Vultures in the Playground

by A. Sparrow

  He retreated into the kitchen where his house boy, Moises was chopping up a goat on a butcher block counter. The legs retained their hooves and a sheathing of piebald fur.

  “Time to get the fogger out, Moises,” said Hodges, in Spanish. “The flying teeth are back.” He plopped down on a rickety chair, fired up his ham radio, booted up his antiquated Dell Pentium desktop, and flicked on the satellite modem.

  “Now?” said Moises, reaching in the pantry for a can of insecticide.

  “Finish what you’re doing for Chrissakes. I don’t want bug juice all over my meat.” Hodges’ gaze flicked to the heap of flesh on the butcher block. “Who’s going to cook all that? Isn’t Natalia up in Malabo today?”

  “I will cook it,” said Moises.

  “You? Oh, just great. Here comes the food poisoning.”

  “There is no food poisoning,” said Moises. “The meat is fresh.”

  The secure intranet came up and Hodges did his daily log-in, typing in the latest password key: “H7ezD4i3”

  Two messages popped up.

  “So what fixings you planning to make to go along with that meat?” said Hodges, scratching at the thicket of curly hair nestling in the folds in the back of his neck. “And don’t tell me its beans again.”

  “How about plantain?” said Moises. “Some greens?”

  “Nice. Haha! Got another fix-up job in Luanda. Some rigger’s got himself tossed in the slammer. Oh man, this fucker tangled with someone from the ruling family. Jeezus, when will these assholes ever learn? You don’t pull that shit in Africa.” He looked over at the butcher block. House flies coated a goat shank shoulder to shoulder, as thick as fur.

  “Hey! How are all these flies getting in? You got a door open?”

  “The door is closed,” said Moises, rinsing his hands in the gravity-fed sink.

  “Well, cover up that damned meat when you walk away. I’m not letting you give me food poisoning again.”

  “No poison. The fire is hot. I am cooking right now.”

  “Whoa!” said Hodges, decrypting the second message. “Look at this. We got ourselves some company coming. That Luanda jailbird is gonna have to wait. Oh, nice. This one’s a boat job, too. I’ve been wanting to get back down to Ureca. Especially now that the goddamn teeth are back. Ouch. I just got nibbled on the back of my fucking leg. Moises, will you please get that damn fogger going?”

  “But I am cooking!” said Moises. “You say for me to—”

  “Get one of the kids to do it. Your little cousin, what’s his name? Can’t be that hard to spray a little bug juice around the place, just see that they don’t take a bath in it.” A name, newly decrypted on the screen, caught his attention.

  Contractor: Xtraktiv LLC. Subcontractor: Adolfo Black.

  “Hooiee! Fuck Luanda,” said Hodges. “Blackie’s coming to town.”

  Chapter 18: Bomé

  The plane rolled to a halt. Hatches opened front and back. Steamy air billowed down the aisle, wrapping the antsy passengers in its embrace. The air seemed just as smothering as Accra’s, with perhaps a tad less smoke. Archie nodded to Melissa. They exited out the back.

  The clouds overhead were looking mighty puffy. The ITCZ, mother of all monsoons, was shifting north again. Equatorial Guinea was not actually on the equator but a few degrees closer than Ghana and would see the seasonal rains first. Another couple of weeks and the place would be deluged. Every unpaved road would become a trap.

  They strode across the tarmac to the terminal. The immigration line was mercifully short, its sneering border agents deliberate but efficient. They passed through unscathed after an emphatic stamping of their passports and immigration cards.

  Melissa giggled. “You were right, Archie. No visa? No problem, if you’re American. It’s just like going to Canada.”

  “Not quite,” said Archie, scanning the baggage claim area. Again, he spotted a man with a placard bearing his name. This time he did not play coy. He waived at the wiry fellow holding the sign and walked right up to him. Melissa yanked her suitcase off the conveyor and skipped after him.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Parsons. I am Arcadio. I will be helping you.”

  “Are you our driver?” said Melissa.

  “Not just driver. Helper, too. Anything you need, you let me know.”

  “Cool,” said Melissa.

  He led them out to a van with a Chess Petroleum logo on the door.

