EBOLOWA 1

 

simon miller

 

 

Based on a true story of courage and conspiracy.

 

Author’s Note

     EBOLOWA is a town in southern Cameroon.  In the mid-1950s it was at the heart of the guerrilla struggle for independence from France.  By the early 1970s, the period setting of the story here, the country was nominally independent and Ebolowa a bustling regional centre.  This was also a time of crisis in the West with Watergate, the Arab oil embargo, and rampant ‘stagflation’, an unprecedented affliction combining the worst of inflation with mass unemployment.  Extreme solutions both left and right hung in the air.  France, still fractured by the Algerian War and the would-be Revolution of 1968, was particularly badly affected and their dominance today in nuclear energy can be traced back to the actions covered in this book - - and to the measures then regarded as legitimate.  The damaging ramifications for ex-colonies like Cameroon and Niger are less well documented. 

 

1

 

Monday April 1st 1974.  Chicago.   

 

     He wasn’t expecting a woman.  Sal had just buzzed her through with the words “new client, Harry.  A Dr Fayol - - ” and here she was, a thirty-something medic rattling on about how her sister had drowned in a rip tide off the coast of West Africa way back in ’56.  He was used to clients arriving strung out.  Private eyes were like priests, inviting confidence and promising redemption, and he wasn’t averse to playing up the confessional angle with nice looking women like this one.

     “It was here,” she said, unfolding a map.  “A beach in the middle of nowhere called Mile 12.”

     Her hands were slender and her nails neat but unpainted and she wasn’t wearing a ring.  She had blue eyes and her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail as if she’d been in a hurry or unsure about coming.  With flat heels and minimum make-up she looked the part of a hard-working medic but Harry Kaplan had been a private eye long enough to mistrust first impressions, especially when the woman in question was wearing a very expensive Rolex watch.

     He pulled a chair across to the desk.  “Please sit down Dr Fayol.  You’re making me nervous.”

     “He must’ve been with her.”

     “Who?”

     “This guy.”  She passed him a faded postcard of a crater taken from the air: Mount Cameroun, 12,000 feet, second highest in Africa.  The message on the back was short and the handwriting forceful. 

     “Hi Candy, you’re not going to believe this but I’ve met SOMEONE.  Really - - at the top of this mountain!  I’m sky high, but our secret OK, because it’s complicated.  Annie X   

     PS I’m onto a big story too.”

     The words jumped off the card as if the dead woman’s excitement was still alive.

     “Sounds like somebody else’s husband.”

     “Obviously, but he didn’t even make contact.”

     “Guys who cheat on their wives don’t tend to do the right thing.”

     “I know that, but Annie didn’t have butterflies for brains and she didn’t fall for guys, they fell for her.  She was in love with her career and didn’t want any romantic distractions.  She just used her looks to get her way.”

     “What way was that?”

     “Getting stories.  She was a photojournalist on Life magazine, working on the idea of a resurgent Africa and she said Cameroon was perfect.”

     “You think this guy had something to do with the big story?”

     “That’s what I want you to find out.”  She pointed at a thick blue line circling Ebolowa.  “She was obviously interested in this place.”

     “That’s not much to go on.  Didn’t she keep a diary?”

     “Of course, but it was stolen at the beach along with her cameras.”

     “Right.”  Harry tilted back in his chair.  “So all we’ve got is a two-timing husband, a lethal rip tide, and a place called Ebolowa - -”

     “And her photos.”

     He leant forward as she shook a bunch of photographs from a thick manila envelope and spread them across the desk: granular black-and-white shots like some French art movie, mostly of men of different ages and demeanours.

“Well,” he said after a minute’s admiration, “they’re good.  Quite a range of guys too: any of them strike you as her type?”

“She didn’t have a type.”

“In my experience everyone does.  What about the men she brought home?”

“She didn’t bring any.  I already told you she was in love with her career and home wasn’t the kind of place you brought a date.”

“Why not?”

She waved his question away. “It just wasn’t.”

“You must have some idea of the kind of guy she went for.”

“Well, I certainly can’t see her falling for a guy who lets her drown and then scuttles back to his wife.“

“That’s a pretty serious accusation.”

“Not really.”  She gestured at the map.  “According to the gendarmes she went to the beach on her own, but that was before we knew about him.  You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out they arranged to meet there.”

