The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  “It wasn’t me,” Bradford said.

  Munroe raised her head, and Bradford continued, “I can count. There aren’t many people to pin the blame on, and I’m the one you hate the most and trust the least—that makes me the prime candidate, but it wasn’t me, Michael.”

  “Concerned I’m going to leave you here?”

  “I should be, but I’m not.” He was calm, his voice low, and his head was still tilted up. “I’m concerned that by focusing on me you’ll be misdirected. Figuring out where this is coming from has become a matter of self-preservation for me as well.” He paused and then looked out into the darkness. “I know how you feel about Francisco. I hope you haven’t let it cloud your judgment.”

  Munroe returned her head to her knees, and an exhausted smile played across her face. Respect for Bradford had just moved up a notch. “I don’t hate you, Miles,” she said, “and I trust you more than you think I do.” And then she was aware of Francisco’s presence. He moved like a cat through the bush, stealthy and quiet in their direction. In the dim light of the smoldering ground fire, she saw the cords along Bradford’s neck tighten and knew that anger seethed beneath the surface. She knew that he, too, was aware of Beyard’s presence. And then Beyard stepped into the light carrying with him a pair of forest rats. He sat at the edge of the tarp, back turned while he skinned and gutted. Munroe watched the flick of his wrist and the knife as it splayed meat and bone, understood the sting of betrayal and knew that, barring intervention, tonight someone would die.

  She stood and opened the back door of the vehicle, reached under the seat and released two of the PB6P9s housed there. The suppressors were already in place, and Munroe snapped in magazines, her ears strained to create a visual picture of what went on behind her back, quiet out of habit, not concern. The two outside were consumed with distrust of each other and in their wariness would be oblivious to her actions until it was too late. And then she turned and leveled a gun at each man. Bradford looked up, lips tight and eyes hard. Beyard sighed, said, “Not this shit again,” and continued working the knife.

  Munroe said, “Scoot the knife this direction, if you please.” Beyard did as she said, and she tossed a roll of duct tape at each of them. She nodded at Bradford. “His feet.” And then to Beyard, “The same to you.” When their feet had been secured, she had Beyard fasten Bradford’s wrists, and then, with the weapon pressed to his spine, she used her free hand to tape his in place. When both men were secure, she had them shift so that their backs were to the vehicle, Bradford at one wheel, Beyard at the other.

  The forest rats that Beyard had skinned lay on a rock next to the fire. Munroe placed them on sticks above the coals, then picked up Beyard’s knife off the ground and felt the balance and weight of it in her palm. When the blade began to call out, screaming to be used, she shoved it into the ground at the feet of the men.

  She sat cross-legged in front of them and nodded to Beyard. “So? Go ahead and say it.”

  He was silent for a moment and then turned to Bradford. “And to think I actually liked you. You’re a motherfucking double-crossing traitor. You fucking sold us out—” Beyard’s voice cut off, and he made a lunge for Bradford.

  Munroe kicked his feet. “Hey!” She aimed the gun at his chest. “Cut it out.”

  Beyard stopped and struggled back to a sitting position.

  “Miles, what about you?” she asked.

  “It could only have been one of the three of us,” he said, “and it wasn’t me.”

  “Fucking hell it wasn’t,” Beyard said.

  Munroe stood, picked up the knife, and walked to the fire. Pieces of the puzzle were coming together, and events that previously had no meaning had been given context. Behind her the men’s voices got louder. They talked over each other, accusations flying, their verbal sparring a cacophonous backdrop to her reflections. She stabbed at the smoking meat. Why give a shit over being tracked and killed by the country’s armed forces when the job would be taken care of tonight by two alpha males waiting to carve out each other’s hearts? The racket from behind her reached a dangerous volume, and she turned and let off a round between the men, the bullet spitting up dirt. “Shut the fuck up,” she said. “Both of you.”

