Terminal Justice Read online

  Mahli again turned to his brother and watched him chew the mind-altering plant. He knew the cathinone in the leaves would soon make his brother feel relaxed and blissful. This was good, he thought, because his brother would be easier to control. “No thank you. I prefer to leave my mind the way it is. You do know that kat is addictive, don’t you?”

  “As you have told me many times, brother, but as Father always said, ‘Kat is not a luxury; it is a necessity.’ ”

  Nodding his understanding, Mahli turned again to his pondering. His father had been right. The hardship of living in Somalia required a release. There was so little water, so little farmland, so little education, so few resources. Somalia was always the last to receive what every other country took for granted. The nomads still wandered the wilderness as they always had, despite the efforts of the Marxist government of President Mohammed Said Barre, who tried to settle the nomads into farming communities. But the nomadic life was too deeply rooted in their genes to surrender to a more anchored existence.

  That was the problem, wasn’t it? Mahli thought to himself. Change was difficult to make. Change, real and abiding change, could not be legislated. That had been tried many times, but always to no avail. Camel herders still herded their camels as their great-grandparents did; children still learned the Koran from their long, wooden prayer boards; famine still came; drought still came; and the desert still advanced. Some change had occurred. Somali families knew how to hide from Ethiopian military aircraft. They learned that during their two-year war with Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978. It was that war that had taken Mahli’s father, and since they lost, also stole a good deal of Somali pride. During that war men learned to use more than knives to defend themselves; they learned to fire Russian-made weapons at their enemy. Ironically, they fought Russian-led troops from Cuba. They graduated to missile launchers and artillery, which came from the United States. But those were small changes. The heart of the people remained the same.

  More needed to be done. Somalia could no longer remain the doormat for other countries. Somalia had to learn to stand on its own. But rival clans, lack of education, and lack of resources had kept the country mired in the past. I will change that, Mahli thought. I will bring a new day, not only for Somalia but for all of East Africa.

  “May I ask a question, brother?” Mukatu asked.

  “You just did,” Mahli replied with a grin.

  Mukatu giggled, and Mahli could see the kat was already working on Mukatu’s mind, dropping its mist of euphoria on every brain cell. “You’re right. Now may I ask another question?” Mahli started to tell him that he had once again asked a question, but thought better of it. It was clearly a joke with no end.

  “Certainly.”

  “Why sink the ship?” Mukatu asked, shoving more kat into his mouth. “It makes no sense to sink a ship filled with food.”

  It was a sensible question, but the answer might not seem sensible to Mukatu, whose mind was still alert but definitely clouded.

  “It seems confusing, doesn’t it?” Mahli said as he strolled from the window to the table. “The answer is in our goal. We wish to change our corner of the world. But change is difficult. That is what I was thinking a moment ago. Change must be forced. The world looks at us as unloved and ignorant stepchildren; as backward people who don’t know enough to take care of ourselves. They don’t think that we can feed our own or educate our children. We seem stupid and impotent to them. Some of our own people think that way too. But we will change all that, you and I.” Mahli began to pace around the table, his hands folded behind him, his head bowed in thought like one of his professors in college. “We provided food not only to our own people but to Ethiopians. The world sees this, and they think that at last someone is in control. The Ethiopians see that we help them of our own free will and with no strings attached. We ask for nothing in return—at first.”

  “Do you really think Ethiopia will join the alliance?”

  “Yes. The world thinks we are a vicious and ungrateful people who turn weapons on those who lend us help. Mohammed Farah Aidid saw to that when he killed Pakistani and American soldiers when they brought food and medicine.”

  “You’ve not had any problem with killing,” Mukatu said firmly.

  “You do not understand, brother. Perhaps you chew too much kat,” Mahli said. “Death is required to make these noble changes. The difference between Aidid and me is that I see to it that those deaths are not attributed to me. The world follows heroes, not monsters.”

  “So if the world knew …”

  “It won’t,” Mahli snapped. “This plan will work as long as each of us does his job and we don’t make any mistakes.”

  “I haven’t made any mistakes,” Mukatu said defensively.

  “No, you haven’t, and if you will let me do the planning, you won’t make any in the future either.” Mahli softened his tone. “There’s a great deal in this for you, my brother. A great deal of power and a great deal of money.”

  “Here’s to power and money,” Mukatu said with a broad, leaf-stained grin.

  Mahli picked up a glass of water, raised it in a toast, and said, “To our power and money.”

  “What are they doing now?” Aden asked as he lay on his back in the dried grass under an acacia tree.

  “They’re toasting their soon-to-be-success,” Roger said, stretching his back. “I wish I had thought to bring a tripod for this dish; I’m getting tired of holding it. At least I thought far enough ahead to pack it in the car.”

  “You’ve been holding it on and off for hours,” Aden said wearily. “Don’t you think you have listened enough?”

  Roger laid the parabolic listening dish down and switched off the electronics. “For now. But I still don’t know their next move.”

  “Did they admit to downing the ship?” Aden was incredulous.

  “That they did,” Roger said. “And they don’t feel the least bit of remorse. It’s all part of their plan.”