  Melissa flashed a nervous smile. “This is exciting, heh. Can’t wait to see what the next hotel is like. That Labadi place was marvelous.”

  “Don’t expect too much,” said Archie. “This is EG, not Ghana. It’s not exactly a big tourist destination.”

  “No hotel,” said Arcadio. “I take you to headquarter.”

  The van pulled away from the curb.

  “Oh crap,” said Archie, softly.

  “Is that a … problem?” said Melissa.

  Archie turned slowly to face her. “Do you really want to meet our sponsors?” he whispered.

  Melissa’s eyes got very wide. “Do you think we should we get out of the car?”

  “Is something wrong?” said Arcadio.

  “No. Everything’s fine.” Archie patted Melissa’s hand. “If it looks bad, we’ll have him turn around. Tell him you need to stop for … feminine supplies … or something.”

  Melissa smirked. “If you say so.”

  “You will like the camp in Bomé,” said Arcadio. “They will feed you very well.”

  ***

  Archie had visited Bioko once or twice—the little island off the coast of Cameroon that harbored the capital city of Equatorial Guinea. Mainland EG, however, broke new ground for him. It was one of the few places in West Africa he hadn’t visited before, having criss-crossed the region from Angola to Senegal too many times to count.

  EG was one of the few Spanish speaking countries on the continent and notorious for its dysfunctional governance. Not quite a failed state, but ranking high on indices of corruption and inequity.

  Someone passing through the city of Bata might get the impression that it was a nice town, what with its tinted concrete oceanfront promenades and elegant fountains. But Archie saw immediately through the façade. This quaint seafront neighborhood was merely a showpiece for the dictator, a Potemkin village. The fountains probably only flowed when foreign dignitaries came to town.

  On the outskirts of Bata, they crossed over estuaries lined with mangroves. The pavement ended and Arcadio cut south down a strip of sandy dirt knifing between swamp and beach. They passed a rusty freighter run aground, clusters of smoky huts, people mending fishing nets on the sand.

  When they reached a barren red dirt lot stacked with shipping containers, the van turned up a nicely manicured drive and stopped before a guard house outside a chain-linked compound. The checkerboard Chess Petroleum logo was splashed across a large welcome sign.

  Archie’s nerves flared with each second of delay at the gate, the guard calling ahead to some authority for clearance. But then the guard waved them on and they passed through a large, landscaped area of lawns and offices and residences with tiled roofs. Arcadio took them straight to a house on the beach side of the compound, which looked deserted apart from a couple of people tooling around on little white golf carts.

  “My God, this looks like some suburb in Tampa,” said Melissa.

  “Houston,” said Archie.

  “It’s like … hermetically sealed. Do these people even know they’re in Africa?”

  “Arcadio, whose place is this?”

  “It is yours,” said Arcadio, as he clambered out of the driver’s seat. “This is where you stay.”

  “The whole house?” said Melissa. “Oh my.”

  Archie insisted on carrying his own small bag. Arcadio wheeled Melissa’s suitcase up the walk, which now bulged with some outfits she had grabbed from the closet in the Labadi along with her dirty laundry.

  Melissa dashed excitedly from room to room. “Hey, t
hey left a fruit basket! Papayas! I love papayas. Ooh. Look at this bedroom! I call dibs on this one.”

  “Take … whatever you want,” said Archie, looking around the sitting room, his eyes seizing on the inevitable briefcase on the table. It was black as usual, but this time made of brushed titanium. He sighed and shuffled over to it.

  A battered white pickup truck pulled up behind Arcadio’s van and its engine stuttered to a halt. A short, burly man with sandy brown hair popped out and came bustling up the walk.

  “G’day,” he said. “Mr. … eh … Parsons?” The corner of his mouth hooked up in a wicked smirk. His accent was strong and Australian. His eyes red-rimmed, the essence of hard liquor wafted from his pores.

  “Uh … hi.”

  The man stuck out his hand. “Carter here. Carter Voss. I manage the compound. They told me to leave you two be, but that’s not my style. That’s no way to show hospitality. I just wanted to let you know, it’s good to have you mate. You need anything at all you just give me a buzz. There’s a camp directory by the land line inside. We can send a cook for your meals. Just let me know when you want to eat in.”

