Black Star Nairobi (9 page)

And if they tortured Muddy to get me to talk? If they made the first cut they would have to kill her, and me as well, because we would come after them. They could torture me but the little Jamal knew of me would have told him that the chances of getting me to talk were not very high. Not because I am stronger or can withstand pain better than most. I would hold out as long as I could simply because the woman I loved was in the room—good, old-fashioned, useless male pride.

That left Mary for the opening gambit. Mary was just a schoolteacher; her innocence was their leverage. It would be
harder for me to justify her death against whatever it was Sahara thought I was protecting.

It didn’t make Sahara any more or less moral. He was simply speaking a language of pure violence, shorn of hate or love—he was laying out the most efficient way to get information from me. Had it been the other way round, had I been the one holding the gun, he would have seen the logic of all or nothing. Perverse, yes, but it helped move along the circuitous nature of torture. It was the perfect opening gambit. It was as intelligent as it was cold and rational.

Except for one thing. These sorts of transactions always had a cost.

“Why should I believe you will let us go if I tell you what I know?” I asked him.

“It is what you don’t know that we are interested in,” he answered with a condescending smile. “But that is a fair question. We do not want you back on our trail. So we have made it impossible for you to continue with the case … in fact, you could say that we have made it impossible for you to continue with your life as you know it.”

He signaled to Tsavo.

“Can you please hand me my bag?” he said.

I was seized by fear and I looked over at Muddy, who was also eyeing the bag while Mary shook her head from side to side. Sahara pulled out a white Mac, patiently hooked up a Safaricom Wireless device, and after several tries managed to connect to the Internet. He placed it in front of me and opened two pages, one after the other: the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Homeland Security. He pointed at the addresses so I could make sure they were authentic.

He typed something that took him to a secured page where
he entered a password. The page opened on to the U.S. Terrorist Watch List. He pointed to three names: Madeline Muteteli, Ishmael Fofona, and Tom Odhiambo. There were photographs of us, armed and looking dangerous, followed by short descriptions. Muddy was a Rwandan ex–guerrilla fighter who had fallen under the sway of Ishmael, a disgruntled black American Muslim who had in turn become radicalized in Kenya. O was the Kenyan cop who provided cover for both of us.

Where had I heard black Muslims mentioned before? Paul, on the night of the bombing—he had made that connection.

“Of course, there is more,” Sahara said as he opened another page.

It was like watching a parallel life unfold. I was under investigation for being an enemy combatant and O was suspected of using his “good offices” to help me train Kenya-based Somali terrorists. There was a photograph of O and me in northern Kenya surrounded by Somali men. I remembered that trip; we had gone to report a death to the relatives of a Somali man killed by thieves in Nairobi.

There was a trophy photograph of O and me, both of us armed, standing by two dead men. But the reality was that we had ambushed some bank robbers and managed to kill two of them. A reporter had rushed to the scene and taken the photograph. Then there was one of Muddy with an AK-47 in what appeared to be a death camp. Out of context, the photograph made it seem like she was the one doing the killing. I knew the photo too well. The RPF had marched into this particular camp only to find they were too late. She was a victim of that war.

These photographs weren’t speaking a thousand words, only one—terrorists.

“I’m not even Muslim … never been to a fucking mosque,”
I protested in spite of myself. “Who is going to believe this shit anyway?”

“Come on now, Ishmael. Isn’t that the point? That you are so good at what you do, even Muslims don’t think you are a Muslim? In my narrative, your cover is that of a black detective who because of identity issues moved to Kenya to recover his blackness, but in reality you are here to work with your extremist brothers and sisters. Your real life is really your cover. Beautiful! Context is meaning,” he explained.

“But let’s not get lost in the details. For you to believe me, I had to make sure there were consequences. I will let you go free, but into the hell of looking over your shoulders,” Sahara said patiently, like a doctor explaining different treatment options.

“What Sahara is telling you, my friends, is that the truth shall somewhat free,” Jamal said. I laughed but he ignored me.

