The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  Dylan nodded, for there was no denying the older woman’s mastery of the rain forest.

  Which was why, when Okoye stood and took off again, the others followed without saying a word.

  CHAPTER

  _ 34

  CHALLENGER 600 JET, 46,000 FEET ABOVE THE AZORES

  He was only three-quarters of the way across the Atlantic, yet from his telecommunications-laden captain’s chair, Shadow Leader was already well under way in organizing a tightening knot of pursuit around the escaped girl and her accomplices three thousand miles hence.

  He had acted with such swiftness partly out of a lifelong habit of extreme efficiency. In this case, however, that had been last among his motivations. Rather, the situation itself had imposed upon him more urgency than usual. In fact, he had left New York hyper-aware that the scythe was poised to swing toward him.

  He had failed, and he knew the price for failure. He had already been warned. He had harvested that price many times himself. As a result, he had not waited for his superiors’ responses to the initial failure in Nigeria. And he certainly wasn’t going to wait on the initiative of his African counterparts. Instead, he chartered a private jet and vowed to travel there and extract a victory in person, no matter how brutal he had to be.

  He was on the phone to one Nigerian general, on hold with one member of the Nigerian cabinet and a source at the NRO, the American National Reconnaissance Office, on the subject of acquiring real-time satellite data of the fugitives’ escape path.

  Then the call came from on high. The one he always dreaded.

  “Shadow Leader,” growled the voice from hell. “I see you have deemed it wise to take the initiative.”

  “I have indeed, sir. And things are going so well, we may have the situation in hand before I even land.”

  “Pray tell me?”

  “Well, to begin with, within the hour I will have twice-hourly thermal images from the NRO.”

  “Please explain, my dear boy. You know I come from another generation. . . .”

  “The National Reconnaissance Agency maintains all of America’s intelligence satellite fleet. If they feel the need, they can provide imaging of any spot on earth, except for the poles, I assume, down to a one-foot radius and tasked according to a dozen different variables. The thermal, or heat-sensitive filter, does the best job of spotting human bodies against a wilderness background.”

  “And what does this pie-in-the-sky picture do for you?”

  “First let me tell you about our mop-up assets on the ground. I have a third of the original attack squad, augmented by a hundred more jungle-trained guerrillas just waiting for the go-ahead. They’ll be supported by three Nigerian Army Hueys, a dozen mortars, and one American-made cluster bomb, armed and loaded.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Plus we have all the national borders sewn up. The Lagos air traffic control is on a heavy lookout for any unauthorized traffic. She won’t be leaving by any airport, that’s for sure.”

  “And our Shadow Man, are we sure that he turned?”

  “It appears that way, sir.”

  “You should have brought him all the way in to the Brotherhood.”

  “Yes. That appears to be my mistake.”

  “You know how much I care for you, my son.”

  “Thank you. I . . . feel likewise, sir.”

  “Of course our masters have expressed a certain affection for you as well.”

  “You know that I serve them utterly.”

  “I would hate for them to call you to their bosom now. I would miss you terribly.”

  “As I would prefer to serve them here in the flesh, my Elder.”

  “Good. Because one more failure and I’d wager you’ll be assessed to be of better service, as they say . . . you know, in the other realm.”

  “That’s why I’m here, sir. Getting the job done.”

  A click, and the merciful dial tone returned.

  Shadow Leader sighed. Despite being a warrior, he found that he was not impervious to his Elder’s perennial rudeness. He fought a geyser of resentment seething up inside him. I’ll do it, old man, he found himself thinking. And by the way, if mere affection from our masters determines when we’re harvested ourselves, and you’ve been their favorite son for decades, why have you remained in this mortal coil for so stinking long?

  Yes, he’d do the job. He might be pushing fifty now, but at one time he’d been the baddest Ranger of his generation. Every bit the equal of Dylan Hatfield. If need be, he concluded, he’d strip down and plunge into the jungle himself.

  NIGERIAN RAIN FOREST —LATER THAT NIGHT

  Three hours later, their joints burning, their stomachs ravenous, their throats parched again, and, above all, their minds astonished at the endurance of their much older guide, Abby and Dylan watched Sister Okoye leave the trail once more. This time she strode confidently up a smaller path, up to the side of a low, overgrown hill. She leaned into a depression and pushed hard. The other two were amazed to see the mat of vines sway open—clearly a door. Abby reached out to the hill, pulled away some vines and discovered that, rather than a cave in the ground, this was actually a stone building that long ago had been covered by undergrowth.

  Even before entering, it was possible to see inside a glowing of candlelight and the reflection of a large, open space.

  Sister Okoye turned and barred the space. “Dylan, you are not yet allowed to enter,” she said sternly.

  He stared at her, glanced at Abby, then back to Okoye. “Sister . . . you know what we’ve all been through today. I admit, I have a long way to go, but is it necessary to punish me now, after all the miles we’ve traveled together?”

  “I am not saying this to punish you, Dylan,” she answered. “I am not allowing you entrance into the Iya Agba safe house because you are still a creature of darkness. You do not know God. And despite the choices you’ve made for the good, you are festering with not one but two familiar spirits of killing and revenge. One of them happens to be a strongman. There is no way you can enter into our midst until you make even more godly choices.”

