Ghost Dancer

by John Case

  “So what’s the problem?” Wilson asked.

  “He wants the chair. So he pulls a knife.”

  The pygmy started to say something, but Wilson waved him off. “Tell him we’re sorry,” Wilson told the soldier. “Tell him he can guard my room.” As the soldier translated, Wilson turned to Khalid. “Why don’t you just get another chair?”

  Khalid shrugged. “We could do that.”

  “There’s one downstairs,” the soldier said.

  Wilson nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

  As they walked down the corridor, the soldier laughed. “Your boys are pretty good!” he said. “Or pretty dumb.”

  “Why do you say that?” Wilson asked.

  The soldier laughed again. “This pygmy, he’ll kill you in a heartbeat. Everybody knows that. So your boys took a big chance for you!”

  As they went down the stairs to the main offices, a wave of laughter and shouting rolled toward them. The source of the noise turned out to be a clutch of boys, none of them more than thirteen years old, hovering over a laptop computer in an empty office. At first, Wilson thought they were playing a video game, but then he saw they were online and at a porn site.

  The soldier screamed “Out! Get out!” and threw a head-fake at them. They ran.

  Wilson turned to the soldier, who was laughing. “You have a satellite connection out here?”

  The soldier nodded.

  “All right if I use it?”

  The soldier shrugged. “Sure,” he said, and went off in search of a chair.

  Wilson sat down before the monitor, cracked his knuckles, and typed: www.yahoo.com.

  He was hoping for news of Hakim.

  Clicked on Check Mail. Clicked on Draft. The page appeared. And to his surprise, he found not one message, but two. I can’t find Hakim had yet to be deleted—which pissed him off. It was a small thing, but an irritating one. Now was not the time to get sloppy about security. God knows, the protocols were simple enough. Wilson checked the deletion box, and went on to the more recent message which, like its predecessor, was addressed to no one and had a Subject line that read “None.”

  Found Hakim. No problem.

  He was meeting with friends.

  Wants you to get in touch.

  Wilson stared at the message. He felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Found Hakim”? The words—or more accurately, the number of words in the first sentence—pushed him back in his chair.

  He tried to rationalize it. Maybe Bo had forgotten…. But no. How do you forget a protocol as simple as theirs? You don’t. Which meant that Bobojon hadn’t written the message. Someone else had. Someone who knew enough about Bobojon’s e-mail to know that he was using Draft mode to communicate. But how could that be?

  Wilson flashed back to the Marmara Queen, when the ship had been at anchor off Istanbul, waiting for the dock strike to end. Zero and Khalid had been watching television—some Arab channel—and someone was getting busted on camera. There was a man with a hood over his head. Men with guns. Wilson said: What’s this? And Khalid said: Malaysia. Not Berlin. Malaysia.

  Wilson’s ass tightened. He thought hard. I can’t find Hakim. That was Bobojon, no question. Four words. And then this phony message about getting in touch. Who was that? Wilson thought about it for all of about fifteen seconds, and began to put it together. There weren’t a lot of possibilities. I can’t find Hakim. Obviously, Hakim had gone missing, and Bobojon had worried about it. Now, Bobojon was missing, or if not missing, no longer in control of his own communications. So Hakim must have given him up. And now the police were looking for Wilson.

  Or someone.

  Did they know who he was? Did they know his name—where he was—what he was doing? Maybe.

  Or maybe not. If Bobojon talked (and everyone talked if you tortured them enough), they would know everything. And that would be the end of it.

  But they didn’t know everything. For example, they didn’t know about the protocol he and Bobojon had used, so maybe Bo had gotten away. Or maybe he’d been killed.

  Hakim was a different story. To Hakim, Wilson was a sideshow—a guy named “Frank d’Anconia,” one of Bobojon’s projects. An American with crazy ideas. How much could Hakim actually tell them? How much did he actually know?

  Well, Wilson thought, he knows everything about the hash, the guns, and the diamonds. He can tell them where I am and what I’m doing, and he can tell them where I’m going. He can tell them what I look like, but he can’t tell them who I am—not exactly. The most he could say was that I’d been in prison with Bobojon. But that could be a lot of guys. Bo had done a lot of time.

