The Catch: A Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  CHAPTER 30

  Munroe left the hotel by way of the staff entrance and stepped out to the front long enough to determine that the thugs hadn’t returned. At the matatu depot she found an empty share taxi and haggled over a day rate with the driver. They drove north, another trip over the Nyali Bridge with the hot breeze and dust blowing through the broken windows; through traffic that slowed around car-size potholes, a fit of stops and starts until they were fully away from the city, up the Mombasa–Malindi road, past the hotels and resorts, up to where the stretches between buildings grew emptier and to where, although expatriates were likely, tourists were a rarity. She had no set destination in mind, only an idea of what she needed and the memory of what she’d seen from the boat on that first arrival in Mombasa.

  A small cluster of makeshift structures dotted the highway edges up ahead, more stick than stall, and for these roadside sellers Munroe had the driver stop. They were markers pointing to the proximity of villages and population clusters.

  In the slow banter of bargaining, Munroe inquired about empty houses, about owners looking to rent; a line of seeking that netted her questions and references to cousins or uncles or friends, but nothing solid, so she returned to the car with her items and they continued on again and then stopped again, vendor to vendor, while bush meat and dried fish and more fruit made its way into the car.

  The tedium drew long into the afternoon, and the evening invitation that would bring her closer to the men responsible for Sami’s murder and her own beating called Munroe back to the city. Without finding what she was after, she’d be forced to repeat this trip tomorrow, which was a problem insofar as Amber and Natan’s arrival was concerned.

  Munroe spotted another rack of drying meat ahead and asked the driver to pull over yet again. The vendor was a gray-haired man with leathery skin, knobby knees, and a red-and-orange cloth wrapped around his waist. With him was a young boy, perhaps nine or ten years old.

  The alcohol on the old man’s breath was strong and his eyes were cloudy, but in response to her question about houses, he stood and leaned against a rough-hewn walking stick, its top-knob polished by what had to be several decades of use.

  In beautifully articulated English he said, “My son has a house to let.”

  She doubted that he’d accurately pegged the definition of “has,” but as he offered to show the way, she offered the front seat of the car, and they left the boy behind with the rack of bush meat.

  The driver followed the old man’s hand signals down a dirt road that cut through thick foliage toward the coast, a kilometer at least before they diverted to a smaller turnoff, and came at last to a stone wall with an open metal gate and stopped in front of a single-story house.

  Munroe stepped from the car and breathed in the air; knew the ocean was close from the smell. A barefoot young man in cutoff pants and a ripped T-shirt came from the house. Seeing the old man, he smiled, and the two conversed in slow sentences that Munroe didn’t understand, and then the young man turned to her and introduced himself as James.

  If he was the old man’s son, then the old man had been busy late in life—the boy couldn’t have been but seventeen or eighteen. When Munroe let go of his hand, she said, “Your father says you have a house available.”

  “I can give you keys,” he said. “For how long do you need it?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “I can give you for two.”

  If he was willing to hand over the keys, she was willing to talk money—she shouldn’t need the property longer than a week, week and a half tops. “I’d like to look inside,” she said, and he opened the door and invited her in.

  The house had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a windowless maid’s room the size of a walk-in closet, semifurnished, with a generator and a functional kitchen and running water fed from a cistern on the roof. She walked from the living area through a back door that opened twenty feet shy of the sand, which sloped long down to the shore. There were no piers to tie off to, but they could make do without them. She negotiated the rate low enough that only someone without a vested interest in the property would have taken it, an informal arrangement made solely on a handshake. “I’ll pay you by the day,” she said. “You give me the keys now, I pay for today. I’ll return tomorrow with the next payment.”

  James handed her a key and with it she locked and unlocked the front door to confirm it was the correct one. She left her many food purchases in the kitchen. Had a fifty-fifty chance they’d still be there when she returned, but she wasn’t about to take them back to the hotel. Walked around the house and worked the lock on the rear door, then handed James twenty dollars’ worth of shillings with the promise that she’d be back by tomorrow’s nightfall.

