by Hugo Navikov
Ellie looked even more excited at the thought of a nest of cryptids, but the reddening welt on her cheek was doing its job of keeping her silent for now.
“They probably know you’ll treat them even worse than the Belgians. You’ll make them from virtual slaves into actual slaves.”
“Ha! Who cares! They’ll still be alive, won’t they? Where is the gratitude for us saving them from the monsters?” Seeing the disgust on my face, Cephu laughed again. “And besides, once Vermeulen is gone, the price of diamonds goes way up for the miners—or for those who are in charge and their soldiers, anyway—because we shall have an automatic buyer, no middle man!”
“I can tell you want me to ask who this buyer is,” I said. My fingers were poised to strike the match. “So, okay, who’s the buyer?”
“I don’t know!” he yelled in my face with delight. “But he tell us he got control over so many of the mines here, billions for them by the time the shiny rocks go to your malls and supermarkets!”
“This big company, they finance you assholes?”
“Not yet, but it all comes when we get control of this mine! Shiny cars, lots of guns, we will get everything your money can buy! We make all the money in the world, live like American rappers! Bling, bling! Ha ha ha!”
“What’s the company, goddamnit?”
“They don’t tell us, stupid! To us, they just give money and tell us how to get richer than rich! We just call them shirika.”
“What’s that in English?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“I don’t know it in English.”
“French, then! Tell me!”
The general thought for a moment, then said, “Em, in French would be l’organisation.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I must have been going insane. The Organization—my Organization—was the number-one killer of endangered animals? And they killed my family to keep me loyal? And now it was behind the killing of these miners, hundreds of innocent people, and it had almost total control over the Congolese diamond mining industry?
This all didn’t make an iota of sense. And it was awfully goddamn convenient. I couldn’t make any of it line up. In my twelve years with The Organization, there had never been a shred of evidence it was anything but the benefactor to the world that I thought it was. “The Organization,” I said at last.
Cephu smiled in surprise. “Oh! It is the same name in English!”
I just couldn’t think of any of this for one more second. I just had to get us out—myself and Ellie. God, Ellie. I had told her everything and she had told them. But she gave them my secrets—them, the bastards who had just killed her loyal sound man—by acting like she cared about me, and at just the right moment. “I got my answer. Now rape her and kill her, go for it. I want to see it.”
“Brett!” she screamed, very convincingly.
Cephu’s yellow grin was matched as soon as he translated what I had said to his two compatriots. The three men laughed heartily and started removing their clothing for a nice long rape … which was not what I was expecting to happen. They were supposed to pause, because it was all a bluff on their part, right? They weren’t going to kill the mole if they were going to kill me anyway. Right?
Oh, hell.
I had made an epic miscalculation.
I mouthed “My bad! Hold on!” to Ellie and, seeing the men in various states of undress, struck the match against my chair and held it to the thick rope. It started smoking almost immediately, then burning in a matter of seconds. The men remained focused on getting naked to rape Ellie, and the low flame eating away the rope was so near my bound hands I thought I would start screaming from the pain. Fortunately for me, I was able to shift in my chair enough to maneuver the burning part of the knot on top, so the heat rose away from my tender hands.
It was a race now. The burning through the ropes versus the soldiers finishing getting their boots off and getting to work on Ellie. I couldn’t see the burning, but my hands felt looser in the unwinding fibers.
However, they were all naked now, their cocks ready for Ellie’s creamy skin. Not paying me the slightest attention now, they yanked down her khakis, not even bothering to get her boots off first. Her legs shook as she struggled against them trying to remove her panties.
Almost there. Come on … My hands felt like they were on fire, and maybe they were. But it didn’t matter—I was able at last to break through the charred remains of the rope binding me and in one motion pulled my hands apart and in front of me, jumping up out of the chair as I did so. I shouted “Ellie!”—as if she couldn’t see me get up from the chair and shake off the smoldering rope—and, her boots never removed by her would-be rapists and her khakis acting as binding to keep her ankles together, she swung up both her feet and smashed General Cephu right in what I could see was his remaining testicle. She used the tread of her boots and raked it up and down his crotch. When she finished, it was no longer there.
He howled and fell to the floor and I got to the soldiers’ discarded uniforms before they could even turn away from their victim. I found one of their .45s almost instantly and put bullets in the both their heads. As they fell, I realized why I couldn’t tell Davy from Salomon—they were twins, down to the matching birthmarks on their chests. So a family reunion, I guess.
I undid Ellie’s bonds—easy enough when you could see what you were doing—and held her close with my blistered wrists. “I thought you told them my … what I shared with you back in the tent,” I said, almost ready to cry again. “I’m sorry.”
She breathed out a laugh that was also a sigh of relief. “When would I have done that? On the drive over here? I was unconscious, you meathead!”
She said with a forgiving smile, but I had to say, “But how could they know anything about The Organization? Unless …”
“Unless they’re working with the militia to take control of the mine,” she said, putting her clothes back on, and frowned at my expression. “Hey! I am a journalist, you know!”
“Great,” I said, ignoring the pain in my wrists as I grabbed the semi-conscious and all-castrated General Cephu and forced his pants up and belted them. He had no shirt on, but we weren’t going to a fancy restaurant. “How about you interview this witness?”
