Chaga

sober as judge. Soberer.’

Ruwenzori. The Mountains of the Moon. The white on the map of Darkest Africa. Terra Incognita. Since the Kilimanjaro Event, the cartographers had been forced to redraw those unknown regions marked Here be Dragons.

‘We do this again, yes?’ Oksana said. ‘When I get back, God knows when. Me, I am only here because I am babooning. Moving out of place so friend can fiki-fiki, yes?’ She made thrusting gestures with thumb. ‘You on EastAf Teleport?’

‘SkyNet’s fixing it. You’ll have to leave a message so I can find you; I’m only booked in here for a couple of days. After that, I don’t know where I’ll be.’

‘I will find you. You’ll see. Ah, damn. Moses, are you closing that thing up already? Is too soon. Maybe we have one more, yes? Moses!’

His gleaming teeth showed no obvious signs of distress at having uncapped fourteen bottles of Tusker.

‘Big cocks and vodka!’

‘Big cocks and vodka!’ Gaby McAslan agreed.

5

She woke bright, sober and decided to walk to work. Any town she visited, she needed to walk over, claim it like an animal marking its territory with a rub of musk. She crossed Uhuru Park and the highway, steering by the open flower of the Kenyatta Centre rising out of darkness into the morning light. Something growing, Gaby thought.

She videoed the big bronze UNECTAfrique horns-and-mountain colophon in the centre of the plaza. People of all colours and races and nations hurried past her, all on the business of the Chaga. As she was. All part of this magnificent machine, unfolding the heart of a great mystery.

She walked on.

In three intersections she was lost. Every turning she took brought her back to the same Indian bookstore. Time was ticking away. Taxis would have been flagged down but they did not seem to prowl these streets. Nor were there any policemen to bribe for directions. It would have to be a choice between the homeboys in street- fashionable flares and patch leather jackets hanging around their good friend’s shoeshine stand, or the smart- casual, studenty types waiting for the pedestrian lights. She remembered T.P. Costello’s pointed warnings about HIV-infected hypodermics.

‘Excuse me, could you tell me the way to Tom M’boya Street?’

The tallest of the student-types smiled broadly.

‘Certainly. In fact, we are going that way ourselves. We could walk with you; it is not really safe for a white woman to be on the streets on her own.’

As they walked they asked her questions: was she on holiday or was she working here, where did she come from, how long had she been here, had she ever been to Africa before, what did she think of Kenya so far? Gaby’s answers were interrupted by the arrival of a friend every hundred metres or so, necessitating lengthy greetings and handshakings. Within half a kilometre, what had been three were now six. They did not seem to be making very fast progress in the direction of the SkyNet offices.

‘This is a quicker way to go,’ said the tall, bearded one with the expensive clothes who asked all the questions. Friend number eight joined the party. ‘I am wondering,’ the bearded one went on, ‘if maybe, like we are helping you, you can help us. You are a journalist, an educated woman, you will understand our problem.’

The problem unfolded over the next half kilometre. A good friend of theirs, a political science student, had got himself into trouble by speaking out against corruption in UNECTA. ‘As you know, the Americans clap their hands and our beloved government dances. They will not allow any criticism of the UN presence in our country – and so our friend is in grave danger. His life has been threatened, his wife and family have been visited, if you understand what I mean. Even we are taking a grave risk in talking to you. You will be all right, you work for a Western news agency, they will not touch you.’

‘What do you want me to do? Run a story?’

‘That would put him in more danger, I am afraid,’ said the bearded student. ‘His only chance is to get away with his family, go south to Mozambique where he will be safe to carry on the struggle. There is a boat he can catch from Mombasa; unfortunately, these days, no one goes anywhere without magendo.’ He rubbed fingers against thumb, the universal gesture of black money. ‘He needs five thousand shillings to get his family out. Only five thousand shillings for a new life.’

‘We would not ask you for that much,’ said a flat-nosed, very black man who had not spoken before. ‘Five hundred shillings would be a good start. It would get him and his family to Mombasa.’

Gaby stopped on the street. The eight men stopped with her and stood in a circle around her. They felt very big, very close. She knew, they knew, it was a scam. But nobody said so.

‘I don’t have that much,’ she lied, twitching her toes in her left boot.

‘That does not matter,’ said Flat Nose. ‘You have traveller’s cheques?’

‘No,’ she lied again. ‘Not on me. Back at the hotel.’

‘A credit card, then. You are a journalist, you will have a credit card. You can get money out of a cash machine. There is one not far. We will take you to it.’

There is a fatal passivity in being conned, Gaby realized. You know it is happening, yet you go along with it, you play it to the end, because it is the only way to make it stop. They know you will pay them their five hundred shillings to be free of them and they will go back to their street corner and tell the same tale to the next mark who comes along asking the way to Tom M’boya Street. It would not have been so bad if they had simply cut the straps of her bag and roared off on a moped. That would have been an opportunity seen and taken in an instant; there would have been nothing personal about it, not like this slow, drawing out of your trust and then gang-raping it.

There was a dispenser she could use. As they had said, it was not far. She fumbled her card out of her bag. A white man in Chinos and a faded denim shirt was coming down the street. She did not want him to see the final sting. He was looking at her. He adjusted her course toward her. He was smiling at her. Beaming.

‘Honey! There you are!’

The stranger swept her off her feet and kissed her hard on the mouth.

‘When you didn’t turn up, I came looking. I know how easy it is to get lost in this town.’ He had an American accent. He seized Gaby’s hand and drew her away from the hustlers. ‘Excuse me, guys, hope you don’t mind, it’s just we’re running a little late.’

He did not let go of Gaby’s hand until they were around two corners.

‘Jesus. Whoever you are, thank you.’

‘Was it the Rwandan refugee story?’ the American asked. He was averagely tall, averagely built, averagely handsome. His accent was averagely mid-Western. But his eyes had the same blue twinkle that had made Paul Newman Gaby’s first true love, and that redeemed all the averages into superlatives.

Gaby could still taste his kiss.

‘It was the student-on-the-run-from-the-government story. How did you know?’

‘They got me too. Fresh off the plane and they scammed me for a hundred dollars. I was so ashamed I couldn’t admit it to anyone for a month.’

Gaby shuddered as if they had laid hands on her body. She could understand such shame.

‘All I did was ask the way the Tom M’boya Street. I reckoned they looked safer than the boys in funny outfits.’

‘Like something from an old blaxploitation movie?’ Gaby nodded. ‘Should have asked them. They’re watekni; they might have flirted a bit but they wouldn’t have tried to fleece you. The Sheriffs insist on good manners in their posse members.’

‘Watekni?’

‘Semi-legal hacker gangs. Information brokers. Cyberpunk caste. They take Shaft