  So he was safe for now. The CIA, or whoever they were, might be waiting for him in Antwerp. But they wouldn’t come after him in the Congo. Not in a war zone, not with the government five hundred miles away.

  Of course, if Ibrahim found out about Hakim, all bets were off. The diamonds would disappear. And so, in all likelihood, would Wilson. He’d end up at the bottom of the mine, or on a spit.

  Found Hakim…get in touch.

  I don’t think so.

  He went to the mine in the afternoon. It was nothing like he’d imagined.

  If he’d thought about it at all, he’d have expected to find a tunnel with narrow-gauge tracks leading into the earth—a sort of coal mine. Or else a mountain stripped into tiers, with massive machines clawing at the ground. Instead, he found something stranger. A landscape with the pox.

  The mine was a gigantic pit, maybe two hundred yards across, dug to a depth of about thirty-five feet. This enormous hole was crisscrossed with berms of yellow earth that framed a score of smaller pits in which teams of emaciated miners stood up to their knees in stagnant groundwater, sweating under the watchful eyes of armed foremen.

  In each pit was a wooden trough with a wire mesh at the bottom. Gasoline engines pumped a steady stream of water into the troughs, while diggers fed them with shovel after shovel of excavated stones, pebbles, and soil. The rushing water washed and tumbled the rocks, making the smaller stones fall through the mesh at the bottom. At the end of each trough, a boy shoveled the finer gravel into piles.

  Stripped to their shorts and slaked with mud, the “shake-shake men” scooped this finer gravel into the circular wooden sieves that gave them their name. Stooping to the surface of the water, they whirled the sieves in such a way that the muck and clay sluiced to the edges, while the much heavier, diamondiferous gravel coagulated in the middle.

  Somehow the shake-shake men could spot a quarter-carat diamond in the rough without fail. And when they did, they froze in place, and whistled to the foreman, who’d come running.

  “How much do you pay them?” Wilson asked.

  His guide laughed. He was the same man who’d driven them from the airstrip in the Mercedes. “Well,” he said, “the ones we pay get sixty cents a day, American. And food. The others just get food.”

  “The others?” Wilson asked.

  The driver grinned. “There are some we don’t pay.”

  “Why not?”

  A shrug. “Bad boys. Lugbara people. Prisoners of war.”

  “But you feed them.”

  The driver nodded. “Of course. They have to eat. So, two cups of rice a day. Cassava, sometimes. I’m telling you, man, that’s Easy Street you’re looking at.”

  An hour later, Commander Ibrahim was seated at a card table outside a concrete hut in a compound at the mine. It was here that the diggers and shake-shake men received their pay and rations, and it was here that punishments and rewards were meted out.

  Wilson and the Mercedes driver entered the compound as Ibrahim was lecturing what looked like a family. There was an older man, who might have been in his forties; his wife, who seemed about the same age; and a young mother with three children: two boys, about ten, and a girl who couldn’t have been more than five. The family looked terrified.

  Belov was nearby, leaning against the compound’s wall.

  Wilson joi
ned him. “I thought you’d be gone by now,” he said. “I thought you’d be heading back to Sharjah.”

  Belov shook his head, and nodded toward Ibrahim. “Commander Ibrahim isn’t happy, so…I’m still here.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Problem is bullshit!” Belov said in a low voice. “He makes argument over RPGs.”

  “Why?” Wilson asked.

  “He wants Russian RPGs. But I don’t have. So I give him Chinese. Is perfect copy! No difference. Good weapon.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s up to Hakim,” Belov told him.

  Wilson looked skeptical. “And how does that work?”

  “Easy. He calls him on phone.”

  Wilson felt his heart lurch. He glanced around. “Hakim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He can do that?” Wilson asked.

  “Why not?”

  “From here?”

  Belov shrugged. “With satellite phone? Yeah!” Belov looked at him. “What’s the matter? Is there problem?”

