Moussa said, “Perhaps we should order our meal first. While we still have a happy appetite.”
Harper flinched.
“And what does that mean?”
Ducking his eyes, Moussa was silent.
“You’ve changed your mind? You’re going to refuse me?”
He looked around them, and though their closest neighbors were several tables distant, he lowered his voice.
“This man you wish to meet, Jean Luc Diallo. What do you know of him? Are you close?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that’s your concern. You’ve agreed to be my driver. I don’t need a guardian.”
He stiffened, looked off with a pained smile as if she’d badly offended him. When he turned back and spoke, his voice was a whisper.
“There’s grave danger. There are military checkpoints everywhere. Rebel forces set up blockades at will. Kidnapping is common. You could be held for ransom, or a fate much worse.”
“But you go back and forth into the countryside, don’t you? Others do. There’s a way.”
“This is my home. I know the customs, the rates of extortion. But even then it is dangerous for me. But for you, a woman with your appearance, and a Westerner, no, it would be trop dangereux. Foolhardy and a reckless escapade.”
“I’ve come this far. And now you tell me this.”
“As a politeness to your husband, I agreed to assist you, and it grieves me to disappoint you at this late moment. But the events of recent days have made the journey you have in mind simply too treacherous. I have made other arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“Let us please order our dinners first.”
“Someone got to you. They made threats and now you’re afraid.”
He looked up from his menu and gave her a rueful smile. “I understand the walnut Saint-Jacques with sweet potatoes is most excellent.”
“With or without you, I’m going.”
“The hot foie gras and pickled beets is supposed to be quite great, yes, and I’m also told the chocolate sorbet is a sheer delight.”
She pushed back her chair and rose.
“I’ll be leaving at midnight. If you’re going along, be in the lobby.”
“Please stay. There are vital matters still to discuss.”
“Midnight,” Harper said. “With or without you.”
“And how would you manage? No trustworthy driver will take you to Akoupé at that time of night. It is one hundred forty kilometers, well over two hours by car. Bad roads, desolate terrain, no highway lighting.”
“I’ll find a way,” she said. “That’s what I do.”
Without another word she left him there with his box of chocolates.
SIXTEEN
Early March, Côte d’Ivoire, Africa
Back in her room, Harper stripped off the black cocktail dress—the only fancy outfit she’d packed for her journey—and flung it back into her bag. Though she’d bathed an hour earlier, she showered again to rinse away the perfume and makeup and returned to normal. With the hot water blasting, she scrubbed herself hard, then harder still to fend off the swell of frustration pressuring her chest.
Afterward she wrapped herself in a towel and unpinned her hair, brushed it out and fastened it into a ponytail, and stared at the fogged-over mirror. She didn’t need to rub away the mist. She knew all too well what she’d see. In these last few days the woman she’d become was nearly a stranger, a face hardened and severe. Her brown eyes had grown shadowy and guarded, and seemed almost to have changed colors as if dimmed by a layer of mist. Her cheekbones had always been prominent, but now, with the weight loss, the flesh had cinched tight around them, giving her a haunted and menacing edge. Even her jet-black hair, parted on the side and falling beyond her shoulders, had lost its luster.
Several times lately she’d raised a pair of scissors to that mane. But she always lost her nerve. It seemed so pathetic, so trite. A ritual that grieving women succumbed to. Hacking away the years of growth as if such a renunciation could obliterate the past, wipe away her pain.
She changed into her travel gear: olive trousers, battered hiking boots, a dark top, and a Bush Poplin safari jacket.
From her cosmetic kit, she withdrew the silver perfume atomizer Sal had presented to her just before she left. He’d even insisted on giving her a lesson on the use of the silly device. Take it, it could come in handy, he assured her. And you can sneak it through airport security, no sweat.
She slipped it into a lower pocket of her jacket. Easy access.
Fully dressed, she sat on the edge of the bed, folded her hands in her lap. She stared at the wall and listened to the hum of the bedside clock and felt the grind of minutes mounting and tried to compose herself. And though she had resisted the urge during the long airline flights, she could not stop herself any longer.
