Doing Dangerously Well (53 page)

He hung his head and wept. He had not wanted much from life. Why, he wailed, had a man of his abilities been burdened with presiding over the most wayward of nations?

Kolo retired to his haven to await the abatement of the storm this event would doubtless generate. Exhausted, he wove his way back to the garage, with its adjoining bathroom. He dragged himself into its tiled majesty to turn on golden taps.

He sniffed the air and wheeled about, struck with terror. No one in sight. Yet that smell … rank, unwashed, asphyxiating. What memory?

“Guard!” he shouted.

“Sir!”

“In!”

The guard entered the garage, his aviator sunglasses still perched on his nose.

“Did someone come into this room?”

The guard considered for some moments, checking every minute of the day. “Yes, sir.”

“Enh? What is your problem? Have I not told you never—
never
—to let enter? Did I not say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And?”

“Em, it was Innocent. He go for get car clean.”

“Ah. Why didn’t you say? I said ‘someone,’ not ‘Innocent’! Anyone else?”

Another long deliberation, then a memory alert. “Ah, yes, sir.
He had no weapons. He came from Inspector General of Police. Same man you talk to in supply store. So garage same-same.”

Quaking with rage, Kolo came within an inch of the guard’s face and flicked his sunglasses to the floor. Unfortunately, the man was very tall, so he still held the advantage. “First of all, broom cupboard is not supply store. We met in broom cupboard. Why would we meet in supply store? What kind of madman do you think I am?”

“Sir, not … no, not mad at all. Never. No, sir.”

“Second of all, in what way is my bedroom, regardless of its former function, like a supply-store-broom-cupboard-what-have-you?”

“Sir, not … no, not same at all. Never. No, sir.”

Kolo opened the Mercedes’ trunk, to double-check for intruders. “No more visitors to my bedroom, only cleaners. If you see this man again … which one was it?”

“Crazy one, sir.”

Kolo breathed a sigh of relief. At least they had not let the ugly one in, with all his sores and pustules. “If you see him again, accompany him to the broom cupboard as before. I can meet him there.”

“But he waited long, long time, sir.”

“Yes, well, there was an unfortunate death to attend to.” Kolo’s index finger sailed forward, pointing towards the other side of the door.

Another intricate turn, just as inelegant as the police’s, and the guard marched out.

After running his bath, Kolo beached himself within it and lapped the water against his body, wondering what Ekong wanted him for.

He submerged himself farther into its cleansing embrace, mouthing the words of John Pepper Clark’s soothing poetry:
“Fear him his footfall soft light as a cat’s, his shadow far darker than forest gloom or night—”

He sank farther down into the tub until the water reached his neck.

A
fter packing her few personal items, Mary sat back, put her feet on her desk for the last time and flipped to
TV Afrique.

She yawned. She had run out of adrenaline. She rocked her chair as news flashed by of floods in Mozambique, death squads wreaking havoc in Congo as more emerald deposits were found, a Senegalese filmmaker receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature and then a surprise item—Kolo and the American ambassador giving a joint news conference.

Sinclair. Dead.

The chair stopped rocking.

This could mean only one thing.

Promotion.

Within hours, Corporate Communications had laid out a strategy to ensure that all blame rested squarely on Sinclair’s gelled
head, isolating it on that slippery spot so that it could not besmirch any other reputation. Cheeseman, with an eye to his own tenure, protected Mary. She managed to scramble back into the corporation under the radar, to turn away from the harsh glare of publicity and to hide from all scrutiny. She recognized that it would take years for her reputation to recover outside TransAqua, but at least she would be able to keep her job.

Cheeseman called an emergency meeting the next day. Mary had donned her best blue suit and pulled her hair back to display the acute and obtuse angles of her face. As she entered the meeting room, all eyes turned to her.

Co-workers marvelled at her ability to maintain composure—serenity, even—as she presided alone and in all secrecy over matters of life and death. Mary could feel the change as her peers began to crave a similar power. Beano pointed a finger gun greeting at her. The associate directors looked at her with pride in their eyes, as if she were an extension of their own egos.

She heard heels clacking in the distance, a hurried, irregular pace.
He must be under considerable stress,
Mary thought.
He’s probably had to take over all of the Slug’s files—both pages of them.
Her mouth stretched into a wry slash.

Cheeseman bounded in and slammed the door, sniffing.

Cocaine.

He sat down, resting his ankle on his opposite knee in alphamale position.

“Well, y’all’ve heard of Mr. Sinclair’s unfortunate demise …” he began.

“Tragedy,” Beano said. “Terrible tragedy.”

“Great pity,” Cheeseman acknowledged the sentiment. “We’ve sent flowers. The bigger tragedy is lack of succession planning. It’s impossible to make head nor tail of his files. We need to appoint someone to his spot immediately.”

Butterflies struggled for space in Mary’s meagre stomach.

“Glass,” Cheeseman pronounced, sending Mary’s heart knocking against her ribs, “I’ve decided to give you the position. You seem tough enough for the job. Let’s congratulate Ms. Glass for a reward long overdue.”

The room erupted into cheers and loud applause.

The feeling of acceptance was momentary. Mary only had to scan the table to return to her state of heightened anxiety. There were no friends here, only competitors.

Within two days, after positive media reports began to emerge expressing shock at the actions of a rogue operator, Mary moved to a bigger fish tank and Beano moved into hers, without even a slight delay for convention’s sake. His boxes had been packed even before the emergency meeting. She then realized who else had known about Sinclair’s visit to Nigeria, a child perhaps persuaded by the president to divulge lethal information about his colleague—a ploy Kolo had not been reticent to use with Mary.

More vulnerable than her peers could imagine, Mary spent the next few days recovering from the shock of near dismissal. She developed a sore on her lip as she bit the skin off it constantly.

