'A' for Argonaut

by Michael J. Stedman

  Out in the hall, Daniels brought them to a bank teller at Banco de Cabinda. Maran pulled out the Walter Jackson platinum credit card and cashed out four thousand more Congo Francs and tipped the man behind the bulletproof glass case.

  “We’ll take my bakkie,” Daniels said and led them to his Land Rover. “We have dinner reservations. Sola Ubulom will join us. He’ll fill you in on the black market for animals.”

  “Protected species? Talk about a dance with the devil. Sell their souls for the right price,” Tracha said.

  “They already have,” Daniels answered.

  The Luna Nova dining room with its large-leafed vines looked like a jungle village. Ficus and philodendron hung from tree limbs which were stretched across the thatched ceiling. The big wooden menu offered Mufete de Cacusa and Farofa, tilapia with a manioc and palm oil sauce, as the specials that night.

  A waiter approached. Maran ordered the special. When it came, he blanched. It looked awful, Maran thought. It tasted worse.

  “Try the boerewors,” Daniels suggested.

  When he finished the spicy sausage, Maran popped an unlit stogie into his mouth, savoring its spicy bite as he chomped down on it with his molars. He looked at Daniels.

  “Kurt tells me you work for the World Wildlife Fund?” Daniels said.

  Maran reached into his inside jacket pocket. Daniel’s eyes jumped. Maran laughed and pulled out a canvas I.D. folder. He handed over his laminated “Walter Q.R. Jackson” credentials.

  Daniels grinned as he looked at the card and turned it over.

  “BANG! Competitive intelligence?”

  “Right,” Maran answered. “Discreet investigations. Strictly business. Mostly boring stuff. They want us to sort out the information. Leopards, white rhino, gorillas. Kurt says you can help.”

  Daniels rose. Sola Ubulom came through the restaurant door.

  “Excuse the tardiness, gentlemen. The children needed a ride home from school. My wife was at her ill mother’s house. She’s making dinner for them,” Ubulom said. He was a tall, lean, taffy colored man with a Portuguese accent. He wore a wildlife ranger uniform from the Kissama Game Reserve where he was in charge of apprehending‌—‌or shooting‌—‌poachers.

  Daniels made the introductions. Maran took charge.

  “Mr. Ubulom, we need to know the major players.”

  “Rocky tells me you plan to write a report.”

  “Right. Our group will publicize the poachers that threaten your most valuable national resource.”

  “Wild animals! White rhino, elephant, leopard, gorilla. Money.”

  “Protected species. A lot of money.”

  Ubulom took a careful look at Maran. He had already sized up the rest of Maran’s party. “I have to warn you, your request is dangerous. These are not just moneymen, serious moneymen, tens-of-millions of dollars. They are criminals and they can get pretty tough.”

  “We’re here for World Wildlife. That’s all. Not with any government.” He showed Daniels the letter from World Wildlife confirming his assignment.

  “Yes. These people will demand confidentiality, and your project would put a spotlight on a world that might be best left alone,” Daniels said.

  “We understand.” Maran pulled out the Amex travelers checkbook Levine had provided. He was prepared to pay for the information. Humane altruism was as rare under the laws of the jungle as humane justice between its animals.

  “U.S. cash, Mr. Maran. One-hundred-percent up front. The local currencies can’t be trusted to hold their worth. Moreover, we don’t trust anybody. Take it or leave it.” Maran pulled a small envelope of finished stones from his pocket. He poured a large one into his big palm and handed it to Ubulom who took it outside to inspect in the sunlight.

  “Good enough,” he said when he returned.

  “Before you put that in your pocket, let’s get a sample of what you know,” Tracha said. His voice sounded like an empty dump truck on a gravel road.

