The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  “There are ways around it.”

  Burbank took a deep breath. “Miles, I’m conflicted. If you think there’s hope of finding answers, then of course I want them, but not at the expense of losing another person. If Emily did disappear in Equatorial Guinea, and now Michael …”

  “That’s the other thing,” Bradford said. “I’ll be tracking down Michael first.”

  “Her body?”

  “The woman.”

  “But you said she’s dead.”

  “It’s what I was told, yes.”

  Burbank said nothing, and Bradford continued. “That woman has got insane survival instincts. If she’s alive, and I’m certain she is, she’s going to be pissed off and heading for the mainland. I need to be there.”

  “Assuming she’s alive—which, no offense, after everything you’ve told me, I find difficult to believe—there’s no way to know what she’ll do. You’re wasting your time, my friend,” Burbank said, and then stopped. “That is, unless you know something I don’t and you’re holding out on me.”

  Bradford shook his head. “Research and gut instinct.”

  Burbank stared toward the plate-glass windows. “I don’t know, Miles, it’s a stretch. It’s really a stretch—another futile pursuit, except this time I risk losing a good man for nothing.”

  “With or without you, I’m going back. I’d rather have your support.”

  Burbank’s focus returned to Bradford. “If you’re determined to go, then of course you have my backing, but I’d rather you not. I have the closure I need, so there’s no reason left, certainly no reason for you to put your life at risk.”

  “Come on, Richard, you can’t be serious.”

  “I am serious. I’m emotionally exhausted. I’ve been riding this roller coaster long enough. You want to go, you go—I’ll have my office sort out the details.” Burbank’s face grew vacant, and his gaze returned to the plate-glass windows. “And be honest, we both know there’s a chance you won’t be coming home.”

  Bradford said nothing, and Burbank sighed the deep exhale of defeat.

  “Before you go,” he said, “get what you’ve seen and heard down in writing. The details you’ve uncovered—Michael’s disappearance, the government officials and the death certificate—everything you’ve told me and anything else you remember. Consider it your parting gift should you never return.”

  Bradford nodded, and Burbank picked up the phone and, after a brief conversation with his lawyer, returned it to the cradle. “He’s got time. You can see him on your way out.” And then, after a pause, “So what happens next?”

  “I find Michael.”

  “You’re so sure she’s alive?”

  “Enough to bank on it,” Bradford said.

  “And you can find her?”

  Bradford gave a soft smile. “Yeah. That I can do.”

  chapter 12

  3.10° N latitude, 9.00° E longitude

  West coast of Cameroon

  From within the pilothouse, Francisco Beyard stared out over the trawler’s foredeck, arms crossed, motionless, except for his eyes, which scanned the steel gray of the ocean. He leaned over the console, punched coordinates into the ship’s navigation system, and felt the vibrational shudder of course correction down to the core of his soul.

  Nine years and she’d come back into his life as suddenly as she’d left it.

  Nine fucking years since he’d traced her to the murky water of Douala’s port.

  There had been no warning, no indication. Just there. Or not. No good-byes, no thanks-for-all-the-memories, no fuck-all-of-you-and-your-despicable-existence. Just a vanishing, leaving him in agony while he spent two months of nausea and sleepless nights putting the pieces of the puzzle together; maddening days following a nonexistent trail; coming at last to the dead end of the freighter and the weathered deckhand with his stories of knife fights and linguistic skill and of the boy, Michael, who could only have been Essa.

  He had stood helpless and transfixed, watching the Santo Domingo shrink into the distance, the final tie to her severed. And there, with Valencia, Spain, whispered into the wind, the trail ended with no way to follow it further.

  He had paced the docks, convincing himself that he didn’t care, reminding himself that he’d been doing just fine before she’d entered his life.

  And it was the truth, though so much more the lie.

  Like four generations before him, he was Cameroonian, a white African with no other passport, no other nationality, and no white man’s country to return to when times got rough. This was home, his land, and since he was thirteen he’d had only one goal: to leave it. To amass a fortune with which he could build a good life outside Africa, somewhere in the world, anywhere, where hard work was rewarded and couldn’t be wiped out in a flicker by the favorites and family relations of whatever sham democracy happened to be in power.

  From pre–World War I France, his paternal grandparents and great-grandparents had come and built a life on the continent, all of it come to ruin in the heartbeat it took to raise the ire of the local government. Over. Finished. Generations of hard work obliterated pretty much overnight because his progenitors had picked the wrong continent. They should have chosen the New World, where those willing to tame the wilderness kept what they carved out.

  His mother’s family hadn’t fared better in Equatorial Guinea. They’d come to Bioko Island in the late 1800s and had owned cocoa plantations until, six months after Independence, the bloodshed began. The educated and foreigners of all colors were the first targeted, and his mother’s family fled to Douala, attempting to start over with nothing while they watched their homeland, once one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, deteriorate into a killing field.

  By his late twenties, by anyone’s standards, Beyard was ahead of the game. But the taps of currency had really begun to flow when he found Vanessa Munroe. It had been no accident. Gossip surrounding the unusual girl filtered through Douala’s expatriate community, and he had arranged the meet through the Papadopoulos brothers, using their beach home in Kribi.

