Cross Country ак-14

by James Patterson

  “Looks good,” I said. “Thank you, Moses.”

  “There is a river. Over there if you wish to wash up.” he pointed with his chin to the opposite side of the road. I noticed his shirt was soaking wet. “It is not far.”

  I bushwhacked with my arms, skirting a huge knot of thorny scrub the way Moses had obviously done before me.

  About twenty-five yards in, the brush opened up and I came out onto a mud-and-gravel bank.

  The river itself was a wide, murky green piece of glass. I could barely tell it was moving. I took a step toward the water and sank up to my ankle mud.

  When I pulled back, the mud sucked the shoe right off my foot. Shit. I’d wanted to clean myself up, not get filthier.

  I looked up and down the bank, wondering where Moses had gone to wash.

  First, I needed my shoe back, though. I reached down into the guck and felt around. It was actually nice and cool down there.

  Suddenly the water in front of me boiled up. Some thing rough, like a huge log, came to the surface very, very quickly.

  And then I saw that it was a full-blown, honest-to-God crocodile. Its black eyes were set on me. Breakfast was on the table.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Good-bye shoe. Good-bye leg or arm?

  I stepped back ever so slowly. So far, the croc showed just a layer of tiled skin at the water’s surface. I could see the bulge of its snout. The great beast’s eyes didn’t leave me for a second.

  Never taking a breath, I kept inching backward.

  On the next step though, my foot turned in the mud. I fell! Like it had received a cue, the crocodile sprang forward.

  Nine, ten, maybe as much as twelve feet long, it surged out of the water, slashing in and out of an S-shape as it leapt straight at me.

  I tried to pull in my legs, if only to postpone the inevitable savage bite. How could this have happened? Everyone had been right– I shouldn’t have come to Africa.

  Suddenly a shot exploded behind me!

  Then a second shot!

  The huge croc let out a strange, high-pitched noise that was part scream, part gasp. It reared up off its front legs, then smacked back down into the mud. I could see a red ooze on the side of its head. It thrashed once more, then rapidly backed away into the river and disappeared.

  I turned to see Moses standing behind me. He was holding the Beretta.

  “I am so sorry, sah. I meant to say that you should take this with you. Just in case.”

  Chapter 69

  AFRICA! WAS THERE anywhere in the world like it? I didn’t think so.

  We reached Porto Novo the next day and decided it would be best if I took the bus from there to Lagos. A man stood outside the public toilet at the bus station. He tried to get me to pay to enter, until I told him I would pee on his shoes first. He laughed and stepped away.

  Then Moses and I parted, and he drove off proudly in his truck. I never found out whether he was a good Samaritan or an opportunist, though my nature favored the former. I will always think of Moses as my first friend in Africa.

  Back at the hotel in Lagos, I showered off three days’ worth of dust, sweat, and blood. I looked at my crooked nose in the bathroom mirror. Alex, you are a piece of work. Finally, I plopped down on the bed to call home.

  I started with a call to Bree’s cell this time. It was good just to hear her voice again, but the warm hellos between us were quick.

  She had news that couldn’t wait – about a new murder, on Eighteenth Street, and about the young boy she’d found there and what he’d said: There was more than one Tiger. Flaherty had told me the same thing, but I was pretty sure I was looking for one killer – I could feel it in my gut.

  Bree countered, “If this boy is for real, it’s the closest thing we’ve got to inside information. He was in the gang, Alex. You could be doing just as much damage control in DC, maybe more. Come home.”

  “Bree, you’re talking about a phantom witness back there. A young boy. I know that the man who killed Ellie and her family is here right now. He’s in Lagos.” At least my instincts told me he was. Who knows now?

  “I’ll see what else I can find out, specifically about him.” Her voice was tight. We’d never really fought before, but this conversation was feeling pretty close.

  “Listen, Bree,” I said. “I swear, I’m not going to stay here any longer than necessary.”

  “I think we have very different definitions of what that means, Alex.”

  “You could be right about that.”

  I might have kept that to myself, but the only thing I could offer Bree right now was the truth.

  “I miss you like crazy,” I finally said, telling Bree another kind of truth, while trying to change the subject. “What are you wearing?” I joked.

  She knew I was kidding and laughed. “Where do you think I am? I’ve got Ugly Fred looking at me across my desk” – I heard a shout of protest in the background – “and half the Major Case Squad’s in the room with me. You want me to keep going?”

  I took a rain check and we said our good-byes. Then, before I could dial home to Fifth Street, I heard a rattle at my door.

  “Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

  The door swung open so fast I didn’t have time to get off the bed to look. I recognized the front-desk manager.

  But not the two dark suits with white shirts standing in the hall behind him.

  “What are you doing in my room?” I asked the desk man. “What is this all about? Who are they?”

  He didn’t say a word to me. He just held the door open for the other two and then closed it from the outside as they moved across the room toward me.

  I jumped up off the bed and set my feet on the floor. “What’s going on here?” I said. “What’s happening now?”

