Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  The boy jabbered something that Alan couldn’t make out. The language sounded familiar.

  Jim looked at him patiently. When Alan showed he didn’t understand, Jim pointed his chin at the old man. “Boy say if you give them another fifty shillings, they can buy dinner.”

  “Why don’t I understand?”

  “He’s Luo.” The last said in a tone that suggested that anyone should have known where the man was from.

  Alan turned away abruptly, walked across the tarmac of the parking lot to the food stand, and bought two more Cokes, a burger, some fries, and a bag of chips. It took five of his remaining minutes, but he was the only customer. Then he walked back and delivered the food to the old man, who gave him a courteous inclination of the head and began to wolf the burger. Alan glanced at his watch and looked up to see Mike Dukas’s red pickup truck coming down the road. He let it pass without another look, then knelt by the fire and used an ember to light another cigarette. Jim bantered with the boy while the old man ate. Alan watched the traffic on the road for five minutes, noting each car as it passed, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t see anything worth calling in, but he counted the cars and thought he’d recognize particular makes if he saw them again, although the preponderance of white Toyota pickups full of round-headed Kikuyu men reminded him of the difficulties of surveillance in a foreign country.

  When his cigarette was gone, he smiled at the old man and headed back to the car. Jim hurried to open his door. “Not so much fun,” he said again.

  “It was fine.” Alan closed the door, feeling he was back in Africa.

  “You want to go to the city park.” Not a question, almost an order.

  “No, rafiki, I want to go to the city market.”

  “Some bad people there. I can take you better places.”

  Alan leaned forward and put a U.S. twenty-dollar bill in Jim’s visor.

  “City market. Find a good place to park, where I can see the place.”

  “Sure.” Jim laughed the big laugh. “Sure.”

  Two hours later, Alan had all the waxed cotton prints he could handle, some soapstone he knew he would dump as soon as he was clear of the market, and two treasures, a good, old Masai sword with a forged blade, and a King’s African Rifles cap badge bought from an old man who claimed that it had been his own. Alan doubted it, but the man knew a little Italian and he charmed Alan with a half-hour’s tales of the Kenyan frontier in 1939, the march through Eritrea, and the attacks in Somalia. Alan had fought in Somalia, and he spoke Italian with confidence. His Swahili was coming back, too, and they jabbered away like old comrades, to the point the man began to include Alan in his stories, as if they had served together. He passed the time happily and exited the old colonial building of the market on the dot of two o’clock.

  The sky was getting darker and a damp wind was blowing the dust off the surface of the market and along the street, little swirls like tiny tornadoes. Alan looked at the sky and prepared to be wet. He looked at his watch, a new habit formed today. One minute. Much better than at the arboretum.

  Dukas was late. Alan was beginning to have to fend off offers for everything from safaris to sex by the time Mike strolled by. He was wearing an absurd ball cap and shorts with socks, the sort of clothes that Mike wore quite naturally. No one would have taken him for a dangerous agent of the United States. Alan persuaded a young hustler that no, he didn’t want a nice, clean girl with no HIV, by pushing him away.

  “Kwa sababu sitaki!” he said with unpleasant emphasis. The man sneered, but desisted. Alan affected to watch him depart, since he was walking right down Mike’s back trail. There were hundreds of people behind Mike, almost all Africans. None of them was Chinese, but Alan tried to see a pattern of movement that would mean something to him, some determination of walking that would indicate intention. He couldn’t find it. Most were chatting with someone near them or walking briskly with their heads down, like inhabitants of major cities all over the world. On a whim, Alan started walking the same way, although more slowly because of his armload of purchases. He walked for several minutes, watching the taxis and matatus unloading on Tubman Road. He didn’t see anything worth reporting. A carload of white male tourists caught his eye, but by the time he saw them they were so far behind Dukas that they couldn’t have anything to do with pursuit.

