Pigment

by Renee Topper

  Outside, Jalil notices the contrast of the wet greys and cement grey of the city compared to Tanzania’s drought browns. They hail a cab and pay cash for a room at a dive hotel under a bridge in a seedy neighborhood.

  “What was he sorry for?” Fiona asks while Jalil closes the blinds to the one small window in the room that overlooks an alley.

  “He’s dead. We may never know.”

  “We know more.”

  “Be right back.”

  “Where are you going? I’m coming with you.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Fiona stays. Jalil steps out and buys a couple burner phones and sandwiches from the bodega on the corner. He thinks, Rolf tried to have a good heart, but he was the most tragic of want-to-be-heroes, often confusing his own desires with those for the greater good. He was involved and someone didn’t want him involved any more.

  He comes back in the room. Fiona has the news on the TV. The media is already airing the security footage from the parking garage where Rolf’s body was found in the trunk of the car, showcasing a grainy blurry shot of the two of them taken by a security camera. They are looking for a black man and white woman, the low resolution and obscure angles keep their features indiscernible and anonymous. With no record of Jalil entering the country, the odds of him being identified are slim. Fiona on the other hand, had stood outside the Drake building, and was well known to Drake Enterprises. She’d flown in on a regular flight, and was processed through customs.

  He hands her a sandwich, which she puts down on the dresser, unable to eat. They both stand, unable to sit, unable to be still.

  “They’ll be able to identify you. Drake’s reach is global and they’ll enlist the help of the authorities to find you. They’ll try to pin the murder on you.”

  “What about you?”

  “No one knows I’m in the country.”

  “I didn’t know your friend, I met him very briefly for the first time this morning. But he had gotten me my current position at IHRI...That’s why I’m here. It didn’t make sense. I want Kennen to rest in peace, but with all of this, I don’t think he is. And I most certainly am not. But, I can’t stay. I came here for many reasons, but I can’t solve them all here now.”

  Jalil, “You’re right. You can’t stay.” He hands her a burner. “Take this. Don’t make any calls on it. When it rings, answer it. I’ll set up an extraction for you. You can’t travel out in the open. A friend owes me a favor. He’s rough around the edges, but he’ll erase any proof you were ever here and get you out of Munich and back to Ireland. Will you be alright there?”

  “Yes, I have friends too.”

  “Thanks, Jalil. What will you do?”

  “I have to go now. She’s close. Drake has her.” He starts to leave.

  She stops him, “I’m going to find out everything. I’m going to fight them, the way I know best, with the law.” She rests her palm gently on his cheek.

  “You’re brother is gone, you have time for a slower fight.”

  42

  Lost & Found

  August 3 (later)

  While trailing Rolf around town after he’d gotten off the plane yesterday, Jalil did some research. He learned that Drake Enterprises owned the plane they flew in on, owned the car that picked him up from the airport and owned the building he’d most definitely been poisoned in. On top of this, the head of Drake spoke at Saba Saba just before the powder incident. While still unclear what brought Fiona there -- of her own accord or that of Drake -- Jalil is certain about one thing. Rolf was not easily manipulated, nor was he easily taken in, so whatever was going on, whatever part he’d played was probably what he was sorry for. Prior to his dying breath, Rolf never apologized for anything. “Sorry” his last haunting word and the clues explaining that are sparse. Sorry for having a heart and wearing it on his sleeve. Sorry for trying to save people. Sorry for failing at that, for putting them at greater risk instead. Sorry for Aliya.

  Jalil puts his attention to what or who compelled Rolf to come to Germany: The head of Drake Enterprises, Günther Drake. There isn’t a ton of information about him available online, surface details if anything, corporate news briefs and press releases. There aren’t even many pictures. Save for his company’s recent expansion in Tanzania putting him more front and center with the media through the Saba Saba incident. Günther is a relatively unknown eccentric, 50-something, elite class, man born from generations of wealth and closed circles. He had come out of his lair to play. It was not hard to figure out that he was in Africa and that his enterprise was there because he was growing his enterprise…and at the expense of those who actually lived there. But it would seem there is much more to the power he and his company wield. The entity has many strategic parts, dressed in different, seemingly disparate parts and logos: diversified and deeply rooted in every industry and every region of the globe. They make deals and break deals with the iconic dragon that they’ve made their moniker, with no care for the environment or villagers who dwell in the regions they infiltrate and pillage.

  Upon receiving news from Claude that his car was confiscated by the police and that the Irish-woman had been helped by some man of color to escape, Günther takes the chopper to his estate outside of the city. He doesn’t like being around such scuttlebutt and plans to leave the country after he wraps up a few loose ends.

  Jalil is driving an older BMW he “borrowed,” that was parked on the side of the road near where he left Fiona, and which he trick started. Now, as he approaches the Drake building, he sees the chopper take flight. He follows it Northwest across the river until it is out of sight. He is able to get the address for where he might be going online. There is an old estate about an hour drive into the countryside that has been in the Drake family since the times of the Duchy of Prussia in the 1500s.

