After a few moments of respectful silence he said, “I am rather glad to have that out of the way, Tanner. Actually I was surprised the deception succeeded as long as it did. It was a difficult role to play.” His manner was entirely different now, the voice rich and resonant, the tones properly pear-shaped. He sounded like the announcer on the old Shadow radio program – Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
I said, “The Shadow do.”
“Pardon me?”
“An old joke.”
“Quite. I was saying that the role was not an easy one for me. Bowman was a crude, rough type. There was a raw primitive quality about him that was not without appeal, however. I doubt I’d have thought to pose as him if you hadn’t virtually put the suggestion into my head by greeting me with his name.
“You recognized the agency recognition signal.”
“Ah, yes. It was one of the items the man disclosed to me. Not the only one.” He smiled a private smile, a sly smile, not the easy grin he had used during the masquerade. “I must say I enjoyed playing the part. And it did take you in for rather a long time.”
“Not really.”
“Oh?”
I told him I’d known for a long time. That there was too much happening in his colloquialisms, too many outdated phrases mixed in with newer expressions. “And too many Britishisms. Not just the odd items Bowman might have picked up through exposure to you, not just bits he might have affected, but turns of phrase that would only be possible to someone whose education was British rather than American.”
“And I had fancied myself equipped with a keen ear for just that.”
“Oh, you’re good at it. You sound right most of the time. But it’s one thing to know how to use the regionalisms of another area and another to keep your own regionalisms out of your talk.”
“Quite.”
“And there were other things, too. The absolute fascination with Plum.”
“A fascinating girl. And Bowman did like women, you know.”
“But he wouldn’t be struck by the idea of a mixed-blood girl. Plum ’s color really got to you. It’s a nice enough color, but it’s not as rare as you made it seem. Not in America, certainly. Some of the stanchest black nationalists are as light-skinned as Plum is. But that kind of racial mixture is rare in Modonoland.”
“I never considered that.”
“It didn’t surprise Plum. She’s used to being considered exotic and unusual. But in America -”
He nodded. “And of course I was completely at sea when we discussed your chief and his manner of operation. I almost suspected that might be a test but I could only play it by ear.” He frowned. “You say you knew for some time.”
“Yes.”
“That I was not Bowman? Or that I was Knanda Ndoro?”
“Both, really. The clincher was your story about how the Retriever died.”
“I thought it was a touching speech.”
“Oh, it was.”
“But Bowman wouldn’t have been capable of such bathos? Perhaps not.”
“Probably not,” I agreed. “But I didn’t know anything much about Bowman. No, the thing was that you couldn’t be capable of that much respect for anyone but yourself. Everything about you was one big ego trip. I got the message intuitively, but thinking about it just reinforced it. You had to be Knanda Ndoro; the only real hero in your eyes is you yourself.”
“That’s interesting,” he said. “That’s very interesting.” He frowned for a few moments, thinking it over. Then he grunted with annoyance. “You know,” he said, “this is bloody awkward. This business of being trussed up like a goat awaiting a barbecue. Don’t you think you might cut me loose so we can discuss this sensibly as equals?”
“No.”
“A flat no?”
“A flat no.”
The grin came suddenly, rich and easy. In his Bowman voice he said, “Well, Tanner cat, you can’t put me down for trying it on.”
“That’s an example.” He looked puzzled. “Trying it on. Bowman wouldn’t have said that.”
He filed this bit of information away. I could almost see it being shuttled off to the proper mental pigeonhole. We talked some more about Americanisms and Britishisms and a few Africanisms, and about his eulogy for his own self.
“Every tragic hero has a single abiding flaw,” he mused. “I fear mine is a lack of humility. I don’t think I ever saw any point in humility. From boyhood it never occurred to me that I had anything to be humble about. My own basic superiority was always patently obvious to me, and I assumed it must be equally obvious to others, or that it would be, had they the sense to see it.”
“What happened to Bowman?”
“Bowman? He died of the fever I invented for myself. I buried him. Not by clawing the dirt away with my hands, I’m afraid, and without benefit of Stevensonian epitaphs, but otherwise it was much as I said it.”
“I see.”
He started to say something, paused, then changed direction. “If you’ve known for so long that I am who I am, why go along with the deception?”
“I didn’t want to die of a fever.”
“Pardon?”
“I think you would have killed us if you knew we knew.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Why did you kill Bowman?”
“I told you-”
“Don’t bother.”