  Chapter 70

  “SSS!” ONE OF them shouted at the top of his voice. I had heard the initials before. State Security Service, if that’s who these two men really were.

  They went right at me, totally unafraid of any consequences. One of them bear-hugged my arms and shoulders; the other scooped my legs out from under me.

  Now what was happening? Were they really State Security? Who had sent them for me? And why?

  I struggled, but both of them were freaks sizewise, incredibly powerful men, quick and athletic too. They had my body twisted in a corkscrew and it was impossible to break free.

  We crossed the room like that, with me tangled and helpless in their arms. Then I heard a window slide open, and I felt the rush of humidity on my skin.

  My whole body tensed and I started to yell for help as loudly as I possibly could to anyone who might hear me.

  There was a blur of sky and earth and swimming pool and then my back slammed hard into the hotel wall.

  I was suddenly outside – and hanging upside down!

  “What do you want?” I screamed up at the one holding my legs. He had a very round face, flat nose, kind of a Mike Tyson squint. It was a struggle to keep still and not fight him, but I sure didn’t want him to lose his grip.

  The SSS man, or whoever he was, grinned down at me over the curve of my knees.

  “You been here long enough, Cross. Time to cross you off.” He laughed over his shoulder, sharing the joke with his partner.

  Even if the swimming pool had been directly below me, which it wasn’t, I figured I was too high to survive any fall. My blood coursed through me. I could feel it everywhere, especially in the growing pressure in my head.

  But then my body was moving again. Inside!

  My spine scraped hard against the aluminum window track, and I came down on the floor of my hotel room.

  Chapter 71

  I JUMPED UP and went at the nearest SSS man, until the other pressed his gun into my ribs.

  “Easy,” he said. “You don’t want to get shot now, do you?”

  I saw that my duffel was out on the bed.

  And packed.

  “Pick up the bag.”

  “Who sent you?” I
asked them. “Who are you working for? This is insane!”

  He didn’t answer me. Instead, they grabbed me and moved me out into the hall. Freak One shut the door behind us and pocketed the key.

  Then they both just turned and walked away.

  “Go home, Detective Cross. You’re not wanted here. Last warning.”

  There was a bizarre half minute or so while they waited for the elevator, talking low to each other. Then they calmly got on and left me standing in the hallway.

  Clueless.

  And keyless.

  Obviously they’d taken this as far as it was going for now. Whoever they were, police or not, and whatever connection they might have to the Tiger, they didn’t kill for him.

  They hadn’t even tried to put me on a plane.

  But why not?

  What was going on in this crazy country of theirs?

  Chapter 72

  IT WAS HARD to fathom or predict, but my situation in Lagos actually got worse over the next hour or so. The front-desk people at the Superior insisted that I had “checked out” and that no rooms were available, something I knew to be untrue.

  I tried half a dozen hotels on the phone and got the same story everywhere – credit card denied. It was looking more and more like the two strong men who had evicted me from the Superior were indeed representatives of the state, whatever in hell that meant here in Lagos.

  I tried Ian Flaherty several times and left a voice mail twice, but I didn’t hear back from the CIA man.

  So I did the next thing I could think of. I got a driver and asked him to take me to Oshodi Market. If I couldn’t get hold of Flaherty, I’d go back to his valued informant. I was quickly running out of options.

  I knew I was in the middle of something bad – but what was it? Why did everybody seem to want me out of the country? What did it have to do with the murder of Ellie Cox?

  It took over an hour to get to the market and another fifty minutes of wandering and asking around to find the rug stall I was looking for.

  A middle-aged man with one dead eye, not Tokunbo, was working today. His English was poor. He nodded at Tokunbo’s name – I was in the right place – but then shooed me off for a customer.

  I couldn’t afford to just hang around hoping for a miracle, so I cut my losses and found my way back to the car. The only Plan C I could think of was to go to the US consulate.

  But then, crawling through more traffic on the way to Victoria Island, I thought of something else. Plan D.

  “Can you pull over, please?”

  The driver stopped on the shoulder behind a burned-out old Ford Ranger. I asked him to pop the trunk, then went around and got my duffel.

  I dug inside, looking for the pants I’d worn on that first day. I’d already trashed the shirt, but I was pretty sure–

  Yes, here were the trousers, smelly and bloodstained from my time in jail.

  I looked in the front pockets, but both were empty.

  When I checked the back, I found what I was looking for, the one thing they’d missed when they took just about everything else at Kirikiri: Father Bombata’s card.

  I turned to the driver, who was waiting impatiently for me, half in, half out of the car.

  “How much to use your cell phone?” I asked.

  Chapter 73

  TWO HOURS LATER, I was dining in style with Father Bombata in his office at the Redeemed Church of Christ, a sprawling complex right in the heart of Lagos.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said. “And for all of this. I was hungry.”

  We were sharing a meal of kudu, squash, salad, and a South African Zinfandel over the expansive desk in his office. The priest’s tiny body was all the more dwarfed by a high-backed chair and the floor-to-ceiling windows looming behind him. Heavy red drapes kept out all but two slits of fading evening light.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked me and actually seemed concerned. “Or should I ask ‘What happened to the other man?’”

