The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  Halfway across the floor, she bumped into one of the enemy, startling him more than she startled herself. He yelped, swung wildly, but before he could fire his weapon, she’d plunged the knife into his throat, cursing inwardly at the speed, at the instinct, at one more death she would never be able to wash clean. She dropped his body softly, setting his arms and legs spread-eagled.

  Passing the keel of one of the cigarette boats, she picked up a whisper from Beyard, perfectly spoken to blend with the chamber’s echo of ghostly wails. She belly-crawled in his direction.

  “There were five,” he whispered.

  “We need starlight,” she said. “Can you get the top open?”

  “Take me three minutes.”

  She moved from under the boat to the front of the hold, and there she waited until the first ambient rays of the cloud-covered moon began to seep in. Shrill and harsh, she yelled, “See your dead! I have taken him! Leave now and live!”

  The response was a rapid report of assault weapons, which came in sporadic bursts, punctuated by yells and curses, all filling the cavernous hold with an ear-shattering din. And then from the rim of the opening gap came the repeated hiss of the sniper. The hold fell silent.

  At last the commander’s voice reached out from the darkness. “Even I have heard the legends,” he said. “We will leave.”

  Munroe followed the sound of his voice and, silent through the shadows, came behind him, put the knife to his throat, and removed his weapons. The commander’s call to his men was followed by the sound of their rifles falling, and from within the hold two stepped into the center.

  All lights off, Beyard turned the trawler northwest, putting a slow distance from the enemy ship, and then the commander and the four men who remained were left to swim while the dead were dumped overboard. With so much blood, chance dictated that sharks would finish the fight. The briefcase—now emptied—in which the lure of payment had been delivered was also dumped, and the crew swept the ship for tracking devices and explosives. As a precaution they would rotate the guard until dawn.

  IT WAS FOUR in the morning when Munroe knocked on Beyard’s door. He called out an answer, and when she opened the door, he stood by the bed, a thick towel around his waist, his hair and body still wet. She froze silent for a moment and, realizing that she stared, blushed. His physique had improved with age—either that or she had never appreciated it the way she should have. What was he now—thirty-seven, thirty-eight? “I need to make another call to the United States,” she said.

  “If you give me a minute,” he said, “I’ll go up with you. Augustin is in the wheelhouse, I’ll take over for him until you’re finished.” He patted the bed, an invitation for her to sit, and returned to the bathroom. When he came back, he was dressed, and he sat beside her.

  “It was nice having you with us,” he said.

  She nodded. Smiled.

  “Would you come back if I asked?”

  “Knowing that I’ve built a good life for myself beyond this,” she said, “would you ask it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She ran a palm across his clean-shaven face. “What if I asked you to come with me, to be part of my life?” It was a rhetorical question meant to challenge, not to invite, but he ignored the undertone, took her palm, and kissed it.

  “If I could, I would spend every waking moment of every day as a part of your life,” he said. “But there’s nothing out there for me, Essa. I already know that.”

  He leaned over and kissed her forehead, then stood. She took the hand he offered and followed him to the pilothouse, where she put in a call to Logan.

  LOGAN SOUNDED RELIEVED when she said hello. “I’m glad to hear your voice,” he said. “It means you’re still alive, still safe.”

  “You worry too much,” she said. “I’m in good hands.” She glanced at Beyard, whose back was to her.

  “Do you have the supply list?” he asked.

  “Actually, no. That’s why I’m calling. I might not need it—things may be more straightforward than I’d thought. But don’t go anywhere, I’ll check back in a few days.”

  “Michael, before you go—I got a call from Miles Bradford last night. I think you need to talk to him.”

  “Say again?”

  Logan drew in a breath. “It will take too long for me to explain it all, and it’s convoluted. I just think you need to call him.”

  “I suppose that means he knows I’m alive?”

  “He knows it now because of me. Before that it was just speculation on his part. Apparently he’s tried to talk to Kate and she won’t give him the time of day.”