  “Fair enough. The biggest threat to the animals comes from two theaters. First, the hunters from Europe and the Middle East go after rare breeds. Second, the Asian thirst for animal parts: rhino horns, gorilla brains, sexual organs of male tigers, and hearts of lion, anything thought to be blessed with extraordinary sexual potency or curative powers. The market is served by the safari farms, like Billa Billie Safaris. For enough money, say seventy, a hundred thousand dollars per person in a party, you can hunt with hounds for any species you name, from pandas to convicted prisoners‌—‌or you can buy aphrodisiacs. Those markets are so diverse they would be tough to investigate without an insider. In this region, one man dominates both, and I know him: Tank Olloobwa. Does that give you a feel for the value of my services?” Ubulom asked.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Boma, DRC

  Maran and his team bumped their way for 60 miles over the heat-baked ruts on N11 over the border from Cabinda to Boma, a two-lane unpaved road. Bomb craters, weeds, and brush hindered the dust-filled passes carved into the hillsides. They intended to reach Boma by late afternoon. It was there they planned to find and interview Tank Oloobwa, manager of Billa Billie Safaris, who Ubulom told them got many of his animals from Slang Vangaler’s Ninjas.

  It was already noon. They were about eighty miles from Boma when they pulled into the town of Tshela.

  Goodwin insisted on lunch.

  “There,” he said. He pointed to a shack with a rusty sign: “Welcome to the Baboon Diner.”

  “This place looks deserted,” Maran observed. “Why don’t we go on into the center of town?”

  “This is worth a shot,” Goodwin pressed.

  Maran pulled up in front of the door. He wore a blue-dyed non-rip tropical five-pocket combat shirt, the same type he had worn in the botched Cabinda operation, with the standard-issue tropical camouflage pattern dyed out of it.

  The sky darkened. A haze cloaked the countryside, clouded the windshield. Maran stopped to wipe it with a dirty red bandana he pulled from a back pocket.

  The restaurant turned out to be a bar with sandwiches. Maran didn’t like to eat at bars, but the jungle wasn’t for the choosy. He climbed on a stool and clamped down on the stogie in his mouth, toying with the Zippo embossed with the crossed upright bayonets which were framed in eagle wings. He didn’t light up.

  Goodwin ordered a White Elephant: coconut, rum and milk. The others ordered Ngoc, the national beer. Everyone except Maran. He ordered the usual.

  “If you don’t mind. I’d like just a Coke mixed with cold coffee and cream,” he smiled. The music from the 1950s jukebox was “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding. The song gave Maran a brief flurry of memories. Lost loves, missed opportunities. Sometimes he wondered.

  Goodwin stood off to the side of the bar. Tracha sat beside Maran. He noticed a man at the other end of the bar watching him. The man was young, heavy-set, solid with big arms and at least two inches taller than Maran and a lot wider in the chest and shoulders. He wore faded jeans, a light woolen sweater, American mustard yellow cashmere. High-impact sunglasses covered his face. He looked over Maran’s shoulder, nodded and looked back directly at him. As Maran turned and started to get up off the stool to speak to him, another man walked over to stand in front of him. The man stood eye-to-eye with him. Shoulders bulged, stretched the fabric of his silk tank-top jersey, stenciled with the slogan: “Pit-bull Gym‌—‌Bad to the Bone.” In contrast to his friend, he was the ugliest man Maran had ever seen. His nose was broken and twisted like a pig’s tail. A bright knife scar ran across his face.

  The man at the other side of the bar suddenly shouted, “Hey!”

  Maran turned back to him.

  The stranger standing in front of him lunged. In his hand, he held a knife, its blade blackened, edge glinting, stropped to razor fineness.

  “Look out, Mack,” shouted Tracha. Maran swiveled, diving to the floor where he lashed one leg out to sweep the assailant’s legs out from under him.

  The strange
r fell to the floor with a crash, bounced back to his feet over Maran, swinging the knife with both hands down towards Maran’s chest. His eyes widened as he saw the knife plunging down at him. A shot deafened him as Tracha fired, hitting the assassin in the forehead and shouting over the reverberating blast.

  Behind him, the bearded man with the sunglasses took three quick steps and was about to crown Tracha with a full beer bottle. Maran’s right hand shot down to his boot and came up with a cord-handled throwing knife that he flipped with a sharp, backhand snap. The knife hit the assailant in the throat.

  Maran and Tracha barreled out the door, shouting for Goodwin to join them, the bartender shrinking behind the bar.

  BOMA, A CITY OF 200,000, is located in the jungle halfway between Matadi and Presqu’ile de Banana. Exhausted, they checked into the Boma Auberge Tonton, the closest thing to a hotel they could find in the city. It was already 5 P.M. Maran’s face drooped with fatigue, but he knew he had to stay sharp. He was a moving target. The room began to spin. He gripped the bedpost, concentrated on the window, focused on the trees outside the room. He gulped deep breaths, tightened his stomach muscles and eased the air back out of his expanded lungs with deliberation. His hands clutched the wooden post. He squeezed until the pain was near unbearable, lessons from the hospital. It worked.