  “Plan? What plan?”

  Roger explained everything that he just heard through the advanced listening device.

  “Unbelievable,” Aden said. “I doubt it will work. There are too many variables, too many personalities to consider. He’ll never be able to convince Ethiopia to be part of an alliance. Our country has never been on good terms with them. The whole idea is absurd.”

  “The most effective ideas in the world are absurd. That’s why they work; no one has ever thought of them. Besides, it doesn’t matter if the plan is possible or not. Mahli thinks it is, and he’s killed to make his dream a reality. That makes the validity of the plan secondary, don’t you agree?”

  Aden sat silently for a moment then said, “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Review your history, Aden,” Roger said, sitting up and twisting his head around to loosen the muscles in his neck. “If you were to outline Hitler’s plan on paper it would be laughable, but he pulled it off. If, in the thirties, you asked if Japan might attempt to conquer China and surrounding regions as well as to attack the United States, you would dismiss the whole concept. But it happened. Think of the most vicious dictators in the world. Did they arrive at their power because they were geniuses? No, but they believed they were. That’s all it takes. Mahli and his no-good brother are no different. His plan may not be feasible, but I’m betting that he’s willing to kill an awful lot of people to prove that it is.”

  “Your point is well taken,” Aden acquiesced. “So what do we do now?”

  “Wait. Listen some more. I’ll report back to my people later, but until then we wait for opportunity to come knocking.”

  “What will opportunity look like?” Aden asked seriously.

  “I have no idea, but I’ll recognize it when I see it. No doubt about that. And when I do … that’s when I act.”

  “I feel that I should tell someone in my government.”

  “What government? The last vestiges of corporate leadership fell twelve months ago when this famine started
.” Roger was animated. “You’ll tell no one. This is something I can take care of, something I will take care of.” Having said that, Roger rolled over on his stomach, picked up the listening dish, and aimed it at Mahli’s compound again.

  15

  THE LARGE FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE VAN PULLED UNDER the canopy at the front of the lobby. The driver exited the vehicle, opened the passenger door, and waited, his body erect and his head held high.

  “Off we go,” A.J. said as he led the small procession to the vehicle.

  The driver, a tall, thin man with a perpetually murky expression, drove slowly along the paved road, occasionally steering around a pothole that might jar his passengers. He spoke not a word, but hunched over the steering wheel and squinted myopically down the road.

  They passed through the heart of Addis Ababa with its high-rise and mid-rise office buildings from which Marxist banners once hung. The center of the city was much like any other major city in an industrial nation. Its streets were broad and paved. Cars, many of them vintage Volkswagens, Volvos, and Mercedes, lined the curbs. It was clear that some of them had not moved for quite some time. They passed a Mobil gas station, a large bank building, an Ethiopian Orthodox church, a mosque, and hundreds of pedestrians.

  David found the pedestrians the most interesting. Many wore Western garb and would fit in to any city back home. Others, especially the Muslim women, wore either white shawls over their heads and shoulders or heavy black coverings that revealed only their eyes. Unlike cities in the States, all the pedestrians were slim; there was not a single overweight person among them. None seemed especially famished, but it was clear that food was still a rare commodity even in the largest city of Ethiopia.

  Once outside the city, the scenery changed from concrete commercial buildings to open country with green trees and brown, coarse grass. Here, David saw pedestrians too, but unlike those in the city, these were dressed in clothes that were old, faded, dirty, and often torn. Mothers carried children on their hips and wore bandannas over their heads, tied in knots behind. He also saw a small village of huts with brown-thatched roofing. The people walked aimlessly, their hopes of subsistence farming dashed by the persistent drought. David looked across the seat at A.J., who gazed sadly out the window.

  A.J. gave more specific directions to the driver. When he heard where A.J. wanted to go, his murky expression darkened all the more.

  “I know the area,” he said cautiously. “It is bad, and the road is not good. At least fifty kilometers are rough dirt road. I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

  “No,” A.J. uttered firmly. “You will take us where I’ve told you.”

  The driver scowled, said something in Amharic, which David took to be other than a compliment, and pressed on. It wasn’t long before the driver’s prophecy became reality. The body of the long van squealed in protest of the cracked and eroded pavement. The passengers bounced off one another and the interior of the car, at times hitting their heads on the ceiling. David turned to ask the driver to be more careful, but saw that he was already intently peering over the steering wheel and doing his best to steer around the worst of it. The jarring they were receiving was the result of the driver being forced to choose between the lesser of the two evils.

  “They should put this ride in at Disneyland,” Peter said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk when we’re done.” David empathized with Peter. His back hurt, especially over his kidneys.

  “Could be worse,” A.J. said. “We could be driving your car.”

  “How much longer?” Kristen asked.

  “My guess would be another hour,” A.J. replied. “I think we’ll all live.”

  David had his doubts. Not only did his body hurt, but his stomach as well. David was prone to motion sickness, especially as a child. As an adult he could ride in planes and cars with only minor discomfort. This, however, was asking his stomach for more than it could endure. He wondered if anyone else was suffering as much as he. Kristen looked thoroughly shaken, but still together; Peter was jostled and clearly uncomfortable. Only A.J. and Sheila seemed unfazed. Sheila simply gazed out the window as if lost in thought.

