it is police or government or what,’ the man panted. ‘But it is some ka flying thing, videotaping us.’
Just then, the iPhone flashed on, the black bitten apple in the white screen. Jacob and the General saw it at the same time but the General got there first. He reached down, picked it up and unlocked it.
‘What is this?’ He turned it towards Jacob. ‘What have you put on my phone?’
The GoPro app was still open. A blurry patch on the screen shuddered into focus: a black circle, a white oval around it riddled with red cracks, a wet throat in one corner. It was an eye. Someone had picked up the crashed chopper and turned it over and was staring into the camera in its belly. Jacob looked at the General, unsure how to explain. He reached for the phone and guards on either side stepped forward, but the General raised his hand like Moses and they parted. The General handed the phone to Jacob, who turned and stood beside him so that they could both see the image. Jacob touched the launch button. There was a yelp on the other side of the screen as the chopper stirred to life and rose.
‘Oho!’ the General laughed. ‘So that thingie at the airport was yours?’
The chopper was unsteady, a fly drunk on sugar. Jacob compensated by tapping between keys, yielding a shuddery hover over a black and white pattern – a tiled floor or maybe a duvet.
‘You must bring this machine to me, ehn? In exchange for your white ka galifriend?’
As the chopper rose, the geometric pattern was replaced by a frowning face.
‘Who is that?’ The General darted his beard at the screen.
Jacob hesitated. But something – the look in her eye or the fact that she lived in that house in Northmead, without him – something made Jacob tell the General the truth.
‘It’s my mother,’ he said, just as her hand swept through the screen and knocked it black.
* * *
That evening in New Kasama, as the sun departed, dragging a ragged train of orange and purple behind it, the General recounted the legend of his empire. Ever since Lusaka City Airport had been given over to the military, he had used his access to bring in goods hidden in the crannies of his cronies’ flesh and luggage. Pills: pharmaceutical, recreational, both. Rough-cut diamonds and cobalt from the Congo. An assortment of consumer goods from Jo’burg and Hong Kong and Dubai, which he sold outside the tariff system. Recently, he had been looking to fry bigger fish, or rather, smaller ones. He wanted to shift his mode of transportation from aeroplanes to drones.
Drones were everywhere these days but the aircraft laws in most nations had not yet been adjusted to account for them. Drones had been used for reconnaissance during the Arab Spring. The US military was mapping the continent with them to burrow bunkers under the land. A drone airport was being built in Rwanda. The General’s plan to use a fleet of them to secret goods over borders seemed dauntingly pricey, however. He was delighted to learn that you could make your own. He didn’t understand that Jacob had just strapped a camera to a toy helicopter. He instructed Jacob to fetch it and handed over a wad of crisp clean kwacha for transport.
The money was tempting, but Jacob felt more compelled by the fact that, when the silver-strung driver drove him back to the compound that night so he could carry out his mission, Solo and Pepa stayed behind. The General, casually waving the steak knife he was using to cut his nshima and bream, said he would send the siblings home tomorrow. Christian handed Jacob a fresh t-shirt, then cuffed Solo on the head to bully him to the back of the house to wash the supper plates. The last glimpse Jacob got of Pepa, she was curled up on the sofa, his old t-shirt like a nightgown on her. Had there been drugs in her glass? Her pale cheek pressed to the white leather, her pink lips wet in slumber, she seemed like an animal that has fainted for fear.
2014
Jacob walked in on his mother breaking. Not breaking outwards into pieces, but shattering inward, towards the core. She was sitting on the floor of her kitchen, back against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, thighs as spread as her tight skirt would allow. Her chest was clutching, her shoulders jerking. In