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," I said, 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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IV
“We’re Going To Mombasa”
We didn’t make it to the Railway Station, instead stopping the small van down around City Central near Kenyatta Avenue. The driver, conductor and two other teen passengers had remained silent during our trip, not that it would have made much difference with rock blasting from all the speakers. The conductor had rotated once to look at us, with attitude, but something about us had kept him from commenting, or doing anything else.
Burt and I were broke. We had to have cash, which meant we needed an ATM. A few businesses would take credit cards, but not many, even in a large developed city like Nairobi. Africa was third world, outside of a very few places. Our Teeny Matata plunged back into the ‘fishball’ of traffic as soon as we were out. I watched my Omega disappear with a glum expression.
“Got a cell phone?” I inquired of Burt, hoping that I had not been wrong about his over-supplied pack rat nature. I was not disappointed. He handed a small phone over to me.
“Will it work here?” I said, opening the Star Trek flip cover. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question, as I already knew the answer. Burt didn’t bother to reply.
I examined the phone. It gave the time of day in big numbers on the screen. I knew that young people did not even wear watches anymore. They got their time from cell phones. I wasn’t that young.
“Agency?” I went on.
“Safaricom chip,” Burt said back. That meant the phone was on a local system instead of any international. It was a relatively untraceable way to communicate, but I wasn’t thinking of calling anyone until we knew more of what we were involved with. Phone calls would give more information out than I was comfortable with. I wondered what other toys Burt had. The mission had been cadged together at the last minute. There had been no clearance meetings, or even initial planning sessions. Things like ingress, egress, communications, armament,
and even financing, had been thrust upon us instead of being homogeneously put together with forethought and design. I put the phone in my pocket. Now I had a bulge on each side, but high fashion was not something common to Eastern Africa.
“Braclays is over in Queensway House on Kuanda,” I pointed out.
I walked in that direction, looking around to see if any of our pursuers had picked us up. If they were Agency personnel we would not have much time on our own. The Agency was terrific at surveillance, and two white guys in downtown Nairobi would not be too hard to find no matter who was looking.
We walked into the lobby of the bank. There were private security guards stationed everywhere, including one on each side of a bank of ATMs. I inserted one of my Visa debit cards, punched in the four-digit code and hoped. Local shillings were all we were going to get from any ATM in the country, which was okay, except for the fact that the largest shilling note issued was for a thousand. With the exchange rate running at about seventy shillings to the dollar, that meant a
Thousand-shilling note was only worth about thirteen dollars.
I used four cards to get a total of sixty thousand shillings out of the machine. The stack of bills was over an inch thick. I shoved the folded wad into my back pocket and we headed for the door. Nine hundred bucks, or so, would have to do.
There was nobody noticeable on Kaunda Street, so we crossed to the Catholic Basilica. We went straight in through a huge gothic entrance. The place was straight out of the dark ages, with tourists gathered together in small guided clumps.
I took Burt all the way to the front of the huge old church and sat him in the front pew. Unconsciously, I genuflected before taking a seat next to him. The lighting was dim to the point of darkness. The place was perfect.
“Stay here. I’ve got to berth us aboard the train going east tonight.
I’m less noticeable alone. Whatever we ran into started down there, where Smith died, so we’re going back to the scene of the crime, if we live that long.”
I looked over at the big man, wondering what the hell he was doing. I was known for my rather unconventional behavior, which had gotten us into the mess we were in, but it was uncommon for wet workers like Burt to be anything but sticklers for following Agency directives and rules.
“What about the woman? You told her to meet us. You don’t think she’ll come?” Burt asked. I rubbed my forehead, thinking for a moment.
“I do think she’ll come, but I don’t want to take her to Mombasa on this, not that she would go. I wanted her to meet us so I could talk to her about what she knows. We can’t drive all night down to Mombasa. We’d be sitting ducks on that rough road. The Agency has drones. We have to hope that whoever is after us will calculate that we’ll run to Jomo and fly out as quickly as we can.”
“We’re going to Mombasa?” Burt asked.
“Yes, we’ve got to get out of Nairobi.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt repeated, this time with a strange tone of enthusiasm. I had more questions about his involvement but they could wait until we were on the train.
I left him there, heading of across the downtown common area for the station. I realized that I should have asked to see if he had a second phone, when the cell phone in my pocket rang. It was Burt.
“I have another phone. The number’s on the dialer, titled King Kong.”
I thought about his self-derived nickname he had given himself. I tucked away a thought to examine his phone to see what he’d chosen for me.
“Thanks,” I responded, not knowing what to say. The man was proving to be an enigma, like maybe a bear with human intelligence would be. Burt hung up. I waited until I was tucked into a corner alcove of the Kenya Bank, right across Haile Selassie Avenue from the station, and then flipped the phone open again. I called Staff Sergeant Stevens, hoping he was still around. I was compromising the cell phone by calling the Embassy, but I had little choice. I had to have more data. I did not believe that the Agency had sent men to kill me. It was just not done. There was no need. They could just recall me and lock me up any time they wanted. They didn’t need to kill field agents. They had worse punishments. Imprisonment and loss of retirement were much more feared punishments, and very commonly applied. In the final analysis, when Burt had been instructed to shoot me, he had refused. Field agents did not kill field agents. There was no career left to an agent who participated in such action, and we all knew it. It was not even entirely believable that he had been ordered to do such a thing.
“I can’t tell you anything at this point,” Stevens said, without preamble. I held the phone out and stared at it for a second. Whether Burt’s phone was already target material, or whether Stevens had been waiting for an unknown call, I did not know, but there was no point asking. Stevens was a Marine, first and foremost, above wife, country and even God. It resonated through him.
“Is she coming?” I asked.
“Tower, in twenty,” he said, and then hung up. I turned to my right and looked up at the tallest building in East Africa. The Times Tower. That was the tower. Twenty, in Marine parlance meant twenty minutes. She was coming. I was relieved, and intrigued, by her conduct. I hadn’t been absolutely sure that she would come. Not nearly as certain as I’d led Burt to believe.
