We’d come round in a steep, narrow loop, hooking around the bottom of the creek and back up toward the hotel along Lumley Beach Road. It ran along a narrow strip of land a couple hundred feet across, sandwiched between Cockerill Bay to the west and Aberdeen Creek to the east. Roberts pulled up outside a beach bar and killed the Nissan’s engine.
“Home sweet home.”
The strip of sand wasn’t much wider than the road itself. We climbed out and walked under the shade of the coconut palms that ringed the bar, the Billingham satchel over my shoulder. There were no customers. A tall white woman in a “Vote Koroma for President” T-shirt presided over the bar, messy auburn hair piled up on top of her head. Roberts kissed her on the lips and turned back toward me.
The woman stretched her hand out over the bar, and I took it. She had a firm handshake and looked me straight in the eye.
“I’m Max,” I said. “How d’y’do?”
“Pleased to meet you, Max,” she replied in a hoarse south London whisper. “I’m Juliet.”
8
“Star?”
I nodded.
Juliet prized the crown top off a heavy green bottle of the local lager and poured half of it into a chilled schooner. The wiry muscles in her forearm tensed as she lifted the bottle. Beads of moisture welled up around the glass as it filled with the amber liquid. We were sitting at the bar. It was getting hotter. Although the palms shaded us, the bar itself shielded us from the small mercy of the breeze blowing in from across Cockerill Bay. A smell of dead fish and rotting vegetation rose as the tide ebbed in the creek.
From a kitchen out the back, an old woman produced a plate of fried plantain and grilled snapper. She was sweating hard, and Juliet thanked her in Krio, but the woman didn’t speak. When she turned to leave, I saw that her right eye was missing. The side of her face was a mass of scar tissue. I looked at the food and I remembered I was hungry. I’d last eaten a meal on the way to see Sonny Boy in Brinton. The plantain took on a reddish hue from the palm oil used to fry it. Salt crystals were scattered over the fish. The skin was blistered and blackened in places by the coals it had been cooked on.
“I think I’m about to eat your lunch, Juliet,” I said to her. I broke off some of the flesh with my fingers and ate it. It was delicious.
“Oh, it’s fine. You go ahead, love. You must be ravenous. Lucy will bring some more,” she replied, looking directly at me. She was beautiful, and hard with it. “And call me Jules. Everyone else does.”
Juliet. I swallowed her name with a mouthful of beer.
“There is no such thing as a coincidence,” my father would say to me when my seven-year-old mind fretted about why my mother called me in for tea at the precise moment I hoped she’d forget I was outside playing. “Everything is connected, Maximilian,” he’d chuckle as I traipsed back inside, “even if we can’t see how. Everything. Coincidences are how God and science shake hands.”
I couldn’t see it when I was a child, and I couldn’t see it then, either. Never mind shaking hands, it felt like I was being slapped by a cosmic high five.
It was inconceivable that Juliet was “Juliet,” the source—the only source—that had placed my target in the rebel camp at Karabunda. Not even MI6 would have code-named a source so transparently, a source so highly classified that apparently not even General King knew his or her true identity. Then I remembered what Captain Rhodes had said: We’re hiding you in plain sight. She was only a captain, but perhaps she knew and had hidden “Juliet” in plain sight, too. Someone other than Mason had to know—if he even knew himself.
What troubled me more was that there was no obvious reason why the source should be withheld from me at all. Any scrap of information, no matter how small, could always make the difference between getting to the target or not. I also reminded myself how entirely feasible it was that the source “Juliet” might not even know he or she was the source: it’s possible to positively identify a target without knowing you’ve done so.
I drank more of the beer and opened a packet of duty-free Reds and remembered, too, that it was only conjecture that Six had named or renamed the source “Juliet.” Like so many of the problems that plagued the Foreign Office, it could just as easily have been inherited as created.
