EBOLOWA 3

“A clean break,” he said.  They wouldn’t let him across the border even if he paid them. 

     She led the way into the porch and opened the front door.  Freezing air blew in off the water and in the distance he could see the chimneys of a power station trailing grey smoke into the blue sky.  Down below, the ferry was approaching the quay with a few cars lined up to go aboard.  Two more were in position for the Drive-Thru Bank and a hobo was rooting through the garbage bin.  All the pieces were in place for an average day in main street America.

     “How d’you like banking with a robot?” he asked.

     “I don’t.  It’s mechanization gone mad.”

     “Right.”  It was another man-on-the-moon moment of technology and society out of synch.  He lit her cigarette with a new-fangled gas lighter. 

     “Thanks.”  She drew on it hard and the end burned bright.  “I don’t like shopping malls either.  I’m a city girl like Jane Jacobs, streets and markets.”

     Harry didn’t know who Jane Jacobs was or why Eileen O’Connell dropped the name because she didn’t seem to be the type of woman who needed help making up her mind.

     “So how come you ended up here?” he asked.

     “I haven’t ended up anywhere thank you very much young man.”  She blew smoke into the air.  “My father couldn’t afford West Egg.”

     “Well, at least you’ve got a great view.”

     “Haven’t I just?  I can keep an eye on what’s going on.  I watched you arrive and was struck by the way you moved.“

     “Really - -“

     “Yes, the way you ambled.  Not at all like someone from a gallery, and then you remarked on the Lusitania rather than Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother.  Somebody from a gallery would’ve been all over it.  So my deduction, Mr Kaplan, is that you’re here on false pretences.”

     She was enjoying herself, a big smile on her face.

     “Looks like you’ve got too much time on your hands,” he said smiling back, “but nice work, it’s a fair cop.”

     He showed her his PI licence and she clapped her hands and gave a hoot of pleasure.  “Perfect, a private detective!  I should’ve guessed.”

     “Yeah well, I am working for the Shultz Gallery as well.  Like Sal told you, they want a story to hang the exhibit on.”

     “Why didn’t you come clean?”  She was flirting, as far from the ice maiden as you could get.  “Were you worried I wouldn’t have a private detective in the house?”

     “We don’t enjoy the best of reputations.”

     “I’ve dealt with worse.”  She examined her nails as if they’d scraped the bottom of the barrel.  “The Foreign Service isn’t all black-tie receptions and cocktail parties you know.”

     “I bet it isn’t.” 

     Least of all in Douala in 1956, he thought, and drew hard on his cigarette.  He held the smoke in his lungs and looked out towards the power station.

     “It’s closing down,” she said following his gaze.  “We’re taking a tip from the French and building a nuclear plant instead.   By the way, you were probably up too early to hear the news that President Pompidou died last night.”

     “No,” he said taken aback, “how?” 

     “Cancer.  He’s been dying for months.”

     “First I’ve heard of it.”

     “The French are very good at muzzling the media.”

     “Did they do the same in Cameroun?”

     “And more.  You could get away with murder.”  She raised her eyebrows.  “What did you have in mind?”

     Harry could hardly believe his ears: the woman was as cool as a cucumber. 

     “Annie was onto a big story when she died,” he said, “and I was wondering if she was treading on anybody’s toes.”

     She stubbed out her cigarette.  “She trod on everybody’s.”

     “Didn’t anybody get upset?”

     “I already told you she didn’t share anything with me.”

     “Like the name of the guy she fell for?”

     She snorted.  “Not a chance, although I heard it was the guys who fell for her, with a little come-on flirting on her part of course.  That way she got the best stories.”

     “She really got under your skin didn’t she?”

     “Not half as badly as the French memsahibs.  They threw a Champagne party the day she was buried.”

     “That’s a whole lot of bad blood.”

     “She’d been running around with the enemy.”

     “And one of their husbands, according to her sister.”

     “I don’t know anything about that.”

     “There must’ve been rumours.”

     “There are always rumours about someone like her in a place like Cameroon: young, attractive, unmarried - “ she paused as if she was picking her words carefully. “Back then we’d have called her fast.  Rumours were inevitable, which is not to say true or that gossip is the same as intelligence.”

     “Sure, but it can get pretty close in hands like yours, or mine come to that.   I’m not saying we’re in the same game but we both have to trawl in dirty water and know what to throw back.”

     “OK, Mr Kaplan,” she said giving him a look as if he’d won a point, “agreed, there is some overlap and my work did involve listening to gossip, which is why I used to frequent some pretty rough bars.”

     “On your own?”

     “I knew how to look after myself.”

     “Sure you did, but what about Annie?  Wasn’t she taking a risk using herself as bait - - ”

     “Your words not mine.”

     “Maybe so, but she was naked when you identified her, wasn’t she?”

     “Yes but it wasn’t the way it looked.  Skinny-dipping under the stars was a craze back then.  The new bridge had put Mile 12 within easy reach and all the kids were doing it.”

     “Not on their own.”

     “No, but Annie wasn’t a kid and she thought she could look after herself.”

     “Maybe she miscalculated.  Maybe somebody was with her that night and things got out of hand.”

     “There was no sign of anybody else or of things getting out of hand, whatever that means.”

     “It means foul play.”

