By Alex Shoumatoff

The following piece is taken from a lengthy article written by Alex Shoumatoff for the November 1991 issue of VANITY FAIR magazine. Mr. Shoumatoff is a visiting scholar at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Recently Alex Shoumatoff and Harold Marcus, “the noted American Ethiopianist,” have attempted to reach former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in Zimbabwe.

Marcus and I spent a week in Zimbabwe tracking down Mengistu. We begin by taking a cab out to Norton, a rural community thirty miles southwest of the capital, where The New York Times had reported he had bought a farm. Not only does this prove to be a baseless rumor, picked up by the paper’s Harare stringer from an Ethiopian exile in the Europa Cafe, but the Nortonians we ask for directions denounce us to the local police. For four hours we sit waiting in the office of Chief Inspector Mabuto, a giant in khaki shorts and knee-socks, who phones in the vital statistics on our passports to his superior and awaits instructions. The problem, we later discover, is that rich Ethiopian exiles in the United States have offered a big reward — in one version $4 million — to whoever bumped off Mengistu, and we are being mistaken for Tony and Luigi, two hit men from New Jersey who bought the contract. At last the chief inspector says, “You are free to go, but I don’t want to see you around here without the proper accreditation.”

So now there is nothing to do but go through official channels. Everyone, for once, is incredibly helpful. The American ambassador provides us with a letter that says we have “legitimate reasons” for seeing Mengistu, which we take to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I give it and a letter for Mengistu I have drafted on Vanity Fair Stationery — a masterfully ingenuous, I-want-to-be-your-buddy presentation in which I even offer to hit some tennis balls with him — to Deputy Secretary Goche, who promises to see that it gets to him.

While awaiting Mengistu’s decision, we infiltrate the local scene and, after sifting through half a dozen rumored whereabouts, figure out where he is hiding: at a government guesthouse in Gunhill, a plush suburb of Harare, a tropical Scarsdale. His son attends St. John’s College, an exclusive Anglican boys’ school in the even tonier suburb of Borrowdale.

At an Italian restaurant three high-spirited Russians invite us to their table. Their business cards identify them as exporters of computer software. After killing a bottle of Stolichnaya, the senior member of the threesome confesses sheepishly that they are K.G.B.

“So what are you doing here?” I ask.

“We’ve come to make sure Mengistu does his farming,” he says with a twinkle.

The next evening, at a private bar, we meet Charlie, a former Vietnam helicopter pilot, D.E.A. agent, colonel in the Southern Rhodesian army, and C.I.A. spook. Charlie is willing to bet a hundred bucks that Mengistu will be “taken out” in the next six months by local Ethiopians. He’s heard the contract is for $500,000. “The wife was in Cuthbert’s this afternoon,” he confides. “She bought tekkies [tennis shoes] for her son.”

Charlie is definitely plugged into the Harare rumor mill. He has also heard that Mengistu brought Haile Selassie’s Rolls convertible into exile with him, and that President Mugabe, who has been taking a lot of flak for giving him asylum, is considering an extradition request from the new Ethiopian government. But Marcus thinks this is highly unlikely. “That would open a can of worms no one wants to deal with.”

At closing time on Friday afternoon we troop into Deputy Secretary Goche’s office, and the word is: at this moment Mengistu is not prepared to talk to anyone. Though chagrined, we aren’t exactly surprised. We leave our phone numbers in case he changes his mind.

On the plane out of Harare, Marcus runs into an Ethiopian woman named Yeshi, whom he has known for thirty years. “In the beginning, it looked and sounded like it was going to be a bright future,” she tells us. “But it turned out to be seventeen years of nothing but bloodshed.” Even so, Yeshi is not in favor of Mengistu’s extradition and trial. “The best thing is to let him live with his conscience. What is death anyway.”