The African Contract

by Arthur Kerns

Stone stared at the ear and knew Jacob had reason to be pissed at the CIA. He would be, but was Jacob’s tradecraft up to snuff? Had he let his guard down?

  Remembering Sandra’s words about not lingering, he looked at his watch. “We should get to the point.”

  They looked out the window. Birds, black with white blotches on their breasts, waddled on piles of garbage. The gloom from an overcast sky blended with the deteriorating setting.

  Jacob spoke. “There are some disturbing rumors. As you know, many people from the Middle East ply this region. For years, they have come, lived here, and traded goods. Some of these people now trade weapons.”

  Stone nodded, thinking what he had just heard sounded like some factoid from a news documentary. Anyone who flew on the regional airlines in Africa recognized the Lebanese, Indians, and Israelis sharing the cabin. “And now the jihadists have descended,” Stone offered.

  “Yes, but this time, a group is here, not to sell, but to purchase.”

  “Buy what?” Stone asked.

  Jacob shrugged with his upper body.

  “Let’s see, my boss advised that you,” Stone pointed, “suggested I travel to Sierra Leone.”

  Nodding, eyes closed, Jacob pushed a white index card across the table on which appeared a name, a company, and a telephone number in heavy marker ink. “Memorize,” he ordered.

  Stone studied the card, looked away, and mentally repeated the words. Pushing it back, he planned to write the information down in code and slip it somewhere secure.

  “He is an Afrikaner. You must see him very soon,” Jacob said. “He is taking a big risk.”

  “Understood.” Stone watched the man pull back and again look out the window as if looking for someone.

  Pulling the radio partially out of his pocket, Stone keyed the transmitter twice, signaling Goodman and Sandra to pick him up. He rose and made his way to the door.

  Without looking, Jacob tossed a good-bye.

  In the backseat of the SUV, Stone asked if they had detected anything strange while they waited for him. “Nothing,” Sandra answered, and added, “You didn’t waste any time.”

  “Got what I wanted.” He also learned that, as usual, his boss and mentor back at Langley, Colonel Gustave Frederick, had told him the bare minimum. Even Jacob realized Stone was in the dark, a professional embarrassment as it placed Stone on a lower rung in the operation.

  Stone rubbed his forehead. A headache was coming on, not from job stress but from his anti-malaria pills. “When’s the next plane to Freetown, Sierra Leone?” he asked Goodman.

  “One is scheduled at eight in the morning for Abidjan. From there you can get a connection to Freetown.”

  Stone touched Sandra’s shoulder. “Do you have a pen?”

  When she passed it back, he inked in his palm only the telephone number Jacob had given him. He was good at names; still, to be safe, he repeated to himself the name and the company: Dirk Lange, York Export Ltd.

  Chapter Four

  Monrovia, Liberia

  Above the horizon, through the haze and city smoke, the sun bubbled blood red. Al Goodman had gone to the airport to make arrangements for Stone and Sandra’s flight the next day to Freetown. The embassy’s cafeteria had closed, leaving the two on their own to find a place for dinner. Sandra suggested they stay in their quarters and combine what snacks they had brought with them.

  “Let’s try the restaurant Goodman and I went to last night,” Stone suggested. “We can borrow that old car sitting on the embassy compound. The restaurant’s only a five-minute drive from here.”

  “Is the food good?”

  “Not especially, but it’ll be nice to get out.”

  “At night. In this town?”

  “We won’t sightsee. Just have a quick meal and head straight back.”

  Stone began to have second thoughts as he turned the ignition key on the beat-up sedan. The motor struggled, but when he put the shift into first gear, the car moved along somewhat. Driving past the darkened buildings, Sandra showed unease but relaxed when Stone, at the wheel, pointed out the landmarks he recognized from the night before. The streets were deserted. The sun dropped below the horizon, leaving behind a gray glow.

