American Spy

by Lauren Wilkinson

  “Can I ask a question? I know we’re in a rush.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is it unusual for you to be working out of an NGO?”

  “A little. But this one’s administered by the US embassy, which means that as the director here I’m considered an embassy employee.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I still qualify for diplomatic immunity. I can explain later when we have more time. For now, let’s talk first steps of SQLR. The palace is hosting a national conference on the environment tomorrow afternoon. A number of politicians will be attending. I want you to use the opportunity to reconnect with Thomas.”

  “You call him Thomas?” I asked.

  “Everyone does,” he said brusquely. That seemed true so far. I saw him referred to by his first name or TomSank in the newspapers, and couldn’t tell if it was because of the informality of the CNR or the smallness of the ruling class in the city—many people working in the government, at the embassy, and for the newspapers knew him personally.

  “Charm him. Set the groundwork for an invitation back to the house, but don’t ask yet. Make him think he’s asking you. How do you like it, by the way?”

  “What?” I said.

  “The house. I stayed there too when I first arrived. Thought it would be a better place to be able to head back to than a hotel.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  He put his hand on the radio. “I want you to take this. It’s a camera. The antenna’s a spring motor; if you push it down it takes a picture every few seconds.”

  He unplugged it, took off the faceplate and showed me where the viewfinder was, then unscrewed the back and told me how to change the film. I nodded, delighted by the novelty of the gadget.

  “Set it up in your bedroom before he shows up. I have a journalist on my payroll who’ll write the story and help distribute the pictures. We’re trying to erode his support. Proving that Thomas is a hypocrite will help do so with all but the most loyal in his base.”

  The phone rang then, interrupting him. He picked it up, spoke angrily in a mix of Mooré and French, then slammed it down.

  “Excuse me a moment,” he said. I watched him dial another number, but no one answered. He hung up with a heavy sigh and stood. “I have to go.”

  He handed over the radio to me.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “There’s an emergency with one of the projects I’m overseeing. I have to head out of the city for a little bit now to check on things. Can you do me a favor? I know running errands for me is not strictly what you came out here for, but—”

  “Yeah, sure. I can help.”

  “Did Ross tell you about the ULCR?” Before I could answer, he continued: “It’s a political party, and our strongest challenge to the single-party government that Thomas has created. It’s led by one of our agents. Once we can set up elections here, he’ll be our candidate. We think we can make him president. There’s a ULCR meeting happening in twenty minutes, at an agent’s house. He was supposed to have been here already to pick up these pamphlets. I just called—I couldn’t get in touch with him. Can you bring them over?”

  “Like this?” I said, referring to the mud on my clothes.

  “Don’t worry about it. The agent’s name is Issa. Give them to him or his brother, Amid. Only to one of them.”

  He wrote down directions to the house, then picked up the pamphlets lying on the handbill press and handed them to me. They were stamped with Democratic Defenders in the corner, just as the flyer I’d seen in the street had been.

  “I saw a truck distributing these earlier.”

  “That’s us,” he said. “My operation targets Thomas Sankara and the leaders of the major political parties who are trying to emerge. Even our candidate in the ULCR. By publishing attacks on everyone, it looks like no one in the government can trust anyone. Creating that perception is much more important than whatever rumor we’re spreading about their sex lives. Any questions?”

  “No. I just wanted to say…I remember seeing you at the funeral. Why didn’t we talk more then?”

  He softened for the first time. “Oh. I know that was a hard day for y’all. I couldn’t intrude.”

  “I don’t know if I thanked you for the pictures you gave me. But I still have them.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m glad you’re out here, Marie.”

  “Me too,” I said as I followed him out to the backyard. “And I don’t want to let you down.”

  We walked through the main office together, where Nicole was working at her desk. She smiled up at us as we passed.

  He got into the 4x4 that I was parked beside. From the driver’s seat he said, “Do you mind doing one more thing for me? When you go to the palace tomorrow. It’s easy.”

  “Sure.”

  “One of my cutouts will give you a package for me,” he said, referring to the intermediary between the agent (meaning the spy, asset, or snitch) and the officer. “Bring it back here after the meeting at the palace. And you can tell me what Thomas was like. Help me gauge what the next steps of SQLR should be.”

  “You don’t know already?”

  He shook his head. “Not my style to keep everything totally structured. I like to play some things by ear.”

  “How will I find your cutout?”

  “He’ll find you,” he said as he started up the engine. “See you tomorrow.”

  I watched him peel off, then went to my motorcycle. I felt like I had to take a moment to catch my breath. It had been such a disorienting, whirlwind of a meeting. Nothing like what I’d expected.

  I tried to fit the radio in the saddlebag, but it was so long that half of it jutted out of the top. I rode toward the address Slater had given me. I smelled the smoke in the air well before I arrived.

  The street was blocked off by an ancient red fire truck with its own water tank. Several firemen in green military uniforms idled nearby. I left my bike where it was, squeezed around the truck, and started down the street.

