The Golden Chair

by A J Fontenot

  Ibsen closed his eyes.

  “The van was Plan A.”

  “Back in D.C.? The one that almost ran over Paul and me?”

  “I fought against it,” he told her, beginning to talk faster now. “I told them you wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “A problem…for what?”

  For what…he thought. Her world is still black and white. The cowboys and Indians of childhood. The real world doesn’t work like that. It never did. Everything is a compromise. Everything.

  “Ghana,” he said, not answering her question, “was Plan B.”

  She didn’t respond this time.

  Static again washed over the connection.

  “Like I said, I wanted to find…another way,” Ibsen said, trailing off.

  What else was there to say? The irony was that it really was this simple. In the end, his decision really was a black and white one. You could move forward and adapt…or you could tie yourself to the weaker ones, and then go down with them.

  “So,” she said finally, “what it really comes down to is, you sent me here to get wrapped up in whatever this is Lennox and his thug Keeler are into. And, in the process, they just take care of me. Do I have that right?”

  Yes. That was exactly right. But he couldn’t bring himself to say those words. Whether it was to her, or just to himself… But, it didn’t matter much now.

  “I want to know why, Carl. After all these years…why you couldn’t have trusted me.”

  “Don’t go to the port,” he said, quietly.

  “And then what, Carl?” her voice was louder now. “I just…come back and pretend nothing happened? And they pretend nothing happened, too? Come on, you know it doesn’t work like that.”

  “If you go,” he said, still quiet, “I can’t help you.”

  “You can’t help me?” she said. “Carl, you’re the one who sent me into this. Don’t pretend like you didn’t have a choice. You always had a choice.”

  There was, Ibsen realized, nothing else left to say.

  In fact, he’d said too much already. If they were listening in — his heart sunk at the thought — he shook his head…she didn’t realize the risk he was taking in just calling her right now. Much less warning her.

  But she wouldn’t change. He could see that now.

  “Okay,” he said. “Erin…”

  “Goodbye, Carl,” she said.

  The line went dead. He looked down at his cell phone and then set it quietly on his desk.

  A knock on his door.

  His assistant, Julia. She opened it slightly, poking her head into the crack.

  “It’s Eli Bren.”

  How did he…

  “He’s on the line for you.”

  Ibsen let out a long sigh.

  “Okay, tell him—”

  “He said it was urgent,” she said, somehow knowing he was about to make an excuse.

  “Alright,” he said, “Put him through.”

  69

  The High View

  The port, from the outside, was a long concrete wall. Over the wall, Erin could see cranes jutting up into the sky, with large metal shipping containers stacked around them.

  She passed by the port entrance and kept driving. Two blocks away was a three-story parking garage. She drove to the top and parked at the edge.

  She got out of the Land Rover and walked to the edge of the parking garage, looking over the port. From here, she could see its entire layout. She walked back around and without opening the passenger door, reaching into the open window and pulled out her sat phone. Looking out over the port, she thumbed through her contacts and dialed Conall McGillis at the Washington Post. She held the phone to her ear, waiting for it to connect.

  “Hey kid, how’s Africa?” McGillis said.

  “It’s…,” she trailed off.

  What was it? she thought. The whole experience has felt so surreal. Like being in a movie and simultaneously watching it play out.

  “Conall,” she said, “this whole thing is bigger than I thought.”

  “What, the story about the loggers?”

  “Yeah. The loggers…and…”

  She replayed in her head, everything that had happened over the last few days, trying even to find a place to start. It all sounded like the conspiracy she’d been looking for.

  Except, now that she’d found it, it was the last thing she wanted to be true.

  “The bacterium,” she said, “it was a fake.”

  “Fake?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got proof.”

  “Wait, weren’t Paul and his guys all working on this together? Were they in on this?”

  “No, well…not Paul’s team. But there’s more.”

  “Okay…”

  “The loggers who died, it was murder.”

  “Murder?” She could hear his chair squeak, as he said it. “How do you—”

  “I’ve got proof of that, too. And get this, it’s all connected to InTrans Global — ITG.”

  “The client you work for over at R4?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “This proof…,” he said, “can we print it?”

  “Conall, there’s more. You’re not going to believe this, but…”

  “Erin,” he started, “if this is about —”

  “Just listen to me. It’s not about that. I mean, I think it’s connected, but I… What I mean is, I’ve got proof they killed thirteen loggers, then covered it up with a fake bacterium, and — and this next bit is the weird part.”

  “What.”

  “I don’t know why yet, but, apparently this has all been so that they could smuggle an ancient Ashanti artifact out of the country.”

  “Ashanti?”

  “They were a tribe that ruled this part of —”

  “I know who they were, but what do they have to do with any of this?”

  “Best I can tell, Jonah Lennox has been looking for this artifact for a while now. And then finally he found it an underwater cave. Then…he killed all the witnesses — the workers — and covered it all up with a story about a small bacterial outbreak. He’s a chemist by trade. And so it makes sense that he could pull it off. The idea is, it would get mild press and create enough of a distraction while he smuggled the artifact out of the country.”

