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Sergeant Okolo
Erasto Okolo, formerly of the Kings African Rifles was enjoying his ride in the big black Mercedes. He sat rigidly upright in the back seat and wondered how it would be to ride this way every day, like a minister, or a politician. As his thoughts dwelled on ministers and politicians, he turned to the man seated beside him.
“How is your father?” he asked.
“He is well,” Aguma said.
“And when do you expect him to return?”
Aguma stared straight ahead. “I don’t know but perhaps what we do today will make a difference.”
“Perhaps,” said Okolo.
The two men were silent for a few moments.
“Where is your father now?” Okolo asked.
“Belgium.”
Belgium. Okolo thought about Belgium for a moment. His memory was still sharp. He still remembered the maps of his childhood –faded by exposure to the sun and spotted with rust marks from the leaks in the thatched schoolhouse roof.
He remembered the teacher pointing with his cane, the one he also used for chastisement and correction, at the map of Europe. He said that the tiny island was Great Britain and the multicolored mass represented the other nations of Europe. Belgium was a nation to be mentioned with disdain. Belgium held sway over the vast central forest to the west of Uganda. They had named the land Congo and they had turned it into a land of horrors where the native population was routinely abused and murdered.
“Why did he choose Belgium?” Okolo asked.
“He was unable to obtain a visa for any other country,” Aguma said.
Yes, Okolo thought, that was not surprising. He knew Aguma’s father, or at least he knew of Aguma’s father, and his implacable opposition to the current Ugandan government. To befriend Aguma’s father was to make an enemy of Uganda and few countries would take the risk.
Aguma’s father had run for president in the last election and had been arrested on a trumped-up charge. The newspapers had been full of stories about the daring rescue of the imprisoned presidential candidate. His followers had broken him out of jail and helped him to escape across the border into Rwanda. Some believed that the jail break was planned by one of the candidate’s sons, perhaps the one who was rumored to have trained with the Israeli Special Forces.
The stories had been disturbing to Okolo. They reminded him of the Idi Amin dictatorship when good men were forced to flee under cover of darkness while other equally good men had simply disappeared.
“I was surprised to find you here,” Okolo said.
“I am my father’s eyes.” Aguma said.
“And now you are working for Herbert Kahwa. Does he know who you are?”
“He does.”
Okolo slowly digested that piece of information and he chose not to comment. Aguma was working for the richest man in the district, a personal friend of the president, but he was employing the son of a notable dissident. Okolo had grown old and wise by keeping his opinions to himself whenever possible, especially when it came to politics.
He turned his attention back to the night that Aguma had appeared at the door of his hut, asking for information about the American boy and the child who had been put under Okolo’s protection. The safest course would have been to tell Aguma that he knew nothing, but he had not followed the safest course. Once the young man had told him who he was and what they were seeking, and once Okolo had seen the almost white girl with her strange intelligent face, he had forgotten about safety. Something in him had risen up in protest as he saw history repeating itself. Once again, the lives of his neighbors were being disturbed by armed men who came in the night to burn and destroy.
A lifetime ago, he had fought in the white man’s war for the freedom of Europe, and the King had given him a medal as proof of his valor. But that night when the stench of burning villages was carried on the breeze, he knew that his precious medal meant nothing at all if its owner had long since become a coward.
He was not surprised that Aguma had come to him at the guest house in Budeka, leaving behind Kahwa’s angry white wife and removing his shoes respectfully as he crossed the threshold. His questions were challenging. Did Okolo know anything? Did he have any idea where Matapa might be hiding?
Okolo had hesitated, because he was not sure of the truth. Could he really repeat the gossip of women, and call it fact? The more he thought about it the more he realized that he would have to speak
“There is a gorge,” he said, “very deep. No one lives there.”
“No one?” Aguma sounded surprised. Uganda’s population was growing by leaps and bounds. There were very few places where absolutely no one lived.
“The place is filled with evil spirits,” Okolo said. He looked at the modern young man with his smart suit and colorful neck tie. Did such a city bred man believe in evil spirits?
Aguma nodded his head. “I know of such places,” he said.
“My wife tells me,” Okolo continued, “that other women have observed movement lately, deep in the gorge. I told her it was chimpanzees because we know that there are many in that place, but she told me that chimpanzees do not light fires.”
“No, they don’t” Aguma agreed.
