Assignment Black Gold (7 page)

Lepaka spoke without opening the dossier. His long fingers
resembled the legs of a crab as he joined and rested his hands on the closed
manila folder.

“I am sorry I had to interrupt your dalliance with Mrs.
Tallman. I do hope she was not embarrassed.”

“Do you think she could be embarrassed?”

“Not likely, I suppose. I think I Shall have to do something
very soon about her presence in Lubinda. She may not mind being deported back
to the States."

“You’d be doing her the greatest of favors,” Durell said.
“Perhaps a favor for Hobe, too.“

Komo Lepaka waited. Durell knew the ploy, and waited him
out, not offering anything. The silence grew tighter mid more strained. The
colonel’s eyes looked sleepier. Finally, Lepaka said, “You see, Mr. Durell, I
know all about you.”

"Yes?"

“You are not a solicitor here to present Brady Cotton with
an unexpected inheritance. You work for K Section, and were appointed to bring
your associate, Mr. Cotton, to the surface. or to find out what has
happened to him.”

“Yes,” Durell said.

“You do not deny this?”

"l don’t believe I can. Colonel.”

“Then you are an admitted spy.”

“I am not here to spy on Lubinda.”

“Is it American oil interests, then, that brought you here?”

“You know there are no American oil interests, truly.
According to Lubindan low, the oil belongs to your country. Only a small
royalty will go to Hobe Tallman’s company.”

Lepaka looked puzzled. "Then why?”

Durell interrupted. “Would you call Lubinda a free
democracy?”

Lepaka blinked. “Yes. Yes, I would say so.”

"We would like to help you to stay free. Your
neighboring countries are hardly democratic examples, are they?"

Lepaka looked grim. “This is why you are here?”

“Yes. To help you, if possible.”

“Brady is secondary?”

“Only as a means to an end.”

“Our enemies would not understand your motives. Or perhaps
they would, at that, knowing you are an enemy of theirs. To the Apgaks, you are
a colonialist, an imperialist agent. It could be construed in several ways.”
Lepaka held his hands palm up. His fingers were steady. His eyes did not
leave Durell’s face. It seemed to Durell that here was a cop superior to most
he had met around the world. He did not blame anybody. His cover was blown, but
then, so was Brady Cotton’s, along with the export shop and K Section’s
Central. Maybe Lepaka had discovered Brady’s true activities long ago; maybe
Lepaka had been waiting for his own arrival for some time. Hard to tell, Durell
decided silently. He as yet felt no great menace from the security officer. But
he could not really read Lepaka‘s intentions.

“Your position here, Mr. Durell,” Lepaka said gently, “is
rather ambiguous. You could be in great difficulties with our authorities.
Meaning me, of course.”

“If you choose to put me in difficulty, yes,” Durell
admitted.

“According to our statutes, you could be imprisoned for no
less than ten years and for as much as life.”

“Would I have a trial?"

Lepaka smiled sadly. “Eventually. Our courts are still in
sad disorder, following independence. A trial might be put off for a year,
perhaps live. Meanwhile, you would be accommodated in our rather primitive
facilities. A Lubindan might survive for a time. But you would not.”

Durell still had his gun. He wondered if he might have to
use it to try to break out of here. There were guards in the brick-vaulted
corridor outside, others at the high prison gates that once had flown the
Portuguese flag. No attempt had been made to search him. He knew that the
colonel knew this, too. He decided to wait.

“Lubinda is a poor country,” said Lepaka. “We are struggling
to establish viability. The oil exploration promises economic stability. We are
bounded by the sea, by the jungles, by the small but extremely hostile Kahara
Desert to the south. And besides our economic and geographical problems, we find
ourselves being wooed by the Russians, the Chinese, and your country. The
decisions are difficult. We are not equipped, really to make a choice—if a
choice is needed."

“It may be forced on you,” Durell said. “You shouldn’t by
the way, be merely a police officer, Colonel.”

“No?”

“You should be prime minister.”

“Is that flattery?”

“You have a lack of educated men in Lubinda. Your talents
may be going to waste.”

“Ah, yes. But at the moment, security is our greatest
problem.”

“The Apgaks?”

