The Situation

by Patrick Smith

Labone

Scene I

Bad News, Terrible News

 

It was in that drab light just before dawn when Ato heard an insistent rattling at the front gate. His instinct was to ignore it in the hope that it would go away, especially because his paramour, Ewura Abena, had just let herself in and crawled into bed beside him. The muggy heat was beginning to rise from the red earth surrounding the house. A cock crowed so languidly, Ato suspected it had raided his liquor cabinet.

It must have been around half past five.

Ato had made it to bed less than an hour earlier, his head full of ideas and akpeteshie, after a session with his friends, known self-mockingly as the Labone Choirboys.

In their twenties and thirties, they had cut their moorings amid the mayhem in Accra. Some were university dropouts, others had lost their government jobs. For them it was about the hustle, finding a connection that would make millions or a way out. Inflated contracts, drug dealing, and trading scams—that’s what kept the Choirboys going.

Other plans had been derailed following a dawn announcement by military officers after they had seized the state broadcasting corporation. The government was bankrupt.

It was March 1984 and Accra was set in aspic. Driving across this once wondrous city in a rust-bucket taxi, you’d see the Independence Arch marking a public square second only to Tiananmen, multilane highways holding few cars, factories standing idle, an empty port, and an international airport once meant to be the world’s gateway to Africa.

All were monuments to a splurge of energy in the wake of independence just three decades earlier. Now that ambition had fizzled; politics, business, music, journalism, fun had been suspended . . . everything except funerals. Death was a way of life.

Six feet five in his tsalewᴐtee sandals, Ato carried his two hundred pounds with a beaming confidence. In the Accra courts as a young advocate, he could pinpoint the strengths in any case. And he could also marshal the arguments against it. Juggling politics, drinking, and dancing, Ato was sure he was heading for the big time but was determined to have fun en route.

The rattling at the front gate continued. Ato released a sigh of surrender. Whoever or whatever was demanding his attention had won.

“Where are you going?” Ewura Abena mumbled as Ato tried to slide out from her grasp without waking her. She’d wrapped one arm around his torso in a half embrace, and rested her hand directly over his heart, as though she’d been checking for the thump thump of his heartbeat.

“Shhhh.” He placed a finger to his mouth. He could smell the akpeteshie on his own breath. “Go back to sleep, my darling. I’ll be right back, just a moment.” Ewura Abena’s arrivals and departures were sporadic, based on her husband’s schedule. He was a “big man” at State Security. Their marriage was enviable in appearance but loveless in reality. Ato, on the other hand, loved Ewura Abena, despite or even because of her serial infidelities.

Ato’s house, the Choirboys’ de facto headquarters, was on Ndabaningi Sithole Road, the main artery of Labone. It was a rambling whitewashed building set back from the road, partly hidden behind a parade of royal palms. Paint was peeling off in places, some of the cracked window louvers were hanging like jagged teeth. The guttering was linked to a network of pipes leading to an eccentric water-storage system. At the front, a wide veranda was crowded with cane chairs, batik cushions, and enough wine and whiskey bottles, strewn across the glass-topped table, to supply the bar of the Ambassador Hotel. Most of the business of the house was done there.

A glance at the place suggested the owner had once lived in considerable style but had fallen on hard times. Like the country itself.

From the other side of the house, Ato could now hear this voice shouting, almost screaming. And an ever more insistent rattling of the front gate. “Mr. Adjei, Mr. Adjei!”

“Oooooh, you too,” Ato growled, shaking his head. “Exercise patience.” He quickened his pace.

“Mr. Adjei . . . Mr. Adjei, I have bad news, terrible news . . .”

Through the akpeteshie-perfumed haze, Ato could make out the words. The last thing he wanted was bad, let alone terrible, news.

“Mr. Adjei . . . Mr. Adjei,” the voice said once more. Ato was now able to place it. It belonged to Kwame Owusu, Thierry’s driver.

Ato stopped. He lit a cigarette and drew heavily on it before finally making his way to the gate.

Close didn’t begin to cover the friendship between Ato and Thierry Tobler. Brothers, not by blood but by a force that felt equally as binding. Two young men in a hurry to change their fate in a country that had been hijacked by armed robbers, politicians, and soldiers.

Yet they were opposites. Ato was an extrovert, a trickster lawyer who believed his charisma would let him escape from any imbroglio. Thierry was an introvert, a banker and discreet businessman bordering on reclusive.

