“Eighteen million people,” Vorster remarked. “The world’s largest slum. Those of us who love Africa find this a sorry sight.”
Rubin’s gaunt face, as he stared out the window, took on a melancholy cast. “So let us return to FREE. It has a fascination unique among the militias, and it’s essential to understanding the forces that bear on Okari’s fate.
“To FREE, as much as to Karama, Bobby Okari is the enemy. FREE has cynically embraced his stated goals: resource control, redistribution of oil revenues, and rebuilding the delta. But if nonviolence succeeds, FREE’s whole rationale for ‘armed resistance’—that is, kidnapping and bunkering—evanesces.”
“In other words,” Pierce said, “FREE could have killed those oil workers and hung the murders around Bobby’s neck.”
“Or paid someone to do it. But here’s another thing about FREE: no one knows for sure who runs it, or what their motives are.”
“The other gangs are merely killers,” Vorster put in. “But FREE has a highly sophisticated command structure, and their military operations are so effective that Dave and I are convinced their leaders were trained abroad—my own guess being the Middle East. They’re also way better armed than their rivals or the army—including grenade and rocket launchers—which means they’re connected with the most serious arms dealers on the planet.”
“Politically, FREE is as shapeless as an amoeba,” Rubin explained. “Their field commander is a Luandian who calls himself General Freedom. But their head is a man known only as Jomo.” Rubin smiled wryly. “The fascinating thing about him is that no one knows if he exists. Jomo communicates with the world only through a series of highly articulate e-mails. No one outside FREE claims to have met him, and the man who reports to him, General Freedom, claims he’s sworn to secrecy.
“Theories abound. Some believe Jomo doesn’t exist; others, that he’s General Freedom. Still others argue that he’s a South African arms dealer, a Luandian general, an American financier, or even someone close to Karama himself.” Rubin’s look of amusement faded. “Whoever’s calling the shots, FREE’s attempting to absorb or destroy the other militias. If it succeeds, whoever controls FREE will control a multibillion-dollar business—oil theft.”
The convoy reached the end of the bridge, still weaving through dense traffic. Above its sirens, Pierce heard horns blasting, drivers shouting, radios blaring. Vendors dodged cars, hawking T-shirts or candy or magazines. A boy of ten or eleven with a hideously burned arm waved a basket at Pierce’s window, begging for money. Ignoring him, Rubin continued: “It doesn’t end with stealing oil. Luandia is a transit hub for drug smuggling, illegal arms trading, and money laundering—all interrelated with oil theft, all generating payoffs for people in government. FREE’s tentacles now reach into every one of them.”
Pierce absorbed this. “Only as long as the delta remains unstable,” he ventured. “FREE still depends on oil theft, right?”
“FREE,” Vorster responded, “depends on PGL. The trick is to steal enough but not too much. That way PGL remains in business, Karama stays in power, and America gets the lion’s share of Luandian oil.”
Pierce considered that. “To help Bobby Okari, I need to put pressure on PGL. A huge missing piece is how deeply PGL was involved in the destruction of Goro.”
Rubin glanced at Vorster, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “We have no idea,” Vorster said. “PGL’s security guy in the delta, Roos Van Daan, is a blight on my fellow Afrikaners—a racist for hire who’s been on the worst side of some of the dirtiest wars in Africa. But it’s hard to say what Van Daan knew or did, or how clearly anyone at PGL anticipated Okimbo’s methods. In an environment like the delta, PGL doesn’t call the shots, and things have a way of spinning out of control.”
The convoy entered a street flooded with a sewage overflow. Traffic slowed to a halt. “We should catch some dinner,” Rubin told Pierce, “sit out this mess. After that you’ve got some attractive entertainment options.”
“Which are?”
“Going to your hotel to meet the hookers at the bar. Or my recommendation—an evening with Savior Karama.” Rubin’s face turned somber. “He’s scheduled a speech tonight in the soccer stadium in Waro, where he can harangue a hundred thousand fellow citizens. His subject is the threat to national security posed by the Asari movement. This speech should pretty much tell us what Okari is up against.”
Pierce felt numb. “What does it tell you that he’s making this an event?”
“Nothing good.” Rubin glanced toward Vorster. “You’ll remember the last public speech he gave there.”