  43

  Cargo Hold

  July 25

  A man blindfolds her, but she can smell the cigarettes and foul cologne on him and the sour breath of the other man as they put her in the back of a truck and drive on the dirty roads to the airport.

  They move her in daylight. She feels the heat beating down on her through the window into the stale dirty vehicle. She is tied tight in exposing her skin to the sun. It burns. She recalls testing the sun not two days ago while riding with Kennen. This exposure she has no control over. But she wants it to mar her perfect milky skin to make her undesirable to her captors.

  Later, at night, they force water down her throat, but it smells like chemicals and she tries to fight them and spits it out, but they force more on her. She counts the hours the drive is taking but there are so many turns that the drugs and her head injury give over and she passes out. Also, the Witch Doctor had drained a lot of her blood and offered no nourishment to restore her. Her mind spins. You can’t feed a ghost. But how then can you rape one, like the woman in the hut? Maybe because she’s not a ghost after all.

  Aliya next wakes on a plane with no idea how long she’s been out, how long she’s been in the air, or where they took off or where they are going.

  As with all major international trade conventions, from the World Cup to Saba Saba, while there are some positive things that come with them, there are some really horrific things that come with them too. The prostitution and sexploitation of children did not stay away from Saba Saba. And now Aliya is among the count of women and children stolen and smuggled out across the border, nameless, numberless, a statistic among the taken. But, unlike some she knows, she is missed and feels for her Mother, having to wonder and wait. She wishes her father had been around more, that she could have learned more survival skills from him. Even without his training, her instincts are good and she has been keeping her wits about her at least during moments the drugs would give sway, making mental notes and watching for any opportunity to learn more to escape.

  She’s kept separate from the other girls. But she can hear their whispers and their cries in the dark, in the stench of the cargo belly of the plane that usually
exports fine, hand woven rugs, baskets, fabrics; all that Aliya remembered seeing at the bazaar in Dar. Now they export the most precious cargo. Someone wants her alive, someone wants her out of Tanzania.

  She wonders to whom her captors have traded her. It’s clear she’s to remain untouched. They’re saving her for something or someone. Perhaps punishment for something she did awaits her. Maybe from the protest? It’s all a misunderstanding she’ll straighten out when she speaks to the person in charge. But what if she never makes it to meet that person. Who could be behind this?

  “I came to do good. I came to help my people and now I am just as Delila said I would be, someone who needed taking care of, more of a burden than a help. I wonder what she’s thinking now, what they all are thinking. I broke some rules but I don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.” She says to the universe, unable to speak allowed.

  As well as taking her blood, the Witch Doctor hacked her hair off with a dull blade before handing her over. He took all he could that would grow back and not diminish her value to the buyer. He could still sell vials of blood, potions and trinkets of her hair to believers, and even non-believers who feared him. The open wounds on her head hurt and the small bump from old man Carter’s cane is exposed for the first time and the new cut on it stings.

  The plane touches down on a smooth airstrip. The air is cool and damp. It reminds her of the weather in New York City that Fall she was there looking at colleges. The breeze has the same frozen whip at the end of it that nips before it moans away. She wishes she had the hat she bought on the street covering her bare head.

  The blindfold shifted in flight and she can see that it is night. A white hand removes her gag and pours more spiked water in her mouth. She spits it out despite her thirst. She kicks, and screams, clocking one of them in the jaw with her heel. They force it down her throat. The gag is put back in her mouth as her body relaxes and she is carried from the plane and put into the trunk of a car. She thinks about the others who were on the plane. What will happen to them? The two men are speaking German…she passes out.

  #

  Dizzy and weak, Aliya senses the chill of death in the room with her as she opens her eyes. She has no glasses, no sense of time or place. She has been bathed and dressed in a lacey white wedding gown, but doesn’t remember how or by whom. There is a veil over her head, over a wig, seemingly to hide her shaved head and the wounds.

  It’s cold. There are no windows, and there’s a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. It looks like an old military bunker or something like that. The walls are solid cold and they feel like they are a few feet thick. It smells like a mix of mold, gunpowder and sweat. There is one door locked from the outside that has a narrow crevice that is blocked by a sliver of wood...a peephole.

  She looks down at the harlot red painted on her toenails, the jewelry on her wrists covering the cuts and bruises where the ropes had bound her since her capture. She removes the veil and wig from her head. Her hair has grown a centimeter. How long has she been here? She wonders, disturbed. She rubs the lipstick off her lips then she uses her teeth to cut the pearls off her wrist. The jewels bounce onto the floor and roll with the slant to the drain in the floor at the center of the room. The drain funnels to a steel metal grate. The deep-set slit in the door slides open -- a response to the sound of the pearls hitting the concrete. She races to the door, a look of attack in her eyes, not the hoped for look of terror that her captor desires. Some light from behind her reaches into the shadows of the sightline and reveals a masculine piercing blue eye...moist and wide like that of an addict getting fix.

  This enrages her. She tears off a piece of the fabric of the dress and stuffs it in the eye slot. She leans back against the wall next to the hole so he can’t see her. The man pulls the piece of fabric through the hole on the other side. The piercing eye looks disappointed, then angry. She hears his heavy breathing through the door.

