Blood Ransom

by Lisa Harris

  Where were the president and vice president in all of this?

  Chad gripped the armrest to keep his balance as they wove through the heavy traffic. Forty minutes later they pulled through the secure gates of the embassy. It should only have taken ten minutes, but at least he felt safe now. And guilty. Natalie should be here as well.

  Paul led Chad into the building, barking orders to his staff. “Meeting in five minutes. I want to know what’s going on out there.” He turned to Chad. “You’re with me.”

  Within five minutes, Paul’s staff had assembled, and the guards were ordered not to allow anyone without an American passport inside the premises. With the city in turmoil, they were officially closed for the day.

  “Political rallies across the city turned ugly this morning when a car exploded four blocks from here,” the consular assistant, introduced to Chad as Brandon Carmichael, began. “Antiriot police arrived in key locations, but their presence only seemed to spark further demonstrations across the city.”

  Paul scribbled on his notepad. “What set them off to begin with?”

  “From what we’ve been told,” the assistant continued, “it began as nothing more than normal political rallies held to encourage voting. The parties hired a few dozen street kids to hang posters, wear T-shirts, and chant. It wasn’t supposed to get ugly.”

  Paul looked up. “But it did.”

  “Fourteen are dead in the Umgani district, including two police officers and one minor. Another man was killed across town when a stray bullet hit him.”

  Chad scratched his ear. He felt as if he’d just stepped into a war-room discussion.

  Paul scribbled something else on his pad. “What’s the UN’s involvement at this point?”

  Another man, with wire glasses and a receding hairline, spoke up. “The plan at the moment is a continued military presence throughout the city with the addition of a curfew if things don’t settle down immediately.”

  “We heard on our way here that General Dumasi is planning to meet with the protesters,” Chad spoke up. “Is that true?”

  Carmichael nodded. “I believe they are even planning to televise the exchange in an attempt to encourage the population to stay away from the rioting areas.”

  “Shouldn’t that be the role of the president, or, at the least, the vice president?” Paul threw out.

  “General Dumasi is still head of the military, and at this point, he’s as good a man as any,” Carmichael continued. “No one has forgotten the last coup that almost destroyed this country. Today’s death toll is nothing compared to what happened back then, but it’s got to stop now if we’re going to avoid it happening again.”

  Chad noted the worried expression on Paul’s face. They all knew what would happen if something went wrong in this election. The cord was already pulled too tight, despite the UN’s attempts at a peaceful election. Protests, flares of violence, killing, and tribal conflict could set off another civil war that could last for months and destroy any strides the country had made in the past few years.

  “I understand there’s been no word yet from Natalie Sinclair,” Paul continued.

  The man with the glasses shook his head.

  Chad swallowed his panic. It had been over six hours since he’d seen Natalie, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “We just received an official report from the police department regarding the death of Patrick Seko’s fiancée,” the consular assistant continued. “Her death, though, is believed to be completely unrelated with today’s violence.”

  “And?” Paul prodded.

  “From the initial investigation, we were told that her death is being called a suicide.”

  Chad spoke up for the first time. “That’s impossible.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Chad leaned forward in his chair to address the consular assistant, wondering if he’d just spoken out of turn. “When I talked to Nick Gilbert on the phone, he was at her apartment and distinctly told me that she’d been murdered. There was no sign of a burglary or a weapon.”

  “He told us the same story in his statement,” Paul said.

  “The bottom line is that if you start looking at all these pieces side by side,” Chad continued, “I don’t think there’s any denying that someone’s trying to cover up something. The photos, Natalie’s disappearance, Rachel’s death, and who knows? Maybe even the riots. There’s no way I can be convinced that all of this is simply coincidence.”

  Joseph walked into the room and took an offered chair across from Chad. At least they’d managed to keep Joseph safe.

  Paul passed the boy a Coke. “How are you doing, young man? Guess you’ve been through the wringer today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sorry we’re late.” Mercy entered the room behind Joseph. “We’ve gone over his story thoroughly and have a report ready to file.”

  “Anything new—”

  An explosion rocked the room. Windows shattered. Chad felt the vibration of the blast as he dropped to the floor and covered his head.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 8:10 A.M. EST

  NORTH BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  Gabby stared at the ringing cell phone that sat on the kitchen table beside her while the yellow center of her egg oozed across the plate onto a slice of half-burnt toast. Any appetite she’d managed to recover vanished.

  “Gabby, what are you doing?” Sabrina entered the room from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and reached for the offending object. “Your phone’s ringing.”

  “Don’t answer it.”

  “You have to—”

  Gabby knocked the phone from Sabrina’s hands and watched it slam onto the tile floor. The persistent ringing stopped. “I said don’t answer it.”

  “Hey.” Sabrina pushed aside the pile of Bride magazines cluttering the table for her and Michael’s Valentine’s Day wedding in order to set her coffee mug down, then slid into the seat beside her. “What in the world’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Look at yourself. You can’t sleep, and you’re not eating.” She picked up her fork, then dropped it back onto the plate. “You’ve been a wreck ever since you returned from Africa.”

