The reader of Mao approached Pierce, his eyes still red. “Come with me.”
Pierce glanced at the grave. Quietly, he asked, “Who killed him?”
For a moment, the man gave no sign of hearing. In a flat tone, he answered, “Who knows. Perhaps they came for you.”
ONCE MORE THEY climbed into the boat. As before, the militiamen donned hoods. No one spoke at all.
For another hour, they navigated the maze of creeks. Then they beached the boat again, this time on a patch of mud. A narrow path, not visible from the water, led into a sunless growth of palms and mangroves so dense that Pierce had no sense that it could end. Finally light appeared, and then an encampment of armed men.
Astonished, Pierce took in the concrete barracks, the shirts and pants hanging from clotheslines, the men loitering or smoking joints or clustered around iron cooking pots. The reader of Mao led him to a hooded man sitting apart from the others on a bench carved from the trunk of a palm tree. Lithe and well muscled, this man seemed taller than the rest, and the impassivity created by his hood was deepened by the intense stare he fixed on Pierce. In a commanding voice, preternaturally deep, he said, “I am General Freedom. I’m told you think I had three men hung.”
Pierce weighed his answer. This man could kill him in an instant; but then he could have ended Pierce’s life without extracting him from Port George. The instincts he possessed, those of a trial lawyer, were to be direct and nondeferential. “It’s occurred to me,” he said.
Freedom’s eyes became slits in a black mask. “Why would I do that?”
“To discredit Okari, and give Karama an excuse to execute him.”
To Pierce’s surprise, Freedom emitted a contemptuous laugh. “No great loss. Okari became so infatuated with his own celebrity that he mistook his people’s defenselessness for immunity from death. Okimbo shattered their illusions.”
“Leaving the field to you, Okari’s rival.”
“Okari’s rival,” Freedom repeated with disdain. “It is true that, by arousing fear, we make Okari more attractive to cowards. But his downfall was inevitable: only a fool imitates Martin Luther King when his opposition is Savior Karama.” Beneath his contempt, Freedom’s tone was imperative. “We did not scheme to give Karama a pretext, and he did not require one. I want you to understand that.”
Hearing this, Pierce relaxed a little; whatever else was at stake in this conversation, it was not Pierce’s life. “Why does it matter?” he asked.
“Because of the Western press. When you returned to America, you caused a considerable stir. If Okari becomes a martyr, I do not want FREE to share the blame that should be Karama’s alone. So listen well.” Leaning forward on the log, Freedom spoke intensely. “There’s the genuine FREE, and then there are groups that cloak their actions in our name. But we do nothing in the delta that I would be embarrassed to claim.
“We do not lynch defenseless oil workers; we kidnap their masters. Kidnapping is profitable. Murder is bad for our business in every sense.” Freedom’s voice became stern. “Nor are we the cat’s-paw of Islamists. I’ve converted to Islam—that much is true. I share Al Qaeda’s aspiration to fight those who would perpetuate our slavery by stealing our oil. But bin Laden’s struggle in the Middle East has refocused America’s avarice on us. Our sole concern is gaining control of the only asset that can end our misery and oppression.”
As Freedom spoke, some of his followers came closer, listening intently. Pierce took stock of his own impressions: this was a man of blunt charisma and, he guessed, considerable intelligence. But in the service of what or whom, he could not guess. “Control?” he asked. “How does kidnapping and extortion profit anyone but you?” Or whoever gives your orders, Pierce thought but did not say.
Freedom’s eyes lit with contempt. “As opposed to speeches, slogans, and marching unarmed Asaris to the slaughter? Okari’s day is done; I do not need him dead. With every act of ‘kidnapping and extortion’ we recruit more men and buy more arms. Soon we, not Karama, will effectively control the delta; soon he will understand that Okimbo cannot save him.”
“I thought Okimbo was your friend.”
Freedom stopped abruptly, his body tensing as he seemed to measure Pierce anew. “We have many friends,” he answered. “Friendship follows fear. Someday Karama will give us what we want, or he will lose his country. If you ever meet our president, tell him that.”
“Tell him yourself,” Pierce answered. “You didn’t bring me here to say that, and I didn’t come to hear it.”