  “Um … thanks,” said Archie. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”

  “No please. Our Lucinda at the main mess is a great chef. She’s Swiss. She’ll cook anything to order and we’ll bring it over hot. But if you prefer to eat it, the pantry and fridge are fully stocked. The kitchen has any utensil you might need. There are extra cases of Evian mineral water in the utility closet in case you run out. We’ve got a doc at the infirmary. Wi-Fi throughout. Anything you need you let me know.”

  “Will do,” said Archie, as Melissa stood by his shoulder, beaming.

  “Alright then,” said Carter. “Make yourself at home. I’d best be off, then. I won’t pester you any further.”

  “Thank you!” said Melissa. “The place is just wonderful.”

  Carter tipped his hat, wheeled about and strode back to his truck, waddling with a slightly bowlegged gait. Just as he touched the door of his vehicle, he turned back around

  “Oh … I almost forgot. Your boat will be here in two days. Six a.m. sharp.”

  “Boat?”

  “He can’t get here any quicker. But we figured you might need the extra time, though I dare say the support folks have done a thorough job with the legwork. Should make things easier for you. You’ll find it all in that briefcase.”

  ***

  Mr. Voss had it right. The contents of the briefcase provided an exhaustive dossier on the domestic habits of this Michael Kremer, a South African environmental activist and humanist. Maps indicated the location of his bedroom within his apartment block and the homes of his two girlfriends in the fringes of Bata. Diaries detailed his every visit to the latrine over the past two weeks. It noted where and when he bought his bottled water, scripts of every key press on the computer of his favorite internet café in Bata—passwords, love letters, everything.

  He seemed like a nice enough guy, despite his womanizing. Too bad they wanted to kill him. He had been in EG for almost a month, recuperating from a machete attack in the Nigerian delta where, until recently, he had been active in assisting the resistance of local communities to destruction of the mangroves in the estuaries bracketing Bonny Island. Not one to rest, he had gotten involved in similar issues in EG, where environmental advocacy had hitherto been relegated to a few poorly financed ECOFAC initiatives supporting Monte Alen National Park and a primate reserve on Bioko Island.

  His threat to industry came from the loud megaphone he held with the western media. The briefcase held clippings from the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the Financial Times. He was an adept fundraiser, a multilingual mobilizer of local opposition. Archie found a lot to admire in the guy—the same qualities that made him a sworn enemy of the petroleum interests.

  Archie passed each sheet to Melissa as he read them. “Jesus. Why do they want to go and kill off all the cool people?”

  “He’s dangerous,” said Archie. “People don’t ignore him. Unlike most advocates.”

  “So how do we help him?”

  Archie nestled his chin over knitted fingers. “He’s probably easier to more approach, than Appiah was.”

  “Poor Simon.” She rose from the table, went to the window and peered out over the ocean.

  “Don’t worry. What happened was a fluke. We just need to get Kremer some of these papers. He’s got a voice … a platform. We get him filled in on all these goings-on and there’ll be coverage on every continent. Transparency, that’s the key. That’ll get the authorities riled. This whole sordid operation will have to shut down.”

  He turned to the next dossier. This was one had nothing to do with Kremer. There were several documents written in Portuguese. Surveys of oil fields in the Gulf of Guinea. Maps of the islands—São Tomé, Príncipe, Annobon.

  His Portuguese skills were poor, but he dug in and tried to skim some meaning out of these papers. It seemed to be background on political maneuverings regarding a Nigerian oil claim and a Social Development Fund derived from future profits. There were no names, no targets indicated, as far as he could tell.

  “Hey Melissa, this file is kind of curious.” He went to pass her a folder, but she had left the room. “Melissa?”

  He got up and checked the kitchen. The bathrooms and bedrooms were vacant. He went to the window, and saw her on the other side of the chain-link fence, skipping across the beach in a blue bikini, a towel tucked under her arm.