Seeing no one of any consequence over at the long cinder block construct of a railway station, I crossed the street and entered the facility. I was always surprised that it was clean. Even the bathrooms were clean. And the rain earlier in the day had helped, giving the place a fresh, although local, scent. I went to the line of booths under a sign that said “Kenya Railroad Berthing Allotment.’ I could not help looking around suspiciously as I approached the attendant behind his bars.
“Two, first class cabin for Mombasa.” The man looked at me, the black visor of his blue cap shined to a high luster. As a former Marine myself, I could tell that it was polished leather and not the fake Corfam junk. There was one train to Mombasa every night. It arrived there, from Nairobi, early in the morning. Tickets were booked in advance, and for cash.
“Papers,” the man said, primly, holding out one hand toward the slot
under the bars.
I took out my wad of shillings, peeled off four of them, then slid them through the slot. The 1st class fare to Mombasa was posted on the chalk board behind the man. It said nine hundred shillings. I waited. He stared down.
“For two,” he said. “Private room with clean bedding and first service in the dining car.” The money was gone when I looked down. I had not seen the man’s hands move. He took two tickets from a drawer, shoved them toward the slot, then looked behind him and made believe he was concentrating on something else. I let him, taking the tickets and walking back toward the platform, until I saw the woman.
A white woman stood out form the building, peering up and down the platform, as if looking for a train. But there was no train, nor would there be until the evening run was ready to be made at around seven. The events at the Safari Park had occurred so quickly and intently that I could not recall if the woman was the same as the one with the camera crew. But she was looking for something. And I knew I was being looked for. I went into the restroom without going out onto the platform. From a stall I called King Kong and filled him in, about the woman and about Joan’s pending arrival, now only fifteen minutes away. Burt’s analysis was better than mine. If the woman was there, then the others would be in the area. We decided that I would try for the Railroad Museum just north of the station.
Before leaving the bathroom stall I removed a full roll of toilet paper. I carried it with me in my right hand.
The station was not crowded, which was unfortunate for my purposes, although no one gave me the slightest glance as I went out to the street side, gained the far edge of the building, and then darted across a twenty yard concrete expanse. The Railroad Museum was right there, with an old engine and cars lined up next to it. I hid behind the cars, kneeling to look up from under them. I did not observe any extraordinary interest or pursuit. After a five-minute wait, I did see the woman. She stood at the outside lip of the wooden platform. She gestured with one hand toward someone who seemed to be in the direction of my position, but I couldn’t see who she might be waving at. Finally, I went through the door into the museum.
The object of the woman’s attention was obvious once I was through the door. A large white male stood in front of me, his arms extending up and outward, as if to engulf me. Without thinking of the potential of terrible repercussions, my left hand went down. I brought the small forty-five up out of my pocket, flicked off the double-sided safety and walked right into the arms of the huge man. His attempt to grasp me never reached conclusion. I jammed the AMT into the side of the toilet paper roll, pressed the arrangement hard into his belly and squeezed the trigger.
The sound was not nearly as loud as I thought it would be.
The toilet paper roll shredded, but the man, amazingly, did not go down. Instead he held both hands to his stomach, an awful expression of pain on his face and a mewling grown coming form his open mouth. I marveled. The man appeared to be made of something tougher than hide, gristle and hair.
I ran, using a casual lope, which covered ground quickly but made me look more like a jogger than someone running from something. The gun stayed clutched in my left hand, so small it was invisible to anyone who might have been looking my way. I could not have run with a two-pound chunk of metal in one front pocket.
One thick hand waved from around the far side of the bank building, as I approached.
“What happened?” Burt asked, when I pulled up next to him, reseating the gun out of view.
“What in God’s name are you using for ammo?” I shot back. I had never known a forty-five round, at close range, fired into a man’s torso, to leave him standing and complaining0.
“Shot-shell,” Burt said, rather ruefully. I waited, looking back around the corner for some sign of pursuit, but there was none. When my head swung back I spotted the Pajero across the side street, just pulling up to the steps of the Times Tower. Burt saw it to. We started out together while he talked.
“I load a cartridge of birdshot as the first round. In all my guns. I’ve had a few occasions where I shot the wrong guy. A few years back I decided that I’d rather apologize for causing pain and misery than live with the other result.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The man was demonstrating an application of intellect and good judgment that I had never seen from any gun or pyrotechnics expert I had ever met. His forethought had saved the day. There would be no unexplainable dead body at the museum. No Caucasian ‘tourist’ slain by terrorists or robbers. The man I had hit would be marginally injured and very likely ambulatory. No cordons. No investigations. Our train trip was still possible.
“What’s the second round, some sort of nuclear device?” I asked, not entirely kidding. Burt didn’t answer. We were upon the car, which was not driven by Joan.
A young blond male with short hair sat behind the wheel. I got in behind him, while Burt went around. The DCM was in the front passenger seat.
“Drive into the traffic,” I told the kid, assuming he was one of Steven’s Marines. Without a word he wedged us in among the Matatas, trucks, and other conveyances trying to get from Kenyatta onto Mombasa Road. I looked behind us, but could not make out anything, but realized we had been either followed to the Railway Station without our realizing it or our behavior had been predicted.
“Thanks for coming,” I said to Joan, “and who are you?” I followed, rapping the youngster on his right shoulder .
“Corporal Sam Hill, Sir,” he answered. “I got the week off for leave but nowhere to go. Sergeant said I might come with you guys, if that’s okay.”
He looked to be a teenager to me, but most Marines do, as I get older.
“A guy just got shot back at the museum, and we’re being hunted by people we don’t know. Are you sure you want a piece of this?” I retorted. I didn’t mention that I’d done the shooting.
“Yes, sir,” the boy-child replied, filled with enthusiasm.
“Why’d you come?” I asked Joan, noting that her medium cut brown hair was perfectly combed. It seemed to float around her head. When she turned to face me, it bounced on its own a few times. I felt a warm glow. She’d carefully prepared to see me again.
“I wasn’t doing anything else,” she said, then smiled for the first time since I’d encountered her. I had a million questions I wanted to ask her but none of them had anything to do with our current situation.
“Thank you,” I repeated, getting control of myself, enough to find out what we needed to know. “How did your husband get involved in a CIA operation?” I asked her, directly.
