Jambo! Bwana & Memsaab
Chapter 22
Dan Healy was showing off his Swahili when he greeted us at the Kenyatta International Airport: Welcome, Mister and Miss was the rough translation. I didn’t expect a meet and greet by the Assistant Regional Security Officer and had planned to take a taxi to our hotel. But it was a pleasant surprise and much appreciated nonetheless.
I was very familiar with Kenya having served three years as the senior Regional Security Officer at the embassy. In those days, my assistant and I covered, or tried to cover, the security concerns and issues in 11 countries in East Africa while based in Nairobi. Now virtually every country in the world had one or more DSS security officer assigned to it. Times had certainly changed, but not necessarily me.
Dan was assigned as our liaison office for our visit and would assist us in identifying the transportation company Vlad had purportedly contacted, if it existed. We might be on a wild goose chase if he left us a piece of disinformation to distract us in our search. That remained a distinct possibility, although maybe he’d gotten a little sloppy in his tradecraft in his haste to leave the Seychelles. We’d soon find out one way or the other.
The traffic was bumper-to-bumper going into the city. That was a big and unpleasant change from my days where the trip could be made in about 25 minutes. Economic progress and prosperity had its downside and now Nairobi was an overgrown metropolis with all the attendant problems of big city life.
Dan pointed out a pair of Grevy’s zebra, the largest size of their kind, in the distance. True to form, Jersey would have quipped that a zebra was the largest cup and then have the audacity to laugh at his cheesy pun. Yep, that was my iffy colleague and nitwitted, sometime friend.
We were passing a side of the 44 square mile Nairobi Game Park, the smallest in the country. Pet was excited to see the animals and I still enjoyed seeing the game as well. I had fond memories of the safaris I took much earlier with my family. Those were special times in my life.
After about an hour, Dan dropped us at the Serena Hotel and we checked in. Neither Pet nor I saw the need to travel separately at this point since we were known to Vlad and his mole. We wouldn’t be fooling anyone except ourselves. That actually made the logistics of our investigation much easier. I also thought Pet made a great travel trophy and companion. Other guys would be enviable.
Dan stayed for lunch and we discussed what we were looking for in Nairobi: the oft mentioned needle in a haystack. Dan poorly joked there were many shops in the city that carried such items so finding the right one might prove difficult. I countered with my own corny joke that he was just trying to needle us. He then said we needed to make hay while the sun still shined. Needless to say, both of our attempts at levity fell flat and Pet groaned at the exchange of nonsense. However, she’d gotten used to the fact the DSS was a funny organization, but less so her own dour agency which had no sense of humor whatsoever.
Dan said he’d assign Rahmet Khan, his senior local investigator to the task. He claimed Rahmet knew every nook and cranny in the city and would leave no stone unturned or take anything for granite in his search for the transportation company. I didn’t bother to call him out on his rocky pun.
Since Rahmet would be doing all the legwork, Pet and I took to the hotel’s swimming pool. I watched her do laps and was amazed at her strength and endurance. Well, maybe those weren’t the only things I watched and fanaticized about.
Two days later, Dan called with good news or so it appeared. Rahmet had located a company called Abacus Transports located in the suburb of Karen that seemed a good fit. He said we had an appointment with the owner, Joginder Singh, and would pick us up in 30 minutes.
Singh and Khan were Indian names and I remembered that many thousands were brought to Kenya in the late 1800s to work as laborers building the Mombasa to Kampala rail line. Many stayed after its completion and now constituted a powerful minority in business and politics in the country. I also remembered something else. I pulled up the story from Wikipedia and read it to refresh my memory of the terrifying event.
As part of the construction of a railway linking Uganda with the Indian Ocean at Kilindini Harbour, in March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The project was led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson. During the next nine months of construction, two male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging Indian workers from their tents at night and devouring them. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas, or thorn fences, around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, all to no avail; the lions leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences. After the new attacks, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. After repeated unsuccessful attempts, he shot the first lion on 9 December 1898. Twenty days later, the second lion was found and killed.
Patterson claimed the lions killed and ate up to 134 laborers. But subsequent forensic examination put the count at about 35. I’d seen the movie and had read the book of the same name: Man Eaters of Tsavo.
Our trip to Karen lasted 25 minutes. Karen was home to wealthy Kenyans and expats wanting large slices of land for horse farms, orchards and other hobbies requiring acreage. The area was named after Karen Von Blixen who was memorialized in book and film: Out of Africa.
I put aside my Kenya reminiscing and movie trivia thoughts, at least for now, to concentrate on the case. However, I always believed things and events looked smaller and safer in the rear view mirror. Looking ahead only meant unknown dangers and not knowing how the movie or book would end beforehand. I sincerely hoped ours wouldn’t have an anticlimactic finish. Unfortunately, our case didn’t come with a trailer.
We all shook hands with Mr. Singh and asked for his help in identifying the invoice or quote. Fortunately, he didn’t ask why. He took a look at the paper and pushed some keys on his desktop computer and turned the screen to us.
“This was in response to a customer request for a quote for a car and driver to drive him to Kampala, Uganda,” Singh stated. “We transport people, packages and things throughout East Africa, at least to places which are safe to do business. This wasn’t an unusual job in any sense.”
“It so happens that the driver for that trip is in the back of the shop and you can speak to him if you wish.” We wished.
Moses Kecula was well north of six feet tall and lanky like a beanstalk. We introduced ourselves and explained once again why we wanted to talk to him.
“Sure, I remember the passenger well. It was only a week ago that I drove him to the Entebbe International Airport, outside Kampala, and dropped him off. He was quiet during the trip and wondered about his fluency, or lack thereof, in English which might have accounted for his reticence. I pegged him as Eastern European based on the sparse words he used during the trip. I’ve gotten to be pretty good at guessing the nationalities of people given the number of international tourists we cater to.”
We asked about the date of the trip and time of arrival at the airport. Moses provided the information from memory. He also mentioned that Vlad was traveling as one Sven Jensen, a Swede according to his passport. He’d glimpsed the information as he handed both their passports to the immigration officer at the border crossing into Uganda. He thought it strange because he was fairly certain that Sven hailed from Eastern Europe. Oh well, it didn’t make any difference to him.
“On my way home, I stopped in Kisumu to visit my relatives and spent the night before returning to Nairobi. By the way, your guy was a generous tipper.”
His last words tipped me off to his origin. Kisumu was Luo land and Moses was one of its sons. The Luo were second only to the Kikuyu in terms of population among the 50 odd tribes in Kenya. The Luo seemed to always get the short end of the spear when it came to voting rights and the outcome of national elections. They were treated as second class citizens by the majority Kikuyu who held the upper hand in terms of political and economic power in the country. That inequity had caused violent conflicts and rioting in the past, especially during elections, and had always been a serious bone of contention of the Luo for generations.
We thanked Singh and Moses for their cooperation and went our way, believing we had a solid lead and a dangerous character to pursue.