  “You mean I haven’t made enough of these choices for one day?” he asked, sounding all at once petulant.

  Her fists found the sides of her hips, and her face took on a maternal bemusement. “Dylan, what two items did you plant about your person three hours ago, when we left the bodies of those you killed?”

  His eyes fell. He had forgotten about his earlier weapons stash.

  “Just a small sickle and a revolver.”

  “Dylan, I have several sisters just inside, fellow Iya Agba who have awaited our arrival for quite a while. Do you know how terrifying it would be to have a man with a scythe come walking through their door?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You already know a little about the Brotherhood of the Scythe; we heard that earlier. Perhaps you do not know much. Perhaps you do not know that the Scythians have been mortal enemies and sworn assassins of Iya Agba for centuries. They have never missed an opportunity to kill any one of us they could find, not to mention torturing and killing millions more with their blades through the years.”

  “I’m sorry. I will leave it out here.”

  “Yes, you will. Because you will be staying out here until all the Iya Agbas inside reach agreement about you. Please be patient, my son. This is all part of what you need to learn. Part of dealing with the truth of what you saw.”

  Okoye and Abby stepped inside, shut the door, and left Dylan feeling more lost and bereft than he had felt since learning of his father’s death, fourteen years before.

  CHAPTER

  _ 35

  AIR FRANCE, FLIGHT 292, OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN

  Robert Sherman reminded himself for the thirtieth time to stop flexing his thigh muscles and rocking his left knee up and down. The tics, after all, would get him nowhere. The plane would arrive when it arrived, not a moment sooner. Air travel was the fastest means of transportation know
n to man. No matter how frantically impatient he was, that impatience wouldn’t help him sprout wings and beat the 747 to Lagos.

  He sighed and tried to keep his attention away from the onboard television monitor. Like every other instrument of worldwide media at the moment, it could not pass five minutes’ time without some sort of update on his daughter. And while it had proven surreal to see her face on-screen a dozen times through a single airport terminal, it was far worse now to be a captive audience as some frowning Frenchman babbled in perfect Parisian an update he could hardly understand, while behind him flashed pictures of the appalling massacre where she was presumed to have died.

  He groaned and tried to focus on his newly purchased map of southern Nigeria. To have the leading global story be your own personal nightmare—it turned out that was the essence of surreal.

  And an apt definition for sheer torment.

  At the moment, no one knew if Abby was even alive. There were rumors and inconclusive video snatches of someone resembling her, running away from the scene. But if that was the case, why had she not surfaced? Why had her protectors among the Nigerian military not produced her, smiling gamely and none the worse for wear? Far more likely, at least implied by most knowledgeable commentators, was that Abby Sherman would be discovered among the piles of corpses now lining the Assembly grounds.

  Sherman shook his head, trying to banish these thoughts from his mind. Foremost among his afflictions was the fact that he didn’t know with whom to be the angriest. Even Abby, despite the love and concern he felt for her, had enraged him by leaving the country with nothing more to comfort him than a cell phone call. And a call, to make matters worse, which hadn’t even informed him of her destination.

  Mara McQueen, who now found herself under a cloud of public scrutiny over the affair, was also in Sherman’s rogues’ gallery. So was this Colonel Shawkey, who after convincingly showing that he had saved Abby’s life, later conceded that he had virtually abandoned her to an unknown security guard when the time of reckoning had arrived.

  He thought of all the bad television movies where heroes instinctively sensed if a lost loved one was truly alive or not. Then he decided to try it. Removing his glasses, he squinted fiercely and tried to force his mind outward, into the universe.

  Is Abby alive or dead?

  No matter what, he knew he would be expected to be there. For her body to be found and her father still be in California conducting business . . . no, that couldn’t happen. It would be a public relations disaster from which he’d never recover.

  No, he had to be here, come what may. No matter what sort of death Abby’s silly god had in store for her, Robert would be the one to do the hard things. To gather the body and take her home.

  He replaced his glasses—the test hadn’t worked. Deep in his most covert mind, he still hadn’t the slightest notion whether or not his beautiful one had survived.

  Or how long, once he did find her, she would still have left to live.

  IYA AGBA SAFE HOUSE, NIGERIAN RAIN FOREST

  Abby gazed at her surroundings: a large, clean hall dominated by a central table of rough-chopped wood and lit by the flames of a dozen large candles. Despite its exceeding plainness and humility, it radiated warmth and welcome.

  Her perusal lasted only a few seconds, however. Almost immediately her eyes were drawn to the fiery gazes of three other women who had stood and now faced her as she entered. Their modern yet colorful athletic attire seemed to clash both with their mission and the room’s almost medieval appearance, its stone walls and Spartan flooring.

  Abby took another step forward, blinked and tried to refocus her vision. She found that she couldn’t. No matter how hard she strained and groaned in frustration, she opened her eyes to the sight of swirling white robes, shining faces, and otherworldly silhouettes blocking the forms of her newfound friends.

  She found herself ruing the power of the Sight, for now it was practically rendering her blind.

  “Okay, God, I get it,” she said, smiling in mock exasperation.

