arrived at the newly completed Alistair Patrick Blair Airport, a group of Sambusai ilmoran, or warriors, met our private jet and escorted us into the terminal—where two of their number, apparently the winners of a lot drawing, attached themselves to us as additional bodyguards. Imposing in their ceremonial cloaks and ornate beaded headbands, they were soft-spoken fellows who had attended a Catholic mission school at a nearby frontier outpost. They towered over my daughter and me.
Monicah, despite my protests in Marakoi, had shaved her head and donned elegant African garb as (her own words, I swear) “prophylactics against the corrupting influence of the resort.” Now she would have to wear a wig to her classes at Kent School. Our Sambusai bodyguards did not mind. They turned their deep brown eyes on Monicah with respectful admiration. Good. I had begun to fear that all my plans on her behalf were going to be thwarted by her own intransigent attitude. Maybe the casual closeness of a pair of innocently virile males would improve her disposition. I sent her down to the paddleboat marina with the Sambusai warriors and one well-armed security agent while my aide and I checked in at the hotel’s main desk and rode upstairs to scrutinize our V.I.P. suite.
“Very WaBenzi.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Timothy Njeri, a fiftyish Kikembu assigned to me not long after I had won my seat in the National Assembly. Timothy’s briefcase contained sophisticated electronic gear, which he immediately deployed to scan the room for listening devices. “It seems to be quite clean,” he said at last, carefully packing his equipment away.
I told Tim to fix himself a drink from the suite’s well-stocked bar. Then I eased myself into an Agosto Caizzi fishnet pullover and a pair of designer bush shorts and descended to the Sands lobby to fulfill another of my obligations on this multipurpose mission.
One-armed bandits whirred and rang in the gaming room to my right, while in the left-hand casino a dozen roulette wheels ratcheted through their fateful orbits. There were more Americans than ever in Zarakal, and the Air Force, in response to our treaty-extension stipulations, had just inaugurated free shuttles from Russell-Tharaka and the naval facility at Bravanumbi for all eligible military personnel. Further, an American coffee concern had built a company town in the central highlands, and there was a Ford suncar plant on the outskirts of the capital, where Zarakali laborers pocketed four times the average hourly wage of other native workers but only a third of what their American counterparts in Dearborn and Detroit were making. In spite of the continuing drought in the Northwest Frontier District, our economy was booming. Marakoi’s East African Ledger made occasional mention of my contribution to the boom.
A black man in Western clothes wearing a distinctive scarab tie pin caught my eye and pushed through the smoky revolving doors to the terrace overlooking the lake. The tie pin identified the man as my contact, a liaison between the custodians of the moribund White Sphinx Project and the Zarakali government. For obvious reasons Matthew Gicoru, our Vice President, had selected me to represent our interests in this meeting, but I still did not understand either the need for such a get-together or the liaison’s insistence on these embarrassing James Bond tactics. After ten minutes in the arid lacustrine heat his enameled scarab would melt right down the front of his tie.
I followed the man outside. My contact, after checking to see that I was not being tailed, led me along a palm-lined parapet away from the hotel. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and much too hot for such foolishness. Book-ended between her Sambusai galley slaves beneath a big polka-dot parasol, my Monicah was a passenger in the only paddleboat plying the turquoise waters of the lake. A small rescue vessel stood offshore to rescue any boater who fell victim to the heat.
To the north of the hotel we were building a nine-hole golf course, with Astro-turf fairways and greens, but it was difficult to imagine anyone but a rich Bedouin ever using it. In addition to dehydration and sunstroke, there were other hazards. My contact, jumping down from the retaining-wall promenade, ignored a tall stone obelisk warning of these:
GUESTS PROCEED AT OWN RISK
BEYOND THIS POINT.
* * *
* * *
Beware of lions and other potentially dangerous wildlife.
Automatic one-year prison term
for any unauthorized person bearing firearms
into restricted area.
This message, repeated in Swahili, French, and Arabic, bore a replica of my own signature:
Minister of Tourism