On the riverside of promise (13 page)

“Not here.”

She nodded hesitantly before adding:

“That’s what Yuembe came for.”

Ethan’s face flushed suddenly. His voice
resonated with barely contained anger and just the slightest hint
of worry:

“They’re still here then? The guns are still
here. Fuckall!”

With a rather glum attempt at sounding
sheepish, Nicole added flatly:

“We should get going. There might be more
groups interested in the cache.”

Ethan grabbed his knapsack and cocked his
Browning, before darting outside the door towards the Rover and
saying rather furiously mostly to himself:

“What a fucking catch, Andy! What a brilliant
fucking catch!”

* * *

Ethan had driven for the better part of the
night mostly in silence. What little words they had exchanged were
about directions, miles, maps and compasses. He had tried to make
their journey shorter, sometimes picking a dirt road or trail and
sometimes plowing through the savannah head on.

They’d seen pin-pricks of light in the
distance blinking on and off in their course; the creatures of the
night cleared a path in their wake. It was mostly hyenas they saw,
as well as owls. Each time the hyenas saw the Rover’s headlights
they paused in the feast of the carcass and gazed with eyes like
gems; then they carried on, the instinct of fear quite outdone by
hunger.

Ethan thought that had it been any other time
their improvised journey through the plains and the hills of
Nigeria might’ve been quite fascinating. A proper night safari; a
peek at the pure, wild Africa, untouched by man. But that was just
a passing idea. So much had happened in so little time, that Ethan
found it at times difficult to focus on simply driving, his mind
racing in all sorts of different directions.

At some point he had felt the need to sleep
but carried on for an hour or so as if his life depended on it.
Nicole had kept silent all along. She sometimes dozed off even as
the Rover rocked and rumbled over crests and gutters, hilly sides
and gravel trails. She didn’t seem to share the same fatigue as
Ethan, who kept straightening himself up, breathing sharply in an
effort to stay awake no matter what. At length, while on a small
dirt road beset with tall savannah grass, she told him:

“Let me drive.”

Ethan rolled his eyes before settling them on
her face while his mouth widened slowly into a grin:

“I think not,” he said and yawned.

“You’ll fall asleep on the wheel if you go on
like this. You need to get some rest,” she said, looking worried.
Ethan glanced at her sideways and kept driving, seemingly about to
pass out in any moment. He shook his head drowsily without
replying. Nicole insisted:

“Look, if you won’t let me drive at least
pull over and get some sleep. For God’s sake.”

Ethan drew a deep breath and shook himself
trying to stay alert. He told her then without taking his eyes off
the road, his voice shallow, almost resigned:

“Fine. Remember, check your compass and
clock; stick to the zigzag on the map and we should be fine. Give
me one hour, then wake me up. Understood?”

Nicole’s eyes rolled ever so slightly; that
had sounded like an order. She replied with a raised eyebrow with
evident irritation:

“I understand you don’t trust me yet, and
that’s clearly wrong because we’re doing this together whether you
like it or not. It’s about Andy, remember?”

Ethan braked gently then and brought the
Rover to a stop. He closed his eyes and sat with fists clenched on
the wheel, breathing shallowly. “I remember,” he said and went on
looking at Nicole through bloodshot eyes:

“Just don’t bloody fuck this up. We need to
reach the outskirts of Onitsha very much alive and completely
unseen if at all possible. If you see or hear something just -”

“Look, I’m not a hapless bitch you can just
work around, alright? Jesus, you think you’re so hot stuff don’t
you? Please shut up and sleep,” she said loudly but without
screeching or yelling. Her somewhat pale face was flush with a red
tint of anger, locks of her hair stuck on her temples. Ethan
strangely thought about how menacingly beautiful she looked
then.

He smiled thinly, nodded to himself and got
out of the Rover straining himself to get to the co-driver’s seat
as fast as possible. When they crossed each other in front of the
Rover, they exchanged a strange look and almost halted their stride
for the barest second. A few moments later, Nicole was behind the
wheel while Ethan lay in the seat next to her, arms crossed and
legs drawn together, snoring like a hog.

They’d been carving a crisscross path towards
Onitsha, the gateway to the Biafran territory east of the Niger.
The small city had been swapping hands for the past few months
between the federal government and the Biafrans. Recently it had
fallen into government hands and was considered marginally safer.
Still, the front-line was in an almost constant flux; units from
both sides would occasionally try and force their passage over the
Niger. It would come as no big surprise to Ethan if they suddenly
encountered Biafran patrols instead of government troops.

As the hours went by, the savannah gave way
to the lush riverside, full of mangroves and thick, green bush. The
last of the starry sky shone its deep blue light. For a moment, it
felt as if the Rover was wading through a dream scape, the primal
Africa of the spirit fathers and the blessed mother Earth. The
illusion quickly melted away as the primrose red dawn cowardly
crept over the horizon. Ethan sat upright startled, his arms still
tightly hugging his chest. He shot a sharp look and asked
Nicole:

“What time is it?”

She glanced at her wristwatch without taking
her hands off the wheel and told him:

“It’s almost six in the morning. We should be
there in about an hour.”

“What?” he said slightly miffed and took
another look around him. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked
at her viciously:

“You’re on the road. I told you to stay off
the road. What if-”

“What if we’re on the road? Wouldn’t it look
even more strange if someone saw us just wading through the
savannah like on a safari? For Pete’s sake, act like it.”

“Like what? A bloody fool?”

