Abby heard the click of Lloyd’s weapon being cocked. She searched his eyes for signs of fear, but saw only a resolute focus on what lay ahead.
Through the doorway came angry-sounding, high-pitched shouts. Orders in an unknown tongue. The pilot came walking out of the cockpit, a reassuring hand held out in front of him. “Please don’t worry, folks,” he said in a tone which, despite being professionally warm and personable, did nothing to reassure Abby. “This seems to be our welcoming party.” His dark-blazered shape disappeared out that terrifying doorway.
Abby turned to Paula. “What does he mean?”
The younger woman roused herself into a state of uncertainty. “I’m not sure. Except that the staff back home was talking about—”
“Come on out!” came a clipped, imperious shout in thickly accented English. “Carefully!”
Lloyd tucked the gun behind the back of his belt and stepped forward into the light.
Cowering as far away from the opening as she could, Abby whispered a prayer. “God, surely this can’t be it! Could I have misread you so badly that it all ends here, on the backside of a tarmac before we’ve even started? Please . . . please don’t let this be it, Lord. Rescue us. . . .”
Paula, now crouched in the exit, motioned for Abby to follow her. The bleakness in her eyes could easily have matched that of Anne Boleyn on her way up the steps to be beheaded.
“You sure?” Abby asked tentatively.
Paula did not reply. Nevertheless, Abby turned and proceeded to follow her downward. She heard no gunfire. Has to be a good sign, she told herself.
Blinking in the glare, she glanced down and focused on keeping her footing on the metal steps poised midway between light and shadow. Feeling solid ground at last under her final step, she ventured a look upward.
The first thing she saw were the gleaming, intent eyes of a tall black man in impeccable green camouflage, staring at her. He stood above the windshield of an open-air Humvee, surrounded by four others crammed with nearly a dozen Nigerian soldiers. All of them staring straight at her.
Abby stepped forward. She felt her free hand, the one not being held by Lloyd for stability, creep upward in a gesture of submission.
She tried not to look at the gleaming gun barrels, the cold gazes behind them, or feel the menace they seemed to exude. She tried to force her mouth into a smile. Normal airport noise engulfed her: a taxiing jetliner somewhere behind her whined loudly on its way past. She breathed in deeply. The air was stifling, hot and humid. Her nostrils filled with the smell of jet fuel and a background bouquet of sea spray and rotting trash.
Can a person smell danger? she asked herself. So often she had heard of a dog smelling danger. Now she stood in a situation where she could almost discern its acrid scent, weaving faintly among all the others.
CHAPTER
_ 25
The tall soldier leaped from the Humvee and swaggered toward her. As he approached, she saw that he truly was an officer of consequence: a garish ribbon adorned his front pocket and his shoulder bore an epaulet gleaming with a golden eagle and two stars.
“You Abby Sherman?” he asked with accented voice.
She nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said.
“And this man?” he asked derisively, looking at the cameraman. “This, we cannot have. I will not allow it.”
“Sir, his presence was one of the chief conditions of your . . . retainer. Please verify that with your people, because our staff was quite explicit about that.”
The officer stepped forward in front of the lens. The cameraman backed up, both out of necessity and, it seemed, self-preservation.
After brooding for a moment, the officer relaxed his posture and turned back around. “Welcome to Nigeria, Mizz Sherman. I am Colonel Anthony Shawkey,” he said. She thought she discerned a softening in his voice. “Colonel Shawkey, for short. I am to be your protector during your sojourn in our country.”
She cocked her head in surprise. Protector?
Paula stepped forward and whispered into her ear. “I was starting to tell you when we went into our final descent. It’s a fairly common practice for high-profile visitors to employ, let’s say, highly placed escorts to ensure safety. This seems to be our ride.”
Struggling to process such an abrupt reversal in her expectations, Abby nodded numbly and shook the colonel’s proffered hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Colonel,” she said after regaining her senses. “I am most grateful that you and your men are on our side.”
At that, the colonel threw his head back and launched an explosive laugh into the sky. He turned and walked back to his Humvee, paused beside it and held out his hand. A small brown arm reached out and grasped his.
The arm was attached, as the next moment revealed, to a diminutive African woman in her sixties who stepped gingerly from the vehicle and came forward. From this distance, the most remarkable thing about her was her dress. A resplendent wrap of emerald green silk crowned her head, but her exit revealed the garment’s full glory. A flowing robe with the same iridescent sheen folded neatly over her small shoulders and encircled her tiny frame, ending with a flourish just above a pair of matching leather sandals.
Abby gaped unashamedly as the woman approached. Between the splendor of the old woman’s clothing and the radiance of her countenance, the young American was unsure if she had ever seen someone so striking. Finally the two stood face-to-face. Close proximity only confirmed the older woman’s beauty; her smile seemed to glow from a place deep inside her.
“Sister Abigail,” the woman said as she lifted both of her arms for an embrace.
“Yes, and you are, ma’am?” Abby answered, utterly befuddled.
