by Gordon Kent
“Spain, maybe?” he said when he got back. He was sitting at his desk, wearing a down-filled coat, his breath making vapor trails between his freezing hands.
“The Seychelles,” Pigoreau said. He had his hands shoved into his pants pockets. He wore a fraying sweater over several turtlenecks, but somehow he looked dapper, while Dukas knew that he looked like a slob. Pigoreau had a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, as if he had learned to smoke by watching French movies. He bobbed the cigarette and elevated an eyebrow and made a quick head movement to look around his own smoke cloud. “Michael, I have something to tell you.”
“Good news, I hope.” A tip Mrs Obren had given them had actually resulted in an arrest. Two of Dukas’s cops were in The Hague, delivering the suspect—had it gone wrong?
“You told me to spend some money on informers, Michael.”
“Snitches, yeah. And it’s paid off.” They were finally building a network; another two years, they would be on top of it. But Dukas wanted something now, something soon.
“I have a report, Michael. You will not like it.” Pigoreau shrugged.
Mrs Obren. He knew it at once. Pigoreau had an expression when he talked about her—a cynical snarl, a slight grin of apology because his friend was involved with her. Using that expression now, Pigoreau put a closed file on his desk.
“Just give it to me, Pig.”
“Michael, I would rather—”
“Give it to me! Summarize, for Christ’s sake! I’m not a kid, Pig.”
Pigoreau shrugged. He removed the cigarette, scratched his nose. He looked out the small amoebic shape of clear glass of the window, the rest of which was thick with frost on the inside. He flicked a bit of ash, holding the cigarette at his side. “I hired a guy in RS. I swear to God I didn’t target her, Michael. He was some pal of Dubricoviz the farmer, the guy with the tractor. Last week this guy sends in a report a Serb was recruiting up there for a militia, about the time the partition line was drawn and he killed somebody, or he gave the order to kill somebody. Then he came back, and there was some kind of party, a lot of ‘Greater Serbia’ bullshit, the guy goes home with a local woman. My snitch thinks that the point of this is that the guy is a war criminal because somebody got killed.” Pigoreau threw the dead cigarette to the floor and went into his turtlenecks from the top to get at the pack. “What interested me was he gave the name of the woman.”
“Mrs Obren.”
“You got it.” Pigoreau was bent almost double, trying to get at the pack of cigarettes. When he straightened, he had one between his fingers. “That’s part of it.” He flicked a lighter, looked through the flame at Dukas. “The guy who was recruiting was called ‘Colonel Zulu.’” Pigoreau smoked, waited, then said, “American military alphabet, Z is Zulu.”
“I got it, Pig. I’m not as stupid as I look.” Dukas was dead calm, colder now than the room he sat in. “Is that it?”
Pigoreau shook his head. “I went up there and saw my snitch. IFOR was running routine patrol in a couple of Bradleys, I hitched a ride, made a meeting with some Serb cops for cover. My guy says Colonel Zulu has an agent in the town. Schoolteacher. Obren’s got very thick with the teacher’s wife, goes there at least once a week. Reporting, I think.”
“That’s it?”
“Details are in the file.”
“You didn’t get all that in a week. How long you had her surveilled?”
Pigoreau shrugged.
“Goddamit, Pig—!”
“All along, okay? Michael, she’s feeding us! That was a treat she brought us—a ‘goodie,’ you guys call it. She’s being run from over there in RS!”
“Zulu.”
“Maybe not. Zulu has gone away, my guy says. He doesn’t know where, but he’s gone. Anyway, he’s not from RS, he’s from Yugo; he thinks Belgrade but he doesn’t have any proof.” Pigoreau inhaled deeply of the cigarette and snatched it from his mouth and held it at his side again. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
Dukas opened the file. He read quickly, reports written on Pigoreau’s laptop and printed on a failing, aged printer and stored on floppies because they were afraid their desktop network was insecure. Pigoreau wrote good reports. They didn’t take long to read.
“Bring her over,” he said. “Cook up some excuse—a bonus for the guy we picked up, tell her we want to pay her a bonus, that’ll do it. Don’t scare her.”