  The remaining time passed with agonizing slowness, especially after the van veered from the maintained road onto a dirt lane. The vehicle’s air conditioning spared them the September heat, but it could not spare them the bruises they received with each new teeth-jarring bump.

  The camp was located in a small village of thatched huts and canvas tents. It was very much what David had expected. The sun had passed its zenith and was following its daily downward path, lengthening the shadows.

  Strolling down the central lane of the camp, he listened as A.J. gave the team a briefing: “We work with many of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups. We feed and provide medicine to the Sidamos, Oromos, Somalis, Amharas, Afars, and the Tigreans. We do so year in and year out. Even in nondrought years, five million Ethiopians depend on the half-million tons of grain provided by other countries. Experts call that a ‘structural food deficit.’ That means there’s a gap between the food the country produces and the food it needs so that its people don’t starve. But that’s only part of the problem. There are other matters that must be addressed.”

  “What else is there?” Kristen asked. She had a video recorder raised to her eye and was panning the compound.

  “That road we were just on is a perfect example of the problem. Ethiopia needs more than food; Ethiopia needs a way to distribute that food. Of all the countries that face chronic famine, this one is in the best position to end the suffering. It has a new and responsive government, the second largest population in Africa, and possesses a wonderful geography that if properly harnessed …”

  David ceased to hear the discussion as he wandered from the group. A little boy, a profoundly pitiful little boy, had caught his eye. He was no more than five years old and was seated on the ground between two tents, playing with a small rubber ball. David was fascinated with the lad who seemed oblivious to the world. The boy moved hardly at all, but sat in the dust with his legs spread before him, holding the small rubber ball in his tiny black hands.

  David didn’t know why, nor could he tell when it happened, but his senses became more sensitive. Noises and voices sounded louder, even the wind, warm and thin, seemed to take on a new life. The tents of the compound seemed whiter, the sky seemed bluer, the smell—the stark near-putrid odor of poverty—seemed more intense. Even the ball that the little boy held in his hand took on new detail, revealing the abuse of years in its elastic hide.

  The ball was painted with gay colors of blue and red triangles and stars. It reminded David of a ball he had as a child. It had been his favorite toy, and he used to sit quietly on the carpeted floor of his parents’ home and stare at it just as this young boy was doing. There was something therapeutic in the presence of the toy. David had been able to project himself through his imagination onto the surface of the small sphere. In his mind it became a new world, a place all his own. It was something David did when he was sad or troubled or if his parents had scolded him. As he grew older his toys changed, but his imagination worked the same. It was then that David realized that all little boys could perform the same feat of magic—mentally projecting oneself to an imaginary world devoid of pain, frustration, and fear. That’s what this little boy was doing. He was mentally disengaging from reality, if just for a short time.

  As David watched the lad, a younger child approached. There was enough of a resemblance between the two to make David believe they were brothers. The younger boy, whom David judged to be about three or four, waddled on bare feet to his brother. He was crying, wailing in desperation and deep-seated fear. There was a loneliness in the cry, a tone of utter despair that no three-year-old should feel.

  David recognized this emotion too. As a child not much older than the crying boy, he had become separated from his mother in a department store. To his young eyes the shelves of goods and the long aisles seemed an impregnable maze. He crie
d out for his mother but heard no response. He wandered to the end of one aisle and looked down the rows of shelves. People, tall as trees to him, walked past without comment. Panic set in, and David, in abject frustration, sat down in the aisle and wept deep and bitter tears. He had been left alone; he knew it. His mother had forgotten him, and he would forever be surrounded by strangers. He had wanted to go home, to his room, to his bed, to his family. But now he never would. He had been as sure of that as he had been sure of anything in his life—until he heard his mother’s voice. “Why are you crying?” she had asked. “I wasn’t that far away.”

  Perhaps that’s all the little crying boy needed. Perhaps he just needed someone to take him by the hand and lead him to his mother. David could do that. After all, they shared a common bond. They both had felt the fear of loneliness, of a premature separation from their mothers. As an adult, David knew that problems like this were really a function of an overactive imagination, but the emotion was nonetheless real.

  David decided to help. Moving farther from the others, he walked the short distance to the small lane formed by the rows of tents with the Barringston Relief logo stenciled on them. He was unsure of what to say. Most likely the boys could speak no English, but surely they would understand a smile and a gentle touch. As he approached the children he looked down the corridor between the tents and saw that the boys were not alone. A woman dressed in a white halter top and a brown ankle-length skirt was reclining on a mat. She lay still and unmoving, and David was puzzled how she could sleep through the shrieking and the sobbing of the youngest child. Surely she could hear the cries of her own child.

  Smiling at the two boys, David stroked each of them on the head and said gently, “It’s all right, guys. There’s no need to cry. Mother isn’t far away.” The five-year-old looked at him through vacant eyes, the three-year-old continued to wail in long and loud ululation.