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Authors: James Patterson
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Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, Nigeria.
I had watched the unbelievable, and somewhat hypnotic, sweep of the Sahara from the plane; the savannas that buffered it from the coast; and the equally vast Gulf of Guinea just beyond the city.
Then, as I deplaned onto the tarmac, I suddenly felt like I was in Anytown, USA. It might have been Fort Lauderdale, for all I could tell.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you here, brother.” Father Bombata came up and shook my hand again before we separated. He had told me he had an escort meeting him to speed up his arrival. “Put two hundred naira in an empty pocket, my friend,” he told me.
“What for?” I asked.
“Sometimes God is the answer. Other times it’s cash.”
Smiling as ever, the diminutive priest gave me his card, then turned and walked away with a final, friendly wave.
I found out what he meant around three hours later, which was the amount of time I had spent sweating on the immigration line. There were just two slow-moving officers at the counter for something like four hundred people.
Some passengers sailed through, while others were detained at the head of the line for as long as thirty minutes. Twice I saw someone taken away by an armed guard through a side door rather than being allowed to go out to the main terminal.
When it was finally my turn, I handed my landing card and passport to the officer.
“Yes, and your passport?” he asked.
I was momentarily confused, but then I remembered what Father Bombata had said and understood. I held a scowl in check.
The official wanted his bribe
.
I slid two hundred naira across the counter. He took it, stamped me through, and called out for the next person without ever looking at me again.
Chapter 35
THE LOW HUBBUB and frustration of clearing immigration was nothing compared with the instantaneous onslaught of noise and hurrying people that met me when I passed through the hand- and fingerprint-smudged glass doors and into the main terminal at Murtala Muhammed.
There’s where I got my first real indication that I was in a metropolitan area of thirteen million people. I think at least half of them were there at the airport that day.
So this is Africa,
I thought.
And somewhere out there is my killer, or rather killers
.
No fewer than five Nigerian “officials” stopped me on my way to the luggage carousels. Each of them asked for verification of my identity. They all basically said the same thing. “Visa, American Express, any card will do.” Each of them clearly knew I was American. They all required a small bribe, or maybe they thought of it as a gratuity.
By the time I reached the baggage carousel, got my duffel, and pushed back out through the twenty-deep wall of people pressing in, I was tempted to fork over a few more naira to a raggedy-looking kid in an old skycap hat who asked where I wanted my bags taken.
I thought better of it, however, and pushed on, hauling my own luggage, keeping everything close to the chest.
Stranger in a strange land,
I thought, though I was also strangely pleased to be here. This promised to be quite an adventure, didn’t it? It was completely new territory for me. I didn’t know any of the rules.
Chapter 36
THERE WAS NO relief outside, where the air smelled of diesel, and no wonder: There was a raft of old cars, trucks, and bright yellow buses everywhere that I looked. Locals of all ages walked alongside the traffic, selling everything from newspapers to fruit to children’s clothing and used shoes.
“Alexander Cross?”
I turned around, expecting to see and meet Ian Flaherty, my CIA contact here in Nigeria. The CIA was good at sneaking up on you, right?
Instead, I came face-to-face with two armed officers. These were regular police, I noticed, not immigration. They had all-black uniforms, including berets, with insignia chevrons on the epaulets of their shirts. Both of them carried semiautomatics.
“I’m Alex Cross, yes,” I told them.
What happened
I had watched the unbelievable, and somewhat hypnotic, sweep of the Sahara from the plane; the savannas that buffered it from the coast; and the equally vast Gulf of Guinea just beyond the city.
Then, as I deplaned onto the tarmac, I suddenly felt like I was in Anytown, USA. It might have been Fort Lauderdale, for all I could tell.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you here, brother.” Father Bombata came up and shook my hand again before we separated. He had told me he had an escort meeting him to speed up his arrival. “Put two hundred naira in an empty pocket, my friend,” he told me.
“What for?” I asked.
“Sometimes God is the answer. Other times it’s cash.”
Smiling as ever, the diminutive priest gave me his card, then turned and walked away with a final, friendly wave.
I found out what he meant around three hours later, which was the amount of time I had spent sweating on the immigration line. There were just two slow-moving officers at the counter for something like four hundred people.
Some passengers sailed through, while others were detained at the head of the line for as long as thirty minutes. Twice I saw someone taken away by an armed guard through a side door rather than being allowed to go out to the main terminal.
When it was finally my turn, I handed my landing card and passport to the officer.
“Yes, and your passport?” he asked.
I was momentarily confused, but then I remembered what Father Bombata had said and understood. I held a scowl in check.
The official wanted his bribe
.
I slid two hundred naira across the counter. He took it, stamped me through, and called out for the next person without ever looking at me again.
Chapter 35
THE LOW HUBBUB and frustration of clearing immigration was nothing compared with the instantaneous onslaught of noise and hurrying people that met me when I passed through the hand- and fingerprint-smudged glass doors and into the main terminal at Murtala Muhammed.
There’s where I got my first real indication that I was in a metropolitan area of thirteen million people. I think at least half of them were there at the airport that day.
So this is Africa,
I thought.
And somewhere out there is my killer, or rather killers
.
No fewer than five Nigerian “officials” stopped me on my way to the luggage carousels. Each of them asked for verification of my identity. They all basically said the same thing. “Visa, American Express, any card will do.” Each of them clearly knew I was American. They all required a small bribe, or maybe they thought of it as a gratuity.
By the time I reached the baggage carousel, got my duffel, and pushed back out through the twenty-deep wall of people pressing in, I was tempted to fork over a few more naira to a raggedy-looking kid in an old skycap hat who asked where I wanted my bags taken.
I thought better of it, however, and pushed on, hauling my own luggage, keeping everything close to the chest.
Stranger in a strange land,
I thought, though I was also strangely pleased to be here. This promised to be quite an adventure, didn’t it? It was completely new territory for me. I didn’t know any of the rules.
Chapter 36
THERE WAS NO relief outside, where the air smelled of diesel, and no wonder: There was a raft of old cars, trucks, and bright yellow buses everywhere that I looked. Locals of all ages walked alongside the traffic, selling everything from newspapers to fruit to children’s clothing and used shoes.
“Alexander Cross?”
I turned around, expecting to see and meet Ian Flaherty, my CIA contact here in Nigeria. The CIA was good at sneaking up on you, right?
Instead, I came face-to-face with two armed officers. These were regular police, I noticed, not immigration. They had all-black uniforms, including berets, with insignia chevrons on the epaulets of their shirts. Both of them carried semiautomatics.
“I’m Alex Cross, yes,” I told them.
What happened
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