“He’s not my husband, and I don’t know, but I know he did. What was it all about?” she asked me, in return. I noted that the nails of her left hand, draped over the side of the seat, were manicured, and painted to a high gloss. I could not tell the color, as blue was the only color I really saw well at all. Her eyes were intensely blue, with thick brows over them. I could see those. She had a stunning presence.
“What happened to Smith, down in Mombasa?” I countered, ignoring her question.
“It didn’t’ start in Mombasa,” she replied. “It ended there, down in that prison outside of town.”
“Shimo la Tiwa?” I asked? I knew the prisons of Kenya. Not hellholes like the prison typified in the movie Midnight Express, put out in the seventies, but dirty bad places to try to survive in, especially for a Caucasian.
“G.K,” she said, shaking her head, “I think it was called, from what I heard.”
G.K. were the two letters mounted above the iron grate entrance to Shimo prison. I’d never found out what they stood for, but I said nothing to Joan. We had a location to work back from. It was also instructive that Smith had been in prison, not in jail. It spoke of an unlikely permanence.
“Where did it start?” I asked her.
“What?” Joan replied, not focused on the data I was trying to get from her.
“Smith. You said all of it started somewhere. Where?” I asked, patiently.
“Oh,” she answered, taking her time. I wondered if it was because of perplexity or evasion. “At the Embassy. Smith came to see Paul at the Embassy.
Neither of them were happy about the meeting, but I don’t know what they talked about.”
“Was your Communications Director present for the meeting?” I inquired, wanting to know if the local CIA ‘cowboy’ stationed at the Embassy was involved.
“That guy?” she came back. “Tyrell? No, why would he be there?”
I couldn’t believe that the DCM of a major embassy could remain unaware of the facility’s only CIA operative, however ceremonial his role was, but I let it pass.
I would deal with Tyrell later.
“We’re going down there, to Mombasa,” I told her, not really understanding why I was giving her any information whatsoever. I just felt that I had to trust somebody and, for some reason I could not fathom, I found the DCM to be imminently trustable.
“The train. You’re taking the train tonight, aren’t you?” she correctly assumed. “You’re going after Rafiq, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Rafiq Salim was the name of our Lebanese target from the mission. I tried to think of why Joan would think we would pursue him down in Mombasa. The Agency had informed me that he lived in Nairobi where he ran a jewelry business. Without prompting, she gave me the answer.
“He lives down there. His family runs one of the ferries.”
I almost groaned aloud. Whatever we were involved in just kept getting more and more complex. I couldn’t seem to find any truth in anything.
“What do you want me to do, sir?” the corporal asked.
“Well for one, Sam Hill, I want you to stop calling me sir. My name is Jack.” I didn’t make the obligatory joke about ‘Sam Hell’ as I presumed he had been living with that all of his life. “Then, when we’re done here, I want you to drive this vehicle down to Mombasa. You have a cell phone?” The boy handed me a white card, like the generic Marine Corps card Staff Sergeant Stevens had given me. There was a Kenyan number on it in pencil. A ton of numbers really, but they seemed to work.
I noted that he was attired in a worn canvas outfit, with lots of pockets. He looked like an assistant to a tour director for one of the tourist ‘safari’ adventures, or maybe one of the redemption-seeking workers for an aid agency. In Kenya to seek redemption from living a life of spoiled ease and meaninglessness.
Joan’s information, if it was valid, changed everything. Mombasa was revealing itself as the key to our mystery, or at least the place where the key might be found.
“When you get down there, and you should arrive hours before us, go to the Inter-Continental and hang out. I’ll call you. We need a car down there, and it might as well be this one.” I could not rent a car for cash in Kenya. Renting another car, no matter what the bribe, would take a host of paper and plastic backup I was not willing to give out. I no longer believed that the Agency was after us. But somebody with assets and motivation was. I was not going to give them anymore than I absolutely had to.
“The embassy is locked down,” Joan said.
“How’d you get out?” I asked, but then didn’t wait for an answer, already knowing that Stevens was at work. The Ambassador would be howling mad when he discovered his ex-wife, his DCM, was not there. “When you going back?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll catch a Matata home. I don’t understand any of this and I need to think, and maybe drink half a bottle of Grey Goose while I do it. Can we go somewhere and talk? Do you have time? Is there some place?”
I was surprised by her request. I was also surprised, however, that she had gotten out from under an embassy lockdown. The woman was starting to amaze me even more than Burt. We had several hours to kill before getting aboard the train, and we needed to be someplace where we could be off the streets. The bottle of Grey Goose sounded wonderful, but it was not to be.
“The Java House, on Argwings, just off Kenyatta, you know it?” I said to the corporal.
“Kinda,” he answered, biting the sir off before it came out of his mouth. He made me feel old and slow, totally unlike what I got from Joan.
“Make it so,” I said, emulating Jon Luke Piccard from Star Trek.
“Engage,” he laughed back, diving out of the traffic, across two medians and reversing our course of travel. I noted that another vehicle tried the same maneuver but only managed to create a massive traffic tie-up behind us. Whoever they were, they were persistent and good. Just not as good as a crazy teen-aged Marine driving a Pajero in downtown Nairobi.
“What changed?” I said to Joan, as the Pajero rocked back and forth, avoiding all manner of obstacles I tried not to pay attention to, only too happy to be taking the train instead of riding with Sam.
“What changed about what?” she retorted, holding fast to the sissy bar mounted above her window.
Communicating with the woman was maddening.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt said, unaccountably.
http://from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
What the hell, I'll put it on her anyway. What are they going to do, kick me off?
Closer to God
Hakuna Matata
III
The reinforced double-steel door of the underground parking lot slowly retracted sideways across our view. It was too impossibly heavy to rise vertically. We sat waiting in the Pajero, DCM next to me in the passenger seat and Burt just behind her. Staff Sergeant Stevens pushed another button and rock barriers at the top of the drive began to sink into pre-formed slots. He held up one hand, watching the stones, until they were gone, replaced by metal grates that snapped loudly into place. His hand moved and became a salute. The kind only a Marine is capable of making. I nodded at the man, putting the Nissan into gear. Mrs. Haggerty waved to him, as well, but I knew the salute was intended for me. I smiled my appreciation. His arm came down. He pointed at the windshield as I drove by. I looked at the small white card under the wiper, then reached my hand around through the open window and claimed it.