So, that was how Okolo had come to be riding in the large black car that no doubt belonged to Herbert Kahwa with Habati, Kahwa’s driver, at the wheel,
The sun was now low on the western horizon. Twilight would be short and darkness would soon be complete. The road was little more than a goat path wending its way across a grassy plateau. The car slowed and the driver peered forward through the front windshield, attempting to find the ever more elusive trail.
“I think we are near,” Okolo said. “I have walked this path but I have never come here in a vehicle.”
He knew he was becoming confused. On foot he would be able to recognize the shape of a tree or the arrangement of a cluster of boulders, but the car cut him off from any contact with nature. They slipped past a tree that he thought he recognized. It was an old tree occupied by weaver birds. Their nests hung in the dried-out branches, choking the life from the tree.
“It is here, I think,” Okolo said. “Let me walk. I will find it.”
Habati brought the car to a halt. Okolo climbed from the car and reached back inside for his long walking pole. Aguma climbed from the other side resting a deadly black assault rifle across his shoulder. Okolo found himself wishing for his spear and the other traditional weapons that he kept by him in his hut.
The two men walked forward together with the Mercedes purring along slowly behind them.
“Here,” Okolo said, pointing to the place where the trail made a sharp turn to the left. “We are very near.”
They made the turn and left the vehicle behind them. The sun was now only inches above the horizon and its golden rays flashed on something colorful in the bushes. Aguma signaled a halt and then moved forward slowly to investigate. He pulled the bushes aside to reveal a local girl cowering among the weeds. She rose slowly to her feet, hanging her head, refusing to meet their eyes.
“Who are you?” Aguma asked.
“No one,” she said.
Okolo’s glance flickered to the gold chain around the girl’s neck. He knew about such chains, and what they meant. He extended his arm and caught hold of the girl’s shoulder.
“No,” she said.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, saddened by the thought that a girl like this should be so full of fear.
He dropped his hand to the neck of her shirt, and felt her tremble.
“What are you doing to her?” Aguma asked.
Okolo showed Aguma the cross suspended on the chain. “This girl is from the convent,” he said. “We are in the right place.”
“Why are you here?” Aguma asked. “Where is the American girl?”
“She is down there,” the girl said. “We were together but she fell. The old white man has gone down there.”
“What old white man?” Aguma asked.
“I don’t know his name.” The girl sounded terrified. “He is the white man who lives in Budeka. He told me to wait here.”
Okolo pushed his way through the weeds, and saw where the ground fell away at his feet. He was standing at the top of a steep trail that snaked down into the rain forest below.
He had always known of this place. Long ago this was the place where witchdoctors had hidden from the Christian missionaries. Now it was occupied only by chimpanzees, the witchdoctors having returned to their villages.
As he watched, a flame flared far below, casting shafts of light up through the tree canopy. When the fire caught hold, the sound started - the drums he had not heard since his long–ago childhood. The drums of sacrifice!
Sarah
“Come and sit here girlie, “Matapa said, patting the battered plastic chair next to him.
Sarah sat, not because she wanted to, but because she had no choice. Her chief tormenter, the ten-year-old with the AK47, was behind her making sure she didn’t make another break for freedom.
Sarah doubted if she could make a break even if the chance arose. She ached from head to toe from her wild plunge through the trees. It was possible that she had escaped without actually breaking any bones but she knew that her right ankle was at the very least sprained and her left arm was just about useless. Pain radiated from her shoulder at the slightest movement. Being dumped on the ground from the back of the pick-up truck had added a severe blow on the head. Perhaps she had suffered a concussion.
Her injuries were not important. The only thing that mattered was the fact that she was back in the camp where the fire was alight, and the witchdoctor from Kajunga was pounding on a drum.
She wondered how they would do it. Why the fire? What were they going to do to the poor little girl? She looked at the child being held by Angelique. So that was the one – the miracle child – the little scrap of humanity whose existence had created the whole situation. She was a strangely silent little girl perched passively on Angelique’s hip, wearing a starched and ironed yellow flowered dress and gazing around with wide untroubled eyes –truly an innocent.
“Where is my phone?” Matapa asked.
“What you really want to know,” Sarah said, “is whether or not it’s still transmitting.”
“Is it?” he asked.
Sarah nodded. “Of course.”
She had no idea whether or not the phone was transmitting. She knew that it had transmitted for some period of time, but she doubted it was working now. She suspected that it had broken into pieces as it fell through the trees.
