4
NAIROBI, KENYA
The Airbus 340 set down onto the tarmac and stopped so smoothly that it hardly seemed to have been moving at all. “On behalf of your Virgin Atlantic flight crew, I welcome you to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Local time is 9:30 a.m., three hours ahead of GMT.” Nothing more. As if they’d flown four hundred miles instead of four thousand. English understatement hadn’t entirely disappeared.
The layover at Heathrow had proved a blessing of sorts, giving Wells time to catch up on the kidnappings, the Kenyan response, and the broader refugee crisis. The Kenyan Interior Ministry was blocking Western journalists from Dadaab. Wells wondered whether the government in Nairobi wanted to hide how much it was doing to find the hostages—or how little.
Either way, the police had placed checkpoints around the camps and the roads that led to Dadaab. According to the media reports, the police were detaining any white person who didn’t have permits from national police headquarters and the Kenyan Department of Refugee Affairs. As far as Wells could tell, the lockdown had succeeded. He’d seen no articles written directly from Dadaab.
Years before, Wells might have found a driver willing to hide him and race to Dadaab straight from the airport. But these days he made the police his enemy only if he had no other choice. Especially here, where he had no on-the-ground knowledge and couldn’t blend in. Getting caught at a roadblock and returned to Nairobi for deportation would be anything but heroic. So Wells planned to spend the day persuading government officials to give him the permits he needed. By persuading, he meant bribing.
Wells looked out the jet’s narrow window, shielding his eyes from the equatorial sun. He felt an unexpected anticipation. For all his years living outside the United States, he’d seen little of Africa. The closest he’d come was Cairo, which was two thousand miles north, and more Arab than African. And the simplicity of this mission pleased him. Get them out.
If getting them out meant making a deal . . . Wells would decide when the moment arrived. The United States government claimed it never negotiated with hostage-takers, that payoffs only led to more kidnappings in the future. But Wells wasn’t working for the government. If he felt a ransom was the only way to save the lives of the hostages, he’d probably agree. Even so, he wasn’t planning a payoff. The offer he expected to make went more along the lines of Let them go. Or die.
His diplomatic passport carried him quickly through immigration. He slipped on his Ray-Bans and stepped outside the terminal to find a sunny day, cooler and more pleasant than he’d expected. Nairobi was about a mile above sea level, a fact that had proved crucial to its fortunes. The city hadn’t even existed before the late 1800s, when the British settled it as a depot for the railroad they were building from the Indian Ocean to Uganda. Its mild weather and lack of malaria-carrying mosquitoes appealed to Europeans and local tribesmen alike. Now Nairobi had four million residents and was the most important city in East Africa. But its deep poverty had made it one of the most violent and dangerous cities anywhere. Expatriates called it Nai-robbery.
Still, the taxi line belied the city’s fierce reputation. Cabs queued neatly at the curb. Wells slid into the front seat of the first. The driver was a skinny man who wore fingerless leather racing gloves, as if he were driving a Ferrari and not a gray four-cylinder Toyota.
“Where may I take you?” Because of the British occupation, Kenya’s public schools taught English. Nearly everyone in the country spoke some. A break for Wells.
“Anywhere I can buy a local cell.” Wells didn’t think the agency had a problem with him being here. But if Duto or someone else at Langley decided otherwise, Wells wanted the option of disappearing. Prepaid local phones were tougher for NSA to track than American numbers. Though not impossible, as more than one al-Qaeda operative had realized too late.
“A cell?”
Wells had forgotten. Only Americans called them cells. “A mobile phone. Then downtown.”
“To your hotel?”
“The Intercontinental,” Wells said, picking a name at random. “Let’s go.”
“Very good. Be sure to look to your left in a minute, sir. The giraffes are visiting.”
So even before the Toyota left the airport grounds, Wells saw his first African wildlife, a herd of giraffes munching contentedly on the open plains to the west. If he hadn’t known better, he would have wondered if they were animatronic props for tourists: Welcome to Kenya. Have you booked your safari?
