by Sam Powers
The town had been around in one form or another for five hundred years, but only as Cabinda from the eighteen hundreds on. Like Benguela, it was a slave port for decades until the trade’s eventual demise. As was typical of the day, the king’s tribe sold his rival tribe’s members to the Portuguese and Belgians. A diary of one king of the Kikongo, as the land was then known, noted the sale of four thousand slaves through the area in one year.
So life there had always been difficult, while its proximity to oil and minerals made the nation valuable. Brennan was glad Francisco had come along for the first leg, at least, and brought a couple of men with him. “We’ll take you as far as your man’s camp and I will arrange a meet. After that you are definitely on your own,” he said as they waited inside the airport for their driver, a handful of passengers and locals milling around, not moving much due to the heat. “He lives nearly eighty kilometers north of here, near the other border with the DRC.”
“Why so far out of town?” Brennan asked. “You’d think his customers …
“Wouldn’t mind going to him. Kovacic is not exactly a lightweight – and he’s going by ‘Anders Kallstrom’ now, by the way. Before he starting running guns out of Cabinda, the rumor is he was fighting with a group of neo-Marxists in the Russian republics. He had a client based immediately on reputation alone.”
“So his threat level…”
“… is considerable. Your guy went to impressive lengths to disappear up here and set himself up as a supplier to the Cabindan resistance movement; it’s only by virtue of us doing business with the same people that I even know he exists. Come on, let’s go wait outside for the car.”
As remote and broken down as Cabinda was, the vehicle turned out to be a Range Rover, which made it the safest car Brennan had seen since arriving in Africa. They had minimal gear, just an overnight bag each. Francisco’s plan was to set up camp in the bush near Kovacic/Kallstrom’s base and be available if Brennan needed a quick escape, and he’d brought along a pair of beefy helpers, along with tents and mosquito nets. They loaded everything up. In short order, they were heading west out of town, towards a perfectly paved two-lane road that ran through the center of the tiny province, cut from the dense jungle that surrounded it and layered in immaculate tarmac that seemed to have never been driven upon.
“Where are we going?” Brennan yelled to Francisco over the road noise.
“Your man’s operations base is just south of a place called Massabi Lagoon. It’s right out in the jungle in the middle of nowhere. The nearest village doesn’t even have a name. They make a living by selling crocodiles caught in the lagoon and the small lakes.”
Though the lagoon should have been just a half-hour from the city, the sole road ran a circular path across around the Cabinda interior, through thick, dense jungle. Small shanty villages had popped up along the route every ten kilometers or so. Like Luanda, the heat wasn’t blistering but the humidity made the air so wet Brennan could taste it.
Just five kilometers from the turnoff to a second dirt road – this one just a track slashed out of the foliage by enterprising machete owners – an old colonial-style two-story building stood near the side of the road, nearly overgrown by the jungle and dilapidated, its once-salmon pink paintjob almost completely worn off. Francisco nodded towards it. “We set up camp there. At one point in the nineteen thirties, someone thought it might be worth developing up here. Not sure why. The locals don’t seem to have any more background on it than that.”
They parked the car just off the track and got out. The building was being reclaimed by the jungle, Brennan thought, vines twisting around its porch columns, the thick grass almost up to its side windows. It probably had dry rot throughout. He tried the steps up to the porch slowly, putting weight down one foot at a time to make sure he didn’t go through the wood.
It held. “I wouldn’t worry so much,” Francisco said from behind him. “People have been camping at this place for decades. And anyway, it’s probably safer in there with a bit of rotten wood and the insects than it is out here; there are things in this jungle that would happily eat you, my friend, if you strayed out too late at night.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Lang wondered if he could transfer.
If he beat the cancer, he thought as he followed David Fenton-Wright down the street from the restaurant, he’d put in for a move to a lower pay grade or even a different agency, maybe something in Florida helping out customs and immigration. Lying around the pool was starting to hold a certain allure, Lang thought, and it had everything to do with age.
Who knew, maybe Myrna would agree to go with him. He doubted it, but maybe.
Fenton-Wright had been talking about some nonsense, something about a television show he’d been watching. “… and then he just shoots her. I mean, who sees that coming? And where do they get this stuff?”
“You got me,” Lang said. “TV these days is crap.”
“Incorrect, Walter,” Fenton-Wright said. “There’s some great stuff out there; but it’s like sig ints: you have to wade through piles of crap before you get to it. Hmmm…” He pulled his buzzing phone from his pocket. “… I’ve got to make a stop. You know the old safe house two blocks from here?”
“Chuck Merrill’s old apartment?” Lang said. “We still own that?”
“Yeah. It mostly sits vacant except for when someone in senior management needs … private time, if you get my drift.”
Lobotomized monkeys could get your drift. “Sure.”
“Yeah, well I left my jacket there last night. It’ll only take us a second, okay?”
“Not a problem,” Lang said. He’d learned that with David, the right answer was whatever David wanted to hear.
