ECLIPSE

by Richard North Patterson

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “No. Neither does someone like Van Daan, I imagine. Though raiding Petrol Island would be more brazen than seems reasonable. The militias have easier pickings on the mainland.”

  Pierce gazed out at the refinery. “How critical are the facilities?”

  “They’re significant. One plant processes crude oil into petroleum; another takes raw gas—the stuff PGL flares elsewhere—and processes, cools, and liquefies it, then ships it off to Europe for use in power stations. Gladstone’s idea is that Petrol Island provides an alternative to gas flaring with benefits for all, if only because acid rainfall won’t be eating through the tin roofs of the impoverished.” Caught in a downdraft, the chopper dipped sharply, taking Pierce’s stomach with it until Rubin reasserted his control. “That shantytown you see is the island’s greatest amenity, Hooker Village.”

  Inhaling deeply, Pierce gazed down at the floating slum. “Named for its residents, I assume.”

  “Yup. They’re an essential part of the ecology, conveniently located. See the side road from the highway to the shacks?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The common practice is for a man to leave work, stop at Hooker Village like he’s picking up a video, and take a woman to the compound for the night.” Rubin glanced at Pierce. “At the gate to the compound, George or Buster checks her in at the security gate, taking responsibility for her actions until he drops her off again. Very corporate. PGL even keeps a registry of names.”

  Beneath them, Pierce saw a thin woman in a bandanna hang a dress on the sill of a broken window. Then Rubin accelerated the chopper sharply upward, veering back toward Port George. “There’s one subject you haven’t raised,” he told Pierce. “Ever think about the market in oil futures?”

  “Not since Bryce Martel mentioned that at dinner. I thought it was a throwaway line.”

  “Maybe not. You know how oil futures work?”

  “Sure,” Pierce answered. “Today the world price of oil is a hundred bucks a barrel. For a fraction of the cost, I can buy the right to purchase a million barrels at a hundred and five in two weeks’ time. If it’s over a hundred and five on the date I’ve got to exercise my option—say, a hundred and ten—I make five dollars for each barrel I sell. That’s a five-million-dollar profit.”

  “Exactly. And if the world price rises, say, thirty dollars instead of ten, the profits are that much bigger. So let me ask you this: what’s the futures play on Okari’s execution?”

  Pierce was startled. “If you’re asking about the effect on the world price of oil, I’d guess that if Bobby dies, it goes up.”

  “Way up, given the fear of further instability in the delta. Which brings me back to Ugwo Ajukwa.

  “You asked why Karama trusts him. Karama trusts no one. But Ajukwa has ties to America—power brokers, moneymen, and the CIA—that makes him useful to Karama. A prudent autocrat would want to keep a man like Ajukwa close enough to watch.”

  “Why the ties to Washington?”

  “One of the reasons Ajukwa signed up with the CIA for a while was to help him amass political power—which, in Luandia, also means financial power. That’s why he was in diamonds; that’s why—or so we believe—he’s involved with FREE in bunkering oil. Some within the Agency also believe that Ajukwa is now connected to a Swiss arms dealer, Alois Shue, who’s begun supplying FREE with advanced weapons, like surface-to-air missiles, paid for by the Russian government.”

  Astonished, Pierce asked, “What’s the point of that?”

  “Power. For example, if FREE can shoot down any helicopters—for instance, those used by PGL to repair facilities—that could affect oil supply. Which, in turn, makes Russia more important in the world oil market. Problem is that Shue is also helping the CIA supply anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, so no one wants to push this theory too hard. It all gets pretty diabolical.” Throttling down, Rubin lowered the chopper to scan Port George Harbor. “For your purposes, the most interesting rumor is that Ajukwa’s partners may also include financial types with ties to the current American administration, whose political influence, in turn, helps them make more money. One of these men, Henry Karlin, is unusually successful at trading in oil futures.”

  Staring at Rubin, Pierce processed this. “Which brings us back to Luandia.”

  “Sure. Consider what crises might affect the world price of oil. The most obvious are Iran going nuclear and a total meltdown in Iraq. But our oil strategists have placed a huge bet on Luandia, which magnifies the price effect of any event that signals volatility. When PGL shut down in Asariland, the world price per barrel shot up six dollars in a day. All you needed to know was exactly when someone would hang those workers.”