Somehow their differences had driven them together. The two had stumbled upon a scheme to make a large amount of money. They’d decided to work it themselves, not sharing it with the rest of the Choirboys.

“What the hell, Kwame! What is it?” Ato finally reached the gate. “I had just turned in.”

When he opened it, Kwame couldn’t hold back. “Mr. Tobler, Mr. Tobler, gone,” he blurted tearfully. “Drowned, sir, drowned! Fishermen found him body for Labadi Beach . . . washed up. No clothes. Naked like a baby, a little baby!”

Ato stood at the gate, staring straight ahead. It was as if he were looking straight through Kwame. “Whaaat? Whaaat!” he raged against the shock. “You don’t mean it! You dey lie!”

“Na true, I dey tell you, sah. He lef am Jagua on beach road with portmanteau for back . . .”

“Whaaat? . . . Who dey for beach now?”

“Soldiers dey, police dey . . . dem go chase us away o.” Kwame, skinny and standing at a schoolboyish five feet six, was tottering.

“Come,” Ato beckoned, closing the gate and walking toward the veranda. “Sit down. Tell me the whole story.” He directed the driver to a wicker seat before going into the house to get cigarettes.

Inside, the shock hit again, harder. Legs wobbling, Ato sat at the kitchen table, then slumped across it, hitting his forehead on the Formica. Thierry was dead. A shiver of guilt ran down his spine, his eyes started tearing. For a few moments, he kept shaking his head, agonizing over his friend.

“I’m sorry,” he cried out. “I’m so sorry.” Even as he was saying this, he saw the absurdity of it. He had nothing to do with Thierry’s drowning. Yet he had other things to apologize for. “Oh my God, my God, my God!” Ato held a cigarette to his mouth, slid it between his quivering lips, then, with an unsteady hand, struck a match.

Shuffling back to the veranda, he stopped in the hallway, gazing at his favorite painting. It was a portrait of a gangly boy in an indigo-blue tunic and trousers, his head resting, exhausted, on his forearms, a mournful resignation in his eyes. It felt surreal, like looking in a mirror. A long-ago premonition that had been revealing itself to him every single day, for years.

“Onua,” he cried, reaching his hand out and gently touching the young man’s sad, tired face. Brother. “Onua, I am sorry.”

Ato meandered through the hallway and stepped out onto the veranda, where Kwame sat hunched over in the wicker chair. His eyes were an odd pink color, almost peach—a combination of the red that came from crying and his usual yellow, the result of jaundice, perhaps a symptom of cirrhosis. He looked like a villain from a low-budget film.

As soon as Kwame saw Ato, he started weeping again. “It was murder, Mr. Adjei. Murder. But why? Wetin they want?”

Another shiver of guilt coursed through Ato. He pulled out a new cigarette, tamping the end on the table. “We don’t know that yet, Kwame,” he said, squeezing the man’s wrists like an encouraging father, even though the two weren’t very far apart in age. “But I promise you that we will find out what happened to Thierry.”

“Sah, I know what happened. They kill am,” Kwame said, pulling his hands free and using them to cover his face. He moaned into his palms, then placed them neatly on his lap. “He say he go speak with the big man. I sabby somet’in’ don happened when Mr. Tobler no dey for hotel. I go waka-waka for Labone, Cantonments too.”

Kwame told Ato that he had gone to all of Tobler’s favorite spots. He said he then ran into a man who claimed to have just seen Tobler’s Jaguar at Labadi Beach.

“E be so,” Kwame continued. “I don find him Jagua but somet’in’ no be correct. I ask fishermen.” He looked hard at Ato. “We take boat to look for am. Not’in’. Not’in’. Then we hear somebody cry . . . he don find Mr. Tobler body.”

Ato was trying to make sense of it, to create some kind of timeline. Tobler had come to his house in the early evening. He’d told the group that he had to go because someone was waiting for him.

“Why not have her come here?” one of the guys had teased.

Thierry had been involved with the same woman for over a year but had not yet introduced her to all the Choirboys. The only one who’d met her was Ato, and he wasn’t spilling the beans.

When the guys kept pressing him, Tobler had said, “Patience, patience. Timing is everything.” He laughed. “Every man who meets her wants her for himself. Isn’t that right, Adj?” That was his nickname for Ato. Everyone else called him Ato Nii, adding a Ga name even though he was Fante. It was a play on his legal background—attorney.