  “Fine, give me the number.” She jotted it down as he spoke. “Thanks, Logan, I’ll be in touch.”

  She stared at the paper and then dialed. When Bradford picked up, she said, “It’s Michael. You wanted to talk with me.”

  A second of silence on the other end, and then Bradford’s voice: “Are you okay?”

  “I am now.” And then, “This call is costing me five bucks a minute. Make it fast, make it good, and make it worth my time. What the hell is going on, and what’s this bullshit about my body washing up on shore?”

  “Until I spoke with Logan last night,” he said, “I had only believed you were alive, wasn’t sure, couldn’t know. It’s a relief to have it confirmed, to hear your voice.” His tone was full of genuine sincerity. “I’ve been trying to get in contact with Kate Breeden,” he said. “She won’t take my calls.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Listen, Michael, there are several things I think you should know. First, it was the U.S. embassy that informed me you had drowned and washed up on shore. Second, the local officials never produced a body, and when I got too demanding about it, I was informed that my stay in the country was over and I was put under guard until the next flight out. I’d had reservations about your disappearance from the beginning: I knew I’d been drugged and thought it was you who did it. When I went to your room to confront you, there were signs of foul play. I searched the hotel and the area around it and nearly had my skull cracked by a police officer when I got into a fight with some of the hotel staff, who wouldn’t or couldn’t give me straightforward answers about whether or not you’d left.

  “I’ve had more than one conversation with Richard about the situation, laid out the scenario of Emily’s being in Equatorial Guinea as you’d given it to me. He has latched onto the issue of the death certificate and refuses to acknowledge the strangeness of it. Says he’s tired and that this is closure for him.”

  Munroe was quiet and then said, “I have an eyewitness who’s placed Emily alive on the Equatorial Guinean mainland within the past three years.”

  Silence.

  “You there?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” His voice was tight, strained. “I’m just thinking about what you said, the possibility of what it means. What are you planning to do?”

  “I spoke with Kate several days ago. She told me Burbank pulled the plug on the assignment. My contract gives me a year to locate Emily, and if he rescinds, I’m guaranteed a shitload of money, which I will happily take. But I’m not leaving. Someone tried to kill me, Miles, and you know as well as I do that it’s because of my search for Emily. I have no idea why it was me and not you or both of us, but I will find out. I’m going to Bata with or without Burbank’s blessing, and I’ll keep going until I find her or find my killer, whichever comes first.”

  “I want to go with you,” he said.

  Munroe laughed. It was a harsh laugh, sarcastic and unfeeling. “You weren’t much help to me the first time around. I can’t think of any reason I’d need you the second time.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” His voice was hard. “Emily is like a niece to me. I took Richard’s assignment for her, not for him. You don’t give a damn about her. You took this assignment for the money, and now it’s about revenge. I want in because I care about her.”

  “Forget it, Miles,” she said. “I don
’t need a liability on my hands, and I have all the help I need.” She hung up without giving him a chance to respond.

  She pulled a sheet of paper out of the fax machine and drew a diagram, an outline of tenuous facts surrounded by big, fucking, glaring holes. And in the middle, attached to nothing, she added another: By morning the U.S. embassy was already aware of her death. Chances were they’d been notified before she’d even been taken onto the boat. She sat in front of the paper staring, willing the answer into focus.

  Nothing. She needed more pieces.

  It was Beyard’s hands on her shoulders that returned her to the present. “We can take it to my cabin,” he said, “go over the details there.” She nodded and folded the diagram, and he picked up a two-way radio, calling Augustin back to the pilothouse. In another hour the sun would begin to rise.

  “THE EMBASSY HAD already been informed of my death by morning,” Munroe said.