  The two men were inclined toward each other. Beyard had a trickle of blood flowing down the side of his face where Bradford had managed to get in a head butt. They both stared at her now, mouths open but silent.

  “You’re going to have to call a truce,” she said. “Because I refuse to wake up tomorrow with one or both of you dead, and if it means that I have to complete this journey with the two of you trussed up like goddamn guinea fowl, I swear to God I’ll do it. Look at you.” She pointed with the guns. “Think for a minute, damn it. You’re both about to kill each other for the same fucking reason.” She stopped and took a breath. “For all you know, it could be me.”

  “It’s not you,” Beyard said.

  “Yeah. I know that. Thanks for the fucking vote of confidence. But the fact is, it’s probably not one of you either.”

  “If not one of us, who?”

  “Richard Burbank does come to mind.”

  Bradford said, “You told him it would be at least a week, and you certainly didn’t give him details about the scanners or camo or anything else.”

  “Logan has those details,” she said, and as the words left her mouth, her stomach churned, waves of exhaustion swept in, and she wanted to vomit. Logan was safety, he was sanity, a surrogate brother, the only home she had left. If he was the one selling her out, then it was game over. It wasn’t a matter of outsmarting him or exacting revenge, which wouldn’t be that goddamn difficult—if it was Logan, what was the fucking point?

  Munroe looked at Beyard. “Did the radio say anything about the make of vehicles we were driving or how many? Any information at all that the three of us and only the three of us would know?”

  He shook his head.

  “Think about the possibilities in that.” She sighed and sat down. “Look, we already know that Richard Burbank has his hands filthy in this. The information could be coming from Logan—for all we know, Burbank’s got his phones tapped. So the two of you just fucking chill and let’s work through this thing, okay?” She paused. “If I cut you loose, do I have your word that you’ll play nice?”

  The nods of agreement were lackluster and noncommittal, but there nonetheless. She reached for the knife, stood, went to the fire, turned the meat over the coals, and then walked to the vehicle and cut their hands free. She backed away with a weapon toward each of them and said, “Don’t fucking move. You can sit there comfortably while we talk about what the hell is going on and decipher what information we have to work with. After that you can undo your legs.”

  Beyard rubbed his wrists and stared into the night. “If the information leak isn’t coming from one of us,” he said, “at this point it doesn’t much matter where it’s coming from.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Munroe said. She sat and placed the weapons on the ground, pressed her fingers to her temples. Survival mattered. And with the three of them now incommunicado, the leak, wherever and whoever it was, could go fuck itself.

  Her mind, exhausted as it was, shifted into analysis mode. Survival would depend on who in the country was acting on the information, what resources that person had at his disposal, and how long he could keep up the hunt.

  With the farce of a coup having been used to flush them out, there were really only two possibilities: Either this thing went all the way up to the president or to someone close to the president—and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who was pushing the president’s buttons.

  Munroe stood and to Beyard said, “Have you worked a theory yet?”

  “Partially.”

  “Good.”

  She walked to the vehicle, trained a weapon at Beyard, who was closer, and said, “Don’t move.” And then with her free hand she reached into the back, pulled out the laptop and the drive that held the foota
ge of Emily, loaded the drive, and brought the computer to Beyard. “We have to look in two directions; there are two sets of motives. There’s Richard Burbank, and there’s here. I’ve got Burbank’s angle. I want you to watch this,” she said. “I need you to analyze this from the Mongomo perspective.”

  The footage ran for nearly forty-five minutes, and when it was finished, Beyard returned to the spots where Emily spoke of being captured and of her treatment by the man she now called her husband. Beyard replayed the segment several times, then shut the laptop and handed it back. “If she’s to be believed, Nchama’s been trying to protect her.”

  “You’re kidding,” Bradford said. “The guy lies to her, beats her, locks her up, spies on her, and for all we know rapes her, and you’re saying he’s trying to protect her?”

