Missionary Stew (2 page)

“They went on for half an hour,” Citron said. “The screams.”

“I heard no screams,” Sergeant Bama said indifferently and then frowned. “Do you want the meat? Four kilos.”

“And the price?”

“The watch.”

“You grow not only deaf in your old age, but senile.”

“The watch,” Sergeant Bama said. “I must have it.”

Citron swallowed most of the saliva that had been created by the smell of the meat. “I will give you two links—the last two—provided there’re two kilos of rice to go with the meat.”

“Rice! Rice is very dear. Only the rich eat rice.”

“Two kilos.”

Sergeant Bama scowled. It was as excellent bargain, far better than he had expected. He changed his scowl into a smile of sweet reasonableness. “The watch.”

“No.”

Sergeant Bama turned to the private soldier. “Fetch the rice. Two kilos.”

After the private soldier left, Sergeant Bama squatted down beside the ironstone pot. He dipped his right hand into its lukewarm contents and removed a small piece of meat. He offered the piece to Citron. For a moment, Citron hesitated, then accepted the meat and popped it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, carefully, and then swallowed.

“It is not goat,” Citron said.

“Did I say it was goat? I said kid—young and tender. Does it not dissolve in your mouth?” “It is not kid either.”

Sergeant Bama peered suspiciously into the pot, fished out another small piece of meat that swam in the brownish liquid, and
sniffed it. “Pork perhaps?” He offered the piece to Citron. “Taste and determine. If it is pork, you will not have to share with the Sudanese, who are Muslim.”

Citron took the meat and chewed it. “It is not pork. I remember pork.”

“And this?”

“This is sweet and tough and stringy.”

Sergeant Bama giggled. “Of course. How stupid of me.” He clapped a hand to his forehead—a stage gesture. “It could only be monkey. A rare delicacy. Sweet, you said. Monkey tastes sweet. There is nothing sweeter to the tongue than fresh young monkey.”

“I’ve never tasted monkey.”

“Well, now you have.” The sergeant smiled complacently and looked around. The other prisoners were seated or squatting in the shade, none of them nearer than six meters, awaiting the outcome of the negotiations. When the sergeant turned back to Citron, the scowl was again in place and a harsh new urgency was in his tone. “I must have the watch,” he said.

“No,” Citron said. “Not for this.”

Sergeant Bama nodded indifferently and looked off into the hot distance. “There will be a visitor this afternoon at fifteen hundred,” he said. “A black woman from England who is a high functionary in a prisoners’ organization with a rare name.”

“You lie, of course,” Citron said, wiping a thin film of grease from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Sergeant Bama looked at him and shrugged. “Believe what you wish, but she will be here at fifteen hundred to interview the other foreign scum. It is all arranged. You, of course, will be transferred to the isolation block and thus will miss the black Englishwoman. A pity. I am told she is a marvelous sight. Of course…” The sergeant's unspoken offer trailed off into an elaborate Afro-Gallic shrug.

“The watch,” Citron said, understanding now.

“The watch.”

Citron studied Sergeant Bama for several seconds. Over the sergeant's left shoulder he could see the private soldier approaching with a big pot of rice. “All right,” Citron said. “You get the watch—but only after I see the black Englishwoman.”

He was surprised when the sergeant agreed with a single word: “Good.” Sergeant Bama rose then and turned toward the other prisoners. “Come and eat,” he called in near English, adding in rapid French, which not all of them could follow: “We want you fat and sleek for when the black Englishwoman arrives.”

The prisoners rose and started filing past the pots of meat and rice. The sergeant presided over the meat, the private soldier over the rice. The sergeant used a gourd ladle to dish meat into the prisoners’ plastic bowls.

“What's this shit?” the young Mormon missionary asked.

“Monkey,” Citron said.

“Oh,” the Mormon said, hurried away with his food, sat down in some shade, and ate it quickly with his fingers.

Miss Cecily Tettah, who worked out of the London headquarters of Amnesty International, had been born on a large plantation in Ghana just outside Accra forty-two years before, when Ghana was still called the Gold Coast. After the war she had been sent by her cocoa-rich father to London to be educated. She had never returned to Ghana, never married, and, when asked, usually described herself in her splendid British accent as either a maiden lady or a spinster. Many thought her to be hopelessly old-fashioned. The few men lucky enough to find their way into her bed over the years discovered not only a magnificent body, but also an acerbic wit and an excellent mind.