Freedom’s eyes drilled into Pierce’s. “We did not hang those workers,” he said succinctly.
“Then who did?”
Freedom leaned closer. “There is a witness. Follow instructions, and he will come to you.” Abruptly, the man stood. “In the meanwhile, you will stay here for the night. I have another message, this one for Karama. I do not wish for you to spoil it.”
10
PIERCE SPENT THE NIGHT ON A WOVEN MAT SPREAD ACROSS THE floor of a mud hut. He did not sleep; his thoughts were shadowed by the image of a dead man, brains seeping from his skull, and the burial that followed. Outside he heard footsteps and voices giving orders—the sounds, novel to Pierce but unmistakable, of a military operation unfolding in the dead of night. When morning came, Freedom was gone, the encampment virtually deserted.
The reader of Mao stuck his head through the door. “Come with me,” he said with quiet disgust. “On this day of days, my contribution is returning you to Okari’s wife unharmed.”
THE TRIP THROUGH the delta, ominous but uneventful, culminated with two militiamen—unhooded and innocuous in appearance—dropping Pierce at the landing where his journey had begun.
Bara waited in the car. “So,” he said dryly. “You’re alive after all.”
“By accident,” Pierce retorted, and outlined what had happened. “FREE’s up to something,” he concluded. “That’s all I know for sure. We’re left with Freedom’s version of the truth, waiting for a ‘witness’ about whom we know nothing.”
IT WAS DUSK when Pierce reached the Okaris’ compound.
Marissa was on the patio. She turned at the sound of his footsteps; for a moment she simply looked at him, and then her smile became the grin Pierce had not seen for twelve years. She stood there, shaking her head. “It’s just so strange,” she told him. “Everything’s terrible. Suddenly I’m smiling like a madwoman because you’re still alive.”
Pierce put his hands on his hips. “You set the bar pretty low.”
“In a minute, I’ll go back to being miserable.” Her voice softened. “While you were gone, I couldn’t sleep or eat. For weeks now, every time the phone rings or someone knocks on a door, my first instinct is that Bobby’s dead. For the last twenty-four hours I’ve included you.”
“Well, I’m back,” Pierce said gently. Neither of them, he realized, had made any move to touch the other.
SHORTLY MARISSA BROUGHT out two candles, a bowl of pasta primavera, and a bottle of passable red wine. “Bobby stopped drinking,” she explained. “He called alcohol ‘the waste of a clearheaded hour.’”
Pierce sipped the wine. “I have less far to fall,” he said, and told her about General Freedom. “It bothers me,” he finished, “how much he seems to know about what I’m thinking.”
Gazing at the candles, Marissa did not comment. “Whatever he tells you to do,” she said finally, “I’m doing it with you.”
“Too dangerous,” Pierce objected.
“Luandia is dangerous,” she replied. “I understand it far better than you can. Whatever you hear from whoever this is, I want to hear it too.”
For the moment, Pierce chose not to argue. As they began eating, he realized that he was ravenous.
After dinner, they stood gazing out at the ocean—the tankers waiting offshore, the distant lights of Petrol Island. Their conversation turned to Pierce’s life in America, and then to his parents. “They’re both dead now,” he told her. “But after my dad died, I actually got t
o know my mother.”
“Because she was free to speak?”
“It was more subtle than that. I’m sure she always had opinions; it was just that no one but my father knew them. Once he was gone, I realized that—within the limits imposed by religion and her natural antipathy toward psychological analysis—she was an acute observer of her children and their lives.” He remembered his own bemusement. “Know what she said about Amy? ‘I knew she’d never want children—Amy’s her own creation, and perfecting that is all she cares about.’ That the remark encapsulates Mom’s anti-feminist bias didn’t keep it from being true.”
Marissa glanced at him. “Do you still want children?”
“Yes. Even more now that I’m older and feel a little less likely to commit malpractice. Parenting means you have to look hard at yourself to keep from screwing up a child. But whatever my parents’ flaws, I know they loved us unreservedly. What a joy it must be to feel that for another human being.”
They fell silent for a time. In the light of flaring gas, Pierce saw—or thought he saw—the outlines of several powerboats moving across the water with unusual swiftness. Then Marissa said, “You’d be a good father, Damon.”
