An African Affair (7 page)

There was a brief pause. It was so slight that someone less observant might not have noticed that his grip tightened on a pencil he’d been casually holding in his right hand. Abruptly, he snapped it between his fingers, as though he were imitating a thug in a gangster movie. Then he reached over, so abruptly Lindsay jumped, and turned off her tape recorder. When he spoke again, it was clear that the interview was concluded.

“There are rumors of every kind in this city,” he said. “It never fails to amaze me what people will say. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go.”

Stubbornly, she pressed further. “So I can quote you, sir, as denying the rumors? My sources said your government would use the chaos such an act would provoke as a pretext to postpone elections.”

Knowing she was crossing a line, she added: “I wonder if the death of Babatunde Oladayo, when it is announced, will also provoke demonstrations among the students.”

He froze. She had obviously taken him by surprise. Before he could speak, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver and shouted into it.

“I told you to hold calls.”

He listened for a moment and then, sputtering in rage, answered in Yoruba so Lindsay wouldn’t understand, but there was no mistaking the menacing tone as he gave an order and hung up. His gaze fell back to Lindsay, and he seemed to be making an effort to control himself. She turned to look at the door and sat quietly.

“Babatunde Oladayo.” He spat out the name like a curse. “I talk to you of progress, of democracy, and you talk of Babatunde Oladayo. People like him, they are nothing. They are bugs. Did you say someone swatted one bug? That is not my lookout.”

She watched his hands clench and unclench and finally, with relief, she saw he was regaining his composure. She hurried to gather up her belongings, stuffing her tape recorder into her bag, and rose to leave. As he walked her to the door, he said, “I’d love to find out who your sources are.” Then, more ominously, “Perhaps I will one day. But I’m sure, as a professional, you will be sure to check them very well and not publish anything that is not substantiated. We believe in a responsible press. We have laws that encourage it—and penalties that ensure it.” He took her hand as if to shake good-bye and gripped it so tightly that her ring dug into her finger and broke the skin.

“Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She understood all too well.

“Good day,” he said.

“Good day,” she answered. “Thank you.”

The general turned to the window. He didn’t turn back as she left.

Hunkered down in the rear seat of her car while John started the engine, she willed her heartbeat to return to normal. A chorus of Olumide’s threats played over and over in her head: “I’d love to find out who your sources are. Perhaps I will one day. . . .” “We have laws that encourage it and penalties that ensure it.” The intimidation came not just from his voice but also from his abrupt movements. She thought of the lizard in the ambassador’s garden—heavy-lidded and scarcely moving, darting its lethal tongue to snatch a bug.

John pulled out into the street. Were they being followed? She turned to look out the back window. Not a single Black Maria in sight.

She decided to file her story immediately. She looked at her watch: 12:30 P.M. It was five hours earlier in New York, giving her plenty of time. Interviews with African heads of state were customarily relegated to the back pages of the paper, but this one might just make it onto the front page. Oil-rich Nigeria was important, and Olumide, who rarely spoke to the press, was a figure of mystery to the West.

She wrote the piece in an hour and a half, then tried to figure out the best way to file. Tentatively, almost on impulse, she picked up her phone, fully expecting it to be dead. But by some miracle, her landline was working.

Perhaps Olumide wanted the story printed. She didn’t waste time trying to figure it out but dialed the
Globe
’s recording room and began the tedious job of reading her story to a machine, which necessitated including all punctuation, and spelling out every name. (“Olumide: O for orange, L for London, U for ukulele . . .”) She finished without being cut off. Relieved, she decided to place another call. The connection was weaker this time, but on the fifth try, she was delighted to hear a secretary say, “Foreign desk.”

“This is Lindsay Cameron,” she said. “Is Joe Rainey around? I’m calling from Lagos and I don’t know how long the line will hold.”

Joe picked up. He’s in early, she thought, probably didn’t go home last night. Once again his wife, Janine, would be furious.

