The American Mission

by Matthew Palmer

  He reached the stairs and started down them three at a time. The stairwell was unfinished and open to the outside. Viggiano was close now, maybe fifty feet behind him. Alex heard the squeaks and rustles of the bat colony as he ran past and retained enough presence of mind to slow down as he crossed the landing covered in the slippery guano. Viggiano was not as careful. The RSO took the landing at full speed. His right leg went out from under him as his foot slipped on the oily bat shit. His arms windmilled wildly and he fought to regain his balance. The pistol went flying out of his hand into the darkness of the building’s interior. Viggiano did not stand a chance. He had built up too much momentum, and Alex watched the man who had tried twice to kill him hurtle headfirst into the air.

  He fell thirty-five feet to the parking lot below. The packed dirt was as hard as concrete.

  Even three stories up, Alex could hear the dry-branch crack of the RSO’s neck breaking on impact.

  33

  AUGUST 19, 2009

  KINSHASA

  It is not an easy thing to tell a man that there is a contract out on his life. For Alex, this task was further complicated by the sense of responsibility he felt for having persuaded Ilunga to reengage in the Congo’s rough-and-tumble politics. Outside of South Africa, there were few retired elder statesmen on the continent. The losers in political power struggles tended to die untimely and often violent deaths. In challenging Silwamba, Ilunga had put himself in the firing line. Adding multinational business interests to the equation further increased the level of risk. Even with Viggiano dead, the threat against Ilunga was both real and immediate. First Antoine, then Jean-Baptiste, and now Ilunga. Alex could feel the guilt gnawing at the back of his mind.

  “I’m sorry, Albert,” he said, after explaining what had happened at the construction site and what he had learned listening in on the call between Saillard and Jackson. Alex, Marie, Ilunga, and Giles were sitting at the small table in the courtyard of the villa. A few smoky torches did a tolerable job of keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Ilunga seemed unconcerned by Alex’s report.

  “You have nothing to apologize for. I knew exactly what I was getting into. I knew it when I was languishing in solitary confinement. And I knew it when I agreed with you and Marie that now was the time to make this move. It was my decision and I am prepared for the consequences. Why do you think I’ve spent three years building up my personal army? Your friends from New York will not find me such an easy target.”

  “Maybe not,” Alex agreed. “But they have essentially unlimited resources and I’m afraid that they’ll keep doubling down until they succeed.”

  “Well,” Ilunga said philosophically, “it doesn’t seem like there’s very much that we can do about it. We have come too far. We need to keep moving forward.”

  Alex was impressed and just a little surprised by Ilunga’s determination. The coalition leader had been manifestly reluctant to launch this challenge to Silwamba’s rule. Alex now suspected that Ilunga had been playing the devil’s advocate, arguing the other side of the issue to tease out all of the problems and pitfalls and to make sure that they had considered the issue from all angles.

  “Maybe there is something that we can do,” Marie suggested. The three men looked at her expectantly. Marie was wearing a plain white blouse and black slacks with a thin gold chain around her neck. Her hair was tied back with a white ribbon. She looked both luminous and fierce.

  “What do you have in mind, my dear?” Ilunga asked. His eyes sparked with an amusement that was somewhat incongruous for a man who had just been threatened with assassination.

  Marie leaned forward slightly and looked straight at Ilunga.

  “We can move faster. We can go from calling for change to making change. Pressure has been building on Silwamba and his cronies. The regime is slowly hollowing out. Now may be the time to crack it open. They think that they’re coming after you . . . let’s turn the tables and go after them.”

  It was hard to read Ilunga’s expression, but his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed in concentration.

  “How would you propose to do that?” he asked, although it was pretty clear that he understood what Marie was suggesting.

  “Take over the parliament, take over the airwaves, and force Silwamba out of the country. Let him live out his miserable life in Switzerland or under Castro’s protection in Havana. I frankly don’t give a damn where he goes as long as it’s not here.”

  “A coup?” Ilunga suggested mildly.

  “Justice,” Marie replied confidently.

  “Marie is right,” Alex chimed in. “The core of our argument is that you are the legitimate winner of the last election. We don’t need new elections to reaffirm that. Silwamba has stolen this country with the help and support of our friends at Consolidated Mining and . . . it pains me to say . . . at least some parts of the U.S. government. A coup is, by definition, unconstitutional. It’s Silwamba’s regime that is an affront to the Congolese constitution and the will of the people. The public is sick of the corruption and violence. This government is ready to fall.”

  Ilunga still seemed skeptical, or maybe he was just playing devil’s advocate again.

  “We’ve built up considerable moral capital,” Ilunga observed. “We risk squandering that if we resort to violence.”

  “I absolutely agree with you,” Alex replied. “This country has seen enough violence. But there’s a difference between force and violence. I think we can do this without having to fight.”

  “And how much experience do you have bringing down governments?” Ilunga was not being unkind, but he was challenging Alex to make the best possible case for an idea that was, at best, controversial.

  “Me personally, not so much,” Alex admitted. “But I know a guy who does.”

