The Iron Lady of Apapa

By seven in the morning, three people had cried in Ebele Anyanwu's office, and she had not yet finished her coffee.

She sat behind a desk of black glass on the fourteenth floor of the Anyanwu Logistics tower, with a view of the Apapa port stretching away below like a toy city of cranes and container stacks. Her phone rang. Her assistant, a trembling young man named Kelechi, hovered at the door.

"Ma, it's the Customs Comptroller. He says the shipment is held."

"Held for what?"

"Documentation."

"Whose?"

"He didn't say."

"Then he doesn't have a reason." Ebele took a sip of coffee. "Tell him I will see him at nine. In his office. With the original bill of lading and a lawyer."

"Yes, ma."

"And Kelechi."

"Ma?"

"Stop crying. It is unproductive."

He fled. She turned to the screen. A column of figures glared up at her. She was thirty-four, five foot ten in her heels, with a face the business magazines called "severely beautiful." She wore a charcoal suit, a single gold earring, and the expression of a woman who had been underestimated her whole life and had decided to make it expensive.

They called her the Iron Lady of Apapa. She had built Anyanwu Logistics from a single truck, inherited from her father, into a fleet of nine hundred. She had won forty-one consecutive contracts. She had faced down ministers, union bosses, a mob of angry truck drivers and, once, a goat that had wandered into the boardroom.

She had never lost a deal.

And she was very, very tired.

A buzz. The intercom. "Ma, your nine o'clock is here."

"My nine o'clock is the Comptroller."

"No, ma. The other one. The interview."

She frowned. She had forgotten. The HR department had insisted she hire a senior assistant, since Kelechi had developed a nervous twitch. She pressed the button.

"Send him in."

The door opened. A man entered, and for a second she forgot what she'd been about to say.

He was not what she'd expected. She'd pictured a smooth young MBA in a three-piece suit. Instead, the man who stepped across her carpet wore a plain grey shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and a pair of dark trousers that had seen better years. He was tall, slim, with close-cropped hair and the kind of face you couldn't quite place: calm, watchful, faintly tired, with eyes the colour of strong tea.

"Madam Anyanwu," he said, in a quiet voice. "Tunde Akin. Thank you for seeing me."

"Sit."

He sat. He did not fidget. He held a folder in his lap and looked at her directly, without the flinch most people gave. She studied him, annoyed to find she liked it.

"Your CV is impressive," she said, skimming. "Mathematics teacher at Kings College. Six years. Then a gap."

"A year of illness in the family."

"Then logistics consultant. Freelance."

"Yes."

"Why leave teaching?"

"The school closed."

"Why logistics?"

"It is a form of arithmetic." A faint smile. "Moving things from one place to another with the least waste. Like a very large long-division problem."

"I don't hire teachers."

"You hire people who can solve problems."

"I hire people who are afraid of me."

"Then I'm unsuitable." He did not move. "I'm not afraid of you, ma. I'm sorry."

She blinked. For a second, absurdly, she wanted to laugh. "That is the most arrogant thing I have heard this week."

"It is the most honest."

"Is it a tactic?"

"No, ma. A fact." He opened his folder. "You asked in the job listing for someone who could streamline a dispatch system. I have taken the liberty of reviewing yours."

"You've what?"

"It is a public tender. The information was available." He slid a sheet of paper across the glass. "Your route allocation is inefficient. Trucks leaving Apapa for Ibadan are taking the Lagos-Ibadan expressway when the Ikorodu bypass would save forty minutes. You lose, by my estimate, eleven million naira a month in fuel and wasted driver hours."

She stared at the page. She read it twice. Her stomach turned slowly cold.

He was right.

"Who told you this?"

"No one. It is on the numbers."

"My own analysts have not found this."

"Your analysts work for you. They have a reason not to find fault."

She set down the paper. She looked at him for a long time. Outside, a crane clanked, and a ship's horn sounded, deep and mournful.

"You're hired," said Ebele.

"Ma?"

"Salary: nine hundred thousand a month. Start Monday."

"You have not asked my references."

"I don't need references. I have a sense for this." She picked up the phone. "Kelechi. Tell the Comptroller I'll be late. Very late."

Tunde Akin rose. At the door he turned, and for a heartbeat his expression changed. Something cold and focused slid across it, like a shadow passing over a field. Then it was gone, and he smiled the small polite smile of a man grateful for a job.

"Thank you, ma," he said. "You won't regret it."

She smiled back. It was the first time in months.

If she had looked closer, she might have seen what was in his folder. Beneath the CV and the graph, tucked behind the last page, lay a newspaper clipping, ten years old, yellow at the edges. The headline read: ANYANWU LOGISTICS TAKES OVER AKIN HAULAGE. FOUNDER FOUND DEAD.