  Alan raised his load to get a look at his watch. Mike was thirty minutes from starting his final run. Alan had to move. He dropped the soapstone on the curb and started back to where Jim was waiting with the car, all the way across the market square on Mbingu Street. He had gone a few steps before a crowd of boys surrounded him, two holding his discarded soapstone collection and the rest demanding reward and portage fees. He bargained as he walked, paying again for worthless soapstone carvings because it amused him and it wasn’t his money. The boys followed him to the car. At the hotel, he overtipped Jim on the way and asked him to send the packages up to the room, conscious that Triffler, his instructor on these matters, would have castigated him for his obvious and uncharacteristic hurry after a day of apparent leisure. Jim didn’t seem to care.

  Alan went straight to the rooftop café, eighteen stories above the street and almost cold in the early evening wind. The rain was coming. He opened his cell phone and dialed a number, and it rang, and all over downtown Nairobi, NCIS agents added him to a multiparty call.

  “Hi, everybody,” he said. They had decided against any obvious use of radio code, on the very real chance that the Kenyans monitored them. “Nothing to see at the market.”

  He could hear an odd buzz, the digital combination of all the background noise from six phones.

  “Nothing to see anywhere,” said Bob.

  “Big, lonely city,” said Frank.

  “Some dickhead thought he was going to mug me on River Road,” said Margo.

  Alan had binoculars and a camera, as did several other rooftop patrons. He used the binoculars, looking down at the matatu stand and across the little square of acacia trees at the entrance to the Ambassadeur Hotel.

  “Jambo!” said a young woman at his table. He tried not to snap around. She was the waitress, dressed in a black skirt and white shirt. Some spy. I almost shot the waitress.

  “Are you watching the vultures, yes?”

  He nodded. Then he smiled. She was pretty, and her whole face was active, pleasant rather than beautiful. She looked like a woman who liked people, liked her job.

  “I am. And watching the people. Nairobi is great.” He sounded like he meant it. “Mzuri,” he added, unnecessarily. Really, just then, he did mean it. She nodded back.

  “What can I get for you?”

  “Tonic water over ice.”

  She smiled again. “Sure. Will you be eating?”

  It was an odd thing, another tiny African thing, but she balanced her tray and stood with her hand on her hip just so, in a way that no one in North America would do. “Yeah. When it’s dark.”

  “Sure,” she said. East Africa’s universal word.

  He went back to watching the vultures. And the people.

  Margo was the first of their team he found. He knew where she was supposed to be, across the park near the matatus, like many other employed women waiting for her ride home. She mixed easily, because fashion in Kenya’s black middle class was last year’s American fashion, and because she slumped her shoulders a little and stood with her hand on her hip. She already had it. Alan nodded to himself. She was watching the door that Lao ought to approach if he was coming.

  Frank and Bob would be invisible, he thought. Frank was outside the service entrance of the Ambassadeur, with a hired panel van and a driver who was heavily bribed. Alan was no part of that and suspected that Mike was in pretty deep there if something came to the attention of the embassy. Bob was across the street from the service entrance in a car, the mobile reserve, the chase car if they took Lao tonight, and communications hub until then. And the eyes on the back door. Brian ought to be visible
walking along the edge of the City Square Park. Alan couldn’t find him, but Brian hadn’t been happy with his post from the start and Alan looked up and down, trying to find him anywhere. Whites weren’t thick on the streets because it wasn’t tourist season.

  And Triffler would be in the restaurant, already seated. Already eating. Dukas’s backup.

  He looked down again to check Margo, and she was moving across the square, a very convincing portrayal of a woman missing a matatu. She had already learned to blow by men trying to talk to her as if they didn’t exist, so she made it across the square and back without a problem, returning to her post with a little shrug of the shoulders. Alan took a sip of his tonic water and shifted his gaze up and out, looking across the park and then down Daniel Arap Moi Avenue. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he knew it when he saw it.

  One car, one driver, face pale. It was a small European sedan, not a common sight at this hour. The car had a shiny finish but was covered in dust.

