Prince Johnson in the Rain

It was about 3 o'clock and pouring rain when I set out for the document. For a second time in a span of three weeks, I was headed to the Monrovia home of Senator Prince Yormie Johnson, a former warlord implicated in the deaths of thousands during Liberia's civil war.

We reached the Duport Road junction, not far from the site of a mass grave memorialized by a tiny wooden marker on the edge of the swamp.

We drove down a dirt road riddled with potholes. We approached the tall red building surrounded by a razor-wire lined wall. A compact man dressed in black flew to the car before I could open the passenger door. "Who are you here to see?" he asked. "Moses Ziah," I said. "Ok. Wait." The man disappeared and two minutes later returned with another man dressed in a light African shirt who escorted me to the palaver hut, under Johnson's second-story gaze. I called Moses who told me he went to copy the document and would return in 30 minutes.

The palaver hut was crowded with people--all men. I asked to speak to the senator. The second man went into the house. He came back shaking his head. "The senator has just come home and from out of the rain. He's not dressed to see you. He's not dressed as a leader. It would be much better if you would come back tomorrow."

I thought if he didn't want me to see him, I could call him. But his phone was switched off. I asked the man again, insisting I had a deadline. He told me it would not be possible. A young man walked briskly out of the house and to me. "You can go up now," he said. I felt I had been summoned.

Johnson did not rise from his imitation leather chair. He wore a t-shirt and red pajama pants. There was no sign of his customary fez. He offered me a seat. We started talking about what he planned to do.

For nearly two hours, he talked about the insider who had informed him the elections commission would declare Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the winner in the next few days. He said he met with the vice president and told him the president should not cheat and could be helped to prevail if she played fairly.

"If the votes were forthcoming and announced, I could tap one of the parties for the run-off. But they don't want those votes to be counted and they don't even want a run-off so they are counting as fast as they can to make sure Ellen gets the votes."

At one point, to demonstrate that he was not interested in taking part in violence, he called his wife, a younger woman with light skin, into the living room. She came in for a moment and wordless, turned around and walked away. He said if he sent his family out of the country, Liberians would know he meant to get involved.

Men of all ages wandered in and out of Johnson's living room. The light faded and we sat in the darkness for awhile before Johnson yelled to someone to turn on the generator. One young man, draped over a chair, rose to take me out of the room. I said I still needed Moses for the document. "I'll just give you mine," he said.

We walked down the stairs and into the dark courtyard. He handed me a folded print-out. Nine parties in all had signed, saying a "massive flaw" had been carried out by the National Elections Commission. Under the second "action" the parties said they had taken in order to protect Liberians' votes, someone had handwritten: "If the process continues, we will not accept the results."