  Pierce shook his head. “Hard to imagine that as a futures play.”

  “Is it?” Rubin turned to Pierce, his expression as serious as his tone. “In the last year, three acts of sabotage by FREE drove the price of oil sharply higher. Suppose FREE blows up a couple of facilities, or seizes an offshore oil platform and kills whoever’s there. Or maybe Jomo announces that all oil workers must leave or die, or some act of sabotage creates a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Luandia. If you were speculating in oil futures, wouldn’t you like to know about events like these before they happened?”

  Pierce rubbed his eyes; the constant pounding of the chopper blades had caused a throbbing in his temples. At length, he said, “Including the fact and timing of Bobby’s execution.”

  Rubin nodded. “At some point, Karama will decide whether and when Bobby Okari will die. The word I have is that Ajukwa is pressing for his execution on the grounds that Bobby is a secessionist threat. In addition to the patriotic virtue of putting a bullet through Okari’s brain, there just might be some money in it.”

  Pierce watched his face. Though Rubin had come to him through Martel, Pierce’s paid consultant, that did not preclude one or both from having other interests. But what those might be, Pierce did not know and could not ask. Finally, he said, “What are you telling me, Dave?”

  Rubin seemed to weigh his answer. “Just to think about the futures market. It may be part of what, in the end, helps you make sense of the senseless. Like Okari says, oil kills.”

  Abruptly, Rubin dropped the helicopter toward the airstrip. When they landed, the men from the state security services were parked near Rubin’s Mercedes.

  REACHING THE OKARIS’ compound, Pierce went upstairs to check his e-mail.

  A message from Rachel Rahv was marked “urgent”: “PGL is finally giving up Trevor Hill tomorrow. Will you depose him, or should I?”

  Without responding, Pierce checked the next e-mail. “Good,” Jomo had answered. “Your friend will help lead you to my friend.”

  Gazing at the screen, Pierce felt Atiku Bara behind him. Slowly turning, he said, “Are you my friend, Bara?”

  The lawyer was expressionless. “I’m known to them,” he answered. “You recall the man I spoke with in the Rhino Bar, the night FREE killed that soldier?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’re on different sides, but he knows I won’t betray him. That’s why Jomo contacted me, I’m sure. I’ve become your character reference.”

  Pierce turned back to the screen. When Bara had gone, he replied to Rachel Rahv: “Hill is yours. For now, I’m staying in the delta.”

  9

  JOMO’S REPLY INSTRUCTED PIERCE TO MEET A STRANGER IN PORT George.

  Sitting on the patio, he repeated this to Marissa and Bara. Marissa shook her head. “To meet openly in a city? Why is FREE so confident you both won’t be arrested?”

  Pierce glanced at Bara. Leaning forward, Marissa gazed at Pierce with new intensity. “Suppose FREE and their friends in government are looking to get rid of you. You agree to go, and then vanish in the swamps. It’s perfect for them: there’d be no one’s fingerprints on your disappearance, no lawyers to take your place. I don’t like the way this feels.”

  Her words struck Pierc
e hard; by stating his own fears so concisely, Marissa deepened them. Bara still watched Marissa. “Why murder Damon?” he asked her.

  “Because they can.” Her voice was raw with anger. “Because Damon has brought his law firm’s resources to bear. Because he’s trouble. Why would whoever lynched those oil workers stop there?”

  “Perhaps they wouldn’t,” Bara answered calmly. “But we don’t even know who ‘they’ are. That’s what Damon’s hoping to find out.” He turned to Pierce. “The man you’re meeting is the one I encountered in Port George. He wouldn’t knowingly betray me.”

  Pierce’s mind flooded with distrust and doubt—of Jomo, of FREE, of Bara himself. But in the half-formed pattern growing in his mind, General Freedom might know why, and by whom, the workers had been killed. In this place where motives were impossible to guess and so many ways existed to get rid of him, for Pierce to shun this invitation made no more sense than to accept it. With nine days until the tribunal convened, he still had no defense for Marissa’s husband. “I have to go,” he told her.

