Chaga

law’s cousin.

They dropped the kid half a mile from the town centre. He looked back nervously. Tembo waved him on encouragingly. He worked his way into the knots of people. Gaby let him get a hundred yards ahead before following in low gear. For all the people, there were few blue-helmets. A solitary APC passed. The soldier in the front hatch saw a white woman driving and curled his tongue to touch the lower edge of his shades. For the first time the realization of what might happen if something went wrong struck Gaby. She was monstrously isolated, professionally, geographically, racially, sexually. If she fell, there would be no hands to catch her but those of men with guns.

William stopped to talk with some young men he knew sitting on the white stones that marked the forecourt of Merueshi’s solitary gas station. Gaby stopped the ATV. In the back Faraway waved his thumbs on the air. The boy’s talk was coming through loud and clear. One of the youths pointed into town. William moved on. The four by four followed.

The soldiers had set up a processing station in front of the district magistrate’s office. A funnel of parked armoured cars directed the press of people past a table where a swarthy officer with the thinnest moustache that could possibly call itself such checked names on a PDU. Beyond him were the trucks.

‘Go to it, go to it,’ Gaby shouted to her stool-pigeon. Unhearing, William melted into the crowd. ‘Damn it. Can’t see him.’ She stopped the car and peered over the back seat at Faraway’s monitors.

‘Much meeting and greeting and no magendo,’ Faraway said. ‘Wait, wait, wait.’ The jerky, wide-angle image of the shoulder-mounted minicam had caught a soldier standing talking with a bearded, barefoot man in shorts. You could see at once that the bearded, barefoot man was at his wits’ end. He pleaded with his hands. The soldier caught his eloquent hands, turned them over. The bearded, barefoot man wore a copper bracelet on his left wrist.

‘Turn to it, please turn to it,’ Faraway begged. ‘Oh, boy, if only you had some lessons in basic camera technique.’

‘But do not get too interested,’ Tembo said, mindful of his wife’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s safety.

On the ten-centimetre monitor they saw the bearded, barefoot man take off the copper bracelet and give it to the soldier. The soldier put it in one of the pockets of his combat pants and handed the bearded, barefoot man a slip of paper. The bearded, barefoot man thanked the soldier effusively with his eloquent hands. He signalled to a thin woman and four children who had been sitting on the earth close by to pick up their things. The soldier led them all away, shouting a path through the crowd. The people pushed in behind them and William’s camera caught no more.

‘One moment,’ Faraway said. He wound the disc back frame by frame. ‘There.’ In the shuffle, William had been pushed against the soldier and the unit flashes on his uniform had come into sharp focus. The alphabet was indecipherable, but the regimental badge of a stooping eagle in a blue triangle was unmistakable. Haran’s instructions had guided them true.

‘Result!’ Gaby McAslan yelled, punching the air and forgetting the low roof.

Kid William moved inward. The ATV crawled after him. The camera saw a soldier take a thousand shillings from a distraught pastor and his family. It saw three blue-helmets laugh at a desperate old man offering them the only thing he valued; an aged, aged black bicycle. They saw a boy in combats with an AK47 order a family to spread all their goods on a blanket on the ground and pick through them, taking here a brass-framed mirror, there a wedding ring. The boy-soldier was seventeen at the most.

What appalled was the blatancy at it. There was no attempt at concealment or discretion, no implication of shame or misdoing. It was a public market that ended in a slip of paper and the people who received it being taken to the trucks beyond. When a truck was full, it would drive away, the people on board pressing their hands together in thanksgiving and weeping with joy, and another would come forward to take its place.

The crowds were denser closer to the town centre. Bodies squeezed the ATV tight. The heel of Gaby’s hand never left the horn. She imagined she could smell sweet-sour fear-sweat blowing through the air- conditioning vents. A cute Azeri boy-trooper with acne pressed hands and face to the driver’s window, licked the glass, rolled his eyes.

‘Fuck off,’ Gaby growled, heart hammering in case he should catch sight of the treachery in the back seat.

‘Oh, you beautiful boy!’ Faraway exclaimed, snapping his fingers in delight. ‘He has got an officer! Contact! The officer is asking him if has any money.’

‘They don’t believe in beating about the bush,’ Gaby said.

‘I do,’ Faraway said, radiantly happy. ‘I will beat any bush with you, Gaby. William is offering him the thousand shillings. It is right in front of the lens. Tembo, my brother, your wife’s sister-in-law’s cousin raised smart children. Oh, this is beautiful. They have taken the money, but they think because he has a thousand shillings to give away, he may have more. They are asking to see what else he has. Give them the disc player, William. I wonder, Tembo, was your wife’s sister-in-law’s cousin ever in Nairobi? Maybe there is some Faraway in him. He is clever and handsome enough. Go on, take it. Made in Japan. Not European Union rubbish. Yes, they like it. That will do them very nicely, thank you William. Now, just give him the paper, and take him through to the trucks. Why will you not do this? Give him the paper, he has given you all he has, greedy m’zungu’.

‘I do not like this,’ Tembo said. ‘Can we get closer?’

‘I’ll try,’ Gaby said. ‘But these crowds.’ Do not think of the annihilation of the mob, she told herself as she navigated the ATV closer.

‘Oh Jesus Mister Christ,’ Faraway said.

Gaby glanced at the monitor. The picture was badly broken, as if the shoulder bag were being shaken violently.

‘I see them!’ Tembo shouted. He was on the edge of his seat with worry. William and the Azeri officer were playing tug-of-war with the bag containing the camera and transmitter. William turned, saw the electric blue ATV, looked right at the white woman driving it. Gaby could hear his cry for help inside and outside the four by four.

‘Jesus. We’re rumbled.’

The officer stared at Gaby with a look that passed from recognition to comprehension to hatred in a few muscle twitches. Exactly the look Raymond Burr gave in Rear Window when he rumbled Jimmy Stewart. She knew her father’s old video collection too well to have forgotten what happened next.

Tembo heaved the big heavy camcorder out of the back, switched it on and brought it to bear on the officer. The officer’s hand had been straying to his sidearm. The watching eye of the world kept it safe in its holster. In the moment’s diversion William twisted free from the officer and fled through the crowd, leaving behind the shoulder bag with the clever little camera and cleverer little transmitter. Faraway put his hands on his head in despair. It was only partly for the loss of expensive equipment.

Gaby floored the accelerator. People parted before the ATV like the waters before Moses. They passed the stunned officer, they passed the running William. Faraway flung open the rear door, seized William’s wrist and pulled him ungently in. The open door flapped wildly on its hinges. Evacuees jumped back.

‘Move move move!’ Gaby screamed at them. They moved moved moved. It was better than death. She threw the wheel from side to side, dodging by instinct alone. The loom of faces places objects was absurdly like a computer game. Only game over is gang rape if you are lucky, a bullet in the back of the head and every vulture for fifty kays around coming to the wake if you are not, she thought. The sweat she could now smell in the car was her own. Fat drops rolled coldly down the sides of her body.

She heard Tembo’s cry and spun the wheel without looking. There was a loud bang. The car lurched as it ran over something. In her wing mirror Gaby saw a dog spin across the road. Intestines sprayed from its burst stomach. Gaby wailed. The back door was still swinging and banging. Faraway did not dare risk his fingers trying to catch it.

William pushed his head between the front seats.

‘Go right here,’ he said. ‘There is an earth road goes west into the valley of the Kiboko, and then south to the Chaga.’

‘I don’t want to be anywhere near the Chaga.’

‘They will have blocks up on the roads north and east.’