Thierry winked at Ato, and that had immediately made him feel uneasy. The feeling stayed with him for the night, long after Tobler had left. It was only after he heard Ewura Abena tiptoeing into the room and then sliding into bed with him that it fell away.

“You drove Mr. Tobler when he left here?” Ato was trying to map out the evening.

Kwame nodded.

“To where?”

“Home, home to Mr. Tobler house,” Kwame started, “and then he say . . . Madam, madam . . .” He suddenly jumped up. Ato turned to see Ewura Abena walking out onto the veranda with a tray full of freshly cut papaya, orange juice, and a pot of steaming coffee.

“Me wura,” she said to Ato, making him blush. My lord and master. Long ago, women addressed their husbands that way. She used it as a pet name for him. He was surprised to hear her say it in the presence of another.

In fact, he was surprised she’d come out to the veranda. No one had ever seen them together, not even his house girl or night watchman. Ewura Abena set the tray down and kissed Ato on the lips before taking a seat beside him. She placed her hand on Ato’s thigh, the way a wife would, to offer support. Ato wasn’t sure what to do so he placed his hand directly on top of hers.

“Good morning, madam,” Kwame greeted her. He’d stopped crying. His eyes had returned to their normal urine-yellow tint, the blood had drained from his cheeks. He refused to sit down again when Ato pointed to the wicker chair. “I go, go . . . go now,” he stammered.

“What’s happened?” asked Ewura Abena. “Something with your friend Tobler?” She turned her head and looked straight at Kwame, even though she was talking to Ato. “So, is there anything more that the driver can tell us?”

“I go,” Kwame said again. “I dey fear o, sah. I don see a t’ing, madam. I don’t know no’tin’. I go, I go now.”

He crossed the veranda then ran to the gate, opening it with such force that it swung wide on its hinges, crashing against the fence. He sped up, didn’t look back, didn’t stop, leaving the gate swinging in his wake.

As Kwame ran down the road, Ewura Abena grabbed a slice of papaya from the plate, held the crescent-shaped fruit to her mouth, and took a bite. “Mmmm,” she mouthed, licking her lips. She ate the rest of that piece and then took another. “Don’t you want some? It’s so good, it’s almost sinful.”

 

Scene II

Richer Than Croesus

 

It was meant to be quick and clean, this secret scheme to make untold amounts of money. When Ato Adjei first heard the gory details from Thierry, he didn’t believe it. Nor did he quite understand it.

They had arranged to meet in the garden bar at the Star Hotel in Labone, where Tobler had set up residence since returning to Ghana after six long years in investment banking. Not as sumptuous as the sprawling Ambassador Hotel or as central as the Continental, the Star had cachet as a place for a discreet rendezvous.

Resplendent in a pale-blue grand boubou, Tobler embraced his bulky friend. Hugging Ato tighter, Tobler’s face beamed with manic elation. “My brother, this is our big break. We will be richer than Croesus!” He patted a fat wad of notes in his trouser pocket. “So, let’s celebrate!”

Ato broke free of the clinch and stared at his friend. Tobler’s willowy six-foot frame was filling out, and he had doused himself in expensive cologne. High living was taking its toll. A weird condition in a country where many struggled to eat.

Ato saw the creases around Tobler’s eyes. Lighter skinned than Ato, he had always had a world-weary look that certain women found irresistible. Now it was just weary; no backstory. His stickman movements had slowed; no longer the killer competitor on the tennis court.

For sure, a bottle a day of hard liquor and several nostrils full of cocaine played their part. Tobler was just five years older than Ato, in his late thirties, but already he looked middle-aged. Once one of the sharpest minds in the locale, an investment banker who read Dostoyevsky and could explain Einstein’s relativity theory in plain language, he was losing his edge.

As a precocious child in his father’s house, Tobler had met the independence generation of African leaders. A top adviser to founding president Kwame Nkrumah, the Tobler patriarch saw himself as a citizen of Africa, and almost every leader would take his calls—no matter which crackly phone line they came through on.

After a coup ousted Nkrumah, Tobler’s father felt a terrible betrayal from which he never recovered. He passed on that lesson to his son, who vowed to stay out of politics and make money instead. Those days were long gone. Now Ato and Tobler were orphans. Their common loss had made them tighter. Somehow, Tobler, loner intellectual and quiet schemer, became a great friend to Ato, everyone’s favorite scoundrel lawyer.