She rose and took the three black-and-white photos from her carry-on bag and sat back on the side of the bed and studied them. Her final photos of her husband and son. Ross shaving with Leo strapped to his chest. The lucky slant of light zinging off the blade of the straight razor poised against his throat. Leo grinning, a hand out before him pointing at his mirrored image and the dollop of shaving foam on his cheek.
Until now, she’d refrained from looking at the photos, afraid they might weaken her resolve, send her into an emotional tailspin.
She’d been wrong. They did the opposite.
At midnight she took the elevator to the lobby, stood for a moment surveying the spacious area. It was empty. Moussa had been true to his word. He’d been scared off. Or bribed.
Behind the check-in desk, a grandfatherly man in a scarlet-and-gold dashiki and matching skullcap saw Harper crossing the lobby and hurried out from behind the counter and caught her at the automatic doors.
“Oh, no, miss, it is not safe. At this hour the city is shut down, even the dancing clubs are closed. There is no walking around. Unsavory youth roam the streets, some of them drunken, capable of rowdy behavior. Atrocities are not unheard of. At this hour, there are sometimes crocodiles climbing from the sewers. Most dangerous.”
She assured him she wasn’t going far. Just needed a breath of air.
“For your air may I suggest you attend the pool and patio. Please, miss. Not on the streets at this hour. Even here in this good district, things cannot be predicted.”
She thanked him for his concern and stepped past him through the doors and out on the sidewalk. The night was sticky and airless, exhaust fumes seasoning a sluggish breeze. Bats flickered above a streetlight on Boulevard Hassan. A half block away, she saw a white Mercedes sedan stopped in the middle of the street, surrounded by a band of youths straddling mopeds. Out of the driver’s window, a man waved his arm, shaking his fist at the gang of boys who hooted and jeered back at him.
She headed in the other direction, west along Hassan, a wide street lined with coconut palms, government buildings, banks, and office towers with clothing shops along the thoroughfare. Ahead of her, the avenue was empty. A ghost town.
Her arrangement was to meet Jean Luc Diallo at his home two hours past midnight. He’d promised to tell her the sordid tale Ross had wanted to hear. But Harper must come in secret, speak to no one about her mission. She must be prepared to turn back immediately from their scheduled meeting if even the smallest detail seemed suspicious.
In their e-mail exchange, she’d assured him she would follow his directions faithfully. Then, a few days ago, he’d e-mailed her and begged her not to come. He’d changed his mind about revealing what he knew. Radical changes were taking place on the plantation. Without warning his bosses had become hypervigilant. New security regimes were being strictly enforced. In recent days several workers had disappeared. Others, terrified by the new threats, were fleeing into the jungle, heading back to their villages. With cash rewards offered for anyone unmasking a traitor, everyone was snooping on everyone else. He feared that even his e-mail was being monitored.
Harper sent him a terse reply. She was to arrive as scheduled on Thursday and would appear at his home around two in the morning, and if he were to renege on their arrangement for any reason, she, herself, would expose him as a spy to the owner of Royale Plantation. She had no intention of going through with the threat, but it accomplished her goal.
The next day Jean Luc Diallo responded.
Comme convenu. Je vais être en attente pour vous.
As we agreed. I will be waiting.
Harper headed north down the empty streets. She figured it was roughly a dozen blocks to the spot on Boulevard des Martyrs where she’d seen a taxi station on her drive in from the airport, a cluster of orange cabs waiting to be called into action. Surely Abidjan was enough of an international city and economic center to warrant keeping a few taxis operational through the night. Now that Moussa Kouacou had abandoned her, this was all the plan she had.
It was when she was passing by Mairie de Cocody, the district’s town hall, with only a few more blocks left to the taxi station, that she heard the low rumble of an automobile idling behind her. She didn’t turn to confront the driver shadowing her, but as she walked on, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her jacket and fingered the atomizer.