Bright afternoon sun had replaced the rain, and a cooling wind blew through the Pajero’s open windows, as we waited to take a left onto Limuru Road. Traffic was heavy, and Kenyan’s gave no quarter when it came to driving. We plunged into the melee but didn’t have far to go. Muthaig’s crowning feature was the Safari Park, Kenya’s only real five star hotel with any local flavor.
We waited to take the turn into the hotel.
“May I call you Joyce?” I asked.
“No, you may not,” the DCM shot back, not looking at me, instead examining the wedding band still located on the appropriate finger of her left hand. “You can call me Joan,” she relented. “I hate the name Joyce.”
“You look terrific, Joan,” I said, quite truthfully.
“Fuck off,” Joan stated, her voice evidencing disgust, “don’t try your smooth, urbane, man-of-the-world crap on me.”
I checked the rear view mirror, to see Burt trying to cover his smile with one hand. He avoided my eyes.
“Thank you,” she followed up, unaccountably. The woman was confounding me. I was afraid to speak, but felt somehow, that she wanted me to say something.
I was in a verbal minefield.
“How long have you been divorced?” I tried, figuring that almost every divorced person I had ever met loved to talk about the divorce, and how rotten the other person was.
“None of your God damned business,” she hissed, massaging her wedding band hand, but looking out the side window. I waited for more, but nothing came.
“Two years?” I offered.
“Two years?” she turned on me, speaking the words loud enough to make me raise my right shoulder and wince. “Two years? What kind of idiot are you? Oh, I almost forgot, you’re a spook. One of those Southern-Fried-Chicken-University types who populate Langley. What’d you major in, Bo Weevil Mating? If I’d been divorced for two years, do you think I’d still be the DCM for that idiot?” Spittle hit my cheek.
I heard a barely audible giggle from behind me, but I didn’t look in the mirror. I finally hustled the Pajero through the broken ‘tiger-teeth’ jam of the opposing traffic.
“Ah, no,” I blurted out to her series of questions, driving as fast as I could manage to get to the hotel as quickly as possible.
“No, what?” she yelled. “No, you have a degree is something else, like maybe Burro Husbandry, or ‘Poor-White-Trash’ farming?” I shook my head, in agony.
The huge pyramidal structure of the Safari Park main building appeared and I headed the car for it like it was a laser-guided smart bomb. Supposedly the willow reed thatched buildings had been designed with clues taken from native Kenyan hovels, but in truth, there was nothing in the country that looked like the place.
Without meaning to, I skidded the Pajero to a halt directly in front of the lobby, and jumped out. I moved around the vehicle to get Joan’s door, but one of the bellmen had already attended to that. She stood waiting. Burt was out and leaning against the back fender, as if ready to enjoy more of the show. The show being my complete humiliation.
Joan headed straight for the lobby. I followed closely behind her, noting how powerfully she strode, her black pumps clicking loudly across the tiled floor of the entrance. Burt ran into me, because I had run into Joan. She had stopped too suddenly for me to avoid her. The three of us grabbed one another and swayed.
“Oh great, slimed by a Halloween spook,” she exclaimed, pushing herself from my fumbling grasp.
“Would you stop that?” I said, as quietly as I could to her retreating back.
“Look what happened to the last guy who got outed on your watch?” I followed up. She flinched, but kept walking.
“Good one,” Burt whispered behind me, which made me frown.
We trailed behind the fast moving woman through the lobby and out the back, around a great blue pool surrounded with palm trees of all sizes, and on past the cascading series of wonderful waterfalls that gave all the interior rooms of the establishment a special serenity. The Hilton, and the Sarova hotels have better rooms than the Safari, but none can come close to matching its ambiance. I knew where we were headed. The Nyama Choma Ranch Restaurant was the only thing left between us and the Muthaiga jungle forest. It was simply the finest African food restaurant in Kenya. Nothing else was close. I yearned for an Ostrich steak covered in Monkey-brain gravy. No monkeys involved, of course. Its only a name.
Under one side branch of the falls I caught a flash of movement. Then it was gone. It had been part of a head, sticking out of the bushes, viewing our arrival. I slowed. Burt stumbled into me. I was a little shaken, as I came to a stop, while Joan disappeared into the opening of the restaurant.
“What?” Burt inquired, backing up a step.
“I wouldn’t take an oath on it, but I think the Lebanese just checked us out from beyond the falls.” The water pouring down upon the rocks made talking difficult, but Burt got my message. He turned automatically, putting a palm trunk between himself and the falls.
“You still got that hand cannon under your coat?” I asked, remaining in the open. If we had walked into an ambush no thin palm tree was going to save us.
Burt nodded, but did not make any moves to access it.
“Got anything else?” I asked, feeling a bit naked.
Burt showed me three fingers, held down at his side. Special Forces hand chatter. I always liked the one where the leader takes two fingers of one hand and aims them at his own eyes, so everyone will look at him. In practice, however, I’d found that the gesture, like so many, was all for show. Anybody who could see the gesture was already looking.
“Three?” I said, in amazement. “The Mau Mau’s were put down in 1960, for Christ’s sake. Give me anything small.”
Burt leaned down by genuflecting on right knee, hand sweeping back to flick the bottom of his pant leg upward. Quickly and smoothly, like an unfolding python, the thick muscular man rose up and delicately inserted a .45 Caliber AMT automatic into my open left hand. I stuck it immediately into my front trouser pocket. The five shot auto was small, yet as thick as a full blown Colt. The bulge was noticeable, but I had little choice. Klingon’s preferred to die fighting in combat, or so they said on Star Trek, and I was not going down unarmed.
“What does it mean?” Burt whispered, his eyes never leaving the area of the falls.
“I don’t know. Not good. What would he come here for? If Haggerty decided on Executive Action, then why would the man come where the man is? He’s a U.S. Ambassador, for God’s sake. And how would he know where he was? I haven’t been able to make sense out of anything since we were out there on the Serengeti.” Joan came back out of the restaurant, looking even more impatient then when she’d walked in.
“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, clicking up to us.
“Admiring the falls,” I covered.
“Oh great, a gay spook and his cultured Troglodyte,” she complained, in exasperation. “Paul’s in there having lunch with one of his mysterious companions.
