Solo (6 page)

Bond shrugged. ‘It doesn’t relate. The Zanza River Delta is part of Zanzarim.’

Adeka looked a little contemptuous. ‘Zanzarim, and before that, Upper Zanza State, and before that Neu Zanza Staat was a construct of European colonialists. They only arrived a few decades ago, at the end of the last century. They drew the country’s boundaries on a whim one afternoon when they had nothing better to do.’ He grew more serious. ‘To the Fakassa people the Zanza River Delta, our tribal homeland, is our birthright. It has no connection with twentieth-century neocolonial politics or the venal ambitions of European adventurers. Can you understand that?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Adeka yielded a little. ‘All the same, my brother, Solomon, should never have tried to create an independent state. It was madness. I told him so. We fought, spoke very harsh words to each other and we haven’t seen each other since.’

‘Your arguments didn’t impress.’

‘He couldn’t see sense. Wouldn’t. Not surprisingly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you any idea how much oil lies beneath the Zanza River Delta, Mr Bond?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I suggest you try to find out – and then calculate roughly how many hundreds of millions of dollars will go to whoever owns it.’

He stood up. ‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid. You’ll have to find someone else who can introduce you to my brother. All I ask is, if and when you reach Dahum, you tell the world exactly and honestly what you see there.’

Bond rose to his feet. ‘You can count on that,’ he said. ‘We’re not in the propaganda business.’

Adeka led him back downstairs and at the door handed him his business card.

‘I’d be most grateful if you’d send me your articles.’

He extended his hand and Bond shook it, firmly, not thinking about the reality that lay behind his journey to Zanzarim.

‘I’ll give your salutations to your brother,’ Bond said.

‘Save your breath,’ Adeka said evenly, with no bitterness. ‘Solomon looks on me as the worst kind of traitor – he thinks I’ve betrayed my people.’

They made their farewells and Bond stepped out of the small shop on to the street and heard the bolts on the door slide shut behind him.

Bond wandered up the street, thinking, heading for the Bayswater Road. He glanced around him, remembering Adeka’s words about continual harassment, wondering if the AfricaKIN office was under surveillance and, if it were, whether his visit would have been noted and logged. Something was making him uneasy, a prickling between his shoulder blades, an uncomfortableness. He always responded to these instinctive promptings – whenever he’d ignored them he had usually regretted it – so, looking for an opportunity to check his back, he turned into a convenient cinema and bought a ticket for the show but, instead of going into the auditorium, lingered in the foyer, to see who might be following him in. After five minutes he began to relax. No one else arriving at the kiosk to buy a ticket could have been any threat at all.

An usherette approached him asking if she could be of any help, reminding him that the film was due to start in ‘four and a half minutes’. Bond reassured her he was aware of that fact and moved outside beneath the cinema’s awning, glancing up and down the street. Nothing. Then his eye was caught by the poster.
The Curse of Dracula’s Daughter
starring Astrid Ostergard. Bond smiled. There was Astrid/Bryce, naked in a bed, a tattered blood-boltered sheet just about covering her impossibly ripe body, a dark looming shadow of some vengeful monster cast over her. It wasn’t a bad likeness, Bond reflected, remembering the glimpses he’d been afforded a few days ago. So this was where he’d seen her name before – B-movie horror-shockers. At least that much was clear now. Yet here was Bryce Fitzjohn/Astrid Ostergard again. Was there any significance in this curious recurrence? Anything he’d missed . . . ? Stepping into a random cinema foyer couldn’t be construed as anything malign or manipulated – this was a harmless coincidence pure and simple. He had another look at the poster and smiled to himself, thinking he really had to make contact with her again once this whole Zanzarim business was over, and turned on to the street and strode confidently on towards the Bayswater Road, looking for a passing taxi he could hail.

