The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (50 page)

So it did. For the government of Patrick Madola had a scheme in which it offered handsome commissions to exporters
for selling local commodities abroad and bringing into the country precious foreign exchange. Solomon Mines, our new company, began exporting nonexistent or worthless gems at high prices from its little mine in Tsavo to its subsidiary in London, earning immense sums in commissions in foreign currency. What Solomon paid to itself were worthless equities inflated in value. The pounds sterling won as commissions from our government were deposited in British and Swiss banks on behalf of some of our elites, into their secret accounts, garnering further commissions for us; the local currencies so collected were sold to the national bank at premium during cash-flow crises. Needless to say, transfers of funds were handled by our affiliate, Aladdin Finance. But in a country such as ours, such large profits, the manufacture of money out of thin air and paper, as it were, plus a bogus mine, do not go unnoticed. Agents of powerful interests haunt the corridors of commerce and banking, feelers out for the smell of success, for rich veins to bleed and possess. Solomon Mines duly attracted its share of well-placed partners. The scam operated for a period of three years. It came to be called the Gemstone Scandal.

But my financial involvements were varied and many; they were a game that offered me comfort, prestige, and the friendship of the powerful. They made my name legend outside the country. Consider. One day a man walks into my office offering gold and diamonds for sale, cheaply, on behalf of a company in Uganda that is obviously a front. The payment is to be deposited into the account of another front company, in Europe; I also have to facilitate the arrival of certain metal goods in Mombasa port and their transportation in covered trucks back to Uganda, from where presumably they will go on farther north or west, where the civil wars are fought. Nothing could be easier to arrange. Another day brings a hand-delivered letter from a deposed general or his son or one of his wives. There have been dozens of coups d’état in Africa. Every coup releases its share of unwanted flotsam—generals, prime ministers, presidents, politicians, widows, orphans, with
stashed-away millions and uncollected kickbacks that need the assistance of a finance company such as Aladdin to see them safely to their new homes.

This chummy bazaar of the discreet telephone call and the party circuit came under stress when the Cold War ended, and along with it the threat of international communism; countries of the West which had supplied aid and loans aplenty, turning a blind eye to abuses, now demanded accountability from the government; the press discovered its guts. The Gemstone Scandal became public knowledge and a symbol of corruption; its audacity provoked outrage. Consequently, when my name became reviled as the Fu Manchu of corruption and the King of Shylocks (our newspapers, under the thumb of the government or otherwise, have always been creative), my life seemed, at least in the initial months, cheap to all those I had offended or in whose way I stood.

Two days after the story of my degeneracy broke, while I was at dinner with my wife, a phone call arrived from Harry Soames, warning me that a midnight raid had been planned on my home. I had promised Soames a large sum of money for just such a timely warning. My son Ami and daughter Sita were out partying with friends and I prayed they would take their time returning. We turned off the lights in our home and waited, the children uppermost in our minds. Ami attended a local college; Sita had finished high school but was undecided. At eleven the phone lines went dead; my wife and I headed for our closet, behind which lay the walk-in safe which had been a present from my in-laws. We did not go immediately into the safe, for it was a cramped space, but sat down on the floor beside the open closet door and waited. At one a.m. Shobha tugged at my hand; I woke up to hear violent commotion outside the house, at the front door and windows. We quickly entered the closet, then the safe, and closed both doors behind us.

The next hour was a punishment from hell. The safe was shallow, with two tiny air passages, and in our enclosure we gasped painfully like two large fish trapped in a small tank. To
make matters worse, Shobha and I had not been so physically close for a very long time. We sat down, and our bodies touched. We heard the front door crash open, one of the bedroom windows too, then the sound of booted footsteps and threatening roars and shouts. The attackers seemed frustrated; furniture and objects were thrown around, and in a final angry fit a couple of machine guns were let off randomly, in all directions, two bullets tearing into the wood and metal of the door that enclosed us. Shobha wet herself and worse, and in that intense humiliation I saw tears of frustration coming down the cheeks of my very proud wife.

The next morning I invited reporters to take a look at the unlawful attack and destruction of my property. I told them that if required I would be happy to come clean about my business dealings, and that my papers were in the keeping of my lawyer Mr. Sohrabji, who would know what to do with them if my life was threatened.

The President made a speech that very day, while on a visit upcountry, in which he reminded the public that we lived in a democracy and vigilante attacks on private individuals would not be tolerated. He invited the Attorney-General’s office to lay charges against Mr. Lall if it had a case, which of course it couldn’t without implicating members of the government. I was safe, for the time being. But Shobha had had enough, she departed for the safety of England with our two children.

And why didn’t you go with them? Seema asks.