  I’d almost forgotten how I looked. The nose had stopped hurting somewhere around Ghana.

  “Shaving accident,” I told him and forced a crooked smile.

  I didn’t want to give one more person a reason to think I should go home on the next available plane. What I needed were allies, not more advice.

  “Father, I’ve gotten some disturbing information about a killer called the Tiger. Do you think it’s possible that there is more than one Tiger? Maybe operating in different locations? Like here and in the US?”

  “All things are possible, of course,” he said with a kind smile. “But that is not your real question, is it? Still, I suppose I would have to say yes, it is possible, especially if the government is involved. Or big business. There are a number of employers of killers for hire. It is a common practice.”

  “Why the government? Or a corporation?”

  The priest rolled his eyes, but then he gave me a straight answer.

  “They have the means for controlling information that others might not. And for controlling misinformation as well.”

  “Any idea why they would want to do that? Be involved, I mean.”

  He stood to pour me some more wine. “I can imagine any number of reasons. But it would be irresponsible of me to suggest that I actually think it’s happening. Because, truthfully, I have no idea. The name is symbolism – the Tiger. You realize that there aren’t any tigers in Africa. Maybe in a zoo someplace.”

  “I know that. In any case, I’m chasing at least one real man here,” I said. “I need to find out where he’s gone. He killed my friend and her family. Other families were murdered too.”

  “If l may?“He looked at a mahogany clock facing him on the desk.”From what you’ve told me, your more immediate need is for somewhere to sleep.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “You don’t have to, Detective Cross. I can’t offer you anything here. It’s a risk I would take for myself but not for my congregation. However, I can take you to our men’s shelter. There’s a five-night maximum, and it’s no hotel–”

  “I’ll take it. Thank you,” I told the priest.

  “As for your mysterious Tiger, I’m in less of a position to help.”

  “I understand.” I was sorely disappointed but tried not to show it.

  Father Bombata held up a hand. “You think quickly, don’t you? Maybe sometimes your mind works too fast. What I was going to say was that I can’t help you there. But I do know someone who might.

  “My cousin, actually. She’s the most beautiful woman in Nigeria. But of course I’m biased. You be your own judge.”

  Chapter 74

  HER NAME WAS Adanne Tansi, and, as promised by the priest, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in person. She was also a reporter with the Guardian, Lagos’s biggest newspaper.

  Her office was maybe 6 x 8, if that. As I entered, I only hoped that I didn’t smell like I’d just spent the night in a crowded homeless shelter.

  Over the next hour, Adanne told me that she had been covering the original Tiger and his gang for two years, but he was still something of a shadow figure.

  “I am not certain there is more than one Tiger. But I have heard the rumor too. This could be gangster myth. Who knows, maybe he spreads it himself. Anyway, who can tell what a man like that could do to the newspaper if he wanted to.”

  “Or to a reporter?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Some things are worth more than a life. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re taking chances with your life?”

  I smiled. “I guess I am.”

  I found that I couldn’t take my eyes away from Adanne Tansi, though I tried not to be rude. She was stunning in the manner of some actresses, and it was impossible not to notice her high cheekbones and her dark doelike eyes but also the way she carried herself. She seemed unafraid, and I wondered why that was so. She had much to lose but carried it lightly.

  She picked up a pen. It had escaped me that she had a pad at
hand among the mess of other papers at her work area.

  “No notes,” I said. “This isn’t an interview. I’m just a tourist here. That’s been made very clear to me.”

  Adanne immediately put the pen down, smiling as though she had had to at least give it a try.

  I went on. “Do you have any sense of where the Tiger is now? Or any idea how I could find out?”

  “No to the first,” she said. “And I believe so to the second.”

  Chapter 75

  I WAITED BUT she left it at that. After a few seconds, I realized that in Lagos even a newspaper office was a marketplace.

  “In exchange for what?” I finally asked her.

  Adanne smiled again. She was very coy – and clever. “A good story about an American detective looking for a criminal and murderer like the Tiger – that would be hard not to print.”

  I put my hands on the arms of my chair, ready to go.

  “No.”

  Suddenly her eyes were locked onto mine. “Detective Cross, do you realize how much good could come from a story like this? This human monster is responsible for hundreds of deaths, maybe more.”

  “I know,” I said, working hard to keep my voice in check. “One of them was a friend of mine.”

  “And one was my brother,” said Adanne. “So you can see why I want to write this story.”

  Her words resonated in the small room. She wasn’t angry, just measured, and, within that, passionate.

  “Ms Tansi–”

  “Please call me Adanne. Everyone does.”

  “Adanne. You obviously care a great deal about this, but I don’t know you. I wish I could trust you but I can’t.”

  Her stare told me I hadn’t lost her yet. “But I hope you’ll help me anyway. I’m Alex, by the way. Everyone calls me that.”

  She thought about what I had said, and I could see she was conflicted. It was unusual to see this in a journalist, at least the ones I knew back in Washington – this kind of transparency.