  “I think we are going to need some beers for this next part,” said Giles. He went to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with four ice-cold Heinekens.

  “Now let me tell you what I have in mind . . .”

  • • •

  Giles approached the U.S. Embassy with a certain degree of trepidation. The building was imposing and forbidding. There was nothing welcoming about it and that impression was further reinforced by Giles’s knowledge that the people who worked inside were conspiring against a man he loved and admired, a man who had rescued him from a life of desperation. He would do anything for Albert Ilunga, however, and if that meant walking into the belly of the beast, then so be it.

  Following Alex’s instructions, he went to the main gate and walked up to the local guard, who eyed the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Giles suspiciously.

  “Can I help you?” the guard asked.

  “I have certain information that would be of value to the United States. I am interested in discussing this with the American authorities.”

  The guard seemed unimpressed.

  “The visa line is around the corner,” he observed. “You won’t help yourself by making up a story. Why don’t you go wait in the line like everybody else.”

  “Imbecile. I am not here for a visa. I have information that is so hot it’s radioactive. You have exactly ten minutes to get me in with the CIA or so help me I will take what I know to the Chinese. They pay in cash.”

  “Your name?”

  “Is of no use to you.”

  The guard shrugged. “Wait here, please.”

  “Make it quick. The Chinese Embassy is three blocks from here.”

  The interview room was all white. The walls were a plain white with no pictures or decorations of any kind. There was a cheap-looking white table and half a dozen metal chairs, all painted white. The chairs were uncomfortable and the room was too warm. This was deliberate. Giles sat alone in the room for some time. This too was deliberate. Although there was no obvious “mirror” like those that were found in every interview room in every police station in the United
States, carefully hidden cameras allowed case officers to observe the walk-in’s behavior before going in to speak to him. Forewarned, Giles sat quietly and waited.

  After some twenty minutes, Jonah Keeler opened the door. The CIA Station Chief was wearing a blue suit with thin white pinstripes about an inch apart. His club tie was done up in a Windsor knot. His embassy ID hung from his neck on a lanyard in the cherry and white colors of Temple University. Giles recognized him from Alex’s description. This was the man he needed to speak to.

  “Jonah Keeler?”

  Keeler raised an eyebrow and took a seat opposite Giles at the Formica table. “Yes. And you are?”

  “A messenger.”

  “How interesting. From whom?”

  “Your friend from Busu-Mouli.”

  “Well, well. And how is he?”

  “Alive.”

  “The list of those who would wish otherwise is growing longer.”

  “Are you among them?”

  “No.” Keeler pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from his pocket and offered one to Giles, who declined. Keeler lit the cigarette with a gold lighter and returned both the pack and the lighter to his breast pocket. There was no smoking allowed in any U.S. government facility. That was only one of the many rules commonly breached in this room.

  “So why send you? Why not just pick up the phone?”

  “I believe that he has learned to distrust telephones.”

  “I can imagine that’s true. What message do you have for me?”

  “He would like to meet you tonight at ten.”

  “Where?”

  “He told me to tell you to meet him on Green Dolphin Street.”

  Keeler smiled and tapped his cigarette on the corner of the table to knock the ash onto the floor. “I know the place.”

  • • •

  Marie and Alex got to the Ibiza by nine. With his light disguise and the gradual disappearance of the “wanted” posters from around town, Alex was less fearful of being recognized. Even so, they took a table in the back, where the shadows were the deepest. It was a different band than the one that had been playing on Alex’s last visit. This band had a female lead singer who looked—and sounded—remarkably like Cesária Évoria. The backing band was small, just guitar, drums, and piano, but the woman’s voice needed little adornment.

  Marie had found time to go shopping, Alex realized. She was wearing a sky blue silk blouse that he had not seen before and a coral necklace just the right shade for her skin. The top two buttons of the blouse were open, and when she leaned forward, there was just a hint of her black bra. She wore small gold hoops in her ears and had let her braids hang loose. It was a younger look for her, less “chiefly” and more carefree. She noticed him staring at her.

  “What is it?” she asked shyly.

  “Chief Tsiolo, you are absolutely fucking gorgeous.”

  “Such language.” Marie rubbed her foot suggestively across his calf underneath the table.

  A teenage waitress brought them a bowl of heavily salted peanuts and took their orders. Marie asked for a glass of pinotage. Alex ordered Dewar’s on the rocks.

  For the next hour, they tried to forget the enormous risks they were taking. There were many more ways that things could go badly than right. At the moment, however, the music was good and they were enjoying each other’s company.

  “You know,” Alex observed, “this is almost like a date. I think it’s our first.”

  “I’d say so. It’s a nice spot for a first date. Think you’ll get lucky tonight?”

  “Hope springs eternal.”

  “That it does.”

  • • •

  About five minutes before ten, Jonah Keeler walked into the Ibiza. He spotted Alex and Marie immediately, but went to the bar and ordered a drink. With a studied nonchalance, Keeler surveyed the room, looking for any patron or employee who appeared out of place. When he was satisfied that no one in the bar raised any red flags, he made his way casually to the back tables, where Alex and Marie rose to greet him.

