Chapter Four

Ms McKenzie hopped into a taxi, left The Seamount Hotel and headed back to her office. She
had told her boss she would be there in about an hour. This estimate had overlooked a recent
phenomenon: roadblocks. They were everywhere now. Motorists and pedestrians had to stop
at them for inspection. Only after clearing them, did the guards on duty swing the barriers out
of the way and wave them on. Two hours would have been a better estimate, she now thought.
Her first stop came at Arch Number 22. A guard there ordered her to get out of her taxi and join
a queue of pedestrians. This was a blessing in disguise: requirements for clearance of
pedestrians were minimal. She sailed through them without difficulty. Not so lucky was her taxi
driver, a youth made to seem older by his loosely fitting robes. He disappeared with his taxi
behind a wall, where guards turned him upside down and shook loose change out of his loose
robes first before they let him go. He emerged with a story to tell. Arch Number 22, lit bright by
a blaze from a late morning sun, was shining with dazzling splendor. Designed to serve as a
gateway to Banjul, the Gambia's capital' it was an arch: a colossal arch, high and wide. The
phrase 'Number 22' in its name referred to a date. On July 22, 1994' the legitimate and
undisputed president of the Gambia fell from power in a military coup. To celebrate this change
in fortune, his successor, the architect of his fall, erected Arch Number 22. Ms McKenzie's taxi
driver finally resurfaced. Wary and watchful, he was part of a growing African phenomenon: taxi
drivers with university degrees whom the local job market had failed to absorb in the
professions that they had trained for. He located Ms McKenzie without difficulty. "Ms McKenzie,
let's go!" he said, motioning her back into his taxi. She got back in. "You were gone for two
eternities," she complained. "Did you have any particular reason?" "Yes, those bullies," he said.
"I take it you're referring to the guards. What did they You mean what did they not do?" He
drove off on screaming tyres. "Essentially, they wanted something small. " "Don't you mean a
bribe? Why did they want a bribe ? "Ms McKenzie, be serious!" "I am serious. " "Then leave me
alone." He gave the car more petrol. It threatened to fly. He gave it less. It slowed down.
"Because my taxi has faulty brakes, they said. " "Well, maybe it does. " He braked to a
screeching halt which nearly threw her out of her seat. "So, does it?" he asked her. "Have faulty
brakes, 1 mean?" guess not, " she conceded. "So what did you do? Give them something g small
anyway?" Leave me alone, 1 said. " Then he drove off again. "Anyway, in case you bribed them,
know that giving bribes is as much a crime as taking them. " "Do you know what I'm going to do
on my way back, Ms McKenzie? I'm going to ask the guards I bribed to arrest me for bribing
them. " There is anger in that sarcastic remark, she thought. She decided to leave him alone. By
the time she reached her workplace, late-morning clouds, sagging under the weight of
imminent rain, were hanging low. So when she went to see her boss, he took her directly to the
point. He said he was pulling her out of her assignment to the summit at the Pinnacle. He
explained why. The leave-on-loan arrangement that she had applied for and that was due to
begin the following week had begun on that day instead, he said. She was on a two-year loan
from the Gambian News to the Voice of America with immediate effect. It started to rain. There
was a time when US policy forbade the Voice of America (the VOA) to broadcast in America.
Since other international media, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), could
broadcast in their home countries, this prohibition struck overseas audiences as odd. That
image was bad for the VOA. It had to go. This was why the VOA was now doing things it could
not have done before• Employing non Americans in senior VOA positions was one of them. Ms
McKenzie, a Gambian, was joining the VOA bureau in Banjul in the wake of this change. Mr
Robert Manley, Chief of the Bureau, met her at the main entrance then led her up two f lights of
stairs. Trim and tanned, he looked even younger than his youthful forty years. All the way up, he
walked at a zestful pace, as if he were daring her to race him, for a prize he would specify later,
and only if she won it. "I'm afraid we are going to put you to work right away, Ms McKenzie, " he
told her the moment they entered his office. "We have a breaking story that can't wait." His
every word had a humid flavor of mint, his preferred scent of breath freshener apparently. "Take
a seat." He motioned her to a chair on the near side of a rectangular conference table. "Thank
you, Sir. " She sat down. "Now then ..." He sat beside her. "The VOA thanks the Gambian News
for agreeing to loan you to us, and thanks you for accepting the terms of that arrangement. You
see, a new VOA policy now requires field offices like us to use local professionals whenever
conditions favor their use over that of Americans. Your presence enables us to say we have met
that requirement. But we are not selfish, Ms McKenzie, so we hope you, too, will like your stay
with us." "1 will, Sir. " "Positive. " She meant it. As part of her leave-on-loan arrangement, the
VOA would be paying her a salary totally dwarfing the two beans the Gambian News had been
paying her. "Mr Manley, I know I will, " she added. "Then meet our new arrival from America.
