A Quiver Full of Arrows by Jeffrey Archer Read Free Book Online Page B

people had been stranded in the hotel overnight and had ended up
sleeping in the lounge or the bar. He checked the paperback rack in the lobby
for something to read but there were only four copies left of a tourist guide
to Lagos; everything had been sold.
    Authors who had not been read for years were
now changing hands at a premium. Eduardo returned to his room which was fast
assuming the character of a prison, and baulked at reading the New Federal
Capital project for a fourth time. He tried again to make contact with the
Brazilian Ambassador to discover if he could obtain special permission to leave
the country as he had his own aircraft. No one answered the Embassy phone. He
went down for an early lunch only to find the dining room was once again packed
to capacity. Eduardo was placed at a table with some Germans who were worrying
about a contract that had been signed by the government the previous week,
before the abortive coup. They were wondering if it would still be honoured.
Manuel Rodrigues entered the room a few minutes later and was placed at the
next table.
    During the afternoon, de Silveira ruefully
examined his schedule for the next seven days. He had been due in Paris that
morning to see the Minister of the Interior, and from there should have flown
on to London to confer with the chairman of the Steel Board. His calendar was
fully booked for the next ninety-two days until his family holiday in May.
    “I’m having this year’s holiday in Nigeria,”
he commented wryly to an assistant.
    What annoyed Eduardo most about the coup was
the lack of communication it afforded with the outside world. He wondered what
was going on in Brazil and he hated not being able to telephone or telex Paris
or London to explain his absence-personally. He listened addictively to Radio
Nigeria on the hour every hour for any new scrap of information. At five
o’clock, he learned that the Supreme Military Council had elected a new
President who would address the nation on television and radio at nine o’clock
that night.
    Eduardo de Silveira switched on the
television at eightforty-five; normally an assistant would have put it on for
him at one minute to nine.
    He sat watching a Nigerian lady giving a
talk on dressmaking, followed by the weather forecast man who supplied Eduardo
with the revealing information that the temperature would continue to be hot
for the next month. Eduardo’s knee was twitching up and down nervously as he
waited for the address by the new President. At nine o’clock, after the
national anthem had been played, the new Head of State, General Obasanjo,
appeared on the screen in full dress uniform. He spoke first ofthe tragic death
and sad loss for the nation of the late President, and went on to say that his
government would continue to work in the best interest of Nigeria. He looked
ill at ease as he apologised to all foreign visitors who were inconvenienced by
the attempted coup but went on to make it clear that the dusk to dawn curfew
would continue until the rebel leaders were tracked down and brought to
justice. He confirmed that all airports would remain closed until Lieutenant
Colonel Dimka was in safe custody. The new President ended his statement by
saying that all other forms of communication would be opened up again as soon
as possible. The national anthem was played for a second time, while Eduardo
thought of the millions of dollars that might be lost to him by his
incarceration in that hotel room, while his private plane sat idly on the
tarmac only a few miles away. One of his senior managers A Quiver of ArrouJs opened
a book as to how long it would take for the authorities to capture Lieutenant
Colonel Dimka; he did not tell de Silveira how short the odds were on a month.
    Eduardo went down to the dining room in the
suit he had worn the day before.
    A junior waiter placed him at a table with
some Frenchmen who had been hoping to win a contract to drill bore holes in the
Niger state. Again