‘A bearded Othello.’ The phrase came into my mind, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it. Then I realized I hadn’t – I had read it. I had been in an airport. That was it. The interview in the Newsweek I had bought at Heathrow.
As I watched him moving around my bed, I concurred with the journalist who had come up with the phrase. There was something of Othello about Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu: a measure of dignified hurt, and an aura of self-importance. He was taller and broader than I would have expected; the photographs didn’t get across how much space he took up. But he had a kind of lumbering elegance, a studied stillness, that seemed familiar from what I had read of him. Pritchard’s briefing notes had referred to him as a ‘power-hungry menace’. That, too, seemed a well-chosen phrase.
But this was all by the by. What the hell was the leader of the Biafran army doing here? And why did he want to talk to me?
After he had fidgeted with his coat a little, he sat himself on the chair vacated by the doctor, squeezing his frame into it as though it were a makeshift throne. Apart from a gloss of sweat on his forehead, he looked calm, well rested, relaxed. With one hand he stroked his massive beard. I’d read about that, too: he had grown it as a symbolic gesture after the pogroms against his tribe three years earlier, and many Biafran men had since grown their own in deference to him.
‘I am sorry about your mishap,’ he said. He made it sound as though I’d stubbed my toe in his swimming pool. ‘My men are superstitious, you know. They had strict orders to bring you straight to me, but they didn’t want to miss their rendezvous with their witch-doctor.’ He smiled tolerantly at his charges’ roguish ways. He struggled with his coat some more, eventually bringing out a pack of cigarettes: Three Fives. He slid one out and lit it with a worn gold lighter. ‘The men responsible have been reprimanded.’
He took a puff of the cigarette. It looked like heaven from where I was sitting. He exhaled, and looked up at the low ceiling. I could sense him thinking, preparing his words.
‘Do you have the message?’
I waited for him to continue, then realized that he had finished.
‘What message?’ I asked.
He laughed, a deep, hearty and utterly insincere bellow. It faded, and he closed his eyes and rubbed them with the palms of his hands.
‘Please do not play games with me,’ he said, letting out a sigh. ‘Let’s not go through the rigmarole of passwords. We are not children.’
‘I don’t have any message for you,’ I said. ‘I’m a journalist with The Times.’
His eyes snapped open and he looked at me as if for the first time. ‘Is there a reason you cannot convey your message?’
‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I said. ‘I have no message to give you or anyone else. Colonel Alebayo…’
‘Alebayo?’ He stood up suddenly. ‘What does he have to do with this?’ He leaned over the bed and stared into my face. He had very sad eyes, like a type of dog you want to adopt.
‘Alebayo captured me,’ I said. ‘A French journalist died…’
‘Oh,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘That. I know about that already. Let’s not waste each other’s time. Where does the Prime Minister want to meet?’
The Prime Minister? What was he talking about? Was this one of my hallucinations? I tried to block everything out and examine his words. Who did he think I was, and what did he want me to tell him? What was it he had said when he had come in? ‘Hello, Mister Kane. Welcome to Biafra.’ So he knew my cover name. That meant he had talked to Gunner – presumably that was how he had heard about Isabelle’s death, too. But there was something else there, some clue. What was it? Why was the leader of the Biafran army in an underground hospital in the middle of the bush? He was apparently waiting for a message from the British prime minister to set up a meeting between them – presumably to talk peace.
Ojukwu was smoking, studying me.
‘There is a plot to kill the Prime Minister,’ I said. ‘In Udi.’
He didn’t react, just carried on smoking his Three Fives cigarette. Where did he get them from, I wondered, in the middle of a war?
‘This is not the message I was expecting,’ he said softly.
‘It’s the one you’re getting,’ I replied. ‘The Russians are planning to assassinate him at the Red Cross camp on Friday afternoon. Help me get there.’
He examined me for a moment, then slumped back as far as he could in his chair, as mystified by me as I was by him. ‘But why should I do that? Your prime minister is my enemy, and so are the Russians.’
I shook my head. ‘You’re not thinking it through,’ I said. ‘Think of the effect of killing him. Think of what it will do to public opinion in Britain. They are already opposed to this war. There are marches, petitions, debates…’
He nodded slowly.
‘So how do you think they will react if their prime minister is killed out here?’
He opened his hands, waiting for the answer.
‘They’ll be furious!’ I said. ‘Not only are their taxes buying arms for this horrific war that is starving innocent children – now their prime minister has been murdered here. They will demand the immediate withdrawal of any assistance to Nigeria, and they will get it. The next prime minister would immediately withdraw from this war.’