Given his level of clearance, I guessed that Sahara and his men worked for or with an American intelligence service—one of the many with a presence in Kenya since 9/11. I was sure of one thing, though—these were the men who had planted the bomb and killed our guy—and they had the coldness, intelligence, and calculation to plant the bomb the year before it was due to go off.

I believed that Sahara was going to let us go—they didn’t have to go to all that trouble so that we would appear to be terrorists after they had killed us. They could have just shot us and walked away—the mystery of our deaths would find an explanation—home invasion gone bad, drunken dispute over women, revenge killings.

Rattling the bushes had worked. Nyiks must have a hit a nerve, because right in front of me stood the men we had been looking for. There was one problem, though: I had nothing. That was the whole point of rattling the fucking bushes—it gives the
illusion of knowing more. They would not know how many hotels and bars we had gone to before arriving at Limuru Country Club. It would appear to them that we were on to them because we had something solid.

“What do you want to know?” I asked, trying to think fast. My job, I kept telling myself, was to keep us all alive for as long as I could.

“You have been looking for us,” Sahara said as he pulled out a chair so that he was facing us across the table. “Well, here we are—all of us. I want to know everything you know.”

“You have to listen to me. We were at the beginning of our investigation, shit, if you hadn’t come after us, we wouldn’t have found you. We walked around yelling fire and you are the only ones who ran,” I said desperately.

Sahara didn’t believe a word I said. He stood up and rapped my forehead with his gun.

“I know you well enough to know how good you are. Surely, you must know that our understanding is predicated on your giving me the information I need. I feel slighted that my sincerity is being treated with such pedestrian disregard,” he said, sounding genuinely pained, and that worried me.

“Rattling the bushes … it’s the oldest trick in the book …” I tried to explain.

“Let’s get out of here. He knows nothing. Kill them all,” Jamal said. He knew I was telling the truth.

“Let me have five minutes with the …” Tsavo started to say but Sahara interrupted him.

“We are not going to debase ourselves by torturing women,” he explained to Tsavo patiently. “If we do, where do we draw the line between us and them? Have I not explained to you that once we start down that road the journey only ends when they are all
dead? You have to leave people a way back into the conversation. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes,” Tsavo replied.

“Ishmael, I feel you are not telling me the truth, not even a little bit of it. I will count to three. Mary dies … remember what I said …” Sahara counseled.

“All for one, one for all,” Jamal said.

He started the countdown.

“One!”

I started rattling off names—motherfuckers I didn’t care for, who wouldn’t be missed by anyone—my parting gift to Kenya.

“John Maina.”

“Which one?”

Maina was a popular name, as was John.

“Minister of Home Affairs.”

I kept rattling off names until Sahara stopped me.

“You are still lying. Let me give you an example so you don’t think I am a liar as well. Some of the people you mentioned, they are in with us. They are not the enemy,” Sahara said, sounding disappointed.

“Ishmael, you are an American just like us. It looks like a black man will be sworn into office soon. Now, some people say that this will be the death of racism. We can argue about that all day. But out here,” he gestured as if pointing to the wilderness, “we are Americans. You and I should be having a beer. Yet here we are. You tied to a chair and I holding a gun. Stop your lies, my friend, and you can retire into your new existence as a wanted terrorist. In a few years, that too will pass and you will go back to your life.”

I wasn’t going to live long enough to see a black man in office.

“Two, Ishmael, two,” Sahara whispered into my ear urgently.

“I know some things—I know you are from Berkeley …” I said slowly, thinking of what to say next. “And one of you went to UC,” I said, looking at the men. “I know Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab did not plant the bomb—you did. I know you killed one of your men because he tried to stop you.”

“Quit stalling with useless details, Ishmael. I sense the truth in there somewhere …” he said, searching my eyes. “Do something right, something good here and now. Save this woman’s life,” he implored, pointing at Mary, then banging the table.

I would have told them anything they wanted to know—the thought of Mary dead had broken me but I knew nothing. I had nothing.

“Enough, Ishmael. I have given you enough chances. I hate torture because it gives a pretense of certainty to the torturer: that truth is truth because it was exchanged for pain. I, on other hand, prefer the certainty of logic and conversation. Our conversation, Ishmael, did not establish any certainty—far from it, I cannot be sure if you know more or less. I just don’t feel that,” Sahara explained patiently.

