The Last King of Scotland (1998) (42 page)

The next morning a policeman came in and took hold of me roughly. For the second time in my life, I was dragged from a cell into a shower and afterwards given a set of clean clothes, in this case a safari suit made of thin black cotton.

Once I was dressed (the material stuck unpleasantly to the weeping grazes on my legs), the policeman delivered me into the company of three armed guards. They handcuffed and blindfolded me. I felt myself being taken to a vehicle. We drove for a long while. I was very frightened, in some ways more frightened than I had ever been in the company of Amin. From the arrangement of the seats, I could tell it was a Land Rover. As we drove, I rehearsed the options in my mind: I was being taken to court, I was being returned to Uganda…

They opened the back door of the Land Rover. One of the guards removed the blindfold, laughing cruelly as he did so. They pulled me out. The light hurt my eyes, and then I saw with relief that it was the airport. I knew, then, that they weren’t sending me back to Uganda: they would have just taken me to the border in a truck in that case, cheap and easy. I began to think the British must have intervened on my behalf – the man in the suit must have been from the Embassy.

But before I had time to thank my luck, I found myself pulled along by the guards. They ran with me, the gang of helmets clustering around. They were almost lifting me bodily as we rushed through the departure lounge, my limbs all floppy in theirs and everyone turning – the officials in blue serge, a big Asian party with tin trunks and bunches of flowers, the Kenyan businessmen, the expat schoolkids with their blazers and comics – to see what was amiss.

It all blurred out then, just the faces and the suitcases and the white walls passing, and suddenly I was in a canvas-top jeep, the hot air off the tarmac hitting my face.

A jumbo was waiting there, its jets already roaring. More policemen were standing at the foot of the steps. I was pulled down, and they hustled me forward and on to the stairway. Climbing the steps, I got a chance to look behind me at the jeep reversing away. My guards sat shadowed under the flapping canopy, oddly formal and dignified as they gripped their guns between their knees. Above it all, the elephant ears of the radar spun round on the roof of the concourse. My last look at Africa.

The Kenyans made me wear handcuffs right up until I entered the plane. The stewardesses, on the other hand, were exemplary, bringing me my meal and my drinks, once we were airborne, just as if I were an ordinary passenger. As soon as I had eaten, I had a severe bout of diarrhoea, spending over an hour in the toilet. I then returned to my seat and fell into a deep sleep – deep, yet poisoned by dreams of Amin and the things that I had seen.

We were within a few hours of London when I woke up. The scrapes on my legs had dried off, but were still throbbing painfully. And yet, as we circled over Gatwick, I slowly began to feel a bit brighter about things. Assuming I was able to get up to Scotland without too much fuss, things didn’t seem that bad, I told myself. We landed, and they played a ridiculous sad song on the tannoy as we taxied and hung about – “What do I have to do to make you love me?” went the stupid chorus. I listened to it feeling sorry for myself, looking out at the flashing orange lights and painted yellow lines on the runway. Without any hand luggage to encumber me, I was quickly off the plane.

No fuss? There was. As soon as I stepped into the customs hall, my eyes blinking from the bright airport lights and the bustle, an immigration official came up to me. He had the kind of paunchy face one associates with steak-houses and beer gardens.

“Nicholas Garrigan?” he said.

“Yes,” I said wearily.

“Can you come with me, please?” he said, taking me by the arm. “There are some immigration queries concerning your arrival in Great Britain.”

He led me to a small, windowless ante-room, furnished with plastic seats and a formica table. There was an automatic drinks dispenser in the corner and, sitting at the table, a familiar figure. It was Stone, the Embassy man. He had put on weight since leaving Uganda, but his straw-coloured fringe still flopped down in the same way.

“Hello, Garrigan,” he said. “Long time no see.”

“You,” I said, dumbfounded.

“Yes, I arranged for your release.” He seemed very pleased with himself, and I suppose I ought to have been more grateful.

“Well…thank you. But if it hadn’t been for you, I might not have been in that situation in the first place.”

