“Are you going on a mission today?” Richard asked.
“Yes.”
“Why are you doing this, sir?”
He put his glasses back on. “I worked with the freedom fighters in Ethiopia and before that I flew in relief to the Warsaw ghetto,” he said with a slight smile, as if that answered the question. “Now I must get on. Keep up the good work.”
Richard watched him walk away, a straight-backed courtier, and thought how different he was from the mercenary. “I love the Biafrans,” the red-faced German had said. “Nothing like the bloody kaffirs in Congo.” He had spoken to Richard in his house in the middle of the bush, drinking from a large bottle of whisky, watching his adopted child—a pretty Biafran toddler—playing with a collection of old shrapnel on the floor. Richard had felt annoyed by the affectionate contempt with which he treated the child and by the exception he made of Biafrans. It was as though the mercenary felt that here finally were black people he could like. The count was different. Richard glanced at the tiny jet again before he climbed into the car.
On the way back, just outside Port Harcourt, he heard the distant rattle of gunfire. It was not long before it stopped. It worried him. And when Kainene suggested they go to Orlu the next day to find a carpenter for her new house, Richard wished they did not have to go. Two consecutive days away from Port Harcourt worried him.
The new house was surrounded by cashew trees. Richard remembered how dejected it had looked when Kainene bought it—half-finished with layers of green mold on the unpainted walls—how the flies and bees clustered over the fallen cashews had nauseated him. The owner had been principal of the community secondary school down the road. Now that the school was a refugee camp, now that his wife had died, he was going into the interior with his goats and his children. He repeated, “This house is out of shelling range, completely out of shelling range,” until Richard wondered how he could possibly know where the Nigerians would shell from. There was an unobtrusive charm about the bungalow, Richard conceded, as they walked through the empty, newly painted rooms. Kainene hired two carpenters from the refugee camp, made sketches on a sheet of paper, and, back in the car, told Richard, “I don’t trust them to make a decent table.”
A shrill sound went off as they drove out of Orlu. The driver stopped with a jerk, in the middle of the road, and they jumped out of the car and into the thick green bush. Some women who had been walking along the road ran too, looking up as they did, twisting their necks. It was the first time Richard had taken cover with Kainene; she lay flat and rigid on the ground next to him. Their shoulders touched. The driver was a little way behind them. The silence was absolute. A loud rustling nearby made Richard tense until a redheaded lizard crawled out. They waited and waited and finally got up when they heard the revving of a car engine and rising voices from nearby, “My money is gone! My money is gone!” There was a market only yards away. Somebody had stolen from one of the traders while she was taking cover. Richard could see her and some other women underneath open stalls, shouting and gesticulating. It was difficult to believe how silent it all had been a moment ago, and how Biafran markets now thrived so easily in the bush since the Nigerians bombed the open-air Awgu market.
“False alarm is worse than the real one,” the driver said.
Kainene dusted herself down carefully, but the ground was wet and the mud had stuck to her clothes; her blue dress looked designed with chocolate-colored smudges. They climbed into the car and continued the journey. Richard sensed that Kainene was angry.
“Look at the tree,” he told her, pointing. It had been cleanly split in two, from the branches down to the stem. One half still stood, slightly tilted, while the other lay on the ground.
“It seems recent,” Kainene said.
“My uncle flew a plane in the war. He bombed Germany. It’s strange to think of him doing something like this.”
“You don’t talk about him.”
“He died. He was shot down.” Richard paused. “I’m going to write about our new forest markets.”
The driver had stopped at a checkpoint. A lorry loaded with sofas and shelves and tables was parked by the side, and a man stood beside it talking to a young female civil defender wearing khaki jeans and canvas shoes. She left him and came up and peered at Richard and Kainene. She asked the driver to open the boot, looked inside the glove compartment, and then extended her hand for Kainene’s handbag.
“If I had a bomb, I would not hide it in my bag,” Kainene muttered.
“What did you say, madam?” the young woman asked.
Kainene said nothing. The woman looked through the bag carefully. She brought out a small radio. “What is this? Is this a transmitter?”
“It is not a transmitter. It is a ra-di-o,” Kainene said, with a mocking slowness. The young woman examined their special duties passes, smiled, and adjusted her beret. “Sorry, madam. But you know we have many saboteurs who use strange gadgets to transmit to Nigeria. Vigilance is our watchword!”
“Why have you stopped that man with the lorry?” Kainene asked.
“We are turning back people evacuating furniture.”
“Why?”
“Evacuations like this cause panic in the civil population.” She sounded as if she were reciting something rehearsed. “There is no cause for alarm.”
“But what if his town is about to fall? Do you know where he has come from?”
She stiffened. “Good day, madam.”
As soon as the driver started the car, Kainene said, “It’s such an awful joke, isn’t it?”
“What?” Richard asked, although he knew what she meant.
“This fear we are whipping up in our people. Bombs in women’s bras! Bombs in tins of baby milk! Saboteurs everywhere! Watch your children because they could be working for Nigeria!”
“It’s normal for wartime.” He sometimes wished she would not be so arch about things. “It’s important for people to be aware that there are saboteurs in our midst.”