I looked up at him.

“I have nothing more to say to you. Do what you must,” I said as I looked at Mary, whose eyes widened, then closed as she let out a sigh.

“Shoot Mary in the head, kill them all!” Sahara instructed Serengeti and the rest of his men.

A soft sound coming from the door that freezes us in place—like someone is running a feather along it, followed by silence. As if on cue, Serengeti takes the safety off his gun and continues
holding it to Mary’s temple. Tsavo stands behind Muddy, his hand slightly over his gun, like he’s in some sort of Western shoot-out. Jamal stands by me, while Sahara points his gun at the door. Somewhere farther away in the complex we can hear running water, and music playing. We hear curses as keys drop to the ground and then the lock turns and all the guns except the one pointed at Mary’s head are pointed at the door. O doesn’t stand a chance.

The tension fades to reveal panic, my heart beats faster, and I am desperately trying to meet Muddy’s eyes. Mary’s looking intently but calmly at the door. I want to say it’s going to be okay but I can’t. Then the sound of breaking glass, a blinding light as curtains and patio door fly open, I see a red spray, and I know someone has been shot. I am screaming in fear and anger. I push the heavy dining table, keep pushing until I crash a stunned Sahara into the wall. He screams in pain as his gun drops onto the table and he slowly slips to the floor.

As Kilimanjaro sidesteps away from the moving table to shoot Muddy, I see Jamal’s hands snap back twice and the mountain falls. O comes in through the curtains and breaking glass, Serengeti fires and misses. O shoots and takes him down. Tsavo, blinded by the light, tries to make it to the door. He stumbles to the floor as blood sputters from his right thigh. O continues shooting at him until he falls to the ground. He tries to tell O something. O shoots him in the head.

I look under the table but Sahara is gone. I rush over to Muddy, dragging the chair along—she is a bit dazed, bleeding from a cut in her forehead, but she is all right. Jamal walks over to us; with a pocketknife he snaps the handcuffs away. I hold Muddy and we start touching each other as if to make sure we are not ghosts.

Then I see Mary’s body on the floor. I take Sahara’s gun and go after him. I’m going to kill him.

I ran out after him, down the stairs and past the now-abandoned gate into the main road, knowing he couldn’t have gone very far. A limping white man would be easy to spot—he’d be reflected in the eyes of a curious crowd. The pedestrians and the traffic caught in a jam moved on indifferently. I saw nothing, no sign of him anywhere. So I turned to go back up to the apartment.

But just before I reached O’s door, I saw little droplets of blood. They trailed to the apartment next to O’s. I had missed them in my rush. I kicked in the door and followed the trail of blood though the sitting room, into the kitchen, and onto the balcony. A long rope was still attached to the rail guards. I looked down. There was Sahara, briefcase in hand, disappearing through a hole cut in the wire fence. I aimed and fired, he stumbled and fell, stood up, looked around wildly, and then dove through the hole.

I slid down the rope, welcoming the sensation as my hands burned. There was a wider trail of blood down here. He wasn’t going to get far but I followed fast and cautiously. Just as I made it to the street, I saw him getting into a beige-colored Range Rover—a bad choice for a fast getaway in Nairobi—even the curbs that should have doubled as emergency lanes were jam-packed with
matatus
and buses.

I ran in and out of the traffic, following the slow-moving Range Rover. I could see Sahara in the backseat trying to steady an AK-47 with one hand. I must have hit him in the shoulder. He let out a wild burst of gunfire—a mistake, because drivers then abandoned their cars, leaving the Range Rover trying to
force its way through. I shot back, he dived onto the seat, and I edged closer to take out one of the back tires. Driving away was now out of the question. I ran over and took cover two cars behind. Sahara’s driver tried to get out, I let out a warning shot, and he scuttled back into his seat and tried the passenger door. That side of the car was blocked by an abandoned
matatu
. I sent another shot into the back of the Range Rover to let them know I had them covered. I had to make things happen fast—otherwise they would think of a way out of the mess.