As Tobler planted his elbows on the table, surveying the bar as if looking for spies, his sleeves gathered to reveal a hefty Omega watch on his right wrist and a trio of gold bracelets on his left. “Kojo, my man!” he called out to the bartender, like a gambler on a winning streak at Monte Carlo. “A bottle of Rémy Martin VSOP for the table, and charge it to Thierry Tobler, suite 908.”

That’s strange, thought Ato. Tobler had pulled him in for a discreet chat about a crooked scheme to mint money, yet he was carrying on like a starlet looking for press coverage.

Just then, Tobler grasped his forearms and stared at him. As a stream of Friday-night drinkers eddied into the bar, he lowered his voice. “I can break open a trust fund in Switzerland that holds billions—repeat, billions—of dollars.”

“Get real, TT, for Chrissakes.”

Like an arrogant professor with an obtuse student, Tobler shook his head in mock despair. “It’s about banks, not lawyers, my man. Tricky stuff . . . long numbers.”

Kojo, who seemed too interested in their conversation, brought the cognac with a silver ice bucket and two brandy balloons. Taking a hearty swig, Tobler began a convoluted tale about password code sequences and protocol integrity. Ato drummed his fingers on the table.

“Cut to the chase, TT . . . I am just looking for the love of my life.”

“Patience, my man. This will help you find that very woman.”

At the heart of Tobler’s story was his father’s ties to President Nkrumah. The two men had set up what they called the national development trust fund with tens of millions of dollars from the treasury.

“Okay, the details are boring. Just know the trust fund started out with millions and is now worth billions. Before he went, the old man gave me a key to unlock the door. I’m the only one left so I’m going to use it.”

Ato’s skepticism was melting as the cognac coursed through his veins.

“The key is here.” Tobler held out his Spanish leather attaché case. “Three files of codes and protocols for the Union de Banques Suisses in Geneva to open this fund.”

Tobler poured two more hypermeasures of Rémy Martin, calling for more ice as the din in the bar ratcheted up. He pulled out a bundle of foolscap manila envelopes. “Take these and put them in your safe.”

“So I’m part of the plot?”

“If you tell a living soul, you’ll have the Brooklyn Mafia after you, and they don’t play, even in Labone.”

“Brooklyn Mafia? You dey craze, my brother.”

“Not Don Corleone. Just a bunch of guys from South Brooklyn. No idea where they got the twenty million dollars.”

“Twenty million dollars for what?!”

That piqued the interest of the neighboring tables. Tobler was looking tired and drunk and not making any sense.

“UBS won’t open the fund until we flash the cash . . . They want a twenty-million-dollar deposit out of which they gouge their fees and, in any case . . .”

Just then, Kojo the bartender strode over with another bucket of ice, a soda siphon, and a notepad. “You have an urgent call at reception, sir.”

“Ah-ha . . . that would be my interlocutor.” After Tobler walked over to the concierge, a new kerfuffle erupted at the back of the hotel.

There were two Nigerian men sitting at a nearby table. “Aaah, aaah . . . Fela don come o!” one of them called out to Ato. “The incomparable Afrobeat king is checking into Accra.”

They were impresarios, in charge of Fela’s long-awaited tour of Ghana. Ato shook their hands, promising to bring some of the country’s finest ganja to the great man’s room that night.

“And if you need any help spending that twenty million bucks, let us know,” suggested the smaller of the two.

Just then, Tobler returned. “We have an assignation, Ato . . . at Cave du Roi.” Cave, as everyone called it, was the classiest nightspot in Accra.

* * *

Inside the bar at Cave, Accra’s beautiful people were getting down to the sounds of Ray Parker Jr. and Lionel Richie pounding from ten-foot speakers. Local stars Teddy Osei and Mac Tontoh were signing autographs at the bar.

Ato, still queasy from the daredevil ride in Tobler’s vintage Jaguar, followed his friend as he wove across the dance floor to a private room behind the bar. There, in a white leather armchair, sipping a mojito, was a woman of disarming beauty with intense almond eyes and a broad smile. A younger woman with a low cut was sitting alongside, sipping a cocktail adorned with a parasol. At once Ato was entranced.

