hadn’t called Muddy.
We went back to O’s and continued sifting through the records. Besides Ngotho, no one had done any work in the basement for at least a year, unless there was deleted or missing footage—but the days and hours were in sequence. There were no suspicious-looking deliveries, or any that ended up with a truck in the basement.
Soon, Mary woke up and started getting ready to go to work. We had worked through the night.
“No laughing,” she said sleepily as she walked by us to go to the bathroom. Her huge afro had been matted into a huge mohawk.
“Razor sharp,” I said to her, now that I was high with fatigue.
Mary made herself a scrambled egg and a cup of coffee, kissed O goodbye, and then she was off to teach. This much I had come to know—love and deserving love do not go together, love has nothing to do with being worthy. At least not in my case, and certainly not in O’s.
“Let’s keep digging back. You go through the security discs, and I’ll go through the logbooks,” I said.
The farther we went back, the more it seemed like our strategy wasn’t working. No one plants a bomb months before its due date—it was against all logic. But we had nothing else to do and so we kept at it.
Finally, after a whole fucking day, something at last. Five men getting out of a van in the basement of the hotel. I couldn’t make out their faces but clearly four of them were white and onewas black. The date was September 14, 2006, about a year before the bombing.
O flipped through the logbook to the same date. There. We finally had it: “Reason for Visit. Fix crack in basement.” The company name listed was Golden Bears Co.
“What kind of a name is that?” O asked.
It sounded familiar. I knew it from somewhere. Then it hit me.
“It’s the name of a university football team—Berkeley … California,” I said.
“Someone has a sense of humor,” O said with an excited laugh. “I can bet you there isn’t a single company by that name in Kenya. That alone … the guys at the gate should have been suspicious.”
“Not surprising they were let through—four white men,” I answered.
O knew what I meant—there was a high premium on whiteness in Kenya. Even criminals who were busy terrorizing their black brethren left the
wazungu
free to roam the country—one could argue it was a service to Kenya, the tourist money benefited everyone. The four white men would have had the run of the place just because they were white.
I rewound the video to the moment where we could see the van pulling in and one of the guards walking around it with a mirror, looking for explosives underneath.
In the video, he walks to the back, looks at what is presumably equipment, and then waves them on through. The van goes into the underground parking lot. The men get out and the driver reverses and parks facing the ramp. One can see the men appearing and disappearing in the outer edges without actually being able to see what is going on. So simple: rather than mess withthe security camera by pulling complicated stunts, they give the guards in the security room a full view of nothing important.
They worked out of sight for six hours before leaving. When they pulled out, we saw a space covered over with a plastic sheet. They came back a second day. When they left again, the floor appeared freshly cemented.
We had something, but not quite. Why plant the bomb a year in advance? We went through Kenyan history looking for why October 28 might be important—nothing. Searched through the major American holidays, still nothing. There was nothing special about that day. There was nothing special about the guests. It had to be a planned random attack, I said to O.
“A planned random attack? Have you been smoking?” was his response. I couldn’t have agreed more.
But still, we finally had something to work with. It was nothing in the world of lawyers and judges, but in our world, it was something.
It was time to go
We went back to O’s and continued sifting through the records. Besides Ngotho, no one had done any work in the basement for at least a year, unless there was deleted or missing footage—but the days and hours were in sequence. There were no suspicious-looking deliveries, or any that ended up with a truck in the basement.
Soon, Mary woke up and started getting ready to go to work. We had worked through the night.
“No laughing,” she said sleepily as she walked by us to go to the bathroom. Her huge afro had been matted into a huge mohawk.
“Razor sharp,” I said to her, now that I was high with fatigue.
Mary made herself a scrambled egg and a cup of coffee, kissed O goodbye, and then she was off to teach. This much I had come to know—love and deserving love do not go together, love has nothing to do with being worthy. At least not in my case, and certainly not in O’s.
“Let’s keep digging back. You go through the security discs, and I’ll go through the logbooks,” I said.
The farther we went back, the more it seemed like our strategy wasn’t working. No one plants a bomb months before its due date—it was against all logic. But we had nothing else to do and so we kept at it.
Finally, after a whole fucking day, something at last. Five men getting out of a van in the basement of the hotel. I couldn’t make out their faces but clearly four of them were white and onewas black. The date was September 14, 2006, about a year before the bombing.
O flipped through the logbook to the same date. There. We finally had it: “Reason for Visit. Fix crack in basement.” The company name listed was Golden Bears Co.
“What kind of a name is that?” O asked.
It sounded familiar. I knew it from somewhere. Then it hit me.
“It’s the name of a university football team—Berkeley … California,” I said.
“Someone has a sense of humor,” O said with an excited laugh. “I can bet you there isn’t a single company by that name in Kenya. That alone … the guys at the gate should have been suspicious.”
“Not surprising they were let through—four white men,” I answered.
O knew what I meant—there was a high premium on whiteness in Kenya. Even criminals who were busy terrorizing their black brethren left the
wazungu
free to roam the country—one could argue it was a service to Kenya, the tourist money benefited everyone. The four white men would have had the run of the place just because they were white.
I rewound the video to the moment where we could see the van pulling in and one of the guards walking around it with a mirror, looking for explosives underneath.
In the video, he walks to the back, looks at what is presumably equipment, and then waves them on through. The van goes into the underground parking lot. The men get out and the driver reverses and parks facing the ramp. One can see the men appearing and disappearing in the outer edges without actually being able to see what is going on. So simple: rather than mess withthe security camera by pulling complicated stunts, they give the guards in the security room a full view of nothing important.
They worked out of sight for six hours before leaving. When they pulled out, we saw a space covered over with a plastic sheet. They came back a second day. When they left again, the floor appeared freshly cemented.
We had something, but not quite. Why plant the bomb a year in advance? We went through Kenyan history looking for why October 28 might be important—nothing. Searched through the major American holidays, still nothing. There was nothing special about that day. There was nothing special about the guests. It had to be a planned random attack, I said to O.
“A planned random attack? Have you been smoking?” was his response. I couldn’t have agreed more.
But still, we finally had something to work with. It was nothing in the world of lawyers and judges, but in our world, it was something.
It was time to go
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