The Golden Chair

by A J Fontenot

  “Now,” Kwami said, starting the engine, “we follow them.”

  45

  The Golden Chair

  “On the first night I was here,” Erin said, turning to Ben, “Kwami talked about an old Ashanti legend of a chair like that.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said, “Kwami…he says a lot of things.”

  “Think about it. Mofi,” she said, turning to him, “you said you were working for an underwater logging company, right? Harvesting the hardwood from Lake Volta.”

  He nodded.

  “And Paul’s old friend,” she said, turning back to Ben, “who hasn’t seen him in years, sends Mofi out to find him and tell him all about…what…a bedtime legend?”

  “Meanwhile,” she continued, “it was the ‘pending outbreak,’” — she held up her fingers, making quotes — “that brought me here in the first place. But…what if the outbreak was just a cover?”

  “Which is why…,” Ben said, picking up her train of thought.

  “It’s why data wasn’t adding up,” she finished. “Right. And what if the underwater logging was just a cover to find this…,” she motioned to Mofi, “golden chair thing.”

  Ben began slowly nodding as she talked through it.

  “And that would explain,” she continued, “why they killed the workers.”

  “Exactly,” Ben said, “because if the rumors got out, they’d be off the charts — you heard Kwami talking about it. That would raise all kinds of attention for Lennox and his operation.”

  “So,” Erin said, “they used the workers until they found what they wanted, and then…killed them, blamed it on some unknown bacterium,” she said waving her hand, “which they conveniently had SERA to confirm to the world that it was under control.”

  The two of them were silent for a moment.

  “But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” Erin said. “If all this is right, and if there is such a thing as the golden chair…then what does Lennox want with it? What’s his—”

  Her words were cut short with a loud crack, splitting the air between them.

  For a moment, Erin didn’t react.

  She heard the loud sound. Felt it, really. But her mind was elsewhere, and it—

  Another loud crack. And another after it.

  She felt Ben push her down. As he did, she was aware of him pulling the make-shift desk next to them onto its side, papers flopping out into the air.

  She was on the ground, sitting behind the table. Ben was beside her, motioning with his hand, silence.

  She looked around and saw Mofi, dropping down, in the other direction.

  “Shooter,” Ben called out.

  Shooter, she thought, still processing how that could be…

  She wanted to turn and look, but all she could manage was to stay completely still, frozen.

  Ben moved. He stood up.

  Everything in her wanted to pull him back down. But she was stuck. Even her voice was frozen.

  As he stood, he jumped over the table. Then he was running. Running toward where the bullets had come from. She pulled herself to the side, looking in the direction he’d gone. As she did, she saw a man drop from a tree, a couple hundred feet away, he was holding something…a gun. As soon as he hit the ground, he began running. Ben was…chasing him.

  She watched the two and then remembered Mofi.

  Looking over at him, she was surprised to see that he never dove for cover. He was, just, lying there, exposed. And then…she saw it. He was hit.

  The shooter hit Mofi.

  In a jump-crawl, she was next to him, holding him.

  His chest heaved, pulling in hard, shallow breaths. His shirt was full of dark red blood, and she couldn’t tell where it was coming from, only that it had hit him, and that he’d bled a lot already.

  “Mofi,” she said, looking at him. Her hand reached up to touch his face. “Mofi, can you hear me?”

  His eyes looked around before finding her. He pulled a hand up, started to speak.

  “Shh, shh,” she said. “Just be still, okay.”

  He pulled his head up to look down at the front of him and then let his head fall back. His eyes looked at Erin. “Paul…,” he said, wincing, and closing his eyes. His breathing was getting worse. She was wondering if his lung was punctured.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “don’t talk right now. We’ll tell Paul everything. Just rest right now.” She looked up, perhaps for Ben. For some kind of help, or hope.

  Erin’s arm was under Mofi’s head, holding him. Her other hand was holding his. She noticed his breaths were less frequent now. And his eyes, they’d stopped looking around as much.

  She watched him as she realized there wasn’t anything she could do for him.

  Ben came running back, out of breath, and slid down next to Erin and Mofi. He was looking at all that had happened to Mofi.

  “The shooter,” he said, still assessing Mofi, “he’s gone.”

  Mofi, Erin noticed, had stopped moving.

  Ben looked down at Mofi, and then at Erin, who was still holding Mofi’s hand.

  “Mofi…too,” she said, looking up at Ben.

  Ben sat back, pressing his fingers into his eyes. He took a deep breath and stood up and started walking.

  Erin stayed still. She saw everything clearly. Mofi alive, is now, gone…forever.

  But, as she sat there, she wasn’t afraid. Nor was she sad. She just…was. Was this, she wondered, what shock felt like? She’d never seen someone die before. And certainly not like this.

  She pulled her hand out from behind Mofi’s head, letting it move gently to the side, away from her. She didn’t stand. She just sat. Looking up at Ben. He stopped walking.

  She looked down at herself, her hands and shirt were streaked and blotted with Mofi’s blood.

  “Jonah Lennox did this,” she said slowly, looking up at Ben.