  “Get what?” asked the first one.

  “That you are surrounded by the presence of the Lord and His angels,” Abby responded. “And if my instincts are still on track, that you are spiritual sisters of our mutual friend Sister Okoye.”

  “Our mutual sister, actually,” said the second of the three.

  “Yes, of course,” conceded Abby. “In the broad family-of-God sense.”

  “Do you know nothing about Iya Agba?” asked the third.

  “Sisters,” reproached Sister Okoye, “that is exactly why Abby risked so much to come to Nigeria. To find us and ask us these questions. True, she knows very little about who we are. Or why she seems to be one of us. So let us tell her, in patience and grace. First, I must confess that I smell food cooking. Has anyone prepared something, or has this table lost its legendary hospitality?”

  The first woman, who gave her name as Saronu, stood with a smile and walked to the back of the room where there sat an ancient hearth Abby would have labeled a kiva back in the States. Next to it was a peculiar construction: an outthrust piece of wall that held a small pool of water so clear that Abby had trouble identifying it.

  Abby found a rough-hewn wooden chair, accepted a gift of water from a pewter pitcher and a plate of something the women called moin-moin—a half dozen cakes of a gelatinous bean mixture wrapped in what turned out to be plantain leaves—and a pair of hard-boiled eggs.

  There had been a time in her life when she would have been embarrassed to eat and drink with the abandon of a rescued shipwreck victim under the gaze of a tableful of people. There was also a time when food this exotic would have taken her a lengthy period to work up the courage to dig into.

  That time was not now.

  Sister Okoye asked if a plate of food could also be brought to Dylan outside. After a few dubious looks, the other three relented and honored her request.

  “There’s no use torturing the young man,” Okoye had said simply, to no one in particular.

  Meanwhile, Abby had cleaned not one but two platefuls of the dish served her, feeling grateful for finally chasing away those hunger pangs.

  It was now time to talk.

  CHAPTER

  _ 36

  The second host was a woman named Motumbe, middle-aged, who bore a bright red scar along her left cheek and who turned out to be the group’s designated historian.

  After the food and drink were all gone and the table meticulously cleaned, Motumbe sat down before Abby like someone who had prepared something to say for a very long time. Sister Okoye had retired to a wicker rocking chair in the corner and sat with her eyes closed, her task for the day duly completed. Abby had no doubt that she was not simply dozing, however. Everyone in the room seemed to be listening as Motumbe began speaking.

  “Iya Agba, you see, is an old Yoruba word that means Respected Mother or Elder Woman Who Sees. There are not so many of us as there once were. Our Sisterhood once numbered in the tens of thousands across all of Africa.”

  “Over the whole continent?” Abby asked in amazement.

  “Yes. In fact, it is the oldest strain of Christianity in all Africa. Most of today’s Nigerian believers are spiritually descended from the European missionaries who came here in the nineteenth century. But we Iya Agbas represent something far older and deeper. Exactly what, or where it came from, has become lost over time. But we know that an ancient heritage made its way across Africa over a thousand years ago.”

  “The first missionaries who came were actually intimidated by our presence,” Sister Okoye added without opening her eyes. “They did not understand how a bunch of African women could know the truth. And so many of them feared us. They thought we might be some kind of soothsayers, some kind of occult knowledge. They urged us to forget about the Sisterhood and just blend into the emerging church.”

  “But there are others in other countries?”

  “By different names, yes,” Motumbe replied.
“Clearly we all possess the same gift, but warfare and mistrust between nations have cut us off from each other.”

  “Do most of the other nations use a name meaning Respected Mother?”

  “I believe some do. It is usually also a name referring to how we can see beyond the veil that separates the carnal realm, or that of the flesh, from that of the Spirit. Of course we see more than that as well. We not only see the state of spiritual matters all around us, but we seem to be connected with each other, somehow, in a way that none of us fully understand. We sense when another is sick or endangered. It wakes us up in the middle of the night or in the heat of the day, often when we least expect it. Or at least, it used to. We Iya Agbas have dwindled of late. Our bonds have weakened, and our influence has waned dramatically.”

  “And the Sisterhood is completely unorganized? No leadership, no hierarchy?”

  “Some people call me the ‘Mummy Iya Agba,’ ” said Sister Okoye, “because I seem to have a gift of leadership, and because I have studied at several universities. But that is a completely local title.”

  “I can’t believe this . . .” muttered Abby admiringly.

  “We have heard rumors that somewhere, in a place we do not know, there exists some sort of matriarch, a living heart of the Sisterhood. A leader, if you will. It is merely something we have sensed for a very long time, and many believe it quite strongly. And now our sense of her has declined quite dramatically as well. We fear that this person may be diminished in the same way that the Sisterhood has been. But it is not the only weakness. We have been weakened by division among believers. By the disbelief brought in Western modernism. By a lack of proper teaching among our young women. By old wounds that have never healed. And to be honest, we have been decimated by the Scythians’ systematic murders.”

  “Did you know that there was an attempt on my life?” asked Abby suddenly. “That’s the reason I was sick—at least until I was healed. I was supposed to have only a few weeks to live.”