“How can they live so close to the city?”
“We have a national park that extends almost to the airport.”
As Wells watched, one of the giraffes loped away. Its first steps were uncertain, but stride by stride it gained speed until it galloped over the plain. The others followed. Wells wondered if the animals had sensed a threat or were taking flight preemptively.
Fifteen minutes later, Wells was the proud owner of two new handsets. Basic models with inch-square screens and twelve-button keypads. Nothing fancy, nothing with a GPS locator for the boys at Fort Meade to trace. Plus four different SIM cards, two each from Safaricom and Airtel, the main Kenyan carriers. The driver glanced at Wells as he clicked cards into handsets. “You collect phones?”
“What’s your name?” Wells liked the guy. The gloves hadn’t lied. He drove with an edge.
“Martin.”
“How much to hire you for the day, Martin?”
“Ten thousand shillings, sir. Plus petrol.” About $120, in a country where most people lived on a few dollars a day. Martin sounded like he couldn’t believe he was asking for it.
“Okay, ten thousand, good. Long as you drive fast. Get me where I’m going.”
“I can do that, sir. Thank you.”
“And call me John.”
“Of course—”
But Wells was already making his first call. Before he went anywhere, he needed a fixer.
“New York Times,” a woman said. “Nairobi bureau.”
“Jeffrey Gettleman, please.” Gettleman was the bureau chief. Wells had never met him, but he’d seen the byline for years.
“Who’s this?”
“I have information about the aid workers, the kidnappings.”
“He’s not in. I can have him call you.”
“Trust me, he’ll want it now. If you can give me his mobile.”
A pause, then the numbers. Wells dialed.
“This is Jeffrey.”
“Mr. Gettleman. You don’t know me, but my name’s John Wells.” Wells had thought about using a fake name but decided not to start with a lie. He might need Gettleman later. “I just landed in Nairobi and I’m reaching out because I’ve been hired to investigate the kidnapping.”
“Hired by whom?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“That was quick.”
“A small one. I need a fixer.”
“You called me for a recommendation, Mr. Wells? Like I’m Zagat’s?”
“Good enough for The New York Times, good enough for me. You help me, I promise I won’t forget.”
“Tell me who hired you, I’ll hook you up with the best guy in town. He’s connected everywhere. Smart. He can give you all the background you need on the camps. And the political situation, which is complicated.”
“Nothing free with you guys. Always trading.”
“You called me.”
Wells couldn’t argue the point. “You can’t use this, not yet, but Gwen Murphy’s family brought me in.”
“From the U.S.?”
“Yes.”
“Have they gotten a ransom demand?”
“No. The fixer, please.”
“His name’s Wilfred Wumbugu. I’ll text you his number. Will I see you at the press conference tonight?”
“Anything’s possible.” Wells hung up, thinking, Press conference?
—
But first the permits. He called Wilfred, explained what he needed.
“It’s not possible. Since
the kidnapping, there’s no access. Essential aid workers with existing permits only. No exceptions.”
“I’ll pay. Whatever it costs.”
“We talk in person. At Simmers. Thirty minutes.”
“Simmers.”
“Your driver will know.”
They were closing—slowly—on downtown Nairobi. To the northwest, office towers marked the central business district. Kenya remained desperately poor, but after decades of stagnation, its economy was reviving. New apartment buildings and office parks rose along the highway. Billboards advertised low-fare airlines connecting Nairobi with the rest of East Africa. And the traffic was horrendous, as the new middle class jammed dilapidated roads. Despite his frustration, Wells almost had to smile. Back in Montana, Evan probably imagined him with pistol in hand, cracking skulls. Instead he was stuck in traffic on his way to get a permit. The thrilling life of the secret operative.
Though Wells didn’t doubt the skull-cracking would come.
—
Simmers was a restaurant and dance hall under a big tent in the midst of the office towers, smoky, almost shabby, with plastic chairs and tables and a barbecue grill. A cantina, really. Wells liked it immediately. A man at a corner table caught Wells’s eye, waved him over.