Events were moving too fast. Even if her brother had managed to get a message through to the embassy in Kampala, there was very little hope of rescue before Matapa did whatever it was he planned to do with knives and drums and fire.
The pounding of the drum was making it hard for Sarah to think of anything except the evil that seemed to blanket the valley floor, weighing down on her shoulders and crawling up her spine. She could not stop thinking of the witchdoctor throwing a handful of dust and telling her that she had no defense.
She glanced sideways at Matapa realizing that she had not heard his terrible cough in some time. He seemed more alert, more energetic, and much more dangerous than the critically sick man he had been that morning.
For no apparent reason, except for the fact that there was nothing she could do about it, the boy poked her with the barrel of his weapon. She reached out and grabbed hold of it. She had nothing to lose, and perhaps it would be better just to be shot.
“Stop it, you little monster,” she said. “Just stop it.”
“He’s just having his fun with you,” Matapa said.
“Since when has this been anyone’s idea of fun?” Sarah asked.
“My mother was raped by a white man,” Matapa said, “the boy just wants to return the favor on my behalf.”
With some difficulty Matapa rose to his feet. He steadied himself on the arm of the chair for a moment and then walked away toward the fire. He passed by Angelique holding the child in her arms and paused to pass his hand across the child’s head. The child screamed – the first sound she had made. Matapa laughed and moved on to the place where the witchdoctor squatted with a drum between his knees.
The boy jerked the barrel of the weapon from Sarah’s hands and aimed it squarely at her chest.
“He wants me alive,” Sarah said.
The boy said nothing. The flickering firelight lit the sharp planes of his face, and the unwavering stare of his eyes. Sarah wondered who he was, where he had come from and if he was really capable of killing her.
Angelique came toward her carrying the still screaming child. The boy swung around, aiming his weapon at Angelique who simply looked at him as a mother would look at a recalcitrant teenager.
She lowered herself into the chair that Matapa had vacated and settled the child on her lap soothing her in soft phrases until the screaming ceased.
“I am sorry,” Angelique said in French, “I had hoped you would be the one to escape.”
“It’s all right,” Sarah replied, also in French. “Because they found me, they’re not looking for the others.”
“Ah,” said Angelique, “where are they?”
“Yes,” said the boy in heavily accented French, “where are they?”
“You didn’t tell me he spoke French?” Sarah said accusingly to Angelique.
Angelique looked at the boy. “Where are you from?” she asked.
“Rwanda,” the boy said, and there was sadness in his voice. “From Kigali.”
“You are far from home,” Angelique said. “We are all far from home.”
Sarah looked at the shadowy shapes of Matapa’s supporters moving around in the firelight. The convent girls were still huddled together under the watchful eye of a boy with a rifle but the other women of the camp moved freely with little children trailing behind them. The tents were already packed and loaded on the lorry along with bundles of clothing and bedding. She could see only a handful of adult men leaning against the hood of the truck, cigarette ends glowing in the dark.
She looked at the boy from Rwanda. He was far from home. If he could speak French, she could communicate with him. They could move beyond his few phrases of English, all of which were threats to rape or kill. Somewhere beneath the dull, beastly exterior was a boy who had once had a home.
“Why do you stay?” she asked.
The boy frowned as though he had never even considered the question.
“How long have you been here?”
He looked down at the ground.
“You may answer the questions,” Angelique said.
The boy was silent.
“You have a gun,” Sarah said. “You could use it to escape. There’s no one to stop you.”
The boy continued to stare at the ground. The barrel of the weapon was no longer pointed at Sarah’s chest. He had allowed his attention to wander. Perhaps he was thinking of his home – maybe he was remembering his mother.
“Don’t you want to see your parents?” Sarah asked.
Angelique hissed and Sarah realized that she had made a mistake. The boy looked up from the ground his face a mask of anger.
“I killed my parents,” he said.
“You what?”
Angelique reached out and touched Sarah’s arm. “It is required,” she said.
“They’re required to kill their parents?”
“Yes.”
“I shot them,” the boy said, “and I went with Matapa.”
“They have all killed their parents.”
Sarah stared at the boy trying to put herself into his shoes. He had killed his parents! She thought about her own parents, her laughing black haired mother, and her stoic blond father and herself at this boy’s age, or even younger, being given a gun and told to shoot them. The thought made her stomach turn. Of course, this horrific murder had not happened in Cleveland with bright electric lights, security alarms on the windows, and the police just a 911 call away. No, this atrocity had happened somewhere in Rwanda in the rural darkness of a land that had already ripped itself apart in a bloodbath of genocide. This boy, a mere child, was an heir to all that fear, and all that guilt.