  “No, I—” Before Wilson could could finish the sentence, a militiaman came into the compound, dragging a boy by the hair. The boy was naked, and he’d been badly beaten.

  Seeing him, the family cringed. The little girl moved toward the boy with open arms outstretched, but was quickly captured by the older man, who clutched her to his chest. The mother burst into tears, and soon, the whole family was keening.

  “What’s this?” Wilson asked. The boy couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

  Belov shook his head. “Bad shit,” he muttered. “They say he steals diamond, so…he’s fucked.”

  The grandfather—if that’s who he was—appealed to Commander Ibrahim. Wilson couldn’t make out a word of what he was saying—he was speaking Swahili, or something like it. But he was pleading hard in a low, tremulous voice.

  Ibrahim adopted a judicious pose, frowning thoughtfully as the grandfather spoke. Occasionally, he looked at the others in the compound—at Wilson and Belov, at the soldiers, at the boy—and nodded, as if to say, Good point. It seemed, almost, as if he’d been persuaded by the older man’s speech, but then he grew bored with the charade, shook his head, and clapped his hands twice, in rapid succession.

  Turning to the soldier at his side, he said, “Get on with it.”

  With a grin, the soldier went into the pink building, and emerged, a few seconds later, with a jerry can of gasoline in one hand and a tire in the other.

  Seeing this, the family let out a wail, the mother screamed, and the boy staggered where he stood. It seemed to Wilson that his knees buckled. But they didn’t give way. The boy just stood there, swaying in the courtyard. It was almost as if he was listening to music that no one else could hear.

  Moving quickly to his side, the soldier slipped the tire over the boy’s head, then dragged his right arm through the hole at its center. Finally, he lashed the boy’s wrists together behind his back, using a plastic zip-tie. Then he filled the tire’s hollow core with gasoline, splashing it liberally over the boy himself, who was quaking to his family’s screams and pleas.

  Wilson couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Ibrahim patted the air with his hands, and made a shhh-shing sound. “Nothing is decided,” he said. Then he turned to Wilson. “Did Belov tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” The air was heavy with the smell of gasoline. It felt like the compound might explode.

  “About the cargo,” Ibrahim said.

  Wilson did a double take. Was this supposed to be a threat? The boy who’d taken the diamond was standing ten feet away, quivering, his hands cuffed to a tire drenched in gasoline. The kid was about to go off like a Roman candle and Ibrahim picks this very moment to bitch about the cargo? “Yeah,” Wilson said. “He told me. You’ve got a problem with the RPGs.”

  “No! You’ve got a problem with the RPGs.” He stared hard at Wilson.

  “So why don’t you call Hakim?” Belov asked.

  “I did!” Ibrahim said.

  Wilson felt his jaw drop.

  “And?!” Belov demanded.

  “He wasn’t there.”

  Wilson realized that he wasn’t breathing. So he took a deep breath. Let it out.

  Commander Ibrahim reached into a bag that was lying on the ground at his feet, and retrieved a satellite phone. “They said he’d be back in an hour.” He consulted a scrap of paper, and punched a series of numbers into the phone.

  “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Wilson said.

  Ibrahim looked puzzled. So did Belov. Nearby, the family was kneeling in the dirt, holding hands and praying.

  “Why not?” Belov asked.

  Wilson didn’t know what to say. “It’s late.”

  Ibrahim gave him a look that questioned his sanity.

  The boy with the tire around his shoulders sank to his knees.

  The telephone must have rung six or seven times before anyone answered. Wilson’s heart was crashing against his ribs, while threads of silver began to wiggle and curl in the corner of his left eye.

  Commander Ibrahim jumped to his feet, shouting into the phone. “Hallo? Hallo? Who is this?” He listened for a moment, then growled with impatience: “Speak English, for God’s sake! Where’s Hakim?” He listened for a while longer. “Then get him! Who the fuck do you think I’m calling? It’s his phone, isn’t it?” He kept his ear to the satellite phone, but turned to Wilson and Belov. In a quiet voice, he asked, “So what should I do with the boy?”

  “Let him go,” Belov said. “You’ve made your point.”

