shown him the way to outwit oracles and spirits, affirming the Ruler’s belief that he himself was the supreme sorcerer.
At this moment of absolute belief in his counselor, he sensed in Tajirika’s offer of advice and his confident tone the danger he posed. Yes, this man of uncanny insights might one day feel emboldened to challenge his authority. He would strike first. Confront danger before it was too late. This guiding principle in dealing with political adversaries and friends had served him well.
He had a sudden moment of inspiration. Just as the Lord of Heaven will one day call the world to account, he, too, would call Aburlria to account. What he once told Rachael he would tell to Aburlria. And what he did to Rachael he would do to Aburlria, thus enacting what had never been done by any ruler before him: freeze or even abolish the future of a country. His instrument would be none other than Tajirika. He would send Tajirika on one more mission.
His plan was simplicity itself. He would send his devoted minister, his very trusted counselor, on a last mission, to order the army for a massacre. Blood would flow. And after the massacre he would set up a commission of inquiry supervised by a couple of observers from America and the European Union, if necessary, which would end up blaming his Minister of Defense. He would then have him executed publicly.
Thought, Word, and Deed!
He told Tajirika to put the riders on television, as he had so magnificently proposed. They should say that all queuing and agitation for tomorrow must cease immediately and that if the people failed to heed the call from their ancestors, then the spirits would urge the Ruler to halt the progress of time; the whole country would be bewitched in one endless moment by sorcery, for there was no tomorrow beyond the Ruler. He then asked Tajirika, in his capacity as the Defense Minister, to order the armed forces to mow down any resistance twenty-four hours after the ultimatum.
Tajirika was hearing the last details of his mission with his thoughts wandering. The talk of a frozen future triggered Tajirika’s memories of the Museum of Suspended Motion. Had that been a sign of things to come? That he would one day become the chosen instrument to freeze the future of… whor
He looked up and saw the intensity of light in the Ruler’s eyes, and he did not like what he read in it. He acted on instinct rather than cool reason using whatever was at hand, in this case, words.
“My Lord, I am only your Minister of Defense. Everybody knows that you are the commander in chief, and for chiefs of staff and commanding officers to believe me when I ask them to act I need your written and signed authority, as much for that as to have the masked riders, awaiting execution for treason, released for their appearance on television. I need the seal of your office, my Lord, to bolster my authority. As for the four riders, I think I should first bring them to you so that when speaking on national television they will be animated by the warmth of recent contact with you. You know that your handshake means a lot,” he added, glancing at his gloved hand.
This is the problem when dealing with cowards, the Ruler thought to himself. They have no backbone. It was easier to deal with and break the likes of Machokali and Sikiokuu than this dithering crook. He gave him the necessary authority, a rope long enough for the cowardly but gifted counselor to hang himself.
7
Tajirika acted with his usual unerring instinct of self-preservation. With the new authority ceded to him in writing, he sent Wonderful Tumbo to fetch the masked riders from death row and bring them straight to him at the Ministry of Defense. Fortunately, Wonderful Tumbo got to them and found their hair and beards still intact, for no warden dared trim the masks of spirits. A few wardens even knelt before the spirits, begging them to intercede with their ancestors on their behalf.
Once inside Tajirika’s office, it was the spirits who fell to their knees, confronted by a figure different from the picture of Tajirika they carried in their heads. Ditto Wonderful Tumbo, a longtime friend and confidant of Tajirika’s. Had it not been for his years of police training and experience, he would have fainted.
Tajirika sat on a raised chair, the one that Sikiokuu had made in imitation of the Ruler’s at cabinet meetings. He wore a T-shirt and shorts made of lion skin. He was draped in a cape of a colubus monkey skin that reached to his feet. Tajirika had discarded the glove used to cover his right hand. To the wonderment of his guests, his right arm and left leg were white, his left arm and right leg black. The riders assumed him a deity. Wonderful Tumbo said loudly, with absolute conviction: He is the chosen one, a man set apart by the gods.
The four spirits abandoned themselves to newfound joy and gratitude for life restored, and there was nothing they would not do for their savior. They listened with all their power to every word of what was expected of them. They would conceal weapons under their hair when they went to meet with the Ruler at the State House.
8
Aburlria heard the news on radio and television. The newspapers also brought out special issues. All carried the pictures of the hirsute creatures. THE SPIRIT MEDIATORS OF POWER, one paper called them. A TELEVISION COUP, another proclaimed. No newspaper had the courage to print what had been said on television, for they all feared the Ruler known for wicked wiles.
The four spirits calmly said that they had been sent by the dead, the living, and the unborn to tell the nation that the Ruler and the official hostess, Yunique Immaculate McKenzie, had been recalled by the ancestors that very morning. The people should not heed any rumors of a coup d’etat. Aburlria was different from other countries of Africa and the Third World. This was not a coup d’etat. It was premeditated SID.
In fact, the Ruler must have known that his time to go had come, because a few weeks before, he had ceded all his powers to the new ruler of Aburlria, Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus Whitehead.
9
For Tajirika, things had gone more smoothly than when he had taken over an armed camp with a bucket of shit and urine. He had taken over the country with a few bullets for the Ruler. Wonderful Tumbo had been effective in ensuring the loyalty of the heads of all the branches of the armed forces. The work he did earned him a promotion to chief of all the eyes, ears, and noses of the Imperial State. Tumbo could not help but thankfully recall the day a policeman he had trained had fought with djinns and got promoted to the State House.
To emphasize continuity, the Emperor retained for a while the Ruler’s cabinet, except for minor changes. Kaniuru was axed and was dealt further humiliation by seeing Kanyori elevated to full governorship of the Central Bank. Sikiokuu was recalled to become Minister for Toilets and Cleanliness in Public Places. Njoya and Kahiga were now the Emperor’s official executioners.
The loyal opposition parties were caught with their pants down. Their leaders first went into hiding, only to crawl out of their holes when they learned the armed forces were firmly behind the Emperor. They tried to devise strategies for gain and survival under the new imperial regime. They listened to and scrutinized every pronouncement from the Imperial Palace, as the former State House was now called. Except for a few odd things, like his decree banning all classics in dead languages and all literature by Descartes, his pronouncements did not ruffle too many feathers.
Even the four sons of the former Ruler, Runyenje, Moya, Soi, and Kucera, in exchange for the Imperial State’s dropping drug and money-laundering charges, agreed, in a written and signed statement by all four, that they knew that their father had succumbed to SID.
They were retired with honor from military service, but alas the ungrateful four escaped to Europe, where they claimed to be the legitimate heirs to the Aburirian throne and formed a government in exile, with one of them as royal president, the second royal vice president, the third a royal prime minister, and the fourth royal deputy prime