  Ben looked back at her, but she could tell, he wasn’t there yet. The anger that was slowly building in her veins wasn’t yet in his.

  “Ben,” she said, still low, still controlled, “Lennox is behind this. He’s behind all of it.”

  46

  The Loading

  Jonah Lennox stood in linen pants, leather uppers, and his shirt sleeves rolled up. He watched with unblinking eyes. The sun was hot, and the back of his shirt stuck to him. But if he felt it, he didn’t let it show.

  The off-road forklift carrying the brown wooden box, made tracks in the red dirt as it swiveled. The machine stopped at the back of an eighteen-wheeler, its rear doors open.

  “Slowly,” he said.

  The hydraulics on the forklift hissed as the machine operator positioned the cargo to slide into the back of the truck.

  The man standing next to him wore a brown Customs uniform and held a clipboard, which he glanced down at too often. He looked at Lennox without moving his head.

  Lennox didn’t move as watched the cargo slide in. The machine operator got out of the forklift and climbed into the back of the truck, tying down the cargo so that it didn’t shift in transport.

  “Have what you need?” Lennox said to the man next to him, without looking at him. Lennox wasn’t a particularly tall man, but he still stood nearly a head above the Customs officer.

  “Er,” the man said, looking down at the manifest on his clipboard and then back up at the truck, “yes.”

  The other man jumped down from the back of the truck, brushing his hands as he did.

  “Seal it,” Lennox told him.

  The worker swung the heavy metal doors on the back of the truck until they clanked shut. He clamped a seal on the container, showing the Customs official, who looked at it and made his note. The Customs officer pulled a paper clamp from his pocket and pressed it onto the document, leaving a round perforated mark on the paper.

  “Here,” he said, handing it Lennox, “you’re pre-cleared for export.”

  Lennox took the paper and looked at the man for the first time. “Are you sure?” he sai
d, continuing to stare at the other man.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding his head, “just have your trucker show them this paperwork when they enter the port. All is in order.”

  Lennox walked to the front of the truck, where the truck-driver was sitting, waiting. He hopped, lightly onto the step of the truck, holding on to the rail with one hand, standing at eye-level with the driver. He handed him the paperwork.

  “Straight to the port,” he said, “It’s already Customs cleared. Don’t stop. And if anyone tries to stop you, call me before you do anything. Understand?”

  The driver nodded, took the paper, and pulled a knob on his dash as Lennox dropped back to the ground. The truck let out a loud hiss. On the other side of the cab, the forklift driver climbed in. The truck drove away.

  The Customs man was still standing off to the side. Lennox looked at him. “You can go.” The man moved away to his vehicle and drove away.

  Lennox watched him drive away and pulled out his phone. He dialed, waited, pushed a few more buttons and waited again for the click. Secure.

  “Loaded and en route,” he said and hung up.

  47

  Answers

  “I’m going,” Erin said, standing up.

  Ben was sitting, his hands holding up his face, staring out at nothing in particular.

  “Going…,” he said, “going where?”

  “The site,” she said. “Where Mofi came from and where the loggers were killed.”

  Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the reality that someone was shot and now lay dead only a few feet from him, was all beginning to settle in. He felt groggy as his mind tried to catch up to what Erin was saying.

  “Why?” he said, looking at her.

  “Because, that’s where answers will be.”

  “Answers…,” he said. His mind was so far from answers. His mind was on solutions. On fall-out. On next steps for what to do when you’re operating in a foreign country and a native of that country gets murdered next to you. There aren’t guidelines for that sort of thing.

  “Answer to what?”

  “The people who did this,” she said, pointing back to Mofi, “they are trying very hard to hide something. Trying so hard, they’re willing to kill for it. Everything they’ve done has been to keep people away. The new bacterium. Lennox and Keeler collecting data samples directly. And now…now this.”

  “But why?” Ben said. “Say that’s all true, say Jonah Lennox manufactured the outbreak story, fabricated the data, and even,” he lowered his voice as he said it, “killed Mofi. Why would he do all of that for this ancient Ashanti artifact?”

  Erin shook her head, crossing her arms, “There’s something more to it,” she said.

  “What?” Ben said.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. “But that’s why I need to go there. To find it out.”

  As much as Ben didn’t want to admit it right now, didn’t want to deal with this extra layer of complication right now…what she was saying was making sense.

  “Fine,” Ben said with a sigh, standing up.

  “Fine what?” she said. “I’m not asking for your permission.”

  “I wasn’t giving it,” he said. “Fine, meaning, if you’re going,” he looked at her directly, “then I’m coming with you.”

  “Fine,” she said, turning and walking to the old yellow Land Rover.

  48

  Going North

  They turned north onto the main road, leaving the SERA camp.

  Up to this point, Erin and had only ever gone south. To Accra, to Bergora, even when she and Marisol went to the lab.

  North, Erin noticed, was much less cultivated. And soon the road was no longer paved. They drove for a while, not seeing the little towns that dotted the roads south. Occasionally, though, they’d pass a small gas station, planted in the middle of nowhere. Erin assumed they were deserted.

