EBOLOWA 24

24

 

Tuesday night, Douala, Cameroon

     First class passengers got through quickly but it wasn’t a big airport and Eileen had no trouble keeping Candace Fayol in sight.  She hung back and watched her pick up her luggage and frantically scan the hall for Harry Kaplan.  Of course he was nowhere to be seen and she could almost feel the poor woman’s relief when a big florid guy turned up waving a card with “Dr Fayol” written on it and towed her out into the African night. 

It took her a second for a name to come to his face, or at least an identity.  It was the Dutchman who’d taken over the Mountain Hotel just before she’d been relocated to Dakar.  She’d never got to know him but she didn’t think he was the kind of guy to take advantage of a young woman whose arrival plans had gone to hell.

     Meanwhile she had her own arrival plans to deal with.  A customs official was rooting through her stuff like his life depended on it.  Eileen had looked deliberately shifty under interrogation and in answer to the question on goods liable to import tax, like a hi-fi, she’d said no, but wrapped in a pair of knickers at the bottom of her valise was a short wave radio.  It didn’t take long for the man to find it.

     “What’s this then?”

     “It’s not a hi-fi,” she said stridently defiant.

     “Same classification,” said the officer oozing satisfaction, “your passport please.” 

     He took the details and searched the back of the radio.

     “It’s just for my personal use,” she said.

     “You should’ve declared it.”  The officer completed the form with a flourish and tore off the top copy.

     “Normally it would cost you thirty francs tax,” he said, clearly overjoyed to be lording it over the sort of white woman who thought she was above the law.  “But you tried to smuggle it in so I’m confiscating it until your departure.  You can pay the fine and reclaim it on the way out or it stays in our storage.”

     He thrust the form into her hands and waved her away to make space for the next passenger.  She muttered a protest and threw her belongings back into the case and zipped it up.  As she walked away the feeling of cold steel pressing into the small of her back was oddly comforting.  It had all gone to plan: she’d never been strip searched at Douala whatever passport she’d been on but there was no point taking risks and she’d bought a couple of small radios awhile back with occasions like this explicitly in mind.  So far so good: she detoured into the rest room and moved the Beretta from her waistband to her purse.  Outside in the exit hall she let a mob of taxi drivers gather round her.

     “Anybody got today’s paper?” she asked in Pidgin.

     A young guy with an Afro stuck his hand up.  “It’s in my car.”

     “You win then,” she said and let him take her case.

     “Here it is Madame,” he said giving it to her before opening the trunk.  “You booked into La République?”

     She shook her head.  “I want a cheap room in the docks, but not Le Frigat.”  That would be tempting more than fate.

     He slammed the trunk.  “You sure?  It’s not a nice area.  Only last week an officer off one of the boats got mugged.”

     “Probably drunk.  Anyway it’s the mosquitoes I’m worried about.”  She got into the front seat and glanced at the paper.  “In any case the dangerous stuff seems to be happening somewhere else.  Where’s this Hi Life place?”

     “You know Kumba?”

     “I did, once upon a time.”

     “Well it’s on the old Calabar road.  Back door for oil mafia.”  He gestured at the paper.  “Idiot was trying to muscle into their business.”  He ran his finger across his throat.  “You don’t want to mess with those boys.”

     The taxi coughed into action and they drew away.  He glanced across at her.  “You really want a room in the docks?”

     She nodded.  “I’m writing a book.”

     “About the Douala docks?”

     “In a way.  There was a famous demonstration against the French down there.”

     “Right.”  The driver looked convinced.  “I know just the place.  How come you speak such good Pidgin?”

     “I’m good at languages.”

     It was true: she was.  She’d been a good mimic too with an Irish taste for blarney and had been pretty enough to take some of the star roles at college, like Portia in the Merchant of Venice and in those days of male chauvinism she’d liked the idea of getting away with being a man.  She still remembered the lines, ”the quality of mercy - - “, and how Shylock had been cruelly undone by revenge.  It made her think about what she was doing and wonder where the world was headed: who the hell prayed for mercy any longer?  The modern state's power was without limit.

     She made as if to read the paper in the light of a passing street light.  “So what’s the word on the street?  You taxi drivers are supposed to know.”  The same the world over.

     “They’re mostly going with the Lagos mafia.”

     “But you aren’t?”