“Let me get to the point,” he said, coldly. “We are under no obligation to take you back into this country.”

“What? You’re joking. I’m British. I have rights.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Not true. When you took up Ugandan citizenship, you renounced your British rights.”

“This is preposterous,” I said, standing up. “I refuse to be treated like – ” The immigration official, who had stood behind me, pressed me down back into my seat, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t think you understand,” Stone said. “You can’t just arrive in this country, without a passport, without citizenship, and expect things. There are formalities to be gone through. We will have to process a reapplication for citizenship. There is the question, in any case, of whether you are now a fit person to be admitted to Great Britain at all.”

“Why?” I said. “I have no blood on my hands.”

Stone waved his own hand. “You may like to know that out there, behind the arrivals barrier, is a whole bunch of reporters waiting to hear your story. They might say otherwise.”

I said nothing. I heard someone walk past outside, their tread heavy and bouncing on the insubstantial airport floor.

“What I am concerned with,” Stone continued, “is that your activities in Uganda be seen for what they are: the actions of one man acting on his own. You have to understand that your return in these circumstances could be embarrassing for us.”

“That’s not my problem.”

He signalled for the official to leave the room.

“Look,” he said quietly, as the door shut, “your relationship with me, so far as it went, doesn’t exist in official terms. You were acting on your own. What we, as I say, are concerned about is that this information is not distorted by the press.”

“I will just tell the truth,” I said.

“Let me make it plain: your admittance to and residence in this country are conditional upon your silence on matters relating to the British Government’s activities in Uganda. If you are not prepared to agree to these conditions, and to live quietly once the initial interest in your arrival has died down, we will be putting you straight back on a plane to Uganda. Do you understand?”

I was shocked. “Why…didn’t you just leave me in Kenya?”

“The press was beginning to sniff around. And the Kenyans were preparing to have a public trial. We cut their aid last year and they planned to use you as a way of forcing our hand. Which is what has happened.”

I said nothing. He pushed some papers across the formica towards me and held out a fountain pen. “These forms repeat the gist of what I’ve been saying to you. I strongly advise you to sign. Furthermore, that money…it is still in your bank account. It’s within our power to freeze the account if you do not comply. It’s as simple as that.”

I became aware that I had no choice. I had set my mind on returning to Scotland, on some peace and quiet while I decided what to do with the rest of my life. If this was going to be the only way to achieve that, then so be it. I took the pen off him and signed, four times, at the bottom of each page, without reading a word of it.

Stone was all sweetness and light after that, bringing me a plastic cup of tea from the machine in the corner.

“I’m pleased you’ve seen sense, Nicholas,” he said, as I held the hot, soft cup. “There’s one other thing. We’ve arranged a publicity expert to help you deal with all the media interest. We wouldn’t want you to be caught off guard.”

I shrugged, and stared at the stippled plastic wall behind him.

“We’ve booked a room for you in a hotel. The publicity fellow – his name’s Ed Howarth – will drive you there. We’re going to take you out the back to his car to avoid the journalists. But they’re bound to track you down, so he’s going to organize some interviews to head them off.”

“I don’t want that,” I said. “I haven’t done anything to warrant that.”

“You don’t have any choice. Unless we’re able to control the situation, the newspapers will hound you and exploit you, and you may find yourself being in breach of the agreement” – he held up the sheaf of papers I had signed – “without having meant to be. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

I shrugged again, angry inside that he should be able to do this to me. He put his head round the door and called the official. They took me back into customs and down a long, carpeted corridor towards one of the areas where the airlines dealt with cargo. We came out into a yard where lorries were parked or moving off.

It was dark and raining. The lights of the lorries and the cargo hangars glistened, reflected in the wet tarmac. As I stepped outside, the night cold hit me; the British weather, those skies that I had forgotten, went deep into my bones. It was partly pleasant, though, the rainy air like something purgative in my lungs. I idly wondered, as we walked through the yard, how ironic it would be, once everything was said and done, if I died of a chill caught at Gatwick airport.

