War Lord

by David Rollins

Twenty-seven

  The frown on Fakim’s face was Sunday school-teacher stern.

  ‘A brothel. This is illegal in Tanzania, Mr Vin. You want to make with woman, we go to Uwanja wa Fisi. It is famous.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘It is also called Hyena Square.’

  ‘Still never heard of it.’

  ‘You buy woman there for five hundred shillings.’

  I did the calculation. ‘That’s thirty cents American.’

  ‘You can bargain with them, make love for three hundred shillings.’

  On the basis that you get what you pay for, what could you expect for thirty cents or less? In Dar es Salaam, I didn’t want to think about it. ‘Let me put it another way,’ I said. ‘If you had a lot of money in this town, and you wanted to meet a nice bad girl, where would you go?’

  Fakim thought about that as we moved off and said, ‘Yes, I know good place.’

  Twenty minutes later, and in a better part of town, we cruised slowly past a joint called the Q-Bar Restaurant and Nightclub, a bar open to the street where white guys mingled with black women, drank beer, played pool and, from the look of the comings and goings, took aforementioned black women back to their hotel rooms, wherever that happened to be.

  ‘This the best place to get laid?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Mr Vin, best place.’

  ‘Okay, well, go down the road a ways, do a U-turn and come back. Park where I tell you.’

  Fakim nodded, massaged the gas pedal and we drifted on past the bar. I couldn’t see anyone I recognized as we cruised by, but did I really expect to? I reminded myself this was a long shot. I was going to have to get lucky – a different kind of lucky to the lucky going on at the Q-Bar.

  A short while later we were coming back down the street. Several parking spots were available. ‘There,’ I said, pointing to a gap thirty yards up the road from the bar and on the opposite side. Fakim squeezed us into the spot. There was no street lighting to speak of around us, so the bar punched out of the gloom. Bon Jovi was on the playlist, a pair of African women moving to the beat in long slinky sheaths accentuating their slender height.

  After ten minutes of doing nothing but sit, Fakim asked, ‘What is happening?’

  ‘Not a lot so far,’ I said as I watched an old white guy with a paunch, gray hair and a bald spot lead a young African woman wearing a midriff-baring top to an old Toyota Tarago van.

  ‘When will there be something?’

  The Tarago edged into the street and drove off.

  ‘Fakim, you watch television, you know what a stakeout is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s what this is – a stakeout.’ That seemed to satisfy him for the moment. I killed ten minutes or so re-examining the confiscated firearms, glancing back at the Q-Bar every now and then. The .38 was an ancient weapon with its numbers crudely removed, a classic throw-down. You killed someone with a piece like this and left it at the scene – untraceable. The barrel was filthy and the grimy duct tape around the handle was sweating glue, leaving little balls of tacky black sludge in the palm of my hand. I wondered how many deaths it had been responsible for. I cleaned the metal with a scrap of rag scrounged from the backseat area, pushing it through the barrel with a pen from a holder on the dash. The gun could do with some oil, but I had none. Obviously the previous owner had never seen what happened when a dirty weapon blew up in your hand.

  The Desert Eagle was a different story to the .38, though the barrel had flecks of powder caught in the rifling. Its action was, however, dirt-free and well oiled. After wiping it down with a fresh strip of rag, I ran the strip through the .38 to transfer a little lubrication, and then reloaded its cylinder with the dum-dum rounds. These nasty little fucks had a grooved cross cut in the tip so that the slugs expanded and broke up on impact with human flesh, the pieces tearing and gouging their way through.

  During the clean-up, a couple of vehicles came while others went, the to and fro movement at the Q-Bar featuring some of the hottest women I’d ever seen, African or otherwise. Other than that, there was nothing of particular interest going on.

  Three hours later, it became apparent which of the women were doing more of the coming and going than the others. Fakim had long since fallen asleep, snoring against his window.

  ‘Fakim.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Fakim,’ I repeated.

  He woke with a loud fart. ‘Yes? Yes?’