In his mind’s eye, the two men between the woman’s legs had become three. But one was dead or missing; the important two were Dukas and this other—the man called Zulu? He felt a surge of revulsion.
23
Late November
Kinshasa, Zaire.
Alan looked at Djalik, asleep in the webbing next to him, without envy. The vibration and noise of the aircraft drowned rational thought, which was just as well.
Alan dozed off himself. It was not the change in propeller pitch, or the rumble of tires on runway that woke him; this was a different homecoming. He felt the temperature change first, and as he swam up out of his noisy nap he felt he was surfacing from the cold, slightly mildewed life of the Navy, but as his eyes opened, his senses detected the differences: warm, moist air; delicate sweet-and-sour smell overlying the aircraft smell and the JP-5. Exhaust fumes from leaded gas. Garbage and spice and rampant vegetation, hurrying its way from bud to rot. Africa.
Alan rooted through his helmet bag as the pilot entered the terminal leg of his pattern into Kinshasa. Under 1000 AGL, he was already sweating, pumped with adrenaline. Waterproof matches. Condoms. GPS. Flashlight, the old Navy knife, twenty-five US dollars in ones. H & K 9mm and twenty-five rounds—probably against embassy regulations, but they had to catch him. Did Djalik also have something from the armory? He burrowed some more: Energy bars. Airport novel. Where the hell was his passport? Ah, side pocket. Fishing kit.
On a COD, there are no cabin services. No one talks to the passengers, who all too often sit facing the wrong way, contemplating the number of CODs that fail to survive launches or recoveries. The last plane in the US inventory designed during WWII, or so someone had once told him. Alan tried to see out the small window, as he always did, and, as always, he decided it had been designed so that he couldn’t see a thing out of it.
He had been to Kinshasa during a get-acquainted trip around Africa in ‘93. Parsills had wanted him to take an armed marine? Kinshasa would fall pretty soon, nerves were probably running high, and the sight of even one set of US BDUs and Kevlar on the streets might have what some Africa hands still called the Liberia Effect. No, it was better to have Djalik.
There was talk he didn’t like black people. So Alan had asked him, and Djalik had shrugged, “No problem,” and that had to be good enough.
In Alan’s experience, one gun wouldn’t help much if things went bad. On the other hand, he really doubted if anything would go bad in the next four or five days. Most Africans were super-careful about Americans.
He saw a flash of landscape out his useless window just as the wheels struck the runway tarmac. BAM. BAM bam BAM. Okay, not a lot of tarmac, at that. The pilot was clearly trying to avoid the potholes, old shell holes, and other excitements that runway 140 at Kinshasa held for the visitor. They crossed 270, which was freshly remacadamized with French asphalt by a French construction company. He wondered if only “friends of France” were allowed to land there. BAM. The pilot was doing pretty well. They were slowed now and the taxiing, while a touch erratic, was quieter.
“Screw it,” Alan muttered aloud and fumbled with the odd, non-ejection-seat toggle. He’d used these things only about fifty times. There. He stood against the swaying of the aircraft, just starting to turn on a smoother taxiway, and made his way to the window. Smog and a visible haze—fear made visible, or the fog of war? But the green, green riverbank, the brown river. The once gaudy terminal, clearly an attempt to outdo the simple strip-mall approach adopted in most African airports: Mobutu Moderne. Now it looked badly used, unmaintained, desperate. So did a great many Afri
can airports, but they had flowers and trees and beautiful women meeting the plane. Not this time. Kinshasa had the sinister air of Mogadishu in ’91.
Alan didn’t care. It was green; it was Africa.
They taxied to the civilian terminal. A green Chevy Blazer drove out to the plane and pulled alongside before the pilot could cut the engines. After a moment, it occurred to Alan that the pilot wasn’t going to cut the engines—he didn’t need gas. He’d just turn around and launch.
A crewman emerged from the cockpit area and started opening the rear gate. Alan waited as the ramp deployed, drinking in the bright sun, the glare and the shade of it. He hefted his bag. He stripped his helmet and handed it to the crewman, and the ramp hit. Alan made his way back to the two seats and put his hand on Djalik’s shoulder. Djalik woke, peered down the ramp, and fumbled with his webbing as Alan walked to the rear and continued down.
