“They’re trolling for money,” Bara said. “Or, if one hits the jackpot, some man to take care of her. This place reeks of the corruption oil brings. But here no white men complain about the cost; here money buys what their absent wives won’t give them.”
“Seems like there is a price, though—the risk of kidnapping.”
“These are the addicted ones,” Bara answered in a sardonic tone. “High on the exotic strangeness of Luandia, the absence of rules. The saner ones now hide in walled compounds.” His voice went flat. “Luan-dian men do not come here. To see the women with these swine offends them.”
Bara signaled a waitress for two beers. Though the light was dim, Pierce could study him more closely: he had the look of a scholar—thoughtful and sober, yet careworn by a constant anxiety that Pierce had begun absorbing. “That policeman,” he asked. “What were the odds he’d put a bullet through my brain?”
Bara’s look of abstraction was so deep that Pierce did not know if he had heard. “Hard to say,” Bara responded slowly. “The army and police are jumpier than before. Port George and the creeklands are spinning out of Karama’s control. He still seems to believe that fear and death will pacify the delta.”
“And it won’t?”
“It’s made the problem worse. Last week one of our radio stations gave a ‘shooting forecast,’ predicting the next week’s toll of death and injuries from warfare in the streets. Okimbo arrested the disc jockeys at once.” Bara began peeling the label off his beer bottle. “What Karama has done to the Asari and to Bobby will strengthen those who steal his ideas to justify their violence. You have heard of FREE?”
“No.”
“It’s an acronym for Force to Reclaim Our Economy and Environment—the most powerful militia group. FREE hides in the creeklands, arming itself with money from kidnapping and stolen oil. When it’s opportune, they raid Port George. You will hear more of them, believe it.” With a fractional smile, Bara added, “I assume that you’re still hungry.”
Without awaiting an answer, Bara ordered snails in red sauce as Pierce watched the crowd and drank from his long-necked beer. All around them the music pulsed; the liquor flowed; women focused on the men so intensely that Pierce could almost smell their desperation. When one approached him, smiling, he slowly shook his head. Bara watched this interchange without comment or expression.
“What do you think Karama will do with Bobby?” Pierce asked.
Frown lines creased Bara’s forehead. “That depends on many things—some unknowable, most beyond our control—and, to some extent, on Bobby. I know him well enough to guess how little he will kowtow to Karama.”
“When did you meet him?”
“Six years ago. It was kismet, of a kind—my wife curses the day. I was still at Cambridge, about to become its first Asari graduate in law, when Bobby came to see me and Maryam.” Bara’s smile was reflective. “He was giving speeches, raising money and support anywhere he could. I knew who he was, of course—they already called him the Asari Mandela. But I was not prepared for him to sit down on my couch, look deeply into my eyes, and say that the Asari movement required more of me than a glittering degree. They needed my brains and my heart.
“’On a platter?’ my wife could not help but ask.
“At first Bobby ignored this. ‘You have written well about injustice,’ he told me. ‘Someone of your abilities can help me build a grassroots movement that turns your words into action. I cannot do this work alone.’ Then he turned to Maryam, his voice gentle yet impassioned. ‘Yes, there will be the risk of imprisonment, or worse. But unless we who are privileged seize this moment, our only success will be in stealing enough but not too much; biting our tongues as our neighbors disappear; leading lives so innocuous in the face of evil that, should we survive, our legacy will be the contempt of those not moved to imitate our cowardice. Can you wish for yourselves such quiet misery?’
“’I wish to sleep at night.’
“’A vain hope,’ Bobby told her. ‘All you can choose is the reason to be sleepless.’ Turning to me, he said, ‘Sleep is the thief of enterprise. There will be time enough to sleep once we free Asariland.’”
Bara shook his head. “That night I did not sleep at all. The next morning I told Maryam that history had walked into our living room.”
Pierce struggled to imagine choosing a course so risky and profound. “Do you regret it?”