  Stone found the restaurant, or what Goodman had called an urban “cook shop,” resembling what one would find in the Liberian countryside. It took up the ground floor of a two-story house that hadn’t seen a paintbrush since the beginning of the civil turmoil years before. Long strips of black tape zigzagged across the front window, keeping the cracked glass from collapsing.

  “This is a restaurant?” Sandra asked.

  “Yeah. Goodman said it’s one of the two decent ones left in town. They cook outside in the backyard on a stone hearth.”

  He parked at the entrance so they could keep an eye on the car from inside the restaurant. A group of four casually dressed African males entered the restaurant after eyeing them and their car.

  “Hayden, are you carrying your gun?”

  “Yes.” Stone had his Colt .45 but had brought only one extra magazine. He knew Sandra had her Glock.

  They didn’t bother locking the car in case they had to make a quick departure from the restaurant. Inside, they met the smells of unfamiliar food. Candles on the three tables along with a kerosene lantern sitting on the bar next to the back door provided light. The city’s electrical power was down again.

  A middle-aged woman, who Goodman introduced the night before as the owner, directed them to a table next to the window. The four men who had entered before them had taken a table on the other side of the room. Stone and Sandra became objects of curiosity.

  “Interesting,” Sandra said, looking at the plates and glasses turned over, a napkin placed on top of each plate.

  “It’s a Liberian custom.” Stone overturned his plate and glass. “I suggest having a beer, which will be warm, or better still, the house ginger beer.”

  The owner said, “You were here last night, sir. With the gentleman from the American Embassy.”

  “Yes. This is my colleague. What’s your special tonight?”

  “The special is the only dish tonight. I’ll bring it.”

  “What’s it going to be?” Sandra asked Stone, concerned.

  “We’ll see.”

  When the meal came, the woman identified the two plates as fufu and jollof rice with shrimp. She placed a small bowl of soup before each of them. “Goat soup,” she said. “Another specialty.”

  “Hope the soup doesn’t have too many peppers in it,” Stone said. It did.

  Sandra played with her meal, finding the rice and shrimp acceptable. “Where will you lay over when you return home?”

  “Paris.”

  “You don’t want to go back to Nice or Villefranche?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid I’m not welcomed on the Riviera. The contessa blames me for shooting up her palace.”

  “How did you two get together in the first place?”

  “Almost twenty years ago, I was a naval officer assigned to the American consulate in Nice. During Christmas season I was invited to attend a local party. I guess you’d call it a dinner dance.”

  “You were in uniform of course.”

  Stone put his fork down. The fufu was good, but he questioned the age of the shrimp under the rice. “I was an ensign. It was a fun party. You know, they have this custom in France and Italy where at one of those functions everyone gets up, holds hands, and dances and skips around all the rooms singing loudly. Like being in a conga line. I met Lucinda there that night.”

  “And?”

  “We dated for about a year and then …”

  “Who broke it off?”

  Stone shrugged.

  “You dumped her.”

  “My ship left port.”

  “You were assigned to a diplomatic establishment on land, not on a ship.”

  Stone played with the rice on his plate. He wondered what
Lucinda’s reaction would be if he returned to Nice and phoned her. Refuse to see him? Perhaps not.

  “Only a few months ago, I planned to live on the Riviera with her. Then everything fell apart.”

  “Still got that old feeling?”

  He laughed. “Funny thing. I don’t have a photograph of her, and I can’t seem to form a picture of her in my mind.”

  Sandra closed her eyes.

  “No matter how I try, I can’t visualize her. I can hold images of strangers in my mind, but not her. Weird, no?”

  After pausing, she said, “Same thing happened to me with a boyfriend in high school.”

  “And?”

  “Still can’t picture him.”

  At that Sandra turned her head toward the other patrons, and her expression changed from inquisitive to alarm. It happened fast. Stone saw the local men leave their table and run out the back door. The owner moved behind the bar and began taking the liquor bottles off the shelf.

  Like a leopard hearing a branch unexpectedly snap, Stone’s reflexes kicked in. His gun came out as he pushed away from the table. His eyes searched the room for adversaries.