“It’s not your fault,” she heard herself say. “No one will blame you.”
The boy made a small non-committal sound, but at least he was listening.
“Wouldn’t you like to go home?” Sarah asked.
“We can’t go home,” the boy said. “Matapa would never let us.”
“He can’t stop you,” Sarah said. “You all have weapons, and there are only a few men.”
“No,” said the boy.
“Yes,” said Sarah, “you can do it. If you do it now, then you will be free and you’ll be able to go home. People will understand. They know what Matapa does and they’ll know it’s not your fault.”
The boy’s gaze flickered from her to the shadowy shapes of the men leaning against the lorry.
“Matapa is sick,” Sarah said, “and one of those men will kill him eventually.”
“He will grow strong with the sacrifice,” the boy said.
“If he kills me,” Sarah said, sensing her opportunity, “the Americans will come after you, and then there’ll be no going home for anyone.”
“She speaks the truth,” said Angelique.
“I’ve already told the embassy where I am,” Sarah said.
“Eh,” said the boy.
“Truly?” asked Angelique.
“Yes,” said Sarah. “I know they’ll come for me, but if they come too late and they find that you’ve actually killed an American citizen, well...”
“We are not responsible,” the boy said.
“They’re not going to believe that,” said Sarah, “not when they see that you’re armed to the teeth, and that there are only a couple of men with you. When they find out that you’ve already killed the Peace Corps worker—”
“No,” the boy said. “We did not kill a Peace Corps worker. We have killed no one here.”
“But you’re going to,” said Sarah, pressing her advantage and setting aside the issue of who had killed Zach Frankel. “You can’t let them kill me.”
The boy looked at Angelique who was continuing to soothe the child on her lap.
“Tell him,” Sarah said.
Angelique lowered her head until her cheek was resting against the top of the child’s head. “So many babies,” she whispered. “We have lost so many babies.”
“You don’t have to lose this one,” Sarah said. “Please, Angelique, you know this is wrong. This magic is never going to work.”
Angelique shook her head. “It will work. I have been with that man for many years, and I have seen much magic.”
Sarah switched gears. “All right, let’s say the magic does work, then what? Matapa recovers. He gets his health back. He’s ready to murder his way around Africa for another twenty years – is that what you want?”
Angelique looked up at her, tears running down her cheeks. “I am afraid.”
“So am I,” Sarah said
“How would we do it?” the boy asked.
“Talk to the other boys,” Sarah said.
The boy shook his head. “I cannot leave this place. I must guard you. If I leave, they will see.”
Angelique rose to her feet. “I will go.”
“He will kill you,” said the boy.
“If I die, I die. I have allowed too much evil for too long.” Angelique tightened her hold on the little girl in her arms. “This child,” she said, “has such innocence – perhaps she is magic.”
“No,” Sarah insisted. “You can’t think like that. She’s just a baby.”
“Yes,” said Angelique, “perhaps it is just the innocence of all babies. Perhaps I had forgotten.”
She set the baby on Sarah’s lap and simply walked away. The child turned and slipped her frail arms around Sarah’s neck and rested her cheek against Sarah’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Sarah said to the top of the child’s head. “We’re going to be all right. She’ll do it.”
She put her arms around the slight little body, surprised by the sudden wave of protectiveness that surged through her. For a moment there was nothing but the firelight, the drums, and the warmth of the small body on her lap. Then she heard the high-pitched sound of a motorcycle coming at speed down the hillside.
The men who had been lounging beside the parked vehicles sprang into action. The drumming ceased as the witchdoctor stirred up the fire sending flames shooting high into the air and illuminating the valley floor. Sarah caught sight of Angelique talking to the boy who was guarding the convent girls.
She glimpsed movement on the hillside above the camp. Was it a boy escaping, or maybe Matthew returning? Please, not Matthew. Let him escape.
Matapa turned from his place beside the witchdoctor and drew a pistol from his belt. The boy from Rwanda was suddenly attentive taking steady aim at her with his weapon, and the little girl tightened her grip around Sarah’s neck.
The motorcycle skidded into view and by the time it came to a halt the rider was surrounded by armed men. Even before the rider spoke Sarah recognized the shock of white hair – Rory Marsden.