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On news from Guinea that the Ghanaian ambassador and his staff were being held under house arrest during Nkrumah's visit, Ankrah broke relations with Sékou Touré. He re-established the relations Nkrumah had broken off with Britain, which returned the compliment by recognizing his regime (as did the U.S. last week). Ankrah also closed up The Redeemer's guerrilla training camps with the curt announcement that Ghana's "days of harboring political refugees to subvert other states are over." Then he ordered 900 Russian and 200 Chinese "advisers" to leave the country.
Ghanaians cheered the decrees, hooted and booed when the buses carrying the deported Reds to the airport passed them on the street. Unable to believe his ears, U.S. Ambassador Franklin Williams drove past the Chinese embassy to see what was going on. He found the embassy barricaded with packing boxes, and a crowd of Ghanaians standing outside. When they saw the American flag on his limousine, they broke into a cheer. In Peking, the expulsion was labeled an "atrocity." Russian Ambassador Georgi Rodionov took it somewhat more philosophically. "These things happen," he said.
The Red T-Bird. Nkrumah continued to talk bravely throughout the week about returning triumphantly to Accra. No one believed him, of course, but there were plenty of reasons—apart from wanting his Redeemer's job back —to bring Kwame home. One of them was a lissome mulatto girl who, Ghanaian police last week announced, was Nkrumah's mistress. Her name was Genoveva Marais, and she had been Kwame's playmate on weekends at his country estate. To keep her happy, he had given her a job at Ghana Television and bought her a red Thunderbird convertible.
An even more compelling motive for his return was revealed by his personal financial adviser, a Ghanaian business man named E. A. Ayeh Kumi. According to Kumi, Kwame had used his nine years as President to amass a fortune of "not less than $7,000,000," and most of the money was in Ghana. Part of the earnings had come from his printing company and two daily newspapers in Accra, but Nkrumah's biggest moneymaker was the National Development Corporation, which held a virtual monopoly on Ghana's import trade and was the only automobile insurance company that Ghanaian civil servants were allowed to use. Unless he could get his hands on the money, Nkrumah might quickly starve to death. All he had with him when he flew to Peking fortnight ago was $130,000.