“Now’s the moment!” Félix said.
“No,” Nwankwo kept repeating.
But this time Félix wouldn’t back down. He waved the Guardian in front of him. The paper had just supplied them with the clearest reason for the commissions paid by Louchsky to Douchet – a huge military construction deal. He repeated what Steffy had told him over the telephone about the large contract that was preoccupying the Quai d’Orsay – and here it was all over the papers! In France the announcement was being treated as a great coup. Dockyards that had been partially laid off for the past four months were now celebrating the fact that they would be back at full strength.
“The key word,” said Lira, “is shared technology. That’s what Louchsky is paying for.”
“And that’s what they’re hardly mentioning. It’s up to us!” Félix continued.
But they had no levers, no newspaper in which to write, no official status, no procedure they could follow. Lira’s magazine in St Petersburg had been ransacked one night shortly after the attack on her. All the computer records had been destroyed, and the damage had been such that publication of the magazine was now temporarily suspended. Helen still remained deaf to Nwankwo’s pleas. He had tried over and over again, with no success. As for the judge, he had been transferred and was now dealing with the statistics of juvenile delinquency.
“We must ring Charlotte,” Lira said, backing Félix up.
“No,” Nwankwo repeated. “We still haven’t got enough ammunition – they can easily shut us up and hush up the whole affair. We’ve only got one chance, one shot, and now is not the moment.”
“So when is the moment? What are we going to do? Look how we’re living! Look around you! Look at our stupid faces! Don’t you think we need help? Something’s got to happen. You can’t make all the decisions on your own, Nwankwo. We’ve reached a dead end, we’re caught in a trap, we’re sitting on dynamite, it’s going to blow up in our faces, we’ve got to get out of this—”
“Shut up!” Lira shouted.
Nwankwo grabbed his jacket and left, slamming the door. They didn’t know where he was going, perhaps to see his children at the other end of town. Would he knock on the door or would he just wait at the end of the street in the hope of catching a glimpse of them? He never talked about them. He had built an impenetrable wall between the two halves of his life. Each day he had become harder, more methodical, intent only on the work in front of them. Félix found his abruptness hard to take; only Lira had seen the gentleness and attentiveness he was capable of.
“Don’t be angry with him,” she said.
“I can’t stand him.”
Lira sat for a long time, silent on the unfolded grey-velvet sofa bed, absorbing his words. They had been held together by their convictions and by their setbacks, and now these were coming between them. The friendship between the three of them was being gnawed at by fear, exhaustion and impatience, and yet it was the only thing that could save them.
“Before he went to Paris, Mark said he would prefer it if you were gone before he got back. That’ll be in two days’ time,” Félix said.
“All right, let’s call Charlotte, we can go and see her and see how the land lies,” Lira said softly. “But we’re not doing anything without Nwankwo,” she warned him.
Nwankwo, heading towards his family, could already hear Ezima’s reproaches – he hadn’t been to see them for two weeks. The welcome was just as he had predicted. The little one stayed back, clasping her mother’s legs, Baïna jumped up to his neck: she had put on pink nail varnish and was acting like a protective little wife. Tadjou, the eldest, remained quiet, but tried to catch his father’s eye, as if to gain his approval. Ezima spoke for him. She said he was unhappy in England, and so he was going home; he was flying out the next day and would live with his uncle in Lagos and go back to school there. She would soon join him there with the girls. She spoke quietly, while her cousin looked on, furious and reproachful, her arms folded. Nwankwo would have liked to have been consulted, but he knew that it would be useless to say anything. Ezima would just reply that he had done enough damage, and she would be right.
He went over to his son and put his arm around his shoulder. He pulled him over to a corner where they could be alone.
“So you’re going home?”
“Yes, Pa.”
“You’re going tomorrow… You’re lucky. I miss our country, you know. I hope I’ll go back too one day and then we can all be together again.”
The teenager did not reply.
“Will you go and see your grandfather? See how he is, eh?”
“Yes,” Tadjou nodded. “And you, how are you?” he asked.
He suddenly seemed so grown-up all of a sudden, this son who had now reversed things and was the one worrying about his parents. And he looked so like Nwankwo! Ever since he was born, people had been saying that this boy was a replica of his father – and now it was time for him to fly away, and to think of his own future. Nwankwo looked around at the cousin’s over-decorated and brightly coloured house, full of knick-knacks: it was right that Tadjou should escape from these surroundings. And then Nwankwo had a wild idea. It was as though the boy was suddenly just an extension of himself. He groped inside his pocket, pulled out a memory stick and placed it in Tadjou’s hand, which was as long and slender as his own. He whispered: “Put this in the bottom of your suitcase, give it to your uncle and tell him to go and see Kay at the port, he’ll understand…”
Tadjou’s eyes shone. At last his father was taking some notice of him. Nwankwo gave him a manly hug. They were both stiff, the father like a solid block, obsessed with one thing only, the son resisting any childish gestures now that he was being treated like an adult. From now on, he too would be in danger.
Before he left, Nwankwo wrote a cheque to the cousin, who was still looking daggers at him. He embraced each of his children. Ezima let him carry on. She understood from the tension in the air and the size of the cheque that he wouldn’t be back for a long time.
He hadn’t gone more than ten steps down the street when he felt a rising nausea, with painful cramps in his stomach and a terrible sense of exhaustion. He walked on a little and then leant against a wall, vomiting up his guts and his whole life.