  ‘There another entrance to this bar?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Vin, there are others,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ I muttered. It was now just after two a.m. The whole exercise had been a goddamn waste of time, the futility of it magnifying my exhaustion. The fault was mine. I’d failed to ask the question, fuck it all. I yawned. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where now?’ he asked, turning the key in the ignition, the motor hiccuping into life.

  I was thinking my bed back at the Southern Sun. I’d chosen this place to stake out in the belief that the pirates out on the African Spirit, being in the employment of von Weiss, would have more money than the average john and therefore would choose to come to the best little whorehouse in Dar when they were ashore – assuming any of them were ashore tonight. Maybe this assumption was flawed from the beginning. Maybe Hyena Square for a thirty-cent doink was more their speed. ‘Head to the docks,’ I said. ‘Wake me when we get there.’

  I burrowed into the seat and thought about closing my eyes. But at that moment I saw two white guys leave the bar with three women, one of whom was well over six and a half feet tall. Sleep could wait.

  ‘Hey, will you look at that,’ I said, sitting up.

  ‘Yes, she is very tall. I think she is Maasai. They are warrior tribe – grow very tall, taller than her.’

  She’d be a shoe-in for a job at Donn Arden’s Jubilee Showgirls.

  The party got into a minibus with a Holiday Inn logo on the driver’s door.

  ‘Follow them,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Mr Vin, you like tall women? You do not need to follow her. I know another place where—’

  ‘Just don’t lose them,’ I said, cutting him off. It wasn’t the Maasai woman I had an interest in but the two white guys with her. I’d met one of them before a couple of times back in Vegas. It was Ty Morrow, owner of Nevada Aircraft Brokers, suppliers of aircraft to drug cartels, arms traders and Benicio von Weiss. Running into Morrow all the way down here? Well, that was completely unexpected. And I’d have been more than happy to have had that opportunity on its own, but a big fat bonus came with him. It was his wing buddy. This guy I’d never been introduced to, though I now knew him well enough through his service record and recognized him from his photo: former lieutenant Ed Dyson, US Navy, discharged due to some obscure (and, for all I knew, bogus) medical disorder. Petinski’s weather professor. As I watched, Dyson closed the door behind the Maasai woman as she pulled in her long legs, then ran around the back of the minibus and climbed in the other side. Whadaya know, a gentleman. Emma Shilling had told me she’d overheard Dar es Salaam being mentioned in a conversation Dyson had with von Weiss. And now here he was in living, breathing, horny person. Motherfucking jackpot. If these guys were here, then surely O Magnifico himself wasn’t far away. Maybe Morrow and Dyson would lead us right to him.

  ‘Wait till they pull out,’ I told Fakim.

  Whoever was driving the minibus took their time getting their shit together, enough time for the vehicle parked in front of it to depart and provide the minibus with an easy exit. The minibus driver took it and accelerated hard, taillights disappearing in a rolling ball of dust up the road.

  I barked, ‘Move it!’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Vin.’ Fakim jack-knifed into the traffic. A horn blared and a headlight crashed into our overhanging fender with a dull crunch of metal and plastic.

  ‘Oh, oh . . .’ Fakim wailed.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I muttered. Fakim slumped his head against the steering wheel, his fists against his templ
es.

  The vehicle that had hit us backed up a few feet and its front doors flew open. Seconds later a flashlight came on and swept over Fakim and me.

  ‘Is that you, Cooper?’

  Petinski!

  ‘Jesus,’ she snapped. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Get out of the car,’ said a man accompanying her in a voice I didn’t recognize.

  Several patrons from the Q-Bar were wandering over to watch the show. Fakim opened his door with difficulty, eventually pushing it out with his feet. I got out and leaned on the roof. ‘Why don’t you watch where you’re going, Petinski?’ I asked her. ‘Or was it your buddy here driving?’

  ‘You know this clown?’ inquired the guy with the flashlight.

  ‘Be nice, Ken,’ she told him.

  Ken was neatly dressed and slightly built with a good hairline. He looked like a Ken. He shone the beam full in my face.

  ‘You wanna put that away, Ken?’ I told him, and then to Petinski I said, ‘Do I call you Barbie now?’