  Abruptly, she stood and walked to the edge of the patio, her back to Pierce and Bara. Quietly, Bara said, “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  For an instant, Pierce wondered what Bara might imagine. Still watching Marissa, he nodded.

  She gazed out at the South Atlantic as the evening sun, falling, blurred the far horizon. Standing beside her, Pierce placed his hands on the railing. Softly, she said, “I never should have asked you here.”

  “Too late,” he answered. “All that’s left to decide is how I live this out.”

  She turned to him, the pain in her eyes so tangible he could feel it. “I’ve had enough of martyrdom. I don’t want that from you, Damon.”

  Once again, it struck Pierce that Bobby, without her knowing it, had placed Marissa in great danger. Bobby had refused exile: the result, a lethal irony, was that Pierce would risk himself to save her. “The idea,” he told her, “is not two martyrs. It’s none.”

  To Pierce, it seemed Marissa could no longer look at him. “Then please come back,” she said.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Bara dropped Pierce at the mouth of an alley in Port George.

  Following instructions, Pierce turned down a second alley, then a third, finding a restaurant that resembled an abandoned shack. Though the sign in its dirty window read CLOSED, the door was not locked. Glancing over his shoulder, Pierce stepped inside.

  Alone at a table was the man from the Rhino. He stood, motioning to Pierce, and led him out a rear exit. In still another alley waited a Land Rover with three Luandians inside. Pierce’s guide opened the front passenger door.

  Pierce got in. The driver wore sunglasses and a black T-shirt that hugged his muscled body. Of the two men in the rear seat, the fleshy one held an English-language paperback of Quotations from Chairman Mao; the other smoked a joint, his eyes half-shut beneath the visor of a Boston Red Sox cap. Each wore a cartridge belt; two AK-47s lay between them. The sheer weirdness of this moment left Pierce caught between instinctive dread and the reflex to laugh aloud. The driver stomped the accelerator, and the car, spitting mud, sped from the alley.

  They took dirt roads out of town, passing homes and shops barely better than hovels. After a time Pierce kept his eyes on the road, accepting his destiny with as much fatalism as he could muster. Then they reached the landing where, accompanied by Marissa and Bara, Pierce had begun the haunting trip to Goro.

  Everything else was different. A waiting sea truck was occupied by five armed men, all in black hoods. Around each man’s shoulders were draped two leather belts from which tipped bullets protruded like sharks’ teeth in a dull gold necklace. Stepping into the boat, the driver indicated a seat in the back for Pierce.

  He sat between the reader of Mao and the marijuana smoker. Both covered their heads with black cloth hoods, the latter carefully placing his Red Sox cap beside him. Pierce tried to imagine them as his friends—in less than an hour, he had grasped the essence of Stockholm syndrome.

  Wondering at the absence of uniformed military, Pierce took stock of the boat. White cloth banners flew from poles bolted to the deck, on which lay boxes holding weapons. The boat itself was new, powered by two gleaming outboard motors; when the pilot pulled the throttle, the boat accelerated so swiftly that it threw Pierce back. The hooded men, standing but bent at the knees, absorbed the jolting movement without much effort.

  The boat skidded across the harbor, still gaining speed. Suddenly the Red Sox cap was captured by a gust of wind; it fluttered in the air like a wounded bird before dropping behind them into the churning wake. Standing, its owner shouted something guttural in a language unknown to Pierce. Spinning the wheel as he cut the motors, the pilot turned the boat in a slow trajectory aimed for the floating cap. As they passed it, the marijuana smoker leaned gracefully from the boat and grasped the visor. Then the pilot turned again, heading toward the creeklands as the man wrung filthy water from his cap.

  WITHIN ANOTHER HOUR’S time, Pierce experienced again the sense of being swallowed by a trackless netherworld. He could have been here before, or not. Banks thick with palms and mangrove closed around them; the pilot made unfathomable decisions, choosing one tributary in the watery maze, then another. The occasional village seemed to have imbued its inhabitants with the same weary lassitude Pierce had observed before, their boats and fish nets lying unused on the muddy banks. The spray of water on his face was slick with the oil that moved sinuously across the surface like a formless black amoeba.