  Sandra pointed. Outside the dirty window, in the gloom of dusk, a car with its headlights on had parked in front of the restaurant. Four men, not African but Middle Eastern, emerged. Two carried submachine guns.

  “Jihadists,” Stone said, his Colt out, safety off. “Showtime.”

  Sandra and Stone jumped from their chairs and raced to the back door. They made it through as two men barged in the front door. The one with the machine gun sprayed the entire room, while the other fired in their direction with his pistol. A young busboy fell, bloody holes in his shirt.

  Instinctively, Stone knew the machine gun had to be neutralized first. Using the doorjamb as cover, he squeezed off two rounds into the stomach of the man holding the machine gun. The terrorist clutched his midsection, jerked forward, and fell to the floor, dropping the gun.

  Sandra behind Stone, in a crouch, shot the other terrorist with repeated rounds until her Glock emptied. The man, his body splattered with blood, fell backwards. She slapped a fresh magazine into the butt of the gun.

  “That was the easy part,” Stone said. “The other two outside have to be going around to the back.”

  “Let’s surprise them. We’ll go out the front and slip behind them.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Passing by the man groaning on the floor clutching his stomach, Stone picked up his machine gun. At the same time, the man pulled out a pistol from inside his coat. Before he could shoot, Sandra fired twice. The man became still.

  “Let’s move,” Stone said, and the two raced out the door.

  Outside in the street, they rounded the building and saw the two jihadists entering the back door. Surprised when they saw them, the men turned and opened fire.

  Stone and Sandra both knelt on one knee and continued to fire until they emptied their guns. One terrorist tried to stay on his feet but spun in a contorted tumble into a trashcan. The shooting stopped. The two jihadists lay at the doorstep. Still.

  As Stone reloaded, Sandra said, “I’m out of ammo.”

  “Here. Take the machine gun.”

  Stone checked the bodies lying outside, removing their identification. Large black birds cried overhead. Dogs barked from behind walls.

  Inside the restaurant, Stone carefully examined the two dead men on the floor. Again they removed anything identifying their would-be killers.

  “You are not going to leave them there?” the owner yelled.

  “We’ll pull them outside in the street for the police to pick up.” Stone said.

  “What police?” The owner was angry. “Your embassy has to fix this.”

  Stone looked around the restaurant. Tables overturned, bullet holes in the walls, broken dishes, food spread on the floor. The glass in the front window had shattered.

  “Who will pay me for this?”

  Stone walked up to the woman. “Do you take American dollars?”

  Chapter Five

  Monrovia, Liberia—August 8, 2002

  The tan Land Cruiser bounced out of a pothole in the two-lane tarred roadway. Hayden Stone sat shotgun and watched the signs to Monrovia’s Roberts International Airport pass by. In the backseat, Sandra Harrington held on to the baggage stacked next to her. The thirty-five-mile drive from the embassy took them through endless rows of homes and shacks in varying stages of disrepair. They met only light vehicle traffic, evenly distributed between old diesel trucks belching blue smoke and new military and police SUVs.

  During the entire time, Goodman, at the wheel, remained taciturn. The previous night had been spent leading Stone and Sandra through the Liberian legal hurdles consisting of giving statements and signing papers—for Stone, in his alias Finbarr Costanza. The police took the four jihadists’ bodies away. Liberian immigration people advised the four deceased’s entry papers were “not in order.” That helped the American position. Financial recompense slated for the owner of the restaurant further helped matters.

  On the phone, the CIA chief of station wished them a safe and mainly speedy departure from his turf. The information on the four thugs would be cabled back to Langley for analysis.

  Back in his room, Stone shared his Irish whiskey with Sandra. When finally he slipped between the sheets and closed his eyes, he hoped not to have his usual bizarre dreams that normally followed a gunfight. That night he had none. The whiskey had worked.

  The SUV bounced out of another pothole, shifting luggage in the backseat.