‘Good,’ said Ojukwu, scratching his beard. ‘But this is not…’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not good. Not good for you. As soon as the British have left, the Russians will step up their support. They will be the Nigerians’ only hope, and make no mistake, they’ll capitalize on it, and fast. They will flood the Federal side with weapons, and the war will be over before you know what’s hit you. Then they will have their stepping stone in Africa…’
‘This is all very interesting, Mister Kane,’ said Ojukwu curtly, mashing out his cigarette on the floor with the heel of his boot. ‘But I feel that we are drifting away from the main issue.’
He was looking up at the ceiling, and without his gaze to distract me, I was free to focus on his voice. And that was when it hit me.
‘Take me to Colonel Ojukwu,’ I said.
His head snapped back down and his eyes opened wide.
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard,’ I said. ‘I want to see Ojukwu. You’re an impostor.’
*
My reading jag in Heathrow on Monday evening had been well worthwhile. Pritchard’s dossier on the war had contained extensive briefing notes on the major figures of each side, and one of the Biafrans in particular had attracted my attention. Simeon Akuji, the Commissioner for Internal Affairs, was Ojuwku’s second cousin and a possible means of communication with him via a personal cipher. Although it hadn’t been spelled out, I had taken it that the link was overseen by Pritchard – especially as Akuji had been educated at Fettes, Pritchard’s alma mater in Edinburgh.
As I had listened to ‘Ojukwu’ pontificating, something had bothered me about him. That he seemed to be performing an act was in character, but then I had realized why his little welcoming speech had jarred: there had been the faintest touch of a Scottish accent to it. My guess had been that Ojukwu had pulled a Monty and had Akuji impersonate him. Judging by the reaction, I had been right. But what was the reason for the subterfuge?
The answer, surely, lay with Henry Pritchard. Akuji seemed to be expecting a message from the PM, but according to the official programme no visit to Biafra was planned. Unless his entire trip to Nigeria had secretly been about meeting Ojukwu? Pritchard had denied that there had been a negotiating element to it back in London, but why else would the Prime Minister fly out here? So he could report to Parliament that he’d seen the war with his own eyes? To deflect attention from a Nigerian attack, as Radio Biafra had alleged? A peace mission made much more sense. He had even come with HMS Fearless, which he had recently used, albeit without much success, to hold talks with Ian Smith over the Rhodesian problem. A peace mission, then, with Pritchard the go-between setting up the meeting with the Biafran leader? Perhaps Akuji was the deal-broker; or perhaps Ojukwu was scared of being assassinated himself.
‘You British have a most amusing attachment to conspiracies,’ Akuji was saying, but I didn’t have time for that.
‘You read history at Lincoln, Colonel. I was there a few years before you, but I imagine they still had that marvellous portrait in Hall of – ah, who was it of again?’
He opened his mouth, and for a moment I thought he was going to try to bluff me, but then he dipped his head and sighed deeply. It hadn’t been the most sophisticated ruse, and I’d been at Wadham anyway, but it had been enough.
‘Is that why you’re not wearing a mask?’ I asked. ‘So I could see how similar you are to Ojukwu?’
He nodded slowly.
‘Quite a risk,’ I said. ‘If you lose your hearing, you know where to come.’
‘The doctor warned me of the dangers,’ he said, somewhat sniffily. Then, his pride hurt: ‘How did you realize?’
‘I’ll come to that,’ I said, though I had no intention of doing so. ‘What made you so sure I was the messenger?’
‘Who else would you be? The message told me to expect someone to turn up here on Wednesday, and here you are. Granted, you were waylaid for a couple of days, but I knew the reason for that – the men told me.’
‘Waylaid?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
He gestured at the walls. ‘You’re ill, unless you hadn’t noticed!’
‘Not that,’ I said. ‘Not that. You said I was waylaid by a couple of days. But I’m not. It’s still only Wednesday morning.’
He looked at me quizzically. ‘Does British intelligence now train its agents to bamboozle its allies? Today is Friday.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Just after ten a.m.’
The walls suddenly seemed to be melting towards me, and all I could think of was Anna, on a roof, looking down at a black car with the Prime Minister in the back seat.
It wasn’t Wednesday. It was Friday, at just after ten in the morning. I ripped the sheet off the bed and sat up. Then I set about trying to find how to disconnect myself from the feed.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Akuji, alarmed.
‘Leaving,’ I said. I had just over four hours to get to Udi.