Doing Dangerously Well (45 page)

“Sure, hon. No problem.”

Barbara mirrored Mimi. “Thanks, sweetie.” Then she sailed out of the conference room, despite her balloon trousers’ aerodynamic resistance to such a movement.

A
s Barbara’s need for action peaked, her brain became increasingly addled—she did not know what item of business to focus on next. Mimi had not called for a month, so Barbara presumed she had taken the opportunity to sneak off to a sweat lodge or rebirthing ceremony.

Then the phone rang.

“Hiya, hon.”

Barbara recognized Mimi’s singsong, baby-girl tones. “Hey, Mimi.” Barbara turned on the lamp she had taken from Mimi’s desk. “Any news?”

“I’ve spoken to someone called Janet, your sister’s assistant. Do you know her?”

“Nope.” Barbara moved Mimi’s former lamp closer to Mimi’s former corkboard.

“She had an affair with Sinclair, but it didn’t work out. She says he’s crap in bed, and insisted on smearing blancmange
all over her. She can’t face mousse-like desserts anymore.”

“Really? Well, tell her to try Tantric Sexperience in Arizona. They have some passable masturbation workshops—”

“Look, hon, these people have enough money to pay for someone to do it for them.” Mimi sounded almost jealous. “You’re not going to believe this, but Kolo himself was behind the deaths of Abucha and his other allies. Guess why.”

“I don’t see how a workshop can hurt.”

Mimi continued, undaunted. “This is how it works: Sinclair mentions in their regular meetings that he has a rival bid for Kainji. Mary gives Kolo the name of Sinclair’s contact. Then Kolo gets rid of him.”

“What do you mean by ‘gets rid of’?”

“Assassinates.”

Barbara flicked open her notebook to write down the details. Her purple pen hovered over the paper. She realized she had nothing to write.

“Mimi, sugar, do you have any data? Names, dates, etcetera.”

“No. Only General Abucha. Janet was too drunk to provide details.”

Barbara wrote down “Janet—drunk—no details.”

“But I do know Sinclair’s next victim is the minister for the environment. If he goes down, then you’ll know I’m right.”

“Great!” Barbara wrote this down, her head wiggling with assurance. “I’ll get Jane onto it. Awesome work, hon.”

“No problem, sweetie.” Mimi actually sounded like she was enjoying herself. “I’ve met Sinclair briefly, and my God, he’s an absolute dreambo—”

Barbara slammed the phone down, unscrewed the fire alarm and lit some incense on her shrine. She visualized her sister’s downfall: the headlines, Mary’s disgrace, her parents’ humiliation and the neighbours’ shock.

Her sense of triumph was both fleeting and faint, soon replaced by unaccustomed anxiety for her sister. She tried to concentrate on her conquest, meditating on a vision of scales seesawing to a new position. The image vanished, supplanted by an image of Mary’s spindles reaching out of a clay tomb. Why was she involved in such a desperate game? In the face of her sister’s potential annihilation, Barbara doubted whether she could continue their rivalry with the same grim resolve. It seemed odd that such a transition should occur, but when she thought back, she could easily pinpoint the occasion of the shift: the moment she spotted the hand in the mud, beckoning change, bidding farewell to unimportant things.

A warm tingling spread through her body as she pictured the smile on Femi’s melancholy face and the pride on Aminah’s. So she chanted for the Nigerian people, for fresh water and for the safety of her friends.

New Age music floated over the sound of waves crashing and seagulls calling to each other, while Tibetan monks chanted an endless “ohhmm.”

She heard a bang on the wall.

Doubtless someone hanging a wall chart.

The winds began to blow—wild, gusting storms bringing with them the fine powders of the desert. Harmattan had enveloped Nigeria, sweeping over every surface, snaking into each hidden corner of life, curling into every crevice. Dust crept over tables and under sheets, immune to any degree of vigilance against its incursion. As far south as Lagos, sand drew across luminous skies and wrapped them in a brown haze. It dried people’s skin into scales and whipped into eyes, making them itchy and sore. Even those with the thickest eyelashes blinked their way through the season.