“You were going to tell me how you got in with the embassy,” I reminded Roberts. Juliet passed me his lighter as he ran his palms over his braids. The unruly ends curled out from the nape of his neck. They were flecked with gray.
“It was during the evacuation in ’ninety-nine, like I was saying. When we arrived in Senegal, there was this guy, Mike, from the British embassy. He’d flown out with us. He knew Ezra and he needed someone who spoke Limba. I do. They had a defector from up north who they were getting to safety. He wouldn’t or couldn’t speak Krio, and they wanted me to talk to him. So I did. I got hero points for that, being a kid and shot in the guts and all. Know what I mean? We stayed in touch, me and Mike, and when we came back”—he looked at Juliet—“well, he must have given my name to whoever replaced him at the embassy, because they kept asking me to do translating jobs for them. It’s good money. Especially when no one’s buying Star or needs a ride.”
“Sure, but I thought you said your folks were from Congo Town. Freetown is south. They speak Limba farther north, no?” For the remainder of the flight I’d skimmed—as standard—the latest Lonely Planet guide to West Africa. Backpackers should take some comfort in being briefed as well as most spies.
“That was my mum’s family. My dad’s folks are from Musala, way up north. There are plenty of Limba in Freetown, but they don’t speak it like me and my dad speak it. We’re Sierra Leone’s only indigenous tribe. He’s a proper northerner.” He paused and looked down at the bar. “Was a proper northerner.”
“Musala, up on the Mong River?”
“Yeah, bright lights, big village. No one has ever heard of it outside of Northern Province. Not even the president, I reckon.”
“Especially the president,” Juliet chipped in.
“I had you down as a fan.” I nodded at her chest.
“What, this guy?” She shook her breasts so the black-and-white screen-printed photo of President Koroma jiggled about. “Nah, it’s so the punters don’t stare at me tits. Ugly bugger, ain’t he? Is that where you’re going to build the clinic?” I took a drag on the Marlboro and didn’t answer. “Robbie said you’re a medic; that you’re going up-country to build a clinic. Is that the clinic in Musala?”
I exhaled and looked at Roberts before I spoke. He was tucking into the plantain and making small pleasure noises while he chewed.
“Near Musala,” I corrected her. “And now I know why Robbie the northerner here got the unenviable job of carting me around.” I tilted my glass toward him in salute. “I didn’t know your folks were from up there. But I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to build it. That’s the contractor’s job—if the project ever goes ahead. I’m just doing the needs assessment for the embassy. They want to know they’re targeting the right people before they pay for it.”
I hadn’t known Roberts’s father’s family was from Musala. That made him either a tremendous asset or an extraordinary liability. Roberts looked up crossly from his plate and scowled at her. I guessed he wasn’t so keen on being called Robbie.
“That’s the American clinic, right?” Juliet carried on.
“Max is Canadian,” Roberts said, to her. And then, looking at me: “Not American. Right?”
“Right,” I agreed, tipping the visor of the blue cap back a little. “Irish Canadian. English clinic.”
“That explains it,” she continued. “Well, sort of. You don’t half sound like that other Irish guy who was here from the embassy.” And then, turning to Roberts: “You know, that big bloke. Lord, what was his name?”
Roberts shook his head. My stomach tightened. I put out the cigarette.
“Hands like shovels,” she went on. “Ever so gentle, mind. Looked like he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was funny, too. Every time I asked him what he was doing up north, he’d just say, ‘You wouldn’t believe it for a moment!’ God, what was his bloody name? He was here about that clinic, too. Must have been the same one. He made a few trips up to Musala.”
“The big guy, that was probably the engineer,” I said.
“But I was sure it was for the Americans.” She looked baffled and cocked her head to one side. “He hung out with that bloke Micky from USAID. They went everywhere together at first. Mind you, I think he got fed up with him after a while and came and stayed here for a bit of peace and quiet before he went back up north.”
“What happened to him, the big guy?” I asked.
