“Could I have some water?” I asked. There was nothing on earth that I wanted more. I could barely speak now.

One officer, in mirror shades, glanced over at the other, who shook his head no.

“What am I charged with?” I asked.

“Stupid question,” said Mirror Shades.

To demonstrate, the second cop walked up and drove his fist into my stomach. My wind was gone, even before I hit the floor like a dry sack.

“Get him up!”

Mirror Shades hoisted me easily, then put his powerful. arms around my shoulders from behind. When the next punch came, he kept me from falling over, and also made sure my body absorbed the full impact. I vomited immediately, a little surprised there was anything to bring up.

“I have money,” I said, trying what had worked before in this country, back at Immigration.

The lead cop was huge-as tall as Sampson, with a flopping Idi Amin belly. He looked down the slope of his body right into my eyes. “Let's see what you have.”

“Not here,” I said. Flaherty, my CIA contact, had supposedly set up a money fund for me in a Lagos bank, which at this point was the equivalent of a million miles away. “But I can get it-”

The lead cop crashed his elbow into my jaw. Then came another wrecking ball of a punch to my chest. Suddenly I couldn't breathe.

He stepped back and waved Mirror Shades out of the way. With an agility I wouldn't have guessed at, the large, fat man kicked high with one boot and caught me square in the chest again. All the air remaining went out of me. I felt as if I'd just been crushed.

I heard, rather than saw, the two guards leave the room. That was it. They left me lying on the floor; no interrogation, no demands, no explanations.

No hope?

Chapter 42

BACK IN THE holding cell, I was given a bowl of cassava and a cup of water, only a few ounces, though. I bolted the water but found I couldn't eat the cassava, which is an important vegetable throughout Africa. My throat closed when I tried to swallow solid food.

A young prisoner hovered nearby and was staring at me. With my back to the wall, I whispered barely loud enough for him to hear, “You want it?” I held out the bowl.

“We hail the cassava, the great cassava,” he wheezed as he took the bowl. “It's from a famous poem we learn in school.”

He scrabbled over and sat next to me, both of us watching the door for guards.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“Sunday, sir.”

He couldn't have been more than twenty, if that. His clothes were dirty but seemed middle-class to me, and he had a three-stripe tribal scar on each cheek.

“Here, Sunday. You'd better not be seen talking to me, though.”