Should I announce you or do you want to make a grand entrance?”
“We’re coming. Please show us the way,” was all I could say. The woman did not elicit lengthy response, not without dealing out considerable pain.
“What’s a Troglodyte?” Burt asked, from behind. I was about to answer when I had another thought. I stopped again, this time with the four-top table, where the Ambassador sat with some unidentified white male, in sight. “Back out Burt, this could be a hit on Haggerty.” Why else would the Lebanese not take a taxi home, but instead head straight for his antagonist. Who was the Lebanese? He’d acted as prey, very convincingly, but he wasn’t acting that way anymore. Burt backed up to the restaurant entrance, and then disappeared into a hidden alcove. I moved to Joan’s side at the table.
“What’s this?” Paul said, slowly getting to his feet. He stared at me in surprise, and recognition. I stood stunned. The man could only have recognized me if he had a file photo. I relaxed a little as I realized that someone might have called him from the embassy. Cell phones worked amazingly well in Nairobi. I didn’t carry one but I was willing to bet that Burt had three or four under his “Q” designed safari rig.
“Sit,” I commanded the DCM, pulling out a chair for her. She hesitated.
“There’s danger here, sit and act like everyone else,” I continued. She took the chair. I sat at the one next to her, across from the two men. The Ambassador joined us.
“What,” he began, but I held up my right hand. I slid my left hand into the .45 pocket at the same time. The automatic was double action, I knew. In the silence over the table a distinct metallic click sounded. The automatic was off safety. All four of us sat frozen.
“You can worry about me later Paul,” I said, conversationally. “The same Lebanese, the subject of our attention a few hours ago, was out by the falls a few minutes ago. I let him off near the airport, where he was supposedly going to go into hiding. I might have erred and cost you your life, but I don’t want Joan here, or your friend, to go out with you. What do you think?” The waiter came over and placed water, without ice, in front of both Joan and I. We sat in silence.
“Ah, how sure are you,” Paul began to ask, but I cut him off.
“This is the Choma, and the waiter just brought us glasses of water, not bottled water like you have.” I smiled, wondering if the man would get it, as I prepared to go to the floor and attempt to crawl behind some nearby decorative rocks. If anybody opened up I could count on Burt to provide intense covering fire, but his ammo wouldn’t last long. The only safety might be found in staying less than a foot off the ground. An assassination at such a notable hotel and restaurant would have to be over in seconds. Surviving the first few seconds would be everything.
“The waiter’s not a waiter?” Joan said in a low tone, her voice shaking. “What have you done Paul? What are we in?”
“Alright,” the Ambassador said, ignoring his ex-wife and speaking directly to me. “Maybe I was wrong about you. I apologize. What do we do?”
I was amazed. The man was apologizing for attempting to kill me. I sighed.
Being an operational agent for the Agency could not be taught in schools or learned in books. It was too bizarre for that.
“We leave. Slowly, without fanfare, you move toward the kitchen over there Paul, while your friend heads for the washroom in back. Joan, you’re going out all the way to the street, where you’ll wait in the Pajero. You drive. I’m going to knock my silverware onto the floor, then lean down to pick it up. If there’s fire, then you all drop and stay where you are, without moving at all. If there’s fire, it‘ll probably be at me, here at the table, where they intended to shoot. The silverware hitting the floor is your cue. Got it?” Nobody said anything. “Tell me you got it?” I instructed.
Joan murmured something, while Paul and his companion said yes at the same time. I pushed my fork onto the floor. It hit with the sound of a ringing bell.
Everyone moved. I went to one knee, then leaned under the table and fell to my stomach, turning to bring the .45 out and up. I had no more time than that. The phony ‘waiter’ stepped out of the bushes holding an old-fashioned double barrel shotgun. The ends of the barrels looked huge, as he stood only two feet over me.
My AMT was only inches from his stomach. I laid there, looking up into his eyes while taking all the slack, and a little more, out of the .45’s trigger. Slowly, he moved the shotgun aside, cocking his head, as if in question. I gave him back the thinnest of smiles, wondering what Burt was thinking, since he wasn’t doing anything. The man stepped back into the bushes and was gone. I breathed for the first time since I’d hit the floor. I then crawled to the front of the restaurant, right past the host at the front desk. He looked down at me in amazement, until he saw the automatic in my hand. Then he dropped down and disappeared.
I got up and began loping back through the areas of the falls and pool. I saw nothing of anyone, save a few tourists laying near the water or taking pictures of everything around. At the main entrance I paused to observe some kind of film crew who were set up down near where cars circled to let people off. The Pajero idled near their large, tri-pod mounted, camera. Several large Caucasian men milled nearby, and one long-haired young woman. The passenger door snapped open. I saw Joan at the wheel and Burt’s hand sticking out from releasing the door. I jumped in.
“I think we’re gonna be famous,” I said, but nobody laughed.
Joan jerked the Pajero into gear and tore off back around the circle, headed for the traffic mess on Limuru Road. “What happened back there?” she asked.
I was about to answer her when Burt made a comment.
“The woman. I saw her. At the airport in Joburg. I think she was on my flight.”
I twisted around to face him, letting go of my seat belt.
“You flew direct from Johannesburg, and she was on the flight?”
Where where you flying to? You came down from Lake Victoria.”
I watched the big man closely. I had come to trust him, but I didn’t know just how far yet.
“Zurich. Then Zurich to down here. I met Walt up at the falls, to check it out. We had a couple days.”
“Shit,” I said, out loud, turning back to face Joan. “Pull down into the traffic, and then stop. Burt and I are getting out. You take the car to the embassy. You should be alright. I pulled Staff Sergeant Steven’s card from my shirt pocket.
Give me your cell phone number.” I took out my pen to write.
“Are you crazy? You’ll get killed out there. All this because somebody was on the same plane? And that whole restaurant thing? You’re looney and paranoid, and maybe dumb as a post.”
“The number,” I repeated, patiently. “There was a guy with a shotgun at the restaurant. I think he was there for your husband.”
“Double gun.” Burt added, from the back seat. I looked back to him in question.
“Looked like one of those Holland and Holland things. Big bore.
Elephant gun.”