Bara contemplated the droplets of condensation running down his beer. “It has not been easy, and not just because of fear.” He turned to Pierce with an air of curiosity. “There was a time when you must have known Bobby Okari well.”
Pierce weighed his answer. “I was closer to Marissa. What I saw in Bobby was the sense of destiny you describe.”
Something in Pierce’s response made Bara study him more closely. “Bobby,” he said after a moment, “has the defects of his strengths. If you resist him with a well-considered argument, he will listen. But once he chooses a course, his mind is difficult to change.” Bara took a quick swallow of beer. “A man too convinced of his own selflessness too easily attributes opposition to baser motives. And for vanity or pride of place, so prevalent among our chiefs, he has little patience. Less so irresolve.
“In a leader whose movement needs friends, turning potential allies into enemies is a weakness. We saw that on Asari Day—and after.”
“At the time, did you think Asari Day a mistake?”
The swiftness of Bara’s answer suggested how deeply he had considered this. “I was in England, trying to rally international support—Karama had already restricted Bobby’s movements. But when I heard that Bobby had ordered PGL facilities to be seized, I believed there would be trouble.” Bara’s voice grew soft. “Then I heard about those workers, and was certain.”
The pause that followed caused Pierce to wonder what Bara knew, or suspected, about the hangings. Before he could form a question, Bara continued, “Maryam and I have two young girls. My first thought was of their safety; next of my own. So I delayed my return to avoid the airport and made the last leg by boat.”
“And yet you came back.”
“My family is here—and Bobby. It was too late for me to turn away.” Looking at Pierce, he said, “I suppose you understand the risk you’re taking.”
Lurking in the comment, Pierce thought, was curiosity about his motives. “I’m learning.” He paused, then said, “When I knew Bobby, his embrace of nonviolence was unwavering. Is it still?”
Bara seemed to parse the question, including the latent inquiry at its core. “The Asari are few in number,” he responded. “To model himself on Dr. King instead of Yasser Arafat, Bobby argued, was not only practical but the surest route to international support. And I never doubted his commitment to nonviolence. But then FREE arose, promising deliverance and riches at the end of a gun.” Bara picked up his beer, then put it down without drinking. “Our young men grew more restive. Bobby was always a provocateur who understood the uses of controversy. Now, to compete, his rhetoric grew edgier. The intellectuals among our leadership worried that his words and actions might persuade Karama that he wished to foster a secessionist movement throughout the delta, and that nonviolence was a transitory veneer.
“Bobby did not see this. Even as those closest to him became fearful, he seemed to believe that his international reputation insulated us from the worst.”
“And so he went too far.”
Bara smiled slightly. “Now I grasp why you wished to speak to me without Marissa. Yes, many among the Asari elite came to fear that Bobby was marching us toward disaster. As their worries grew, so did Bobby’s intransigence and, perhaps, his desperation to keep our young from gravitating toward FREE.” Bara paused. “Revolutionaries are not easy people. The fierce purpose that drives men to take on causes that frighten others does not admit of flexibility. Perhaps Bobby became too fixated on his dream.
“Had I been here, I would have counseled him against seizing PGL facilities. B
ut even now, the fact that Okimbo spared him may feed that ‘sense of destiny’ you noticed. I fear that Bobby’s destiny may be to die at Karama’s pleasure.”
Pierce met his gaze and held it. Bluntly, he asked, “Who ordered those workers killed?”
Bara did not flinch. “We may never know. A favorite trick in Luandia is to kill one man and blame another. Sometimes the man who orders the killing has the murderer killed for his own protection. About these murders, there is nothing I can tell you. But for Bobby to inspire them would have been suicide. As we have seen.”
What struck Pierce about the answer was its lack of an insistence on Bobby’s innocence. Bara was a sophisticated man, he sensed, whose admiration of Bobby was mingled with an undercurrent of unease deeper than he acknowledged. Given the pressures on Bara and his family, Pierce recalled Martel’s admonition: trust no one. “About the massacre,” Pierce said, “it seems that PGL’s boats and helicopters were used. What do we know about that?”