  Evening had fallen by the time the driver returned her to the hotel, and when she stepped inside the room, the captain turned toward her, face swollen, blood clotted near his forehead where he’d apparently taken a blow. Gabriel sat across from him, the stick in his lap, and Munroe said, “He tried to escape again?”

  “Yes, and he try fight me.”

  Munroe stepped around to the captain. He winced and pulled away when she tried to examine a wound that was minor, if a bleeder. “Very nice,” she said. “You keep getting knocked in the head and eventually you’re going to go out again—that’ll make my life easier but probably won’t help you much.” She straightened and turned toward Gabriel. “You did good,” she said. “Thank you.” Pulled out five hundred shillings and handed it to him. “I’ll pay you for the work when you get back. Go celebrate a job well done, get something to eat.”

  He nodded and stood, took the money, and when he’d gone, Munroe sat on his bed and sighed. Pulled off her shoes, picked up the stick, and, resting her hand on it, lay back on the bed. Felt the captain’s gaze boring into her. Eyes closed and face toward the ceiling she said, “I offered you a shot at freedom. Just take it. It’ll be easier than getting beat up every day.”

  He was silent a long while and then said, “I agree to help you and you untie me, let me go?”

  “We save the crew on the Favorita and then I let you go.”

  “Is still a death sentence.”

  “Maybe,” she said, then opened her eyes and turned to look at him. “But it’s still a better option than your Russian friends.”

  The tendrils of exhaustion wound up from the bed, pulling her downward. She closed her eyes again. “Why do they want you so badly?” she whispered.

  The captain harrumphed and shifted, perhaps turned his back. She could feel that he’d stopped watching her, so she ignored him and allowed herself the luxury of falling in and out of uneasy sleep until Gabriel returned.

  He sat on the captain’s bed and she handed the stick off to him. Left for the shower and cold water to bring her fully awake, then changed into the next set of stolen clothes, and as she’d done the evening before, transformed her hair and face and drew in the mental shift, the character transformation, a change she could feel inside her chest, inside her head, as she pulled in each long breath.

  Every run for information, whether the target was male or female, was seduction in the highest form: The conquest happened first inside the mind. Tonight should have been an afterthought, the type of routine work that in years gone by she would have done on the fly, invigorated by the challenge of triumph. Instead, the fatigue of indifference and the words from the book came back again: What did it profit to gain the world and lose your soul?

  What would she give in exchange?

  SERGEY WAS ALREADY in the lobby when she arrived, and although he’d told her that they would be partying with a group, they left the hotel alone. Traveling by private car outside the city, they took the Likoni ferry south to the party playground of tourists, to a beach-side restaurant tucked in among villas and stately homes that lined the shore. It was a place without a name, a place one had to know to find, which indicated either that the Russian delegation had been in Mombasa longer than the hawaladar had
let on or that they had local connections who were familiar with the area.

  The driver parked and opened the rear door.

  Hand on arm, Munroe followed her date into the restaurant, where, even though it was still early by holiday standards, the party had clearly been going on for some time. The main room was one large circle, an oversize Tahitian-style hut with a ceiling at least thirty feet high and sides open to the night, screened in against insects, and lit by colorful lights.

  Munroe nursed a drink through the first hour while those around her drowned in liquor and music and dance. Sergey became more inebriated, his coarse flirting with other women less veiled, and so she left him and wandered among the guests, listening to threads of conversation that had no common language or common tone and more often than not resorted back to English and banality and made a mockery of the time she’d wasted coming here.

  Two hours in, the three other men from the Russian delegation arrived with an entourage of local women. Munroe watched her date, and when he left off his desperate vying for a brunette’s attention to join his group, she exited her own conversation, timing her approach so that she arrived at the same time he did. Made it through another round of introductions, another round of drinks, placed faces to the names on her list; absorbed group dynamics and the women that had come along, and eventually singled out Alice, the youngest, who belonged to Anton, the boss of the group, and sidled up to her in a form of camaraderie.

