The Outlaw (13 page)

"Quick," said the
gendarme.
"Give me a leg up."

The porter obliged. He interlaced his fingers and hoisted the policeman up into the branches of the tree. The crowd puffed out their cheeks, pointed up into the tree, and chattered.

Back in the bus, Paaté wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Good," he said. "The danger is past."

"Speak for yourself," said Kas. "If Yakuuba is in that tree, then his danger is totally
not
past."

"Yakuuba is not in that tree."

"Where is he then?"

Paaté pointed at the porter in the blue STMB overalls, who was now strolling away from the mango tree, chewing on a bent twig. As he passed their window, the porter looked up and winked at them. Jake nearly laughed out loud.

"That's why we call Yakuuba the Chameleon," said Paaté. "He can change his whole disguise quicker than most people can change their socks."

Kas stared. "You mean he was carrying those STMB clothes all the time?"

"He was wearing them," said Paaté. "The Chameleon always says that one disguise is never enough. If you want to stay safe, you should wear one disguise over another."

"Amazing," said Kas.

The three
gendarmes
searched the bus station for the resurrected outlaw. They drew ugly-looking knives from their ankle holsters and proceeded to stab and slash at every millet sack and traveling bag in sight.

"It's only a matter of time until they search the bus again," said Paaté. "We need to get out of here."

"And go where?" said Kas. "I thought this was the only bus to Ouaga."

"It is. And we're safer on it than in it." So saying, Paaté hauled himself onto the window frame and reached up to grab the edge of the roof rack above. His legs dangled briefly and then disappeared.

Jake followed him; then it was Kas's turn. She let herself be hoisted up onto the roof like a sack of potatoes. No one in the bus saw them go—everyone was too busy staring out the windows at the antics of the three furious
gendarmes.

The roof of the bus was piled high with motorbikes, sacks of grain, caged chickens, and travel bags. Paaté burrowed into the middle of the luggage, loosening a knot here and heaving a millet sack there until he had hollowed out a comfortable den for the three of them.

"No one will see us in here," he said. "Except the chickens in that cage, and they can't tell anybody."

There followed an agonizing half hour of waiting. Jake and Kas held their breath as they listened to the
gendarmes
moving around inside the bus, barking orders and insults. The
gendarmes
checked and rechecked the passengers, but not one of them thought to search the luggage on the roof.

At long last the search was abandoned. The horn of the bus proclaimed its departure, and the engine grumbled into life. The bus edged out of the station, navigating what seemed to be an impossibly tight space between two buildings. A figure in blue overalls, crouched on the tin roof of one of the buildings, stood up and leaped across onto the roof rack of the bus, rolled silently over the piles of luggage, and tumbled down into Paaté's makeshift den.

"
Salaam aleykum,
" whispered the Chameleon. "Peace be upon you."

"
Aleykum asalaam,
" chorused Paaté, Jake, and Kas.

"Paaté, I do believe your eyes are red," said the Chameleon. "Don't tell me you cried!"

"Of course I cried," said Paaté. "That robe is only three days old and already you have riddled it with bullet holes."

The
bus drove south past the mosque, the hospital, the military barracks, and the orphanage. On the outskirts of the town was a magnificent whitewashed villa set in private gardens, and from his vantage point on top of the bus, Jake could see over the high security wall into the gardens. There were bougainvillea vines all around the lawn, and a stone fountain in the middle gushed good clean water. Two ostriches stood at the fountain, arching their necks to drink.

"That house belongs to the mayor of Djibo," said Paaté. "One time, when he was away on business, I got into his garden with some lads from the Djibo cell, and we had an ostrich race across the lawn. You would be surprised how tricky it is to ride a sprinting ostrich."

As the bus traveled south out of town, the concrete houses became mud-brick dwellings, which in turn became straw huts and goatskin tents. Finally all signs of human habitation disappeared. On both sides of the road the flat scrubland stretched away to a shimmering horizon.

"One hundred fifty miles to Ouagadougou," said Yakuuba. "It will take us about five hours,
inshallah,
if you include all the stopping and starting."

