The Book of Secrets (21 page)

“ ‘As we agreed before, my brother, it is best for people like us to keep a low profile and out of the way …’ ”

Jamali looked up. “You should be careful. We all should be careful. These are treacherous times. There is no telling who works for whom.” Jamali waited, looked pointedly at the young man, then said, “News of your mother doesn’t surprise you?”

“No …” Pipa murmured. “She had to go wherever she found security — and with me here … what could she do?”

But Pipa was stunned by the news of Hamisi’s execution. So the war could touch someone like himself, directly. Hamisi, his friend and patron, was dead; hanged by those same Germans whose secret papers he, Pipa, had received, handled, and then passed on to Maynard. Hamisi — working for Maynard? How could that be, when he had been so clearly the German commandant’s friend? Would Hamisi have betrayed his friend? Pipa remembered that it was Hamisi who had sent him to see the commandant, whose letters he agreed to take with him to Kikono. It was these letters that had involved Pipa in all this trouble. Hamisi had been no innocent, then. Had he known all along he would be placing Pipa in danger?

What made these people act in such ways that they could not even trust each other? Their motives, like their war, were incomprehensible to him.

He stepped out of the shop for some air and walked over to Baruti’s tea shack. There he found that the news of Hamisi’s demise was known to everyone. An Arab sheikh, they were saying, a Sufi, had been hanged by the Germans.

“Eti,” he said, “did Hamisi really work for the British?”

They laughed. You are naive, Pipa. Didn’t your mukhi tell you? And so they told him.

Hamisi had
not
worked for the British. He had been defeated by them — or rather by Maynard, the wily Englishman.

Hamisi had been head of the Germans’ African and Arab spies, whose agents were legion on the Voi-Taveta road and were even present among the railway workers. The explosion at the railway depot of a few weeks before must have depended on detailed information, even a guide. It had been costly for the British. This time Maynard had vowed vengeance, and he wasted no time. He wrote a letter to Hamisi, thanking him for his services, adding that his wife in Sudan was well looked after by the British. After the war he would be allowed to go back to his country with a suitable position and a decoration. To add to the cleverness, the letter had been written in Arabic. It was found on the person of Abdalla the mali when he was seized by the Germans in Mbuyuni. Hamisi was arrested and hanged.

“Everyone knows this here, and the Germans don’t?” asked Pipa.

Everyone knows this now, period, he was told. What is victory good for if it is not broadcast?

“But Abdalla?” he asked. “What about the mali?”

“Abdalla?” the speaker paused. The British didn’t commandeer his donkey, did they? They let him go about. Now we know why. The Germans also let him alone. Why? Think. A trader always carries things both ways — never one way, never empty-handed. So Abdalla carried messages for both the British and the Germans. This time the British betrayed him, the Germans hanged him.

No telling who works for whom — Pipa recalled the mukhi’s words.

When relief came for Pipa, it did not come too early. One day
the Fisi arrived in Kikono with his lieutenants and took over Corbin’s former residence. Pipa’s job with the British army was thenceforth terminated, and he felt as if an oppressive weight had been lifted from him and that he was free at last.

It was February 1916. The new railway line from Voi brought the massive British conquering army west to the midway point of Mbuyuni, and the small German force that had occupied the town dispersed. The next German line of defence was at the formidable Salaita Hill outside Taveta, at the border, which the British had now begun to assail.

Mbuyuni turned into a city of white tents against a background of desert brown and scrub. In the morning the flapping, cracking canvas could be heard for a great distance; as the day heated, the canvas would tighten, its surfaces smooth and blinding in the glare. At night lamps flitted about in the landscape, men sat and sang around fires, there were smells of food and gasoline. A makeshift hospital had been put up. Trains packed with soldiers arrived, later to depart for action at the border. Planes flew overhead. Troop patrols brought in prisoners and casualties.

Kikono, only ten miles away, saw its neighbour town thus overcome and was itself run over, but not so completely.
Prominence had been dreamed of, forecast for this little town between two railways, but not of this variety. The war was almost over for the area — and the town would never be the same again; already the townsfolk, not unappreciative of the added business brought by the war, had learned to regard the place cynically, without affection, as they would a whore. When they were done, they would go away and leave it, as the armies were doing.

At Pipa’s one afternoon, a knock came at the backyard gate that led to the street. He and Mariamu were outside the kitchen shed eating their midday meal while the baby slept inside. Mariamu got up to look. A female figure draped in buibui stood outside the gate.

“Mama, I want to work.”

“We have no work,” Pipa called gruffly.

“Then give a poor woman some water, for kindness.”

Mariamu walked to the drinking pot to fetch some water, and the woman stepped into the yard. Quickly she closed the gate and, undoing the buibui, revealed herself to be a man. A stocky man, moreover, with a moustache.

Mariamu gave a start. “To repay kindness you do this?”

“What do you want?” asked Pipa. “Take all you can, there’s not much.”

The man laughed. “Show me the hiding places, then. But I am not a thief. I come on business.”

Pipa nodded. “The Englishman?” he asked casually. What could that devil the Fisi want now?

But the intruder said, “Bwana Juma sent me.”

“Juma? Which Juma? Are you some kind of madman or what? I know of no Juma.”

“After Thursday comes Friday,” said the man implacably, playing on the names. “After Hamisi, Juma.”

Pipa began to understand. The man was from the German side, one of Hamisi’s followers. He sat down, looked at his wife, who was still looking startled, the cup of water in her hands.

“You go inside,” he told her. “It’s not her business,” he said to the visitor. “She has to be with the child.”

The man graciously agreed. “But stay indoors,” he warned her as she gave him the water.

“Look here,” Pipa said, pleading with the man. “This war is nothing to me. I just want to lead my own life.”

