Otto Penzler - Agents of Treachery – Spy Stories

To me, an unsmiling Benjamin said, “You must be wondering why you are not dead yet.”

He was not grinning. The sergeant, watching me over Benjamin’s shoulder, did it for him, big white teeth reflecting more light than there seemed to be in the room.

Up to this point I had not looked at my fatal wound. In fact, I had not moved at all since the snake had struck me. Something told me that any movement might quicken the action of the venom and rob me of whatever split seconds of life I might have left. Besides, I did not want to see the wound that I imagined, twin punctures made by the mamba’s fangs, perhaps a drop or two of blood, and most horribly, venom oozing from the holes in my skin. Finally I found the courage to glance at my chest. It was unmarked.

I leaped out of bed, dashed into the bathroom, and examined my sweating torso. I stripped off my boxer shorts, the only garment I was wearing, and twisted and turned in the stingy light, looking for what I still feared was a mortal wound. But I saw no break in my skin, no bruise, even. The symptoms of death I had been feeling-the light-headedness, the shortness of breath, and a sense of loss so intense that it felt like the shutdown of the heart-went away.

Without bothering to put my shorts back on, I went back into the bedroom.

“Look at him!” the sergeant chortled, pointing a finger at me.

At first I thought he was making fun of my nakedness. I had spent time on a beach in South Africa, and the part of me formerly covered by my shorts was dead-white. I soon realized that he was laughing at something other than my tan line. I was the victim of the most sadistic practical joke since Harry Flashman was kicked out of Rugby College, and these two were the jokers. There is no mirth like African mirth, and both Benjamin and the sergeant were doubled over by it. They howled with laughter, their eyes were filled with tears, they gasped for breath, they hugged each other as they danced a jig of merriment, they lost their balance and staggered to regain it.

“Look at him!” they said over and over again. “Look at him!”

The locked valise had been placed on the bed. The contortions of the infuriated six-foot-long muscle that was trying to escape from it caused it to skitter across the sheets. I tried to get around the helpless men, but they kept lurching into my path, so I was not able to reach the Webley, Benjamin’s gift to me, that was stashed under the mattress. My plan was to empty the revolver, if I could get my hands on it, into the pulsating valise. I was in no way certain that I could stick to this plan if I actually had the gun in my hands and this comedy team at point-blank range.

Breath by breath, I got hold of myself. So did Benjamin and the sergeant, though it took them a little longer. It was obvious what had happened. Some juju man had captured the snake and removed its fangs and venom sac. Knowing Benjamin-and by now I felt that I knew him intimately despite the brevity of our friendship-he had commissioned the capture and the veterinary surgery. Knowing also how terrified President Ga was of snakes, I could only surmise that the defanged mamba was going to be a player in the overthrow of the tyrant. Maybe, if the coup succeeded, Benjamin would make the mamba part of the flag, as an earlier group of patriots had done a couple hundred years ago with another poisonous snake in another British colony.

Benjamin offered no explanations for the prank. I was damned if I was going to ask him any questions. I was by no means certain that I could control my voice. By now the joke had cooled off. Benjamin had stopped smiling. His grave dignity had returned. He made a minimal gesture. The sergeant picked up the valise.

Benjamin said, “I will be back soon.”

With a scratchy throat, I said, “Good.”

The two of them let themselves out the front door. I locked it behind them, and as I tried to put the key into my pants pocket I remembered that I was stark naked. Nakedness was deeply offensive to christianized Africans like Benjamin. Maybe that was why he had stopped laughing before the joke had really worn off.

I reached under the mattress and pulled out the Webley and cocked it. It is a very heavy weapon, weighing almost three pounds when fully loaded, and when I felt its heft in my hand I began to tremble. I could not stop. I was afraid that the gun might go off, but I had so little control over my muscles that I could not safely put it down. Teeth chattering, my body chilling in a room in which the temperature was not less than ninety degrees, I understood fully and for the first time just what a brilliant son of a bitch Benjamin was.

Two days later, at five in the morning, he showed up at the safe house for breakfast. He said he had been up all night. There was no outward sign of this. He was fresh from the shower, his starched uniform still smelled of the iron, and he sat up straight as a cadet in his chair. But he was not his usual masked self. There was an air of excitement about him that he did not bother to conceal.

He ate the yolks of his fried eggs with a spoon, then touched the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “The president of the republic is very upset,” he said.

He spoke in a low tone. It was difficult to hear him because a Benny Goodman record was playing on the phonograph-the usual precaution against eavesdroppers-and Harry James and the rest of the trumpet section were playing as if their four or five horns were a single instrument.

I said, “Upset? Why?”

“He has discovered the fangs and the poison sac of a black mamba on his desk.”

“Goodness,” I said. “No wonder he’s upset.”

“Yes. He found these things when he came back from one of his women last night. They were right in the center of the blotter, in his coffee cup. If someone had poured coffee into the cup he might well have drunk it absentmindedly. He said so himself.”

I could think of nothing to say. Certainly Benjamin needed no encouragement to go on with his story.

He said, “He flew off the handle and called me immediately. He screamed into the telephone. He was surrounded by traitors, he said. How could anyone have gained access to his office in his absence, let alone smuggled in the coffee cup? How could no one have noticed this coffee cup and what was in it? There are soldiers everywhere in the presidential palace. Or were.”

“They are there no longer?”

“Naturally he has dismissed them. How could he trust them after this? He also ordered the arrest of the army chief of staff. His order has of course been carried out.”

“The army chief of staff is in your custody?”

“For the time being, yes. It gives us an opportunity to talk frankly to each other.”

“Who is handling security if not the army?”

“The national police. This is an honor, but it is a strain on our manpower, especially with the Pan-African festival beginning the day after tomorrow. Thousands will flood into Ndala, including twenty-six heads of state and who knows how many other dignitaries and nobodies. But of course the safety of our own head of state and government is the number-one priority.”

“You are investigating, of course.”

“Oh, yes,” Benjamin said. “Suspects, some of them of very high rank, are being interviewed, quarters are being searched, every safe in the nation is being opened, information is being gathered, fingerprints and other physical evidence have been assembled, all the usual police procedures are in place, but on a much larger and more urgent scale than usual. The presidential palace is off-limits to everyone except the president and the police.”

He was in complete control of his voice and his facial muscles. But underneath his unflappable behavior, he glowed with joy. He was within reach of something that he wanted very much indeed.