“Well, Garrigan,” Stone said, interrupting my thoughts to point at a yellow Jaguar parked in front of the lorries. “Here we are.”

He rapped on the car’s window. The door opened and a large man in a double-breasted suit got out, a cigarette between his lips.

“Hi, Nick,” said the man, throwing the cigarette like a dart into a puddle and shaking me by the hand. “You look like you could do with a bath, a drink, and a crash-out.”

“Well, that’s me done,” said Stone, as I got into the car. He leaned in. “And don’t forget what I said. We’ll be keeping tabs.”

We drove off. The car smelled of tobacco. Weir, I thought, where was he now? The wet black light of the road skidded by, and held no answer.

“Don’t worry,” said Howarth, “they leave you alone if you follow the rules. I’ve had cases like this from them before. It’s just a matter of giving people what they want – the government, the media boys, everyone. He probably told you that I’m sorting out your press coverage. They’ll be livid that they didn’t get pictures of you on arrival, so we’ll have to handle things quite carefully. I thought, if you don’t mind” – he turned to look at me in the passenger seat – “we’d do the interviews tomorrow morning.”

“I just want to be left alone.”

“We’ll have to deal with the allegations first, I’m afraid,” he said. “Then you’ll be left in peace, I promise.”

“What allegations?” I said, “I have been locked in prison, and I worked in a country run by a dictator. That’s it.”

“They are saying that you helped him cut people up. That you helped with tortures in his gaols.”

“That’s rubbish,” I said, horrified. “I was one of the ones who was locked up.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Howarth said. “I believe you. But you’ll have to explain why you were so close to the old bastard. He’s in Libya at the moment, by the way; no one quite knows how he got out. There’s a rumour that a Tanzanian officer who had been in the King’s African Rifles with him helped him escape.”

“I don’t care where he is.”

Howarth looked across at me. “Tell me something. Why did you stay? Why didn’t you just leave?”

I felt it was a question I could hardly answer. I didn’t
know
the answer myself. I paused, and then, when I spoke, I spoke slowly, as if I were a robot. I stared at the walnut dashboard as I did so, its winking lights an uncomfortable reminder of that communications room in the bowels of Nakasero.

“I stayed because it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t get out anyway, some of the time. And it would have been dangerous to refuse him things. You just do not do that sort of thing in Africa. Besides, I genuinely felt that by being there I could moderate his excesses.”

“That’s it!” Howarth said, excitably, when I’d finished. “That’s the right tack. Exactly the direction we want you to take things in. Don’t mention Stone, or the Embassy. You just have to plead that you were in a fix.”

“But it’s true!” I protested. “I would be justified in saying it.”

“Again, I know that,” Howarth said, turning to me once more over the steering wheel, “but they don’t. When you talk to them, as I said, you have to find a form of words that will give them what they want and keep the government boys happy at the same time.”

“But it’s all just lies. Well, it’s not lies, but the way you are thinking about it is lies. I haven’t committed any crime.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s my business. I know what I’m doing. You’ll be right as rain when the time comes.”

As right as what – that cold rain which fell, from high above the city, as I got out of the car? No. Its coolness had turned to bile, and it seemed to hurt as it touched my face.

I
went to sleep that night with the dull hum of London in my ears, seeping in through the sealed windows of the hotel. The next morning, wearing some clean (if slightly ill-fitting) clothes Howarth had managed to get for me, I waited in the hotel for him to pick me up. The lobby was a swish one, filled with light from an enormous glass atrium and the tinkling noise of tea and coffee being drunk at the low tables.

From where I was standing, at a window next to the pot plants and racks of tourist brochures, I got a good view down the Maryle-bone Road. There was a lot of traffic – there’d been a security alert on the Underground and people were obviously taking their cars – and I realized how so many years in Africa had made all this strange to me. The day before, a bomb had gone off in a rubbish bin outside Baker Street tube, just nearby. The television in my room reported that two commuters and a flower-seller had died. There was still red and white police tape sealing off the entrance to one of the streets I could see out of the window, and a general air of nervousness among the passers-by.