In another half block, the car caught up. Harper turned to face it, an older white Mercedes, the same car she’d seen earlier. Its headlights were extinguished, but a rear door hung open, and a yellow map light illuminated the car’s interior.
The man behind the steering wheel was slumped in his seat, and as the car pulled abreast of Harper, she saw the long, narrow face of Moussa Kouacou, his head lolling.
The car swerved two steps in front, bumped onto the sidewalk, and collided with the safety cage across a storefront.
Harper hurried to his door. The front windshield was cracked in several places as if it was pelted by stones.
Moussa’s electric window lowered.
In a frail voice, he said, “Get in. They’re coming for you.”
“Are you all right? What happened?”
“I was waylaid. When I saw you exit the hotel, I managed to break away and follow.”
“Who are they? Do you know them?”
“Get in the car. It’s you they want. They mean you harm.”
He winced and turned his face away, and it was then she saw the pearlescent handle of a pocketknife, its blade sunk deep into Moussa’s left shoulder, blood darkening his blue caftan.
“Not a mortal blow,” he said. “Get in.”
“Move over,” she said. “I’m taking you to a hospital.”
As she was easing Moussa across the bench seat into the passenger side, she heard the snarl of small engines, and when she looked back down the Avenue of the Martyrs, she saw a pack of mopeds tearing up the empty boulevard toward them.
SEVENTEEN
Early March, Côte d’Ivoire, Africa
Four bikes, six riders.
“Moussa, hold on.”
He shook his head, eyes growing sleepy. “No, I will help you. These are . . . depraved men.”
“Stay put. I’ll handle this.”
She stepped from the car, chose an open space, and positioned herself as they roared up. They formed a half circle around her. Five guys and a girl.
The largest of the young men, the one with the girl behind him, had long Medusa dreads, a few of them dyed blond. He wore a black tank top, aviator sunglasses, ragged blue jeans, and an ugly grin. The others glanced at him as if awaiting orders.
He motioned at Harper and spoke in a harsh dialect to his boys.
The two closest to Harper gunned their engines, then killed the motors, set their kickstands, and dismounted. Those two weren’t grinning. The others stayed astride their bikes, engines muttering, watching the thugs approach her. The one in the lead was chunky. His skintight T-shirt showed off big, smooth muscles. He was a few inches taller than Harper. The enforcer.
He stepped within an arm’s length of her while his scrawny partner stayed a few feet behind like a waiter in training.
“You the American?” the leader called out. “Name Harper?”
“Tell your goon to back off. Do it now while he still can.”
Muscle Boy stretched out his neck, bared his teeth at her, and clacked them together several times like one of those windup chattering dentures from a toy store.
The others laughed.
Muscle Boy’s first strike was tentative, more of a lazy slap than a punch, as though he was mocking Harper or testing her reflexes.
She slipped sideways, blending with the trajectory of the swipe, grabbing his wrist, and steering him as a dance instructor might correct the errant move of a bumbling student, stretching him out until Muscle Boy was teetering on one foot. In the next instant she stabilized his open hand, found a thumb lock, and halted his momentum, wrenching his wrist backward and forcing the hooligan to his knees.
She held him in place one-handed, tightened the backward pressure against his wrist until he gasped and tried to swing away. Again, she went in the direction of his move, then rocked back against the grain, cocked the wrist joint at a more severe angle, widened her stance, bracing herself, feeling the crackle of the man’s cartilage beneath her fingers.
His pals were yipping and laughing at the sight of their muscled-up brother-in-arms shamed by this lightweight woman.
“It’s kung fu fighter Missus Bruce Lee,” the leader called out.
His gang members chuckled.
The leader dismounted, lifted his shades, and settled them high on his forehead.
“Get back on your bikes and go,” Harper said, “all of you, or I’ll break his wrist. He’ll never ride again.”