Still a handsome woman, quite tall with graying hair, Miss Tettah, as she rather primly introduced herself to almost everyone, had been granted the use of Sergeant Bama's tiny office to interview the foreign
risoners. She sat behind the plain wooden table, a thick file open before her. Citron sat in the chair opposite. Cecily Tettah tapped the open file with a pencil and looked up at Citron with wide-spaced, bitter-chocolate eyes. She made no effort to keep the suspicion out of either her tone or gaze.

“There is no record of you,” she said, giving the papers in the file a final tap with her pencil. “There’re records of all the others, but none of you.”

“No,” Citron said. “I’m not surprised.”

“They claim you’re a spy, either French or American. They’re not sure which.”

“I’m a traveler,” Citron said.

“I had an audience with the Emperor-President this morning.” She sniffed. “I suppose that's what one should call it—an audience. He has agreed to release all of the foreign nationals—all except you.”

“Why not me?”

“Because he thinks you’re a spy, as I said. He wants to see you. Privately. Will you agree?”

Citron thought about it and shrugged. “All right.”

“Not to worry,” Cecily Tettah said. “We’ll get it sorted out. Now then. How’ve they been treating you?”

“Not bad. Considering.”

“What about food? You look thin.”

“There was enough—just barely.”

“Today, for instance. What did they feed you today?”

“Meat and rice.”

“What kind of meat?”

“Monkey.”

Cecily Tettah pursed her lips in approval, nodded, and made a note. “Monkey's not bad,” she said. “Quite nutritious. Almost no fat. Did they feed you monkey often?”

“No,” Citron said. “Only once.”

The Emperor-President's anteroom was an immense hall with no chairs or benches and a once magnificent parquet floor now ruined by cigarette burns and boot scars. The room was crowded with those who wanted to petition the Emperor-President, and with those whose job it was to prevent his assassination.

There were at least two dozen uniformed armed guards, plus another dozen secret police. The secret police all wore wide gaudy ties and peered suspiciously out at the world over tinted Ben Franklin glasses. The guards and the secret police stood. The threadbare petitioners sat on the floor along with a host of preening sycophants, a squad of sleepy-looking young messengers, and a pair of Slav businessmen in boxy suits who spoke Bulgarian to each other and tried to look forbidding, but whose wet friendly eyes betrayed their optimistic salesmen souls.

Citron also sat on the floor, his back to the wall, guarded by Sergeant Bama, who amused himself by shooting out his left wrist to admire his new gold Rolex. The sergeant smiled at his watch, then scowled at Citron.

“You will be alone with him.”

“Yes.”

“Do not lie about me.”

“No.”

“If you lie, then I might have to reveal what was in the morning pot. There are those who would pay well to learn its contents.”

“Monkey,” Citron said, knowing it wasn’t.

The sergeant smiled a quite terrible smile that Citron felt he might remember for years. “It was not monkey,” Sergeant Bama said.

“Last night,” Citron said. “The screams. They sounded like children's screams.”

Sergeant Bama shrugged and gave his new watch another admiring glance. “Some got carried away.”

“Who?”

“I will not say.” He glanced around quickly, then leaned closer to Citron. The smile reappeared, even more awful than before. “But you helped destroy the evidence,” he whispered and then giggled. “You ate up all the evidence.”

Citron stood throughout his audience with the Emperor-President, who sat slumped on the throne that had been cleverly crafted in Paris out of ebony and ivory. Citron thought it looked uncomfortable. He also thought the Emperor-President looked hung over.

“So,” the Emperor-President said. “You are leaving us.”

“I hope so.”

“Some say you are French; some say American. What do you say?”

“I was both for a time. Now I’m American.”

“How could you be both?”

“A matter of papers.”

“Documents?”

“Yes.”

“Ahhh.”

The Emperor-President closed his eyes and seemed to nod off for a moment or so. He was a chunky man in his early fifties with a big stomach that bounced and rolled around underneath a long white cotton robe. The robe resembled a nightgown, and Citron thought it looked both cool and eminently practical. The Emperor-President opened his eyes, which seemed a bit inflamed, picked his nose, wiped his finger somewhere on the throne, and then beckoned Citron. “Come closer.”