“Hmmm,” he said. Suddenly he laughed, a rich warm vibrant laugh that in context I found quite chilling. “Bowman wanted my wealth. Mine! And he wanted it. He had a suitcase full of ideas, Bowman did. He would take me back to America. My bearer bonds and certificates of deposit and my gems, these would finance a black revolution in America. We would split off a dozen southern states, he told me, and we would establish a black government there.”
“He wasn’t the first man with that dream.”
“Perhaps not. That made it no more attractive to me. If you’re as sound a man as you seem, Tanner, you know that a black government in America has as much chance for success as a white government in Africa. This one, for example – these white men will all be hanging from lampposts one of these days. And so would Bowman if he took his ideas back to America. I had no desire to invest my funds in such an enterprise. Nor was I by any means certain that Bowman wanted only a portion of the fortune, or that he intended to take me back to America along with my money. I had the distinct impression, friend Tanner, that it was a simple matter of survival. One or the other of us was going to die of a jungle fever. And while I was better than he at hand-to-hand techniques, that was no guarantee that he might not – uh, induce a fever, shall we say, when my back was turned. I had to act first.”
“And you had to act first here, too. With me.”
“An unpleasant subject, that.”
“As unpleasant for me as it is for you.”
“Of course I wouldn’t have killed you,” he said.
“Of course not.”
“I just would have discommoded you temporarily while I made my escape.”
“I’m sure of it.”
He laughed suddenly, like a seal barking. “Oh, Tanner,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to have everything out in the open, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Unquestionably. We’re at rather a stalemate, aren’t we, though? I don’t suppose either of us is entirely willing to put much trust in the other, and yet we have to do precisely that, don’t we?”
“Why?”
“Because we need each other.”
“For what?”
His eyes flashed but his voice remained cool, confident, on top of it all. “Nothing’s really changed,” he said. “You need me to get a portion of the treasure. You don’t know where it is and there’s no way you can find it on your own. You can search the shipyard until the tide goes out permanently. It won’t do you any good.”
“I see.”
“I’m sure you do.” He beamed. “You have me all wrapped up like a parcel, but I’m really on an equal footing, am I not?” His deep voice echoed in the room. “You’ll get no information from me, Tanner. I’m not easily intimidated. Pain does not move me, threats do not bother me. We will work this all out my way.”
“And what’s that?”
“You will untie me. Now. And you and your little brown girl will wait here while I recover the fortune myself. Then I will return-”
“Sure you will.”
“Why, I still need your help to get out of the country. I could do it without you, but why should I? You already know everything. And we really do need each other, Tanner. With your help I might get into the United States. I suspect I might find your country a good home for my talents. The market for African leaders is crowded now, you know. As a superior African of some wealth, I could have a secure future in America.”
“So you would come back on your own, and then the four of us would waltz off together.”
“Precisely.”
“And we would split the fortune according to plan, and we would all be satisfied.”
“There is enough for all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So it is settled. Now if you will cut these bonds-”
“But nothing’s settled,” I said. “I may be crazy but I’m not stupid. Not that stupid, anyway. Even if what you said made perfect sense, I don’t believe you’d stick with it. Your ego wouldn’t let you be equal partners with anyone in anything.”
His face hardened. “You will never get the treasure without my help.”
“I know.”
“And you cannot possibly get my help except on my terms.”
“I know.”
He frowned. “Then what will you do?”
“I will get the hell out of this godforsaken country,” I said. “Your treasure can stay here, and so can you. I don’t really care about your fortune. I didn’t come here to get rich, and I don’t really have any use for the money now. I have to get back home and buy a house something like this one, except maybe a little bigger, and without quite so much plastic in it. And then I have to marry a girl named Katin Bazerian and adopt the heir apparent to the throne of Lithuania. Heiress apparent, that is. And then I have to live happily ever after, and I can do that without your bearer bonds and your diamonds and whatever the hell else you’ve got. And without your monumental ego for company, for that matter.”
“You will just… just leave?”
“That’s the idea.”
“And the fortune? You will leave it for me?”
“Right.”
“Well,” he said. “That is-”
“But you probably won’t get much pleasure out of it. Because I’ll leave you here, tied up like this, so that you won’t spoil our exit. And I’ll leave Sheena here, too, because I don’t see how I could get her out of here under the circumstances, and because you’ll need someone to keep you company. And I guess I’ll leave her untied, because otherwise she might starve to death, and I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
He was staring at me.
“And whether she’ll have any particular animosity toward the man who sold her down the river, and I do mean down the river, well, I wouldn’t know about that. You’ll just have to see.”
I got up and started for the door.
“Wait,” he said. “Wait. We must talk this over.”