They were about a hundred meters from the terminal. No customs, no immigration. Djalik appeared, fully alert now. Alan led the way to the Blazer, and the passenger door opened and Alan got in. Djalik got in the back.
“Craik?” The man was short, broad and powerful. He reached across the transmission to shake hands. “Ralph Halland. I’m with the embassy.” He was wearing a short-sleeved khaki shirt and shorts and was deeply tanned. “I’m with the embassy” means he’s not with the embassy, Alan thought. I’m at the embassy but I’m not with the embassy. What was going on? The Agency, that’s what’s going on.
“Alan Craik. Navy. Anything new on O’Neill?”
“You’ll be briefed.” He turned to the back seat, where Djalik was arranging himself next to another man, also overweight, also in shorts—a standard, State-Department-issue American?—who shook hands all around as Halland put the Blazer in gear.
“Arnie Molnar,” the second man said. “Diplomatic Security.” Meaning, not Agency, so with the embassy, and not with Halland but riding herd on him. Uh-oh. Embassy security was handled by the Diplomatic Security Office—DS—local intelligence by the Agency. The two didn’t necessarily get along.
Djalik was looking Molnar over.
“Ever train at Little Creek?” Djalik said.
“Oh, sure.”
“Team Six?”
“What about it?”
“Navy SEAL.”
Halland turned to Alan. “They’re exchanging secret handshakes.” Not said with merely guileless humor, but rather with some edge—personal dislike? Or professional distrust? Uh-oh.
Alan smiled, rather taken with him despite his own prejudice. “I thought we were supposed to do that.” They chuckled, not with any real amusement.
Halland drove fast. Despite what appeared to be a fresh bullet hole in the hood, neither Halland nor Molnar appeared really stressed—no guns at the ready, no frightened eyes. Halland opened the glove compartment, took out a Coke, all while driving down a runway. He left the glove box open.
“Have one.” He pointed at the glove box with his Coke can. Inside the box, next to a water-beaded can of classic Coke, was a gleamingly new Beretta.
“Not just now, thanks.” Alan closed the glove box.
“Got one?” Halland muttered as he leaned back.
“Mmm, as a matter of fact, I do.”
“Don’t tell—” Halland’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror.
Alan glanced in the mirror to see what Halland saw. Djalik and the DS guy were deep in some reminiscence about bars in Little Creek, Virginia.
“You bring courier stuff from your ship?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll talk more later.” He rearranged his body on the sticky seat and, with it, his attack. “How’re the Caps doing?”
Alan hadn’t been asked a basketball question since he left his first cruise, but he was a good guest and had a few sports factoids at hand. Even Molnar leaned forward from the back to listen.
Alan watched as Halland turned off the runway and drove straight through a gate in the airport security fence. Bored black soldiers in ragged camos and berets watched him without interest; no weapons twitched in their direction—a nice experience at an African checkpoint. “Armed teenagers scare me,” Alan said as they breezed through. Halland guffawed.
They turned down what appeared to be a major thorough-fare and drove at what Alan considered a reckless speed. Zaire’s infrastructure was shot to shit—streets potholed, sewers clogged, buildings no longer maintained. Lots of uniforms were on the streets, mostly ragged; their wearers had been rioting for back pay only a week ago.
Alan turned to Halland. “Kinshasa dangerous?”
Halland laughed. “Fuck, what’s dangerous? Yeah, you can get popped out there. Probably not if you’re white and look tough. Planning to sight-see?”
“My admiral wants a report on local conditions.”
“Get it from us.” Alan wasn’t sure whether this was an offer or an order.
Alan smiled. Time to do secret handshakes. He nodded at the crumbling city. “Reminds me of Mogadishu.”
“You been to Mog?”
“Before it went to shit. June.”
“Yeah? Ever eat at that canteen by the Canadian HQ?”
“Yeah, once or twice. Real fries, as I remember.”
“Ever meet the Queen?”
Alan was puzzled for a moment. Then he got it.