  It all reminded him of ASW. Looking for patterns that didn’t match other patterns. This car was not going at the speed of other cars. That got his attention first. Then the color and the polish, not the dead matte of dust-blown Nairobi. The race of the driver, possible as he turned off Moi, probable as he parked a block away. Alan knew he was craning over the edge of the roof, aware he might be attracting attention, but this was the job.

  “Margo. Behind you, parking off Moi. Metallic green sedan.”

  “I don’t see him. I’m moving.”

  Pause.

  Alan lost the man as he parked. He thought it was a man, and his heart was beating because the time was close and this would be it, and because he suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be watching for Lao’s backup, but he wanted to know this was right before he switched his gaze.

  Don’t bore sight, Triffler had said. Hard to obey when he had the target in sight. He tore his eyes away from the screen of the acacia trees and looked north. The laminated map on his table said that the building blocking his view of Moi Avenue was Unlon Tower. He looked at the tower.

  “Easter,” called Margo. “Rabbit is locking his car.”

  Alan looked away from an interesting balcony on the Unlon building and swept the street. Then he looked south on Moi.

  “I have a cat,” said Brian. “Jungle Garden Club, patio.”

  That was the other side of the square, and to see it Alan would have to cross his side of the roof and lean out. He sat tight and looked back at the balcony on the Unlon building. As it was a commercial building well after business hours, any movement on a balcony was worth watching. The cloth curtain of an open window flapped like a flag in the wind. A man came through the window, noticed the curtain, and tried to hold it still. He was talking to someone else. Alan raised his binoculars, lost the balcony for a moment, and brought it into focus.

  “Is cat one Asian?” Alan asked quietly.

  “Roger.”

  Alan took a deep breath and looked again. A short, balding man was watching the square through a camera. He was crouched below the balcony, but Alan was above him. He waited, and watched. Turn around, he thought. Move the curtain again. And he wondered if he had imagined another man.

  “Rabbit is walking east on Kuanda Street.” Margo, calm as a relief pitcher.

  “Cat one has a camera.” Brian sounded a little excited.

  Alan wondered where Brian was. He had a moment of disorientation, both physical and mental, and he had to put the binoculars down and look around him. He found that his glass was empty. He turned to look for the waitress and looked around again, suddenly conscious that he might have a watcher right here on the roof of the Hilton with him. If he did, the other watcher was German. Everyone on the roof of the Hilton was German. He listened for a moment, watched the other couples, wanting to raise the binoculars, and suddenly self-conscious. He reached out to the big camera and saw his waitress and smiled at her. It was a forced smile, and he thought his lip must be trembling visibly.

  Worse than a night carrier-landing with a bad pilot, he thought. The same sense of having no control. He reached for his earlier reaction to the waitress’s natural openness, found it, used it to calm himself.

  “Can I have another tonic water?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  In his earpiece, Margo said, “Rabbit is crossing the matatu station. He doesn’t want to get his shoes dirty.”

  Alan looked up at his waitress. “Jina lako nani?” What is your name?

  “Janet,” she said. She gave him the broad smile that Africans always give people trying to use one of their languages and walked off, businesslike. Alan picked up the camera under his hand and pointed it at the Unlon Tower. He found the balcony the first time, focused as he found it. His hands were calm and sure. Turn around, he thought again, snapping his first picture, and the man did, calling something to a shadowy form behind the flapping curtain. The wind was rising.

  “I have cat two on the balcony of the Unlon building,” he said with certainty, and took a picture.

  “Rabbit’s going in the door,” Margo said.

  “In,” Triffler said.

  30

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  “Winds rising to thirty-five knots, sir.”

  Captain Rafehausen had been in the combat information center for three hours. He nodded to the tactical action officer.

  On the big blue screen, a flight of two F-14s was marked as two half-circles well up by the coast of Africa. Behind them, halfway to the carrier, a single S-3 was another friendly half-circle. Otherwise, the sea was empty.