  Gabby pressed her fingertips against her face. She’d tried to sleep, but how could she sleep when her dreams were haunted with images she couldn’t forget.

  Sabrina took a sip of her coffee. “I thought we were best friends. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Rising, Gabby stalked into the kitchen with her uneaten food and dumped the cold eggs down the garbage disposal. Sabrina would pester her until she told her, and she didn’t have the energy to fight. “I’ve received some threatening phone calls and e-mails the past couple of days.”

  Just like her father.

  Sabrina followed Gabby back into the dining room, where she sank back into the padded chair. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

  “Because you’d worry—like my mother worries—and try to convince me not to have my series printed.”

  “An article isn’t worth your life.”

  Gabby waved the notion away. “You don’t understand.”

  “What happened over there?”

  Gabby flipped through the pages of one of the magazines, wondering how different her life would be today if she’d opted to cover wedding trends. “Apparently someone didn’t like all the questions I was asking.”

  “Do you know who’s behind the threats?”

  Gabby shrugged, wishing the answer wasn’t so elusive. “I talked to at least a dozen investors from Lusaka to Bogama to Dar es Salaam. There were some who seemed to legitimately want to help the people working for them, and others who were obviously exploiting their workers and pocketing all the profit. All it would take is one who didn’t like what I wrote about them.”

  “Apparently you found that one.”

  “That’s not all.” She toyed with the rounded handle of her half-empty coff
ee cup. “The last night we were in Bogama, I was involved in an…incident.”

  “An incident?”

  Gabby sat back and folded her arms across her chest. She could still hear it all—the shouts, the glass, the gunshots…“We stopped at a red light. A gunshot shattered the driver’s window, and a half dozen men surrounded the car and dragged the driver out onto the street.”

  “Oh, Gabby…”

  “The men were scrambling to get into the car when another shot was fired,” she continued. “Apparently our driver had a weapon they hadn’t counted on. In the confusion, my translator, Adam, managed to scoot into the driver’s seat and drive away. It all happened so fast…”

  “What happened to the driver?”

  “We found out later he was taken to the hospital with several broken bones and a concussion, but he lived.”

  “He’s lucky.”

  “We all were.” Gabby shoved back a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “But I can’t live in fear. My father didn’t.”

  “No, he didn’t, but that doesn’t mean you can take chances with your life.”

  Gabby glanced up and caught Sabrina’s gaze. “So I live in fear and never go out until…when? I can’t even trace this guy.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing now? Living in fear?”

  Gabby pressed her lips together. She’d spent the past twenty-four hours trying to figure out where to go with this. Holing up in her house wasn’t the direction she wanted to take.

  Sabrina reached out and squeezed her hand. “Maybe the truth in this case isn’t worth your life.”

  This was the conversation she’d wanted to avoid. “I’m not the first journalist who’s believed they’re onto something that’s worth the risk of exposing. Look at Don Bolles, Ivo Pukanic, Anna Politkovskaya—”

  “And your father?”

  Gabby slumped against the back of the chair and shut her eyes. She could still read the headlines as if it were yesterday. “Freelance journalist murdered for his hard-hitting commentary that angered corrupt officials…”

  She opened her eyes and caught her friend’s worried gaze. “This isn’t about my father—”

  “This has everything to do with your father. Everything to do with your trying to finish what he wasn’t able to do.”

  Gabby slammed her fists against the table, rattling the remaining dishes. “Did you even read what I wrote? Businesses, foreign investors, and even governments are coming into these small, unknown countries promising schools and roads and hospitals, but in exchange they’re stripping them of their natural resources and exploiting their people. Working conditions are deplorable, children are dying because of the lack of safety regulations—”

  “I read your article and saw in it the compassion you have for those people, but it’s not worth your life.”

  “But you didn’t see what I saw.” Gabby choked back the tears. “Children, some of them only three or four years old, caked in mud from riverbeds, were working in narrow tunnels mining coltan for cell phones. Others I found sifting through sand for gems inside homemade mineshafts. These children are dying from dynamite accidents and floods and…” She pressed her fingers against her pounding temples. “I can’t get them out of my head. I see them at night when I close my eyes, and they’re still there in the morning when I wake up. They need a voice—”

  “And you can’t be their voice if you’re dead.”

  Her cell phone started ringing again from beneath the kitchen table. Her hand trembled and knocked over the coffee mug in front of her. Lukewarm liquid ran off the edge of the table and splattered onto the floor. She grabbed for a napkin and stopped the thread of coffee snaking its way toward the stack of magazines.

  “This has gone too far.” Sabrina picked up the phone and answered the call. “I don’t know who you are, but—”

  She stopped mid-sentence.

  “Excuse me?” Sabrina’s face paled. She listened to the response, then handed Gabby the phone. “I think you ought to take this. It’s someone from Interpol.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 3:04 P.M.