“Yup. I went fishing with her off Mombasa.”
Halland smiled and looked at him differently. Mostly, Agency guys had used to eat in that canteen in Mog. The Queen was a famous figure in very limited circles. They both knew it. Halland had to know who Alan was already, but, in some undeniable way, Alan was now, he thought, more acceptable. Still, he didn’t like the atmosphere, the lack of play between Molnar and Halland. And O’Neill is depending on these guys.
The deputy ambassador’s working office was not the most cheerful of rooms; indeed, the metallic official furniture, drab walls, and lack of pictures smothered any cheer that the deputy himself might have shown. The flag in the corner was the only splash of color, and it seemed faded by the strain of competing with the surrounding drabness. The two Navy men in their sage-green flight suits fit right in.
If Alan had expected a welcome, he was destined for disappointment. Within seconds of shaking his hand (and not shaking Djalik’s hand) the deputy ambassador began a harangue about a lack of cooperation from the military. He was a weary-looking man of about fifty, probably working twenty-hour days with the ambassador away, and probably worried about how he was going to get his family out in time. Still, he was doing the obligatory State rap: he suggested in what he probably thought were civil terms that Admiral Pilchard should have visited the ambassador in person. Alan tuned out for that.
“—and that brings me back to you, Lieutenant. I don’t really see why you’re here.”
“Lieutenant-Commander.” He smiled. “My rank is lieutenant-commander.”
Addicted to protocol, even capable of inventing some if required, the deputy got flustered.
“Sorry, Christ, Lieutenant-Commander.” He smiled and looked at his watch. “Anyway, I’m still trying to see a role for you here. You don’t, um, intend to mount a military expedition, do you?” He laughed, but it was clear he had just voiced his real concern. “We have to convince the Zairians that our work here is peaceful.”
“I believe that my presence might be helpful solely because I know the victim and can identify him.”
The ambassador snorted. “How hard can it be to identify an American in Africa?”
Alan smiled his gentle, combat smile. “Mr O’Neill is a black American.”
The deputy’s face fell. He was running on empty, and he was making mistakes, and obviously he despised himself for doing so. “I’m sorry,” he said. And he sounded sincere. “I knew that; I just—” He looked at his watch.
“I have several classified items for your chief of station. I assume that you and he have a plan to deal with whoever has O’Neill. I don’t want to interfere. Petty Officer
Djalik and I would like to go with them to identify O’Neill, and, given the situation in the city, we’d like to move him to the battle group’s hospital on the carrier if he needs care.” The confidential tone seemed to soothe the deputy. Alan went on. “Sir, I know you’re a busy man. If I could meet with the chief of station, perhaps he could get back to you—?”
The deputy ambassador cleared his throat and looked grateful.
“Yeah, right. Do that. I’ll speak to Tom later and we’ll see about the contact. We can’t have any appearance of dealing with the factions—you understand, Lieutenant. Uh, – Commander. It jeopardizes our standing with the government.” He cleared his throat. “The legitimate government of Zaire.”
Alan thought that Laurent Kabila had so thoroughly jeopardized the whole of Mobutu’s government that the ambassador could rest easy about who was legitimate and who was not, but he kept that thought to himself, nodded his head, kicked Djalik, and escaped.
Halland’s boss, the Agency honcho, was an Old Africa Hand. He wore khaki shirts and shorts and had a tan so dark and tinged with red that it declared that the wearer seldom checked UV levels and never wore sunscreen. A large-caliber revolver in a vest-like rig hung on the wall behind his desk, where, in other offices, the President’s portrait hung. Alan wondered if this was some sort of political statement. Otherwise, the man escaped being a colonial stereotype only by not offering him a drink. He was on the phone when Alan entered, and his prolonged conversation gave Alan the chance to glance at his books. The Scramble for Africa. The Washing of the Spears. Kind of colonial. Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya and a play of Ngugi’s. Not so colonial.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Commander. Enjoy your time with His Assistant Excellency?”
Alan smiled, said nothing.
Neither did the man in khaki. Alan lost. “I have messages for you, sir.” He rifled his helmet bag and came up with two double-wrapped envelopes.
