Chaga

wings of the angel of death, who is white, and fast, and always closer than you think.

‘I saw another plane,’ Gaby whispered. ‘A big white plane. Coming right at us.’

Dr Dan nodded.

‘A near miss,’ he croaked. ‘It was a UNECTA aircraft.’

The captain apologized on the PA and said that there had been a close approach situation but everything was under control and they would be on the ground in three minutes. He sounded like he would personally be very glad to be down there. Fasten Seat-belts/No Smoking pinged on. Gaby felt the reassuring rumble of wheels going down and locking. Three minutes later they were on the ground. They taxied a long way to find a stand. They all seemed to be occupied by enormous transport aircraft hastily painted white with the blue mountain-and-paired- crescents symbol of UNECTAfrique on their tails.

Gaby and Dr Dan waited for the plane to empty before gathering their things. On the concrete it was colder than Gaby expected equatorial Africa should be. Streaks of grey and dull red lightened the sky behind the main tower. Dr Dan shook Gaby’s hand at the foot of the steps.

‘Have a good wedding,’ Gaby said.

‘I doubt it, somehow. Her betrothed is not a good man. Then again, my daughter is not a good woman. So maybe it will work well. If it does not, I shall want back the fifty cattle I gave that good-for-nothing as dowry.’ A black Mercedes was approaching from under the passenger pier. ‘It was a pleasure to have met you, Gaby McAslan. Doubtless, given the nature of our vocations, we will meet again. I look forward to it. I shall certainly never use an aircraft washroom again without thinking of you.’ He smiled wickedly and was driven away in the black Mercedes.

Don’t go, Gaby wanted to shout, alone on the apron among the huge white aircraft. Don’t leave me.

They had lost her luggage. She waited for it to appear in Reclaim until the man came to shut the carousel off. He told her where she could make a report, and not to worry. The immigration officer was just settling down for a doze when she came through. He stamped her passport, checked her inoculation certificates and assured her with a wonderful, generous smile that her bag would turn up very soon. She would see. The smart woman with the very good English at the airline desk gave the same assurances and smile. It would be brought to her hotel. Where was she staying? The PanAfric. But only for three days until she found somewhere more permanent.

There was one figure in the whole big arrivals hall. He was a short, stoutish, middle-aged man in the rumpled linen suit that was uniform for male East Africa staff. His black hair was receding at the front but had been let grow long at the back. It looked as if his scalp had slipped. He wore round spectacles that, with everything else, gave the impression of an owl on a long-haul holiday. Rather needlessly, he was holding a cardboard sign with Gabriel McAslan felt-markered on it.

‘T.P. Costello?’

‘Gabriel McAslan?’

‘Gaby.’

They shook hands.

‘Is this all you’ve got?’ the short man asked. He was the Nairobi Station Chief of SkyNet News but had never lost his native North Dublin accent. Easier to take the boy out of Barry town than Barry town out of the boy.

‘They lost my luggage.’

‘It’ll turn up. That’s the amazing thing about this country. It looks like bloody chaos but things get done all the same.’

It was even colder in the car-park than on the apron. Gaby’s breath steamed. The grey dawn light was just strong enough to make the white floods dazzling and surreal. The SkyNet logos on the sides and hood of the big Toyota Landcruiser gleamed.

I am here, Gaby McAslan told herself as she fastened her seat-belt. This is me, this is real. No. She could not believe it. There was still a pane of glass like a television screen between her and the reality that she was in Africa.

‘Good flight?’

‘Apart from losing all my worldly goods and a near-miss with a UNECTA plane on the way down, about as good as any long-haul flight can be.’

‘Those bloody Antonovs,’ T.P. Costello said, sliding his credit card into the car-park reader. ‘Things should have been scrapped twenty years ago, but as usual the UN’s running the whole damn show on a shoestring. It’ll take hundreds of dead bodies before they wise up.’

‘There almost were.’ Soldiers in blue helmets waved them through the sandbagged permanent checkpoint. ‘I met an interesting guy, though. Could be useful. Dr Daniel Oloitip.’

T.P. Costello laughed.

‘Dr Dan. He’s all right. One of the white hats, I suppose. At least he doesn’t have his head so far up UNECTA’s ass that every time it yawns you can see him singing “God Bless America”. An African problem with an African solution, he says. I agree with him.’

‘Except it’s an Asian and South American and Indian Ocean problem as well.’

They were on the main road now, a good two-lane highway. Most of the street lights were still working. It was early, but traffic was heavy. A stream of taxis flowed out from the city, some with biogas compression tanks fitted into their trunks. Big gasoline tanker-trains hurtled in-bound through the morning dusk. Oil products were precious with the connections to the coast under threat. Everywhere were small Japanese microbuses with baggage-laden racks welded to their roofs. Each was filled to bursting with passengers. Some brave souls clung to the sides or hung from the sliding doors. The road surface was inches from them and the vehicles seemed to have only one speed, which was flat out, but the hangers-on were blase enough to wave and grin and waggle their tongues at the white woman in the big Landcruiser.

‘Matatus,’ T.P. Costello said. ‘Something between a bus and a taxi. Cheaper than either and a hell of a lot less safe. They go all over the damn country: up mountains, across deserts, through swamps. There’re probably ones trying to make it through the Chaga. Everybloodywhere. Only use in dire emergencies.’ He braked and blared simultaneously as a green Hiace bus cut in front of him. The matatu flashed its hazard warning lights impudently and accelerated. Faces grinned in the rear window. The Lord is Thy Salvation said a sticker on the glass.

Shanties crowded the airport road on each side. The rows of tin shacks and cardboard lean-tos stretched further than Gaby could see in the grey light. The township had been awake and busy since before dawn, as the poor must. Women lined up with plastic demijohns at the community stand-pipes or stood battered margarine cans to boil on wood fires. Some carried sacks of grain on their heads. The sacks read ‘A Gift from the People of the United States’. Some women scrubbed children in the porches of their shacks, others pounded washing and hung it out to dry. Ten thousand trickles of pale blue woodsmoke rose up and mingled in a veil that hung low on the cold morning air.

Children were everywhere. Standing by the side of the road with fingers in their mouths, rolling heavy tractor tyres up the twining alleys, driving away leprotic dogs or mangy goats with well-aimed stones. They were thin and poorly clothed but Gaby did not see one who was not smiling.

She wound down the window and unfolded her visioncam.

I’d put that away if I were you,’ T.P. said. ‘Or you’ll end up with a rock up it. Not that it matters to me, but they might miss and I don’t want to have to pay for another new windscreen for this buggy. You think this is bad? I tell you, this is one of the good ones. You should see Pumwani. Jesus. Ten million people: Nairobi’s population doubles every five years. If it was me, I’d take my chances with the Chaga, but the UN says evacuate and so we evacuate. One day they’ll run out of places to evacuate to. It’s not an if, it’s a when, but they can’t see that. This is what happens when you try to apply military thinking to something totally outside its conceptual framework, like an alien colonization.’

Traders had spread plastic sheets on the oily red earth verges and laid out their wares for inspection. Piles of misshaped oranges, unsteady pyramids of Sprite cans, knobs of maize blackened over hubcaps filled with charcoal. Flies were shooed from grilling skewers of meat with whisks of shredded newspaper. Seeing white faces, children sprang up, shimmering bangles looped over their fingers.

‘Karma bracelets, they call them.’ T.P. hooted savagely and swerved around a home-made water cart that was little more than an oil drum on car tyres hauled by an emaciated pony. ‘Hokum for the New Agers. They’re actually optical fibre. Grub the stuff up faster than Kenya Telecom can lay it down. Funny thing is, there are people