The BOAC VC10 levelled into its cruising altitude and the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign was extinguished. Bond ordered a double brandy and soda from the stewardess and as he sipped his drink thought about what lay ahead of him and what unforeseen perils he might have to face. It was always like this as he departed on a mission – and while the unknown generated a certain alarm and pre-emptive caution, Bond also recognised the frisson of excitement that ran through him. This was what he had been trained and honed to do, he re-emphasised to himself; sometimes he wondered if it was what he was born to do. He glanced over his shoulder, checking the cabin – the plane was only half full and Bond had two empty seats beside him. Not many people going to Zanzarim these days, he reflected, even though this flight was routed on to Banjul and Accra. Bond ordered another drink, running over the events of the last few days in his mind. He couldn’t remember M sending him on such a vague assignment before: to find a way of infiltrating himself into Dahum and, one way or another, to ‘immobilise’ the brigadier . . . Perhaps, as far as M thought, his instructions were perfectly explicit, however concise. But, from Bond’s point of view there was a lot of room being left for his initiative. Conceivably Ogilvy-Grant would be able to put some flesh on these bare bones.

The plane flew south into the darkening evening sky. Bond switched on his reading light and took out his book – Graham Greene’s
The Heart of the Matter
. Bond had been to West Africa only once before, years ago – to shoot down a helicopter, as it happened – but he had not lingered; it had been an in-and-out visit. Greene had served in Sierra Leone during the war – as a spy, moreover – and Bond was hoping that his West African novel might furnish some shrewder insight to the place.

Eight hours later the VC10 touched down at Sinsikrou International Airport. As the plane taxied towards the terminal buildings Bond gazed out of the window at Africa, lit by the early morning sun. They passed gangs of crouching workers cutting the runway verges with long thin knives like sabres. Beyond the perimeter fence was undulating dry scrubland dotted with trees – orchard bush, as it was known – that sprawled away in the heat-haze. A row of olive-green MiG-15 ‘Fagot’ fighters and a couple of sun-bleached, oil-stained Bell UH-1 helicopters were drawn up on a separate apron. The Zanzarim air force, Bond assumed. A few soldiers squatted listlessly in the shade cast by the planes’ wings.

The VC10 came to a halt and the passengers bound for Sinsikrou headed for the door. All men, Bond noted, and none of them looking particularly salubrious. As he passed through the door on to the aircraft steps the humid warmth hit him with almost palpable force and, as he crossed the parched, piebald asphalt towards the airport buildings, he sensed his body breaking out in sweat beneath his clothes. Soldiers, wearing an assortment of camouflage uniforms and carrying various weapons, looked on lazily as the passengers filed into customs and immigration. Bond glanced around quickly. Parked by the fuel depot was a shiny new six-wheeled Saracen armoured car – recently imported from Britain, Bond supposed, the first patent indication of whose side we were on in this war.

As if to give credence to this analysis Bond’s British passport was barely examined. It was stamped, the immigration officer said ‘Welcome to Zanzarim,’ and waved him through to the customs hall, which was surprisingly busy with a traffic of people who apparently had nothing to do with customs. As he waited for his suitcase to arrive, Bond declined to have his shoes polished, rejected the invitation to be driven in a ‘luxury’ Mercedes-Benz private car to his hotel and politely refused a small boy’s whispered offer of sex with his ‘very beautiful’ big sister.

A surly customs officer asked him to open his case, rummaged through his clothes and even unzipped his pigskin toilet bag and – finding no contraband – scratched a hieroglyph on the suitcase’s lid with a piece of blue chalk and moved on to the next piece of baggage in the queue.

Bond again refused the offer of help with his case as a young man physically tried to prise it from his grasp, and walked out of the building to find a taxi rank. He climbed into the back of a racing-green Morris Minor and happily agreed to pay extra in order not to share the car with others. He instructed the driver to take him to the Excelsior Gateway Hotel.

Even though the Excelsior was barely a mile from the airport the journey there was not straightforward. Almost as soon as they left the airport perimeter they were waved to a halt at an army roadblock and Bond was asked to step out of the car and show the customs mark on his suitcase. Despite the clear evidence of the chalk scribble he was asked to open the suitcase again. The soldiers at the roadblock were bored and this was a diversion to enliven their long and weary day, Bond realised. Other taxis were halted behind them and soon voices were being raised in angry protest. Bond wondered if he should give the soldier who was listlessly picking through his case some money – a ‘dash’, as he now knew it was called, thanks to his reading of
The Heart of the Matter
– but before he could do so an officer appeared, shouting in furious rage at his men and waved everyone on.