     “That’s ridiculous.  She drowned in the rip tide and there was never the slightest suggestion of anything untoward - - ”

     “Untoward!  Oh come on Miss O’Connell, don’t tell me a smart woman like you didn’t think about it.  A young woman is found floating naked in the river, the same woman who’s been playing fast and loose with every man in town - - homicide has got to cross your mind.”

     “All right Mr Kaplan, yes.  It did cross my mind but the pathologist found no evidence of violence.”

     “I heard the body was in bad shape.”

     “It was, but only from being in the water with barracuda and the coroner returned a verdict of misadventure.”

     He was tempted to push her on the French muzzling more than just the media: if Annie had been murdered the cover-up would have involved a swathe of local officials, including the coroner.

     “OK, I believe you,” he said instead, “but you can see where I’m coming from, a cynical PI with a lot of bad experience of human behaviour.”

     “The road of the diplomat is strewn with the same sorry stuff.”  She pulled the front door shut and shot him a frank look.  “I should’ve stuck to history.”

     “You still can,” he said and took the packet of photographs from his bag. 

     “I appreciate the chance.  I always wondered where they’d got to.”

     “My pleasure.”

     She cleared the newspapers away while he set up the photographs.  Even before he’d finished she’d gathered up a series of shots featuring guerrilla fighters sitting round the remains of a campfire. They’d taken their boots off as if they were uncomfortable and their camouflaged fatigues looked a size too big.  Some were smoking, one was cleaning a machete, and another was stripped to the waist washing a gash in his side with a ragged cloth.  In the close-ups they looked young and inexperienced.

     “These men are freedom fighters in the early days of the UPC’s armed resistance,” she said with a rueful shake of the head.  “Could be Vietnam, which only goes to show how little we learn from the past.”

     “I’ll second that, but no American woman ever got that close to the Vietcong, except maybe Jane Fonda.  You’ve got to be impressed.”

     “I already told you Annie knew how to get a story.” 

     She picked up a photo of a handsome black man with a pencil moustache sitting cross-legged at a café.  With the bentwood chairs and striped awning he might have been on the Left Bank. 

     “Annie got that close,” she said holding her finger and thumb a fraction apart, “thanks to this man, her good friend Dr Felix Moumié and a leading light in the party.”

     “An intimate friend?”

     “If you believe the gossip.”  She paused.  “And it’s ’56, so this was taken in Bamenda.“ 

     She broke off and picked out the shots of two other black men.  One was much the same age and leaning happily against a tree, while the other, an older man in his forties, was sitting soberly behind a typewriter.  Harry took the pages from the Encyclopaedia Britannica out of his pocket and looked at the map. 

     “Bamenda was in the British mandate,” he said.

     “Exactly.”  She had a triumphant gleam in her eye.  “You said the gallery needed a story.”

     “That’s what I’m being paid for.”

     “Well, once upon a time there were three young men, idealists - -“ She broke off and shook her head.  “There’s no way I can make light of it.  The facts of the matter are that Annie Fayol met them in Bamenda because the French had outlawed the UPC in ‘55.  The idea was to throttle it at birth, but they simply moved the HQ across the border.”  She held out the photo of the most boyish.  “This is Ernest Ouandie.  He was executed for treason only a couple of years ago.  He’d been on the run for years.”

     Harry took the photo: the young man was beaming into the camera and his eyes shone with youthful expectation.  He looked happy, brimming with energy.

     “Too bad.” 

     “Too damned right,” she said with a flash of anger.  “They thought they had everything to live for.  They’d read the Atlantic Charter and put their faith in it and when it wasn’t honoured they turned to the Soviets.  We let them down, which was the one thing Annie was right about.”

     “What happened to the others?”

     “Nyobé was ‘killed in action’.”  She rolled her eyes.  “The usual story, and Félix Moumié was poisoned by a French agent in Geneva with thallium.”

     “What’s that?”

     “Radiation as bad as Hiroshima.”

     “That’s a dirty trick.” 

     “Yeah well, nobody can touch the French when it comes to dirty tricks, except in Moumié’s case they screwed up.  It was supposed to look like natural causes, but they overdosed him and he died a few days later accusing the French government of assassination.”

     “You know a lot about it.”

     “It was the hot topic in Douala and Geneva, not to mention Paris.  He also accused Le Main Rouge - - if you remember them?”

     “Yeah,” Harry nodded: a terrorist organization ruthlessly committed to keeping Algeria French.

     “So you might recall some people suspecting the French Secret Service were giving them a helping hand.”

     “Yeah.  Were you one of them?”

     “Well,” she shrugged, “I thought it was quite possible - - there’s always bound to be a few bad apples, or someone exceeding a brief.”

     “That’s putting it mildly,” he said, arranging the three photographs in a line. “These guys were probably Annie’s big story, but what the hell was she doing driving through a war zone to go skinny-dipping under the stars?  This border crossing must’ve been as busy as Checkpoint Charlie.”

     “Come, come, Mr Kaplan,” she said leaning back and smiling, “romance doesn’t only happen in Hollywood you know.  You said she’d fallen for someone and she obviously couldn’t wait to see him again.”

     “So you agree he was at the beach with her?”

     Her smile faded and she shook her head, “I didn’t say that.  My guess is that they had a rendezvous but he didn’t show, and if I were you I’d want to know why not.”