“Well, that was funny—funny peculiar, I mean.” Her gaze was unbroken, and I returned it, trying hard not to steal glances at the president. “He was supposed to come back here and stay with us again on his way to London, but someone from Micky’s office called Robbie on the mobile and said he’d been taken sick and they’d had to fly him home. Malaria, they reckoned.” She shook her head at the memory. “The mozzies are a right bugger up north.”
Roberts finished the last of the plantain and looked wistfully at the door from which Lucy the cook-cum-waitress had emerged earlier.
“Shame, that,” he said. “He was all right. Someone was supposed to come round and pick up his stuff, but in the end no one showed up. They just told me to give you his bag after all.”
I looked at the Billingham satchel on the floor beneath my barstool and resisted the urge to reach for it.
“How interesting. I wonder what’s in it,” I said to neither of them in particular.
Roberts looked at Juliet, and then back at me.
“Search me, mate. Feels heavy, though. Like a camera. Maybe it’s his theodolite.” Then a mischievous look flitted across his face, as he lit on a different, better suggestion. “Hey, if it’s gold or diamonds, I know a great little restaurant on the beach that’s ripe for development.” And then he burst out laughing, and Juliet joined in, and I smiled along with them.
“What do you reckon is in the bag, Max?” Juliet asked me. “Gold or diamonds?”
“Ah well,” I said, “it’s probably just his sat phone. I’ll have a look later.” Then I hammed up my accent. “But you won’t believe it for a moment if I tell you it’s gold, sure you won’t.”
* * *
• • •
I TOOK OUT the black Benchmade knife from the duffel bag, slid the safety catch off and pressed in the small silver stud at the hilt. The blade sprang out sideways and snapped home with a reassuring thunk. The tip scored out the newly laid grouting, and I lifted the large oblong brown floor tile clear. Nestled inside the hole I’d uncovered was a small burlap sack about twice the size of a roll of toilet paper, tied shut with a length of nylon sailing cord. I unpicked the knot and carefully slid out the contents, which were further wrapped in ziplock sandwich bags.
I carried everything through to the bedroom, placed the packages on the desk and pulled the curtains to. The room was momentarily plunged into darkness between the sun vanishing behind the thick hotel blackout drapes and the sidelight blinking into life. Then I extracted the oiled SIG P229 semiautomatic pistol from one of the plastic bags, two spare fifteen-round magazines and a short silencer from another, and two boxes of ammunition from the third. Each box contained fifty cartridges: premium match-grade 9mm full metal jackets. I wasn’t a fan of British Army–issue ammo—made always by the lowest bidder. Captain Rhodes had been as good as her word. The pistol was modified military issue—with a custom flat trigger and no sharp edges to catch on the clothing that would conceal it.
I took some toilet paper from the bathroom, wiped the excess oil from the pistol and ejected the magazine. The slide and action were liquid smooth. The bespoke barrel was threaded to receive the silencer; the threads were protected by a metal cap. I removed the cap and fitted the silencer. It was made from titanium and steel and well-balanced. I loaded fifteen rounds into the magazine, inserted it, chambered a round into the breech, ejected the magazine and refilled it so once the magazine was put back in the pistol, it held sixteen rounds—which was sixteen rounds more than I wanted to put through it in Sierra Leone. What I needed to do was fire one rifle shot to end a war, not start one with a pistolero shoot-’em-up.
When we first arrived at Raven Hill, Colonel Ellard warned us that if we ever needed to fire more than five handgun rounds on a job, something had gone very seriously wrong, and that we would need more ammunition than we could carry to make it right again. But for this mission the extra bullets were reassuring. As Ellard had also said, “If you always plan for the worst, you will only ever be pleasantly surprised.” He had fostered in me a chronic sense of unease. His gift, Raven Hill’s gift, to all of us was to eliminate hope and replace it with agency.
