corner, but I’m willing to bet our ‘friends’ don’t know that.
“You called in?” I asked him, as nonchalantly as I could.
“I’m big, not stupid,” he answered immediately, sipping from a second coffee he had on the table. I was sorry I’d asked. Right then I didn’t think the Agency wanted to hear from us anymore than we wanted to talk to them.
“What were your orders?” I inquired, getting to the heart of the matter, with respect to his place on the mission.
“If you went the wrong way, I was to take control of you, then take out the target.” He drank deeply of the hot Kenya double A.
“Take control of me? Is that Executive Action or just another name for it?” I asked, using the term we used internally for assassination.
“What do you think?” he asked back, not really putting it out there as a question. Nobody at Langley wanted any part of hitting an active agent. The phrase ‘take control,’ was perfect for purposes of plausible deniability outside, but its meaning to all of us inside was clear.
I patted my left front pocket. “This AMT only holds five rounds. I used one. Got anymore?”
Burt fumbled into one of his inside coat pockets, and then came out with another magazine. Surreptitiously, he passed it to me. I checked the first round, sticking up out the top of the small thick metal device. It was pointed, but solid.
“No shot-shell for the first round?” I inquired with a wiry smile.
“If you need a second magazine, then you’re shooting at the right guys,” he answered, adding, “his fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind.”
Neither of us smiled or laughed as I tucked the loaded magazine into my back pocket. Burt was either the best man I have ever worked with, or quite possibly the worst. I could not know which, sitting in the Java House, lost in a truly strange, and now savage, land.
