Zanzibar Intrigue, page 13
“Why, I’d like to,” North said. He looked at the closed door and then back at Ring. “Don’t you think we ought to stick around, though, and see how this comes out?”
“Oh, I know Halstrett,” Ring laughed. “For a policeman, he has an inordinate dislike of arresting anyone. They have a Zanzibari joke about him being such a stickler at running a clean chauki that he won’t have his cells dirtied up by any untidy prisoners—and God knows that ape’s untidy enough. Besides, you wouldn’t want to be booked as a witness, ’msure.” He peered at North and added: “Unless you were thinking of lodging a complaint, p’raps?”
“Oh, lord, no,” North exclaimed.
“Well, then,” Ring said and turned to lead North down the hall. The Englishman stopped short and exchanged his easy smile for a sneer as a thin, long-legged man in a wrinkled linen suit gained the top of the stairway and came toward the group outside Suite 300. “Hah,” North heard Ring snort under his breath. “Trust Lourenco to show up when everything’s over.”
The G-2 colonel eyed the brother of the slain João Silveira, the ineffectual Lourenco who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He looked as though he deserved the faint derision, too: skinny, with a long, beaked face, hangdog eyes, and protruding teeth. Everyone referred to the slain hotelkeeper as “old João” and there must have been a big spread between brothers, North told himself; this man could not be much more than forty.
“Hodi, Lourenco,” Ring was saying in jeering greeting. “Come to help the Commissioner in case there’s a battle?”
Hugh caught the tiny gleam of stark hatred in Silveira’s hound-dog eyes before the man attempted a smile that disclosed a mouthful of bad teeth. “I would have come at once, Senhor Ring,” he said in a whine, “but my sister-in-law did not inform me there was a difficulty.”
“She didn’t let you in on the secret, eh?” Ring laughed. “I fancy you’re the only man in Zanzibar who needed to be told there was a difficulty. All the rest of us heard it plainly enough.”
The knot of listeners around the door of Suite 300 snickered; the recently snubbed Bagshaw guffawed. North added his smirk while he inwardly labeled Archie Ring a sort of louse: the man who got pleasure out of humiliating another man in front of a bunch of tittering spectators had a mean streak in him, no matter how charmingly hidden most times.
“I—I was not feeling well,” Silveira was explaining feebly. “I took some medicine and lay down. It was the medicine, senhor, not because I feared to intervene in the difficulty.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Ring said. He touched North’s elbow and said: “Come along, now that Lourenco’s here there’s no need for us to hang about. Everything’s under control.”
Another bray of laughter from Bagshaw, another burst of tittering from the others, and Ring led North down the hall to a door marked 310. He tapped twice, then threw open the door and stood aside to let the colonel enter. “Company, Betts,” the Englishman called. “I’ve brought a gentleman from the States along for a drink.”
“Archie, you beast,” Hugh heard a woman exclaim. “You know I look a fright.”
“He just saw Milady Bagshaw in the hall and I’m sure you’ll look delightful by comparison, whatever you’ve on,” Ring laughed. “Come out and mix us a drink. We need something to take the taste of that scene outside out of our mouths.”
North said: “Look, I don’t want Mrs. Ring to go to any trouble. I can come back some other time.”
“Nonsense. Didn’t you know all women have to call themselves a fright when they haven’t had four or five hours to primp? Agree with them and they’d prob’ly burst into tears.”
“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Douglas. My impossible husband delights in bringing in visitors when he knows I’m at my very worst,” Betts Ring said as she came out of the suite’s bedroom, a smile on her face and her hand outstretched.
North met the cool, firm handshake and told himself that if this was Betts Ring at her worst, he would like very much to be around when she was at her best. The Englishwoman was no spectacular beauty but she had more than, say, Sahami Buma’s striking impact; she had the inimitable clear skin, the crisply careless hair, the unstrapped or foam-rubbered figure of the monied girl of the English town and country set. Her gray-blue eyes, her small, even teeth, her easy carriage, and her poised graciousness joined with the rest of her to present the portrait of a healthy-minded, soundbodied English girl of the type that North privately labeled the best of its kind anywhere.