Jake leaned back against a sack of millet and gazed out at the sideways-scrolling savannah. It felt good to be going home, but he was still no closer to understanding the events of the last two days. Most confusing of all was the discovery that at least one of their kidnappers was a
gendarme,
a member of the military police.

"Why would a policeman want to kidnap us?" he asked out loud. "It does not make any sense."

"
Au contraire,
" said Yakuuba, "it makes perfect sense. You yourselves said that someone was trying to frame me, to provoke your people into hunting me down. I have many enemies, Jake, but none more bitter or more powerful than the police."

"Why do they hate you so much?"

Yakuuba took a cola nut from his top pocket and bit into it. "Let me explain," he said. "Policemen in our country do not earn a big salary, so they supplement their pay with little extras. They accept bribes from the rich, they extort money from the poor, and they impose irregular 'taxes' or 'fines' on anyone too simple to stand up for his rights. Some are more corrupt, some are less corrupt, but none is ever held accountable for his actions. Have you ever seen a
gendarme
with a name tag on his lapel?"

"No."

"Neither have I. And yet the law of the land states that a
gendarme
should wear his name tag at all times. Power without accountability, Jake. That is the reason our country is sick. And that is why the poor need protecting. Take yesterday, for example. On Wednesdays, as you know, villagers from all over the province come to Djibo market. Yesterday morning, everybody entering the town with a bicycle was stopped by the police and asked to show paperwork to prove their bike was theirs. Those who were not able to show a valid receipt right then and there had their bicycles impounded by the police, pending payment of a twenty-thousand-franc fine, which is five times the official fine."

"That's not fair."

"That's what we thought. At about midday we gathered the Djibo cell and went to the police compound. We removed all thirty-five bikes and gave them back to their owners."

"Was there a fight?"

"Not even a scuffle. Cunning is better than force, Jake. The hero of most African folktales is not the lion or the bear, but the rabbit."

"I see," said Jake. "And do you often pull stunts like that?"

"All the time. Not long ago the local magistrate, Judge Jia-baté, had Widow Wolof's mud-brick hut bulldozed to make way for his new Palace of Justice. We asked everybody in Djibo to donate one brick, and we built her a mansion."

"Nice."

"And when we heard that a foreign gold-mining company was polluting Djibo Lake, we dressed up as water sprites and haunted their mine."

"And just last week," broke in Paaté, "when the mayor announced a new livestock tax, we organized cacophonies in the road outside his villa."

"What are cacophonies?"

"Loud nighttime livestock parties, where everybody brings either a rooster, a dog, or a donkey!"

Jake laughed. "I'm not surprised the authorities hate you," he said. "What gives you the right to do all this? Who appointed you to the role of Chief Protector of the Poor?"

"Our people have a proverb," said Yakuuba. "
Allah reenata baali, amma Allah wi'ii, sannaa baali ngadanee hoggo.
It is God who protects sheep from the wolf, but God also says that sheep should have an enclosure made for them."

"Meaning?"

"We all have a part to play. It is our duty to protect the poor from the bad habits of the rich."

Jake nodded. It was impossible not to admire this crazy young vigilante and his gang. He thought about his own schooldays in England, and all of a sudden his life seemed very empty and selfish. Friends and apps were the only two things he really cared about.

"What about that sheikh back at the camp?" asked Kas. "What's his story?"

"He was one of our special projects," said Yakuuba. "When someone is exploiting the poor in a particularly nasty way, we bring them back to the camp and we try to show them the error of their ways. Sheikh Ahmed used to tour villages making promises of rain in exchange for sheep and goats. Somebody had to stop him."

Jake glanced at the wicker cage opposite, and even the chickens seemed to be glaring at him accusingly.
You call yourself an adventurer, Jake Knight, but what good has your adventuring ever done? Has geothimble ever made a difference to injustice or poverty or pollution? Has wall running ever provided a widow with a house to live in? You're not an adventurer, Knight, you're a consumer. Mr. Joyce was right all along. Too much technology and too little moral fiber.

"I still don't understand," said Jake. "Dad hinted that the Friends of the Poor were an African branch of some international terrorist organization."