Despite the fact that pilots had no ground vision and airports lacked radar, Femi flew from Lagos to Jebba on Onada Airlines. It operated in any weather, as the company paid its pilots per flight. He met Aminah in the airport at Jebba, having no trouble spotting her since she wore a wrapper of unbridled patterning inspired by the full range of colours of the known spectrum, and above this a voluminous buba that exploited an infinite number of dyes to excite the farthest observer. Neither skirt nor blouse could hide her excessive curves. Her headdress had been starched and tied into a structure that any builder could only admire.

“My friend!” she yelled at the top of her voice, obliterating the announcements over the PA system. “Here I am!”

“Make I see,” he boomed back. “So—you have body, as Barbara says.”

Aminah threw her head back and screeched. Within moments, the sound destabilized into a violent wobble that Femi knew heralded the onset of riotous laughter. Though no one turned to face her, she was a pre-eminent artist in this arena—with spectrum, innovation and diapason unmatched by any other—and, like his fellow countrymen, he could only listen in awe. As always, attracting maximum attention served as their most efficient camouflage, as Jegede the legend was rumoured to hide in shadows.

Once she had reached his side, Aminah whispered, “So, who bombed the bus?”

Images of bloodied bodies arcing through the air bombarded Femi’s thoughts. “We think it was the African Water Warriors, but we have no proof. Igwe suspects a virus within. Most of us think that crazy white woman and her gunpowder goddess self organized something. Who knows?”

“Barbara Glass? She was the first one I considered. I was shattered by the thought.”

They snickered.

“And yet she sounded so upset, talking about the losses suffered by ‘we Nigerians.’”

“Hmm.” She raised her eyebrows well into her headwrap. “Well, at least TransAqua’s business is suffering.”

“Why did they think they could do business in Nigeria? Which person did they think would collect their money for them and then, like an idiot, hand it over? Are they mad?”

They both shook their heads, mystified.

It took a day to reach the village that sheltered the woman who knew too much about Kolo’s past. The air still bore a mild, uneasy tang. The thatch on some of the huts had blown away; their mud walls had cracked. The village seemed to be entirely deserted. There was only a haunted silence, broken by tiny sounds like lizards tickling across the sands.

Skinny chickens pecked at the grain that had fallen at the entrance to the village granary. Femi approached it, conscious of a rustling sound within—maybe a child hiding. He rose up on the balls of his feet to peek over its threshold, then screamed. The granary was teeming with rats, four or five deep, fighting for the remaining kernels.

Aminah stood with her hands on her vast hips, staring at a dead dog. “Water sickness,” she said.

Femi looked around for the ancient vendor. His stall still stood at the village entrance, but there was no trace of him.

In shock, they headed for the chief’s lodgings, Femi scolding himself for not coming sooner to talk to him about Kolo. “With all this death,” he said, “who knows if Kolo’s nanny will be alive? And if she is, will she able to talk?”

“Everyone is able to talk, although sometimes in silence, sometimes in screams.”

They entered the low concrete building where the chief had held his audience, and took off their shoes.

The chief, thin and bedraggled, sat on his chair, a few remaining retainers by his side. He had shrunk to almost half his size, so the skin hung tight to his bones. He seemed close to death. Femi and Aminah prostrated themselves before him, but he continued to stare into the middle distance. Femi wondered if the chief had lost his memory—or his mind.

Then a retainer whispered into the chief’s ear, and the old man broke out in a smile, the skin tightening over his bones. “Ah! Femi Jegede!” The chief continued to look past Femi to the other end of the room. “You have returned! I greet you!”

The chief held out his hand. An aide beckoned to Femi, who approached the dais. As the chief grasped Femi’s hand, with a warm smile still playing on his lips, Femi realized the man was blind, ravaged by the diseases carried by infected waters.

“Sir,” Femi said, “I’m so sorry to see you in poor health.”