His name is Nick. Nicolas Sentinel." He gestured at a youth in army fatigues, rounded off with
wire-rimmed Gandhi glasses. The youth was sitting on the far side of the table. "This young man
has just hit our shores. He'll be our communications-technician-in-residence. " The youth,
twenty-five years old at the most, had been brooding quietly before this introduction. He
continued to brood quietly even after. "1 am Fiona McKenzie," she said, stretching a hand
towards him, "but you may call me Fiona. " Now the youth sprang into action. Goodness, did he
spring into action! He scrambled to his feet and grabbed her hand from across the table.
"Pleased to meet you, Ms McKenzie," he said. He was shaking her hand. "Mr Manley says you
are the best reporter in town." He was still shaking it. She heard the youth's compliment. To
relish it, inwardly and therefore completely, she pretended she did not. This was why she asked
a totally unrelated question. "So, Mr Sentinel, when did you arrive in the Gambia?" "Yesterday,"
the youth said. "My word, you are a new arrival. Welcome to our country!" "Thank you. " The
youth let go of her hand finally then sat down again. Mr Manley resumed. "Ms McKenzie, a
summit fabricate heads of state will begin shortly at the Pinnacle Hotel," he told her. "That is the
breaking story I mentioned a while ago. .1 know you were going to cover it for the Gambian
News. Now we want you to cover it for us, the VOA, instead." He looked at her. "Why did we
choose you? Well, we chose you basically for two reasons. First, your professional expertise; it
will be needed. Second, your African background; it will come in handy." "I'll do my best, Sir,"
she said. "If I may ask, what kind of VOA backup should I expect?" "Ah." This stub of a word
rode on a whiff of mentholated breath. "Perhaps now is the time to bring in Mr Sentinel." He
turned to the youth. "Yes, jump in, Cowboy ! " First, the youth craned his neck up, sticking it out
like a rooster readying to crow. Next, he adjusted his Gandhi glasses around his ears. Then he
clasped his hands together and, with them still clasped, turned their palms out, in the process
cracking his knuckles loudly, yet, apparently, without hurting himself. Now, at last, he could
speak. "Ms McKenzie, I hope you don't mind my asking this. Did you study in Britain or
something? I mean, gee, your accent!" "Yes. Scotland. " "Edinburgh?" She nodded. "I'm good,
huh? All right, let's move on now. You asked what kind of VOA backup you should expect. For
sure, expect all the help you will need in my area: wireless communications. You know what the
term 'wireless communications' means, don't you?" "No, tell me.' "It means all methods of non-
wired message transmission. You know: stuff like cell phones, or, to you folks up here with a
British heritage, mobile phones. " e Pronounced 'mobile' in the American way: mo-bo. "There
are problems of course: problems of semi-random lognormal shadowing . . . The youth was a
jargon-spewing buffoon, she decided. "And of what else?" she asked, baiting him. "Well, and
the whole nine yards really. Ms McKenzie, are you with me?" She nodded, untruthfully. Then
she lobbed back at her tormentor a one-size-fits-all kind of question. "Where is your niche in all
of this wireless business, Mr Sentinel?" she asked. "It's up there, " the youth answered, pointed
at the ceiling. He meant the sky. "I monitor electronic transmissions. " "How do you do that?" "I
use a real-time multi-phase mega-channel analyzer. " The youth managed to say all that without
choking. "I call the analyzer the Silent Listener. Think of it as an infinite array of radios tuned to
all wavelengths, from zero all the way to infinity. This is so it can catch all aired transmissions.
So, by working with this sweetheart, I can monitor zillions of aired messages daily. " Mr Manley
cleared his throat, letting out another whiff of his scented breath. "Don't feel you have to hold
back anything, Cowboy. Ms McKenzie is one of us now. Tell her the transmissions you monitor
includes private dialogue. "Well, uh . yeah, but only as an unintended bonus. " Embarrassment
had reddened the youth into a ripe tomato. She rubbed it in. "Goodness me, you mean you
eavesdrop on private conversations! What happened to privacy.2" She pronounced 'privacy' in a
British way: pre-vacy. Hey," protested the youth. "I don't break into bedrooms, okay. ? All I do is
harvest the sky. And I don't even actually do that. The Silent Listener does it for me." "What has
it done for you lately?" she asked. "Aha! Now you want to hear my stuff, after all. What
happened to, um, pre-vacy?" "Answer, please," she told him. "Has it harvested the sky for you?"