“I understand, my friend,” said the man. “I do too. But have we a choice? We have all become involved.” He leaned forward and looked straight into Pipa’s eyes. “Hamisi was betrayed. There are those among his followers — the Sufis — who think his death should be avenged.”

“But it was the Germans who hanged him.”

“He was betrayed from here — by a message given to the mali Abdalla. Some say it was you who gave it —”

The man sat back as Pipa erupted in his defence.

“The day the mali was caught he got no messages from me. This I swear, by God, the Prophet, and my mother.”

The man shrugged: “What do details matter.”

“Hamisi was my friend,” Pipa said.

“Listen, Pipa.” The man again leaned forward, as if to impart a confidence, and said slowly, “Prove to us that Hamisi was your friend, by working for us.”

All Pipa had to do was pass messages on. They would come from the British camp in Mbuyuni. He would get little chits with his money from certain customers, and these he was to insert inside packets of spice, which he would hand over to any customer who said to him, “I thought it was Thursday, but Friday follows Thursday and demands a prayer.”

“The war is almost over,” Pipa pleaded. “Why now, why me? What for, all this treachery, this Thursday-Friday business that will surely cost me my life?”

“Everything counts,” said the man, unmoved. “And as you yourself say, it will soon be over. One week, maybe two. But till then.… It is nothing, truly. Just a few messages — accept them,
and hand them over. That is all, you know nothing else. Is that a crime? I will tell the Sufis you are innocent, a good man.”

Pipa and his wife sat looking at each other for a long time after the man had left. The Fisi was not far, he was up the hill in the departed
ADC
’s house. If they told him about Thursday-Friday would he protect them? And for how long? He would soon be gone, but there would remain Hamisi’s followers and Abdalla’s family. He and Mariamu went and talked with the mukhi. Do what the man said, Jamali advised. He could be desperate. It can’t last long. A week at most. Then you are free.

The messages began the next day and came three days running, brought by an off-duty Sikh soldier from the British side.

Pipa eyed the man curiously, who ostensibly bought cigarettes, and once a packet of sugar. He was not very young, somewhat weary-looking. Each time he said something that Pipa couldn’t understand. After the man had gone, Pipa would hide the messages in his packets, which then waited to be picked up.

On the fourth day following the arrival of the Thursday-Friday man at Pipa’s, a British attack on Salaita Hill outside Taveta was rebuffed.

That night, as news of the setback spread, as the wounded and dead were being brought back, and as they talked once more in the town of the prowess of the German feldkompanies and their African askaris, a fist pounded on Pipa’s door, threatening to bring it down. Pipa went and opened a panel. Two men strode in — Fisi and his Swahili aide. Pipa, still at the door, watched them with fright. If he had been alone, he would have made a dash for it. The game was up now, he thought, and probably his time, too. The baby, Aku, began crying, and Mariamu went and picked him up.

The Swahili brought a chair. “Sit,” he said to Pipa. This was no kindness, but a preparatory step.

Aku was struggling in Mariamu’s arms as she returned her
husband’s look in terror. Inside the shop, now, the men were searching. Cigarette tins, cigarettes, shelves, kerosene tins, spice and grain boxes … all turned over and inside out; then finally the spice and sugar packets. Triumphantly they brought them out to examine them under a lamp.

“They forced me,” Pipa said. “They forced me, what was I to do? They said —”

Maynard glared at the Indian and put a hand to his pistol: “For this he can be shot.”

“No!” screamed Mariamu. “Please, no. He was forced —”

“Trial, bwana,” said Shomari. “In Mbuyuni, with other traitors.”

And so Pipa was marched off to the lockup, as the mukhi and one or two others hurried inside to comfort Mariamu and the child.

There was a hole in the roof which let in a dim glow that was the light of the night sky. This faint light cut through the dark hollow under the roof, illuminating the beams, exposing objects lower down as shadows and silhouettes. Through the opening Pipa saw the pinpoint flickers of the stars; the new-moon ceremony was a week past, now, but the moon was out of sight. He was nervous of sounds, afraid of snakes. At first he dared not move, but later, barraged by all manner of rustling, scraping, soughing, he made his own, propietary sounds in the dark. Later he became bolder still, egged on by a pack of hyenas who arrived outside, barking at him angrily through the wall where the mud had been washed or broken away, and in frustration rubbing their bodies against the gap, as if willing it to give way. And Pipa, on edge with fright but unwilling to show it, clapped his hands, stamped his feet, shouted at them to go away. But he was a prisoner and they knew it; they would not go away.

In this forsaken prison, with its small wooden bench, broken bed, and rotting mat, Pipa languished that night besieged by hyenas, until he started yelling to be let out.

Captain Maynard, commander of a military intelligence corps, sat at the table in the
ADC
’s former home, surrounded by his chosen lieutenants, sifting through the messages they had found in Pipa’s store earlier in the evening. Above them, hanging from a beam, was a powerful pressure lamp by whose bright light they went about their work. The strength of the army amassed to move into German East, and its momentum, were too great for these captured reports to make much difference — there was intelligence from the other side to indicate this. Nevertheless, the Germans had come up with surprises before, had repulsed several overconfident attacks, including the one the previous day at Salaita Hill.

German intelligence in the area had been in place and strong even before the war; German maps found on captured soldiers were accurate and were even used by the British to correct their own. Raids from across the border were persistent and effective, their successes depending frequently on collaborators. Although Hamisi the Arab had been killed, his network of spies continued to be active and was operating in Kikono right under Maynard’s nose.

Maynard had four men with him, an Indian and three Africans; each was familiar with a different language, a different tribe. The search in Pipa’s store had delivered six scraps of paper bearing messages. These messages were passed around, commented upon, put back in the heap on the table, picked up and passed around again, as the men tried to make sense of them.