     “Maybe not, but you haven’t got any evidence he was there or watched her drown.”

     “But that’s why he didn’t come forward!”  Her eyes flashed.  “He just kept his head down.”

     “That’s possible, but the rest of it doesn’t add up.”  He ran his finger along the track leading to the beach.  “This will be a dirt road and the cops would’ve found two sets of tracks if they’d met there.”

     “So they went together,” she said hotly.

     “In which case, how did he get back to his wife?  You said they found her car at the beach.”

     Her mouth clamped into a thin line and she coloured slightly.   He folded his arms and waited. 

     “All right,” she said, “I’ve got no evidence of him being there, but something’s not right - - I can feel it in my bones.  I just can’t believe she’d have fallen for a jerk like that.”

     Harry nodded.  He listened to clients’ hunches even when they were as vengeful as this one.  “How come it’s taken you this long to ask the question?”

     “I’ve only just found the package - - it’s a long story.”  She looked away and when she turned back her eyes had hardened. “My father had taken off with another woman and my mother was getting through a bottle of bourbon a day.  Alcoholics can’t face the world Mr Kaplan.  They can hardly get the garbage out on the right day and dump the mail without opening it, in Mom’s case in the bottom drawer of a big oak chest.  She died in the fall and I’ve been clearing the house.”

     “You never checked before?”

“I probably wasn’t any better at facing the world.”

     He wondered if she knew what she was getting into: the past was a dangerous country and the whole thing felt like a fool’s errand, picking at a scab that would never heal.  Finding the guy wouldn’t bring her sister back and he should have told her so, but work was scarce and the rent was due.  He also fancied a break from his fellow Americans bitching about OPEC and the price of gas.  It pissed him off that they worshipped the market except when it worked for somebody else.  

     Then there was the year: 1956 had been a turning point for him too and he hadn’t been much better at facing reality.  He and Dr Fayol had that much in common.

     “D’you think you’re ready to face up to it now?” he asked.

     “Absolutely.  I’ve got a target.” 

     “Which will be very hard to hit.”  He scanned the faces and figures in front of him.  “None of them seem to be on a mountain.  Is this all you’ve got?”

“The Shultz gallery has the rest - - they’re putting on a retrospective of Annie’s work.  That’s the other reason for hiring you: they want a story to hang it on.”

     He held her eye for a second and an unspoken acknowledgment passed between them.  Sometimes the loose ends in life couldn’t be left any longer: he understood that well enough, but there was also a dangerous whiff of revenge in the air.

     “OK Dr Fayol,” he said, “I’ll take the case.  The deal is all expenses and a month’s money up front.”

He took a contract out of his desk and she read it quickly before signing.  She passed it back and took a family photo out of her bag.

     “This is Annie.  Just so you know what she looked like.”

     A striking young woman looked back at him, blue eyes and thick black hair and beaming with youthful expectation.  With her full mouth and confident tilt to the jaw she looked like a younger version of the woman across the desk, but there were differences.  Time had stolen the bloom of youth and the face opposite was thinner and more angled.  The blue eyes were deeper-set and clouded.

     “She was real nice looking,” he said.

“So everybody used to tell me.”

“And she was going to make the big time?”

“Life magazine thought so - - ” Her voice got husky.  “But she wound up here instead, under a bridge.”  She put her finger on a port called Douala.  “The humidity is apparently hell and people used to go down to Mile 12 to cool off.   They told Dad that skinny dipping under the stars was a craze.”

He gave her a sharp look.  “You didn’t say she’d been skinny dipping.”

“Yeah, well she had, and that’s another reason why I think he was there.  It wasn’t something Annie would’ve done on her own, but nobody listened to me.  Dad just went on about the rip tide, crazy stuff like there should’ve been danger signs up.  The gendarmes said it was up to the British.”

He took a closer look at the map: the beach and the mountain were on the British side of the border.  “Did your father identify the body?”

     “No.  They’d already buried her by the time he got there.”

     “Really - - ” 

     “It took him over three days and they said the morgue was out of action.  Apparently the body was in bad shape.”

     “I can imagine.”  He knew from Vietnam what the tropics could do to the dead.  “So who did identify her?”

     “The US chargé.”