  Under the pretext of running an errand, Vanessa’s boyfriend, Andreas Papadopoulos, had left them in the quiet of the garden. Tall, gangly, and, with the exception of striking gray eyes, awkward-looking, she was not what Beyard had expected. In the quiet she studied him and then turned away, resting her forearms on the back of a wooden bench.

  Standing so that his arms rested next to hers, he said, “Rumor has it you speak Fang.”

  She nodded. “And several of the other local languages as well.”

  “I need an interpreter for the evening,” he said. “If you can manage that, there are five hundred francs in it for you.”

  Without facing him she said, “Five hundred francs is a lot of money if you want someone who speaks Fang. Ten thousand CFA would get you the same thing from a waiter at La Balise.”

  He smiled. “True, but you don’t look like you speak Fang. More important, I need someone I can trust.”

  She turned and brought her eyes to his, eyes that threatened to penetrate and read thoughts. “And you can trust me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Can I?”

  The hint of a smile settled at the corners of her mouth. “It’ll cost you five hundred francs to find out.”

  THE RENDEZVOUS WAS on the patio of a building at the edge of town that functioned as a hotel of sorts during the high seasons. The night was alive with the mingled sounds of laughter and the rhythms of soukous playing over a nearby radio. The smell of roasting meats and smoke from wood-burning cooking fires wafted through the air.

  The only requirement Beyard had of her was that she listen to everything said around them. In the foyer while passing to the patio, she pulled him aside and warned of being held at gunpoint should they make the transaction.

  The meeting was filled with veiled threats and bad French that soon turned to shouting. They left the hotel without completing the sale and hadn�
�t yet pulled out of the potholed dirt parking lot before he offered her a full-time job.

  In response she stared at him and then shifted to rest her head on the window. Gazing out the glass, silent, arms crossed, she said, “I know who you are and what you do and what working for you would mean.”

  “Sleep on it,” he replied. “Tomorrow we can talk.”

  The next morning he invited Andreas to breakfast and, in questioning deeper into Vanessa’s missionary background, was surprised to realize that the teenagers’ relationship went far beyond the innocent puppy love the Papadopoulos parents assumed it to be.

  “She’s your age?” Beyard asked.

  Andreas looked up in a shock of silence. “Younger.”

  “Sixteen? Seventeen?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Beyard let out a low whistle. “Her parents? Do they know?”

  “They know. She throws it in their faces. Sometimes I think she’s using me just to get at them—not that I mind, you know.” He smiled, almost bashfully. “She took me to her home this Christmas to meet them, and I swear the freakiest, loudest sex of my life was with her parents six inches from my head on the other side of the wall. Trust me, they know.”

  “So they don’t care?”

  “Oh, sure they care. What are they going to do about it?”

  “Take her home? Send her to live with relatives? Cut off her money?”

  “She refuses to return home, she already lives with friends of the family, and even if they did cut off her money, she’d find a way to get by.” Andreas shrugged. “In the end her father indulges her. Emotional blackmail, I guess.”

  Beyard repeated the job offer over lunch. If she would agree to work for him, he would cover her living expenses, pay for whatever distance-learning education she chose, and give her a percentage of each job he collected on. She didn’t answer, said she’d think about it, told him to come back the next day, and when he did, he learned that she’d left Kribi.

  It took several days to locate her in Douala, and when he did that, she gave no apology and said simply that she would take the job but wanted a larger percentage. When he balked, she shrugged, turned to go, and he yielded.

  He moved her to his beach home, gave her the run of the house, and rarely saw her when work was slow. But when on the job, she stuck by his side, a silent partner with the power of observation and linguistic skills worth many times the percentage he’d conceded.

  It was in the hours after, the pressure off and the money safely away, that they talked and drank into the night. He taught her to play chess, she intrigued him with observations on the cultures they lived among, he introduced her to fine wine and classical music, and she recited local legends and argued theology with him, their conversations often turning philosophical.

  It was almost a year later that he learned she had set him up, that months prior to being introduced, she had researched him—located information he didn’t even know existed—analyzed him, understood what drove him, what made him tick, and then used Andreas, not to get to her parents but to get to him. Knowing that the brothers would talk, she’d planted ideas and stories, framing the context in order to pique his curiosity. She knew he would come looking, and when he did, she baited him with the one ability he lacked and couldn’t resist. In the end she’d gotten exactly what she wanted: emancipation and money.

  He’d laughed; in some perverse way it had pleased him to know that he, the consummate strategist, had been played. But that night he began to see her differently, as an equal. It was then that he realized she was no longer the gangly teenager he had brought into his house. Her body and her face had changed from those of an awkward girl into those of a beautiful woman, and with this realization came the desire to possess her. No, those were the afterthoughts. What he really wanted was to fuck her, and after that he wanted to own her, both body and mind.

