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Miller H Caldwell, click here
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Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Secret Ashes
By the third week at the factory I seemed to have understood every part of the oil production process. Farmers regularly brought in their peanut harvest and were paid promptly, which pleased them. The machinery was itself oiled and working well to chaff the shells, and the press brought out the oil to where sterile bottles were filled every day. Lorries stood in a line at the end of the premises to transport the bottles in cartons of 12 to the airport, a stone’s throw away. It was a slick business model.
I was sitting at my desk when I began to smell burning. I stood up and headed towards the glass louvers to locate the source of this nasal intrusion. I saw outside Mr Frempong standing over a brazier. He seemed to be in a daze. He was throwing paper by the handful into the hungry flames from a box. With a wooden stick, he turned over the pages, ensuring they completely burned.
If these were his own papers then he should not have been using up company time to burn them, but I thought they must be work-related and so I decided to investigate for myself. I made my way out of the building wondering how to challenge Mr Frempong politely.
When I turned around the corner of the office, I saw the conflagration had died down and there was no sign of anyone. The box had gone.
The stick Mr Frempong had used lay beside the brazier. I approached feeling the heat warm my face. I lifted the stick and flicked out a few half-burnt pages and stood on them. I picked up the first, which stunned me into retrieving more from the embers. In the end, I saved four pages that had artistically burnt edges. I spread them out on the ground. They were lists. I ordered them alphabetically. They were the names and addresses of most of the National Embassies in Accra, the capital. Some had lines drawn through them while others had an asterisk beside the name or the address.
I held them gingerly in case they would further disintegrate and returned to my office. I did not quite reach the door.
Peace sat smiling, waving a blue paper. ‘It’s airmail for you,’ she said thrusting her hand towards me with the correspondence.
‘Airmail?’ I queried. I asked Peace if Moscow had an instruction for me.
‘Yes, airmail, try again. Think more personal. I mean think of a fluttering heart,’ she giggled like a school girl.
I had forgotten how she had grilled me during the delightful evening at her home about the girl I’d left behind in Scotland. It dawned on me—of course, Morag must have written. I took the letter from her and turned it over, and in seeing the return address my thoughts were confirmed.
‘I’ll bring you a coffee and see that you are not disturbed.’
I smiled and thanked her, but her expression turned to disgust. ‘I think you should wash your hands first. Goodness knows how you have got dem so dirty.’
After hurriedly washing my hands, I sat down at my desk. I took a knife to carefully slice open the feather- light aerogramme. I turned it over to read the last line and a smile appeared on my face. Morag had written of her undying love and smothered the last line with a row of hugs and kisses. I had been forgiven. I launched into reading her letter with a hungry appetite for her news.
Of course, to begin with, she responded to the points I had made in my letter to her. She had acknowledged it had arrived ten days after I posted it. The main point of her letter was that she was getting her yellow fever injection the following week, and in a month’s time, she would be in Ghana at the Korle Bu teaching hospital’s maternity unit. I checked the date the letter was written. That meant in twenty days she would be in Accra. I had to see Utechin soon about some leave.
Now I had two reasons to speak to him. Would he be in a generous mood if I approached him right away? I looked at my watch. It was almost 3 p.m.—I’d have to wait until tomorrow.
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Caught in a Cold War Trap
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