She stared blankly at the road and replied
calmly:

“Like Andy’s brother. You’re all too tied up
in playing the professional, while in fact you’re just winging
this, aren’t you?”

Ethan let out a laugh of surprise despite
himself. He was at a loss for words for a few moments. Nicole went
on:

“Maybe you’re too scared. You’d be an idiot
if you weren’t, but at this rate…”

“So you’re the expert? Some kind of
superhero? Does the CIA brainwash their own agents as well?”

Nicole shook her head and scoffed. She said
with a flat, nearly emotionless voice:

“Maybe.”

Ethan did not answer. He was simply staring
at her intently, as if searching for something on her face. She
took notice and asked him:

“What now?”

Ethan rested his head on his hand and let out
a sigh. He shrugged and told her:

“I’m just trying to see what Andy saw in you,
that’s all.”

A smirk appeared on her face suddenly and she
replied as if flustered:

“None of your business.”

“No, thank God not.”

* * *

“London Times?” asked the young lieutenant at
the checkpoint. He was squinting under the bright morning sun, a
pair of sunglasses tucked away neatly in his shirt pocket. Ethan
replied nonchalantly:

“It’s a newspaper. Press?” he said, and
showed off a battered, smudged, laminated press pass with his photo
on it. The young lieutenant stared back for barely a moment before
nodding to Nicole. He asked them:

“Red Cross nurse? All alone out here?”

“I’m doing a story arc. Ms. Heurgot here is
the centerpiece, you see,” Ethan said and looked at her with a thin
smile. She barely glanced back at the lieutenant with an uncertain
grin, pretending to feel awkward. He shook his head and without a
word, waved at the guard to raise a shoddy, rust-ridden metal bar.
Ethan gave a mock salute and thanked him, while Nicole started the
engine and drove off slowly towards the bridge.

After a few yards Ethan looked back through
the mirror and saw the lieutenant still shaking his head; he
noticed a smile and then a few laughs from the guards. He was
joking; that was good. That meant they thought they were probably
crazy; which wasn’t that far off from reality. Nicole asked him
then:

“They’re lax. It’s like they think it’s just
another job.”

Ethan laid back in his seat and lit a smoke.
He told her then as they crossed the bridge, the rover bucking
slightly at each segment, his head lolling freely:

“Well, isn’t it?”

She spared a frowned a look lazily before
replying and shifting gear:

“I like to think it’s a lot more. I’m a bit
surprised you seem so…” She paused mid-sentence, her mouth
half-open.

As the Rover reached the other side, a guard
motioned them to stop. A soldier sitting inside a small shack that
offered some relatively comfortable shadow was noting down their
plates, cross-checking it against some sort of list. Nicole found
the word she’d been searching for and said:

“Jaded.”

Ethan replied after a heavy draught:

“I thought you’d say cynical.”

“I would, if you were.”

“But I am.”

“No, you’re not. You care.”

“How do you know?”

“So do you?”

He smiled thinly and tapped away the ash from
his cigarette over the open window. He shook his head and said with
half a smile:

“Well played, I’ll give you that.”

“You think this is a game then?”

“Oh, do drive on.”

She smiled wearily and once the guard waved
them on their way, she sped towards the center of the city through
the main road. They both peered through open windows at the strange
mix of people, land and buildings that seemed so impossibly jarring
to the eye. Red brick walls looked inherently unable to hold even
the smallest tin roof, while the people around them went about
their morning business dressed in all sorts of colours from the
drab gray shirt to the colourful rainbow woolen tunics.

Goats were being herded in pairs by the
equivalent of a milkman and quite a small crowd of mostly women and
children seemed to be waiting in line expectantly. Groups of
soldiers seemed to be dispersed along the road, idly but warily
overlooking the passers-by.

They were driving alongside the river, the
east bank on their left. Little by little the rural outskirts gave
way to more and more concrete, more and more colour. The town
seemed relatively intact from the fighting, but the unmistakable
signs were there: bullet-ridden blue and red walls, makeshift
barricades and gun posts mingled with food stalls and workshops.
The people seemed to take things in their stride. Despite it all,
they still lived there.

They drove past the harbor and the piers
where the military presence was more than evident: stores of
supplies seemed to be piling up, while barges slowly waded through
the Niger, loaded to the brim. Nearby, fishermen were preparing
their nets as they did every day. Nicole broke the silence
first:

“Isn’t it amazing?”

“What, exactly?”

“This town has been exchanging hands ever
since the war started and there are still people living here. Not
only that, they’re going about their business like nothing’s
changed.”

Ethan snorted almost derisively and with his
gaze fixed on the golden reflections of the sun on the river, he
replied:

“Well, what would you know. A spy with a
conscience.”

She looked at him with a knowing smile, while
they drove past a small square that had been reduced to patches of
brush and wild grass. She retorted:

“Does it surprise you?”

“It surprises me you can afford one.”

“It would have no meaning if I wasn’t doing
this for a reason.”

“It doesn’t really have much of a meaning.
Though there’s millions of reasons, try as you might, there’s no
meaning.”

“So, everything is meaningless, so we should
just do nothing about anything? Maybe jump off a cliff as
well.”

“No, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do
anything. I’m only saying it doesn’t really mean anything. It only
means what anyone wants it to mean.”

“There’s only as much value in the war as we
want it to have?”

“Not just this one here. Every war.”

“What about the people who were driven out of
their homes, those who were shot because they were thought to be
sympathizers? What about the orphans and the starving children?
What value do these people have?”