  “So how does this connect back to ITG?”

  “It’s Lennox.”

  “Lennox?” he snorted. “Because he was in your mother’s file?”

  “No, not because of that. Because he’s the liaison between SERA and ITG. Officially, he’s here doing research for ITG. But he’s really been leading the underwater expeditions to find the Ashanti artifact, the golden chair.”

  “What’s Lennox’s relationship to Paul?”

  “None, other than giving them data to analyze.”

  “Why didn’t SERA do that themselves?”

  “This is not unusual for ITG,” Erin said. “They do this kind of thing all the time. For them, it’s the intellectual property they’re after. The data.

  “One of the ways they capitalize on this is by leveraging the nonprofit work for their own PR. Because ITG needs to appear to be supporting and not controlling the nonprofits they work with, they don’t technically own them. But they still control them indirectly through grants and other donations. But legally, they’re separate.

  “And so ITG’s interest is data collection?” McGillis said.

  “Right. Data is expensive to collect. And so in this case, they’re the ones feeding SERA the data they need. SERA then takes it, compares it against WHO or CDC data to then make a recommendation to the local government on how to handle any new developments.”

  McGillis was quiet. She could tell he was thinking, piecing it together. In the journalism business, the process of a story started with a reporter or field investigator who’d pitch a story to an editor. Like what Erin had been doing. The editor then had to pitch it — in a different way — to management. Management in the newspaper business was most int
erested in placement. How would this be received? Who’d be interested in reading it? And is it strong enough, or should something else go there instead? No matter how good it was from a journalistic point of view, if it wasn’t set up to get eyeballs, it wouldn’t make the cut.

  But there was something else in all of this.

  This was political. ITG was a large conglomerate. And, as Erin could personally attest — being her client — they’d cultivated a savvy media position with their various nonprofit support. If the Post ran this, they’d have to contend with heavy blowback. A company like ITG wouldn’t be accused of corruption and murder without swinging, and probably landing, a few heavy punches in return.

  All of this added up to a highly charged situation. One that McGillis now needed to walk carefully through.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Say all that is true. Say ITG really does want this ancient Ashanti artifact, and say they’ve found it and even gone to the extreme of killing people to smuggle it out of the country. Putting aside their motivation for a moment, which still isn’t clear, what actual, printable proof do you have to back any of this up?”

  “Internal reports, where they recorded their progress of finding and excavating the artifact. And then we’ve got pictures of the bullet holes and bloodstains of the location where the loggers were killed. Plus,” she said, “one of the guys on the SERA team did an analysis of the bacteria-data Lennox’s team gave them, and it shows clearly it was manipulated from the start.”

  “And…,” McGillis said.

  “And what?”

  “And what else do you have? That’s all good, but each of those can be turned around — explained in a different way. A better way, if they’re clever enough.”

  “I…,” she said, biting her lip and letting out a breath, “I’ve got an eyewitness.”

  “An eyewitness? One who will go on record?”

  “Well…no,” she said. “That’s part of the problem. He was killed.

  “Killed?” he huffed. “You mean you had an eyewitness. What’s that do?”

  “I mean,” she said, “before he died, he told me what he knew. And, Conall, he was killed by a sniper.”

  “I’m really sorry about that, but…so what?”

  “So — we were in the middle of nowhere. Someone tracked him. And then, they took a shot from, I dunno, a really long distance away. It was clearly a professional job.”

  McGillis was silent.

  “So,” Erin said, “tell me, why would someone expend all that effort on keeping someone quiet who didn’t have anything important to say?”

  “And you can prove it was ITG who did this, who sent this sniper?”

  Erin felt her heart thump in her chest, thinking about the answer to this question. “I…,” she started. “I will.”

  “You will? What do you mean ‘you will’?”

  “I mean…I’ll have that proof soon enough.”

  And that was true. If she could find Ben, she’d find Lennox. She wasn’t exactly sure how she’d extract something as helpful as a confession out of Jonah Lennox. But it was a detail. Lennox was the one who had Mofi killed. There was no doubt of that. And combined with the rest of the story, that put ITG in a vulnerable position.

  Her own death was a thought that was becoming more and more common in her mind. She hadn’t, she could firmly attest, become okay with it. But the more she felt herself getting pulled into this thing, the more that end became a real possibility.

  “Okay…okay…” he said. “InTrans Global, ITG, wants this artifact, this, eh…”

  “Golden chair.”

  “Right, they want this golden chair. And why…? We don’t know yet. But…” he continued, working out the narrative. Erin was used to this. He wasn’t talking to her anymore, he was walking through the story, out loud, trying out how the pitch felt.

  “But,” he continued, “we know they’ve been searching for it for some time. And then they found it. And, presumably, because it was a cultural artifact, they couldn’t just export it. Also, knowing word would get out about finding such a special thing, they killed the workers and quietly hushed the piece out of the country,” he said. “That about the sum of it?”