“Hodi,” she smiled up at the G-2 colonel. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you, Mr. Douglas.”
“It’s my pleasure, I’m sure,” North stammered.
“Oh, Betts means it,” Ring said. “You’re such a relief from some of the people she’s been meeting lately. As the dutiful wife of a man looking for a job she’s had to help impress some prospective employers with such hospitality as we can dig up in this hole.”
“Now that,” Betts Ring cried, “is a left-handed compliment, Archie.” She turned her smile on North and said: “He didn’t mean you’re especially welcome because of the others—Archie just never learned how to open his mouth without sticking his foot in it.”
“Oh, my dear,” Ring mourned. “When will you ever learn to resist the cliché? And how about our drinks? We’re parched.”
The dark-eyed girl moved to a small sideboard that was stocked as a modest bar and looked back over her shoulder. “Do all you Americans drink rye whisky?” she asked. “I’m afraid we haven’t any but Archie can send down for some. Although I think it’s only fair to warn you that what Wanji will bring up might astonish you.”
“No, no,” the G-2 man said. “I’d prefer scotch if you have it—anything at all.”
“My dear boy, when you say whisky to a Britisher you mean scotch whisky,” Ring said. “All other drinks usurp the name, except possibly Irish, if one wants to get technical.”
Mrs. Ring busied herself with glasses and bottles. “Archie has made a scientific study of whisky,” she explained. “It’s taken years from his life but he’s had to forge ahead, foregoing nearly every normal pleasure but—”
“Quiet, wench,” Ring said affectionately and gestured Hugh toward a chair. “Sit down, man, sit down. I’d point out one chair or another as especially comfortable but I’m afraid none of them is, really. How did you find your quarters?”
“All right,” Hugh said and lowered himself into the inevitable wicker chair. “Nothing fancy but that suits me okay. P.C. isn’t the kind of a boss that says anything goes on the expense account, so I’ve been in hotels even worse than this.” He caught himself and blurted: “Look, I didn’t mean to say this was—”
“Oh, heavens,” Betts Ring cried from the bar, “don’t apologize for calling this hole a hole. You’re lucky—you’re just passing through but we must stay here till Archie finds a situation.” She brought two tall glasses of amber across the room and gave one to North, the other to Ring. “I’m afraid we haven’t any ice,” she said. “It would take ages to have any sent up, especially with all the excitement going on down the hall.”
“Never take ice,” North lied and raised his glass. “Good health.”
“God bless,” Ring said and buried his face in his glass. Mrs. Ring nodded and returned to the bar to get her glass, speaking over her shoulder. “Did Halstrett throw those horrible creatures out, Archie?”
“We left before the end,” her husband said briefly, “but you know Halstrett.”
The girl wrinkled her sharp-tipped nose in disgust. “Terrible people,” she said. “And this is only the beginning. Sometimes I wish the Panga Kwaheri would make a clean sweep right now. Then we’d be rid—”
“Now, now, old girl, let’s not get all snorty about a spiv and a couple of Bolshies having a brawl down the hall,” Ring slid in smoothly. “Leave that to Bagshaw and his friends.”
“Panga Kwaheri, what’s that?” North asked.
“Oh, an organization of sorts that cuts corners occasionally to keep the blacks in line,” Ring explained idly. “Don’t know too much about them, actually.” He brandished his glass and said: “No more chewing over the deplorable situation, eh? God knows we hear enough of that without letting it interfere with our drinking.”
He swallowed and asked Hugh: “What part of the States are you from, Douglas?”
“Baltimore, Maryland,” North replied, and gave it the proper Baltimorese pronunciation, Ballimer, Murrlun, just in case. He looked over at Betts Ring, prettily posed in a chair with her long legs crossed to show just the right amount of shin and knee. “Your husband says you’ve visited America,” he said. “Ever been to Baltimore?”
She shook her head. “I was the proper tourist,” she explained. “New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, so I don’t s’pose I can say I know the States at all, can I? That was ages ago, before I settled down to be the happy helpmeet of an irresponsible engineer named Archie Ring.”