     He shrugged.  “I just heard the guy was a colon with a lot of enemies.  They cut him up real bad.  You know - - ” He nodded downwards.  “And then stuffed it in his mouth, choked him to death.”

     She groaned and inwardly cursed Jules for the hundredth time.  He should’ve left it to her.

     “Your business surviving this gas crisis okay?” she asked changing the subject.

     “No, it’s hell.  The price is going through the roof.”

     “I could help you out.”

     He looked at her, his eyes wide, “How?”

     “I need a car for a few days and I’ll make it worth your while.  Double your best day plus two hundred US dollars, all upfront.”

     “Dollars.”  He thought about it.  “You want it tonight?”

     “Yeah.  Tonight.”

     “OK.”  He nodded: she was serious.  “Three hundred dollars and you can have it until midday Saturday.”  He glanced at her.  “It’s a standard shift.”

     “I know.”  She counted out the money.  “Just show me where I’m staying and I’ll take you back to town.  Somewhere in the centre.”

      She needed to find a phone.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

Candace locked the door.  She was trembling and couldn’t stop no matter how much deep breathing she did.  The Dutchman had been kind enough but she was still in shock.  Anybody would be for God’s sake: Harry was in jail on a murder charge and she was being minded by an overweight hotelier who wanted to be Philip Marlowe - - the whole thing was totally insane.  Plus there was Harry’s notebook, burning a hole in her bag, confidential, for his eyes only.  

     “I found it after the gendarmes had gone,” Hans had said, “and brought it in case you were interested.”  She’d looked at him blankly: of course she was. 

     Now she sat on the hotel bed and put her head in her hands.  Harry, Hans, Nkumbé, Esther, Ebolowa, Eileen O’Connell, Annie - - the names ricocheted round and round.  She was jet lagged and wished Harry was there, or Karen, anybody.  Her stomach cramped up tight and her throat was dry, and the tension built like a tidal wave.  She was caving in and told herself to get a grip.

     She looked around for the minibar but there wasn’t one.  Just a bed and a shower and French doors onto a balcony - - French doors - - Cameroon and the French connection, she thought and pressed hard on her temples.  She closed her eyes, trying to clear her head and told herself sternly that she’d only come to find this Didier Nkumbé guy, to wrap things up, a line finally under it, that was all - - he was her priority and like Hans said, no need to worry about Harry, the Embassy would sort it out. 

     She rehearsed the arguments.  He was obviously innocent.  A case of mistaken identity - - the whole Chicago Al Capone thing, like the paper was full of, with the local cops jumping to crazy conclusions.  Two and two make twenty, madness, but hopefully not for long.  Tomorrow morning the guy from the Embassy was coming, Charles Logan or was it Chuck, she couldn’t remember, and the plan for her and Hans to sign affidavits, plus the Inspector. 

     Her restless mind settled a moment on the Dutchman: surely he was a good guy, he had to be, he was helping out - - he’d met her at the airport for God’s sake - - but he was pretending to be a private dick, living out a fantasy and keen to trace Nkumbé.  He’d obviously wanted to hang onto the notebook, but she’d said she needed it to contact Eileen O’Connell’s journalist friend. Harry had said she was up to no good and the old journalist was one of her closest connections, so she had to make contact as soon as possible.

     Oh God: suddenly she couldn’t remember the man’s darned name.  It’d been there a moment ago and was now gone.  She folded her arms and hugged her body before taking a deep breath.  She took the notebook out of her bag and flipped through it.  The name would be there somewhere but there was no neat list.  Instead the pages were crammed full of dense spidery writing as if paper was in short supply. 

     Maybe it had been where Harry grew up, but either way the words were so tiny and crushed together they were barely legible.  Plus there were a bunch of abbreviations and it took her a while to figure out that the first pages actually dealt with a different case altogether - - a capital M for matrimonial and a Mrs Elaine Kramer suing for divorce.  In the state of Illinois you needed graphic evidence of sexual infidelity or domestic violence and Candace saw that Harry had found it.

     She flipped through some more and was brought up short by a diagram on the last one.  Annie, “AF” with a tiny skull and cross bones dated ’56, was at the centre of a spider’s web of connections.  Lines, solid and broken, and arrows drew people into the web.  Some of them were easy to figure like “VC” for Castile with links to “OIL” (“Total” ”Shell” and “BP”) and she noticed another line connecting Total with “Nkumbé”. 