“I’m Wilfred.” He was a slim man in a crisp white shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. Back home Wells would have pegged him as a Web designer.
“How’d you guess it was me?” Wells was the only white person in the place.
Wilfred waved over a waiter. “You want something?”
“A Coke.”
“Not a Tusker? The national beer.”
“I try not to drink before noon.”
“In here, time doesn’t matter. Simmers never closes. Open twenty-four hours. We call them day-and-night clubs.”
“Coke.”
“Two Cokes,” Wilfred said to the waiter. “Now tell me again what you want.”
Wells did.
“You understand, these camps, all of eastern Kenya, it’s dangerous now. Because of Shabaab. You know about them?”
“Yes.” Al-Shabaab was a radical Muslim group that controlled much of Somalia and enforced strict sharia law in its territory. Women wore burqas. Thieves faced amputation. But the group also had a criminal side, smuggling sugar into Kenya and protecting the pirates who kidnapped sailors off the coast. The United States and United Nations had tried to destroy Shabaab for years. Lately they’d made progress. United Nations peacekeepers had pushed Shabaab’s guerrillas out of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. And Kenya had briefly sent troops into Somalia from the west. Still, Shabaab remained a threat. The Kenyan government had publicly announced that the group was the prime suspect in the kidnapping.
“But doesn’t the government or the UN try to screen Shabaab out of the refugee camps?”
“Wait until you see them. A half-million people. Almost ten percent of the population of Somalia. And you think they tell the truth about who they are? Oh, yes, I’m Shabaab, I shot three peacekeepers. They know the story to tell to get in. The UN doesn’t even try to screen them anymore.”
“Everyone gets in?”
“They call the policy prima facie. You’re Somali, you get across the border, you’re an automatic refugee. In the United States you would call them illegal aliens. But here CNN runs pictures of starving babies, so they’re refugees. If you’re a Kenyan living in Kenya you don’t get free food and shelter, but if you’re a Somali you do.”
Wells saw what Gettleman meant about the complexity of the political situation. He hadn’t considered how the Kenyans viewed the refugees. “Would that anger extend to the aid workers? Could a Kenyan gang have kidnapped them?”
“Possible. It wouldn’t be political. Just for money. But I don’t know how they would get paid without getting caught. In Somalia it’s much easier. There’s a whole setup.”
“So you think it’s Shabaab.”
“That’s the most likely. And the police say so. Though in Kenya the police say lots of things.”
“Why I need to go up there myself. Today.”
“You can’t hide up there, mzungu”—the not-entirely-friendly Swahili term for a white person. “Everyone will know you’re American.”
“I’m not so sure,” Wells said in Arabic.
“Arabic?”
“Get me the permits or I’ll find a fixer who can,” Wells said, still in Arabic.
Wilfred looked at Wells’s coiled hands and broad shoulders. For the first time he seemed to understand who Wells was, what Wells was. “You have money? Not one, two hundred dollars. Real money.”
Wells handed Wilfred a packet of hundreds from his backpack. “This enough to start?”
Wilfred riffed the bills. “Castle House first. If the Department of Refugee Affairs approves you, the police will follow. By the way, my rate is two hundred fifty a day in Nairobi. Whether I get these permits or not. If I go to Dadaab, five hundred.”
Wells felt he had to protest, if only to prove he wasn’t a total sucker. “Gettleman said your rate was a hundred.”
“Gettleman didn’t see how much money you have.”
—
The refugee department was headquartered west of downtown. Martin slalomed through traffic on a broad avenue shaded by oak trees, then swung onto a rutted road hemmed by concrete-walled houses. The neighborhood’s wealth reminded Wells of the fancier precincts of Los Angeles. The homes here had similar private guards, security cameras, and signs promising armed response. “There’s money here.”