“The one about subversion by the press?”
“Yup.” Rubin turned to Pierce again. “Karama delivered that one at midnight. The next morning the state security services kicked down the door of Waro’s last independent newspaper, smashed the desks, destroyed the computers, and beat up the reporters. They were the lucky ones. Their editor—the only ‘enemy’ Karama had mentioned by name—was kidnapped, tortured, and left dead by the side of the road.”
“His name was Peter Agbo,” Vorster added softly. “Some of us admired him quite a lot. We’ll drink to him tonight.”
8
THE YES CLUB, PIERCE DISCOVERED, HAD TWO FLOORS: AN UPPER level on which privileged expats could eat and drink in peace, and a first floor packed with young Luandian women in heavy makeup and provocative dress whose means of survival was hustling white men. As Vorster and Clellan steered Pierce and Rubin inside, their armed police escorts stationed themselves at the door, prepared to stop anyone who might be carrying a weapon. Then Vorster guided Pierce through the throng of desperate, eager women toward the stairway to the second floor. “They’re like eels,” Vorster said. “A new man doesn’t pass without getting touched.”
As he said this, the women closed around Pierce in a claustrophobic press of bodies, putting their hands on his wrist, arm, back, legs, and buttocks as they murmured presumably seductive phrases. One pushed between Vorster and Pierce. She was caked in makeup; though her face was covered with festive silver sprinkles, her smile was forced, her eyes anxious and sad. “Do you need a woman?” she asked.
“Thank you,” Pierce answered gently, “but I have one.”
Her lips formed a wistful smile as Pierce moved past her. “Sad,” Pierce murmured to Vorster.
“Common,” he said. “Before oil she might have been a village woman—a circumscribed life but, one can argue, far better. It certainly beats dying of AIDS or getting brutalized by a sadistic stranger. Most of these stories don’t end well.”
Rubin and Clellan followed them to the second floor, a large room with wooden tables, a bar, and a couple of televisions tuned to CNN and a soccer match. Rubin, Vorster, and Pierce sat at one table, ordering drinks: Clellan sat apart, watching the entrance. Both Vorster and Clellan, Pierce noted, asked for soft drinks.
Rubin touched his beer glass to Pierce’s. “Your e-mail asked about how bunkering works. So fire away.”
Pierce marshaled his thoughts. “I’m still figuring out how many people profit from crushing the Asari movement. Bunkering seems like a road map—selling billions in stolen oil requires more than the thieves and crooked army officers.”
“True enough. Bunkering is like a hydra, with tentacles into every segment of the Luandian elite. The CIA has made a study of it: our people worry that the proceeds could be used to finance terrorists, or that theft and violence will eliminate the delta as a reliable source of oil.” Rubin spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Problem is, it’s nearly impossible to stop, given that everyone gets a cut of the profits.”
“’Everyone’ being?”
“Start with what you saw,” Vorster suggested. “A rust-bucket tanker loaded to the gunnels with stolen oil. Already you need PGL engineers to open a pipeline, the militia to tap it, the barge’s crew and its owner to take the oil away, and army officers to ignore them. But that’s just the beginning.
“The next
stage is to move the tanker through the creeks to an oil freighter in international waters. For the purpose of this exercise, you’re FREE. Who do you need for that?”
Briefly, Pierce considered this. “For openers, the village chiefs along the creeks.”
“Yup. Also local officials and state governors, admirals and generals to keep the navy and army away, customs officials to let the tanker cruise right through Port George Harbor into the Atlantic, a freighter no one bothers that takes the oil to refineries in Guinea or Angola—”
“All of which requires,” Rubin added, “federal officials at the highest levels. No thievery so lucrative and blatant occurs without them taking a piece.”
“In short,” Pierce said, “no one who can stop PGL from bleeding wants to.”
“Right. Analogies abound: you can say that PGL’s the semivoluntary host to a swarm of parasites; or that bunkering is a cancer that’s metasta-sized; or that the entire governmental structure of Luandia is a Mafia operation in the form of a West African state. As one example, FREE has already bought the Luandian navy: the biggest incentive to being an officer is the chance to retire on dirty money. It’s also believed that most of the tankers and freighters are owned by those close to Karama, including his national security adviser, Ugwo Ajukwa—who may well play a behind-the-scenes role in deciding Okari’s fate. But Ajukwa’s merely one among the many crooks knee-deep in bunkering who’d be happy to see Okari and his movement eradicated.”