  “Yes,” she said. As contrived and bizarre as it all sounded, yes…that was it.

  “We’re going to have to play this one close, you know?”

  She did. All that mess from Trinidad all those years ago — if it taught her anything, it was who to trust. Or…

  “Conall… there’s one more thing.”

  “There’s more?” he snorted.

  “I’m going to send you what I’ve got,” looking down over the port as she said it. “For safekeeping. The pictures, I’ll email to you. And the reports, I’m going to fax them over. You still have a fax, right?”

  “Eh, yeah, but —”

  “After I hang up, I’m going to go to an Internet cafe. You should be getting something from me within the hour.”

  “We’ll need to move on this fast. I’m going to need your story soon. If this is happening, I’m going to need it, like, as soon as possible.”

  “I know. But…there’s one more thing I need to do here.”

  “Lennox,” he said.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Look,” he said, “we’ve got the story already. There can be more, later. But this is enough to run, as is.”

  “I know,” she said, “I’ve just got to go do this.”

  “If all that stuff, the stuff with your mother. If it’s connected to him and if he was the one who...”

  “I know,” she said. It didn’t help to hear the odds. Reality, for what it was worth, wasn’t always helpful. Right now, she needed all the courage she could find.

  70

  Entrance

  Erin pulled the Land Rover into the queue to get into the port.

  There were three vehicles in front of her. They looked like official work vehicles. The one directly in front of her was for a chemical survey company. As they waited, a man in a tan uniform at the guard shack ahead was stopping each vehicle and checking credentials before letting them proceed.

  Credentials, she thought. She’d been so obsessed with finding Lennox, finding what she needed to prove his and ITG’s involvement, that she hadn’t even considered the detail of how she’d get into the port.

  For a moment she considered pulling out of line and turning around. She didn’t have another plan, there was no other entrance that she knew of. And if there was, they would surely be checking ID. All she knew right now was she didn’t have an ID that would let her…wait. She did have…

  She began rummaging in her bag in the seat beside her.

  “Got you,” she said, pulling out an ID badge. The one Paul gave her just after she’d arrived.

  She glanced up at the pickup truck in front of her. It had moved ahead, leaving a space. She let off of her brake, moving the Land Rover forward.

  She looked back down at the badge Paul made for her. She hadn’t bothered reading it until now. She had no intention of using it before now. It said she was a member of SERA, working in conjunction with the American Embassy. I guess, she thought, that could…kind of…be true.

  She looked up again the truck was gone. She pulled up to the uniformed man standing next to the guardhouse.

  “ID,” he said.

  She handed it to him.

  He looked down at it, reading the label. Looking at it.

  “What’s your business?” he said, without looking up at her.

  “I’m…here,” she said, “to…”

  The man looked up at her. His face was blank. Was he seeing through this? Could he tell the badge was a fake?

  “To…?” he said.

  Focus.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said flatly, pulling out her other badge, the one from the Washington Post that she always carried.

  He took both badges without responding and walked back into the booth. She looked straight ahead, watchin
g him out of the corner of her eye. He was looking through a clipboard. He put it down and picked up the phone. He said something into the phone, but he was talking low and she couldn’t make out any of it. He stopped talking, still with the phone to his ear. “Okay,” she heard him say, as he glanced her way. “Okay,” he said again and hung up the phone.

  He walked back out.

  “We don’t have any media personnel scheduled for today,” he said, handing the badges back to her. He began pointing, for her to u-turn, already looking at the vehicle behind her.

  She didn’t take the badges. Or move the truck.

  “I’m with the Embassy,” she said.

  He paused and looked at her again.

  “My visit won’t be on your lists,” she began inventing. “The Washington Post and the U.S. Embassy are doing a joint project, and it’s been authorized by the Accra Port Authority” — she saw that title as she was driving in and wished now she could remember the official’s name in charge of it. Vice Admiral Something-or-other — “he’s cleared it all. It’s an unscheduled inspection, for all American facilities in the port, to make sure they’re…er, up to code.”

  She stopped talking but kept looking at him.

  He looked at her for a moment and then walked back to his booth and reached for the phone again.

  “It’s a visual inspection,” she called out to him.

  “A what?” he said.

  She pointed up to the sky. “We’ve only got a short time before our window closes. Your Vice Admiral asked us to come as close to closing time as we could. To make sure no one was cutting corners at the end of the day.”

  With that, he stood up a little straighter.

  “Wants to make sure the Americans aren’t taking advantage of the Ghanaian facilities.”

  He began nodding. He began to hand her ID badges back and then hesitated.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” he said.

  “It’s my first time,” she said without hesitation. Which, she noted with a sense of irony, happened to be true. “Everyone has a first day on the job, right?”

  Something in there seemed to satisfy him.

  “In that case, you’ll need to check in first at Building Four,” he said, handing her credentials back to her.