“Introductions, first,” said Tobler. “This is my alter ego, advocate Ato Adjei. And these stars are the formidable Ewura Abena and her highly talented sister, Amelia.”

They both glared at Tobler. Ewura Abena had a day job as the youngest director of the central bank, but her true vocation was counterculture activist, hanging out with artists, musicians, and dissidents. Super-hip but cerebral banker. Something didn’t compute as she twisted her plaited hair.

A waiter brought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in an ice bucket, setting it down on the low table in the center of the room. Ewura Abena smiled at Ato and held out a pack of Benson & Hedges, a scarce but essential commodity in those trying times.”You want a jot?”

“Sure,” Ato said on autopilot. Instead of cigarettes, there were ten ready-rolled spliffs in the packet. “Well, okaaaay . . .”

Laughing, Ewura Abena threw back her hair, then drew heavily on a spliff. “That’s better.” Another smile for Ato. “Now Cave makes sense tonight . . . Thierry, will you indulge? But I’ll tell you true, my friend, you are looking the worse for wear.”

It was a fair comment. Tobler had been drinking shots of Rémy at an alarming pace. He always got boring or stupid when overdrinking. This evening it was a bit of both.

Ewura Abena grabbed Ato’s hand. “Let’s hit the dance floor.” Crowded onto it, she alternately pressed close to Ato then broke away to go freestyle. A slow, smoochy dance to yet another Lionel Richie number convinced Ato that the evening had taken a wondrous turn.

After the song ended, Ewura Abena and Amelia made a diplomatic detour to the ladies’ room. Tobler shoved Ato into a corner. “Chale, what the fuck?”

“Whaddya mean, what the fuck?”

“There’s two fucking things wrong with this,” Tobler hissed through gritted teeth. “One, Ewura Abena is married to the head of intelligence, who lacks a sense of humor about this sort of thing. Two, she’s my woman . . . tonight.”

Ato felt like a car tire about to blow out. “If she is married to Colonel Quarshie, what the fuck are you doing with her?”

“For your fucking interest, she is my interlocutor with the government. She will make everything happen.”

Ato was about to ask what “everything” covered when he saw the women heading back.

“Permission to fall out,” said Ewura Abena sarcastically, beaming at the men’s agitated faces.

“Sweetheart, let me run you home,” said Tobler protectively.

“Whatever makes you happy, Thierry dear,” Ewura Abena whispered in his direction. She turned to her sister. “Amelia, can you drop Ato wherever he’s going?”

Five minutes later, Ato was in a car with Amelia on Ndabaningi Sithole Road. He gave her a chaste good-night kiss. A sweet and innocent end to an evening that had been neither.

Clutching Tobler’s attaché case, his head reeling, Ato tried to fit the pieces together. Once home, he stashed the folders at the back of the house.

What the hell had he been dragged into? If anyone was being played, it must be Tobler. But by whom? His woman? His South Brooklyn business partners? Again and again, Ato ran the puzzle through his mind, hoping to discover a clue.

Then the phone rang. It was Ewura Abena. Of course.

 

Scene III

Picking Up the Pieces

 

It was unnerving to see a man of Ato’s size thrown into convulsions. But on that Sunday morning, the searing aftershock of Tobler’s murder had felled him right there on the veranda at the house on Ndabaningi Sithole Road.

His body started shuddering, shaking uncontrollably. Face contorted, sweat pouring down his temples, as the Accra sun beat down. For a few moments, Ato would be still, as if he was summoning the energy for another bout of frenzy. Then the weeping would start: guttural moans, heavy sobs from deep in his chest. Then more juddering. Ewura Abena looked on while eating thick slices of papaya, amazed at the transformation of her towering, confident lover into a trembling wreck.

Even her cool ministrations failed to help. She tried to embrace him, the man with whom she had shared the most intense passions just hours before. He swatted her away.

Ato’s implosion had begun well before the driver’s terrified exit. Now, he was free to fall apart in his own way.

It was all over. Tobler was over. The big-money plan was over. Trust was over. Everyone was suspect, everyone. Including the woman crouching beside him, pleading, cajoling. Horror, and even desperation, were slowly supplanting her confident default smile.

Rarely troubled by conscience, a sickening mixture of guilt and fear was unhinging Ato as he pondered the lies, betrayals, and crimes that had led to this point. He had not been to church in at least a decade. Suddenly, he felt a desperate need to see Father Dominic, his priest, any priest. In a trance, he ran through a confession, the trembling subsiding with each word.