Citron moved closer.

“Closer still.”

Citron took two more steps. The Emperor-President looked around suspiciously. They were alone. He beckoned Citron with a single finger. Citron leaned forward until he could smell last night's gin. Or today's.

I wish to send a secret message to the Presidents of France and the United States,” the Emperor-President whispered. “No one must know. No one.” He waited for Citron's reply.

“I’m not sure,” Citron said carefully, “how soon I will be seeing them.”

The Emperor-President nodded his big head, as if that were exactly what he would expect a spy to say. “My message is brief. Tell them—tell them both that I am ready for reconciliation—on their terms.”

“I see.”

“Can you remember that?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“Here.” The Emperor-President fumbled into the folds of the long white gown, found the pocket, and brought out a clenched fist. “Hold out your hand.”

Citron held out his hand.

“Palm up.”

Citron turned his palm up. The Emperor-President unclenched his fist. A two-carat diamond dropped into Citron's open palm. He automatically wrapped a fist around it.

“A token,” the Emperor-President said. “A gesture.”

“A token gesture.”

“Yes. For your trouble.”

“I see.”

“You are free to go.”

“Yes. Well. Thank you.”

Citron turned and started toward the tall double doors, but stopped at the sound of the Emperor-President's voice. “Wait.” Citron turned.

“I understand they fed you monkey today.”

Citron only nodded.

“Did you like it?”

“I ate it.”

“So did I,” the Emperor-President said and began to chuckle—a
deep bass chuckle that seemed to rumble up from his belly. “We both ate monkey today,” the Emperor-President said and then went back to his chuckling. He was still at it when Citron walked through the tall double doors.

Miss Cecily Tettah counted three hundred French francs onto the plain table, picked them up, and handed them to Citron. He put them into the envelope that contained his Air France ticket to Paris and his American passport.

“How was he?” she asked. “You never said.”

“He laughed a lot.”

“Nothing else?”

“He still thinks I’m a spy.”

“Really? I thought we’d got that all sorted out. Are you still quite certain there is no one you wish us to notify in the States?” “No. No one.”

“Not even your mother?”

Citron shook his head. “Especially not her.”

CHAPTER 2

It was almost a year to the day after Citron sold his diamond in Paris that Draper Haere, the money man, flew into Denver from New York. He arrived late, just before midnight. Because Haere had experienced a couple of uncomfortable rides with Denver taxi drivers in recent years, he carefully examined the man behind the wheel of the taxi at the head of the rank and was pleased to discover that he was Mexican and apparently a very sunny fellow.

Two years before when Haere had caught a taxi at Denver's Staple-ton Airport, the driver had turned out to be a disgraced lieutenant governor from Louisiana who had taken to drink, but was now on what he called his rocky road to recovery and wanted to tell Haere all about it. The second time, almost a year later, another taxi driver had been a former Teamsters business agent from St. Louis who had been caught with his hand in the till. The former business agent was philosophical. “What the hell, Draper,” he said. “I took a chance and I got caught.” Haere sometimes wondered if taxi driving in Denver was a mystical restorative experience that somehow helped the fallen to climb back up onto the stool of redemption.

Before flying to Denver, Haere had been staying in New York at the Pierre, talking to a man who was toying with the idea of running for
President—provided it didn’t cost too much—and provided his mother gave him permission. But when the man who would be President seemed incapable of making up his mind, Haere had made a date with the mother.

They had tea at the Plaza. Or rather she had a vodka martini and Haere had tea. It took only five minutes, perhaps four, for them to agree that forty-three-year-old Sonny wasn’t quite ready to be President, at least not in 1984, and probably not even in 1988. After that they spent another pleasant half hour or so talking politics.

Haere discovered she had one of those shockingly brilliant political minds that sometimes crop up in such places as Texas and Wisconsin and even Nebraska (Norris came to mind), but rarely in New York and not quite never in California. She was from West Virginia and had married steel. Big steel. When Haere told her it was too bad she couldn’t run for President herself, she had shrugged and smiled, more than a little pleased. Haere didn’t bother to call Sonny, who, he decided, would probably rather get his bad news from Mommy.