  “Sandra and I are scheduled to leave at eight,” Stone said. “What are the chances of departing on time?”

  “None at all.” Goodman blew his horn at a man wandering in the middle of the road. “Once you board, the weather from here to Abidjan is clear. From there to Freetown as well.”

  People plodded along the side of the road. As for many in undeveloped African countries, travel by foot provided the only means for getting to and from the markets. The women’s clothes appeared more somber than Stone remembered. The bright, gay colors were absent. Instead of the light sway in their walk, the people shuffled.

  The low-lying airport buildings appeared in the distance as Goodman slowed at a police checkpoint. The pulse always quickened at roadblocks in the third world. Stone knew the rules: be prepared to show your passport, hand over some of the local ragged currency, and at all costs stay in the vehicle. Just hope that one of the young, untrained thugs in a dirty uniform didn’t let loose intentionally or unintentionally with his AK-47. Goodman, experienced with the situation, finessed the grinning policemen with their outstretched hands.

  At the entrance to the hangar building, Goodman introduced the embassy’s expediter, a slender African with airport security badges dangling from his neck. “This fellow will get you through the gate and show you to the lounge—if you can call it that.” Goodman extended his hand. “Got business to attend to. Next visit, we’ll keep the snakes and bad guys away.”

  The expediter knew the right people and whisked them through the airport check-in. Goodman had been accurate; the lounge looked unimpressive, consisting of only seven battered chairs in a roped-off area from the main terminal. The plane was scheduled to arrive in an hour, which was only thirty minutes late. Not bad for this region.

  Stone and Sandra settled themselves in a corner. She handed him a soda from her backpack. “It still has a chill to it. Damn, the air in this terminal is stuffy.”

  They sat quietly, watching the throng. No smiles on their faces. Stone witnessed only frowns. No displays of flashy jewelry on the women. No ties on the men.

  His mind drifted to the events of the night before. The attack was not a random assault in a city in the throes of anarchy. Foreign jihadists had planned the operation, and he and Sandra were targeted. He knew now that his mission was not a matter of talking with an Israeli contact and going to Sierra Leone to q
uestion some South African.

  “What’s eating you?”

  Stone waved off the question.

  “You’ve had that look since this morning,” Sandra said. “The one where the creases in your face become hard and those gray eyes lose their sparkle.”

  Stone moved close to her and whispered, “This mission is not just a stop and shop. As usual, I haven’t been told everything. I’m a bull’s-eye for some terrorist group and I haven’t done squat.” He put his finger on her knee. “You were sent down here to help me. Have you been clued in and are holding back on me?”

  Sandra’s mouth tightened and Stone backed away. He had witnessed what she could do with a quick karate chop.

  “I thought we were … closer.” Before her eyes moistened, she put on her Italian sunglasses. “You know as much as I know,” she mouthed between her teeth.

  “Sorry. You’re right.”

  She relaxed. “Do you expect to hear from Colonel Frederick when we reach Sierra Leone? Some response on our contact with Jacob?”

  “I’m counting on it. At that time I’ll expect more from him about this gig.”

  “The colonel will give you as much as he thinks necessary,” she said.

  “Knowing that people want to kill you comes under the heading of necessary.”

  “Keep in mind Frederick would not have sent you and me here if the mission wasn’t important, and he knows from experience you can handle yourself.”

  She looked over the terminal from behind her sunglasses, still alert after the night’s gunfight. If she had a case of the nerves, she didn’t show it. Wearing snug jeans and a long-sleeved blouse, a scarf hid much of her blonde hair. Unlike many western women who traveled to Africa, she had the good sense to dress modestly to avoid as much attention as possible.

  “How long will you be with me?” he asked.

  “As far as I know, a couple of days. Have to get back to Paris.” She sighed. “You didn’t expect this to be a long trip, did you?”

  “The last time Frederick offered a job, he said it would be a lark. Sunning and boating on the Riviera. You know how that ended up.”