“Jesus, Lindsay. We were wondering when you’d check in. What’s going on?”

“It’s been hell getting through and now that I’ve got a line, I’m going to talk fast. I just filed twelve hundred words on my interview with Olumide. He didn’t say much, but I’m using it as a peg for some background on the situation here. There may be a big story coming up. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, but I’m on top of it.”

“What kind of time line are we talking about?”

“Not sure. Maybe a week or two.”

“Okay. What about the interview? Can we reach you later for questions?”

“Beats me. You can try. If the phone’s down, don’t send a fax through the public communications office. I’ll try my best to reach you.”

“There’s something else,” Rainey said. “You marked a piece ‘hold for orders.’ What do we do with it?”

She glanced down at her notebook and saw Olumide’s only comment about Babatunde Oladayo: “People like him, they are nothing. They are bugs.” Her face flushed with anger. It took her less than a minute to make up her mind.

“Run it,” she said. “You can pair it with the interview.”

“Okay. Good. Listen, we could use some features for page two while you’re waiting around for your big story. Maybe some lifestyle pieces. What’s Lagos like now? Write about African art, music, food, that kind of thing.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes in exasperation. Editors! She was talking about real news, and he wanted a goddamned feature. Still, she could always do something on African art—she’d talk to James.

“I’ll see what I can find,” she said.

“Right. Good.”

There was a slight pause.

“So,” said Lindsay, “what’s going on there?”

“Same old shit. The big news is that Greenberg’s secretary Anna, who as you know is married, just had a baby boy that looks a hell of a lot like Greenberg.”

“No kidding.”

“Gotta go, kid. Page one meeting’s about to start. How you doin’?”

“Not so great. But I’m surviving. Can’t wait to finish up, frankly, and go home. It’s tough being so cut off, really. . . .” She waited for a response but could hear him talking to someone else on the desk.

“Well, hang in there and keep in touch, Linds,” he said hurriedly.

“Right. Wait. Just check with the recording room to see if they got it all, okay?”

“Sure. Hold on.”

A long pause.

“They lost you, Lindsay. They got a few graphs but then just static.”

“Oh no. I’ll try again,” she started to say before the line went dead. Her only hope now was the AFP man, whose office, luckily, was just a few blocks away.

She found Georges Pontier, drink in hand, looking at the lagoon behind his house. Introducing herself, she reminded him of their correspondence.

“Ah, yes,” he replied graciously. “The telex. I remember.”

“How amazing that you’ve got one working. I heard you paid a big bribe to get it.”

“Yes, I did.” He smiled and shrugged. “Unfortunately, it seems it was not quite big enough. The line has been dead since I returned from leave.”

“But how do you file?”

Pontier smiled laconically. “When the desire to file overtakes me, which isn’t often anymore,” he said, sipping his scotch, “I usually lie down until the impulse passes.” He grinned at his adaptation of the famous quote. “But when I have to file—you know, a coup or something—I do what you will have to do. I wait in line at the government message center. Oh, sorry, can I get you a drink?”

“No.” She knew she looked agitated.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said, chuckling. “We call it WAWA.”

“WAWA?”

“West Africa Wins Again.” He poured himself another scotch.

“I simply can’t let that happen,” she said. “Thanks anyway. I’ve got to go.”

As John pulled away, she cast a rueful glance back at the house. A Nigerian man in a dark Western suit sauntered onto the porch. He spoke to Pontier and then fished in his pocket and handed him something. Pointier pocketed it and the two of them broke off their conversation to look at her car.

She wondered if Pontier’s phone line was really out or if he’d been bribed to force her to file through official channels. She told John to head for the public communications office, nervously peering through the rear window to see if she was being tailed.