“Enh, well,” the chief replied, “we all have to go sometime. No man can argue with death, so no point causing wahala when it arrive.”

Tears blurred Femi’s vision and he felt embarrassed by his reaction. Weeping would only prove to the chief that death lay close to him now, and he was glad for a moment that the man could not see. Femi tried hard to control himself, but the more he tried, the more the tears fell.

The chief gripped Femi’s hand more tightly. “Tell me, my son, how can I help you?”

Aminah moved forward and pressed an enormous starched handkerchief into Femi’s hands. He wiped his eyes. “Well, oga, when we last met you, long time ten months, you mentioned a woman in your village who worked for Kolo’s family. Is she still alive?”

“Yes. Of course.” The chief murmured something to an aide, who left the hut, then he turned back to Femi. “Kolo! I will be
happy to see that crook back in the gutter where he belongs, if the rats will let him in.”

“No. The rats won’t let him in. They’re too smart.” Femi smiled. “But probably the Swiss will, along with his bank account.”

The chief cackled a dry laugh.

A few minutes later, an old woman entered. She looked like a gecko—thin, with huge, bulbous eyes and greying, translucent skin, on which dust had settled. Though she must have been almost eighty years old, she appeared lithe and intelligent, her movements executed in tight, aggressive jerks.

“Victoria,” the chief said, “these people have come to ask you about Kolo. Please tell them all you know.”

She twitched around, flicking her stare from Aminah to Femi and back. Her eyes came to rest on Femi, her features settling into distrust.

Taking an immediate dislike to her, he asked a short question, phrased as a statement. “Apparently you know a secret about Kolo.”

“I know nothing!”

“Nothing that makes him fear you?”

The woman paused before replying, much like any reptile waits in rigid silence before pouncing on its prey. “No!”

One last terse query. “You have no idea? Money? Drugs?”

He waited for her to uncoil her answer, killing all further probing. She did not disappoint. “No!”

Relieved to be rid of the woman, Femi glanced at Aminah, indicating that it was time to give up, but she sat down, firmly beaching her extensive buttocks on a small stool, obscuring it entirely.

“How is your family, ma?” she asked, her mighty voice ringing round the hut.

The woman jerked her head towards her. “Them all don quench.”

“Water sickness?”

The old woman did not reply, but her eyes lost focus, one drifting off to the ceiling while the other remained on Aminah.

Aminah gestured to the woman to sit down. She hesitated, then perched on the edge of a stool, no flesh to spare for that activity, in a position of imminent escape.

“I’m sorry, ma. No parent should bury her own pickin.” Aminah unfastened the sturdy clasp of her mammoth handbag and offered another starched handkerchief to the woman, then slipped out a pen and notepad.

“But there is only one person who can stop this happening again. One person.” She held an index finger up in front of her to reinforce the number. “And that person … is you!” Aminah’s powerful hands snapped her handbag closed.

The woman’s errant eye returned from the ceiling to Aminah’s face. She stiffened into curiosity.

“Tell me, ma—are you surprised that Kolo became president?”

“Sometimes. No one talked to him as a boy. Now everyone wants to talk to him.”

“Why did they not talk to him?” Aminah’s voice obliterated the sounds of nature from outside the hut.

“He was cursed. His twin brother died.”

“How did his brother die?”

The old woman hesitated, her body inflicted with nervous tics. “Nobody knows.”

“But you do.”

“I was only a servant.”

“Servants know many things.”

The woman hesitated once more, then spoke in jagged phrases. “Kolo killed him. He pushed him in pool.”

“He killed his own brother?” Aminah shrieked, making Femi and the chief jump.

“Yes. He never saw me, but I saw him.” Again, she threw a strange look at Femi that he could not decipher—only that it contained discomfort.

Undeterred, Aminah barked, “Why would Kolo kill his own brother?”

“He jealous. The brother very fine, well, well. Very handsome boy. The brother look like angel.”

Femi ran through Kolo’s history in his mind. “I thought Kolo was an identical twin,” he said.