Father, I have sinned. I have cheated and stolen. I have fornicated. I have taken another man’s wife. But I have never killed. I have never tried to kill. I will change after this day. I promise to God, I will change.

He slumped forward and lost consciousness.

When Ato opened his eyes, instead of the rumpled, whiskey-soaked features of Father Dominic through the confession grille, it was Ewura Abena, facing him. Her eyes, lowered, now sought his with compassion.

“Oh, darling Ato. You poor, poor man . . . weeping for your brother. You loved him. You didn’t kill him.”

Still dazed, Ato blinked, trying to focus. Was this the same Ewura Abena who had been so stonehearted when they had learned of Tobler’s death?

“My darling, you feel bad because of us.” Those eyes, so penetrating and clear. How could they lie? “Thierry and I were finished. We knew that. He was changing, becoming a bit mad.” A wistful sigh. Even a hint of contrition. “I should have tried to save him.”

“Huh? You sh-should have w-what?” Ato was stuttering his way into a suspicion. “What do you mean? How the hell could you have saved him?”

A flash of calculation crossed Ewura Abena’s eyes. “To save him from himself . . . He was getting out of control. Spending like a billionaire, boasting, drinking, snorting cocaine by the barrel . . . it was like he had already cracked open the fund.”

Ato thought of Tobler’s attaché case that he’d hidden at the back of his house and the folders that were inside. “No, Ewura Abena, no, no, no. He was killed for a bigger reason. Someone wanted the money and thought they could get it without TT. Right?”

As Ato was recalibrating his thoughts, Ewura Abena moved closer, wrapping a comforting arm over his shoulder. This time he didn’t push her away.

“Where are you going with this, Ato?”

“I’m going to Tobler’s killers! Either his South Brooklyn guys or State Security. Maybe both . . .”

That brought it right into Ewura Abena’s court. Or rather, the court of her husband, Colonel Kwabena Quarshie, director of State Security. “I hear you, Ato. But what about us?”

“I don’t know where it leaves you, but I’m the next target if I don’t move fast.”

“This may sound crazy,” she said, looking away from him, “but you should go to my husband.”

“Sound crazy?” yelled Ato. “Not sounds, it is damn crazy. He’ll see through me in a second.”

“Trust me, Ato, I know him.” She put her arm back around his shoulder. “Offer him something, get him on your side, and then we can pick up the pieces.”

Ato wondered which pieces those might be. But it made him see, too, how limited his options were. A meeting with Colonel Quarshie, convened by his wife, may well be a bad move, but right then it seemed the least bad of the ones he could make.

Clearly, a full confession to Colonel Quarshie was out of the question. He would be walking down a track strewn with unintended consequences. But cutting some kind of deal with the colonel might buy him some time to figure out his next steps.

He nodded. “Maybe you’re right, Ewura Abena. Organize the meeting.”

Before Ato’s lover got up to leave on this weirdest of missions, to set up a meeting between him and her husband, she gave him a lingering, reassuring kiss.

 

Scene IV

A Faustian Pact with Security

 

When Ewura Abena returned, Ato was chirpier. Back on the veranda, he was devouring a heavy plate of Fante kenkey, Titus sardines, and a mound of freshly ground pepper and tomatoes. He raised a glass of Club beer as she walked across the gravel. “Cheers!”

“Well, Ato, he will hear you out. But no guarantees,” she said, lowering her voice as she got nearer. “Right now the regime is on red alert.”

Ato grimaced at the absurdity of the situation. To be caught between a military junta and Brooklyn gangsters. “Am I going to end up in the cooler if the meeting with your colonel bombs?”

“It’s not by force, Ato. If you don’t want to, don’t go. But he’s one of the few who could help.” Ewura Abena looked and sounded brisk. Her mouth set, lips turned down; her earlier tenderness was gone. She wasn’t as good an actor as she thought.

Ato grunted, lighting a postprandial cigarette.

“He wants to meet you at the coffee shop, on the side next to the old GNTC store, five o’clock sharp. Don’t be late; the soldiers are on a short fuse right now.”

Briefing over. Irritated and apprehensive, Ato nodded.

