Read Online Snakepit by Moses Isegawa - Free Book Online Page A

near him, except if he was going to kill him, which he intended to do. He wanted Ashes’ tongue, eyes and penis in a jar. The last time he made a man smoke his penis had been in 1971; three years later Ashes was going to become the second. It would pacify the generals humiliated by his arrival and promotion, and he would reclaim mastery over the lake and his beautiful islands.
    â€œYou are still a cabinet minister,” his mother said in an effort to comfort him. “Don’t worry. Look on the bright side. Now you have time to concentrate on the ministry, your family and other duties.”
    General Bazooka was too angry to answer.
    ROBERT ASHES HAD originally come from the Industrial North-east, born in Newcastle, Great Britain. His father was a dissatisfied factory manager, his mother a gentle housewife. The only thing his father failed to dominate was his drinking and his temper. Everybody called him the Weatherman, agent of doom and gloom. There always seemed to be something wrong at the factory: strikes, unmet quotas, cash-flow problems, fewer orders. Home was just an extension of his office, and the ways which had taken him from the assembly line to the top, he espoused there. Ashes later learned that his father was not his biological father, and that the Weatherman was frustrated by his failure to have a son from his loins. By then, Ashes had decided to leave anyway; he had no intention of working in factories, mines or docks. He craved freedom, adventure, not bullying bosses and claustrophobia. Before leaving, he decided to put his parents out of their misery. The house went up in beautiful flames. His parents were injured but they survived. He hitch-hiked to London before anybody began to ask questions.
    War was in the air and Hitler’s name was on people’s lips. Ashes drifted and finally became a courier in the underworld: liquor, drugs, dirty money. There was robbery, extortion, arson and racketeering. At nineteen he enlisted and was rewarded with proper military training, discipline and a wide knowledge of arms. With his characteristic fearlessness, he made an excellent soldier. He was sent to North Africa and fought against the remnants of German forces. Africa was a revelation: the space, the skies, the sand, the opportunities. He was later transferred to East Africa, stationed in Kenya. The Coast was a dream, a tantalizing morsel bringing to mind the escapades of hedonistic gangsters. The Kenyan Highlands, the mountain ranges, a vision of majesty. For the first time in his life, he thought there might be a God. He knew that he would return some day. With the cash and freedom to enjoy all of it. He gradually got bored because there was no fighting. He still wanted to be in the thick of things, to garner more experience; he wanted to leave the force a honed fighter, a one-man army.
    Back in Britain he asked to be discharged as the war had ended. Many of his former colleagues were dead or maimed; together with the few he could find, he entered the construction industry with a vengeance and used his skills to extort, kidnap and amass a fortune. American aid was flowing into the country, and it was a wonderful time for those with the will to fight their way up the hierarchy of their chosen trade. With time his wanderlust rose and his life seemed too predictable, too easy, smelling a bit like his father’s past of petty bossing and bitching. He was itching to return to Africa and he flirted with the idea of becoming a pirate. A friend pointed him to the possibility of becoming a mercenary, hiring himself to the highest bidder as a military instructor to sprouting terrorist or guerrilla groups.
    He enlisted to take the fight to the Mau Mau in post-war Kenya; it was his kind of thing: the hunter and the hunted, the vague lines between right and wrong. The frightened whites and the agitated blacks turned him on. He loved the interrogations because they reminded him of the underworld he knew so