‘Foreign Minister,’ she said. ‘That’s how T.P. was able to get me back into the country after four and a half years in the wilderness.’
‘I could not help you when you needed me last. It was the least I could do – I do not know why there has been a problem with the DF108. But there will be no problem now. I have thought much about you, over the years.’
‘I’ve thought about this place every single day I was covering those wars. One bloody stupid little ethnic slaughter-fest after another. Freeze the ass off you in Siberia this time of year. Mother Russia’s fucked, but won’t lie back and submit to the inevitable.’
‘Mother Kenya too.’
‘What’s it like up in Nairobi?’
‘They say it is well established in the northern suburbs. The Tacticals are coming out of their townships to fight each other and the security forces. The UN pretend they are implementing an evacuation plan, but there are too many people, and there is no law, no order, and not everyone wants to be evacuated anyway.’
‘Are they really letting them go?’
A group of secretaries were cooling their legs in the pool as they ate their lunches. They kicked up the water, laughing.
‘They say a thousand a day pass through the Westlands gate alone,’ Dr Dan said. ‘Of course, they cannot control entry to it, any more than they could ever control any other part of it. Who knows how many tens of thousands cross terminum unauthorized? They tattoo them, did you know that? The UN soldiers on the gates have tattoo guns. They are instant, painless, so I am told. Once you are marked and pass through the gate, you may not return on pain of being shot.’
‘What symbol do they use?’
‘A letter E, on the back of the hand. It stands for “Exile”. It should have been a C
‘For “Chaga”?’
‘For “Citizen”.’
‘They need you, Dr Dan,’ Gaby said. ‘They need your vision and bloody-mindedness to build a proper nation.’
‘Thank you, Ms McAslan. Do you recall when we first met, on the night flight from London, that I regretted that the Chaga would not give us time to build a nation? Five years on, I can see that the Chaga is giving us the time, and the space, and the resources, to build the Kenya we should have built. A fine nation, an African nation; that is not some continuation of Western colonialism in another form, with Western legal and political and educational systems, Western values and morals. In the Chaga we can find African solutions to African problems – maybe we will find out in there that what we thought were our problems are those we have been given by the West. We can do a frightening thing: we can build a new Africa that does not owe the West anything, that does not need what the West has to sell us, that has resources and capabilities the West can only envy.’ Dr Dan looked out across the pool and the palms that led down to the beach, and to the grey hulls of the warships beyond the white water of the reef. ‘Those gunboats, that they say are there to protect us: they are no different from those letter Es the United Nations tattoos on the hands of the exiles. They are afraid of us. They are afraid of what we could become, when the nations of the New Africa become the most powerful on earth. You asked me for my vision: I have shown it to you. I hope you are content with what you see. Ah!’ A civil servant in a Hawaiian shirt and creased chino pants gave Dr Dan an envelope. ‘Excellent. Thank you.’ He handed the envelope to Gaby.
‘Your DF108.’
‘You don’t know what this means, Dr Dan.’
‘A friend for the new nation, I hope. Oh. I almost forgot to mention. An old friend of yours has come back to Kenya.’
‘Oksana Telyanina?’
Dr Dan frowned, not recognizing the name.
‘No. Dr Shepard.’
55
She flew up on an early flight in a cavernous Antonov heavy lifter. Faraway was with her. They were the only civilians. Their seats were in the middle of the centre block, far from the windows. She would not be able to see the Chaga. Gaby tried instead to get some of the soldiers to talk about their anticipation of the withdrawal from Nairobi but they were young and this was their first time out of their mother countries and they had been told to be suspicious of journalists by frightening noncommissioned officers. Gaby ended up sleeping most of the flight on Faraway’s shoulder. The white boy soldiers wondered what a white woman was doing with a black man. The black boy soldiers wondered why a black man did not find his own kind good enough for him.
T.P. Costello was waiting in arrivals, like that first time when everything was fresh and clean and thrilling and could not go wrong. He did not seem to Gaby to have changed his clothes in four and a half years. Within those clothes, his flesh had softened and slumped, his chin descended, his hairline ascended. But irredeemably a boiled owl.
‘What the hell kept you?’ he asked, because he knew she knew it was expected of him. ‘The UN’s announced its withdrawal from Nairobi. Three days and it’s open city.’
Everything that points backwards points forwards. Old Land-cruiser in the car park. New fluorescent orange zebra stripes.
‘People with big guns kept mistaking the SkyNet globe for the UN logo,’ T.P. explained.
Old catechism, new rubric. T.P. handed Gaby a sleeveless jacket the same colour as the car’s stripes. ‘Colour-of-the-day for the press corps. Don’t look at it like that, these have saved the lives of several folk you know.’ He took a canvas bag from a pocket and dropped into Gaby’s hand. She almost let it slip through her fingers; it was extraordinarily heavy.
‘What have you got in here.’
‘Krugerrands. You’ll need negotiables. Forget dollars, forget Deutschmarks, forget yen; gold is the only universally convertible currency on the streets. And something to keep it, and you, safe.’
He handed her a .45 revolver. Gaby’s little frozen wars had taught her how to handle weapons, though she detested their feel against her skin. She broke the piece. It was loaded.
‘These are Black Rhinos.’
‘You put them down, you don’t want them getting back up again.’
‘Where am I supposed to keep this? In my hand bag?’
In the back seat, Faraway laughed priapically, thinking of suggestions.
‘Goes without saying that you can’t get accommodation in this burg for love nor money,’ T.P. said, following the directions of the MPs with white gloves toward the exit checkpoint. ‘Even your old friend Mrs Kivebulaya’s guesthouse is like a sardine tin.’
‘Gaby will be staying with me,’ Faraway said. T.P. greeted the disclosure in purse-lipped silence as the soldiers waved the Landcruiser through onto the city road.
In four and a half years since she last drove along this road the squatter towns had grown to enclose the airport on all sides. Cardboard shacks slumped against the perimeter wire, used the backs of warehouses and hangars as lean-to walls. The pall of eternal blue wood smoke hung over the plastic roofs, interspersed by the occasional dense plume where a shanty was burning. The women carried their burdens of sticks and plastic basins of washing on their heads. The men sat on their heels and watched the women work. The children, with flies around their eyes and their fingers in their mouths, looked at the aeroplanes taking off over their heads. Everything was the same, but it was different. The spirit had changed. The people in the alleys, or sitting by the side of the road selling their piles of Sprite cans and karma bracelets, seemed listless and apathetic. The life had gone out of them, leaving them transparent and desiccated. Gaby understood. They were the tidewater people; the flotsam left beached now the others had all gone out on the waters; to the coast, to the new transit camps in the east and far north, to the Chaga. Of those who remained some were too scared to go. Some were too poor to go. Some did not wish to go, but would wait with what they had until the Chaga came and made them decide where to go.