Bara shrugged. “Only that PGL was involved. The depth of the involvement is known only to PGL and the government. This much I’ll say—PGL runs to the army whenever it feels inconvenienced. For me, the only question is how much Okimbo may have exceeded their expectations.”
At last their dinner arrived, snails drenched in sauce and accompanied by two more beers. “Take my advice,” Bara said. “Alternate bites with a swig of beer.”
Within three bites, the fiery red pepper sauce brought beads of sweat to Pierce’s forehead. He started to remark on it when he noticed Bara eyeing the crowd gathered at the bar.
A tall young Luandian, conspicuous among the throng, sipped a beer as he looked casually around him. Bara stood, touching Pierce’s shoulder, and then edged through the white men and black women as he headed for the bar.
Bara tapped the Luandian on the shoulder. Surprised, the man turned. He seemed to recognize Bara: the two men exchanged words, their faces close as the Luandian bartender, noting them, drifted to the other end of the bar. After Bara spoke again, the man nodded. Then Bara turned abruptly and returned to the table. As Pierce watched him, the Luandian took a last sip of beer and left without paying. “What was that?” he asked.
In a low voice, Bara answered, “He’s a member of FREE. No doubt he’s scouting for PGL executives to kidnap. FREE gets pictures of the important ones from Luandian employees at the company.”
“How do you know him?”
“He was with us before he decided that nonviolence equaled weakness. Perhaps it was also FREE’s promise of money for his work. But we remain friends. You will find this a place of odd relationships, shifting alliances, and mixed motives—it is useful to keep communications open. In this case, I told him you were not PGL, but a journalist. I also suggested that this was not a good night to work the Rhino.”
“So what will he do?”
“There are other bars. Still, it would be best to leave.”
Though they were halfway through dinner, Bara signaled for the check. When the waiter appeared, Pierce produced a sheaf of Luandian bills from his spare wallet. Together they angled through the dance floor thick with bodies and cigarette smoke. As they stepped out the door, Pierce heard what sounded like gunshots from an indeterminate distance and direction.
“Hurry,” Bara ordered tersely.
They rushed to Bara’s car. He started the engine and drove cautiously down a thoroughfare that seemed oddly bare of traffic. Then, perhaps thirty yards ahead, Pierce saw three Luandians pull a struggling white man out of another bar.
Bara braked abruptly. At the sound, one of the kidnappers pointed his pistol at the car.
Bara worked the clutch, backing up. Suddenly a black van appeared from a side street near the bar, squealing to a halt. The kidnapper put away his gun and helped his companions shove their terrified captive into the van. Only as it drove away did Pierce notice the body of a Luandian soldier lying in the entrance to the bar. Then he saw another man standing in the doorway—the Luandian from the Rhino. The man stepped across the body, glancing swiftly to each side, and vanished down the alley.
4
VIGILANT, BARA RESUMED DRIVING DOWN THE EMPTY STREET. “FREE never kills its hostages,” he said phlegmatically. “No profit in that, and it’s bad PR. But someone will pay for that soldier.” After that, the two men said nothing until they reached Bobby’s compound.
Surrounded by walls and a garden, the two-story house was backlit by a gibbous moon and the orange glow of oil flaring on the beach. The only other illumination came from an upstairs window and a light beside a wrought-iron gate that blocked the driveway. Parked across the rutted street was a black car, the two heads of its occupants briefly caught in Bara’s headlights. “She wishes to see you alone,” Bara said without inflection. “There’s a buzzer by the gate—press it, and she’ll come. Tomorrow, if we can manage, you’ll see what is left of Goro.”
Pierce thanked him and got out.
His footsteps crunched gravel at the mouth of the gate. Pressing the button, he saw a circular drive shadowed by palms whose fronds caught the light of the burning oil. A faint breeze touched his face, reminding him that in San Francisco, spring was just beginning. He heard the whisper of footsteps crossing gravel, then saw a slight form moving toward him on the other side of the bars. The mechanical gate parted, and Marissa Okari stepped forward.