"If their terror campaign succeeds in driving out the
oil people, we are lost. The government would topple. The Lubindans are a
simple people. They expect our streets to become paved with gold, through oil
revenues. But the effort to find oil
 
being hampered by violence, as you saw earlier tonight. If it fails,
more will join the Apgak cause and we will become little more than a Maoist or
a Moscow colony.”

Durell said, “I appreciate your courtesy in giving me this
lecture, Colonel. But I’m not here to interfere in your internal affairs.”

Lepaka’s eyes suddenly opened wide. They looked bloody. “Ah.
but you must interfere, Mr. Durell. We need you.
I
need you."

“I’m only here to find Brady Cotton.”

“You will not find him in this prison, sir.”

“Am I being offered a choice?”

“Crudely put, yes. imprisonment as a foreign agent, or
cooperation with me.”

Durell smiled. "We’ll get along, Colonel. It depends on
what you want of me. What kind of deal.”

“Yes, of course. A deal.”

Durell felt better. He watched Colonel Lepaka reach into a
desk drawer and take out a box of small thin cigars. He offered them to Durell,
who shook his head, and then carefully thrust one between his large white teeth
and lit it. The smoke was fragrant in the hot, humid air. Durell smelled again
the urine smell of the ancient prison. The man in the cell down the corridor
kept moaning and groaning.

“Have you ever,” Lepaka said slowly, “heard of Felipe
Barraganza Sakadga?"

“General Sakadga?”

“Ah.”

“He’s dead,” Durell said.

“He is not dead.”

“The ‘father’ of your country?"

“Sakadga. The Lion of Lubinda.”

“He must be very old, then.”

“He is. But quite vigorous.”

“Really alive?” Durell insisted.

“In retirement. Disillusioned. He was ill for a time. From
long imprisonment here and in two European capitals. A brilliant old gentleman.
Lubinda worships him. Lubinda has all but canonized him."

“There is a tomb along the river,” Durell said, “where
Felipe Barraganza Sakadga has been interred.”

Lepaka shook his head slowly. His eyes were sleepier than
ever. “You might call him our messiah of freedom. People make regular pilgrimages
to the tomb, true. But they pray to an empty casket. Sakadga is not there.”

“But you know where he is, and alive?”

“I know. And only one or two others.”

Durell said, “You wish to resurrect him?”

“The people would go mad with joy. They would destroy the
Apgaks overnight and follow, obey, and work for him.”

“I see,” Durell said.

“You do not see. It could be a very dangerous thing, to
bring Sakadga back. Like the return of Christ in this country. It would be a
revolution.”

Durell leaned back against the brick wall. “Excuse me,
Colonel. Are you planning a military coup against the democratic government of
this country, with an old and martyred saint as your front man? if so, you Can
count me out.”

Something flickered in Lepaka’s eyes. “You do not
think I could run this country?”

“So far, you haven’t even been able to get rid of the
Apgaks, who are deliberately destroying your one hope of viability, the oil
exploration rig offshore.”

Lepaka considered his thin, fragrant cigar. A small sea
wind, like an errant hope, drifted through the barred window. It died in
anguish, a victim of the prison smells.

“The Saka, as we call him, is my foster father.”

“And?”

“When I was a boy, the Saka was already a mature man, a
fighter for our independence, a revolutionist, if you will. I was a tribal
orphan—the ward of a little village on the edge of the Kahara. I need not tell
you that life was difficult, far below the normal subsistence level. I was
pagan, illiterate, with a perpetually swollen belly. How I grew to my present awkward
height is probably a matter of simple genetics. In any case, when the Saka came
through our village to collect freedom fighters against our colonial
masters, I joined him. What else was there for me to do? No woman would look at
me. As a
fdana
,
a tribal orphan. I had nothing to offer and never would have. I was a pariah.
So I followed the Saka.

“He adopted me. It was as simple as that. It was like a
splendid sunrise. He became fond of me—why, I do not know. I worshipped him for
his strength and wisdom. He taught me Portuguese and English. Somehow, I was
quick to learn. Before he was imprisoned that second time, he gave me money—no
doubt stolen from the Luanda banks in Angola—and directed me to go to Europe
for my education. He insisted that Lubinda needed literate, professional men,
if we were to succeed in raising ourselves from the lives of fishermen,
jungle kraals, and desert nomads. I went to London and studied hard, applied
myself, and kept faith with the Saka.”

