The Vessel
Page 10
Months of coming up here, of being noticed and smiled at, so many nights of hide-and-seek with sleep, of watching the stars fade under the rising glare of the sun, and not once had any of the apartment occupants spoken to her. She’d learned their routines, sometimes left gifts of nuts and fruits on the balconies when only the children were at home. Occasionally handcrafted presents waited for her in exchange, but not today, which was fitting for a good-bye. The girl peered out again, and Munroe smiled, then slipped over the rail and maneuvered into position to drop to the next balcony, perhaps for the final time.
For six months Djibouti had provided the comforting chaos that only the Third World could offer, and for these six months, navigating the nepotistic politics, the culture of graft and paranoia, the stench and the sounds and the maze of a society steeped in khat drug addiction, had played snake charmer to the serpents inside her head.
She’d come full circle, back to the African continent: had maneuvered herself into the arms of a mercenary team as she’d done a decade ago, and as it had also been then, she wasn’t here as one of Leo’s ship-jumping little army for hire, but as a linguist and a fixer. She’d wanted nothing to do with the weapons and the machismo. Though she had the skill to be one of the boys, she’d come to him as an errand runner. This was her past, comforting in a way that home might be comforting, if anything could ever be home. English-teaching parents had been her cover story—one that didn’t invite questions—and really, Leo and Amber Marie had no reason to doubt. She got things done, soothed the abrasions that came with working in the grit: Familiar and rote—what clocking in for a data-entry job might be to anyone else—Djibouti had kept the inner voices quiet, gave her a way to keep busy without the responsibility or the burden of life-altering decisions or people depending on her for survival. She didn’t need Leo’s job for the money but for the sanity, and though she could eventually find something else, she didn’t want to. She was dead here, liked it that way, and wasn’t ready to come back to life.
Munroe went hand over hand, from second balcony to wall, and dropped into the compound that housed the two single-story buildings that were Leo’s base of operations. She crossed caked dirt and passed beneath the one large tree to the rearward house, which was three small bedrooms and a few common areas that she shared with two other team members.
Natan lay lengthwise on the living room couch, his bare foot wrapped in an ankle bandage propped up on the wooden armrest. In place of ignoring her as he typically did, he watched her, and when she’d crossed half the room he said, “Leo is looking for you.”
“He found me,” she said, and stopped. Doubled back and stood in front of his foot. “How bad is it really?”
Natan shrugged.
“That’s what I figured,” she said, and his expression gave away what his words didn’t: He knew just as well as she did why Leo had made this switch, and whatever resentment Natan may have felt at staying behind over a minor injury was probably compensated for by watching Leo’s jealousy reach boiling point.
Munroe continued down the tiled hallway toward her room.
She’d never claimed to be male, not to Leo, not to Amber Marie, not to any of the rest of the men. Unlike so many other misrepresentations in her line of work, this one hadn’t been calculated or deliberate, was just a continuation of the way she preferred to dress and operate in countries where being a single woman had the potential to cause endless complications. She was long and lean, with an androgynous body; it wasn’t a difficult transformation and over the years the pretense of behaving and working as a boy had become more natural than assuming her own identity.
She’d shown up in Leo’s office unannounced and asked for a job. He’d given her two weeks to prove her value, and with her skill set and experience it had been easy to ingratiate herself and create dependence, to become part of an operation that, for all of its excellence in weapons and security, lacked the finesse needed to inoffensively grease the daily bureaucratic gears. The side effects of coming onto the team as a male had been a bonus: She didn’t have to endure sexist quips, no one hit on her, and Leo’s men all respected the boundaries of man-to-man personal space.
Except she’d done her job too well, her name had been uttered once too often on the lips of the boss man’s wife, and because Munroe had never bothered to clarify her gender at the outset and it was too late to clarify it now, appearances had turned her into the only guy the wife hung out with and repeatedly talked about during the long stretches the others were away. Call her oblivious, but a husband’s jealousy was a complication Munroe hadn’t planned on.
Munroe paused in front of her room to listen down the hall for Victor.
If the Spaniard was in, he wasn’t moving about. She opened her door to a bare room: a bed she rarely slept in, an empty desk shoved up beside the bed, and a narrow armoire with a few changes of clothes. None of the furniture was from the same set much less the same decade. Her room had no pictures. No personal items. Nothing that said she belonged here.
Munroe sat on the bed and pulled from beneath it a backpack that had been with her for nearly ten years and twice as many countries. Held it in her hands and stared at it without seeing while Leo’s options chased each other around her brain: Board the ship, or leave the team.
To keep his marriage calm, Leo needed to make her departure look like her own doing. She had no attachments that would make walking away difficult, but his clumsy, indelicate, ham-handed attempt to back her into a corner irritated her just enough to prod her into proving points of her own. A little manipulation, a little backstabbing, and the fight in her had breached the surface again.
Munroe sighed. Perhaps she wasn’t as dead to the world as she’d thought. She stood. Unzipped the pack and then dumped the few clothes from the armoire into it. Against her better judgment, she’d board that ship tonight, Somali pirates be damned, and when she got back, when she was ready, she’d leave Leo’s company and Djibouti on her own terms.
Movement and a knock at the door interrupted her thoughts. Amber Marie, the other half of the company, the real brains behind the operation, stood in the door frame, blond hair tied back in a severe bun, baggy clothes hiding both her shapely figure and her age, which was a good ten or more years younger than her husband’s. It was Amber who Munroe truly worked for, solving problems in a world that created new ones daily.
“Leo says you’re going with him,” Amber said.
“I might.”
“You don’t have much time left to decide,” Amber said, and paused. “I guess either way you’re leaving tonight?”
Munroe nodded. “Seems that way.”
Amber smiled, making it difficult to tell if she understood that Natan’s injury was really just a conveniently timed excuse that allowed Leo to force Munroe’s hand. Amber said, “I figure once you get a taste for the ships, Leo will steal you away and you’ll never want to be my go-to guy again.” Gave a halfhearted attempt at another smile. “Either way I came to say good-bye and to thank you for everything.”
Munroe returned the half smile. “It’s been a good run,” she said, and in response, Amber shifted, anguish in her body language. If Natan hadn’t been in the living room, Leo’s wife would have invited herself in, sat on the bed, and in response Munroe would have walked her through logic as she’d done so many times before, would have reassured her that based on probability alone, Leo would be home soon and that stress was pointless. Or they would have sat and laughed about the local inefficiencies and exchanged stories that played to similarities in lives that had left them both strangers to their homeland, citizens of a planet on which, no matter where they went, neither of them ever really belonged. But given the way things were now, Amber remained leaning against the wood, arms crossed, trying to look brave.
“So I’ll see you when you get back,” she said.
Munroe shoved the last of the clothes into the backpack and gave her the same answer she’d given Leo. Maybe.
Amber M
arie nodded and with a mock salute left for the living room. The few words she exchanged with Natan filtered back as a mumble, and then the front door closed to quiet. Munroe stared through the empty door frame.
Amber’s parents had been English teachers, not missionaries, but the dynamics were the same. Like Munroe’s, Amber’s loyalties, few as they were, were to people—not to any place or culture or flag. Born abroad, raised abroad, ever on the move and anxious if she stayed in one place too long, caught between cultures, with no allegiance to the country stamped on her passport—the easiest way to answer the question Where are you from? was to lie.
Munroe slung the pack over her shoulder and shut the armoire with finality. In the living room Natan, still on the couch with his ankle propped up, called out as she strode through. “Where are you going?” he said, and she ignored him, just as she had Leo.
Also by Taylor Stevens
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