  He sighed and started out the door, paused, and went back to the briefcase. This time it contained a small Glock pistol and an odd rifle with a detachable stock and barrel. It was so light and skeletal. It almost seemed like a toy. He extracted the Glock from its foam, clicked a cartridge into its receptacle. It was as easy as connecting Legos. He looked for a safety toggle, but couldn’t find one. He stuffed it under his belt, careful not to touch the trigger.

  He went out and crossed a scraggly lawn to a gate in the fence manned by a guard sitting on a stump stool under an awning. Archie nodded to him as he slipped past.

  He popped off his shoes, pulled off his socks and trudged across a fluffy dune to the hard-packed sand near the water line. The baking sand burned his soles. “Yo!” he called. “Thanks for telling me you were going to the beach.”

  Melissa twisted around, propping herself on one elbow.

  “Sorry. You looked … occupied.” She squinted under her sunglasses. “Take off your damned shirt, why don’t you? See if we can even out that farmer’s tan. I swear, you look like vanilla in the middle and like a brother from the neck up, and elbows out.”

  “Yeah, well. I have sensitive skin.”

  “Oh, a little sun won’t hurt you. Seriously, you should grab yourself a towel and lay out. The sun is glorious. And the sound of the waves ….”

  “Tide’s coming in,” said Archie. “You’re gonna have to move soon.”

  “That other sand’s too hot. This stuff’s cool. I don’t mind the damp.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Take off the damn shirt already. Party pooper. Why so glum?”

  “Melissa … this is not a vacation. We … we killed a guy.”

  “We?”

  “Okay. We got a guy killed.”

  “We?”

  He sighed and pulled off his polo shirt, wrapping the Glock in the bundle and descending to a lotus position beside Melissa.

  “Nice breeze,” he said.

  “Look at you,” said Melissa, iPod earphones bright against her mocha skin. “You haven’t been eating.”

  “What do you mean? I eat at the same places you do.”

  “But you’ve lost your pudge … that dough-boy look you used to sport.”

  “That’s a good thing. No?”

  “Not … necessarily.” Her brow crinkled. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine.” He shrugged. “Tired.”

  He pried a little gray sand dollar out of the sand. It was an odd one, with de
ep indentations around its circumference, making it look part disc, part star.

  A dull roar came to them upwind from the direction of Bata. Archie squinted down the beach to see a red truck barreling down the damp sand just beyond the lap of the waves, about a hundred meters away. Did someone know he was here? Someone on the ‘good’ side? Coming after them?

  “Melissa, we gotta scram!” said Archie, fumbling for the gun.

  She mumbled: “Why? I like it just fine where I am.”

  “Melissa. Move!” In a blink, the truck had closed half the distance between them.

  “So let the tide come in. It’ll cool my toes.”

  He swiped at her earphones, ripping them out of her ears.

  “Archie? What are you doing?”

  “Melissa, I’m not talking about the damned tide, there’s a truck coming after us!” He grabbed her arm and yanked her off the towel.

  The truck blared its horn. Melissa saw it bearing down on them and shrieked. They stumbled together into the fluffy, hot sand above the tide line as the truck screamed past.

  Carter, the caretaker, came trotting up the fence line from the next gate down. “You folks okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Archie, struggling to catch his breath. “We’re fine.”

  “Oh my God! That was close,” said Melissa, palm over sternum. “They were going so fast.”

  Carter skittered down the slope of a dune. “I should have warned you. There’s only bad roads or no roads going south along the coast, so the locals use the beach like a superhighway. If you want to sunbathe I’d recommend the pool at the Rec Center. Better security. Cold drinks to boot. Though I see, you’ve got the security part handled yourself.”

  The Glock lay in the sand, having tumbled out when Archie retrieved his shirt. Melissa dipped her chin and glared. “Archie! What are you doing with that gun?”

  The caretaker snorted and guffawed.

  ***

  Arcadio took them to Bata at sundown. Michael Kremer roomed with a group of young, local activists in a concrete house outside the outside beautified Potemkin zone. Most of his Equatoguinean friends rotated in and out of jails, but the presiding government was reluctant to lock Kremer up because of the acquaintances he had made with some of the college-age progeny of the ruling family. Not to mention, his connections with the international media made them think twice. They didn’t want to be the ones to make a martyr out of him.