Vultures in the Playground

  ERICC, the Extractive Resource Industry Contingency Center, handled issues peculiar to developing countries—daunting problems that sometimes required extreme solutions. Its members were mainly members of a consortium of small corporations—petroleum, mining and logging concerns lacking the critical mass to handle extraordinary initiatives in-house, unlike the behemoths of industry.

  ERICC dealt with a hodgepodge of messy and shady little things such as how to traffic in humans for labor without being accused of human trafficking; how to skirt environmental protection regs without being noticed and how to remove security concerns such as rebels, demonstrators or politicians without being accused of murder. In short, they took on the sorts of necessary evils that small companies didn’t want to harbor under their corporate umbrellas in full view of shareholders. Some problems could be handled with lawyers, nuance and money. Other situations could only be remedied with brute force.

  Good coffee and pastry in the morning, heavy hors-d’oeuvres in the afternoon. To Gus, they were the only consolations of these consortium workshops. Today’s victims were a gang of Corporate Social Responsibility execs. He was indoctrinating them on some of the more difficult and disturbing aspects of working in developing countries.

  Gus had just given a talk on their local law enforcement training initiatives and was anxious to escape back to his office, but the dang CSR types kept asking him awkward questions, ones he couldn’t answer or ones that made him stammer and look like a fool. At times it felt like he was being prosecuted. Where did they find these people? He was relieved to see the moderator give him a nod and tap his watch.

  “Okay. One last question and I have to go.” He scanned the crowd, homing in on a sharply dressed woman standing near the exit. “Um … you there … the lady in the back.”

  “Yes, I was just wondering who actually conducts this police training? Is it done by your center?”

  “Um no … we outsource all security and training. Mostly to an outfit called Xtraktiv. You’ve … probably heard of them?”

  A murmur swept through the crowd, punctuated with snickers and groans.

  “And … what happens when things go wrong?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What if the police we train, turn on the population? What sort of damage control process do you have?”

  “Well ... none, to be frank. We wash our hands. Our job is simply to show them the proper techniques. Once we turn them loose, it’s their discretion, not our problem.”

  The moderator stood. “Alright everyone, it’s time to move on to the next topic. Let’s have a hand for Gus Henson for shedding light on such a fascinating and complex issue.”

  While the audience clapped, Gus shook the moderator’s hand and rushed down the aisle, mind focused on getting back to the office and putting on some nice bluegrass, cracking open a diet Mountain Dew and spend the rest of the afternoon of idle gazing at his monitors. Talking in front of groups sure wore him out.

  Harry intercepted him in the hall, face flushed and grim. “Hey Gus, let’s find a secure room. I’ve got something unsettling to show you.”

  “O-kay,” said Gus, his stomach already churning.

  ***

  They slipped into one of the backmost conference rooms, one of the ones with no windows. Harry secured the door.

  “Jeez Harry. What’s up? Is something wrong?”

  Harry slid a picture out of a folder. It was an 8 X 10 printed on a color laser printer.

  “Have a look and you tell me.”

  Gus scanned the picture. People with signs. African. Slogans in French. “Looks like some kind of protest.” No big deal. He calmed down a notch.

  “It’s in Yaounde, sponsored by Greenpeace. Something to do with a national park, some kind of logging bullshit. But that’s not the problem.” He pointed his finger at the far corner of the photo. “Take a look over here and tell me what you see.”

  He squinted at a fuzzy picture of a man with curly hair tucked under a bandanna. “Holy shit. Kremer?”

  “It sure looks like him … I mean, as far as we can tell. It’s a little out of focus.”

  “When was this taken?”

  “About five hours ago. Ten a.m., Cameroon time.”

  “So he’s … alive. How can that be?”

  Harry pulled out another photo. “Look at this side view here. Kremer’s arm is in a sling, so he was injured.”

  “Maybe Black thought he had popped him with a kill shot. Left him for dead. But he only had a flesh wound. Got medical attention.”

  “That’s not like Black,” said Harry.

  “Not like him at all. He’s a finisher. Mr. Clean.”

  Harry nodded and shrugged. “That’s why they like him so much upstairs.”

  “So Black screwed the pooch. Go figure. Maybe something happened, prevented him from following up.”

  “I would hope he would have informed us of any complications.”

  “Yeah. One woulda thunk. He did check in today, finally. From Ureca. No report, though. Just a key code.”

  Harry shook his head. “This bothers me. I haven’t told the big bosses yet. What the heck do you suppose we should do?”

  “Well … we can’t send anyone else after Kremer … not just yet. The B team’s already deployed in STP with White. The A team’s in Ecuador and none of them speak French. If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything. Not until we know more.”

  “Do you have access to Black?” said Harry.

  “Maybe. He should be on a boat with that new guy … Hodges. Might be able to reach him by sat phone.”

  Gus pondered the latest news in light of all the other anomalies that had been accumulating. At every step of the way, Black’s modus operandi had warped, the change too drastic to blame on the girl or a shift in tactics. Something about the almost botched Liberia operation still nagged at him. In the rush to cremation, they had never gotten a positive identification of Parsons’ remains.

  Or had they?

