Anin's brow puckered. "Why did he not shoot me?" he muttered. "He was armed. He could have shot me dead in my sleep."
Climbing into her clothes, Yvette quoted the agreed-upon price.
Anin snapped out of his puzzlement.
"You expect me to pay your price when you failed to warn me of danger?" he snarled.
"I sell pleasure, not protection. You have been pleasured. Now you must pay."
"Then I will hire a tart who is adept in the protection arts."
"Bonne chance, " said Yvette, who nevertheless held out for her price and would not go until her scarlet-nailed hands curled around it.
In the end, Anin gave it up. Luxury hotels were easy to hoodwink compared to call girls. And he had to get out of Bujumbura as quickly as possible.
IN NAIROBI, there was some difficulty procuring a hotel room given his odd demands.
"You would like a room without a fire extinguisher?" The hotel manager was dubious.
"No. No. I wish a room on a floor without a fire extinguisher."
"We have fire extinguishers on all of our floors. It is a safety precaution."
"I have a phobia. I cannot be around fire extinguishers. I am allergic. The mere sight of their steely, sinister hulks makes me nervous."
And since he was Mahout Feroze Anin, a former head of state and presumed wealthy, all the fire extinguishers were stripped from the top floor before Anin was escorted to the Presidential Suite.
By that time, he knew he was being stalked.
It was time to put aside all thoughts of revolution and acquire a personal protective force, the more vicious the better.
"I WISH PROTECTION," Anin announced to Jean-Erik Lofficier in the offices of the Nairobi Security Company. Anin's fresh candy-striped shirt was open at the neck, and his grayish fringe of hair was as dry as the sweltering Kenyan heat would allow. He leaned forward in his chair, both hands resting on his malacca cane.
"Against enemies known or unknown?" asked the white Frenchman.
"I am being stalked by a man who calls himself the Extinguisher. His last name is Fury. I know no more than this."
Jean-Erik Lofficier raised both eyebrows in alarm.
"If you are being stalked by the Extinguisher," he said gravely, "then you are a dead man. The Extinguisher never fails."
"You know of him?"
"In my younger days, I read of his exploits. I am astonished to hear that he is alive."
"Still alive, you mean," said Anin, suddenly patting his tall brow with a canary yellow handkerchief.
"No. I mean alive. I had thought he was a legend without substance."
"You must protect me from him."
Jean-Erik stood up gravely. "I cannot. No one can. L'Eteigneur never fails."
"Then help me to learn more of him."
"For five thousand francs, I will compile a dossier."
Supreme Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin leaned forward and took the man's hand gratefully. "I will await your report."
"It will be a pleasure to read up on L'Eteigneur. The very thought fills me with nostalgia. I would not have entered the security business if it were not for his supreme inspiration."
Backing out from the office, Anin wore a troubled expression.
At another security office, he was laughed at.
"We do not fight bogeymen," Anin was told.
He could get no other explanation than that.
In the end Anin was reduced to doing what he had done in his early revolutionary days: recruiting street rabble. If only he had AK-47s and some khat for them to chew. His soldiers had been paid in the druglike plant. It had made them fearless. It had also made them foolhardy. If not given sufficient enemies to shoot from the backs of their rolling technical vehicles, they tended to machine-gun innocent Stomiquians in the streets.
It took nearly all day, but Anin assembled a formidable protective force-if sheer numbers and a dull willingness to murder for food were a measure of formidability.
"Preserve my life," he promised to them in the luxury of the Presidential Suite, "and I will make you all rich."
The new army looked about the suite. They already felt rich. Never had they seen such opulence. Inasmuch as they never expected to see such again, they fell to pocketing the soap and shampoo and other loose items.
Noticing the chocolate mint left on the pillow in his absence, Anin hurriedly claimed it. He liked chocolate. He popped it in his mouth. It was very good-until the third chew when his teeth encountered the unchewable. He spit the remainder into his palm with much violence.
There, he saw in horror, lay a half-melted slab of chocolate that had concealed a tiny plastic item. Fearing poison, he picked at the matter with a sterling toothpick.
The chocolate crumbled to reveal a tiny plastic fire extinguisher, somewhat mangled and pocked by his molars.
Anin sprang to his feet.
"He was here! That maudit Fury was here in this very room!"
Immediately the new army began attacking the furniture. They ripped open cushions with their knifes, stabbed cabinets and fired shots into the closets before opening them. Anin himself sank into the bed thinking that he would surely have to move after this unpleasant day.
Since this was Africa, the gunshots roused no special interest from the front desk. Visiting African heads of state often shot servants and ambitious relatives on state visits. It was usually the most convenient time and place for such toil.
That evening there was a knock at the door.
Anin barked, "See who it is."
A man moved to obey and, to Anin's horror, the stupid one ignored the peephole and flung wide the door.