Muscle Boy groaned and hunched down as she cranked the grip tighter, clamping his thumb closer to his wrist. There were countermoves he could try. A seasoned fighter would have twisted in line with the pressure, or swept a foot at her ankles, broken loose, forced her to find a new joint lock. But this young man relied on brute force, pushing, shoving, undisciplined punches. Crude, bullyboy skills that had won him his position in the gang. But he’d never been tested. He’d crumpled at the first jolt of pain and would not be a threat again on this night.
The leader, however, was another matter.
Still grinning, not cowed, he seemed intrigued by her.
Which meant one of two things: either he was more skilled at hand to hand than his flunky or he was armed. She decided it was the latter. She hadn’t seen the gun yet, but she suspected, from the way his tank top fell off-line around his waist, that the pistol was holstered at the small of his back.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know many things,” the leader said.
“Someone paid you to rough me up. Frighten me.”
“What is this? Rough up?”
“Hurt me.”
“Oh, no, we want to be very, very nice to you, sweet lady.”
The leader’s girlfriend dismounted the bike and sauntered over.
A bulky girl with buzzed hair, heavy breasted, and thick at the waist. A snarl growing on her lips as if she didn’t like Harper chatting up her man.
“Who paid you?” Harper applied more torsion to Muscle Boy’s wrist, and he yelped. “His name, or your friend will be left-handed from now on.”
“This punk is worthless,” the leader said. “Kill him all you like.”
Muscle Boy groaned long and low, and his body went slack. Passed out or faking, she wasn’t sure. She released her grip and took a step back. Muscle Boy wilted facedown against the pavement.
Harper turned to the side to shield the move, her right hand dipping into her pocket, retrieving the silver atomizer. Palming it.
When she turned back, as she’d expected, the leader had drawn a stubby revolver and had it trained on Harper’s face. He kicked the shoulder of the fallen man and ordered him to get up. The young man groaned and staggered to his knees. He cradled his right wrist in his other hand and blinked at Harper.
&n
bsp; “Shoot her, Jules. She fucked my arm.”
“Hands up, Missus Bruce Lee,” Jules said. “You coming with us.”
“One final chance,” she said. “Who sent you? What’s his name?”
The leader barked an order to his girlfriend, and she pulled a white plastic strip from the pocket of her jeans. Flex-cuffs. She handed them over, and when the leader’s head was turned to take them, Harper raised the canister of pressurized CS military gas, pepper spray on steroids, the nozzle set to fire in a shotgun pattern rather than a pin stream. Sal claimed it was excellent for crowd control. No marksmanship required. Bless the old man’s heart.
With a sweep of her hand, she sent a cloud of gas across the gang. Jules saw it coming and ducked and waved a hand in front of his face. Too late. His sunglasses fell to the sidewalk. He retched and scrubbed one-handed at his eyes, the gun waving, directionless. The others choked and scattered blindly. Motorbikes clattered to the ground.
Staying beyond the noxious mist, Harper watched the gang boys thrash and cough until the cloud began to break up. She held her breath, stepped forward, and grabbed Jules by a dreadlock, then yanked him backward, chopped the gun from his hand, and kicked it down the street. She hauled him to the car while he gasped and huffed and flailed his arms in an awkward backstroke. She moved fast, kept him staggering.
Moussa slid across the bloody seat, settled against the passenger door. He looked feverish, his face glossy with sweat. Somehow he’d managed to extract the blade from the meat of his shoulder and was gripping it overhand, ready to stab.
“We’re taking this one along,” she told Moussa and whacked Jules’s forehead hard against the doorpost. When he continued to resist, she slammed his head again. He shivered and sagged, blacking out long enough for Harper to fold him into the car and shove him across the seat alongside Moussa.
She started the car, squealed onto the street, and sped down the empty avenue. After a few blocks, Moussa relented, admitting he was in distress. Directing her to the nearest hospital, Hôpital de Port-Bouet, guiding her back toward the hotel, then onto Boulevard de Gaulle. A fifteen-minute ride this time of night, he told her.
When They Come for You Page 9