  A third hour passed, the creeklands becoming narrower, the foliage thicker. Suddenly a helicopter appeared above the trees. For the first time, the heavyset reader of Mao spoke. “Perhaps the army,” he told Pierce. “If they drop a grenade, maybe our boat will sink, and they’ll shoot anyone swimming in the water.” But he said this with a curious unconcern. After a time, the helicopter vanished.

  THE SUN WAS straight above them now, radiating a muggy heat that dampened Pierce’s shirt. Still they took one creek, then another, seemingly without direction. Every so often the pilot, studying the terrain, spoke in an unknown dialect to a hooded man beside him. Then the pilot pointed to a landmark Pierce could not discern, and the man next to him replaced the white cloth flags with red ones. They took a hairpin turn into another creek, so sharp that their new course was hidden from view.

  When they completed the turn, another boat was waiting there, its bow pointing directly at them.

  The pilot shouted out. The other craft began speeding toward them, its armed occupants kneeling as bullets ripped the hull of Pierce’s boat.

  Stunned, Pierce froze. As the men around him hit the deck, he followed, sprawling forward. Beside him the owner of the Red Sox cap crumpled and was still.

  The militiamen grasped their weapons, all sense of randomness vanishing in the discipline with which they returned fire. Crouching, the pilot whipped the wheel; the boat swerved, barely missing their enemy as it sped past them in the narrow creek. Then he spun the boat again, and suddenly they were in pursuit.

  The other boat was twenty yards away. Moving to the front, Pierce’s companions laid down a barrage of bullets. Ahead, two of their attackers fell, one pitching headfirst into the water. Then the man who read Mao stood, shouldering a grenade launcher. With a percussive whir, the launcher recoiled.

  Reflexively, Pierce half-stood as the dark sphere arced toward its target. The enemy boat shuddered, bursting into flames. As Pierce heard a scream of agony, a second grenade struck.

  Tongues of blue-orange flames burst from the broken hull. A gas tank exploded. Pieces of fiberglass flew in all directions, and then the water was ablaze.

  Standing, the pilot throttled back abruptly. As their boat slowed, gliding past the wreckage, a man screamed in anguish amid a burning oil slick. Next to Pierce, the reader of Mao stared down at his dead companion, pink-white brains seeping from the man’s shattered skull. With calm deliberation his friend raised his AK-47, turned, and launched a fusill
ade of bullets at the survivor, which caused him to twitch as though a metal clothesline was holding him above the surface. Then he sank amid a red-black skein of blood and oil, and the reader of Mao resumed his contemplation of the dead man.

  At length he took out a cell phone and called someone. The softness of his tone required no translation.

  MOMENTS AFTER THE pilot continued their journey, the reader of Mao returned to his vigil beside the corpse. Numb, Pierce sat alone.

  Slowing, the boat glided into a shallow creek. In a clearing along the shore stood a group of hooded men, their chests bare except for ammunition belts. Red and white cloths were knotted on their arms. In front of them lay a white wooden casket.

  Stepping from the boat, Pierce’s companions dipped their hands in the oily water. To Pierce, the reader of Mao said, “You also.”

  Uncomprehending, Pierce complied. Two men stepped from the shore and bore the dead man to the casket.

  Gently, they placed him inside. Then four men lifted the wooden box, taking a path through the palms and mangroves as the others followed in a single file, Pierce trailing behind. When the path opened again, he saw them in another clearing, gathering around a shallow grave dug from the red-orange clay.

  The coffin lay beside it, the man inside gazing sightlessly at a patch of blue sky. The reader of Mao knelt again, shutting the man’s eyes with a forefinger. The militiamen crowded around the casket, chanting what to Pierce sounded like an anthem of battle. Then they removed their hoods.

  They were startlingly young. Most could not be twenty; some struggled to mask their grief. Tears in his eyes, the reader of Mao placed the Red Sox cap inside the casket, then closed its lid.

  Standing apart, Pierce saw the men pick up wooden shovels. They each took turns covering the casket with dirt. When they were through, someone planted a makeshift wooden cross above the grave.