“And when you returned to Lubinda?”

“The first thing I did was to organize a breakout for
Sakadga from Kajary Prison. You have heard of the place?”

Durell nodded. “Not easy. I heard the Saka was killed just
four days before independence for Lubinda.”

“He was seriously injured. He has recovered. But his major
and lasting hurt is an inner one.”

Durell waited. Insects hummed. and buzzed in and out of the
barred window. Great moths fluttered around the globe lamp on the desk.
He looked at this watch. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. He could
have used at cup of coffee. But Lepaka offered him nothing. The colonel seemed
to be thinking of other things, his hands flat on the closed dossier on his
desk. Then Lepaka stood up. unfolding like some sort of stick insect, until he
towered with his head just grazing the bricked vault of the ceiling.

“You see, Mr. Durell, I know we are in the same business,
and therefore I can trust you to be competent and circumspect about what I say
to you."

“You suggested we might make a deal.”

“Precisely. I am coming to that.”

“I just want to find Brady Cotton.”

“Alive, or dead?”

“Alive, preferably.”

“I am prepared to assist you,” Lepaka said. “In turn, you
can do something for me that I am unable at the moment to do for myself.”

“You want Felipe Barraganza Sakadga?”

"Yes."

“Alive or dead?" Durell returned, unsmiling.

“Very much alive. To help Lubinda, to help my people, to be
rid of the Maoist Apgaks who. in their foolish fanaticism. refuse to believe they
are only the tools of another imperialism not much different from the old.”

“How many others know that Sakai is alive?”

“As I said, very few.”

"The President?”

“No.”

“Any of your parliament?”

“No.”

“Do you have a small junta planned?”

“No. We simply want his return. To guide us. The people
adore him. They will follow him. The country will settle down. There will be no
more killings.”

Durell had no idea whether the man could be believed or not.
He did not mean to lend himself to some
putsch
that might establish yet another military dictatorship among the newly
emerged African states.

“You said the Saka is hurt inwardly?"

“
Sim
.
Yes. By his true son, who was always at his side, even as I was at his other
hand.”

Suddenly it seemed as inevitable to Durell as the inexorable
fate in an ancient Greek tragedy. There was remembered sorrow in the colonel’s
black, bony lace, in the red depths of his murky eyes. Lepaka stood at the
window and looked out at the moths, and without thinking, he drew up one of his
stiltlike
legs and stood on the other, loft foot
resting just above the knee of the right. Durell could see him thus, leaning on
a spear in the black forests and swamps of Lubinda—but more likely leaning on a
rifle or a bazooka.

“You know of whom I speak?” Lepaka asked softly.

“l can guess.”

“Guess. then.”

“Are you testing me?” Durell asked.

“In a way."

“This former comrade-in-arms, this son, beloved by the Saka,
as you say"—Durell paused— “this man, your stepbrother, is now the head of
the Apgaks—Lopes Fuentes Madragata.”

Lepaka sighed. “Yes.”

“And how many know that?” Durell demanded.

“You and I. Lopes. No others.”

“All right. Then what’s the deal? What choice do I have
except staying in this jail for years to come?”

“l want you to bring the Saka back—back to life, back to his
rightful place, leading the people of Lubinda. To end Madragata’s stupid
terrorism on behalf of the Maoist Apgaks. Bring him back for me, Durell.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“It is a journey into the desert, beyond the Bone Coast.”
Lepaka paused. “Settled by Germans in pre-World War I days. There are still
some Rhineland-type castles there—
Wakermund
,
Schneiderhof
, and
Heinrichburg
.
All ruins. Ignore them. I cannot leave. Madragata is ready to make his strike.
He knows just where and when to do this bloody business. Someone tells him. I
do not know who, but he has an informer, high in government, perhaps. I step
closer to him with each hour. No, I cannot leave the city now."

Durell said, “I have no wish to interfere in your affairs or
get mixed up in local politics. Why me?”