I whistled. A gun like that would sell for a cool twenty-five thousand dollars, if not more. Whoever was involved in the mess we’d stepped into was very well heeled. And that was bad news indeed.
“He’s telling the truth?” Joan asked of Burt, her voice going up.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “Donner is the best there is. Not well liked, but the best there is.”
I would have commented but the back window of the Pajero blew out, along with the rear driver’s side glass. There had been no sound, except the whoosh and tinkle of breaking glass. Joan screamed, then drove recklessly right out into the middle of Limuru Road. Cars, vans and trucks careened and honked, but no contact was made. The SUV stalled out. I looked out the back, through the gaping hole, over the seat where Burt crouched down. The camera crew had scattered to cars and vans, now fighting one another to get out of the narrow driveway.
“The Railroad Station. We’ll wait there. When I call you, come get us.”
I flew between the seats and shot out the driver-side passenger door, Burt behind me.
“Like hell I will,” Joan yelled, “and you don’t have my number.”
I stood and put my hand up against the flow of traffic, which flowed around us like a thick school, of metallic fish. I liked the woman. She was tough as iron and she wouldn’t abandon us after we’d stood up for her. She’d figure it out.
A red mini-van, with a strange hand-painted poster of The Lion King splashed across its front, screeched to a halt, almost touching my hand. A gold stripe ran around the van’s body. I’d stopped a Matata, one of the thousands that constantly prowled the streets of Nairobi. They came in three kinds, regular, gospel and teeny. The regular one’s were for regular people, like most tourists. The gospel one’s blared reborn gospel music at impossibly volumes. The teeny ones were even worse, pumping out acid rock and rap. The latter two were mostly for locals.
Joan got the Pajero started. She joined the traffic flow. The side door of the Matata opened and a young hand waved. Burt and I crawled inside. There were already three teens inside, plus the driver and his ‘conductor,’ who collected the fare. Matatas had gotten their name from their original fare of three shillings. Now, the prices were variable, going all the way up to fifty shillings or more. Fifty shillings being about seventy-five cents American. The Matata didn’t move. Teeny conveyances were weird. They would carry people they liked, or thought were cool for free, or not let you in at all if they didn’t like your look. I could tell that the conductor didn’t like our look.
“You got any money?” I asked Burt. He shook his head. I stared at the evil looking teenager in front of me, trying to ignore the blast of horrid rap coming out of the Matata’s speakers. We had to get the hell out of there. I took off the Omega and held it up.
“Omega, Speedmaster, Astronauts took to the moon, four thousand U.S.” I said. The kid looked at the watch.
“Sare,” he said, then grabbed the watch. Sare, I knew, meant ‘free’ in the local street slang called Sheng. The kids spoke it, like pigeon in Hawaii.
“Sare, my ass,” I responded, angrily. “Railroad Station, right now.”
I tried to see out the windows of the mini van, to see if our new band of followers were there. They had to be. But I also knew they’d never be able to stay on us unless, somehow, they’d been able to attach a GPS unit to our specific Matata. Not likely. Not likely at all.
Matatas were the locusts of Nairobi streets, and they were nearly indistinguishable in outer appearance. We drove Limuru toward Mombasa Road in a veritable sea of them, our vast overpayment of fare overwhelming the driver’s natural tendency to stop for anyone else. Our teenage riders stayed with us to the station, without complaint or comment.
“Who were those guys, anyway?” Burt asked.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “They’re Caucasian, all of ‘em, and I don’t think they’re with the Lebanese. They look like Agency. And they fired on us.”
Ironically, a piece from the Lion King soundtrack blared out from the radio. Hakuna Matata played. I looked around at my fellow passengers. They didn’t seem to get the irony at all. Then the words of the song hit me. “Hakuna Matata! It’s a wonderful phrase. It means no worries for the rest of our days.”
For more information on Kenya and Kenyans:
http://www.softkenya.com
This is a wonderful Kenyan website.
Generation "O" Main Blog & Unique "O" Wear/Gear @ Generation O on Zazzle
Hi, I'm new here...wish I had found this site sooner, but better late than never.
Looking for possible ways to get more involved in the process of making our world a better place alongside people in my community...ya know, to get in where I fit in.
Still learning my way around this site...
Read y'all later,
Monika
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By Mail Foreign Service (UK)Last updated at 11:32 AM on 03rd December 2008
Sarah Onyango, Barack Obama's grandmother has revealed Mr Obama's grandfather was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau rebellion
Barack Obama's grandfather was imprisoned for two years and tortured by white British soldiers during Kenya's bloody fight for independence, his family have said.
Hussein Onyango Obama, the U.S. President-Elect's paternal grandfather, worked as a cook for a British army officer after the war.
He became involved in Kenya's independence movement, which spiralled into a terrifying uprising by guerilla fighters known by the mysterious name 'Mau Mau'.
Hussein Onyango was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high security prison as the British struggled to quell one of Africa's bloodiest and most desperate rebellions against colonial rule......
ENTIRE ARTICLE -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1091499/Barack-Obamas-grandfather-tortured-British-Kenyas-Mau-Mau-rebellion.html
I have read several references to a 'tsunami,' with respect to describing the coming effects of this financial cataclysm. I sometimes wonder if those references, by mostly famous people, come from my earlier description, not that that matters. But all those references have gotten it wrong. The water is still going out! Waves are not coming in yet. Oh yes, we have banks and financial houses, even auto companies, on the brink and being 'bailed out.' I guess a good analogous description would put those efforts, the paying out of newly printed money to hold off disaster in those companies and industries, into best perspective in the following way. Our government is paying the wave to stay the hell out there. It can work for a little while. But its gotta come in eventually. That wave is a quadrillion dollar wave. Maybe a bit bigger. That's a thousand trillion dollars. We have assembled about six trillion and spent about four of that so far. We might put together another six trillion, which would make this bailout the largest expenditure of funding ever made by any government, for anything, on this planet. And still, it pales next to the quadrillion or more sitting out there.