The apartment was above a Korean grocery store, a second-floor walkup. They trudged up slowly to its landing. It was the first apartment on the floor, at the very front of the building. Fenton-Wright produced a key and let them in. They walked inside, and Fenton-Wright began scanning the room. The small radio that rested on ta window frame overlooking the street was on quietly, Julio Iglesias singing “La Mer,” the original French version of “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” to a funkier seventies beat.
“Hmm… must’ve left that on,” Fenton-Wright said. “Where the hell did I put it? I’ll check the bedrooms. Do me a favor, look in the kitchen would you?”
Lang nodded and went into the kitchen, to their right. He took two steps in and realized he was stepping on a large sheet of plastic. He looked down at his feet. It covered the kitchen floor completely, doubled over.
Behind him, Fenton-Wright held the silenced pistol to the back of Lang’s head. “I need the reporter’s location, Walter,” he said matter-of-factly. “Although, I’m only asking out of obligation, on behalf of our mutual friend. I know you’re a better man than to actually tell me.”
Walter knew what the drop sheet meant. It really didn’t matter how he answered. Faisal had decided to make good on his threat. Colombia hadn’t beaten him, and neither had cancer. But some streaks, Walter figured, were just bound to even eventually.
“Go fuck yourself, you officious little prick,” he said.
“If it were up to me… well, let’s not even go there. Sorry about this, Walter, really I am,” said Fenton-Wright.
“If you knew what I thought of you, you wouldn’t be,” Walter said.
Walter closed his eyes. The pistol recoiled twice, the silencer reducing the end of his life to two quick decompressions of air, without a bang or a whimper. The first one made him drop to his knees, and the second ensured that Walter pitched forward onto the plastic sheet.
11./
MARCH 26, 2016, NORTHERN CABINDA
Andraz Kovacic’s camp bordered the Massabi Lagoon, a sixty-mile long giant coiled snake that wound its way from fat to thin, from the interior where it resembled nothing less than an enormous lake, to the coast, where its narrow tributary rediscovered the Atlantic Ocean.
At the very edge of the bo
dy of water, a dirt road cut back into the jungle, heading east. They followed it in the rented Land Rover. The foliage on both sides of the road was dense, seemingly impenetrable to light. It reminded Brennan of parts of Sri Lanka, the sense that something dark and foreboding lay beyond the wall of foliage, branches and vines, the weight of the humidity that much heavier in the moment. The trail ended after about two miles and they came to a wire fence gate supported by two tall, thick wooden posts, the size of tree trunks. “No trespassing” signs were posted on it in four languages.
“Your guy really doesn’t like company,” Francisco said. “You would think just being located hell-and-gone from anywhere would be dissuasion enough.”
“Now what?” Brennan said.
“Now, we ring the bell and wait for instructions.” Francisco got out of the vehicle and starting pulling the gate open, swinging it wide across the road as Brennan watched. “That was a joke, by the way. There’s no electricity out here unless you have generators and your own power lines to transmit the stuff.”
The Land Rover rolled on for another kilometer before it reached a checkpoint, where a pair of gunmen in olive soldier fatigues manned a small hut and a red-and-white barricade. One walked over to the Land Rover’s driver, finger on the trigger of his AK47 knockoff. He rattled off something in a language Brennan didn’t recognize; Francisco’s driver associate answered in kind.
“Bantu,” Francisco whispered. “It’s the local tribal tongue. Fewer of the residents in Cabinda speak Portuguese; in fact, for most their second language is French.”
The pair chatted for a moment and the guard at the gate nodded, then took a few steps away from the car before unhooking the walkie-talkie from his belt and speaking rapid-fire. He nodded a couple of times then repeated the motion to his companion nearby, who lifted the barrier.
A minute later, the red-dirt trail emptied into a large clearing. Two long, corrugated tin bunkhouses were on its right side, perhaps a hundred yards from the banks of the lagoon. Ahead was a large two-story house built out of what looked to Brennan like the remains of shipping containers. Two Jeeps were parked in front, along with another Land Rover and a Range Rover; to the left, a massive garage or metal shop had also been thrown together out of tin. Next to it, a towering winch crane stood waiting to load or unload cargo.
They pulled up and parked next to the Range Rover. Within a minute, a short white guy with close-cropped hair exited the house and headed over to them. “Francisco?” the man asked as the foursome got out of the Land Rover. “You’re Benny Goncalves’ friend?”
Francisco extended a hand, and the men kissed on both cheeks as they shook. “Anders! Your reputation precedes you.” The meet-and-greet was being watched over by a dozen or more armed guards and there was movement around the compound. “It looks almost like you have your own army up here.”
Kovacic beamed a smile. “We are quite proud of the place, it’s true. But it’s not an army; just enough men to stay cautious. Besides, labor is cheap around these parts. My man Antonio tells me you want to buy some hardware?”
Francisco was earning his extra ten thousand, agreeing to use a purchase as cover while Brennan performed recon. “That’s right; along with the rifles we need a few more specialized items.”
Kovacic slung an arm around the man’s shoulder and began walking him towards the house. “Then remote or not, you are most definitely in the right place, my friend. Come, let’s go talk in the house. I have AC and cold beer.”
