biggest stake in the company. “To contribute that much money to pay millions in taxes, no, thank you. As the Americans say, it would only be throwing good money after bad.”
The others took their cue from him and voted to dissolve Knight Air Services and put it up for sale the next day. A firm Fitzhugh had never heard of, East African Transportation Limited, bought the shares at twenty-five cents on the dollar. Except for Fitzhugh and Wesley, the other shareholders were wabenzi like Adid and thus able to swallow the losses of three-fourths of their investments. Fitzhugh found his lodged in his throat. He was frantic, out not only thousands of dollars but a job as well. How could Douglas have assured him that he would be all right? He was miles and miles from being all right, and he could not find Douglas to ask for an explanation.
Wesley, on the other hand, took his losses with equanimity, an odd reaction for a man so pugnacious. Later, in the hotel bar, Fitzhugh asked why he wasn’t mightily upset.
“If a goat was tied up in front of a leopard, you wouldn’t get upset when the leopard jumped on the goat and tore its windpipe out, would you? You’d expect it. Hassan’s the leopard. I’ve been expectin’ somethin’ like this for a long time.”
“Hassan?”
“He owns East African Transportation,” Wesley said. “It’s a subsidiary of his conglomerate, the Tana Group. So Knight Air is a subsidiary of the subsidiary, except now it’s got a new name—Knight Relief Services—and new management. The pres-i-dent is Hassan Adid but Dougie boy Braithwaite is still the managing director.”
Fitzhugh almost slapped himself on the head for being so stupid, for not seeing the sleight of hand. Hadn’t he warned Douglas months ago that Adid intended to take over the airline? His only mistake had been in thinking that Douglas would be a victim of Adid’s machinations, the leopard’s prey. He was instead the leopard’s partner. Never enough, he thought. The fortunes earned by the Tana Group were not enough for Adid—he had to acquire the airline and at a fire sale price. The profits earned by Knight Air had not been enough for Douglas; he wanted the financial muscle and the political clout—always handy in Kenya—that would come from being a province in Adid’s empire. The American and the Somali had had a meeting of appetites. They were a hunting pair.
“Y’all will be happy to know that you’re still on the team, operations manager and junior partner,” Wesley said.
Fitzhugh wasn’t exactly happy. He was relieved, grateful to Douglas for thinking of him, for offering those words of assurance, and somewhat ashamed of himself for feeling so grateful. If he had the integrity Diana had expected of him, he would walk away now; otherwise, he would be a junior partner in what amounted to a multimillion-dollar hustle.
“You’re sure?” he asked Wesley. “How did you find out?”
“Just did a little detective work,” Wesley replied and motioned to the bartender for another drink, whiskey neat. “That bullshit about owin’ three million in taxes. Shitfire, Hassan could of made that bill go away with one phone call to the finance ministry. What him and Doug did was to scare those others with the idea of payin’ out all that money, throwin’ good money after bad.”
“But why did you offer to kick in the sixty thousand?”
“Just to let Hassan and Doug know I’d figured out the scam, just to make them a little nervous,” said Wesley, with another grin out of one side of his mouth. “Did y’all notice how some of them shareholders almost raised their hands after I raised mine? If they’d voted to recapitalize, that would of fucked things up but good for those two. Don’t you wonder what happened to all that money?”
“Higher fuel and operating costs,” Fitzhugh answered. “That much was true.”
“Kinda half true. They weren’t that much higher.” Wesley gave a derisive snort. “I’ll bet if I did a little more detective work, I’d find an offshore account somewhere.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“On account of I don’t give a shit. Remember, back when we formed Yellowbird, when I said that there was a better-than-even chance those shares wouldn’t make good ass-wipe? That’s how come I got Dougie boy to sign a contract for that airplane. I intend to hold him to it.”
In making that arrangement, Dare had perhaps overestimated his own cleverness.
After Knight Air’s death and resurrection, Fitzhugh went on another journey to the Congo with Timmerman,