  Ibrahim nodded. “I suppose…What do you think?” he asked, raising his chin to Wilson.

  Wilson didn’t know what to say. The vision in his right eye was beginning to go, and his thoughts were elsewhere. “I’ve got my own problems,” he muttered. If Hakim didn’t come to the phone (and why would he, how could he?), Ibrahim would begin to wonder. And that could not be a good thing in this place, under these circumstances.

  Ibrahim frowned. “We all have—Hallo? Hakim! Where the fuck have you been? Speak up, man! I can barely hear! Look, we’ve got a problem with the glass samples that you sent. Yes, ‘the glass samples’!” A long pause. “Well, some of the glass was made in China. What the fuck am I supposed to do with…what? No, it’s not a lot of money. Maybe ten percent.”

  “Maybe six percent,” Belov mumbled.

  Commander Ibrahim was smiling now. “Okay, my brother! Now, you’re talking! I’ll tell him what you said…What? Yes, of course, he’s standing right next to me. Okay, okay, but…all right, no problem.” Commander Ibrahim handed the phone to Wilson. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Belov was smirking.

  Wilson was nearly blind, his eyes spangled with neural fireworks that only he could see. He laid the phone against his cheek, and said, “Hello?”

  Ten seconds passed before Hakim said a word, and when he did, his voice was weak and tired-sounding. “Frank?”

  Stupidly, Wilson nodded. Then he caught himself, and said, “Yes?”

  “It’s Hakim…”

  “I know.”

  “So…everything’s okay? At your end, it’s okay?”

  “Yeah,” Wilson said. “It’s fine.” How many people are listening, Wilson wondered. And where are they keeping him?

  “Then I’ll see you in Antwerp in a couple of days.”

  “Right,” Wilson said.

  “At the De Witte Lelie Hotel. As discussed.”

  “Right.”

  A moment later, the phone went dead.

  Wilson took a deep breath, then tossed the phone to Commander Ibrahim.

  Who was smiling. “Sorry, Charley! He says you get ten percent less.”

  Belov took a step toward him, looking outraged, but Wilson put a hand on his sleeve. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll make it back the next time around.”

  Commander Ibrahim turned his attention to the boy with the Firestone necklace. “I’ve decided,” he sa
id. Then he paused, savoring the moment as everyone’s eyes turned to him. “He’s just a boy…from a poor family…and it was a small diamond.”

  The family was nodding in agreement. The boy, too.

  “But…” Ibrahim paused for a second time.

  Wilson could see it coming.

  “I have a mine to run,” Ibrahim said. “So here’s what we’re going to do.” Ibrahim reached into his pocket, and pulled out a lighter. Moving around the table, he went to the family clustered on the ground, and gave the lighter to the mother. “Light him up, Mother…”

  She wailed.

  Seeing what was happening, her son scrambled to his feet. But with the tire around his neck, and his hands behind his back, it was impossible to get anywhere. One of the soldiers grabbed him by the tire, spun him around, and shoved him back the way he’d come.

  The mother was hysterical.

  “Well, if you won’t do as I ask,” Ibrahim said, “we have an even bigger problem.” Still looking at the mother, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. On cue, three soldiers came out of the little pink building, carrying five tires and a can of gas. The family gasped, and one of the younger boys swooned dead away.

  But Ibrahim was having a grand old time, and so were his men. Some of them were laughing, and all of them were bright with excitement. “Light him up, and that’s the end of it! I promise you, Mother, once the boy toasts up, you can go home!” He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. She was shaking her head so hard, it seemed almost as if it might fly off. “You understand, don’t you? You’re as responsible as the boy is! More! You brought him into the world. So now, I think, it’s up to you to take him out. If you don’t want to do that, if you can’t do that, I’ll quite understand. But then, I’m afraid, there’s a tire for each of you!”

  Ibrahim sank to his haunches, a few feet in front of the mother, and looked her in the eye. “What’s it to be, then? You’re in charge, Mother! You decide! The boy—or the family? C’mon!” He spun the lighter’s little wheel, and a flame flickered.

  “Let her alone,” Wilson said.