Pierce turned to her. “Why do you say that?”
“Part of it is the capacity to love, which I know you have. But another part is detachment: the ability to see another person—in this case, your child—as someone whose needs are separate from your own. I saw that in you a long time ago.”
To his surprise, Pierce felt touched. “Thanks,” he said lightly. “Amy’s greatest compliment was that I excelled at trial tactics.”
After a time they turned to Marissa’s life: her mother, shadowed by ill health; her final break with her father, less a dramatic rupture than the last expression of his vast, incurable indifference; then, briefly and touchingly, Omo—for whom, though Marissa did not say this, her feelings had become maternal. They did not speak of Bobby; it was plain she did not wish to. It came to Pierce that in some recess of her soul Marissa was alone. Even when they were quiet, she made no move to leave. “It’s getting late,” he finally said. “Time to check my e-mail.”
A muffled explosion made Pierce start an instant before he heard Marissa’s brief cry of astonishment. Rising above Petrol Island, an enormous ball of flame transformed the night to amber. “Liquid gas,” she said tightly. “Oil can’t blow up like that.”
For moments they watched the inferno light up Petrol Island. Pierce thought of the fleeting image of speedboats on the water, and then his cell phone rang.
It was Bara. “Tell Marissa to turn on the radio,” he said quickly. “FREE is broadcasting on the government station.”
Pierce repeated this to Marissa. She led him to her bedroom and turned on the sound system. “FREE has blown up PGL’s liquid gas facilities,” the voice of General Freedom was announcing, “and kidnapped three engineers, using female loyalists pretending to be prostitutes.” Freedom laughed. “PGL hoped to screw Luandians, and instead Luandians screwed them. Now our fighters have ‘borrowed’ Karama’s radio station to explain to PGL that its workers will not be safe anywhere in the delta or at sea until the government meets our just demands: reparations, restoration, and rebuilding.” His voice rose. “Free the people,” he cried out, and then the station went dead.
Taking Marissa’s hand, Pierce returned to the patio.
The ball had receded to a low flickering fire, the embers of Michael Gladstone’s prototype for the elimination of flaring. Pierce considered many things: this irony in FREE’s chosen target; the boldness of its tactics; the failure of Okimbo and the army to protect critical facilities; the impact on Karama. Then another thought struck Pierce so forcibly that he hurried to his laptop, Marissa following.
“What is it?” she asked.
Swiftly, he read an e-mail from Rachel Rahv: during his deposition, Trevor Hill had professed to know very little, conceding his stated doubts about Okimbo but adding nothing Pierce and Rachel did not already know. Then Pierce clamped on earphones and Skyped his law school roommate, Jeff Schlosser. Waiting, Pierce told Marissa, “My pal is chief of enforcement for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.”
Schlosser, it transpired, still answered his own phone. “Jeff? It’s Damon.”
“You sound harassed,” Schlosser answered. “Where are you?”
“Back in Luandia. I’d like you to look at something.”
“What?”
“Unusual trading patterns in oil futures, someone placing big bets on a price rise. Key it to two events bound to drive up the price of crude oil per barrel. The first is the lynching of three PGL oil workers in Asariland about six weeks ago. I just witnessed the second: the explosion of a PGL facility on an island off the delta. I’d particularly like to know if someone positioned themselves to make a killing on both.”
Schlosser sounded perplexed. “Got anything more?”
“Maybe a name. See if whatever entity bought the futures is tied to an American named Henry Karlin.”
“What’s this about, Damon?”
“Maybe nothing. Or maybe a particularly ambitious form of insider trading: someone who knows in advance about disasters that affect the world price of oil.”
Schlosser paused. “Even if there’s something there, I may not be able to tell you much.”
“Whatever you can, Jeff—as soon as you can. Someone’s life may ride on this.”
Schlosser did not ask. When Pierce signed off, he saw another e-mail.
“Enjoy the show?” Jomo said. “Instructions to follow.”
11
DEEP IN THE NIGHT, PIERCE SAT ALONE ON THE PATIO, ABSORBING all that had happened since he had first come to Luandia.