“Who’s presently without a job and nearly stony,” Ring said cheerfully. He flashed his easy smile at Hugh and asked: “Good old P. C. MacKettrick doesn’t happen to need an engineer, does he?”
“I don’t think so,” North said uneasily, as though suspecting a touch.
Betts Ring’s laughter pealed. “Don’t mind him, Mr. Douglas; he’s a shameless tease. No, Archie wouldn’t be much use in spices, I’m afraid, and, besides, the situation isn’t as desperate as he makes out. There’ll be several openings he can choose from within the next week or so.”
“I’m glad,” North murmured. “I know how tough it is. During the Depression I did about everything but sell apples before I landed with MacKettrick. Wonderful company, Mr. Ring. Like a great big family, you might say.”
Ring could not help grinning: “I might but I doubt it. No, sorry, old chap—didn’t mean that.” He turned serious. “You said Maryland; that’s in the south of the United States, isn’t it?”
“Well, sort of, not really.”
“But isn’t that where your famous Army traitor, that chap named Bonhart, came from? Or was it Mississippi?”
“I think it was Florida,” North said dubiously. Keep pumping, Charley! “Whatever it was, I don’t guess they’re very proud of him back there.” He turned to Mrs. Ring again in time to catch the tag-end fragment of the incisive look she had spiked past him at her husband. “I know how most of you English people think we’re pretty rough on our colored people and maybe we had it coming, a guy like Bonhart doing what he did, but it’s not that way at all. I mean, maybe they do bear down on ’em in the Deep South but in Maryland—why, a colored guy’s got just as much right to go anywhere and do anything as anybody else.”
“That’s not what Bonhart says,” Ring said lazily. “I’ve heard some of his wireless talks in Swahili, beamed at the wogs from Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.”
“Well, he’s a damn liar—excuse me, Mrs. Ring, but that’s what he is,” North exploded. He triggered the glands and muscles that swelled his neck, crimsoned his face. “I just wish I could lay hands on that guy,” he cried. “Maybe he’s big and tough, like I read somewhere, but I’d just like to get my hands on him. Maybe I could make him eat some of those things he said about us.”
“I’m sure you could,” Betts Ring said soothingly. “You seem to be amazingly fit, Mr. Douglas.”
The G-2 colonel let the red fade from his complexion as he looked down at his middle. “I watch my diet and when I’m home I work out at the Y,” he explained comfortably.
The British girl sighed. “I wish I could get Archie to exercise. His idea of a workout is to walk from the hotel down to his favorite sidewalk café, about three squares away.”
Haraka haraka haina baraka,” Ring said. “Old Zanzibari saying which means nobody gives medals for hurrying, or something like that. The same thing goes for strenuous exercise, at least where Archie Ring’s concerned. Anyway, I expect we got enough exercise in the Congo to last us a lifetime, running for our lives. You get a thousand mad Balubas on one side of you and another thousand equally mad Congolese soldiers—or at least that’s what they called themselves—on the other and you’ll find it much more demanding than any exercise with dumbbells at your precious Y, old chap.”
His smile took on a faint tinge of the same contempt he had shown Bagshaw and Lourenco Silveira. “But p’raps you Yanks are going to find that out some day. According to what Bonhart screams over the wireless, that day might not be too far off, either.”
“Oh, Archie,” Betts mourned, “there you go again. And you were the one who called a halt to that kind of talk.”
“Sorry,” Ring said, and sipped his drink.
“That louse, Bonhart,” North muttered. “I just wish he’d show his face where a good, red-blooded American could—” He broke off and wagged his head, the crimson back in his face. He waited for a breathless moment that seemed to stretch on forever and that instant of silent communication which the Rings exchanged without knowing Hugh North’s gaze was anywhere but on his glass told him what he wanted to know: these two people knew who the “spiv” in Suite 300 was, all right; the chances were that they had known this from the time the two KGB men had brought their “pal” to the Nipoo.