A further 500 yards down the road they were halted at another so-called roadblock consisting of two oil drums with a plank across them. This looked less official and the demeanour of the soldiers manning it was more lackadaisical, the men contenting themselves with peering curiously through the open windows into the back of the taxi.

‘Good morning,’ Bond said. ‘How are you today?’

‘American cigarette?’ one soldier said, grinning. He was wearing a tin helmet, a red T-shirt and camouflage trousers.

‘English,’ Bond said and gave him the Morlands that remained in his cigarette case.

When they eventually reached the hotel entrance Bond paid his fare and pushed through the crowd of hawkers that surrounded him – offering thorn carvings, painted calabashes, beaded necklaces – and finally gained the cool lobby of the Excelsior Gateway, formerly the Prince Clarence Hotel, as an old painted sign on the wall informed him. Ceiling fans turned above his head and Bond gave his suitcase to a bellhop in a scarlet waistcoat with a scarlet fez on his head. He crossed the glossy teak floorboards towards the reception desk where he was checked in. There, an envelope was handed to him that contained a slip of paper with Ogilvy-Grant’s address and new contact telephone number at an industrial park. Bond folded the note up and tucked it in his pocket, looking around him as the receptionist busied himself writing down Bond’s details from his passport. Potted palms swayed in the breeze produced by the ceiling fans. Through glass doors Bond looked into a long dark bar where a barman in a white jacket was polishing glasses. On the other side of the lobby was the entrance to the dining room, where a sign requested ‘Gentlemen, please no shorts’. Another receptionist wearing a crisp white tunic with gold buttons arrived on duty and wished him a smiling ‘Good morning, Mr Bond.’ For a moment Bond savoured the illusion of time travel, when the Excelsior Gateway had been the Prince Clarence Hotel and Zanzarim had been Upper Zanza State and civil war, mass starvation and illimitable oil revenues were all in an unimaginable future.

The bellhop in the scarlet fez took Bond to his small chalet in the hotel grounds at the rear of the main building. There were a dozen of these mini-bungalows linked to the hotel buildings by weed-badged concrete pathways, a remnant of the Excelsior Gateway’s colonial past. After independence an Olympic-sized swimming pool had been constructed, flanked by two five-storey modern annexes – ‘executive rooms with pool-view balconies’. Bond was glad to be in his shabby bungalow. He tipped the bellhop.

‘Water he close at noon, sar,’ the boy said. ‘But we have electric light twenty-four hours.’ He smiled. ‘We have gen’rator.’

Bond took his advice and had a cold shower while the water pressure was still there. He changed into a cotton khaki-drill suit, a white short-sleeved Aertex shirt and a navy-blue knitted tie. He slipped his feet into soft brown moccasins, thought about removing his socks but decided against it. He reloaded his cigarette case with some of the Morlands he’d brought with him in a 200-cigarette carton and, ready for action, headed out to the hotel entrance.

The doorman shooed away the hawkers and Bond gave him $10.

‘I need a taxi with a good driver for several hours,’ Bond said. ‘Twenty US dollars for the day – and if he’s good, I’ll give you another ten.’

‘Five seconds, sar,’ the doorman said and raced off.

Two minutes later a mustard yellow Toyota Corona lurched to a halt opposite Bond. A skinny young man, smart in a white shirt and white shorts, stepped out and saluted.

‘Hello, sar. I am your driver, Christmas.’

Bond shook Christmas’s hand and eased himself into the back of the Corona.

‘Where to, sar?’

‘Do you know where the military headquarters are?’

‘Zanza Force HQ. I know him. Ridgeway Barracks.’

‘Good. Let’s go.’

Ridgeway Barracks was a large four-storey pre-war building of faded cream stucco set in a park of mature casuarina pines. Christmas dropped him at the main entrance and Bond showed his press card to the soldier at the gate and was told to follow a sign that said ‘Press Liaison’. In an office at the end of a corridor a young captain with an American accent looked over his documentation.

‘Agence Presse Libre? This is French. Are you French?’

‘No. I’m from the London office. I file all copy in English. It’s an international press agency, founded in 1923. Global. Like Reuters.’

The captain thought about it for a moment then stamped and signed a new accredited press card. He smiled, insincerely – Bond suspected that he didn’t like journalists or his job – and handed it over.