Some people are talking about how we are going to be able to get through all this (without going through bankruptcy or cancelling our existing currency) by having a central worldwide bank and extending credit from that. A bigger version of the United States Bank, backed by our government alone, which I expounded on a few blogs back. Are we willing to sacrifice all of our sovereignty? Are we really ready for Friedman's flat earth? If we are, then being poor for a long long time will be where and how we live. Ninety percent of the world lives in some sort of poverty. Yes, that is a huge percentage. Only twenty-five percent of the planet has sufficient energy and food in order to have heating, air conditioning and eat a healthy diet. The media has shown us nothing else, really. We saw some of it marginally when Bono was on tour in Africa, but we kind of blew by it. We see just a few little swatches of the real world on newscasts about the Sahara, the Eastern Bloc and most of China, but we just let that stuff slip by. I liked to say, when I was traveling out there (which I don't do much of anymore) that the difference between a Republican and a Democrat back here was simply world travel. If you go out there, and get away from the airport and four star hotels, you see it. You begin to live it with those people. That expression applies: "If you stare into the abyss long enough, it begins to stare back at you."
In Mombasa, Kenya, the average yearly income for a family is less than a thousand dollars. I once supported a small village there, for many years, on a contribution of only two hundred and fifty a month. The world is a poor place indeed. And Kenya is not considered anywhere near the poorest! The questions posed by these facts are these: Do we live comfortably, thinking, creating and building technology to the point where all of us are lifted from poverty? Or, do we share absolutely everything we have and live in poverty with everyone else on the planet, and going nowhere? Maybe there ought to be two follow-on questions. Do we have enough generosity built into our culture to share the advances our status allows us to create and build, when we reach that point? And, do we have the kind of generosity it would take to simply distribute everything we now have to those who are not as well off as we are today, and then live with them in their circumstance?
And we ready for one central ruling body running the planet and the representatives of countries appointing those people who would make all the decisions from such an authority? Have we done that great a job with the United Nations? Have we done that great a job with our own country? If you answer no to those two questions then what idiocy would it take for us to just throw in with a financial entity that was created to make financial decisions for the world? Why trust them? Who do we trust now? Do we trust our banker? Our insurance companies? How can we? Did the people we trusted act honorably in taking this quadrillion I write about? Even if they changed and shaded the rules in order to make their thieving 'legal,' do we accept such behavior as being worthy of our trust again? If not, then why are these executives not being discharged across the land? Who's heads are rolling? None of them are losing their jobs. There is only talk of those people not being paid bonuses. Not getting the same amount of stock options. That sort of thing. But the, the wave is not really visible out there yet. But the water keeps on going out farther and farther.
It is Thanksgiving tomorrow. Whom do we thank? God? Well, thanks God. I don't understand You, but then everyone says that I am not supposed to or you would not be God. I would be. And we can't have that. So I thank God, for whatever. I have it okay. I have been given gifts. I prayed for strength so He gave me tremendous problems that I had to solve. After railing against Him about that, I finally figured out that He had also given me the gifts, if applied, to beat the problems. And I have never really figured out whether He gave me the problems, anyway. I just kind of had and have to believe. And He did not give me that gift.
So, I thank the people I am close to. I thank family and friends. I thank some of you out there who communicate with me regularly and positively, even though my rather strange life-style and opinions do not always merit such. I am sorry about the people I have hurt...and there is indeed a line of those back there, and I promise to continue to exert every effort in my being to try harder. To have a stronger sense of honor, integrity and compassion. The very things I write about in all my bodies of work. There is a happiness and bliss in my life and I wish it upon you, whoever you may be out there...on this night and on the morrow. Happy Thanksgiving.
As reported by the Associated Press:NAIROBI, Kenya - The American author of a best-selling book attacking Barack Obama as unfit for the presidency was being deported from Kenya on Tuesday, a criminal investigations official said. Jerome Corsi, who wrote "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," was picked up by police Tuesday for not having a work permit, said Carlos Maluta, a senior immigration official in charge of investigations. He was briefly detained at immigration headquarters before being brought to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for deportation, said Joseph Mumira, head of criminal investigations at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.Here's the rest of the story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27065133/Obama - Biden '08, Can't Wait!!!
Why I campaign for Obama?
First of all, too put it mildly, I was really dissappointed that Bush won the last TWO times! But that's neither here nor there. That's not why I'm campaigning for Obama.
And then, Sarah Palin? Seriously? What were you thinking, John McCain? I think Sarah Palin was a symbol for the republicans to get excited about. They saw the crowds Obama was gathering and they felt left out. So this gave them a venue to play too, but I believe her 15 minutes of fame are up. The more she lies and gets called on it, the more facts that come out about her, the more she's proving to be Bush in a skirt. She's petty, vengeful, heartless, secretive, evasive, uneducated, her cabinet in Alaska consists of her inner loyal circle since high school and family. I can go on and on, but she's not worth my breath. She's an insult to me as a woman and a mother. She's not my leader. Not MY president. And with McCain at 72 with Melanoma, I don't want her waiting in the wings.Finally, Why I'm actively involved in the election this year like never before, campaigning for Barack, knocking on doors, going to meetings, wearing my pin, and talking to everyone who might be undecided? Because I see greatness in Barack Obama, and I can't do nothing. I'm reading his first Memoir, Dreams from my Father, to get it straight from the horse's mouth, in the mindset of when he was just coming out of Harvard... before any publicly elected office. He lived a fascinating life. I've been constantly doing research, looking up everything I can and cross-referencing. Thorough research is important so I can speak intelligently and don't hurt the credibility of the campaign. There's a lot of mis-information out there. I may have inadvertently passed on wrong information that I have found in my searches, but it's a process. The more I learn about Obama the more respect I have for him. It seems his whole life, in all his struggles, in all his experiences, and his education, he's been unknowingly groomed to be a great leader. He is INSISTENT about having people in his circle who span the ideological spectrum so he can hear and see all sides. When he was professor of Law at the University of Chicago for 12 years, he was known to have standing-room only debates in his class. He invited the discussions to be completely open and the debates got hot, but that's how he approaches decisions. Out of that, and in the midst of seeming chaos, he has a talent for empathy and focus that calms the herds. He thinks on his feet and his mind is razor sharp. One thing that I've noticed from this book, is how he dealt with being half white and half black. He grew up in a white household, mostly in Hawaii, four years in Indonesia. His father, who was from Kenya, left when Barack was two. His father's name was also Barack. The book is fascinating. Anyway, from about 10 years old, after he moved back to Hawaii, he was starting to see how black people were treated differently in America and he was trying to find out why and what it meant to be a black American. This was also the age when his father came to visit for a month. Basically he was exposed to a variety of different cultures and world views growing up, and the black/white issue in America was another cultural curiosity in which he was immersed. As time went on, the more people he spoke to and became friends with, while he put himself in their shoes, it still wasn't him. He still had to decide who HE was. So he was outside looking in at the same time as being in it. He became a student of sociology. He questioned and analyzed everything about the black-American psyche. He dissected it until there was nothing left. Then he was able to communicate all those questions and conclusions so well, that for the first time in my life I've gotten a whole new understanding of the black American culture myself. I'm not done with the book yet, right now I'm where he went to Kenya for the first time after his father's death and he met so much of his family. Another immersion, a home coming to a place he had never been. Fascinating!Now, this skill of his. to immerse himself in different world views, empathize with people, analyze objectively, communicate, and focus. That's what I want in the white house.And I can't sit back and be a bystander on this election. I have to do something.Marianne
CNN has a video online on Barack's half brother George. He is a Kenyan and lives in Nairobi. He is classy, young and handsome, appears smart and thoughtful, and he is articulate.