  Günther unlocks the door, lifts the latch and opens it. He steps into the room, his right hand in sporty white kid gloves and holding a Maasai full tank bowie fixed blade hunting knife – another trinket from his recent trip to South Africa.

  Aliya steps toward him, away from the wall, her balance is shaky from all she’s been through, with all she now faces. She tries to steady herself as he steps toward her.

  44

  Roots

  August 3 (later)

  Jalil parks the car an inconspicuous distance up the street in a covered corner outside of the estate. He climbs the five-foot high stone wall and jumps on to the property. He maneuvers through a wooded area and then the shrubs around the field where the chopper is parked. The building is an old castle with arching stone walls that cut the low misty clouds that roll overhead.

  Jalil slips inside a side door off the yard into an office. The mahogany walls and built-in shelves are enlivened with an exotic collection of items from obscure places National Geographic hasn’t yet captured.

  There is a dramatic long-horned mask on the mantel over the fireplace, handcrafted by one of the Bobo people of Burkina Faso, painted and rubbed with white clay and with the round eyes of shining river stones, for good fortune, near the mounted lion head positioned in an eternal roar above the desk. To its right is another mask with a wide shocked expression, bleached wood, its hair is made of straw and the feathers of a rare white kiwi chick that was stolen from a New Zealand wildlife center two years ago. Tokens of Günther’s recent trips, he steps back quietly, studying them.

  Through this whole quest, Jalil is seeing more beyond the physical matter of fact. And he needs to. He thinks, “Power seekers travel the world’s darkest crevices to seek out more power.” And why wouldn’t this guy go and take from Africa, where homo sapiens originated, where the vibrations must run deep to the core, the shortest distance to source energy. This room is dark with bold energy. If Aliya were in this room, she’d be able to sense the vibration, the darkness, in a more visceral way than her father.

  He sits on the leather-backed chair, to gain some insight and point of view. The chair is extraordinarily comfortable and his posture relaxes into the firm cushioning as he studies the ivory Rhino tusk head on the north wall. He rests his hand on the soft armrests, so soft he strokes them. He looks more closely at the leather. It’s a greyish skin -- natural color, not tanned. Not human, but close. The legs and feet are of a silver hair skin,...a silver backed gorilla. But there is something that draws him in deeper as he studies the chair...a tightly woven throw over the back made of the reddish hair of albino humans. Jalil strokes the texture. “Sick inbred” he mutters, clenching his teeth. The strands are slightly different groupings, from different heads.

  He opens the obscenely big mahogany desk. None of the drawers are locked. It is meticulously organized. Nothing within is unessential for office-work, paper, pens, paperclips, files and so forth. He opens the last drawer on the lower right hand side. Therein lies an antique leather bound photo album. He places it on the desk and opens it. There is picture after picture, in chronological order, of Drakes performing sacrificial ceremonies of rare and exotic animals. Over time, the sacrifices become bigger, more albino. Then finally there are human albino sacrifices. The empty pages at the back of this linear book denote that there is more to come. He closes the album and takes further note of the leather binding, which he now realizes is made of human skin.

  He observes the room, at all the ritualistic items before him. All of these trinkets are an affirmation and each was used in a ceremony or was part of a sacrifice. Overcome with a wave of emotion, Jalil knows he’s in the right place. He must go deeper into the house. He reaches to open the door from the office into the rest of the house. He’s about to turn the knob when he hears breathing low on the other side of the door, then scratching. It’s one of Herr Drakes prize German Shepherds, a descendant of the Nazi SS dogs that would sniff out Jews and gays and Catholics and all the non-aryans in WWII. An elegant animal retooled and abused for the most wretched e
xcuses of men. The dog barks, summoning more four-legged creatures and drawing the attention of his owner.

  Jalil moves away from the door. He turns to go out the door he came in, but Herr Drake is standing there with two more shepherds and an antique glöck loosely pointed at him. Jalil considers going through the closed door, but not knowing what is on the other side of the door and with the gun pointed at him, he stays put. “Herr Drake.”

  “You’re the man who saved the Irish woman.”

  Jalil doesn’t affirm or deny.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks in his slithery way.

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “I know who you are Mr. Scott. No need for being obtuse.”

  “What do you know, besides my name?”

  “Before I bring someone into my fold, I vet them, fully. You’ve known Rolf Teigen for many years.”

  “Yes, Rolf.”

  “Unfortunate what became of him.”

  Claude rushes to the doorway from the yard, ready to protect Drake. “It’s okay, Claude. Get the bird going, I’m going out of town. The police are on their way here. I won’t be bothered with what they found in my car. Take my bags.” Claude looks at Jalil and hesitates, unsure of Jalil. Günther waves him on, “It’s okay. Mr. Scott won’t be detaining me.” Claude follows orders and takes the bags outside the door.

  Günther goes to the photo album on his desk. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.” He picks up the album and holds it close. Two of his shepherds shadow him, while the third keeps Jalil at bay. “Rolf didn’t understand what was really at stake or what was really happening. He didn’t know how things had progressed in Burundi. He was right about one thing though. If the refugees are sent back to Burundi, they would be killed.”