     An extended dotted line linked Nkumbé with Annie with a question mark, as if Harry was still unsure as to who Annie’s SOMEONE was. The question mark bugged her: it annoyed her that he’d resisted the idea of from the beginning and for a moment she stopped reading and stared at the wall.  A big black bug was crawling across it heading for nowhere in particular and she smacked her thigh angrily - - no way was she doing the same! 

     She went back to the notebook and tried to put her feelings on hold: why the hell should she care what Harry thought?  Like Karen said, she was paying the bill.  It didn’t take her long to figure out that “FM” with a skull and cross bones dated ‘60 stood for Felix Moumié, but “FSS” was tougher until she remembered the Brit Frank Stokes.  The Ice Maiden, “EOC”, was connected to Annie and to another unspecified woman with a skull and cross bones and a question mark, as if her identity and date of death were unknown. 

     Another dead woman: Candace frowned and rubbed her forehead as the crazy jumble of names and lines in front of her went out of focus.  She sighed: she’d been meaning to update her contacts for months and hadn’t gotten around to it.  She rested her eyes for a second and was on the point of shutting the notebook when a totally unexpected detail seized her attention.  At the very edge of the web there were two small bubbles containing the miniscule initials “CIA” and “IRA” with a connection to none other than Eileen O’Connell!

     Candace leapt up and put the notebook in the direct light of the bedside lamp.  Her heart was pounding as she took a closer look: the letters were cramped and tiny, but there was no question, they were definitely CIA and IRA and the connecting line was solid with no question mark.  She sat back in shock and tried to clear her head before checking a third time, but there was no mistake.  It was on the page in black and white: Eileen O’Connell had been in both the CIA and the IRA.

     But before Candace had had the time to take it in another sobering thought struck her to the core: the woman had been or was still a member?  My God: she flopped back onto the bed and folded her hands over her stomach to quell her nerves.  What the hell was going on?  She was so fazed by the details that she put the notebook away and took a benzo - - she knew what she was like and was afraid of losing control. She wasn’t paranoid by any stretch and had never entertained any of those crazy conspiracy theories about Marilyn Monroe and JFK, but now was different - - this was her dead sister, and the woman chargé who’d identified the body was some kind of double agent. It beggared belief. 

     Jesus.

     It was insane, incredible - - out of this world - - she closed her eyes tight and pressed her fingers to her temples.  Very gradually her mind seemed to sharpen and things began to fall into place.  Clarity out of chaos: it was out of her world all right, but then her world was a drab and routine place where things and people were what they seemed - - whilst in Eileen O’Connell’s they weren’t.  Harry’s words at O’Hare came back to her, Eileen O’Connell was “more than meets the eye” and she’d said “you mean she’s a fake”, somebody who pretended and kept secrets, somebody whose life was a lie. 

     That’s who Eileen O’Connell was and suddenly it was obvious: agents always masqueraded as diplomats and every embassy the world over was stacked with them, so why not Douala?  She got undressed and sat down in front of the mirror to take her contacts out and make-up off.  Questions buzzed around her mind and she waited for the benzo to kick in. 

     She just wanted a break and to have someone to share it with to get it into proportion.  But she was on her own and, insult to injury, it suddenly struck her that she’d trusted Harry with her secrets and in return he’d kept her in the dark.  She fell back onto the pillow in disgust and closed her eyes.  Her head reverberated with noise and she wanted to scream with hurt and frustration: he had left her out of the loop - - a whole layer of hidden characters and what they had to do with Annie.

     The more she thought about it, the simpler it seemed: just like Watergate and the Daniel Ellsberg affair, there was something rotten at the heart of the state and Eileen O’Connell was part of it.  Annie had been murdered and O’Connell had covered it up.  She’d lied to Dad and he hadn’t doubted her word. Candace sighed: he should’ve known better.

     A breeze blew up and rustled the flimsy linen drapes and she suddenly felt exposed.  She got up and locked the French windows and dragged at the drapes, but one of the runners jammed and they refused to come together.  Through the gap she could see the last few flickering lights of the city shutting down.  Somewhere out there was the river and the bridge and further north, Mount Cameroon and the beach at Mile 12.  She shuddered and clenched her fists, her newly manicured nails digging into her palms.  She felt daunted and utterly alone.