Before leaving London, Kagame had called an RPF supporter in Kenya and asked her to meet him at the Nairobi airport. There was no time to call again after he changed his plans, so she went to the airport as they had arranged. There she asked an immigration officer she knew to escort Kagame from his plane. After all the passengers had disembarked, the officer came to her with information he had kept to himself.

“The person you asked me to pick up and help through was not on the plane,” he said. “It’s just as well, because we were alerted to be careful with this person. We were instructed that if he came here, he was to be detained and questioned.”

Having eluded police at airports in London, Brussels and Addis Ababa, Kagame needed to make his way through one more, at his final destination in Uganda. He had called several friends in the Ugandan intelligence services to tell them he was on his way and ask for help in passing through the airport. When the plane landed, he was relieved to see one of them waiting on the tarmac. The friend passed the new overall commander of the RPF through a warehouse!