Snakepit (19 page)

The knowledge that government was doing business just a few floors above him brought with it a crushing sense of redundancy, insignificance. The thugs could do their demolition job without his forlorn efforts to keep some things running. The Ministry of Power hadn't collapsed: delegations were being sent abroad, deals were being cut, the machinery grinding on, just a few blocks away, in his own office. As he wasted away, he tried to imagine what he would do if suddenly released. It had happened to others. Would he go abroad and seek asylum in Britain or America? Did he want to leave the country? No. He wanted to stay.

He wasted hours going over calculus, various mathematical theorems, geometry. He remembered that when he was young he used to believe that it was the British who had discovered mathematics and was later surprised to learn that it had started in Arabia. And that writing began in Baghdad. He remembered the sand of the Arabian Peninsula as he constructed tunnels, calculating the depth, the width, the time it would take to dig so much each day. He devised the most efficient means of waste disposal. He planned escape attempts using a climber's gear, helicopter rescue, smoke grenades, massive shoot-outs in which he would have to depend on the expertise of other people, as other people depended on his own expertise at the office.

He felt no bitterness towards the General; it cost too much precious energy. He just excised him from his mind, his life. He liked to think of his tormentors as a group in order to avoid hating them too much, seeing their faces in his sleep. From the flimsy residues of his Catholicism, he dredged enough stoicism, saintly resignation, to accept his punishment. Good people got punished; so did bad ones. That was the beauty of it. He now and then went over his life, the class wall he had built to protect him and his interests, and tried not to lose hope. He tried to look for those moments which would fortify him, keep his spirits up. They kept shifting, changing position according to mood.

He thought a lot about justice; it did not make much sense. He was living outside the bounds of book justice; most Ugandans, most people groaning under dictatorships of all sorts, did. In many places it was the criminals handling the apparatus of justice, meting out their version of book justice. I am also compromised. By accepting the Saudi prince's money I participated in corruption, albeit involuntarily. Now I am being punished by criminals, killers with dripping hands. It did not make much sense. Salvation lay in the passivity and patience of a crocodile. Maybe something will happen and I will be free to go and do my work.

In the fourth month, when he had quit thinking about Babit, his family, his former life, because it disturbed his equilibrium, a soldier entered his room deep in the night. He switched on the light and barked at him to wake up.

“Job. Exercise. Good for body.”

He marched out of the room. He felt weak in the knees with fear. At the end of the corridor were five other men. He knew them by sight. They stood under the light looking at the soldiers.

“Move.”

They were herded together towards the garage and then outside into the yard. The air was cold, fresh, the sky a marvellous deep blue dipped in twinkling icy stars dominated by a fat moon. It was a very quiet night, with no shooting, no shouting. Bat felt momentarily free. Fantasies and memories rushed to the surface. His body tingled with excitement. He was then pushed inside a Stinger, which cruised past his office and entered the gates of the Nile Perch Hotel. He saw the spot where he had left his XJ10 and tried not to think who owned it now.

They were herded inside the hotel. He found himself in a room with two other men. The sight at his feet made his legs buckle. There were six bodies on the floor. He realized that he was standing in blood, pools of it.

“What are you looking at? Roll them in blankets and take them outside. Quick,” a soldier with a very nasty voice barked, gesticulating fiercely with his hands.

Bat did not know how he brought himself to do the sordid job. It was an out-of-body experience, something the brain washed clean and locked away in order to preserve its sanity. It was heavy lifting, with sandals squeaking, slipping on the marble floor. Outside, a lorry was parked, tail-gate open. They hoisted the bundles, coming away sodden, panting. He stood at the side and looked out. The dome of the mosque on Kibuli Hill looked imposing, like a huge egg. They were ordered to climb in the back together with four armed soldiers. The lorry drove away towards Jinja Road. The cold air whipped in through the slats and over the tail-gate. Everybody shivered, teeth clattering. The soldiers smoked to keep the demons at bay, to generate heat in their bodies and to fight the stink.

