Excerpt of Triple Agent, Double Cross
Epilogue
November 2008
Conakry, Guinea
The night before was unusually rainy for the Guinean capital. The heavy rainfall could have been considered an irritation if not a catastrophe elsewhere in the world for the flooding it caused in some of the neighborhoods in the city. But for most of the residents of Conakry still reeling from the intense heat wave that blighted the country for more than two weeks, the torrential rains came as a welcome relief. It enlivened their spirits and even brought life to the flora that had been wilting and dying from the intense heat wave from the Sahara Desert. The rain also washed the thick layers of dust off the streets, giving some originality to the color of the asphalt roads.
However, for a man walking the streets of Conakry that morning, the effects of the rain and the nature of the city were of no interest to him. His mind was on the Cameroun cemetery.
The man crossed the November 8 Bridge as if nothing else mattered in the world, even though he stayed conscious of the sounds and activities around him. He raised his head fully only once, just as he walked past the Donka hospital located in the city center.
Any curious bystander watching him at that moment would likely have noticed the thoughtful expression on his face that gave him the academic demeanor of a professor grappling with a worrying phenomenon. The patches of grey hair on the man’s head made it look like he was balding prematurely, since it contrasted with his athletic gait that could only have been expected from a physically fit person in his late thirties or early forties. However, the stranger was a quinquagenarian with more life experiences than most men his age.
An expression of sweet reminiscence spread across the stranger’s face as he walked the street of the Cameroun neighborhood and entered the cemetery. Nevertheless, this look of appreciation at the fact that a Guinean neighborhood was named after his country suddenly changed to one of extreme seriousness as he approached the grave. He knew what he would find as he steeled himself and took out the flowers from the inner pocket of his raincoat. He laid them on the empty grave deprived of its sarcophagus, and then crossed himself several times. He mumbled a short prayer after that, and then turned around and walked away, wondering whether the world would ever find the embalmed body of Félix-Roland Moumié that went missing after the death of Guinea’s first president Sékou Touré.
The lone figure that stalked the Conakry morning that day stated in his memoirs written two decades after the assassination of Vincent Ndi, and half a century after the system killed Ruben Um Nyobé, Félix-Roland Moumié and a host of other prominent Cameroonian political figures that he visited the graves of all the martyred UPC leaders he knew while growing up. He said he did that just to pay his respects and be at peace with himself. He also stated that he visited the Cameroun Cemetery in Conakry on more than five occasions.
On a curious note, he stated that Vincent Ndi would have been disappointed with the character Ivan Fru became, and then went on to add that he kept his promise to Vincent Ndi by tracing and reactivating the political genius referred to as ‘The Green’, but whose actual code name was Le Rouge. He stated in one of the pages that Le Rouge gave that phase of the struggle against the Franco-Cameroonian political establishment its ideological direction, and that he too got betrayed in the end.
Janvier Tchouteu is the author of Triple Agent, Double Cross
CAMEROON: The Haunted Heart of Africa
by Janvier Tchouteu,
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