I loaded the two spare magazines and put them in the burlap sack with the rest of the ammunition, untwisted the little silencer and put the SIG into a thick hiking sock, and then put the lot into a black North Face day bag. I washed my hands and checked the room safe. The code, always the same, was 1-2-2-3. The door swung open with a beep to reveal a large manila envelope, which in turn opened to reveal one hundred thousand US dollars in late-series, nonsequential used bills. I closed and locked the safe and turned my attention to the Billingham satchel.
Made of canvas and closed with leather straps with brass fasteners, the Billingham was a piece of retro English elegance. It looked out of place among the modern lines of a business-class room in the Mammy Yoko Hotel. I turned it over in my hands. No sign of damage or interference. It was supposed to contain a two-way video BGAN satellite phone and two smartphones, one local and one for international calls. The latter I needed immediately. I’d switched my own phone off once Roberts had picked me up. Ordinarily it shouldn’t go back on until I was out of the country.
From what Juliet and Roberts had said, it looked like the last person who’d had possession of the bag before them was Sonny Boy. And the last thing that Sonny Boy had done was try to kill me. I had no idea what was in the bag. What I did know was that Sonny Boy handled plastic explosive like Michelangelo handled marble.
I wasn’t in the mood for a surprise.
For a moment I considered taking it to a remote spot on Lumley Beach and firing a couple of rounds into it to see if it went bang. But instead I undid the leather top straps to reveal a double zip secured with a combination padlock, which Sonny Boy must have added and which Captain Rhodes hadn’t mentioned. That was a good sign, at least. You don’t padlock shut a booby trap for which the target doesn’t have the code: five combination digits each ranging from zero to nine, and all set to zero. There were exactly one hundred thousand possible permutations, and only one solution. I slipped the point of the knife into the canvas by the lock and worked it along the seam, careful not to push too hard and damage whatever was inside.
There had been nothing to fear.
I put the SIM cards into the phones, switched them on and set them up. Both phones looked completely clean. No trace of Sonny Boy’s last moves. Both beeped repeatedly as messages came in welcoming me to Sierra Leone, confirming receipt of a thousand dollars’ worth of credit and unrestricted data access and advising me of the best local numbers to call in case of emergency. The BGAN satellite phone was equally clean, and so was the bag. As usual, Sonny Boy had kept his shit tight. The contents of the bag were exactly as advertised. What was not as advertised was that Sonny had been tooling about with an American aid worker, or someone who claimed to be one. I’d pressed Juliet about “Micky” as far as I’d dared, and drawn a blank. There were no clues in the phones, either.
Switching them on meant that Rhodes, Mason, King, Nazzar and, of course, Frank Knight would now all know exactly where I was. And where was that? In ano
ther hotel room, with my hands not long scrubbed clean of blood, which this time belonged to someone I called a friend. I lit a cigarette and parted the curtains an inch. The light was softening. Palm trees on the hotel grounds shimmied in the breeze.
Neither Roberts nor Juliet had mentioned anything unusual happening in or around Musala. We’d talked in detail about Ebola and the civil war, but neither of them had expressed any concerns about a fresh outbreak of either. They were looking to the future and seemed happy enough. I’d walked back to the hotel alone along the Lumley Beach Road, leaving Roberts tucking into a fresh plate of snapper and plantain.
News of Musala falling would soon spread through the Sierra Leone Army. The rebels might not have left any survivors, and the town might be locked down, but army rumor mills everywhere operate remarkably well devoid of even the most basic of facts. At the very minimum, government reinforcements would have been sent to block the road south from Musala to Kabala. Once the news reached the general population—which could be within hours—pandemonium was possible, at least in the north. That was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. But either way, it would change how I operated. For all I knew, Kabala could already have been attacked. The sudden awareness of the enormity of the task ahead made me realize how tired—actually exhausted—I was. In less than a week, I’d failed to terminate my target, killed my mate and possibly fatally compromised myself in the eyes of my superiors.
The Break Line Page 7