  She snatched the Maglite from her partner’s hand, turned it off and tossed it into their car. ‘You were following Morrow and Dyson?’ she asked, short of patience.

  ‘About to,’ I said. ‘Until you and Ricky Bobby here arrived.’

  The guy glanced at the ground and then over at the Q-Bar as if maybe we were talking about someone else.

  ‘We’ve been sitting twenty yards up the road for the last six hours,’ Petinski said.

  I watched Fakim examine the damage to his vehicle. ‘Is it drivable?’ I asked him.

  He tugged at the fender but couldn’t manage to pull it away from the tire. ‘No, but it’s not so bad.’

  The Renault was a patchwork of different-colored panels anyway, evidence of numerous past accidents. Life was hard for a car in Dar. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I told him. ‘The Company will pay to get it fixed.’ I turned to Ken. ‘Won’t it, Ken?’

  ‘Who is this joker?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Don’t push it, Cooper,’ said Petinski. ‘Can we get back to the business at hand? How long you been following Morrow and Dyson?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same thing. Weren’t you being reassigned?’

  ‘This is my reassignment.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  I looked at her flatly.

  She sighed. ‘Okay . . . Chasing the weapons obtained illegally in the United States from military bases.’

  It annoyed me to hear that. That was the case I wanted. Fakim had finished checking over his car and he wasn’t happy either. ‘Give him your card,’ I said to Ken before Fakim could arc up at me.

  ‘But it wasn’t my fault,’ Ken whined.

  ‘There’s an independent witness who says otherwise,’ I said.

  ‘And who’s that?’

  ‘You’re looking at him.’

  Ken stared at me a moment or two and wisely decided I was serious. He reached for his wallet and removed his card. It read: Lieutenant Ken Bushell, US Navy, Assistant to the US Military Attaché, Kenya. US Embassy, Mombasa. A weight of fancy non-standard gold embossing on the lettering told me Bushell had had them printed up himself. These Navy types . . .

  ‘Nice card,’ I told him. ‘When’ll you be back in the office?’

  ‘I don’t know. Next Monday or Tuesday. Who knows.’

  ‘Petinski, can you loan me three hundred bucks?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘C’mon, you know I’m good for it.’

  She put her hand in her pocket, removed a money clip and pulled most of the bills off it.

  ‘Two-fifty’s all I got.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘You do.’

  I handed Ken’s card to Fakim along with one of my own. I also gave him the two hundred and fifty dollars and told him it was the balance of what I owed him, plus fifty bucks for a cab. ‘Contact Mr Bushell here. If you can’t get through, give my office a call.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Vin. I will. Ha ha. If you want to use boat, your friend at Magogoni Street will be waiting. But please to bring back, okay?’

  ‘Relax,’ I said.

  He passed me a card, a photo on it of his Renault with him standing beside the vehicle, his hand raised, and the words Fakim’s Luxury Taxi. ‘For next time you come to Dar,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Fakim,’ I said, shaking his hand.

  ‘Asante sana – thank you, Mr Vin, ha ha.’

  ‘You going somewhere?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Yeah, with you and Petinski.’ I gave Fakim a final wave and then climbed in the back of their light-green Ford before Ken could get his tongue around an objection. ‘The Holiday Inn, right?’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Petinski shrugged and got in. Ken didn’t have much choice. He turned and opened the driver’s door.

  ‘So you’re from the Mombasa station,’ I said to Ken, leaning forward between them. ‘A little out of area, aren’t you?’

  Petinski answered for him. ‘I told you we’ve got problems in Dar. The station chief has been relieved for taking bribes. Langley thought it best to use out-of-towners.’

  ‘What about von Weiss?’ I asked as we moved off. ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. We’re after your two pals Charles and Falco White.’

  ‘They’re here?’

  ‘At the Holiday Inn with Morrow and Dyson.’

  ‘And this has nothing at all to do with the other things you and I were investigating?’

  ‘No.’

  Ken eyeballed Petinski beside him, whispered something to her.

  ‘Relax, Cooper’s one of us,’ I heard her say.