  There were puddles in the road. A fireman stepped out through a set of open gates and I went through them. It was a compound-style home—a side of one of the buildings there was black, apparently having been licked at by flame. Another was completely destroyed.

  A man was sitting in a lawn chair in the yard, with his head in his hands. I asked, “Are you Issa?”

  When he didn’t answer or look up, I cleared my throat and repeated the question. He looked up, dazed, and nodded.

  “I think these are for you,” I said, and pushed the pamphlets into his lap.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT DAY, as I rounded a bend on my motorcycle, I got my first glimpse of the presidential palace, which came into view above a line of palm trees. It was a surprisingly accessible building in the heart of the city, standing behind a simple green gate with only one guardhouse. It wasn’t a large building. It consisted of three attached sand-colored columns, the one in the center the tallest, a perfect rectangle with slats carved into its face instead of windows. A Burkinabè flag flapped on the roof. Modest, egalitarian—the building was a reflection of Thomas’s governing style.

  I pictured him at work inside, Sam Kinda standing guard at the door with a clutch of other uniformed bodyguards. I showed identification (false, of course) to a baby-faced soldier in fatigues who checked my name against a list on a clipboard. Instead of lifting the barrier he ducked briefly into the guardhouse and handed me a large padded envelope. I realized he was Slater’s cutout. I slipped the envelope into my purse next to a few of the photos I had of Helene, which I’d brought with me in anticipation of my meeting later with Slater. I then rode onto the grounds, parked, and was directed upstairs to a conference room on the second floor.

  It was a close, hot room, ripe with body odor. A dozen or so people, mostly men
, were already sitting in the small audience. As I took a plastic chair at the back near the exit, I looked around. Thomas wasn’t there.

  The first speaker stood at the front of the room. He started his speech: “Imperialism is the arsonist setting fire to our forest and savannas….”

  As he droned on, I looked around, bored and disappointed. I only had a week and a half before I headed back to New York.

  When the speaker finished he was met with light applause. A second presenter went to the front of the room. He began, “While the effects of our environment’s destruction will be felt by everyone, it will be much more lethal, by orders of magnitude, for our world’s poorest….”

  I glanced at the exit, trying to gauge the best way to make my escape. Thomas was there, leaning in the doorway, listening attentively. He was dressed casually in black pants and a striped shirt and was wearing his pearl-handled pistol in a holster. I looked at him until he turned toward me.

  He didn’t acknowledge me in any way, but he’d clearly recognized me, and after a few minutes disappeared back into the hall. I got up and pushed my way through the crowded room toward the exit. By the time I got out to the hall, Thomas wasn’t there—it was empty except for a soldier in a fatigue uniform standing guard at one end. But he couldn’t have gone far. I moved down the hallway methodically trying doors. When I opened the last one, I found Thomas standing in a small room, his back to me as he looked out at the courtyard. He must’ve been waiting for me. I said his name as I went toward him.

  “The American.” He turned to me. “I thought that was you.”

  I’d buried my desire in the lead-up to this trip, but once he was standing in front of me again, it plucked at my belly. His pull on me was even more intense than it had been when we’d first met.

  “Why’d you leave the desertification conference?” he asked. The corners of his mouth twitched up as he added, “Do you find the topic too dry?”

  “Thomas.” I rolled my eyes at the silliness of the joke but was charmed by it. I could tell he was pleased with himself.

  Although only a couple of months had passed, there were signs of exhaustion in his face that I thought must be new, not just blotted out by the polite censorship of memory.

  Then he said, his question surprisingly harsh, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working on a project for the embassy,” I stammered. “I’ll be here for a few weeks.”

  His tone had made me aware of my mistake. I’d thought I would be able to play my appearance in Ouagadougou as a coincidence, but I’d been so worried about being recognized as a spy and a honeypot, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might think my appearance in the city was crazy. That I was stalking him.

  “I’m here for work,” I emphasized. “My office sent me because I was your liaison at the UN.”

  Although he didn’t look like he believed me, I felt that desire larger now, and thrumming between us. I stepped closer to him.

  “You should go back to the forum,” he said. “Aren’t you worried you’ll miss something important?”

  “Not really.”

  “I need to get back to work.” He stayed where he was.

  I’d never felt an attraction like that to anyone before. It was undeniably intense. He felt it too, I could tell. I touched the buttons on the front of his tunic, then slid my hand to the warm back of his neck. His eyes closed for just an instant before he took my hand in his and gently removed it. He said the name I’d given him. We stood where we were.

  After a few more moments, I spoke. “If you need to go back to work I’m not stopping you from leaving.”

  He nodded and stepped around me. I watched him open the door and slip out into the hall.

  18

  I WENT IMMEDIATELY TO HDF, AND AS I approached Slater’s office I heard raised voices. I knocked on the door and went inside. Issa was there, with a second man who must’ve been his brother.

  “Should I come back?”