  From Alice, Munroe learned the patterns of the delegation, of the haunts that they visited and the money that they spent, learned what they ate and drank and how they occupied their time, what made them laugh, but most important, whom they wined and dined. And in Alice’s recognition of people in the room Munroe began to assemble a map of threads and connections. This was consuming work that pulled her back to that different life and different time, a world of secrets and adrenaline and high-stakes information, and only when her date encouraged her toward the exit did she realize that six hours had passed. His interruption forced her up for air, and in breaking from the focus of the assignment, she felt her own fatigue.

  Munroe followed him without protest; his car was the fastest and safest way to return to the city. In the backseat he pawed at her with drunken advances and in response she laughed and pushed him back, ran the fine line between encouragement and offense, seduction and aggression, an invitation to another night and the urge to slit his throat.

  GABRIEL WAS AWAKE when Munroe returned to the room, holding vigil by the desk with the small lamp on and one of the books she’d stolen between his hands. He looked up when the door opened, and seeing her, he smiled and said, “You had good night?”

  “Yes,” she said, and glanced toward his bed, empty and inviting.

  “You go sleep,” he said, and so she stripped out of the blouse and replaced it with the T-shirt and lay on the empty bed. Eyes closed, she listened to the tempo of the captain’s breathing, a slow and steady rhythm not nearly as slow or steady as it should have been, which told her he’d woken when she came in and preferred that she not know it.

  She managed a few hours of rest before sunrise came, and then with a pillow over her head managed a few more after that until the effort became pointless and she rose and showered and reverted back to her old clothes. She ordered room service for Gabriel and herself, ate what she wanted and gave the captain what was left over, and with her obligations satisfied, left the hotel once more for the matatu depot.

  It took fifteen minutes of asking around, of leads and phone calls and dead ends, to find a reliable van to rent for the day, and when she’d finally negotiated the rate and secured the driver, she had him take her to the Mombasa airport, where, among the many other parked vehicles, they waited.

  The flight was scheduled to arrive at midmorning, and close to noon Munroe spotted them, Amber first, followed by Natan pushing a luggage cart piled high with suitcases and duffel bags. Amber squinted right, then left, shielding her eyes against the bright light of the outdoors, searching through the milling crowds, while touts and taxi drivers and money changers vied for her business and attention and Natan forcefully pushed them back to make space for the cart: all part of the maddening rush of arrival.

  CHAPTER 31

  Munroe left the van and maneuvered around bodies to move in Amber’s direction, and when Amber glanced up again and made eye contact, her expression twisted between a smile and tears and she pushed toward Munroe and threw her arms around her neck in a hug that she never would have attempted in Djibouti.

  Munroe’s body revolted and the pain in her chest burned hot. She drew down a breath and patted Amber’s back with as much warmth as she could muster and then when the hug became claustrophobic and suffocating, she gently pushed Amber away. Natan was beside them now, with the cart, and Munroe shook his hand. He gripped her hand far harder than was necessary, held on longer than was expected, as if making a point, and Munroe didn’t need the act of dominance to feel the animosity.

  She nodded at his ankle and he said, “It’s good now.”

  Amber took Munroe’s hand again and Munroe fought the urge to shrug her off, managed a good three meters before her fingers began to sweat and the claustrophobia kicked in again, and with the anxiety mounting, she had to let go. Munroe put her hand on Amber’s back, guided her toward the van, while Natan followed.

  The driver loaded their stuff and Munroe slid the side door open. Amber stepped in and slipped onto the back bench. “How long do we have the van?” she said.

  “Just today,” Munroe said, and Natan lifted a duffel, knocked into Munroe as he put it on the floor by Amber’s feet, and then climbed into the van and in the process brushed hard against her without even a pretense of apology.