After another restless night, Mary returned to the Acquisitions floor at 6 a.m. exhausted, passing her former office, now occupied by a man with hair flopping over his blue eyes and a plastic smile as irksome as Sinclair’s. She hated Beano as much as his mentor. Worse still, she knew that, lacking Sinclair’s oversized ego, he was twice as dangerous, charming people with his carefree, laid-back manner. While Sinclair swam around like a parading shark, Beano lurked in camouflaged silence like the venomous and deadly stonefish.

In preparation for the team meeting, Mary phoned Kolo to negotiate further rights to the Niger River. It took over an hour to get through, as different levels of security vetted her call.

“Ms. Glass?” Kolo answered at last, his voice quivering with emotion. “I’m sure you’ve heard the tragic news.”

“Yes, sir,” Mary yawned silently. “Terrible news.”

“Are you taping this conversation, Ms. Glass?” Kolo’s voice had changed to a steelier tone.

“No.”

“Well, I can hear a tape.”

“I’m not taping. I have an interest, as you do, in keeping our conversations private. And since I didn’t know Sinclair was coming to visit you, I’d hardly have the time to—”

“Mr. Sinclair dropped in of his own accord, Ms. Glass. Apparently, he had an allergy to peanuts.” His voice reverted again, carrying more pathos and sorrow. “Ms. Glass—it’s a mainstay of Nigerian food!”

“Well, you weren’t to know, sir.”

“But the cook knew, Ms. Glass. He just didn’t know groundnuts and peanuts were the same thing.” He blew his nose so loudly, Mary almost dropped the phone.

“You sound devastated,” Mary said in a monotone.

“I am,” Kolo whimpered. “I am. So,” he revived, “how can I help you?”

“To meet our original targets of servicing all your fresh water needs, we’ll need to acquire rights to the Benue River as well. It’s cleaner water and flows into the Niger, so it’s basically,” she thought of a term to minimize the damage, “an offshoot.”

“An offshoot? The Benue? That’s like saying the Atlantic is an offshoot of the Pacific! Impossible! You’d have the whole country in a stranglehold! You’d have, well, effectively you’d have our entire water supply.”

“Well, sir, the Benue is technically a tributary. And it would be wonderful to name a river after your brother, President Kolo. Twinned rivers nourishing your great country.”

Silence.

“You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Glass.” Kolo sounded weary. “Okay. Let’s go ahead.”

Since she now had the upper hand, Mary felt she could broach a subject of even greater importance. “We also need to discuss embezzlement, fraud, water rackets. It seems a lot of our revenue is disappearing.”

“That’s not fraud, Ms Glass. Our people are working with an American company, so it’s simply the local way of achieving wage parity. There’s little I can do about that. Unfortunately, you have laws on minimum wage. Local officials are merely ensuring compliance.”

Mary had a hunch that more questions would only suck her further into Nigeria’s deviant ethos. “And our water is also disappearing. Our pipes are being cut.”

“Certainly not! Not in Nigeria! It’s a hot country, Ms. Glass. You must expect some evaporation.”

“And your bureaucracy seems unable to deal with pilfering on either issue.” Defeated, she waited for another warped rationalization.

“Pilfering! In Nigeria? This is not something we tolerate, Ms. Glass. And as soon as we can afford to pay our police force, it will be dealt with. Meanwhile, we rely on these individual water collection agents and other such entrepreneurs.”

“President Kolo, we cannot—”

“Did you hear that?” Kolo sounded anxious.

“No. What was it?”

“Dripping. I think something’s leaking. They’re trying to flood this place.”

“They? Who is they?”

“You know.
They,”
he whispered. “Don’t worry, Ms. Glass, I only sleep an hour at a time, so there’s absolutely no way they can get me. Absolutely no way.”

It took several weeks for Mary to read through all the emails in Sinclair’s inbox: he had little method and didn’t seem to know the function of the delete key. The slime had made deals with multiple territories in Niger that would divert a sizeable portion of the Niger River before it flowed onto Nigerian soil. She as yet had no specific idea how to revoke these contracts, so she sent them off to a language specialist. Knowing Sinclair, there would be loopholes created in the interstices between English and French.

Sinclair’s emails and chats with the minister of finance were of particular interest; this name she would not forward to Kolo. She would deal with him herself, as a separate, perhaps more resilient, candidate. A few emails mentioned a connection between the minister of finance and the Inspector General of Police. The latter had personally selected Lance Omeke to assassinate Jegede. Mary, unable to eat for days, grew dizzy. Sinclair had been within a tentacle’s width of discovering her collusion with the African Water Warriors and the explosions at TransAqua’s dam site.

She clicked back into her own email inbox and scrolled down until she alighted on another item of interest. The private investigator she had hired had written back. She opened the email.

He had unearthed the mystery of the woman at the bar to whom Janet had divulged so much confidential and damaging information. Her name was Mimi Minto, and she was not a journalist-she worked for Drop of Life.

In a fit of anger, Mary’s small muscles and thin bones tried to overturn her desk. Even in her fury, she noticed her new
secretary observing her with the eyes of a birdwatcher, and she surreptitiously let her desk drop back into place.

An invoice from a friend of her father’s slipped to the ground. She snatched it up. Her company had been billed over
$10,000
for a report interpreting the blueprints for the dam—no doubt for Drop of Life.

How could someone as mercurial as that imbecilic mess of a sister have organized anything, let alone seen it through? Not one cell in her entire overfleshed body contained any element of predictability, reliability or focus.

Then three words from her MBA popped into her mind: flexible, fast, futured. They described the advantages of small companies over behemoths such as TransAqua—a motorboat versus an ocean liner.

Mary focused on the only avenue available to her: retribution. Surely she could find a way to get back at Barbara.

An idea surfaced. A great idea.