Immam Igrandi, border guard at the Swarna Bridge between PanAfrica and the CAR, squinted his eyes. A storm was blowing from the east, bringing with it countless flecks of sand and gravel and dust, a microscopic speck of which had lodged near his left pupil.
This was not good. The bridge was crowded. It seemed that everyone in the world had come south for the day and now, having seen the living legend himself, was returning to the Central African Republic, where they belonged.
Immam was twenty-two, and liked his job immensely (he had inherited it from his father). The money provided his family with a house and good food and comforts, and Immam with an Afjap mistress who gladly performed acts his own wife would castrate him for suggesting.
He was thinking about his mistress, a thin, big-titted, slow-moving delicacy named Nikomo, when the fleck flew into his eye. The gods are watching you today, Immam, he clucked, rubbing the sore orb. Maybe it’s true. Maybe only white people and monkeys are supposed to fuck like that. He wasn’t to be relieved for another hour, and the six lanes of traffic heading north wouldn’t wait for any of the glass-boothed border guards to head to the lavatory. Hell, he had peed in a bucket more than once, and he could damned well suffer through a bit of grit.
He waved a few cars through, after giving them a perfunctory scanning. His laxity was understandable: after all, normal immigration pressure was in the opposite direction. Anyone who wanted to leave the paradise of PanAfrica was welcome. Assuming, of course, that they carried nothing of value to Phillipe Swarna.
But still, Immam had the task of recording every face that passed, and he took that obligation seriously. Through a haze of pain, he saw a face that he recognized, and he suddenly forgot the throbbing eye. He stepped out of his booth, shielding his face from the wind. He saluted the occupants of the jeep snappily. “Azziz, nex’ champion of world!” Immam said between chipped and golden teeth.
Aubry Knight smiled, and started to speak, and felt something shift in the back of his head, and suddenly he was speaking in Swahili. “Thank you, my friend. Blessings to you and your family.” Jenna and Bloodeagle regarded him with amusement.
“My brother-in-law,” she said. “The polyglot.”
Immam waved them through, cheering, fingers interlaced, hands raised above his head in the Victory sign.
And no one, not even Immam, noticed that an automatic camera had recorded every face in the jeep.