  Munroe closed her eyes and held out a finger to Bradford. “He may have been telling the truth, Miles, and for the rest, it’s acceptable to the culture.” She paused. “Please, if you don’t mind, just stay quiet for a few minutes.” And then to Beyard, “Go on.”

  “Nchama told her that her life was in danger, and all events that we’ve seen so far indicate that he believed this himself. I would venture that his trying to protect her is why you were dumped into the ocean—he believed you were a threat.”

  “Why would he think that?” Bradford asked.

  Munroe held her hand to him as if to say, Be quiet, but Beyard answered anyway. “It’s a logical assumption,” he said. “Whether Nchama was deliberately informed of your arrival and then misinformed of your motives—and I suspect that Richard Burbank would be the one to have done it—or whether your presence and questions triggered his fear, either way you are there, asking questions about Emily. The result is the same. The threat from which he initially tried to protect her has returned, and it forces his hand.”

  “That would explain Malabo and Bata,” Munroe said. “But the alleged coup? That’s far more serious. Are we ruling out the president in this?”

  Beyard shrugged. “Untangle the web, Essa. What do we know? Where is the foundation? What holds everything together? Where do the connectors lead?” He paused. “Return to Occam’s razor. With as few assumptions as possible, what takes all circumstances into account and explains what we see? With what little we hold certain, does anything point to the president?”

  Munroe stared at the ground. Her mind ran in circles. Events. Threads. She pushed out. Stretched. Returned. Where Emily had once been the common strand, there stood Richard Burbank. “No,” she said. “At this juncture nothing points to the president.”

  Beyard nodded. “Then we return to Nchama, and we assume that the hunt for us will continue until we are either dead or gone from this place.”

  Munroe looked toward Beyard. “Based on the footage, based on events, Nchama cares about Emily, sure,” she said. “He’s trying to protect her, sure. But does he care so much that he’s willing to put his own life on the line should the president realize there is no coup?”

  They were all silent.

  “For what does a man risk his own life?” Beyard asked.

  Munroe said nothing. She stared again at the ground, tracing her fingers through the soil, taking them along the virtual paths that her mind traveled. Forward. Back. There again. Occam’s razor. Simplicity.

  She turned to Beyard. “A man risks his life to save it from the greater fear.”

  Richard Burbank.

  They were quiet again, and the moments ticked by. Finally Bradford said, “This whole time, all your theorizing, it’s all based on the supposition that Richard wants Emily to remain unfound or, worse, dead. After what Emily said, I’m not going to argue it, but seriously, why would he go through all the trouble and expense of hiring you to track her down when if he’d just let it rest none of this would have happened in the first place?”

  “Because you pushed him into hiring me,” Munroe said. “He was appeasing you, keeping up the act of grieving father. For some reason he believes it’s important that you buy into his story. Maybe you know something he’s afraid of. Maybe he knows how close you were with Elizabeth, is worried that she told you something, I really don’t know.”

  Munroe pressed her palms to her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, backtrack,” she said. “We know now that from the beginning Richard Burbank knew that Emily was alive and, more important, where to find her. I’m not the first person he’s hired to track her down, and I’d venture to say he’s spent a hell of a lot more money during the first four years than he did to hire me. The difference is that success in locating her created an unexpected complication. Once we started getting close, Burbank had to act—that’s why he closed down the project, why he didn’t want you coming back to Africa. You’d seen the death certificate, didn’t know that Emily was alive, and he could work with that, but by getting in touch with me, by insisting on returning, you effectively signed your own death warrant at Burbank’s hand.”

  “But still, why? Why does he need Emily to be missing?” Bradford hesitated. “Or dead?”

  “It’s money, Miles, it has to be. Haven’t you ever wondered why Richard waited until Emily was almost eighteen before legally adopting her? He was her stepfather for … what? Around ten years? If he really cared, if it was to mean something, why not adopt her when she was young? You’re a smart man, Miles. Surely you must have considered this.