  “No. We’re going now,” Amid said.

  “I’ll take care of the situation,” Slater promised as they left.

  “Issa was telling me about the fire.” For just an instant I saw reckless fury in his face, then it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Do you have a lot of agents?”

  He nodded. “They’re everywhere you can think of: in the CNR, the trade unions, the student unions, the university, a cutout at the palace, and another at our embassy. The one I had at the Soviet embassy disappeared.”

  “Dead?” I sat.

  He shook his head. “I think he’s hiding.”

  I took this information in. I appreciated that Slater was less cagey with me than Ross, who’d never answered any of my questions so directly.

  “I have your package,” I said, and put the envelope on Slater’s desk.

  “Did you look inside?”

  “It’s none of my business,” I said, even though I’d peeked at it of course—it contained a spiral notebook.

  “Good answer.” He took it out of the envelope. “Do you know what this is?”

  When I told him he shook his head.

  “It’s a copy camera. I had an agent at the palace using it to take picture documents.”

  He tucked it into one of his drawers.

  “Tell me about Thomas,” he said. “Did you get him alone?”

  Ross had asked the same strange question. “For a few minutes, yes.”

  “Did you?” He sounded surprised. “No bodyguards around?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. Very good.”

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t invite him for dinner?”

  He shook his head. “He’s going to invite himself. I promise.”

  “Okay,” I said, but it was clear I didn’t believe it.

  “I promise. He’ll come because he’s exhausted. All you need to do is be around. You’ll have a second opportunity. There’ll be an election in two days at the university, and Thomas will be there. They’ll be voting for the new head of the university’s Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, and one of Thomas’s nephews was the incumbent. Vincent Traoré.”

  “I met him in New York,” I said.

  “Oh yes. That’s right. The election has the added benefit of giving you a sense of the work the station office has done to undermine the CNR. Traoré won’t win because the members of the committee understand that he’s a Sankara proxy. Six months ago that would’ve guaranteed him victory.”

  “So my assignment is just to attend.”

  “We’re getting you close to him. We’re getting him used to you.”

  I nodded, accepting this. And because he’d answered my question about his agents, I thought he might be receptive to another. “I know you are involved in propaganda. With the Democratic Defenders. What else do you do exactly?”

  “Exactly? I can’t tell you. But I will say that I’m in charge of about a dozen operations out here. I work hard. Too hard. Our goal could be accomplished in one shot, with SQLR. Which is why I asked for approval to bring you out here. I have a lot of faith in you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re a Mitchell, right? You girls never give up.”

  I took that as an opportunity to take the photos from my purse. “I didn’t get to talk to Helene as much I would’ve liked when she was in North Carolina.”

  “Where’d you get these?”

  “They were at my dad’s house.”

  “Huh.” He looked at a picture. “Oh, this is a good one. I took it.”

  I pointed to the man holding the beer. “Who is that?”

  “Ray. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Did you meet Helene through him?”

  “No. I sought her out because she was in intelligence and I’d heard she might have some
information I needed.”

  “So you met her at Fort Bragg.”

  He nodded. “She was working in a little office, and the second I saw her—even in that fluorescent light, even in her uniform—it was love at first sight. She was so beautiful. I felt like I had to have her.”

  “Did she help you?”

  He smiled. “No. I even took her out for a drink to get her to lower her guard, but she knew what I was trying and wasn’t having it. She wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

  “That sounds about right,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, well. It was sensitive information. I guess I was asking her to bend some rules.”

  I shook my head, feeling overwhelmed. Even now, I feel hard-pressed to explain why the anecdote meant so much to me. Sure, I could call up someone like Robbie to talk about old times with Helene. But this was totally different—this was new information from the time when she’d been closed to me. He knew things about her that I didn’t. The more of it I could get, I thought, the closer I could get to the truth about what had happened.

  * * *

  —

  ON THE DAY OF the CDR election, I was up early, confident and determined to succeed. The bulk of the past two days had been taken up with a few more little tasks like the ones Slater assigned me on my first day. Nothing particularly big or interesting, just small errands that I’m sure ate up a lot of his time. As I crossed the yard, my guard, Jean, made his usual show of wiping the motorcycle down with a rag, then pushed the heavy bike out into the street for me. I thanked him; I’d adjusted to having a staff disconcertingly quickly.

  Ouagadougou was scattered with ghoulish signs begging the population to wear helmets, but the only person I saw with one was a Frenchman who told me he’d brought it from home. I told Jean about this and—once I’d made it clear that the request wasn’t a joke—he managed to scare one up for me.

  I put on the helmet, which hid my face entirely if the plastic visor was down. I kept it flipped up, because it was so yellowed with age and the assault of red dust that it would have obscured my vision, but even so it changed my whole appearance. Although it was hot, I wore it because I was so conspicuously American in Ouaga—or at least so conspicuously foreign—and the helmet made me feel like I was in disguise, even if practically speaking it probably called more attention to me.