"Did he, really? And who told him that, I wonder?"

"Beogo."

Yakuuba looked up sharply. "
Haut Commissaire
François Beogo? The police commissioner in Ouagadougou? Does your father know him?"

"We all do. He sat with us at a banquet the night we got kidnapped."

"How interesting," said Yakuuba. "I have known Commissioner Beogo a long time. He seems to have made it his life's mission to destroy me."

"How come?"

"Last year Paaté and I borrowed the Djibo police van without asking. We were using it to transport grain and milk powder to a group of Tuareg refugees near Naasumba. They had no food, so it seemed the right thing to do, but the police lieutenant in Djibo did not see it that way. When he found out who had taken his van, he got very upset and he called in FIMO to find our camp and destroy it. FIMO, Force d'Intervention Militaire de Ouagadougou, is a branch of special forces, and at the time François Beogo was their commander. They came up to the north and spent months on end hunting for our camp."

"They made life impossible for us," said Paaté. "They were very good trackers, much better than the local police, and we had some very narrow escapes. Six times we had to move our camp to a new location. In the end, Yakuuba decided that something had to be done, so he sent a message to Beogo challenging him to a calabar duel."

"What's that?"

"A calabar duel is the method our ancestors used for resolving arguments. Archenemies meet in the bush next to a calabar tree, and each of them picks a calabar bean from the tree. Cala-bar beans are poisonous, you see. They say a prayer, and then both men swallow their beans at the same time. The calabar tree resolves the dispute. If you eat your bean and die, then you were in the wrong. If you eat your bean and live, then you were in the right."

"And Beogo agreed to this?"

"He was too proud to refuse," said Yakuuba. "Refusing a calabar duel is the same as admitting that you are wrong. So we met in the desert by the Naasumba calabar tree. No guns, no radios, just him and me and the calabar beans."

"What happened?"

"Beogo lost," said Yakuuba. "He would have died, but I could not let that happen. I put him on the back of my horse, took him to the nearest hospital, and waited by his bedside while doctors pumped his stomach. After that he went straight back to Ouagadougou and was off work for a month."

"You saved his life," said Kas.

"And he will never forgive me for it," said Yakuuba. "Like I told you, François Beogo is a very proud man. As long as I remain alive, he can never forget the humiliation of the calabar duel."

Jake cast his mind back to the night of the gold banquet and to their conversation with the affable, larger-than-life police commissioner. From the way he had talked that night, it was clear that Commissioner Beogo hated outlaws, but Jake had not appreciated just how bitter and personal that hatred was, nor the lengths to which he might go to get revenge on his archenemy.

There followed a long silence, and then Kas voiced the question that Jake had been afraid even to contemplate. "So what do you think, Yakuuba?" she asked. "Did Beogo have something to do with our kidnapping?"

Yakuuba bit off another piece of cola nut and chewed it with a slow sideways movement of his jaw, like a ruminating cow. "I can think of only four people in this country who would dare to mastermind an operation like that. François Beogo is one of those people."

"But you can't prove that it was him?"

The Chameleon smiled. "In Africa, princess, you can't prove anything."

Jake leaned back against a sack of millet again and stretched his limbs. He liked this young outlaw who had dedicated his life to the service of the poor. And for the first time since they had met, Jake trusted him as well.

By
eleven o'clock in the morning the sun was high in the sky, and the stowaways on top of the Ouagadougou bus were feeling the heat. Paaté found a mat among the rooftop luggage and stretched it across the top of their den like a parasol.

Jake gazed out across the wide savannah and saw a slow-moving cloud of dust far out on the plain. "What's that?" he asked.

"Last week's cattle drive," said Paaté. "It should arrive in Ouagadougou tomorrow."

Yakuuba was frowning. "Why is it going so far south?" he said.

"It just is."

"I am not talking about the cattle drive," said Yakuuba. "I am talking about that rhinoceros beetle over there."

Jake rubbed his eyes and looked in the direction where Yakuuba was pointing. He saw a reddish insect flying alongside the bus, a meter or two from the edge of the roof rack.