After our experience in the closet, we could not even face each other without turning away in embarrassment. In my presence, Shobha seemed always out of breath, as if reliving the torment of the closet. Obviously, according to the unspoken rules of our household, I had not provided sufficient protection for my family. We thought at this point that a legal separation
was a good idea. I didn’t want to leave the country, in any case. I had business to attend to. I didn’t believe I was any more guilty than a hundred others, and I was certainly less guilty than many I could name. Perhaps there would be a general amnesty, as was widely rumoured, allowing businessmen and politicians to come clean and start afresh under a new and strict code of ethics. What would I do in England or North America?

With your money? Plenty, Seema says. What made you leave, finally?

I give this one a long thought. I would like to say that Njoroge came to me in a dream and said, Vic, I’ll give you a new oath of allegiance…let’s go back and start all over again…And reluctantly I pushed myself off the wall on which I was leaning and followed him to the woods behind our house…I would like to mention the letter I received one day from a girl called Happy in Kampala. Dear Mr. Vikram Lall, she said, I have heard you are a big charitable man in Kenya…Her village had been raided by rebels in northern Uganda, her entire family had been killed except herself and her little brother; she was raped and abducted by the rebels; she was taught to fight her own people and became mistress of a commander. She was now in Kampala and needed money to pay her fees at a convent school. There was a letter from a principal and a transcript showing very good grades. I sent money, of course, I have always given to charity. I would like to say this was my transformation, my redemption, this terrible knowledge that I had been party to supplying guns to that area where Happy’s village was attacked.

But no. I left for neither of those reasons. I saw not light but the darkness of plain fear.

I left because I was afraid. Representatives of the donor countries, who underwrite social programs in our part of Africa, and of the World Bank, came to Nairobi, having frozen all aid and loan instalments, and demanded an immediate account of the hundreds of millions of dollars that had disappeared from the national kitty. The government set up the
independent Anti-Corruption Commission to satisfy the Donors and the Bank, and the Commission published its List of Shame; Vikram Lall’s name was first. I was invited to testify about my questionable business dealings, in particular the Gemstone Scandal. But if Vikram Lall spoke, as everybody knew, a lot of prominent people would get skewered. I possessed information that could help indict a platoon of politicians and a hive of senior bureaucrats. The country, goaded on by the newspapers and the government’s opponents, held its breath: would I come forward? Meanwhile hitmen, I was warned, had been paid for my blood. And so Vikram Lall absconded for this town on Lake Ontario where he had earlier invested in a property.

I look at Seema, this new lover who understands my race, my needs, my loneliness, but not my career. There can be no reconciling between her idealism and my sins; her home here in a zone of temperance, and mine far away in the tropics.

There is no choice but to return to Nairobi and meet my destiny. Papa is alone there; and Joseph, I have learned, was arrested in Nairobi as soon as he arrived there on his foolhardy venture.

PART 4.

Homecoming.

THIRTY-TWO.

Mr. Lall, a man says as I come down the stairs into the arrivals lounge, and I get the fright of my life. My passport says Victor De Souza, and it is as such that I expected to be addressed. He nods as I look up and says, Everything is taken care of, and bids me to follow him. A slight-figured man in the careless khaki attire of a low-level bureaucrat, he leads me past the grimly intimidating, high-pedestalled immigration wickets, then down the stairs, past the carousels and the chaotic customs counters. If this man knows who I am, who else does too, and what is my life expectancy this precise moment? But nothing happens. Papa is waiting for me in the reception hall; he has been chatting with a large Somali woman and looks up with a wan smile as I arrive. He has on a red sweater over black pants, a black beret. My son, he says to the woman. We quietly embrace and quickly head for the carpark outside.

There is something immeasurably familiar in the feel of the cool Nairobi night that tells you you are home, that for better or worse, this is where you belong.

As we drive away from the airport, Papa keeps nervously looking behind in the car mirror, in case we are being followed. The road into the city is for the most part dark and deserted; the factory names we pass seem oddly cheerful; the police car by the lonely, barely lit gas station promise either comfort or menace. A haze hangs in the air, vestige of a prior rainfall.

It’s taken me a while to adjust to where I am, but finally I turn and ask my father, How did that man know me by name?—he called me Mr. Lall.

Papa replies, I gave the game away a little bit, Vic, I introduced myself as Mr. Lall, and he guessed the rest. He was paid well, let’s hope he keeps quiet.

I had asked Seema to make a carefully worded phone call to Papa, with my travel plans and assumed name, and he had done the rest, arranged for my rush processing at the airport.

We agree that I should not stay with him in his apartment. It is where I would be expected to go.

Papa, you should act as if I am not here, I tell him. You’ve not seen me. In fact, you should go on holiday to Mombasa for a few days, until I have my business sorted out. This way you will not be bothered.