  The episode cleared his head. No matter how hard he tried to dispel the paranoia, it was always there. Real. He could justify it, feel it, touch it.

  Cabinda! Was it my fault?

  The question haunted him, yet again, betrayed by one of his own? There was no other option. Someone on his team, a trusted friend, had set him up.

  They knew we were coming. They‌—‌and Washington.

  IT TOOK MARAN ALL the next day to reach Tank Oloobwa, a former poacher-fighting park ranger from the Kissama Game Reserve, at the number he got from Sola Ubulom. He introduced himself. Oloobwa did the rest, then Maran called Tracha, told him to go into town to find a computer café where they could pick up e-mail from Sergei.

  Downstairs, the hotel bar perched on a platform over a series of waterfalls on the Congo River. Maran watched a bunch of children jumping around, splashing each other, up to their waists in the muck. Hot and sweaty as he was, Maran’s better judgment prevailed. He decided against a swim in the polluted and infested water. He ordered an iced coffee and fresh mango juice combination and waited for Goodwin.

  Minutes later, Goodwin approached.

  “You look pretty fresh.”

  “Cold shower. How’re you doing?”

  “Sent Kurt out for some stuff. Why don’t you relax, enjoy the delights of beautiful downtown Boma. I’m going over the bridge to meet with Oloobwa after dinner at the Billa Billie office in Tshimpi Belvedere Village just outside Matadi. Here’s a phone number if you need me.”

  “When will Kurt be back?”

  “Couple hours. You’re on your own to entertain yourself,” Maran said.

  OLOOBWA’S OFFICE IN BOMA looked more like a taxidermist’s showroom. Heads and feet of Africa’s Big Five adorned the walls in various poses. A 20-foot python skin hung from the rafters. Maran arrived in the Humvee an hour early. He surprised Oloobwa, who sat at his desk, a slab of unfinished mahogany. It was arranged kitty-corner, to the left of the entrance.

  “Sorry to disturb your dinner, Mr. Oloobwa,” he started.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Jackson. Any friend of Sola Ubulom’s,” Oloobwa answered. He was a short, wiry man with a Van Dyke beard. He wore a colorful orange and red Kente robe over loose, chalk-white cotton trousers.

  Maran told him about the bar in Tshela.

  “We are conscious of security, Mr. Maran. Let’s check the most recent phone calls.”

  They didn’t have to listen long to determine whether any of the calls contained a threat. The one that did was to one of the hunters, a Belgian.

  “Luc, this is Slang. I have work.”

  “Luc Ducasse,” Oloobwa told Maran. He paused the recorder. “He just came in from the field. I don’t know about a ‘Slang.’”

  The message to Luc informed him that Maran was due to arrive for a meeting at eight. It also contained the lie that Maran was a murderer and that the “firm” wanted to make sure he didn’t leave Oloobwa’s compound alive.

  “Use any means. Close him out,” General Slang Vangaler’s message told the hunter.

  “What does he mean, ‘the firm’?” Maran asked.

  “Strategic Solutions International, SSI. They run all the action here. For now,” he added.

  Oloobwa stepped to a large wooden cabinet at the far end of the office. Inside, a bank of twelve video monitors blinked on when he flipped a switch on the console at the base inside the cabinet. On one of the monitors Maran could see two men stretched out beneath the engine of his vehicle. Oloobwa ran back to his desk, picked up the direct line to his secretary.

  “Get security down here. Now!”

  Before he put the phone back in its hook, Maran was out the door. As he charged ahead, his mind ran through the main question.

  Who are they? Who do they work for? How did they know?

  The two men heard him coming. They leaped to their feet, looked at one another, turned to Maran. They were huge, both had shaved heads on necks that looked like pyramids sloping up out of shoulders like big picnic hams. One produced a knife. Maran’s kick sent the blade spinning through the air. The other assassin turned, ran into the forest.