George Obama is a brother I would choose to have over one by the name of George W. Bush any day. George Obama has impressed me with his richness of character and cleaniness of conscience, things that wealth cannot acquire or power cannot extort.
By: John Gorenfeld
They say nobody reads books anymore. But Dr. Jerome Corsi, the man of right-wing letters whose goofy books got Americans talking in 2004 about whether John Kerry shot himself on purpose (Unfit For Command), and in 2007 about the "coming merger with Mexico and Canada" (The Late Great U.S.A.) has just struck New York Times Bestseller List gold with his dumb new book, The Obama Nation. And this one has people asking whether Barack Obama plans to team up with his depraved cousin from Kenya—the Luo politician Raila Odinga—to make your daughters wear burqas and pledge allegiance to Terrorist Law.........
ARTICLE- http://cliffschecter.firedoglake.com/2008/08/06/jihad-fantasies-of-obama-dick-morris-and-kenya/
Obama's right-wing critics allege that he has a huge ego.
They are compiling a list of instances they claim reveal that this charismatic man is, well, too full of himself for his own good.
They cite his dietary habits — the words abstemious and picky pop up quite a lot — his alleged certitude about his own likeability, and his "tendency to praise himself," half in jest sometimes but mostly seriously.
What these Right-Wing nuts need to know, is that they are fretting over something they have no clue about -- it's got nothing to do with ego, it is a wonderful inheritance -- Embedded in Luo culture (Obama's father is a Luo from Kenya), as in other African cultures, is a certain machismo.
Read More Here
Last night we had the good fortune to host a dinner party for our family friend, a former Kenyan parliment member. The conversations revolved around the Kenyan situation post-violence, the world food shortage (food prices went up by 40% in Kenya last month)! and eventually, to our presidential campaign and the potential for Barack Obama to become president.
It was so interesting to hear about the hopes and opinions of a Kenyan woman regarding the possibility of Obama in the white house. To learn of the tribalism in Kenya and how that affects their unity- to the point of influencing how Obama is viewed in their country as well. It was fascinating to hear a foriegner's view on our media coverage of national elections as well as a more objective viewpoint on how fortunate americans are to have the opportunity to participate in the process... how it is often seen as not being taken advantage of by all of our citizenry.
Mostly, I was impressed by the comment she made when I was telling her of a recent expericence I had in Washington DC.... I was able to attend a conference where I sat ten feet from George W. Bush as he spoke to the attendees. As so often happens when I relate this story to my friends in liberal circles, I put in the aside, "even though he is not my favorite president"... which typically generates a hearty round of agreements from listeners. In this instance however, our guest interrupted with the remark, "Yes, but he is your president, and that is a great thing." It reminded me of what is so often overlooked in these days of fallen idols.
When it is not uncommon to see impeachment signs in windows and yards with each new administration, when it is daily grind to read about how our administration has lied to us in order to get into a costly war- and we just shake our heads and sigh... when political parties and advisors spew lies and defamations with the full knowledge that once they're in print and in media, it does'nt matter if they were fabricated... when all of this does not cause the outrage and rioting that were the standard of the 1960's... we have failed to see the office of presidency as a shining example of what democracy can be.
I have mulled over our conversations from the previous night. I have been thinking constantly today about how I crave to have something to hold up as a standard- something to look up to... something that gives me pride to be American... that ideal of what our system of government was supposed to embody... I realized that I am placing a lot of those hopes onto Mr Obama's campaign. It is my hope that others feel likewise and the movement that has been growing during the last 12 months will sweep the nation and give others, like our friend, something to smile about again when they speak of America and its system of government.
This past week there was possible closure to the December election in Kenya. Mwai Kibaki was kept as President. Raila Odinga was named Prime Minister. 40 Ministers and 52 Asiistant Ministers were also sworn into office.
Despite this solution there is still much concern about Kenya. Some critics have said today that there are now too many ministers in Kenya to run an effective government. To me the government seems like a parliament. There is also a need to have a land compromise in Kenya. Tensions could always continue in the Kibera slums.
Most likely the compromise will be in place when Senator Obama is President Obama next year. Senator Obama's father was at odds with Jomo Kenyatta when Obama's father was a cabinet minister and later removed from the government. I'm not sure of Senator Obama's relationship with Mwai Kibaki, but I am sure he will try to get a good solution to the current problems in his father's native country.
John Navarra
Ben Smith, Jeffrey Ressner Tue Apr 15, 5:43 AM ET
Barack Obama's dad was such an important but absent figure in his life that he devoted his first book, Dreams From My Father, to the search for details about his father's life and how the quest helped forge a son's identity.
Now, a long-forgotten essay written 43 years ago by Obama's father has surfaced, and its contents reveal much not only about the senior Obama's grasp of economic theory but also the iconoclastic politics that, his son would later write, sent him into the spiral of career disappointment that concluded with his death in 1982 in his native Kenya.
Parts of the article, titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism," have been making the rounds on several small blogs over the past week, but Politico is now reproducing the entire piece in its original form online for the first time.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89388159