  “You said Richard wanted Elizabeth to change her will, and that indicates that there was either a prenup or some other legal mechanism that prevented him from inheriting. Maybe Richard had hoped that Elizabeth would change her mind over time, and she didn’t. By adopting Emily when he did, Richard gave himself options—inheritance rights through Emily. He probably thought that if it ever came down to it, he could manipulate Emily in a way that he couldn’t manipulate her mother.

  “This is a man who at the very least abandoned his stepdaughter in the middle of Africa and has thwarted efforts to find her, and I wouldn’t be the tiniest bit surprised to find out that Elizabeth’s death wasn’t a suicide. It was very convenient for him, I think, to have Emily tucked away here in the land that time forgot, everyone believing she was dead, though she is still very much legally alive and able to inherit. Once Emily died, which was probably in the plan, the fortune would transfer to him.”

  Bradford shook his head. “You can’t possibly believe that Richard planned all this, got Emily into Equatorial Guinea and had her kidnapped?”

  “Burbank is an opportunist, Miles. I think he hoped something would happen to Emily while she was in Africa, even gave her a little shove in the right direction by suggesting Equatorial Guinea. And then when something did go wrong, he pounced on it and made it work for him. If none of this had happened, if Emily had gotten home safely, I have no doubt that some other tragedy would have occurred—Elizabeth first, then Emily.”

  “Have you ever been wrong?”

  Munroe was quiet for a moment and then said, “Yeah. I’ve been wrong.” Another pause. “But not with this. Burbank is patient, he’s waiting it out; in another three years he can make Emily’s a legal death and take it all, so long as she never shows up to challenge the claim.” Munroe stopped, tilted her head up, and took in a steep drink of air. She whispered, “Only now there’s a glitch in the plan. You and I know where she is.” Munroe held eye contact with Beyard. “Until now Emily has been safe, but unless we disappear and the information we have disappears with us …

  “Fuck,” Munroe said, and then, with the implication permeating the air, she stood, turned her back on the two men, and stared out into the night.

  “So what do we do?” Beyard asked. “Go back and get her?”

  In answer to that impossibility, Munroe said nothing, and Beyard continued. “You thought you were doing the right thing by leaving her. You were trying to protect her, couldn’t have known all this at the time. Neither did I.”

  “It makes no difference to her what my motives were,” Munroe said. “Dead is dead.”
<
br />   The silence was broken by Bradford. His eyes were closed, and he knocked the back of his head against the vehicle. “I. Am. So. Fucking. Stupid,” he said. A head bang for every word. Munroe locked eyes with Beyard, and then they both turned to Bradford.

  “I don’t pretend that it makes sense,” Bradford said. “I don’t understand why Richard would need or care about the money, but Emily has a trust. When Elizabeth died, everything Emily inherited went into the trust until she could be located. There’s a board that manages it, and they’ve been writing the checks for the searches. It’s the trust that’s paying you, not Richard.” He turned to Munroe, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have suspected tears. “I signed an affidavit,” he said. “Richard said he’d back the project again if I’d sign an affidavit stating everything I knew, including the details of Emily’s death certificate. I was so fucking blinded by wanting to find Emily that all I could think about was keeping on the job. I never suspected ulterior motives.” Bradford looked at his watch. “The board is meeting in five days, and he’s taking the affidavit to them.”

  “What does that mean?” Beyard asked.

  Munroe said, “He’s going to try to sell the board on the affidavit in lieu of the actual death certificate to get them to turn over her trust.” To Bradford she said, “What do you think the chances are that the board accepts it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, I just don’t know. Based on their past decisions and what they’ve authorized in order to find her, I tend to doubt it.”

  Munroe sighed. “If they don’t, then either we permanently disappear or Burbank is going to need physical evidence of Emily’s death.” She sat, wrapped her arms around her legs, and placed her chin on her knees. “Or,” she said, “we can cut Burbank off at his feet and get proof of Emily’s being alive in front of the board.”