Read Online Assignment Black Gold by Edward S. Aarons - Free Book Online Page A

village to collect freedom fighters against our colonial
masters, I joined him. What else was there for me to do? No woman would look at
me. As a fdana ,
a tribal orphan. I had nothing to offer and never would have. I was a pariah.
So I followed the Saka.
    “He adopted me. It was as simple as that. It was like a
splendid sunrise. He became fond of me—why, I do not know. I worshipped him for
his strength and wisdom. He taught me Portuguese and English. Somehow, I was
quick to learn. Before he was imprisoned that second time, he gave me money—no
doubt stolen from the Luanda banks in Angola—and directed me to go to Europe
for my education. He insisted that Lubinda needed literate, professional men,
if we were to succeed in raising ourselves from the lives of fishermen,
jungle kraals, and desert nomads. I went to London and studied hard, applied
myself, and kept faith with the Saka.”
    “And when you returned to Lubinda?”
    “The first thing I did was to organize a breakout for
Sakadga from Kajary Prison. You have heard of the place?”
    Durell nodded. “Not easy. I heard the Saka was killed just
four days before independence for Lubinda.”
    “He was seriously injured. He has recovered. But his major
and lasting hurt is an inner one.”
    Durell waited. Insects hummed. and buzzed in and out of the
barred window. Great moths fluttered around the globe lamp on the desk.
He looked at this watch. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. He could
have used at cup of coffee. But Lepaka offered him nothing. The colonel seemed
to be thinking of other things, his hands flat on the closed dossier on his
desk. Then Lepaka stood up. unfolding like some sort of stick insect, until he
towered with his head just grazing the bricked vault of the ceiling.
    “You see, Mr. Durell, I know we are in the same business,
and therefore I can trust you to be competent and circumspect about what I say
to you."
    “You suggested we might make a deal.”
    “Precisely. I am coming to that.”
    “I just want to find Brady Cotton.”
    “Alive, or dead?”
    “Alive, preferably.”
    “I am prepared to assist you,” Lepaka said. “In turn, you
can do something for me that I am unable at the moment to do for myself.”
    “You want Felipe Barraganza Sakadga?”
    "Yes."
    “Alive or dead?" Durell returned, unsmiling.
    “Very much alive. To help Lubinda, to help my people, to be
rid of the Maoist Apgaks who. in their foolish fanaticism. refuse to believe they
are only the tools of another imperialism not much different from the old.”
    “How many others know that Sakai is alive?”
    “As I said, very few.”
    "The President?”
    “No.”
    “Any of your parliament?”
    “No.”
    “Do you have a small junta planned?”
    “No. We simply want his return. To guide us. The people
adore him. They will follow him. The country will settle down. There will be no
more killings.”
    Durell had no idea whether the man could be believed or not.
He did not mean to lend himself to some putsch that might establish yet another military dictatorship among the newly
emerged African states.
    “You said the Saka is hurt inwardly?"
    “ Sim .
Yes. By his true son, who was always at his side, even as I was at his other
hand.”
    Suddenly it seemed as inevitable to Durell as the inexorable
fate in an ancient Greek tragedy. There was remembered sorrow in the colonel’s
black, bony lace, in the red depths of his murky eyes. Lepaka stood at the
window and looked out at the moths, and without thinking, he drew up one of his stiltlike legs and stood on the other, loft foot
resting just above the knee of the right. Durell could see him thus, leaning on
a spear in the black forests and swamps of Lubinda—but more likely leaning on a
rifle or a bazooka.
    “You know of whom I speak?” Lepaka asked softly.
    “l can guess.”
    “Guess. then.”
    “Are you testing me?” Durell asked.
    “In a way."
    “This former comrade-in-arms, this son, beloved by the