Filing was, as she had anticipated, an ordeal. She didn’t trust the slow Internet connection, so she decided to wait for the telex. It was three hours before she got back in her car to go home. Two blocks away, she spotted the yellow and white truck of the Nigerian Telephone Company, hardly an unusual sight since the technicians were often out and about, climbing telephone poles and busily poking around the bird’s nests of tangled wires that constituted the Nigerian telephone system. Inspired, she stopped to talk to one technician who was about to climb the pole outside the Ghanaian embassy. She told him that her phone was dead and she desperately needed it fixed.

“You go call company,” the technician said, his back to her.

“Well, actually, I can’t call anyone, that’s the problem.”

The technician shrugged and started his ascent. Halfway up, he yelled down at her: “How much you pay?”

“Whatever it costs.”

“You pay dollars. Five hundred. I give you good line.” He gestured toward his friend. “He come too. You pay both or no good.”

“Yes. Yes. I’ll pay both,” she answered. “But when?”

The two men consulted in the low tones of Yoruba. Then the first asked her where she lived. She told him and the men resumed their discussion. Finally the first man spoke to her.

“You go for get dollars. Dollars, no naira, den we go give you line.”

With a tilt of his head, he indicated that the line would come from the Ghanaian embassy.

She went home and retrieved the money from her bedroom safe. On her way out, she ran into Martin, who asked her where she was rushing off to. Proudly, she told him about her negotiations.

Martin nodded thoughtfully. “Madam, maybe you make a mistake. Don’t give them all the money now. Maybe you give them half and tell them you pay more each month the line keeps working,” he suggested.

“Martin, you are a genius.”

When she returned to the repairmen, she explained that she would pay them a retainer that they could come each month to collect. The men agreed, but demanded the full $500 up front. She nodded and handed over the money. She watched as they climbed the pole again, searching for the wire that connected the working line in the embassy to the central system. She saw them pulling several strands from the tangle of wires and connecting them to a pole near her house.

As soon as she got home, she tried the phone, but it was still dead.

She was concerned. Her encounter with them could have been anything from a government setup aimed at bugging her phone to a con job, but Martin counseled her to be patient and served a strong cup of coffee and some muffins he had baked. She collapsed in the living room, glancing at the Nigerian newspapers. She remembered she had promised Martin she would read to Eduke. Playing with the three-year-old always distracted her, so she roused herself and fetched
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
, which she had asked her mother to send from New York.

As soon as she sat down, he climbed onto her lap. He could identify all the colors in the butterfly and proudly recited them in English. He made himself comfortable, cuddling into her and, when the story ended, put his head sweetly on her chest. He was a special child, she thought, brighter, more sensitive than most. His father had high hopes for him. “He is the one I set my mind on,” Martin had told her. She determined she would help Martin with Eduke’s school fees when the time came, even when her tour in Nigeria ended.

As it was getting dark, she walked back into the house. Over dinner Lindsay told Maureen about her attempt to bribe the telephone workers. Maureen was skeptical but impressed nonetheless as Lindsay picked up the receiver, willing a dial tone. It was still dead.

As she started upstairs for bed, Lindsay said, “I’m having lunch tomorrow with that guy you introduced me to.”

“James?”

“Yeah. How come I never heard about him before?”

“He’s really more Mark’s friend than mine. He met James freshman year at Yale. When James transferred to Michigan, they kind of lost touch for a while but connected again in London. I don’t think they talk too intimately. You know that male thing.” She leaned heavily on the banister as she climbed the stairs.

“Are you feeling okay?” Lindsay asked.

“I don’t know. I feel a little weird—super exhausted and queasy. I hope I’m not coming down with anything.”

“It’s probably just the weather and the change in food. And you’re probably still jet-lagged. Go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Before turning in herself, Lindsay picked up the phone again, but it was still dead.

In the morning, she was awakened by ringing. She reached to quiet her alarm, but it hadn’t gone off yet. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was the phone. She picked up the receiver.

“You go have phone now,” a voice said.

Then the caller hung up. But his voice was replaced by a truly beautiful sound: a dial tone.