The smile only widened. “Sister Abedago, at your service. Your Nigerian brothers and sisters have all heard and been inspired by your story. And now, for you to choose coming here at this hour, with nearly the whole world concerned with your whereabouts—we are all overwhelmed. That’s why I have been sent by the Believers Gathering to greet you in the name of our Lord and invite you to return, along with our brother the colonel here, to our assembly grounds.”
The old woman’s hands ventured closer, and Abby gave herself to a warm hug, careful not to rumple the lady’s elaborate wrappings.
Suddenly, Abby remembered. She pulled back and asked the question she’d come here to answer. “Sister, have you ever heard the word Iya Agba?”
The older woman’s expression underwent a fascinating series of reactions upon her hearing the word. First came abject surprise, manifested by a sudden relaxing of her facial muscles and a slight stare. Then bemusement, along with a faint smile. And finally, her guarded reply.
“Yes, I have, my dear,” she said in a near whisper. “And I will tell you all I can when the time is right—”
From overhead came the thunderous interruption of chopping helicopter blades.
Without warning, the world began to swirl menacingly around Abby. Something in her knees gave out. The sight of the soldiers fell away from her. Mortified, she felt herself slump forward into Sister Abedago’s bosom, precisely where she didn’t want to end up. Then, gratefully, she felt arms behind her, pulling her up and away.
“Forgive me,” she managed to tell her new acquaintance. “I do not feel very strong all of a sudden.”
But Sister Abedago seemed quite agitated at Abby’s collapse. Her regal glow instantly transformed into an expression of sharp concern. Looking around her with questioning eyes, she finally turned to Lloyd. “Should we still proceed?” she half shouted against the continuing blast of the offending chopper.
He only frowned and shook his head in response. “We’ve always known Abby was in precarious health. We’re only here because of her sheer conviction that she’s been sent by God himself. And if that’s true, then I suppose she can drive out in any condition.”
“Go, please,” Abby said faintly. “I want to go now.”
“Sister Abigail,” her host said, leaning in to he
r, “you have come to a place of miracles, at a time of miracles. Let us take you and claim a healing for you. Will you let us do that for you?”
Abby nodded and allowed herself to be lifted into the lead Humvee.
Colonel Shawkey jumped up snarling, grabbed a machine gun from one of his nearest men, and unleashed a single blast into the air—a warning shot to the media bird still roaring overhead.
The aural onslaught sent Abby into a convulsive shudder of mixed fear and shock. “Who are they?” she asked, too weak to shout but strong enough to point upward.
“News media,” said the colonel. “They already know you’re here. There’s been a leak!”
Abby returned to full awareness a moment after the Humvee clunked into gear and the wind of a headlong rush struck her in the face. As difficult as it was to keep her eyes open, she found it just as difficult to close them, for the sights flowing past on either side proved simply stunning.
The first reason was speed—the colonel’s armed contingent concerned itself neither with speed limits nor the safety of other motorists. The four military vehicles roared down the tarmac like a sovereign’s bodyguards in a royal motorcade.
The second reason was the incredible cityscape before her. Her first locale was the airport tarmac. As exhilarating as it had been to watch the Gulfstream weave its way through ground traffic after landing, she found it now doubly thrilling, although terrifying as well, to weave around the huge wheels of a departing jumbo jet, then race forward, narrowly escaping not one but three smaller propeller planes, execute a death-defying turn around a decrepit hangar, then rocket toward a side gate at the speed of an Indy Pace Car.
Soon afterward, however, it was the unrelenting squalor and humanity of outlying Lagos that kept her staring about in amazement. Granted, the daredevil driving had hardly ended; they were now on a regional highway the colonel’s convoy treated as a personal racetrack. They flew on, oblivious to speed laws, blinking their headlights and honking their horns, and the few motorists who did not anticipate their passing, by pulling off the road, soon found themselves treated as highway cones in an improvised slalom derby.
But even through the vertigo and dizziness, Abby was transfixed by the row after row after row of unending shacks stretching out in slums so vast and desolate that she felt her soul shrivel at the mere sight of them. The lanes between them were jammed with people, and it was the sight of them which kept the young woman from growing totally demoralized.
They seemed, despite their surroundings, a remarkably energetic and lively people. Even as they skirted or jumped over trenches of raw sewage that transected every single lane, she saw folks laughing, saluting each other, children running barefoot with the same joy as kids back home. Men in sharp suits navigated precarious moat tops on rickety bicycles, and yet despite their tenuous balance, found the temerity to look over and wave at her out of sheer friendliness. It seemed the cameraman could not bring himself to stop filming.
“Lagos is rumored to be the second largest city in the world,” Paula commented in her ear. “Official sources say tenth. But it has no sanitation whatsoever. No garbage pickup, no sewage system.”
“I gathered that,” Abby said.
“The people are amazing, though. They don’t let any of their country’s problems get them down. They have such spirit, such optimism. Mara fell in love with them when she was here.”
The infernal drive did not relent for a second. But what kept Abby thankful for the Humvees’ excessive speed was the stench, which, even with highway winds snapping about her, assaulted her nostrils with a strength and pungency that rivaled Manila. Beyond that came the assault of thick, heavy humidity.