“You want poor people?” Wilfred said. “We’ll take you to Kibera. Over the hills just southeast. A few square kilometers, maybe a million people, no one really knows. No running water, no open space, no legal electricity. Shacks and shacks and shacks. After the elections in 2007, the politicians stirred them up and they rioted. Tribal warfare, the Kikuyu against everyone else. Five hundred died, maybe one thousand. The police waited for them to fight themselves out. Like animals.”
“Nice.”
“Don’t let what you’re seeing here fool you. This country, a few hundred thousand live well. Two, three million more have a decent job. Teachers, truck drivers. Everyone else feels hungry just looking at the price of sugar. You want to see, I promise you’ll see. Now let me talk to the DRA so we can get this piece of paper.” Wilfred reached for his phone.
Four calls later, he was shaking his head. “Everyone says the same. It’s impossible.”
“Wilfred Wumbugu, the great fixer. Fine. I’ll go without a permit.”
“I have one other contact. But I don’t trust her, she’s strange.”
Wells lifted his hands: What are you waiting for? Wilfred dialed, spoke for a bit. “She’ll see us.” Five minutes later, they stopped at a brick-walled compound protected by a guardhouse. Behind it was what looked like a fieldstone manor, straight out of the English countryside, with turrets and recessed windows. Beside the main entrance, a sign proclaimed “Castle House, Department of Refugee Affairs, Ministry for Immigration and Registration of Persons—Renovated in 2009 by the Government of Kenya with funding from the United Nations.” “They never let us forget where the money comes from,” Wilfred said.
The building’s interior was disappointingly conventional, concrete floors and white-painted walls. Wilfred led Wells down a corridor lined with posters from the International Organization for Migration and knocked on an unmarked door. “Come,” a woman said. Inside, a comfortable office. Satellite photographs of refugee camps hung from the walls. A heavyset forty-something woman sat at her desk, typing an email. Behind her a window looked out on a lushly planted garden.
“Wilfred. Jambo.” One of the few Swahili words that Wells knew. Literally, it meant “Problems?” but was used in the sense of “Hey, how are you?”
“Sijambo.” The usual response, meaning “No problems.”
She finished typing, gave Wells a broad smile. “And you? Jambo?”
“Sijambo. I’m John. Nice to m
eet you.”
“I’m Christina. Please, sit.” Wells waited on the couch as Wilfred and Christina had a heated conversation. Wells hadn’t felt so linguistically helpless in years. He hated needing translators, treasured his hard-earned proficiency in Arabic and Pashtun. Knowing those languages had saved his life more than once. Unfortunately, Swahili wasn’t all that common in the North-West Frontier.
Finally, Christina took Wilfred’s arm and pointed at the door.
“How much does she want?” Wells said.
“She didn’t name a price. She says she wants to help you, she likes you, but—”
“Go,” Christina said to Wilfred in English.
“I’ll be outside.” Wilfred left.
Christina came over, sat beside Wells. She had dark skin and wore a long green dress that clung to her breasts and hips. She was big all around. Pretty. “So you want to visit our refugees. Most tourists prefer a safari.”
“I’m looking for the aid workers.”
“Are you sure you’re not a reporter?”
“I barely know how to read.”
She grinned, touched his cheek with a long purple fingernail. “What are you, then? A soldier?”
“Used to be.”
“And now?”
“You’ve seen guys like me before. We’re all over the place.”
“Not exactly like you, mzungu.”
He couldn’t tell if she was serious or playing, hoping to annoy him. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Your eyes are dying.”
No wonder Wilfred had said she was strange. “Now that’s definitely an insult.”
“What about me?” She leaned toward Wells.
He looked at her, really looked. “Your eyes aren’t dying.” It was true. They were big and black and glimmered with life.
Outside the windows, a cat meowed. “That’s Njenga.”
“What are her eyes like?”
“Are you joking, mzungu?”
Wells reminded himself that this woman, strange or not, was probably his last chance to get to Dadaab legitimately. “Do you like working with the refugees?”
“I’ve never been to Dadaab and I hope I never go. Tell me, why do you care so much about these aid workers?”
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