  She lay on Beyard’s bed, her hands behind her head, studying patterns on the ceiling. He was next to her, lying on his side, quietly watching her. “It would be useful to know who informed them, what branch of government, who in that branch,” she said. “I need to get the embassy’s phone number. I’m sure it’s on a consular sheet somewhere on the Internet.”

  He traced her profile. “We’ll get it,” he said, “But first you need to sleep.” She began to sit up in protest and he put a finger to her lips. “You know as well as I do that clarity and focus will come with sleep and food. We have time. We won’t be in Kribi until sometime in the afternoon tomorrow.”

  She lay back down and in that moment of acquiescence understood that Beyard was dangerous.

  He continued to run his finger along her body, tracing it down her throat and over her chest. His gaze followed his hand, and so he avoided her eyes. “On one of those calls,” he said, “you used the name Michael. It’s the same name the deckhand from the Santo Domingo gave me.”

  His hand rested on her stomach, and she took it and brought it to her lips. “It’s a moniker I’ve taken for the work that I do.”

  “You’ve never told me what it is that you do.”

  “It’s a topic for another time,” she said. She turned to look at him and then rolled over and straddled his pelvis, pinning his hands with hers. She leaned over him and touched his lips with hers. He breathed a sigh and then without warning jerked his hands free, grabbed her by the waist, and put her back down on the bed. “Don’t toy with me, Essa,” he said.

  He was strong. Powerful.

  “Why do you assume I’m toying?” she asked. “I want your body as badly as you want mine.”

  He smiled. His eyes were sad; his mouth was cruel. “You couldn’t possibly.”

  He stroked her hair, still avoiding her eyes. “When you were here with me, I resisted what I wanted most, and when you were gone, I spent years trying to forget what it was that I wanted.” He brushed his hand lightly over her neck and down her chest. “And here you are again. In front of me, beside me, mine for the taking. I’m not sure whether I love you or whether I hate you and want to destroy you.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  She knelt on the bed and removed her shirt, took his hands and brought them to her breasts, and then bent and kissed him, touching her mouth lightly against his, teasing him with her tongue. He searched out her eyes. “This is a game of control for you,” he whispered.

  She grazed down his neck, and his breathing quickened.

  “If it is,” she said, “what does the strategist in you tell you that it means?”

  He stared at her for a second and then wrapped his arms around her, brought her to him, and filled his mouth with her, and when he did, a heat gripped her throat and shot through her body.

  It was one thing to allow a man access to her body, another thing entirely to allow a man access to her soul.

  chapter 14

  2.00° N latitude, 9.55° E longitude

  West coast of Equatorial Guinea

  The sea was an endless sheet of steel gray reflected off the cloud-covered sky and the trawler a small black blemish on the horizon. It was nearing sunset, that period of day when the sky would change into brilliant hues and the ocean would undulate with color. Munroe leaned into the wind and the ocean spray, closed her eyes, and allowed her thoughts to flow in random patterns, willing synapses to connect and make sense of patchwork pieces of information that continued to bring more questions than answers—and found nothing.

  The cigarette boat cut across the water with considerable speed, closing the distance on the city of Bata, which was now at some invisible point over the horizon. Three hours earlier the trawler had weighed anchor off the southern coast of Cameroon, and, with the exception of George Wheal, who had agreed to remain with the ship until Beyard returned, the crew had dispersed to the mainland. In the pilothouse Munroe, Beyard, and Wheal had sat poring over hand-drawn maps that Beyard had assembled throughout the years and debated over supplies and transportation for the few possible routes through Bata and into Mongomo.

  The project was Beyard’s now. Munroe had never officially given it to him; he’d taken it, dissected it, and then meticulously planned it, a master strategist setting out pieces to one more living chess game. It was a throwback to another life, another world, and as it was then, there would be no discussion now about doing the job her way. Beyard was no lackey; conceding command was the price she would pay for his participation.

  And then Bata was there, its red-and-white visage faintly visible on the horizon. They continued south a few miles past the city, just beyond the reach of the port, to one of Beyard’s properties, where they would exchange the boat for a land vehicle.

