Kahawa by Donald E Westlake

Author:Donald E Westlake [Westlake, Donald E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-11-10T07:23:09.139000+00:00

27

For Idi Amin, the least enjoyable aspect of his office was his office. He very much liked to be out on maneuvers with his Army, or observing a flyby of his Air Force, or making a whirlwind tour of “inspection” in a jeep at the head of a convoy of troop-filled trucks, racing through the small towns, laughing at the dogs and the babies and the chickens as they scurried out of his way.

Official dinners, they were also nice. And official lunches, official teas, official cocktail parties. Also official tours of locations such as Owen Falls Dam (making sure those thrown-away bodies which had not yet been eaten by the crocodiles had discreetly been removed the day before) or the Field Marshal Idi Amin Air Force Base at Nakasongola, seventy miles north of Kampala. (The air base was a particular favorite, though also something of an embarrassment. Amin, early in his presidency, had ordered it built, with its modern camouflaged underground hangars, because he wanted to protect his Air Force from the fate that had hit the Egyptians in the 1967 Six-Day War, when the Israelis had destroyed virtually the entire Egyptian Air Force on the ground on the very first day. However, Amin had only about twenty modern warplanes in his Air Force, which he couldn’t bear to keep so far away from himself, so the Field Marshal Idi Amin Air Force Base normally stood empty while his total Air Force remained at Entebbe, where the Israelis had wiped it out last summer. He had new planes now, though, and always ordered a few of them to Nakasongola before an inspection.)

Unfortunately, for the leader of a modern nation there’s more to the presidency than Army maneuvers and VIP inspections. From time to time he must seat himself in his office, listen to a lot of boring details from various ministers, make decisions, give orders, and even occasionally sign something. (He really disliked that part. He had learned late in life how to sign his name, and he remained convinced there was something funny about the look of it, that it didn’t have in some strange manner the appearance of a real signature. He thought other people could see the difference and were deliberately hiding their knowledge from him.)

As with many men who have reached the top in the world of power politics, Idi Amin’s talent was not for governing but for climbing. Now that there was nowhere left to climb, he was frequently bored or resentful or ill at ease, as though it were the world’s fault he had nothing left to do with his skills. Again as with so many such men, he had turned his energies to the obsessive struggle to retain the power he’d achieved, even if his enemies and competitors were frequently no more than ghosts.

But you can’t chase ghosts all the time, no matter how many you’ve made. Today, all his appointments finished, nowhere else to go, Amin prowled the large plush room he’d

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