And what cause did this couple serve, Tommy Henderson’s Panga Kwaheri, British Intelligence, the Communists, or perhaps another, more obscure faction in the deadly, silent struggle that went on in Zanzibar? Or were they only what they said they were, a British engineer and his wife, forced out of the Congo by the upheaval there and interested in Willie Bonhart only in their fear of what he might be bringing to this island?
All this passed through North’s mind in the two seconds of silence that followed his muttered blurt. Hugh waited for Ring to speak, as he knew the Britisher would have to speak, by the import of that swift meeting of eyes across the room, the imperceptible nod that Betts Ring gave before she raised her glass to her curved, unpainted, lovely mouth.
“If you’re serious, p’raps you’re closer to your chance here in Zanzibar than you think, Douglas,” Ring said idly.
North jerked up his head. “What do you mean?”
The Englishman’s smile took on its sardonic edges again as he nodded. “Fact. I hear things at that sidewalk café that Betts just maligned. I’ve kicked about Africa for a good many years and there aren’t many languages or native dialects that I don’t kumi. These stupid Africans all think that if they’re jabbering in Swahili, no white man can possibly understand what they’re talking about. That’s how I happened to overhear the wogs talking about the big get-together tomorrow night, the high mass that’s going to tell them what to do and whom to elect when the island gets its independence.”
He sipped leisurely again before he said: “Oh, they’re having all the mzees of the old Mau Mau gang here, plus some of the more fiery maniacs from the Congo and Ghana. James Mnoyah will be one, and some other blacks from Kenya who have almost as many crimes to answer for as Mnoyah.”
He drank again with maddening deliberation, lowered his glass and looked straight at North. “And from what I gathered, the biggest attraction of the whole foul mess will be the personal appearance of your esteemed countryman, Willis Bonhart of the U.S. Army.”
2
Hugh North went sag-jawed in astonishment as he goggled at Archie Ring, then turned his head slowly to gape at the young woman who sat watching him over the rim of her glass, across the room.
“You mean that ba—that Bonhart guy’s in Zanzibar?” he asked.
Betts Ring nodded, hesitated, and then said: “Matter of fact, Archie thinks that horrid spiv in Three Hundred might be Bonhart.”
“No kidding!”
“Well, I’m not positive, of course,” Ring hedged, “but from what I’ve seen of that bird in Three Hundred—which hasn’t been very much, I’ll admit—he answers the general description. The Russians who are sharing his digs rather fit the picture, don’t you think?”
Hugh stared toward the hallway door as though trying to look through several walls and study the men inside Suite 300.
Mrs. Ring said quietly: “Of course Archie could be wrong, but it would be rather too coincidental with that mass meeting due tomorrow, to say the least.”
The G-2 colonel turned back to Ring. “But—but shouldn’t we tell the police?” he bleated. “They’d stop them, wouldn’t they? I mean, they wouldn’t let a traitor like Bonhart walk around loose, would they?”
Ring’s twisted smile was pitying. “My dear fellow, you must remember that Bonhart’s a traitor to you Yanks, not to us British. Besides, with the Prime Minister and everyone else at Whitehall feeling the way they do about such things, I rather doubt they’d take any steps even if Bonhart were a Britisher. Oh, heavens, no, let’s not do anything that’d let Khrushchev accuse us of being unreasonable!”
“Now, Archie,” Betts put in. “You know the government is in a difficult situation. Zanzibar is due her independence soon and the U.N. demands—”
“Blast the U.N.,” Ring said violently. “Oh, I know I’m sounding like a bloody fascist but that’s the way I feel. What happened to good old British guts? There was a time when Panga Kwaheri wouldn’t have been necessary; it’d all have been settled before it got this far. Now we have to take matters into our own hands to try to preserve a few shreds of decency.” He shook his head and grimaced. “But there I go again. Sorry, and fix me another splash, will you, old girl?”
“I will not,” the girl answered promptly. “When you’re in this mood, more than one’s not good for you. You start remembering the Congo too vividly and you end up with all sorts of frustrated rage.” She looked across the room at North and her smile struggled back. “But that doesn’t go for you, Mr. Douglas. I’m sure you must be ready for another.”