  UNITED STATES EMBASSY, BOGAMA

  Joseph stared across the room as if he were watching the nightly news on his uncle’s color television. This couldn’t be happening here. Blood dripped from his forehead and now stained his pants, but he couldn’t feel anything. Nor did he care. All he noticed at the moment was the gaping hole on the other side of the room. From his vantage point, he could see the green lawn of the embassy. Sirens screamed in the background. People rushed by. Paramedics pushed a man on a stretcher.

  “Joseph?”

  He heard his name but couldn’t stop staring at the hole. Bricks and debris filled the side of the room where Dr. Talcott had been sitting just moments earlier. Now he was gone. A wave of nausea struck. They’d killed him. Just like they’d killed his grandfather. And the way they’d kill his father.

  Someone touched his shoulder. “I need to look at your head, Joseph.”

  The doctor’s chair lay upside down beside the pile of bricks. “Where is he?”

  The woman pulled out a sliver of glass, then pressed a cloth against his head. “Who?”

  “Dr…Dr. Talcott.”

  “Dr. Talcott—”

  Someone shouted.

  The woman hovering over him looked away. “Press this against your forehead. I’ll be right back.”

  Joseph couldn’t wait. He got up and walked toward the sunlight streaming in through the hole. Ducking down, he started scooting through the opening. A brick scraped against his back. Someone hollered at him to move. He stumbled backward at the order.

  A portion of the wall crumbled in front of him.

  Still pressing his hand against his head, he tried to escape the roar of voices pressing in around him. He left the room and ran down the hall, looking for a sign of the doctor. Paul Hayes, one of the men he’d met earlier, stood in the center of one of the offices shouting orders.

  Joseph tried to slow down his breathing. Natalie had told him that prayer worked. Maybe it was time he started praying.

  If you happen to be there, God…we need a miracle. Several, to be exact.

  “Joseph.”

  Joseph turned around at the sound of his name. Dr. Talcott stood in the doorway.

  Joseph’s jaw dropped open. “Dr. Talcott…I thought…”

  “I heard you got cut on the forehead. Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  Joseph nodded, noting the long scratch across Dr. Talcott’s left arm. Other than that, he seemed fine. They’d both been lucky. He squirmed as the older man touched the wound.

  “No stitches this time, but you’re going to have matching scars.”

  Joseph smiled. Maybe Natalie was right and prayer really did work.

  “Why don’t you sit down over there and wait for me, Joseph? We’ve got a triage set up outside where we’re treating the injured, though so far there don’t seem to be any life-threatening wounds.” Dr. Talcott turned back to Mr. Hayes. “I was told you had an extra first-aid kit in here?”

  He watched as Mr. Hayes rummaged in the bottom drawer of a desk and tossed a kit to the doctor. “Boy, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “So am I.” Dr. Talcott shoved the kit under his arm and caught Joseph’s gaze. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  Joseph pressed his hand against the bandage, wondering if he really was safe. He hadn’t felt that way for days. If only he could disappear into the walls like he didn’t exist. Maybe there he wouldn’t feel any more pain.

  FORTY-NINE

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 9:17 A.M. EST

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Gabby stood gazing out the window that overlooked the front lawns of the office building, hoping that her tailored black slacks and white button-down shirt projected the image she wanted. Typically, she thrived on the unexpected, but Tuesday
’s attack still had her reeling. She licked her lips and turned to the door as it opened. No need for the law to see that.

  A man walked into the room. Late forties, gray suit. “Miss Mackenzie. Thank you for coming. I’m Mickey Chandler.” He set a file beside his can of Coke on the table and shook her hand. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, tea, or maybe a soda?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.” She drew in a deep breath, still curious about Interpol’s interest in her articles.

  “Good, then we can get started.” He motioned for her to take the chair across from him, then sat down. “I appreciate your agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I understand you just recently returned to the States?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Still a bit of jet lag, then, I’m sure.”

  “Some.” She set her briefcase down beside her, then clasped her hands in front of her on the long conference table. “Mr. Chandler, I’m still not sure I understand what this is all about. On the phone, you mentioned my recent article in the newspaper and the need to see my research.”

  He took another sip of his Coke, then flipped open the file. “I was flying back from New York yesterday and happened to read in yesterday’s paper the first installment on your series on the surge of investors going into Africa. It was extremely well written and thought provoking.”

  Enough to catch Interpol’s attention?

  “I’m hoping that what I wrote will catch the public’s eye, as well as that of the governments involved.” Gabby spoke from passion as much as facts. “It’s time we forced these businesses and investors to change the despicable working conditions thousands are forced to live under. Nothing will change if they aren’t held accountable.”

  “I can see that you’re quite the advocate.”

  “It’s a heart-wrenching reality in our world, especially when one realizes human trafficking, child slavery, and a booming sex industry are all alive and well right here in the United States.”