Warren Murphy: Unite and Conquer

With a sinking feeling, Anin understood that he would have to dig into his thinning billfold to deal with it. He had hoped the general would offer to pick up the tab as a gesture of his newly redirected loyalty.

The bill lay upon a silver tray. A filigreed lid covered it from prying eyes.

Reluctantly Anin lifted the lid.

A small black calling card was exposed. Frowning, he picked it up.

It was inscribed in blood-red ink with four words: YOU ARE THE FIRE.

His bald brow furrowing, Anin turned the card over. The obverse was printed with four more English words: I AM THE EXTINGUISHER.

"What is this!" Anin howled, standing up.

The maitre d' came bustling up. He offered profuse apologies in impeccable French, and a search was undertaken for the waiter. He was not found. Nothing could be learned of him other than that he was an expatriate American, hired only that morning.

"What is this man's name?" Anin demanded as the minor general, concerned about the commotion, slipped out the back door.

The manager appeared and said, "The name he gave was Fury."

"He should be fired for disturbing my meal," Anin screeched, waving his malacca cane. "He should be exiled. All Africans know that the Americans wish me dead because I stood up to their imperialist forces. Not content to hound me from my own country, they have embarked upon a campaign of intimidation here in neutral Rwanda."

His voice sought higher and higher registers, and the maitre d' quietly tore up the check and called a taxi for the former supreme warlord lest the bulging purple veins on his high forehead signify the onset of a sudden and appetite-inhibiting stroke.

As he climbed into the taxi, Mahout Feroze Anin allowed himself a sly smile. It could not have turned out better. Unless of course, the minor general had acceded to revolution. But there were other troubled African nations. If fact, most African nations were troubled in these post-Cold War times. Burundi continually chafed at the edge of civil war, for example.

As he was coveyed through bustling Kigali traffic, Anin wondered what the waiter had meant by his strange message.

Perhaps a United Nations agent was simply trying to frighten him, he decided. Having failed to capture him in his stronghold, they were reaching out to him in exile.

Two days later, Anin reappeared in Bujumbura, having skipped out on his hotel bill in Kigali.

When he realized late in the evening no Burundi general would accept his call, he ordered room service.

"Yes," he told the room-service operator. "I would like a zebra roast, with all the trimmings, a bottle of the house wine as long as it is French and a blond tart, also French."

The blonde came smelling of French perfume, and smiled salaciously upon Anin as he ate his fill.

As they laughingly emptied the wine together, Anin plunged into her sumptuous charms and, after a suitable interval of play, sank into a relaxed sleep. There was something about a woman who obeyed his every whim that restored a man's faith in the eternal malleability of humanity.

In the middle of the night, Anin rolled over in bed and struck his hand against something hard and metallic. It made a faint clang when his diamond ring touched it.

"Yvette?" he whispered.

There was no reply from the rounded shape on the adjoining pillow. Heart pounding, Anin groped the unmoving object. It was cold and metallic, not warm and compliant like Yvette. And in the African moonlight, it gleamed like steel.

Snapping on the night-table light, Anin saw the steely gleam resolve into the heavy tube of a large fire extinguisher.

It occupied the spot where Yvette should have been. The covers had been pulled up so that only the pressure-gauge dial showed. Tied to it with a scarlet ribbon was an ebony calling card. Anin snatched it up and read the legend with his heart trip-hammering in his chest.

One side said: PREPARE TO BE SNUFFED OUT.

The reverse bore the familiar printed legend: THE EXTINGUISHER.

Jumping out of bed, Anin called the hotel manager.

"I have been violated by your lax security!" he shouted.

Again profuse apologies were offered. The bill was torn up with great ceremony. "You may, of course, stay as long as you wish, General Anin. Charges will accrue from noon of this day only."

"I demand two free nights. No-make that three. Let it be a lesson to you to tighten up your worthless security."

The manager acquiesced instantly. The reputation of the five-star hotel meant more than a mere five thousand dollars.

After the hotel staff had departed, lugging the offending extinguisher, Anin found he could not sleep. It was too dangerous to remain in Bujumbura. Perhaps Dar es Salaam or Maputo would be safer for a fugitive expatriate warlord.

Rushing to the closet, he discovered Yvette on the floor, trussed up like a political-torture victim. Her eyes were hot and angry.

Untying her, he demanded, "What happened to you?"

"A man stole upon me in the night," she complained. "He wore black and was white. Other than that, I could see nothing."

"You did not call out?"

"He placed a ferocious pistol to my head."

"He was armed?"

"I have never seen such an ugly weapon. It literally bristled with menace."

Anin's brow puckered. "Why did he not shoot me?" he muttered. "He was armed. He could have shot me dead in my sleep."

Climbing into her clothes, Yvette quoted the agreed-upon price.

Anin snapped out of his puzzlement.

"You expect me to pay your price when you failed to warn me of danger?" he snarled.

"I sell pleasure, not protection. You have been pleasured. Now you must pay."

"Then I will hire a tart who is adept in the protection arts."

"Bonne chance, " said Yvette, who nevertheless held out for her price and would not go until her scarlet-nailed hands curled around it.

In the end, Anin gave it up. Luxury hotels were easy to hoodwink compared to call girls. And he had to get out of Bujumbura as quickly as possible.

IN NAIROBI, there was some difficulty procuring a hotel room given his odd demands.

"You would like a room without a fire extinguisher?" The hotel manager was dubious.

"No. No. I wish a room on a floor without a fire extinguisher."

"We have fire extinguishers on all of our floors. It is a safety precaution."

"I have a phobia. I cannot be around fire extinguishers. I am allergic. The mere sight of their steely, sinister hulks makes me nervous."

And since he was Mahout Feroze Anin, a former head of state and presumed wealthy, all the fire extinguishers were stripped from the top floor before Anin was escorted to the Presidential Suite.

By that time, he knew he was being stalked.

It was time to put aside all thoughts of revolution and acquire a personal protective force, the more vicious the better.

"I WISH PROTECTION," Anin announced to Jean-Erik Lofficier in the offices of the Nairobi Security Company. Anin's fresh candy-striped shirt was open at the neck, and his grayish fringe of hair was as dry as the sweltering Kenyan heat would allow. He leaned forward in his chair, both hands resting on his malacca cane.

"Against enemies known or unknown?" asked the white Frenchman.

"I am being stalked by a man who calls himself the Extinguisher. His last name is Fury. I know no more than this."

Jean-Erik Lofficier raised both eyebrows in alarm.

"If you are being stalked by the Extinguisher," he said gravely, "then you are a dead man. The Extinguisher never fails."

"You know of him?"

"In my younger days, I read of his exploits. I am astonished to hear that he is alive."

"Still alive, you mean," said Anin, suddenly patting his tall brow with a canary yellow handkerchief.

"No. I mean alive. I had thought he was a legend without substance."