  THE WOOD OF the dock was worn smooth and weather-beaten, held fast by solid pier beams driven deep. It ran from the back of a well-manicured property over the sands of the beach, fifty feet out into the water, and tied to it was a small fishing boat, the wood still raw and new. Beyard guided the cig to the opposite side of the pier and with a confident hop moved from the boat with the mooring ropes.

  The house stood on two acres, a single story that seemed to spread out and melt into the lush landscape. From the back door, a woman walked toward them. Her skin was soft brown, her features smooth and perfect, and behind her a small child followed, barely walking and clinging to the shapely dress that skimmed her ankles. Her smile was genuine, and she greeted Beyard with a familiar hug. In all the planning of the afternoon, Beyard had failed to mention a woman or her child, and when she greeted Munroe with the casualness of an equal, Munroe pushed away hostility and forced a mask of pleasantry.

  The woman smiled when Beyard spoke, and the electricity that flashed between them betrayed a history far beyond the platonic. Beyard knelt to the eye level of the child and tickled his rounded tummy, then pulled the youngster to his arms and tossed him in the air. Peals of laughter filled the property, though Munroe heard nothing but the rush of blood pounding in her ears and stood paralyzed with an ersatz smile plastered to her face.

  Beyard put the child down and turned to Munroe. His mouth was moving, and she forced the sound to register. “This is Antonia,” he was saying. “She, her husband, and their three children live here—it’s their house and their land unless I happen to be in town.” He nodded beyond the house. “There’s a guesthouse on the far end of the property. That’s where we’ll stay the night.”

  The guesthouse was furnished with necessities and not much else. The building consisted of two rooms: a bedroom with a small bathroom annexed to it and a larger room that functioned as a living room on one end, a kitchen on the other, divided by a four-place table. There was no air-conditioning, but the ceilings were high and a steady breeze tempered the humidity.

  By the time they had showered, darkness had settled, and Antonia, not one of the servants, brought food from the main house. From the bedroom Munroe heard her enter, and from behind the closed door she traced portions of the muted conversation. There were spaced si
lences. Lingering. And then the front door closed, and both Beyard and the woman were gone, and Munroe realized that she’d been holding her breath and felt a stab of self-loathing because of it.

  The emotion she felt was a violation of the cardinal rule of survival; it skewed reason, clouded logic, had to be eradicated. Munroe took a deep breath and exhaled. She needed control, and to regain it required internal shutdown. Another intake of air, and she closed her eyes and then against her better judgment fought it, argued against it, and finally postponed it. Beyard was a rare equal, a man with skill and motive to destroy both her and the assignment. The danger was an intoxicating lure, difficult to abandon.

  It was twenty minutes before Beyard returned. Over dinner they conversed—Munroe knew it with her eyes—Beyard’s moving mouth, a shrug, a flirt, the sound of her own voice traveling through her head and Beyard’s charming smile in response. It continued through the meal, external harmony enshrouding internal turmoil. Shutdown was inevitable. But it could wait.

  They were awake before daybreak, that time of darkness when the jungle came to life with ascending simian and avian orchestras that shut out the predatory calls of the night. The air was damp with a light mist, and when the sun rose, it brought a thickening to the humid heat.

  Beyard’s transportation was a nondescript Peugeot, originally beige or possibly white, now permanently rust-colored. Unlike everything else he owned, whereby aged appearances disguised state-of-the-art equipment, the Peugeot was decrepit. In response to Munroe’s reluctance to use it, Beyard insisted. “It’s better for us this way,” he said. “My other vehicles are known. With this one we are provided a certain sense of anonymity, and in any case we’re not going far—in about five kilometers the roads become paved.”

  “We’re not taking this thing to Mongomo?”

  “No,” he said. “We’ll use the Land Rover for that, possibly one of the Bedford trucks.”