     “I’ll need to talk to him - - “

     “Her - - but I don’t know her name either.  She was one of those Wellesley types and Dad just called her the Ice Maiden.”

     “Meaning?”

     “Chilly.”  She shrugged.  “You know, East Coast, a bit stuffy.”

     “Most of the women in the Foreign Service are like that.”  

     “Sure they are, but I imagine you can get her name easily enough from the State Department. After all, you know the post and when she was there.”

     And with that, she got up with her shoulders back and her head held high.  Harry had seen it before, the lift that came with the promise of action, but all too often it ended in heartache and disappointment. 

 

*   *   *   *   *

    

     Sal was at the window watching the new client turn up her collar and get into a battered brown Saab. 

     “Nice legs and fancy Gucci bag,” she said, “but she needs a tip on where to get her hair done.  Strikes me Candace Fayol is a pretty woman who doesn’t know it.  She’s still in her sister’s shadow.”

     Harry had noticed the legs but not the bag.  He’d also noticed her state of mind.  “She’s a bundle of nerves,” he said, “she wants revenge but at the same time can’t bear to think of her big sister falling for a jerk.  Deep down she’s hoping he’ll turn out ok.”

     “What did I say?  Big sister syndrome: you have to knock them off their pedestal.”

     “Sounds like you’ve been reading too much stuff in Readers’ Digest.”

     “That’s because you don’t know about it Harry.  No sibling rivalry.”

     He actually had a brother called Lazlo but there were things he never talked about, even to Sal.

     “Yeah lucky me,” he said giving her the photographs.  “What d’you make of this lot?  Any heart-breakers?”

     She zipped through them, nodding occasionally and shaking her head but then she stopped.  “Oh boy, I wouldn’t trust this guy in a concert hall, let alone at the beach after dark.” 

     The man was in cut-offs and a sleeveless singlet showing off his biceps.

     “Maybe you wouldn’t, but remember Annie had fallen head over heels.“

     “You mean she was a sucker?”

     “No, I just mean love is blind especially if it’s Cupid’s first hit.”

     “Forget about arrows Harry,” she said handing the stack back with a grim look, “this is a needle in a haystack.  Where do we start?”

     “The chargé,“ he said, “and the gendarmes, and whoever stole Annie’s cameras.  Maybe they saw something.  And whoever she took photos of, but the chargé first.  Can you get Brad on the phone?”

     “Sure.” 

     Sal sat down and flipped through her card index.  Bradley Hastings had been in the Embassy in Saigon during the Vietnam War and Harry had dragged him out of a strip joint seconds before a bomb tore it to shreds.  Ever since, Brad had dined out on how Harry’s instinct for danger had saved his life even though it’d actually been a hangover and his need for fresh air.

     “Ringing,” she said and passed him the phone.

     “Brad, it’s Harry Kaplan - - ”

     “Harry, nice to hear from you,” said Brad, “what can I do for you?” 

     Harry gave him a quick summary of the case and why he needed the details of the 1956 US chargé in Cameroon.

     “No problem Harry,” Brad boomed down the phone, “We’ve processed the data on personnel already.  Ike probably knows the colour of her underwear.” 

     Ike was Brad’s pet name for the Foreign Service’s computer.  After Saigon he had taken a desk job in DC in what he called ‘the brave new world of machine intelligence’.

     “Just her name and telephone will do,” said Harry.

     “At your command Jefe.  Give me an hour.”

     Harry winced: Brad was one of those Americans without an ear for foreign languages.  He got up and reached for the C volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Some poor idiot before him had swallowed the salesman’s patter and not met the payments.  The guy hadn’t paid the rent either and Sal was forever complaining about bills and circulars cluttering up their mailbox.  Harry blew the dust off the volume and flipped through to Cameroon, a German colony until the First World War.  In 1918 it was divided between France and Britain by the League of Nations into ‘mandates’.  Its range of flora and fauna earned it the title “Africa in miniature” and it was also known as “de Gaulle’s gift to Churchill” on account of its titanium, a crucial component for wartime Spitfires.  An insurrection in Douala in 1940 gave the Free French control and de Gaulle flew out to feature in a propaganda newsreel on how his gift would turn the tide in Europe.  In the fifties an insurrection for independence broke out and France, still smarting from colonial reverses in Indo-China and Algeria came down on it with a mailed fist. Hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians lost their lives. 

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