  She didn’t have the physical strength to take him down and make a point, so she slid the door shut and let him have his passive-aggressive fit. Waited until the last of the bags were loaded in the back and climbed into the passenger seat. Using Swahili so that Natan wouldn’t understand, a way to needle him by shutting him out, she told the driver to take them to the Royal Court Hotel.

  They were five minutes down the road before Amber spoke. “Was that Somali?” she said.

  “Swahili.”

  “You speak that, too?”

  “Working on it,” Munroe said, and the driver, checking Amber in his rearview, said, “He speaks very well.”

  The rest of the ride into the city was a mixture of silence and stories: Amber grilling for what little information Munroe had, and Natan sitting with arms crossed, staring out the window through sunglasses. At the hotel Munroe guided the driver around the block and down the street onto which the staff door led and, stepping from the van, said, “It’s going to be twenty minutes at least before I get back down, so sit tight, okay?”

  “Where are you going?” Amber said, and Munroe shut the door without answering. Headed inside and up to the room, where Gabriel, on the floor beside the desk, back to the wall and knees bent, struggled to stay awake. The look on the captain’s face said that he’d been biding his time, just waiting for another opportunity to get loose, and that she’d inadvertently thwarted his plan.

  Gabriel picked up the stick and got to his feet.

  “Any escape attempts?” Munroe said.

  Gabriel shook his head. “He has been good.”

  Munroe cleared out the closet and dumped her few belongings into a plastic bag and in Swahili that had gotten clearer as the days had progressed said, “I’m moving the mzee today. I think it’s better that you don’t stay with us. The people who killed Sami will be looking for us, and Mary needs you.”

  Gabriel was thoughtful for a moment, and she knew he was weighing risk against reward. In the end he didn’t offer to continue working, so she closed out the matter. “Come with us until we have the mzee in his new home, and then I will take you home and pay you everything that I owe you.”

  “We go now?” he said.

  She nodded. “Now.”

/>   Gabriel held on to the stick and picked up her bags and motioned the captain up. “Where are we going?” the captain said.

  “On a little trip,” she said.

  A glimpse of panic crossed his face. “I will give you more information,” he said. “Another name.”

  She took his elbow and nudged him upward. He resisted at first, but Gabriel stood beside the bed and held the stick high in the threat of another hit, so the older man grudgingly got to his feet and as Munroe prodded him toward Gabriel, he said, “Nikola Goran.”

  She nodded. Wasn’t in the mood for playing guess who. Knelt beside the bed and loosened the sheets, and then slowly, to avoid straining, pulled them off, and repeated the procedure with the second bed. Wadded the bedding into tight balls and handed them to Gabriel. He opened his mouth in protest and she said, “They’ll blame me, not you. They’ll put the expense on my bill.”

  He took them, and fingers to the captain’s back, Munroe prodded him toward the door. To Gabriel she said, “Check the hall. Tell me when it’s empty.”

  “Nikola Goran,” the captain said again. “It’s my name.”

  Gabriel said, “It’s empty,” and Munroe pushed the captain onward again.

  “Nikola Goran, Nikola Goran,” he said again, and she said, “I heard you the first time,” and that was when the first yelp came out of him, a scream for help, and Munroe slugged him in the kidney and regretted it for the pain she caused herself.

  The captain sagged slightly and nearly tripped over his own feet.

  “You can shut up now,” she hissed, “or I’ll cut off your ears and then take you directly to the people who want you.”

  “You don’t take me there now?”

  “No,” she said, and shoved him into the hall.

  A door opened behind them and Munroe turned for a quick look. Noted another guest and pushed the captain on faster and this time his pace picked up willingly. The Russians might spot her bringing him down, but they’d been up late, and from the conversation the evening before she knew they had no plans for anything until tonight; they, too, were in a holding pattern, waiting for something.