He had been on this road before, going to visit Babit's parents. He remembered the last time, the reception, the joy, the going home with Babit. Now he was going to pass right by those people. He thought about jumping off, an impossibility. But he had convinced himself that he did not care if he got shot or not. Had he not seen it all? What did he have to look forward to? More money? More power? More love? Would the rest of his life not be just nostalgia, the re-created taste of familiar stuff?

The vehicle entered Mabira Forest with a squeal of abused gears. The driver went faster. The massive forest looked even more formidable, more ominous, more pregnant with secrets of life and death. The overpowering darkness was opposed only by the headlights and the groan of the engine.

They swerved off the main road. Tree limbs whacked the side of the lorry and the top slats. They stopped. For a moment nobody moved or talked. A rifle clattered against the tail-gate, sending chills down spines. Then two soldiers barked orders at once. Grabbing a head, Bat led the way, stumbling, hurting his legs on sharp sticks. The human cargo was dumped, naked, the blankets taken back for further use. The soldiers smoked, puffing away, doing their best not to look. Everybody seemed eager to get away.

The next stop was at a river on the edge of the forest.

More orders: Wash blanket. Wash lorry. Wash self.

They washed the blankets, glad that they were thin. They scrubbed the lorry floor, the sides, the tail-gate, while fighting the mosquitoes and other biting and stinging insects of the night. They finally got into the lukewarm water to bathe off the filth which they could no longer smell. It took them an hour of endeavour to get everything ready. They shivered all the way back to the hotel. There they had to wash the rooms, the corridors, the entrance.

“Cleaning woman's job. You still long way off, you pussies,” one soldier said.

They were given new clothes and sandals before being taken back to Parliament.

It became a fortnightly event. Each time he was sent out with different prisoners. What happened to the others? Was there no end to the number of people held here?

On the fifth trip the soldiers had a surprise for them. At the hotel there were no bodies awaiting disposal. Instead, men were lined up, hands tied in front of them. Every prisoner was given somebody to dispose of. Bat tried not to look. He hesitated, waiting to see what others would do. He was viciously prodded with a rifle barrel. He lifted the hammer, said a prayer of absolution, and smashed. A clinical exercise robbed of either the thrill of anger or the satisfaction of malice. He remembered beheading, gutting and roasting chickens for the family when he was young. The jump from chicken to man, without progression between, seemed ridiculous. He had always wondered what butchers felt when they slit the throats of huge bulls. If they felt as empty as he did now, he pitied them.

At the river he thought of drowning himself and what a waste that would be. The soldiers would return to the hotel without him; his people wouldn't know where his bones lay. He had almost stopped washing the blanket. At that moment the nastiest soldier with a face like the night rushed towards him.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry. You think you still big man, eh? You think because some white snake go making noise you are special? Tell me,” he barked, collaring and bringing him close to his face. He could see envy all over it.

At that moment Bat knew that he wasn't abandoned. It struck him like an electric shock, short and sharp. Now he could handle this man. “No, sir. I am not a big man.”

“That is right. You nothing. You hear that? Nothing. You going nowhere.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, feeling so excited that he wanted to dance. A white man! Damon Villeneuve, MP? Had he stepped on a few corns? The moments of exuberance tasted delicious. The fact that a soldier knew about it meant that something was really happening. It was possible that this man had got wind of the affair a few weeks back and had been smouldering with resentment ever since. They had made him do these grisly things hoping that he would refuse and they would get a chance to injure him badly or to kill him. They were mistaken; he was going to play their game. The chance would come for him to hurt them later.

“First kill make you no special, you pussies. Be very careful. I catch you little mistake, I kill you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wash, wash, wash,” he ordered, pushing him away.