Francisco looked at Brennan. “You,” he said in French, “stay with the vehicle.”
“But boss,” Brennan answered in French. “He has AC…”
“Just do your job,” Francisco said. “If you get bored, walk the compound a bit.” He looked over at Andraz. “You mind if he looks around?”
The arms dealer shrugged. “Out here? Not much to see, but you are welcome.” They strolled up towards the house together then went inside.
They’d worked out the little act before getting there; Brennan had a pocket-sized Geiger counter, along with suspicions about what Kovacic had done with Khalidi’s missing millions. Given his background before Africa as a Chechen dissident and militant, there was every chance he was either the buyer or the seller of the nuke. The questions were why he was in the middle of the Cabindan jungle, and what he’d done with the weapon.
While his guide kept the arms dealer busy, Brennan strolled by each building in turn, slipping the counter out of his pocket whenever out of direct view, to take readings. But the entire place was hot, it seemed, way too many readings from way too many sources for it to be a single device. He wondered if there was something wrong with the Geiger counter. If anything, the readings got stronger the closer he got to the main house. Under a series of suspicious glares, he strolled around the perimeter until he was almost behind it, making sure to stay in sight of Kovacic’s nervous men.
Behind the house, the two sides of the perimeter fence converged at an opening into the rock face at the very edge of the tree line. It was sizeable, more than just a natural cave, as if an opening had been blasted out. He kneeled for a moment and ran some topsoil through his fingers, then tied his shoelace as a pretense for the guards, before taking a small sample of the soil and pocketing it.
The Geiger counter was getting into high exposure zones. Whatever was in the cave was putting off major readings; Brennan looked at the reading and began to back away nervously.
When he was back to main yard, he headed for the car. It was another twenty minutes before Francisco emerged from the meeting. He waved backwards towards Kovacic, who was standing in the doorway to the container house and waved back. Francisco, Brennan and their two guards got back into the Land Rover. The driver turned it around and headed back out through the main gate.
“We’re going to talk more tomorrow,” Francisco asked Brennan. “Did you figure out what you needed to know?”
“Not exactly. There’s an old cave of some sort behind the property. The readings out of it were high. Most of the people in that camp are getting significant doses of radiation.”
Francisco’s eyebrows rose. “I wonder if Kovacic is aware of it, even. He did say the place was built near an aborted mining operation, so maybe…”
“Maybe they weren’t mining gold,” Brennan said. “You know anything about the local geology? I’m going to do a test reading when we get back to the camp. Either my Geiger counter was way off, or that camp is sitting on some kind of radioactive ore.”
The Geiger counter had been afterthoughts on Brennan’s part, and he’d been lucky Francisco’s connections had come through; he’d expected to fly up to Cabinda, question Kovacic and then have a new set of leads to follow. It didn’t occur to him that the bomb might be at the compound until just before leaving Luanda – after all, it had been years; whatever Kovacic’s connection, it should have come and gone.
And the man still looked familiar; it was eating at Brennan, trying to figure out where he’d seen him before.
While Francisco’s men got busy making a fire and cooking supper, Brennan tried to use the satellite phone, first to check in with Walter, from whom he got no answer, and second to try and get a mobile web connection, which he eventually managed. Readings suggested the soil contained Uranium, in significant concentrations. Brennan cursed himself silently for not paying more attention during his primer training.
He walked out of the abandoned old house. Francisco was drinking a beer on the front porch while the two guards cooked the chicken on an open pit out front. He tilted the bottle towards Brennan then nodded at the cooler, but Brennan declined.
“You figure out what you need to know?” Francisco asked.
“Maybe.” Brennan checked his watch; it was seven-thirty, and evening was falling. It wasn’t like Walter to be away from the phone when he knew someone might be checking in.
It didn’t make sense. Why there? Why would an arms dealer force his customers to go out of their way so that he coul
d set up on radioactive soil?
“How long has he been out here?” Brennan asked.
“Not sure. I’d say a year at least.”
That meant there were four years unaccounted for between Kovacic disappearing from the Khalidi’s Nigeria operation to him showing up at the camp as “Anders Kallstrom.”
“This was a hell of a long way to go for ‘maybe’, my friend,” said Francisco. “I know you are paying me well, but so far what you’ve got amounts to background information, the type you could…”
“That’s it,” Brennan said, interrupting him. “That’s the reason: it’s a ‘forest for the trees’ gambit. There’s so much background radiation …”
“Eh?” Francisco muttered. “You are losing me, my friend.”
“His camp: it’s been in the same location the entire time?”
Francisco yelled to one of the guards who answered in rapid-fire pigeon French. “He says the camp has grown quite a lot and moved closer to the access road. It was further in from the lagoon originally.”
“And Kovacic? Does anyone know where he came from before this?”
Francisco asked the driver. “He said he was operating out of a warehouse in Porte Noire.” The port city in the Congo – the former Zaire – was a few hours north of the lagoon.
That fit, Brennan thought. Kovacic wasn’t hiding the nuke in Cabinda; he was looking for it.
“Francisco, you up for a little recon mission tonight?”