While ironing an orange dashiki in the back of the house, he could hear Ewura Abena collecting the plates, glasses, and bottles that had been left all about. She seemed to be clearing the stage for the next act. The balance of power between lover and beloved had tilted fully in her favor. He hung up the dashiki and started searching for a clean pair of trousers, all the while running through what he would tell Colonel Quarshie.

Ato’s plan was to hand over the sheaves of trust-fund documents and protocols, bartering them for safe passage.

He had already gone halfway down that track, disregarding the strict orders from Tobler, by sharing almost everything with Ewura Abena. That was then, before his friend’s murder. Now, Ewura Abena’s loyalty felt negotiable.

The worst couldn’t be ruled out: do not collect two billion dollars, go straight to jail. A public trial, a national disgrace. Then a lonely death on the beach facing a firing squad. A crooked lawyer, trying to steal the past president’s investment fund. Who would miss him?

Bleak thoughts swirling through his mind, Ato finished dressing and set out down Ndabaningi Sithole Road to the coffee shop.

An eerie stillness had descended in the late afternoon. A couple of children clutching a football skipped into a side street; a dilapidated Datsun taxi with faded yellow markings cruised for fares; a young man in a dark suit and starched white shirt, flowers in hand, stood waiting at an imposing steel gate.

Labone was quiet these days. In the 1950s and ’60s under Nkrumah, it had grown fast as a domicile for civil servants, hospital doctors, teachers, and journalists. Now, with its palm-fringed streets and whitewashed estate houses, it was on hold. Most people were surviving on the margins between a stake in the official economy and wheeler-dealing. They distrusted the radical pretensions of the new junta, especially the “people’s tribunals.”

Ato’s own loyalties were divided. His father, an ambassador, had amassed a clutch of lucrative directorships; his mother, a high-court judge, had dismissed the people’s tribunals as kangaroo courts. They had long ago fled into exile and died there, effectively severing Ato’s links with the “old” Ghana.

At first, Ato backed the revolutionaries and their anticorruption purges. Now he had doubts about the policies and the heavy hand of the state, the incessant roundups of dissidents. All that made this meeting with Colonel Quarshie, whose organization had led those purges, a dangerous gamble.

A bulky-muscled guy in green-gray fatigues stood outside the coffee shop scanning the street with a practiced look of unconcern.

Shuttered against the late-afternoon sun, the inside was dark and dingy. At the bar, the manager, nervous and plumpish, was gesturing to a boy lugging a crate of beer. Beyond them sat a few solitary drinkers. Pots were clanking in the kitchen. An aroma of fish being fried wafted out from behind a gaudy plastic curtain.

“Is Colonel Quarshie in?” asked Ato, as though inquiring about an old drinking buddy. The manager, unsmiling, pointed to a battered door at the back of the bar.

Inside the half-furnished room was a bespectacled man in jeans, a polo shirt, and trainers, leafing through a pile of documents on the rickety table before him. Beside them was a full glass of Coca-Cola.

Colonel Quarshie’s appearance belied his fearsome reputation. He had last seen active service in Angola a decade earlier, and before that in Congo. Known as the security capo, he had obliterated all manner of threats to the military regime.

“Ah, advocate Adjei,” said the colonel with studied politesse, offering his hand. “My condolences for your loss.”

“Thanks, and for agreeing to see me,” said Ato, putting his hands in his pockets to stop them from shaking. “I have to find out what happened to Thierry Tobler . . . we were close.”

“Soooh, Ewura Abena told me.” The colonel looked straight across the table, probing for a reaction.

“I’m sure the motive was money, getting into the trust fund. I guess you’ve heard all about that.”

“Not as much as I want,” said Quarshie with a hint of a smile.

“I hope I can help.” Ato tried to look as sincere as he could. “Tobler briefed me pretty thoroughly, but now it is spinning out of control.”

“My office called me down to Labadi Beach this morning to see the body. Your friend was murdered under—” Quarshie broke off. “Let’s say the circumstances were embarrassing . . . We were meant to be tracking him.”

“He was talking to the government. I know he needed documents from you.”

“Let’s say there was a trust problem.” Quarshie’s smile widened. “Perhaps it was mutual . . . Let’s see if we can get around that.” He fiddled with a pack of cigarettes, then offered a stick to Ato. “All this must be worrying, I suppose? If it’s any consolation, we can’t afford to lose another one.”