  A short while later, Ben stopped at one to get more gas. They were subsidized by the government, he explained. It was similar to the way the government paid for the roads. The rural economy couldn’t support these things on their own. But without them, they’d suffer even more, so the government pays for them.

  A moment later, they were back on the road. And the regular bumps from the road continued.

  “So…you’ve been to the logging site before?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking over at her, “I’ve got a friend who works for Keeler.”

  “A friend?” she said, looking at him.

  “Not a friend like that,” he added. “More of an acquaintance. He works security.”

  She was still looking at him.

  “He’s on the level,” Ben said. “We swap favors from time to time.”

  She looked back out her window, watching the tree blur by.

  They kept heading north, the road occasionally tossing them inside the Land Rover. The bumps and holes getting bigger. Most of the trip passed in silence. A silence Erin was thankful for. A silence that let her think. And relax.

  Ben pulled out his phone, pushed a button, and held it to his ear.

  “Who are you calling?” she said.

  “Paul,” he said. “I tried him earlier, before we left, couldn’t get him.”

  He put the phone back down as another bump rocked them both.

  “Still nothing.”

  “Is that normal?” she said.

  “Him not answering?” He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  The sun was now coming in sideways through the truck. Filling everything with an orange glow. Up ahead they saw a town. The first since they’d started north. But as they got closer, they noticed, it was empty. The buildings were abandoned. Or, mostly abandoned. The area around didn’t look too fertile. Erin figured the town must have failed. Like a ghost town in the American West. Whatever sustained it before was—

  “I want you to follow my lead here,” Ben said, “and only do what I do.” He was looking steadily ahead as he said it.

  She looked at him, caught off guard by the sudden seriousness in his voice. She felt their speed begin to decrease.

  “What do you…,” she started, but then, looking where he was looking, she saw them.

  Ahead, men with guns, waving for them to stop.

  49

  Chicken

  “How can you eat?” Gavin asked, his knee rocking up and down.

  “I’m hungry,” Kwami said without looking up at him. “I always eat when I’m hungry.”

  The noise from Accra was around them, as they sat outside, on a bench next to a chicken-and-rice stand. Across from Kwami, Gavin kept looking around, watching the cars pass by, watching the people pass by, not noticing any of them.

  “So…what’s next?” Gavin said.

  Kwami put his chicken leg down and looked at Gavin.

  “You’ve asked me this same question about forty times.”

  Gavin’s expression didn’t seem to register that the answer would be the same. He said nothing in response, just looked at Kwami.

  “We wait,” Kwami said. “We wait.”

  “We…wait,” repeated Gavin. “We wait for what?” he said, raising his voice.

  “We wait until he calls.”

  “How is he going to do that if he’s in jail?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Kwami said, going back to his chicken.

  Gavin let out a huff of air and stood up and started pacing.

  Kwami looked down at his watch, wiped his hands, and pulled out his phone, dialing.

  “Who are you calling?” Gavin asked.

  “Ben.”

  Kwami waited, but there was no answer. He hung up, reached into his pocket for a piece of paper, and dialed another number.

  “Who are you calling now,” Gavin said, “Paul?”

  “No,” Kwami said without looking up at him. “Erin. Now sit down and quit asking.”

  Gavin did not sit down, but folded his arms, and resumed his pacing. He continued to watch Kwami.


  Kwami put the phone down. “No answer.”

  “What does that mean?” Gavin said, stopping his pacing.

  “It means…they didn’t answer.”

  “Well, I mean, shouldn’t we leave them a message or something?”

  “How would that go?” Kwami said, still holding his phone, “Paul’s in jail, not sure when he’ll be out, hope all’s well with you, talk soon?”

  Gavin looked at him but didn’t reply.

  “We wait, and later, we try them again,” Kwami said, going back to his chicken. “If I still can’t reach them, I’ll leave them a message. But for now, most important, we stay calm.”

  Gavin looked away and started pacing again.

  50

  The Check Point

  “Step out,” the man in fatigues, with a rifle over his shoulder, said.

  Ben didn’t get out, but instead smiled, like this was all routine.

  “Good day, sir,” he said, “our papers are all in order.” He lifted a laminated badge from a lanyard hanging around his neck.

  The soldier did not respond.

  “We’re here working for the Ministry of Health,” he said, still holding up his badge. “Our work is time-sensitive,” letting his foot off the brake as he said it, causing the truck to roll forward.

  “Step out,” the soldier at Ben’s window said in a louder voice.

  The soldier next to Erin took a step back, pointed his rifle directly at her.

  She raised her hands, instinctively. Doing her best to stay still, to not look at the man’s eyes — an acknowledgment of her disobedience.

  “Alright, alright,” Ben said, “no trouble, gov.” He reached his raised hands through his open window and opened his door from the outside. As he did, he looked at Erin and gave her a slight nod to do the same.

  She let out the air she didn’t realize she was holding and reached her hand down to open the door. As she did, the man with the gun pointed at her, leaned in. He was jumpy, looking down to the hand she’d just put down.