  Maran’s remaining antagonist managed a professional kick to his stomach. Maran gripped the man’s ankle, gave it a violent upward twist, sending the man to the ground on his back. Maran’s pent up fury flooded his brain; suddenly he was an animal himself, stomping on the downed man’s midriff. With both hands, predatory claws now, he tore the leg up and out, ripping the groin ligaments from the bone. He dragged the twisted body up, bent the man over the Humvee.

  “Who sent you? Who do you work for?”

  The man grimaced, tried to speak. Maran dropped him. He wasn’t going anywhere. He rushed back to Oloobwa’s office and confronted him. “If this SSI runs the goons in this neighborhood, he’s getting them from you.”

  Oloobwa argued that he had no control over SSI’s criminally insane soldiers that ran every illegal operation in the region. Maran realized that as a supplier of protected species, Billa Billie Safaris was far from legal.

  HOURS LATER, MARAN ARRIVED back at their room at the Boma Auberge Tonton. When he saw Tracha, he knew something was wrong.

  “Goodwin’s room is empty. He’s gone,” Tracha said. “He must have left last night. We just got a call from the regional police. They want to talk to you. Oloobwa’s dead.”

  Goodwin? Oloobwa! Betrayed. Again!

  Things were moving fast. The enemy was panicking. The thrill of the hunt revved Maran’s heart rate. He and Tracha were getting closer, flushing them into the open.

  The next morning they traced Goodwin to the Hotel Interlochen Phenix, a ratty place overlooking the Congo River in Kinshasa. With Sergei’s electronic surveillance help, they had cross-referenced Goodwin’s name with hotel registrations and car rentals in the entire region for the previous twenty-four hours.

  Goodwin had arrived in a rented Town Car and checked in earlier.

  THEY NEVER INTENDED TO kill him.

  When Maran and Tracha showed up in his room, Goodwin didn’t stop to consider. He came at Kurt Tracha with serrated-edge field knife and was rewarded with a high kick to the throat.

  He fell, choking. Maran dropped, his knees on his chest.

  Goodwin couldn’t breathe. Tracha fell down beside Goodwin and stretched his arms out to the sides. He pumped Goodwin’s arms up and down while Maran, on Goodwin’s chest, moved up and down in the hope that they could revive him. He gasped as blood bubbled through his lips seeping into his lungs from his smashed trachea.

  “Breathe, Al Ray. Breathe,” Maran ordered. “We’re going to pull you through.”

  Goodwin gasped again, his eyes opened, bulgin
g.

  “Who put you up to this? Who are you working with?” Tracha demanded, pumping Goodwin’s arms more forcefully.

  They couldn’t save him. Just before he died, Goodwin uttered one word, “Pajak.”

  Tracha downloaded all the files from Goodwin’s laptop onto a CD, and they left the place the way they had found it. They didn’t want to stir up any more mud than necessary. Goodwin’s body was bound to do enough of that.

  Blackness blanketed the area outside the building. Inside, they worked with an infrared light Tracha had packed. It didn’t take them long to find the local Internet Service Provider’s address, but they were shocked to discover it was in Boma. A half-hour later, they were outside the ISP’s building. It was empty. Tracha picked the locks. They took seats in front of the master computer and downloaded the core router master codes.

  “Crank it in,” Tracha said. “Spell it out in rotation.”

  Maran wheeled through the letters in Boyko’s name. The site came up. Once they were in, the computer allowed them instant access to SSI’s e-mail system.

  Boyko’s personal box held two hundred messages in the “read” queue, only ten unread. The information about the diamond smuggling operation from Kinshasa to Cabinda to Antwerp was all there. They scrolled quickly through.

  “Hey! Too fast. Go up three or four messages. Did that say ‘ship’ in the subject line?”

  Sure enough.

  They opened the message and discovered a dozen more within the same family of subjects:

  SHIP ARRIVES CABINDA.

  SHIP LEAVES NAMIBIA.

  SHIP ARRIVES NAMIBIA.

  SHIP LEAVES BOSTON.

  The clincher jumped out and grabbed them.

  SEVASTAPOL BOARDED.

  In the next twenty minutes, they learned that the ship had ported in the Azores, picked up three U.S. M-60 Main Battle Tanks, diverted as U.S. surplus from the Egyptian army, a half-dozen M-113 armored personnel carriers and a dozen U.S. Marine Corps Humvees equipped with 14.5 mm heavy machine guns.

  The Sevastapol! Is that Boyko’s transport ship?