Listening, Vorster put down his club soda. “When Okimbo destroyed that village, he benefited FREE and its corrupt legion of stakeholders—all in the name of law and order. Pinning the murders on Bobby would finish the job.”
Rubin nodded to Vorster, then turned back to Pierce. “Bunkering is embedded in Luandian corruption. Luandia’s most corrupt institutions—the military, police, and customs—produce its future presidents. Shutting down the Asari serves them all. But it’s foolish to assume that Karama wants to shut down FREE—”
“So wiping out that shantytown in Port George was all for show?”
“Sure,” Vorster said. “Maybe a couple of residents hid the guys who shot that soldier. But I guarantee that whoever planned that PGL man’s kidnapping isn’t living in a shack without water or electricity. Okimbo’s raid was a symbolic gesture to PGL, sacrificing a few hundred feckless victims on the altar of hypocrisy.”
Rubin drained his beer. Sardonically, he said, “Let’s focus on more cosmic issues than the slaughter of incidental victims. Like the world price of oil.”
“Yeah,” Pierce said. “Martel mentioned that.”
“Well he might. OPEC’s far from the only player. Four years ago, FREE’s first wave of theft and kidnapping pushed the price of oil to fifty bucks a barrel. Now it’s twice that and rising fast, in some part due to what’s happening in Luandia.
“FREE’s operations help drive up the world price of oil per barrel, and every price rise makes FREE’s bunkering business more profitable in an oil-hungry world. FREE’s getting richer, more powerful, and better armed. Pretty soon it could have the power to shut down the Port George airport, kidnap hundreds of PGL workers, and sabotage a quarter of PGL’s operations.”
Vorster nodded vigorously. “And what’s after that?” he asked rhetorically. “FREE could buy the next ‘free election’ for its chosen candidate, bankroll insurrections in West African countries rich in oil or diamonds, even finance terrorists abroad. Whatever else they do, our oil security strategists worry that FREE could completely destabilize Luandia. Makes the fate of Bobby Okari seem like pretty small potatoes.”
This disheartening litany aroused Pierce’s resistance. “Not to me,” he said. “Certainly not to Bobby. He believes that his movement can bring stability to the delta.”
Rubin gave Pierce a crooked smile. “That’s the problem, isn’t it. Too many people with power don’t want that. The only ‘good’ thing is that these same people know better than to make PGL’s existence totally intolerable. For everyone’s sake—the crooks and ours—PGL has to keep pumping oil. A two-year shutdown in the delta could cut America’s oil supply by twenty percent, perhaps leaving the Chinese to pick up the pieces.”
A waiter appeared, a polite young Luandian who stood at a respectful distance. Looking up, Vorster ordered more drinks and several dishes for the table. “You’ll have to trust me,” he told Pierce with a smile. “Whatever we’ll have you’ll never have eaten before.”
Pierce waited for the young man to depart. “In the car,” he said to Rubin, “Hank theorized that FREE’s military leaders were trained in the Middle East.”
Rubin placed a finger to his lips, as though pondering how much to say. “In Libya,” he finally answered. “At least General Freedom was. Though the delta’s Christian, he’s a Muslim convert. That means nothing in itself—the world’s full of Muslims who aren’t obsessed with fucking us over.” Pausing, he looked from Pierce to Vorster. “We know that two years ago a Saudi-backed group affiliated with bin Laden sent an emissary to General Freedom. Our information is that Freedom sent him back—FREE is making too much money bleeding PGL to get mixed up with jihadists.
“Still, a clever terrorist could use FREE’s bunkering network to pull off a one-shot operation worse than anything we’ve seen. The Pentagon has come up with scenarios that make 9/11 look like nothing.”
“Such as?”
Rubin’s gaze settled on Pierce. “FREE transfers a load of stolen oil down the creeks to a freighter offshore. But this freighter is owned by Islamic jihadists. Instead of heading for an African refinery, the jihadists fill the freighter with explosives and ram it into New York Harbor.