  “Chief Tsiolo, I presume,” he said warmly, taking Marie’s hand. “It’s a pleasure. The pictures in your Consolidated Mining personnel folder do not do you justice. You are truly lovely.”

  “Thank you,” Marie replied. “The staff photographer at the mining company used to moonlight at the city jail taking mug shots.”

  Keeler turned to Alex and unexpectedly enfolded him in an embrace.

  “God, I’m glad to see you alive. I don’t think I told you that J.J. had even-money odds you were gonna break your neck on landing. That was a hell of a thing you did.”

  “There’s a first time for everything . . . and a last. I’m just glad they weren’t one and the same that night.”

  “So did you hear about Viggiano?” Keeler asked, after they had sat down.

  “Yeah, a tragedy. He was a beautiful human being.”

  “A real sweetheart.”

  Jonah’s eyes darted briefly in Marie’s direction and then back to Alex, who understood the implicit question.

  “It’s okay. Marie knows everything that I know. Without her, I would have been dead some time ago.”

  Keeler nodded his acceptance of Alex’s endorsement.

  “So what happened?” Jonah asked. “All I know is that I have a dead RSO with bat shit on his shoes and gunpowder residue on his arm. I also have a little hobby den inside the abandoned building where he died . . . with your fingerprints on just about everything, by the way . . . and a laptop computer more or less gutted by a 9mm bullet from the dead guy’s gun. Do I have that about right?”

  “Pretty much. What’s the fallout like?”

  “Un-fucking-believable. Viggiano didn’t tell anyone where he was going and the cops didn’t find his body until the next morning. It wasn’t, by all accounts, a pretty sight. The dogs got to him. Spence had me leading the investigation, which lasted all of three hours before they shut it down. The official cause of death is ‘accidental slip and fall.’ Somebody got to Spence, and I have a sneaking suspicion it was a foppish Belgian with a soul patch and a bad attitude. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “No. I think you’ve pretty much got it nailed. Did you keep the computer? There’s some data on it that could prove extremely useful.”

  “I sent it to our tech guys in Jo’burg. Not much hope that they’ll be able to recover the data from it. The bullet absolutely eviscerated the hard drive. What was on it?”

  “You’ll need a little background first.”

  “I got time.”

  Alex gave him a brief rundown of the events since J. J. Sykes had taken off from Kinshasa with Alex on board as a reluctant skydiver. He told him about the decision to partner with Manamakimba, the assault on Busu-Mouli, their successful efforts to recruit Ilunga back into politics, and Alex’s parallel efforts to pry open the locked doors of Consolidated Mining’s secret chambers. When he told Keeler about Saillard’s conversation with Grover Jackson, the Station Chief’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  “You had that conversation recorded on the hard drive?” Keeler asked.

  Alex confirmed that he had.

  “Fuck!”

  Alex also explained to Keeler the circumstances surrounding Viggiano’s death. “In a way, ‘accidental slip and fall’ isn’t that far from the truth. I certainly didn’t kill him. Which didn’t stop him from coming damn close to killing me. I will admit that I’m not exactly sorry he’s dead. The guy was dirty. I just hope that his being dead doesn’t wind up making it harder for me to clear my name.”

  Keeler polished off his Jack and Coke and signaled the server for another.

  “So what can I do for you? You asked for the meet.”

  “If we had time, I think we could succeed in ousting Silwamba purely through political pressure and installing Ilunga. But we’re running sho
rt on time. Even with Viggiano out of the picture, Consolidated Mining has the resources and the contacts to kill Ilunga. That would obviously put something of a damper on the movement.”

  “So you’re thinking that you need to push the pace a bit?” Keeler asked. “Are you talking about a coup?”

  “A bloodless one,” Marie interjected. “We want a change of government, not a civil war.”

  “I wanted to see you, Jonah, because we need your advice. I suspect that you’ve had more experience with this kind of thing than I have.”

  Keeler nodded. “Mozambique in ’93, Côte d’Ivoire in 2002.”

  “That was us?” Alex was genuinely surprised. In the Ivory Coast a kleptocratic pro-Russian dictator had been swept aside in a surprise putsch that had installed a kleptocratic pro-American, or at least pro-ExxonMobil, strongman. There had been no hint of Agency involvement in those developments.

  “Hey, we can keep a few secrets.”

  “So is there a set of instructions for this kind of thing?”

  “More a collection of generally accepted principles.”

  “How would you apply them to these circumstances?”

  “I have some ideas.”

  “A moment,” Marie said. “Before we take this further, I need to ask a question. I know that you have helped Alex. I know he considers you a friend. But you work for the American CIA. Why would you want to help us in this?”

  “If Alex has told you about the Africa Working Group, then I expect he’s also told you that there are other factions contending for influence over policy that have very different views and different priorities. I happen to represent one of those groups that sees tremendous positive potential in Africa. We need to invest here, not just extract. So we want the same things. I wouldn’t have thought to go to Ilunga to try to bring about change, but I’m happy as hell that you did. Now that you’ve come this far, I want to help you finish this and get it done right. Does that seem fair?”