In the half-light, Pierce could not see her face. He put down his suitcase. “Nice place.”
She managed to laugh, then glanced past him at the men parked across the street. “State security services,” she told him. “Come inside.”
She pressed a button, and the gate slowly closed behind them. Briefly, she leaned against his chest, hugging him tightly. Then she drew back to look up at him, and he saw her face more clearly. It was the same, yet not—still beautiful but subtly older, a woman’s face on which hard experience was written. Quietly, she said, “I can hardly believe you’ve come.”
He looked deeply into her face, even more lovely than he had imagined. “I’m glad I did.”
“I’m grateful, Damon. More than you can ever know.”
For a moment they were silent. She took his hand, the touch of a guide, and led him toward the house.
She wore a simple Luandian dress; though her movements lacked the kinetic energy he recalled from their past, her posture remained erect and proud. She opened the door, nodding to a slender houseboy with watchful eyes, whom she introduced to Pierce as Edo. Then she ushered Pierce up a central flight of stairs to a patio luxuriant with flowers. “It’s better we talk here,” she said under her breath. “I can see who listens.”
They sat at a wooden table overlooking the Gulf of Luandia. A mile or so offshore, the lights from an armada of oil tankers sparkled like a floating city. The source of the unnatural glow, visible now, was a black pipe whose flame lit a quadrant of debris-strewn sand. To the far right were scattered lights demarking what Pierce knew to be Petrol Island, an offshore compound chosen by PGL for its relative safety from militia attacks. Quietly, Marissa said, “I can’t imagine what you’re thinking.”
“The trivial and profound. I was wondering how you and Bobby managed to come by such a place. Far more important, how you are.”
Marissa seemed to study his face, as though discovering him anew. “As to how we live, Bobby’s writing paid well. His second novel, Delta Boy, became an international bestseller. He was also the son of a wealthy chief, one of the traditional elite—he never pretended not to be privileged.” Her voice lowered. “As for me . . .” She stopped and looked down. “When I saw him hanging there, I entered a world without limits. Maybe we’ve always lived this way and I refused to see it. But now I live with horrors I literally can’t express: isolated, under constant surveillance, threatened with further harm to Bobby if I speak to the foreign press. I can’t even see him, and they’ve taken my passport. Other than that, the government seems content to keep me here, as though pretending that the massacre is something I
imagined. For the world at large it may become that: anyone who survived by hiding in the forest knows better than to be a witness.” Pausing, she seemed to shiver, murmuring in a husky voice, “Last night I dreamed about his father’s head. But this time the head was Bobby’s.”
Pierce groped for a way to comfort her. “I’m here for a while,” he promised. “Until I can figure out how an American lawyer can best help you and Bobby. Once I find a way, the next step is to persuade my law firm to support it. In the meantime, this is my vacation.”
Marissa ignored his attempt at lightness. “Vacation? Before I interrupted your life, you were in the midst of a divorce. There must be better ways to heal.”
“I can’t think of any. Perhaps you did me a favor—before your e-mail I had too much time to think.”
Marissa looked at him again, her face softening. “You must be so tired. Do you need to sleep?”
“Only if you do.” When she shook her head, Pierce added, “I wouldn’t mind some coffee.”
Marissa stood, opened the glass door, and called out a few words in Asari. Within moments, the houseboy brought a carafe of coffee. Smiling, he said, “You’re welcome,” and left before Pierce could thank him.
“’You’re welcome,’” Marissa explained, “is a universal greeting—don’t ask me why. And don’t misread his smile. Edo is deeply scared; warmth and kindness is his reflex. As a whole, Luandians are quite wonderful—humorous, emotive, and patient in a way that completely eludes Bobby. There’s a favorite saying that always drives him crazy: ‘The clock did not invent man.’ But they’re also incredibly enterprising. Even their scams are inventive.”
“Like selling other people’s houses?”
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