  “One-oh-four says he can’t even see the deck. He wants permission to go over the coast and look at the islands.” An air operations officer was speaking softly from his station a little in front of the TAO.

  “Negative.” The TAO sounded angry.

  “Seven-oh-three has no contacts.”

  “Everybody else is scurrying for port or getting some water between them and the coast. This is going to be a nasty blow.”

  Rafe thought about their fuel state and the likelihood that the F-14s could get gas in the air with a thirty-five-knot wind and gusts to fifty. He picked up a red phone and waited for the admiral to pick up on his end.

  “Tell me.”

  “No contacts, Admiral. Wind rising and thirty-five knots. I want to get them aboard.”

  “Call ’em home.”

  Out on deck, the wind rose again.

  The Safir Restaurant.

  “Colonel Lao, I presume?”

  Thrown off guard, Lao stared at the American. The use of his name unbalanced him; it was bad enough that the man in front of him was not Craik, whom he had expected, but it was humiliating that this low-browed, brooding Caucasian knew who he was. To cover his confusion, Lao recited the recognition code: “I have been here six times and it has never failed me.”

  The American had eyelids that looked too thick and eyebrows that loomed over them like cliffs. The face, by Lao’s standards, was not intelligent; the body was too heavy, too broad, the arms almost apelike. Lao detested him on sight.

  “Nobody comes here only once,” the American said—the other part of the recognition code. He put out a hairy hand. “Bob Michaels.”

  Lao ignored the hand. “I am Wu. I am, alas, not a colonel.” He turned and signaled to a waiter. “Table for Mister Wu,” he said.

  “Table for Mister Michaels,” the American said over his words. “I got a reservation. Michaels—for two.”

  The African waiter looked at them and hesitated, in the end thought it best to go away. Lao and the American who called himself Michaels and who was undoubtedly named something else stood awkwardly together, isolated in the half-filled dining room, whose other patrons were now staring at them. Lao heard the American give an exasperated sigh.

  “Patience is a valuable lesson,” Lao said. Saying it helped to restore his self-assurance. Still, he was off balance. Clearly, Craik had turned his messages over to t
he CIA: How long had Lao been corresponding with some committee at Langley, he wondered. He glanced aside at the American, again feeling dislike, some of it the inherited dislike of all Chinese for the barbarians, the dislike of a millennia-old civilization for these Caucasian upstarts. Some of it was dislike for American power and American lack of respect for China. Some of it was dislike of losing the lead.

  “About time,” the American said. A headwaiter was waving them toward a table at the front. Lao, to assert himself, turned aside and headed for a smaller table by the wall. “This one,” he said in the voice that Captain Jiang would have known meant business. The headwaiter recognized it, too, and waved the American that way.

  One goal for China, Lao thought. He sat, allowed a large menu to be put in front of him, put his hands together above it, and said, “I was told that this is the best Indian restaurant in the world.”

  “No kidding.” The American’s face was turned down to the menu. He looked up; under the black brows, the eyes in their thick lids were sharp and hard. “It seems unlikely, here in Africa.”

  “Many Indians were compelled to emigrate by the British during colonialism,” Lao said. “Theirs, like mine, is a very old culture—one that transplants well into new soil.” He tried to smile. “I am told that the lamb curry is superb but should be ordered a day ahead to let the flavors blend.”

  “Wish you’d told me that yesterday, Colonel.” The American gave him something like a grin. “Maybe I’ll have the chicken.”

  When the waiter appeared, Lao leaped in first and ordered a tray of pakoras and samosas for both of them; the American interposed his heavy voice and demanded Kingfisher beer; Lao asked for Indian tea. The waiter wanted to take their orders for a full meal. Lao started to order the lamb curry, and the American said, “Later,” and the waiter withdrew.

  “It takes time to make the dish,” Lao said with some asperity.

  “We maybe don’t have time. Let’s cut the crap, Colonel; I don’t do small talk very well. What do you want?”