  ‘Hey, I resent that,’ I said.

  ‘You always got a smart mouth, Agent Cooper?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Only when there’s good material to work with.’

  ‘Anything turn up on Randy?’ Petinski said over her shoulder.

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘In a way that’s something, I guess.’ She meant that as a body hadn’t turned up there was still a chance he was alive.

  ‘How’d you track down Morrow and Dyson?’ I asked her.

  ‘Morrow piloted von Weiss’s G5 from Buenos Aires to Dar. Laurent Duval was his co-pilot. Ken here had the airport staked out and picked up the tail when they landed.’

  I was more familiar with ‘Duval’ by his real name. ‘André LeDuc,’ I said, this time unable to suppress the grin. ‘He’s here too?’

  ‘I thought that would make you happy,’ she said.

  ‘Delirious. So what’s going down?’

  ‘We think Charles and Falco have been negotiating deals with Somali pirates. We’re here to get the proof.’

  ‘A deal to do what?’ I asked.

  ‘Weapons shipments.’

  Her use of the word ‘shipments’ made me think of the African Spirit. ‘What about Morrow, LeDuc and Dyson? What are they doing here?’

  ‘We’re not sure. Hence the tail.’

  ‘But everyone’s still convinced it has absolutely nothing to do with what we know to be missing.’

  ‘What’s missing?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Tell him,’ I said. ‘We need to talk and time’s running out.’

  ‘You tell him.’

  ‘A nuke, Ken, one of ours.’

  ‘Shit?!’

  ‘Yeah, lots of it.’

  Petinski shook her head, not happy that I’d spilled the beans. ‘There have been arrests.’

  ‘What arrests?’ Being at thirty thousand feet in economy the last couple of days, I hadn’t heard dick.

  ‘OSI swooped the day before yesterday and detained a number of people: four NCOs who worked in Munitions Control at Area Two, along with six armorers and three weapons handlers. All but two of them had moved on from the 896th MUNS to other posts.’

  ‘There goes Colonel Challis’s perfect record,’ I said.

  ‘The colonel shot himself.’


  He shot himself? ‘Was he under suspicion?’

  ‘No. He left a note.’

  ‘Why’d he do it?’

  ‘Shame, basically. Also, you remember the one-star general and the colonel I told you about, the two officers who were under suspicion? The FBI took them into custody. They were spirited away to a safe house somewhere in Maryland.’

  ‘What did they get out of them?’

  ‘A couple of corpses.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Both were murdered. One was electrocuted in the bath, the other shot. Whoever did it then torched the house and burned it to the ground.’

  That didn’t seem possible for a whole bunch of reasons. ‘What about surveillance cameras? They give up anything?’

  ‘Temporarily disabled.’

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Good question,’ Ken echoed.

  ‘Stay out of this,’ Petinski warned him. ‘Loose ends, Cooper . . . Three NCOs who served with the 99th Security Forces at Area Two have died recently in various car and motorcycle accidents.’

  ‘And no one’s talked?’

  Petinski shook her head. ‘No one’s saying a word. There’s a nuclear weapon involved. There aren’t going to be any deals cut.’

  ‘Anyone we know been taken into custody?’

  ‘Staff Sergeant Sailor. You remember him?’

  I nodded. Sailor – the black guy the size of a plains buffalo who’d accompanied Petinski and me on the orientation tour.

  ‘More arrests are expected,’ she said.

  ‘How’d they figure who had their hands in the cookie jar?’

  ‘You remember your idea – the one about the psych tests where people learned the answers?’

  I prepared myself for a pat on the back. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, the people who really know about those things laughed at the suggestion.’

  I shrugged. It was a long shot anyway.

  ‘But they reviewed all the background security checks. Irregularities were picked up. Turns out around half a dozen people who had clearance and access weren’t who they purported to be. They’re all now in custody and high on the suspect list. The whole system’s going under review. Again.’

  Traffic was banking up. Ken doll swerved to avoid a pothole and then hit the brakes, the air full of brown dust choking the headlight beams. ‘What now?’ he muttered.