His sense of respite with Marissa—a brief flight to “normality”—had vanished with the explosion on Petrol Island. Now images disturbed his consciousness like the aftershocks of a nightmare: the wasted wilderness of the delta; the ruins of Goro; the horrors of Bobby’s imprisonment; Karama’s expressionless image on an enormous screen; Okimbo’s abuse of Marissa; meeting a frightened soldier in a waste dump; the murder of a stranger by unknown militiamen; e-mails from a phantom whose intentions were as obscure as what might happen the next day. Yesterday, Pierce could have died. This was the reality he had chosen.
Jomo’s last e-mail had said only that Pierce must travel to a town called Raha and wait in a hotel for more instructions. Marissa was insisting on going with him. “I understand the people,” she had told him tautly. “I know the Asari dialect. I’m tired of waiting for other people to save my husband, or to kill him. My role now is to help you.”
“How?” he had asked.
“By giving you second sight.” She grasped his hands. “You’re functioning on instinct without any basis for your instincts. God knows who General Freedom is allied with. You think maybe Okimbo or Ajukwa or even Roos Van Daan; I think he’s had tentacles into the Asari movement long before Goro. Together both of us may be less blind.”
“Remember your airplane metaphor?” Pierce answered. “Go with me to Raha, and we’re flying in the same plane. If the worst happens, who’d be left for Bobby?”
Marissa’s eyes met his. “Yesterday, waiting for you, the worst happened to me a thousand times.”
For a moment, Pierce was silent. “And the state security services?” he asked.
“Will follow you with or without me. Unless this is a trap, FREE will have a plan.” Her tone was level and determined. “Except for Bara, our Lu-andian friends are underground now—all we can do is send each other e-mails we delete before we dare to answer. You still have the freedom to act. If I don’t go with you, I’m in prison, too.”
Pierce grasped Marissa’s misery. Only action kept the darkness he felt at bay; when it was impossible to know the right course from the wrong one, all that remained was fatalism. Then there was this: he did not wish to be alone.
“All right,” he said at last. “Get some sleep.”
Now it was two o’clock. Perhaps she had succeeded; Pierce had not. This lack of sleep was troublesome—it made him question whatever judgment he still possessed. Not that it seemed to matter.
He went to bed, trying to remember his life before Luandia. At last he slept. When he awakened, dawn had broken, and Marissa was touching his shoulder. “It’s time,” she said.
THEY DROVE TOWARD Raha, Marissa taking a rutted road that tested her nerves and reflexes. In profile, her sculpted face was intent, her keen eyes alert to difficulty. Movement seemed to help her: she seemed a mature version of the woman he had met at Berkeley, tempered by time and trouble.
Now and then she glanced in the rearview mirror. No one seemed to follow them. Perhaps they did not need to; Pierce no longer knew what anything meant.
Four hours later, with little said between them, Pierce and Marissa crossed the bridge to Raha.
If this had been frontier Oklahoma, Raha might have qualified as a boomtown. Since a recent oil strike, shacks and a ramshackle hotel had sprung up; on the outer limits of town, PGL had built a compound for its executives, crammed with modular housing. But the creeklands surrounded it and therefore danger. Though jeeps filled with soldiers patrolled the town, Pierce saw no white men on the streets.
They checked into adjacent rooms, making plans to meet for dinner. Pierce gave Marissa the shriek alarm to wedge beneath her door. He kept the handgun, Vorster’s gift, in the duffel bag he carried with him.
SHORTLY BEFORE EIGHT, they met in a sparsely populated dining room with woven mats on lacquered tables. “Any messages?” she asked with muted anxiety.
“Only an e-mail from Grayson Caraway: State is letting him ask to visit Bobby, and he’s met with Karama’s foreign minister. What’s embarrassing to the U.S. and PGL, Caraway argues, is also bad for Karama. Like torture—”
“Or kangaroo courts?” she interjected tartly. “I thought they were merely weapons in the global war on terror.”
Pierce frowned. “It’s a problem,” he acknowledged. “Karama is taunting Caraway with the secret prisons and special courts we’ve used since 9/11. But the ambassador’s real problem is three dead men. It’s hard for State to campaign for Bobby’s release when we can’t prove he’s innocent.”
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