23

President Nduka sat immobile behind his oak desk, lost in thought.

The project for Kireba was, just as he had expected, running into problems. That was what happened when you left a project in the hands of ministers not up to the job. It was also what happened, he admitted to himself, when you got old . . .

Cement, water, land rights, power supplies. The list of hold-ups and cost overruns seemed endless, and everyone wanted a little something. Greed, how he hated greed!

Then he took out the rose from the vase on his desk – the thorns had been carefully removed by the duty toto. He shook off the drops of water, and attached the flower to the lapel of his pin-stripe suit.

His diary for the day had begun with a meeting with the Chinese trade minister, which he had deliberately allowed to overrun by 20 minutes. The British High Commissioner, who had arrived to discuss the role of UKAid in the redevelopment of Kireba, had no choice but to cool his heels in the ante-room that ran off the ornate ballroom, where the air conditioning had broken down.

That would teach him – though it might not stop the white man delivering another lecture about the importance of good governance and transparency. It really was quite tiresome.

Soon he would have to leave for the funeral service.

He liked to prepare for these occasions. In the early days of independent Kuwisha he had had a hand in the demise of more than one political opponent, as well as several members of the ruling party. He used to find their funerals most productive events. They gave him time to think, and from the pulpit he delivered some fine eulogies in honour of the men and women he had dispatched. But now in his seventies, he spent more and more of his waking hours in conversations with these very same ghosts from his past.

The time for him to join these ghosts was not far off. The Sitholes, the Chisizas, the Mboyas, the Oukos – all had been clever men. They were Africa’s lost generation, their talent unfulfilled.

When a funeral service that he attended was particularly tedious, he would pass the time selecting a Cabinet from the ranks of the “disappeared” – the men who had died in unexplained road accidents, or victims of “accidental shootings”, or whose health had mysteriously and rapidly deteriorated. True, they would get up to tricks in the Cabinet, but they couldn’t help it. That, after all, was why they had been disappeared.

Nduka examined with distaste the papers on his desk, dealing with the redevelopment of Kireba. Provided the World Bank and other aid agencies made the funds available, the first phase of the Kireba project would create up to 500 flats.

To the president’s irritation, the World Bank was insisting on holding a donors’ conference to draw up the blueprint and to raise the money from the donor community.

They had become so predictable, he thought to himself: Kireba – Meeting the Challenges, Achieving Potential, read the title of the main paper.

That word potential again . . .

At least the vexed question of whether to renew the contract with the upholstery firm in Surrey was easy. Or was it Sussex? He needed them to help refurbish his home on the coast. It had been on his mind. He had postponed any renewal until after the World Bank auditors had been to Kuwisha, poking their noses into presidential business.

It just took one example of what the bank called “unauthorized off-budget spending”, and their forensic auditors could follow a paper trail of spending that went who knows where? Sure as eggs, the trail would lead to the entertainment budget, which in turn would put investigators on the path of hospitality arrangements for the foreign officials responsible for the order of Mirage jets.

And the British press would sniff around.

After the audit and not before, he decided.

There was no reason, however, he had to deny himself a bit of fun. He decided to send an official invitation to the couple who ran the upholstery firm to attend the independence day celebrations that year. How they would squeal when the reception committee at the airport took them not to a five-star hotel but to jail.

“After, not before . . .”

He would give orders about their reception to Mboga, the senior steward.

“After, not before . . .”

He liked the sound of the words. They emerged with a rasp, a huskiness, authoritative, with an air of menace. He said again: “After, not before,” and took a sip of the hot water, laced with honey and lemon, which the new kitchen toto had just placed on the table beside his mahogany desk.

The toto, who was standing to bare-footed attention, dressed in khaki, trousers and singlet, but no pockets, looked terrified.

He was still on probation.

Only when the old man in front of him, with rheumy eyes and a sharp tongue, gave his approval would the boy become senior kitchen toto – official. And then, and only then, would he be entitled to put aside the drab khaki and replace it with a sparkling all-white outfit, a shirt with pockets, starched shorts, complete with belt, knee-length socks and plimsolls, also white.

How the youngster longed for that day; how he craved the uniform that would give him status.

He stared straight ahead, as he’d been instructed. Never should he look the Ngwazi in the eyes. He sensed, however, the president looking at him, with his cold, malevolent glare.

The fact was Nduka missed the toto’s predecessor, Mlambo . . . Ferdinand Mlambo. Now there was a bright boy! Devious and treacherous, yes, deceitful and cunning, yes. But clever, the boy was clever. And he knew his football. Oh yes. He knew his football.

“Mboga!”

“Mboga!” he called again.

The senior house steward failed to appear.

The toto coughed.

“Suh, Mr Mboga, suh, Mr Mboga is retired, suh.”

Nduka fixed the boy with his sinister, piercing look.

“Boy, only talk to me when you answer my questions. Be very careful, boy. I think you may be cheeky. A cheeky native – now that is very, very dangerous. If I think you are a cheeky native . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence. “Go! You piece of nothing! Tell the driver I am ready.”

The lad scuttled off, the sound of his bare feet slapping the polished wooden parquet and echoing down the long passage. Nduka savoured the silence that ensued, broken only by the distant cries of the State House peacocks. Critics unkindly compared the birds’ harsh cackle to the president’s laugh.

It all came back to Nduka now.

Mlambo’s part in the stupid plot to discredit the president, dreamt up by that British journalist, Pearson, had cost the boy his job as the youngest kitchen toto on record.

Nduka made a noise in the back of his throat, as if clearing it. Yes, it came back to him. He should have followed his instincts and had the boy killed. Instead he had taken the advice of Mboga, State House steward and Central Intelligence Organisation senior officer.

The boy had made a fool of Mboga, who became mad. What happened next? Yes . . . the boy had been helped by British diplomats to fly to London. That Mlambo. He knew his football. And what was more, he missed him. Getting soft. He should have disappeared him.

A buzzer sounded on his desk. The car was ready to leave for the chapel.

Nduka’s knees creaked as he got up from his desk. The security detail saluted as he left his office. He would consider the case of Mlambo later. First the Ngwazi had to say goodbye to an old adversary.

Nduka looked again at the project title. Potential! Why could it not be something simple, straightforward? The Kireba Project. That was enough. That said it all.

Soon he would have to join the Cabinet of the disappeared. The shadow cabinet. Nduka chuckled. He liked that. The shadow cabinet.