“That would blow up the entire port and destroy New York City for blocks. There’s nothing to stop it from happening—despite all the rhetoric about homeland security, our ports still aren’t secure, and there’s no way of tracking down an anonymous oil freighter in the middle of the Atlantic.” Rubin’s tone was clipped. “Right now the only force, if any, that can stop FREE from doing that is Karama and the military—”
“Which is riddled with corruption,” Pierce objected, “and maybe in bed with FREE in any case.”
“Unless FREE goes too far. But Karama’s all we’ve got. That’s another reason why the White House won’t be eager to pressure him about Okari.” His voice lowered. “The president knows Karama’s a murderer and a crook—our intelligence reports have left him with no illusions. But Okari’s caught up in the geopolitics of oil and the global war on terror. Right now, we need Karama.”
Pierce felt another surge of anger. “Which is precisely what Okari told me. No matter that Karama has jailed Bobby and wiped out an Asari village. Because Karama and FREE are empowered by oil, we’re afraid to save the one man who might stop them from oppressing the delta, destabilizing the country, pushing America toward an oil-driven recession, and maybe helping Osama blow us up. We don’t even know who in Luandia’s doing what with whom, or on whose behalf, except that all of them want Bobby gone.”
Vorster gave him a look of sympathy. “Assuming it wasn’t Okari himself, who does he say killed those men?”
“He thinks Okimbo. The question is why.”
Rubin raised his eyebrows. “Other than that Okimbo killed them on Karama’s orders? A story, then. Two years ago, when General Freedom was foolish enough to show his face in Port George, he was arrested by an overzealous army captain.
“They threw him in the jail where they’re keeping Okari. Strike you as easy to break out of?”
“Hardly.”
“Me neither. But somehow the general managed. Then, as now, Okimbo was in charge.”
Dinner arrived, steaming dishes of rice, peppers, snails, and chicken. Pierce gazed at it without appetite.
“Eat up,” Rubin said mildly. “Soon enough, we’re off to see Karama. That should give us some enlightenment.”
9
THOUGH IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT, THE SOCCER STADIUM AT WARO was besieged by Luandians
waiting in lines that crept forward a foot at a time. By prearrangement, Pierce, Rubin, and Vorster went to the head of a line, passing money to a policeman at the entrance. As they went inside, Pierce stopped, transfixed.
Illuminated by banks of klieg lights, the grass of the soccer field shone. Giant television screens were stationed at all sides of the field; at its center was the focus of the cameras, an elevated speaker’s platform. Of the stadium’s one hundred thousand seats, only those farthest from the field remained empty. The faces Pierce saw reflected conflicting emotions—excitement, anticipation, resignation, restiveness, boredom, and apprehension. “Why are they here?” Pierce asked Vorster.
Vorster looked around. “Soldiers and government workers are ‘encouraged’ to bring their families. Companies with government contracts bus in their employees. Some of these folks may even like Karama, not that it’s relevant. What matters is that he likes a crowd.”
They found three seats with a clear view of the field. The klieg lights captured smudged wisps of air; Pierce’s eyes stung, and his lungs began burning from the smoke and exhaust. The stadium continued to fill, the cacophony rose, and groups of Luandians began chanting, “Karama, Karama, Karama . . .”
A deputation of Chinese filed in two rows below them, their expressions somber and dutiful. “They’re used to this kind of thing,” Vorster observed.
Minutes passed. The stadium filled to capacity; suddenly the noise swelled, spreading through the crowd as two jeeps carrying armed soldiers emerged from a tunnel. Behind them, a black convertible bore Savior Karama.
Flanked by two soldiers with rifles, Karama stood where the rear seat would be, his posture still and imperious. Behind his black aviator sunglasses, he did not acknowledge the crowd; it was as though he were offering himself as an object of veneration. Pierce found his appearance chilling: the man’s dissociation seemed complete.
The jeep arrived at the speaker’s platform, surrounded by armed soldiers. A young officer opened the door for Karama. He stepped from the jeep and mounted the steps, eyes straight ahead, his expressionless face and glass-covered eyes magnified by the massive screens. He could have been walking in his sleep.
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