He had a theory of what had happened with the villains. They were stuck. His theory was that originally they had gone up and installed themselves on that part of the roof in order to rain fire on attackers coming from the direction of the pan. And that would have been an ideal site for an emplacement. But then somehow Kerekang had gotten a team into the building and up onto the roof by stealth. And now the villains had their backs to the pan, from which some light gunfire was still proceeding. And something was keeping them from rappeling down the building, which surely they were equipped to do, although possibly not. But of course that would mean abandoning equipment they couldn’t let fall into Ichokela’s hands, Kerekang’s people’s hands. And then likeliest of all was that Kerekang had shooters on the ground close enough to make rappeling unthinkable. That was his theory of the situation.
He thought he should push his rifle farther away from him. He leaned toward it, reaching, which led to actual screaming from some of the witdoeke. He was being misunderstood. He had wanted to give a reassuring sign.
“Dumela,” he shouted.
He pointed at his forehead. “Witdoek, ke witdoek,” he shouted.
Someone came up behind him and pressed a gun barrel into his back.
Impulsively, he stood up and turned around.
A young man, a boy, really, was pointing a pump-action shotgun at him. He was in a state of alarm and confusion. He was retreating a few steps. Ray realized he knew the boy, from the university. He was wearing bush shorts, and a tee shirt from the main craft shop in the capital. It was a sky-blue tee shirt and bore the legend Keep Botswana Tidy. Iris had bought three of those shirts to give as presents. The young man was wearing his witdoek, like his comrades. I would like to have comrades, Ray thought.
Ray said, “Dumela, rra. I believe I know you from university. I am a teacher, rra. I am from St. James’s. Ke mang St. James’s.”
The boy was thin. The combat boots he was wearing belonged on sturdier legs than his. It was wrong for this boy to be here. It was altogether wrong. He had to do something. The boy was moving further back. He slid the pump action forward and back. Obviously it was the bundle on Ray’s chest. It had to be that.
Ray slapped the bundle, prompting the young man to drop to a crouch, a firing stance.
“No,” Ray said, slapping the bundle even more heartily and forcing himself to smile.
Two other fighters, older and rougher and more rustic-looking men, approached, their rifles aimed at him. It was peculiar, because everyone in the encounter was hunched over, stooping to one degree or another, out of prudence. And that reminded him that he needed to get his head down too. He was taller than any of the three people he was dealing with. He doubted that the two new arrivals spoke English. He would tell them he was with them, that he was their friend.
“Ke tsala. Witdoek. Ke tsala.”
The older men wanted him to do something about the bundle. He wasn’t going to. The damned loops around his neck were cutting into his flesh and it would be his pleasure to get the whole thing off him just for ten minutes but there was no way he was going to relinquish it in the circumstances he was in.
He addressed the boy, the student, whose name was coming to him. It was Kevin. And his last name was coming to him and it was Tsele. He had been a member of the Student Representative Council. They had spoken. Kevin had been a firebrand of some kind.
Ray said, “Kevin, listen to me. I am Professor Finch. I am here to help you. Look, this is only a manuscript, here. You can feel it. I will hold my hands all the way up, like this. You feel it. I know what you think. But this is paper in here, a book.”
Cautiously, Kevin approached, saying something to the two other men. He lightly punched the bundle. Then he pried at it.
Kevin said, “It is like a bomb, rra, to my eye. But so why are you carrying it about in this way? And rra, you are naked, I see.”
“Because it is a precious thing of my brother’s. It is a keepsake. It is a very long story, Kevin. He is just dead.” Ray was using locutions from Botswana English. Normally he didn’t. But he wanted to be completely comprehended. Because he wanted to find Quartus and get him and he wanted to shake Kerekang’s hand and help him get out of this and begone, be somewhere else, if he would go, walking around with all his limbs working, somewhere else with snow and lakes.
“Ehe, then come away. You must have to explain why you have come amongst all this. But you may do that in time, rra. Because we are in a spot. But you are naked.”
“I know it,” Ray said forcefully.
Kevin led him away to crouch in the lee of the water-tank foundation. Kevin was uneasy with him, naturally. He reminded Ray to keep his head low. This was the safest area in the whole position, Ray realized. He appreciated being put there.
The two older men were returning to their places. They were taking his rifle along with them. They were staring at him. He wanted them to know that there was only one bullet, that it was chambered, and that he had no more ammunition. He thought the word for bullet was lerumo but he wasn’t certain. He was tired. They could come back to him if they wanted more information.
Kevin sat down next to him. He said, “Rra, you know these men who are killing us, they are killers from Namibia, koevoet. We will send them back to that place. They have killed in Namibia from before. So we have to kill them. We are taking their weapons.”
Ray explained about Wemberg’s rifle and its solitary round.
Kevin said, “I want to know how is that old man. We said to him he must stay back, but he came following behind us and then we saw he was all blood. We sent him down, then. And when I went to look he was gone.”
“Yes, that’s a man I know from Gaborone, a very good man. No, I hope he’s okay. He’s being seen to. There is a doctor. We were held by koevoet, but we got free. The old man is my friend.”
There was a violent fusillade. The tanks were hit. Bits of shattered wood showered on them. The tanks were dry.
“They are hitting high, you see,” Kevin said.
“That’s heavy ammunition.”
“Ehe, and now we see they have their second gun back to use again. For a time they had only one big one to use. We have got to go and kill them. Come and I’ll show you something.”
Kevin crept over to the parapet. Ray crept behind him and joined him there.
“We have done this,” he said. He directed Ray to put his head through one of the embrasures and look down.
Below was the vast courtyard filling the space between the arms of the U. Koevoet had made the mistake of turning the area into a car park and, obviously, not guarding it securely. Ray was looking into a well of destruction. There were ten vehicle carcasses, some still smoking, most of them trucks of different sizes. But at least one armored personnel carrier was among the wrecks. It was a brilliant example of what guerrillas could do with a box of matches, if they got a chance, if the wrong door was left open. It was astonishing that the building hadn’t gone up too. Apparently there had been enough distance between the clustered vehicles and the building walls to keep it from happening before some form of firefighting had taken place. He could see places where the walls were blackened. He didn’t want Ngami Bird Lodge to burn. And he was making a mental inventory of the damage he was observing. It was a reflex.
Kevin brought him back to the place under the tanks. Ray wanted to know where the water had come from to fight the courtyard fire if the rooftop tanks were empty. He asked Kevin about it and was told that there were two deep wells out near the pan that fed directly into another set of tanks under the kitchen.
“I am going to kill these evil things,” Kevin said, aiming his shotgun skyward.
He meant the buzzards. Three of them were circling low over the roof.
He said, “You see what they do, these koevoet. We saw it. If one of their comrades dies they push him off onto the ground to lie there. So as to keep these birds down there.”
“I saw one of them. I took his boots.”
“You should have taken his trousers… I was shooting down these birds, but our chief said I must stop.”
“To save on ammunition, you mean.”
“Ehe.”
“So who is in charge of this group?”