  “Let’s hold off on contacting him just yet,” said Gus. “There are some things I want to check out.”

  “Things?”

  “Give me a couple hours. I’ll figure something out.”

  ***

  Gus got on the horn to the American embassy in Liberia and got Albert Kowalczyk, his liaison to put them on the most secure line he had.

  We waited for the click and a wash of overtones, digital debris from the wave-encrypting software.

  “Albert? We good?”

  “We’re good,” said Albert, his speech clipped at the borders like a singer with a pitch corrector. “What’s this about?”

  “Remember that deal that went down at Robertsfield a couple weeks ago?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did your guys happen to collect any forensic samples?”

  “Um … I can check. We kind of left it for the Liberians to handle. We wanted to be as hands-off as possible.”

  “Yeah, I understand. I’d appreciate if you could look into it.”

  There was a pause. He could hear Albert speaking to his staff.

  “We’re checking. So how’re things?”

  “Um … a little discombobulated right now.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore that this whole goodbye tour for Black was such a great idea.”

  “Yeah … well … it was ambitious. To say the least.”

  “Things are kind of uh … getting out of hand. Don’t know why we can’t do one thing at a time like we used to. Get’er done right from mission prep to retrograde. But not … the big shots got greedy. Wanted everything done at once when they heard Black was retiring.”

  “Well they gotta use him before they lose him. Operatives like him don’t grow on trees.”

  There was a commotion at the other end. The stray bits of sound that weren’t swallowed by the crypto were scrambled and frayed. Albert came back on.

  “Okay Gus. My people say yeah they took samples. Some blood and
hair off the tile in the washroom, and even some soft tissue.”

  “How contaminated?”

  “Plenty, I would imagine. It’s a public bathroom. But with a big enough sample, there’s enough signal to resolve something definitive with quantitative PCR. You just want an ID, right?”

  “Yeah. But we can do that here. When’s your next mail run?”

  “We’ve got a courier flying out tonight.”

  “Send it. We’ll cover the cost.”

  “Will do. You should have it first thing it in the morning. Sorry, we should have thought to send it on.”

  “We should have thought to ask. Thought this one as a no-brainer, seeing it was Black involved.”

  “Hmm … so you got … issues?”

  “Yeah,” said Gus. “We’ve got issues.”

  Chapter 26: Biding Time

  The next day, White put on his shoes and simply walked, ignoring every jitney and taxi driver who tried to solicit him. He wandered the city almost at random, turning down alleys and avenues on whim and whimsy alone. But he kept gravitating towards the presidential palace, the tendency subconscious but unsurprising given that the complex harbored his potential prey.

  He had gone out minimally armed, in case some authority took offense to his curiosity. Deep in his pocket he had his trusty garrote, along with a sharpened pencil and a worry stone the size of a hen’s egg.

  At first glance these items might seem innocuous to a frisker. The garrote could simply be a line to dry his socks. But in White’s hands, the contents of his pocket provided a weapons array sufficient to exterminate a small village.

  His back to the harbor, he walked across the city to the base of the hills. He had yet to glimpse the summits of the larger peaks, obscured as they were by layers of cloud and mist. Sometimes a hint of slope peaked through, like the curve of a woman’s thigh through a negligee, but each tease would be quickly obliterated by blankets of fog.

  He hiked back to the harbor and bought lunch at a blue shipping container converted into a fish grill, enjoying the most flaky and tender fillet of snapper he had tasted in a long time. He had some chips as well, to remind himself of home, though no one in Brixton had ever served him fish and chips as succulent as this.

  After lunch, he walked some more, criss-crossing the avenues, watching the people with all the acute attention of an anthropologist, taking note of how they spoke to each other, how physical or aggressive they were, how closely they invaded another’s personal space.

  Only footwork let him gauge the true spirit of a community. Drive-arounds would suffice to gather the gist, if an executive summary was all he had been after. But to really know what was going on in the heart of a São Toméan, he needed to witness it up close.

  What he found surprised him. The laziness he had thought he had observed the day before, this overarching sense of enervation and ennui, it was actually a stealthy sort of energy, subdued and controlled, released in efficient spurts. He could see it in how they worked, the frantic bursts of activity with which they unloaded trucks and trimmed trees in the gardens of the Presidential Palace. And in between, they would gather their strength and summoned their will, rejuvenating.

  This told him that São Toméans were scrappier than they looked. He would have to take care in a fight or he might get nicked.

  He was watching a man argue with a grocer when his cell phone went off. Not the secure satellite receiver that his employers had given him but his personal unlocked Siemens with a global GSM SIM card. He was tempted to ignore it, but it was Alice. He had neglected to call her before he left Addis.

  It was thoroughly unprofessional, taking personal calls on the job, but at the fifth ring, he couldn’t stand it anymore. What the hell. This was just a boondoggle, anyway. He was just an afterthought on this mission. It was clear, with Black involved, he was not getting anywhere near the ‘big fish.’ So he picked up.

  “Alice, I told you, never to call this number.”

  “And a good day to you too, sir. What a way to greet me!”

  “Listen. I call you. Always. Remember?”

  “But you didn’t. And you haven’t.”