  She had fallen asleep on the couch, long legs trailing out from the thin blanket in which she’d wrapped herself, and he’d knelt in front of her and watched her sleep. He was so close he could feel her breath on his cheek—she could have been his—and he’d reached out a hand to touch her and then pulled it back. It was a conscious decision, a strategic decision. It had nothing to do with any notion of goodness or morality; he lived life by his own rules, getting what he wanted as ethically or as ruthlessly as necessary, because it made no difference. He was who he was without pretense or excuse, and his life amalgamated barbarianism and culture. Until now he had never denied one desire for the sake of another. And if he had known then the pain this change of view would bring, he would never have laughed.

  In time, having his base in Kribi began to be a problem. In its own right, his property was secluded and, as was critical, had access to both sea and land. But it wasn’t enough. He needed a location with less scrutiny, and that was what drew him to Equatorial Guinea. Río Muni, the mainland portion of the country, was just south of Cameroon’s border and Bioko Island a short trip, depending on which boats they used. The location was propitious in that it was almost equidistant between Libreville and Douala, and as Equatorial Guinea was dirt poor, with no navy or coast guard to speak of, there was virtually no risk of bumping into authorities while transporting goods from one location to the next. It seemed to be a form of poetic justice that the country responsible for his familial poverty would soon be responsible for his rise to wealth.

  He added extra men to his team and brought in mercenaries for protection. He used work as an escape from the euphoric ache that drove him to distraction when Vanessa was in his presence, grateful that Pieter Willem had her away for so many hours of the day. In spite of her repeated requests that Francisco remove Willem from the team, he never did.

  Beyard’s reputation grew, and so did the rumors surrounding the woman who accompanied him. He didn’t understand the whispers and the extent of the superstition, because she never mentioned them. It was only after she was gone that he realized it was more than his heart that was so deeply entwined with her, that his success was steeped in legends, that the people he dealt with were terrified of the juju she commanded. And suddenly the juju was gone.

  He had stood that day on the docks of the port staring out over the ocean, watching the Santo Domingo until it disappeared over the horizon. And then, hating her, he’d returned to Kribi to start over with what was left. He’d rebuilt, figured it out, just as he always had. And now she was back.

  MUNROE RAN HER hand over the door where the missing handle should have been. Her fingers traced the doorframe and tested the strength of the door itself, noting metal through the woodlike veneer. She placed her ear against it, listening for the sound of Beyard in the hallway, and, hearing nothing, knocked lightly and said, “Francisco, can you open, please?”

  Silence.

  The hinges were on the outside.

  She pulled the residency card from her belt and slid it between the door and the frame at the latch.

  Nothing.

  Her fingers moved to the walls, testing as she went.

  Metal.

  The cabin had a small bunk on each wall, a table that folded out between them, and cupboard space above the beds. There was no porthole and no bathroom.

  This was a cell. A prison.

  A sea of gray washed over her, and she fought it back. She’d expected payback, but not in this way and not so soon.

  Munroe dropped the backpack on a bed and then, after staring at it a moment, emptied the contents. Slowly, in shock, she sat beside them. They were her personal belongings, an assortment from the items she’d left abandoned when departing Cameroon: a hairbrush, a notebook, and a few articles of clothing.

  She picked up the hairbrush and ran her fingers along the bristles, held on to the thick brush head with one hand, the handle with the other, and, gripping tightly, pulled hard. The pieces separated, and a four-inch blade slid out from under the bristles. It was a memento of her time fighting off Pieter Willem, one of many crude weapons she’d const
ructed in an attempt to never be defenseless. She shoved the pieces back together and tossed the brush onto the pile. No matter what Beyard’s intentions, she would never use a blade on him that had been intended for Willem.

  A shudder ran through the ship. The engines had been given life, and they were now moving through the water to an unknown somewhere. In the silence the walls of the room weaved claustrophobically closer, and Munroe turned off the light and lay back on one of the beds. She took in a deep breath and followed it with a second and then a third, working backward into a state of calm and clarity.

  Unless Beyard planned to let her starve, he would return. She had two days before Breeden expected contact. Two days with no watch and no way to gauge the time; waiting was all she could do.

  The movement of the ship and the vibration from the engines remained constant, and it was two hours, three at the most, before she felt the differentiating tremor of footsteps down the hall. She tucked the hairbrush into her pants at the hip and returned to lying on her back with her arms behind her head. She did not get up when the door opened.

  Beyard stood in the doorway, a silhouette against the light in the hall.

  “Don’t tell me this room was reserved for me,” she said.

  “You’re not the first guest, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What do you want, Francisco?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “And until I do, I want to be sure you aren’t going anywhere. In the meantime I’ve kept my promise, I’ve taken you off the island.”

  She watched him, studied his posture, and analyzed his intonation. “Where would I go? We’re on open water.”

  She sat up. His body tensed.

  “I’m not scared of you, Francisco, and I have no reason to run away.”

  “You’ve done it before,” he said, his voice soft, melancholic. “I have no guarantee you won’t take one of the small boats in the night.”

  “True,” she said, and she stood. Unable to see his eyes, shrouded in shadow as they were, she gauged how fast she could move by the minute reactions of his body. “But why would I want to do that when you’ve already said that you would help me? I not only need to get to the mainland, I need your knowledge, your expertise, once I’m there.”