DAMON VILLENEUVE, MP, met with reluctance and indifference from the very start. The members of the English Parliament he usually cut deals with were busy with more momentous international issues. They had had enough of Idi Amin's capers. It was quite entertaining to hear or read about them but dreary business to try and unravel them. Politicians were interested in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the oil crisis, the Watergate scandal, terrorist attacks, hijackers, unemployment and riots in Britain, the nuclear threat from the East, the ramifications of the Cold War for the West. The disappearance of a small civil servant in an obscure country was far from top priority. There was no political percentage in it, domestic or foreign. Dictators like Amin had been largely left alone as long as they did not fall into the Cold War territory and the fight against Communism. They could do whatever they wanted as long as it was not to key British subjects. Nobody expected Britain to play world policeman. The empire was gone. When there had been incidents of British involvement, the outcome had been very mixed indeed. There was that Bossmans affair, Villeneuve was reminded more than once by colleagues who were knowledgeable about Uganda. Trouble in Uganda was not worth anybody's attention. In consolation, a few colleagues promised to sign a letter if he wanted to write to the British and the Ugandan Embassies, maybe Idi Amin too. Villeneuve consulted Ugandan exiles and British expatriates, who advised him to play it low-key, but he started making phone calls, writing letters.

The news slowly seeped into Uganda. The British Embassy was reluctant to take up the case. There were heaps of similar cases involving more distinguished Ugandans lying unsolved. What was so special about this one? Villeneuve was insistent. A Member of Parliament usually got his way; the news finally reached the right ears. Amin asked Colonel Robert Ashes to look into the affair.

At the time Ashes was busy putting together another megadeal with Copper Motors. Big Bossman had been replaced by a more sensible fellow, and big bucks were in the making. The last thing Ashes wanted was interference from back home. He felt he had suffered enough over the Bossmans affair, explaining himself to embassy people he despised, people who had threatened to bring in Scotland Yard to investigate the disappearances and claims of fraud. Nothing came of the threats, but now he wanted nothing to do with the embassy. Besides, people were disappearing every day. Over trivial things like offending the wrong person, land disputes, women, grudges, politics, business. Why should he get involved in this case?

When Ashes discovered that the missing man used to hold a key post in the Ministry of Power, a jolt of excitement cut through him. Here was a golden chance to deal General Fart a blow. He had threatened to investigate the bastard but had let him off the hook. Not this time.

Colonel Robert Ashes called and promised to look into the matter with immediate effect. His first course of action was to send his men, the Acolytes, to the headquarters of the Ministry of Power and arrest everyone in Bat's department. In the early afternoon, without a warning, Stingers swooped onto the place. Men jumped out, guns drawn, dashed into the offices and came out with eight people, including Bureaucrat One.

By the time General Bazooka received the news, two hours later, the damage had already been done. It was unclear who had captured his men. Word was his office had been attacked by armed men in Military Police uniforms. Efforts to find who they were had so far failed. He dispatched emissaries, made frantic phone calls to all security agencies, to no avail. His first guess was that he had fallen out of favour with Marshal Amin. He had not seen the Marshal lately, and he wondered if somebody had betrayed him. Had some envious back-biting general accused him of treason? Plotting a coup? Corruption? Had some astrologer seen him in his dreams and accused him of political ambition? Where was the Unholy Spirit? Was he in the country or abroad? What he said nowadays the Marshal swallowed. General Bazooka's hands started shaking. He lit a joint and puffed on it nervously.

In this unruly time, favours were gained and lost in the blink of an eye. At the start it had been exciting to find his way through the confusion; nowadays the game had become lethal as a mine field. General Bazooka felt his chest tightening. His wife could become a widow, his children orphans. In a fit of panic he called friendly officials hoping that at least one would tell him the truth before it was too late for damage control. Nobody seemed to have seen or heard anything. Are they lying to me just to keep their distance, or have I become too paranoid? But you cannot become paranoid enough these days; you cannot trust anybody for more than two minutes, he said to himself. Then one colleague suggested Ashes might be behind the mess.

“That dog again!” he swore, relief spreading in his body. It all smelled like Ashes. “I want to tear out his entrails with my bare hands.”