For the second time, they approached a barrier of vehicles and vicious-looking, rifle-brandishing men who jumped aside at the last second for them to pass. “Who are they?” Abby whispered into the ear of Sister Abedago.
“A gang of local boys, asking for dash,” she sighed. “An ordinary motorist cannot go more than five miles without being stopped at gunpoint and asked for dash. That’s our name for a bribe, which is one of the most common daily facts of life here. The richer you look, the more pressing the request. The more serious the consequences for not paying. Another good reason to thank God for the colonel.”
As they sped by, Abby glanced at the cold sneers directed at their camera and shivered. That smell of danger returned, more pungent than before.
“Are you seeing it again?” Lloyd asked in a concerned voice.
She nodded wearily.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
Sighing, Abby closed her eyes. “I don’t really like to talk about it. But I will. The evil spirits are so ugly and terrifying that I’m not sure I have the language for it. I don’t even know what’s worse about them—their distorted, reptile-like appearance or the sense of hatred and hunger that seems to just reek from them in this awful stench. They’re all different yet share the same qualities, or should I say distortions. Huge, leering eyes, mouths lined with limbs and fangs and dripping with some kind of caustic substance, everything backward and bloated and a grotesque mockery of the human body. The worst part is to see a human being walking around with one of these beings perched with its huge mouth halfway over its soul, its spiritual body. The person believes they’re just walking through life and yet they’re already half consumed.”
Lloyd shivered. “But you see angels too, right?” he asked, as though considering such a prospect for the very first time.
“Oh yeah. And you’ve probably heard more about the true appearance of angels than of demons, just by being in our culture. What the stories and statues don’t capture is how it feels to actually see one. Your body just comes alive with chills. I mean, to have one appear and know it’s not a weird dream or a hallucination, and then realize all at once that your seeing this means everything about God and His Son and the Bible was true all along.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Lloyd said thoughtfully. “But I suppose you’re right. You can’t have angels without having confirmed the rest of the story too.”
“Exactly. Everything just falls into place.”
“And you’re sure you’ve seen them,” he said, more of a doubtful question than a statement.
“Yeah, I have,” she answered with a good-natured chuckle. “Lloyd, it’s kind of refreshing to talk with someone who hasn’t read my story. Everyone else I’ve met in the last two weeks knew more about my strange condition than I did.”
“The price of celebrity, I suppose.”
Lloyd—or his real name, the assassin Dylan Hatfield—turned away from the young woman and, for the first time in years, found himself in the unlikely battle of fighting to maintain his composure.
First of all, he had never spent this amount of time with a mark just prior to killing him. Or her in this case, which was one of the other sticking points. In fact, he had never spent any time with any mark. But her being a woman, and a woman this disarming, made things even worse.
But surely, he told himself, if he had ever done this before, it would never have come down like this. He had gone into this operation without the usual internal reassurances that he was truly neutralizing a righteous target. That, despite the fact that this particular one warranted more information than ever. He had lowered his standards for various reasons, which now struck him as trivial and beneath him—fatigue, intimidation, greed, resignation, blind faith.
But now, sitting here after hours in this young woman’s presence, the questions throbbed so powerfully that they seemed poised to rip the breath from his lungs. How could, as Shadow Leader had so emphatically asserted, this beautiful girl and her ethereal Sight be such a threat to all humanity? The proposition seemed contrived and exaggerated at best.
Bottom line? It didn’t feel right.
And it always had before.
Even if he’d been given a clear formula to how she threatened the world, killing her now would prove quite difficult. He’d
grown to like the girl. She was down-to-earth, self-effacing, despite her beauty and sudden fame, curious and humble and funny at the same time. A real girl.
Had he met her in the course of his ordinary life—that is, the transitory and artificial cover identities he adopted between assignments— he surely would have been knocked out. But would he have had the insight to cast his eyes away from promiscuous models, and see what Abby had just now revealed to him?
He shook his head to dispel the thought.
This was madness. He would have to dispatch this girl with a bullet in the head within the next several hours.
The prospect brought her descriptions suddenly back to him. Angel or demon. Regardless of whether it was all true, he pondered a question in his mind that came whole and was utterly compelling.
Which one are you, Dylan? Which side do you serve?
He truly felt evil, insinuating himself into this girl’s trust and loyalty under the falsest of pretenses. And yet his expressions of concern and interest had not felt like pretense. Because he wasn’t pretending at all. He genuinely cared about the girl, and that not only made no sense but violated every operational philosophy he knew.
As the drive continued, he could sense their destination approach by the moment. The place where he would have to decide, once and for all, not only what kind of operative he was but what kind of human being. He tried not to think of it, but instead to return to the moment at hand. For the very notion made him want to vomit.
He shivered and looked aside, down into the squalor of the Nigerian suburbs.
Anything but to glance at Abby.
The lethal procession had rocketed away from the city’s center for a solid half hour, with their straightaway speeds blurring in Abby’s mind to some unthinkable velocity somewhere north of eighty miles per hour. All of this had produced the unforeseen benefit of reducing the beleaguered Lagos ghettoes to an eye-numbing stream of dried mud and refuse.
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