  “You have to understand. I’m at work. My employers … they get upset.”

  “Two days I’ve been calling your landlord at the Z. He didn’t know where you went. I was worried … and wondering.”

  “I was gonna call you when things settled down. I’m only going to be here a few days.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Alice … you know I can’t say.”

  Silence. “Aw … shoot,” she said, her voice separated from the mic.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I wanted to have you say night-night to Gabriella, but she seems to have drifted off to sleep.”

  “Don’t wake her up. Just tell her that daddy loves her, and I will talk to her soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know, Alice. I don’t know. Soon.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “Am I … welcome?”

  “Of course you’re welcome. How can you say such a thing? We are a family. Just because I got into a snit the last time doesn’t mean—”

  “Alice. I can’t stay on the line. It’s been nearly a minute. You know the rules. Two minutes max.”

  “I love you, Da—”

  “Don’t say my name! Not my true name.”

  “I wasn’t going to! I was going to say ‘darling.’”

  “Sorry. Sorry to be so brusque. I had to make sure.”

  “Brusque? You yelled at me.”

  White took a long, deep breath. “This isn’t going well.”

  “No.” Her breaths came rapidly. “It’s not.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up—”

  “Not if I don’t let you.”

  “Next leave I get. I’m coming back to London. I promise.” There was silence at the other end. “Alice?”

  “Your two minutes is gone.” She hung up.

  ***

  White strolled on the beach in front of his hotel as the sun sank into a haze almost thick enough to prevent it from setting. He kicked at barnacle-encrusted bits of Styrofoam that had washed up, tossing an occasional glance out towards the airport traffic.

  Not a single motorcade had gone by since he had come back to the Marlin Beach. He had spotted plenty of military vehicles, but no notable officials with flags on their bumpers or motorcycle escorts. Either they didn’t get out much or they went incognito.

  He had gathered from shreds of small talk around the palace that President de Marazul did not like staying in the city. He minimized his time in the official spaces, preferring to stay as much as possible at his rancho in the hills above Trinidade.

  Thus, tomorrow was going to be a day for exploring the interior. He would turn tourist, a hiker, ostensibly to go look at some of the pretty waterfalls that adorned the slopes behind the president’s farm. He hoped Black would be grateful for all the legwork he was doing for the team. As if the selfish bastard would ever return the favor.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, its ringer silenced. He hoped it was Alice calling back, but wrong phone. This time was the sat phone. He fished it out and enabled the crypto app, pressed receive and held it up to his ear, poking a finger in his free ear to block the sound of the traffic and the waves.

  “Secure,” he said.

  “You’re on alert, White.” It was Gus Henson, the mission manager from the consortium.

  “The mission … is mine? The big fish?”

  “Hold your horses. You’re just on alert until you hear further. Just be ready in case we make a mission adjustment.”

  “Will do. I’m ready to go. Whenever you give the word. I don’t even need the bloody backup team. I’ve got this job sussed.”

  “Easy, easy. You’re just on alert. Don’t do a damned thing until we tell you to. Just stand by.”

  “What’s wrong? Something happen to Black?”

>   “None of your damned business. Just stand by. Oh … and White?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This job may involve more than just the big fish.”

  “Oh … how interesting!”

  The line clicked off and a cold thrill wallowed in the mire where his heart dwelt.

  Chapter 27: Boca do Inferno

  The sun made a brief appearance, like some diva at a cocktail reception, and then slipped back out of sight. The ocean’s glitter turned to lead. Archie clung to the side of the boat, staring a dark green smudge between water and cloud.

  “Out there.” He pointed. “Is that—?”

  “São Tomé island? Yup. Sure is,” said Hodges. He throttled down his craft. “Gotta take ‘er easy now. There’s some nasty ledges that don’t show up on the charts.”

  A pod of spotted dolphins intercepted them and formed a chevron on either side, riding the bow wave. Archie counted seven with two-toned hides, blue-gray above, mottled beneath. An eighth dolphin, larger, more even-toned and with a wider snout, did not seem to belong to the same pod. It lagged behind the others when they broke away to breach and dive.

  A pair of harbors came into view, one packed with docked freighters, the other with fishing boats pulled up on a beach. A city of modest proportions sprawled beyond with glass and steel buildings mingled yellow brick and stucco. Fingers of development spread into the lowermost hills and transitioned into forest where the slopes grew steep.

  “Looking good, looking good,” said Hodges. “No patrol boats. I get nervous coming this way, but it’s funny … they seem to patrol the back approaches more heavily … as if they don’t expect anyone to be brash enough to sneak in the front door.”

  “No big deal for me,” said Archie. “I’ve got a visa.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t,” said Hodges.

  “Me neither,” said Melissa, voice rising in alarm.

  Archie felt sheepish. “Sorry, I mentioned it.”

  They angled closer to shore, swinging uncomfortably close to a rugged palisade that reminded Archie of blunt and blackened teeth. Stepped volcanic ledges battled the ocean, causing even these relatively placid waves to thunder into rifts and blow holes, bursting upward in a detonation of foam and spray. Water swirled every which way. He couldn’t imagine what the place looked like in a storm.