Force Protection. Gordon Kent

the other young men were just as interesting. They seemed to be listening for something, utterly still. Not getting much work done.

      The boy at the counter muttered something about his father. Perhaps serious bargaining had to be done by an adult, although in most of Africa all three of the shop boys would be thought men. In Somalia they would have been fighting for years. One of them even looked Somali. Not impossible.

      ‘Lini?’ Alan couldn’t remember how to ask something as complex as when the father would be in. It might not even be polite.

      ‘Kesho!’ Did he really mean tomorrow? The young man at the counter waved his hand as if eager for Alan to go. He was eager. Then, swiftly, his expression changed and he retreated to his work area, his face blank, as a new, older man came in through a beaded curtain to the side of the counter. He was looking at the three boys in puzzlement, but he smiled as he looked at Alan. ‘My son. I do not know why he torments me this way. You are interested in the necklace? I made it myself.’

      ‘It is very good.’

      ‘It is, isn’t it? Too good, I think. Tourists want a cheap memento of Africa, not a good piece of silver.’ Alan liked him instantly; he had the directness that Alan associated with craftsmen. Men too busy for bullshit. The young men were listening; no wire was being drawn, no silver polished.

      ‘What price did my son quote you?’

      ‘Tafadhali, mzee. I did not really understand him. My Swahili is never as good as I think it is. Not nearly as good as your English, for instance.’

      The older man polished the chain idly, unfazed by flattery. ‘Hmm. Yes. It is. One hundred twenty dollars.’

      ‘I could perhaps go as far as eighty dollars.’ Alan wanted it more now than when he had first looked at it. He also wanted an excuse to prolong the meeting. The older man was interesting, a type; and the young men were clearly on edge – waiting for something, something that a foreigner, an mzungu, was not part of.

      The mzee looked at him, one eyebrow raised. Alan settled on to a bench by the counter with a sigh, as if ready for a long siege.

      ‘Perhaps if we had some tea?’ The mzee was happy to dicker; indeed, would have been sorry if the business had been concluded directly.

      The plan to meet Craw was somewhere around the edge of Alan’s consciousness, but Craw wouldn’t worry and Alan knew where to find him. The tourist part of Old Town wasn’t more than a couple of streets, really. And tea, sweet cardamom tea, drunk in this medieval shop, would make Alan’s day. The det wasn’t going anywhere without him, either.

      The older man turned to the boys and said something in Arabic, a language Alan didn’t speak but easily recognized. Arabic was the language of education in Old Town Mombasa, the language of the Koran. Alan’s attention sharpened. Nobody answered the mzee, and Alan was surprised, but it was of a piece; they were waiting for something. Finally, the one who had first come to the counter dropped his eyes and darted out of the main door. He returned with a small tray, rattled off some Arabic as he entered. Alan was reaching for a cup when the older man caught his eye and motioned with his hand. He looked very serious.

      ‘My son says there is a bad crowd in the street. Perhaps you should go now.’

      Alan looked out the shop doorway, wondering how long the boy had been waiting for this ‘bad crowd.’ Then he could hear, in the distance toward Fort Jesus, a sound like waves on a beach.

      The street in front of the little shop was empty.

      Bad crowd?

      Alan took his little cup of tea and drank it off, holding the other man’s eye. Now he was more than a customer; he was a guest.

      ‘How bad is it, mzee?’

      ‘I have no idea.’ The mzee was calm, attentive, dignified. ‘It might be better, after all, if you stayed here; these things soon pass.’ He picked up the necklace, studied it, said in the low voice of a man speaking to one who he thinks is sympathetic, ‘You understand: we are Muslims, and the government is not our friend.’

      ‘I appreciate your hospitality.’ Alan could hear the beach noise louder now, as if waves were breaking higher. It was a crowd, all right. But it didn’t sound angry.

      ‘But I should go. I have a friend looking for me by Fort Jesus.’

      ‘Please go carefully.’

      ‘I’ll be back for the necklace,’ Alan said. The noise was growing louder still, and the young men were restless.

      ‘Inshallah,’ the older man said with a bow.

      The old man had had no idea there was trouble in the street. But the young ones had expected it.

      ‘Allahu Akbar,’ Alan said and hoisted the helmet bag through the door. God is great.

      The crowd was thicker at the end of the street; men and women mixed, so not immediately dangerous. Still, the non-Muslim Kikuyu shops that pretended to be part of Old Town seemed to be closed, their half-Masai guards glowering from the height advantage of their steps. The street he entered from the back street with the silver shop was narrow at the best of times; now it was claustrophobic, with at least a thousand men and women jammed along its length. Alan began to shoulder his way along it, looking for Craw, for any white face, but there was none. He got as far as the gap between two ancient houses and he turned into it and pushed along through a smell of urine until he reached the next street, which was almost as full. He shoved himself toward Fort Jesus, navigating by the minarets of two mosques.

      Men were pulling prepared signs about a jailed leader and economic conditions out of their houses. Some were in English, but all were labeled with the green sigil of the Islamic Party of Kenya – the IPK. Women were pulling the black abyas over their street clothes. He was acutely conscious of his color and of the fact that he was in the dressing room of a major demonstration – Old Town Mombasa was emptying into the streets that led up past Fort Jesus and into the center of town.

      Despite his unease, he kept pushing his way along, apologizing – sameheni, pole, sameheni, pole. Twice, men bumped him hard or elbowed him; not enough to do damage, but enough to remind him to keep moving. His missing fingers itched and he felt trapped. If it hadn’t been for Craw, he would have gone around the other end, through the back alleys below the dhow port; he could walk that way and come out high up on Kenyatta Avenue. But if he did that, he’d be leaving Craw wandering Old Town in a riot.

      He could see the corner and the peach flank of Fort Jesus rising beyond it, and then he caught sight of a white face and bushy eyebrows, a dark polo shirt. Craw. None too soon, he thought, and began to burrow toward him when three men off to his right registered as being different, somehow not part of the crowd. He couldn’t put a finger on it and he was eager to get Craw’s attention, but they were all three lighter skinned, carrying bundles that struck Alan as wrong. Some kind of tension. He hoped they had only swords or cudgels. The rest of the crowd seemed to keep them a little distant, too; he could see they were not ‘with’ anyone.

      ‘Craw!’ he yelled – pointlessly, as it turned out. There was too much noise. He kept burrowing. The three men were still there, just off to his right, and they were all looking at him now. Great. ‘Craw!’

      Craw was standing on a step next to a half-Masai guard. The man was ignoring him, and Craw was looking up and down the street. Alan willed him to look a little farther back, and kept pushing, an inch at a time. Suddenly, as if a dam had broken, the crowd began to move the way he wanted to go, and the sound crested and crashed like the noise of the sea. Now Alan had to fight to reach the edge of the street and the human eddy where the Masai guard next to Craw was using a club to keep the crowd from his shop. Alan got clubbed on the shoulder as he struggled to get Craw’s attention.

      ‘Whoa, Ben, that’s my guy! Cool it!’ Craw stuffed a bill into the other man’s hand.

      ‘Glad to see you