It was a remark loaded with ambiguity and threat. Ato wondered if he would leave with a gun to his head. “What do you need to prevent that from happening?”

“That’s easy . . . your silence and all the papers that Tobler gave you. My officers will be coming to see you this evening.”

Just then, the man in fatigues pushed open the door, his two-way radio active with conversation. He handed it to his boss. Ato heard fragments of the chatter—“blue gate” and “Castle meeting”—before Colonel Quarshie barked orders down the line in Ga. Despite the years he’d lived in Accra, Ato could only understand snippets of Ga. It seemed that some form of security crackdown was going on at the airport. After more commands, Colonel Quarshie handed the radio back and turned to Ato.

“So that’s done. Remember, you are now a high-value target.”

Ato forced a smile as he and the colonel shook hands. The manager, still nervous, saluted Quarshie as he left. Ato sat at a table and ordered a Guinness. He pulled out his packet of cigarettes and contemplated his new life as a ward of national security.

It took him another hour, and four more bottles of Guinness, before he felt ready to return home. Ato left a hefty wodge of cedis with the barman and shook his sweaty hand.

Outside, he looked into the midevening gloom. Farther up the road, there had been a power cut. He could see candles fluttering in the darkened houses. Strange, he thought, how a country that could not guarantee electricity to its people could have an omnipresent intelligence agency run by graduates of Harvard and West Point.

As he meandered back up Ndabaningi Sithole Road, Ato amused himself by imagining he was under protective surveillance, a high-value asset rather than target.

Then he heard it. It sounded like a motorbike at first. A sedan with a broken muffler, like so many in Accra, coming up behind, rather too close. Just as he turned around, the car skidded to a halt and two men, whites or Arabs, jumped out.

“Hey you!” said one, waving a baseball bat.

“Who? Me?”

The lights went out. Ato’s own personal power cut.

 

Scene V

Suffering at the Star

 

It was still dark when Ato came around. He felt as if someone had driven several nails into the back of his skull. He blinked, tried to stretch his arms. They were bound tightly behind his back.

More blinking. Ato looked around the room, trying hard to focus. Something about it had an unnerving familiarity. The scuffed blue carpet with faded gold stars. Pale-green walls, and a painting of women gathering around a well in Jamestown. As he realized where he was, he felt the deepest foreboding. It was the suite in the Star Hotel that had been occupied by Thierry Tobler until just twenty-four hours before.

He heard a key turn in the lock. A thickset white man walked in, followed by a slim Ghanaian dragging a large suitcase.

“We’re going to keep you here until our boss comes,” said the white man in an indeterminate European accent. “You know what we want. Once we get it, we’ll decide what to do with you.” He glowered at Ato.

The man strode over to the fridge and got two bottles of beer, throwing one to his Ghanaian workmate, who opened it with his teeth, effortlessly.

“You people have given us a lot of trouble. Why?” The white man turned to Ato with another accusatory glare. “Anyway, the boss will decide.”

Despite this bravado, the two were uneasy about something going on elsewhere in the hotel. There was shouting down in the bar by the pool, almost drowning out the Fela Kuti tracks the deejay was playing.

“I’ll check what’s happening,” the white man told his Ghanaian accomplice. “You keep an eye on him.”

After a few minutes, the shouting seemed to grow nearer, traveling up the stairs. Then, the sound of several people running along the corridor. The white man would have been no match for them. From inside the suite it sounded like he went down very quickly.

In the corridor after that, Ato could hear an animated discussion in Twi about which was the right room. Suddenly, the door burst open and in charged a soldier who must have weighed at least a hundred pounds more than Ato.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the officer greeted Ato and the beer drinker. “You’re going to have some company.” Inspecting Ato’s bloodied head, the soldier untied his arms. “You will be needing some small treatment for that.”

The beer drinker nodded, then pulled a bottle of Fanta from the fridge for Ato. Just as Ato was puzzling over the direction of these fluid alliances, in walked Colonel Quarshie, still in the same polo shirt and jeans he had been wearing at the coffee shop.

“You had some sort of accident after we met, Ato?”

Ato rubbed his head. “Someone clobbered me hard.”

“Strange that,” replied Quarshie, deadpan. “Someone has clobbered me too. It appears my wife flew to Geneva some hours ago. And your house has been ransacked, by the way. I think it’s time to talk again, this time about Ewura Abena.”