"Look. I knew from the word go that the summit at the Pinnacle would have breaches of
security. Gatherings like the summit always do. Therefore, as soon as I arrived yesterday, I set up
the Silent Listener then charged it with the task of watching out for those breaches, catching
them as they came and analyzing them for me after it had caught them. I asked it to start by
taking note each time it heard the word 'summit'. You can already see the difficulty there, can't
you? 'Summit' is an English word, so equivalent words in other languages were going to blow by
unheard. And this was not the only problem either. In addition, there were speech-recognition
problems I had to get past just to make the Silent Listener hear the word 'summit' to begin
with." "I got past them! Another thing I had to do was to ask the Silent Listener to keep a special
ear open for all broadcasts with hints of actual breaches of security. Do not tell me this is tricky,
because I already know. When can we say broadcasts smack of actual breaches of security, and
when can we not? Not easy, is it? In the end, what did I do? I made an assumption. All
broadcasts that are in code, I said, are in code to hide actual breaches of security. Bu this
assumption was not of much help, really. All it was to replace one complicated riddle with
another no les: complicated. Because, let me tell you, codes can be tough nuts to crack, and in
this approach, I had to crack them, you see. Frankly, I did not want to go down that road, but I
had to. To cut a long story short, what I ended up doing was to limit myself to simple codes,
known as disguisers. " "What? Disguisers?" "Yes. They mask identity but do little else. Take a
listen. " The youth's voice rose to simulate an imaginary speaker. "Gamma, this is Kappa. Do you
copy? Over." The voice fell to simulate another speaker. "Roger. Kappa, come in. Over. " The
voice rose again to mimic the first speaker. "Beta has just landed. So cut Delta loose. Over and
out. " The youth shrugged. "You know: simple stuff like that. Oh, and the final thing I did? I told
the Silent Listener to record all suspect broadcasts. " "Meaning what?" "Meaning
communications with threat content. Even here, the Silent Listener was not up to the task of
catching all of such communications. However, you will be amazed how much it caught. Here."
The youth reached for a device that, until then, had been squatting mutely near him on the
conference table. He switched it on then keyed in it a number. "Ms McKenzie, listen to this
verbal trinket. " He pressed PLAY. A female voice spoke: "Dr Afolabi, I have to go. Silly boss wants
me back at the office. Something has come up. Sorry. " Ms McKenzie was tongue-tied. When
she could talk again, she did. "That was me, " she confessed. Her eyes were filled with a child's
amazement. Mr Manley was watching her. "May I ask who Dr Afolabi is?" he ventured. "A
summit delegate I was interviewing for the Gambian News, Sir. " She turned to the youth. "Nick,
did you also record the interview itself?" "No. The Silent Listener caught the bit I have just
replayed only because you said it with your cell phone still in transmission mode. 'Silly boss' will
have heard that epithet as well. " She slapped herself on her brow for that indiscretion. "I
shouldn't have called him silly, huh?" "No, you shouldn't have. All right, now hear another
trinket. " He keyed in some number then pressed PLAY again. This time, a male voice spoke:
"Excellent. Keep that phone on at all times, day and night, rain or shine. From now on, I will be
calling you often, even unexpectedly, but only through this number. So always have the mobile
phone on. Unlike your hotel phone, it is completely secure, which means I can talk to you on it
freely. " "Isn't that ironic?" asked the youth, smiling. "The Silent Listener caught that bit of
conversation because the speakers were using wireless cell phones, believing them to be more
secure than their hotel's landline. In this case, the landline was in fact more secure than their
cell phone after all. That is ironic, isn't it?" "Yes, it is. " Ms McKenzie had new respect for the
youth she had just branded a buffoon. He keyed in a different number. "Now hear this trinket,
excerpted from the same conversation." Another male voice spoke: "Then why won't you tell
me your real name?" "Ms McKenzie, keep that question in mind as you listen to the answer. "
The youth keyed in a previous number. The first male voice spoke again: "I won't because our
mission is still at a delicate stage. For that reason, I'd rather you didn't know who I really am yet.
Until I tell you otherwise, just call me your guide. Needless to say, I won't let you see my face
either, but you will hear my voice. Is there anything else you would like to ask me?" The youth
waved that question away and played three other excerpts from different but similar
conversations. He then concluded: "In short, we have a man talking to a total of four other men.
He knows their names but will not tell them his. They should just call him their guide, he insists.
You see, 'guide' is his disguiser, a fake name. Like Gamma and Kappa, in the examples I gave
earlier. He says he is talking in this nameless way because some mission is still at a delicate
stage. Now, what 'mission' is that?" Mr Manley cut the youth off. "Let's stop there for the time
being, Cowboy." Then he looked at his watch. "Goodness, I must run. I have a meeting at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. " He rose. "Cowboy, let's walk our new colleague to her office, shall
we?" They did. A few paces down the corridor later, Mr Manley opened a door. "Ms McKenzie,
meet your office, " he said. "I hope you like it. " "Wow!" She did like it. "Mr Manley, it's lovely.
Thank you. You are welcome, " he said. "Now listen, both of you. I'm giving you free reign. From
here on, you are on your own. So get down to work now, will you?" Then he turned to the
youth. "See you later, Cowboy. " "Go give them hell, Hotshot," answered the youth. He turned
to Ms McKenzie next. "Promise me you won't let Cowboy bully you, okay?" "Have a nice
meeting at the ministry, Mr Manley," she said.