Chapter 14
Every dip in the ground was filled with water, and it still dripped rain from the trees, but the sky was blue like the hours-long storm had never happened. I kept hold of Cephu by his belt and marched him to one of the Jeeps, keys in the ignition. His khakis were drenched in crotch blood, but it was drying now, so the bleeding must have stopped. I sat him in the shotgun seat and helped Ellie into the back seat. I gave her one of our now-plentiful handguns and said, “He makes a move, shoot him in the spine. He won’t die, but he’ll be a beggar on the street the rest of his life.”
I had no reason to think the general understood every English word I said, but I could tell by his slow but insistent shaking of his head that he didn’t want such a fate. That was fine by me—I needed him for just one thing and then he could go live his eunuch’s life for all it was worth.
“I want you to take me to our cameraman. And you’d better pray he’s alive and well.”
His eyes opened. “Your cameraman? I don’t know who—”
I slapped him upside the head and said, “Our friend. The black kid. Atari. The one you were going to kill, remember?”
Despite everything, his mouth opened in a smile. “From when you blow up my Jeep and kill my men?”
“And I ripped one of your balls off,” Ellie chimed in from the back.
“He is your friend?” Cephu said and couldn’t keep himself from laughing. “Yes, I take you right to him!”
“Well, all right,” I said, and started the Jeep.
Cephu led us directly to the front door of the Vermeulen Mining concrete bunker. “This is the place, mons amis. Now take me inside to the clinic?”
I slapped myself in the forehead. Of course this was where Atari was—was h
e not ordered to go tell Vermeulen that very soon he wouldn’t have any more miners to abuse? Of course, even the casually racist Daan Vermeulen wouldn’t throw Atari out when the militia is killing people. He wasn’t white, but he was American, and that counted for a lot in this oddball end of the world.
“Take me to the clinic now, yes?”
“No. We can grab you some peroxide on our way out.”
I had stuck Ellie’s rope into my front pocket—the one without my two remaining cheroots in it—and now I tied the general’s hands through the steering wheel in a knot he would need three hands to get out of. “You watch the car. We’ll be right back.”
His face and voice couldn’t decide if he was petrified or highly amused as he shouted, “You go in there, you not ever coming back!”
This put a chill in our spines, but Ellie and I didn’t know what else to do except rescue Atari—if he even needed rescuing; he could be asleep on a feather bed in a guest room for all we know. Cephu’s laughing, terrified warning made us, after being buzzed in, enter the Vermeulen building with a trepidation neither of us had felt even a moment before.
***
As we entered, a shrill fire alarm pounded our arms, and blinking safety LEDs added to the atmosphere of impending disaster. But there was no smoke, no screaming or even mildly inconvenienced workers making a move to leave through the door we had just entered from, the only one we were aware of. (Congolese safety codes were as foldable as a handful of cash.)
We walked down the carpeted hallway as before, but the left-hand side, the one that had provided a safe space for the miners and their families during the Kasai Rex attack, was no longer besmirched with even a spot of mud. It was shiny and clean—and empty.
“Better this than housing dirty workers,” I muttered to Ellie as we moved toward Vermeulen’s vault-like office farther back, the sirens still blaring, the lights still flashing.
She looked over to the office section on the right and said, “Where did everyone go?”
I stopped, and she did as well. I stared through the glass and saw monitors left on, screensavers on some, spreadsheets or Web pages still open on others. Every office chair was pushed in, however, and there was no untidiness anywhere we could see.
“Who buzzed us in if everybody’s gone?” Ellie asked.
I leaned in through a door to the office section and called out, “Hello? Anybody here?” I assumed the Vermeulen workers spoke English because … well, I’m an American.
As soon as I had finished my call, however, the sound and light show stopped. At that, the workers who had stuffed themselves into each office against the wall, plus a copy room, closets, and a kitchen—all areas with doors that closed—streamed out of their safe places and returned to their workstations, chatting as if nothing had happened. Because, apparently, nothing had.
“Um, hello?” Ellie said to a young woman coming our way but who just about jumped out of her skin when she saw us.
Then she laughed and said, “Je maakte me bang!”
Ellie smiled along with her but added sheepishly, “English?”
“Ah! You scared me!” She seemed friendly and not frightened by anything other than us popping into the doorway while she wasn’t looking.
“What’s going on?” I asked, following Ellie into the office proper. “What were you all hiding from?”
“I think maybe it was a surprise drill?” she said, looking unperturbed. “When we get a Code Black siren, it means there is maybe a crazy gun-shooter in the building, you know? The doors aren’t bulletproof, but we hope security comes before the shooting person finds us, you see?”
We did, indeed. “Where’s security, then?”
“It maybe was just a drill, like I say. Security doesn’t really have to come and rescue us, you know?”
“Of course,” I said, but something was definitely not right. “We need to see Mister Vermeulen, please.”
“I believe he was in a meeting when the Code Black went off.”
“Mind if we check?” I asked, already herding Ellie and myself out the door so that any resistance would be more or less futile. “It’s rather important.”
“I’ll ring him, wait just a moment, okay?” she said, and picked up a receiver and punched a single button. “Oh, hello! Mister Vermeulen has two guests, please. Yes, they …” she trailed off, then looked at the receiver funny and hung it up.
“All good?” Ellie said.
“Yes, all good,” she said, not looking like all was good, but whatever, we had business to tend to. Like finding out what the hell had happened to Atari? Had there been a gunman in the building, but one with a specific American, chubby, black target?
We made haste to Vermeulen’s office and rapped at the heavy door.
“Come in,” Atari called from the other side.
***
The replacement Cryptids Alive! cameraman sat in the plush chair behind Vermeulen’s desk, with the executive himself seated in one of the also-nice chairs facing the desk.
“Hello, guys! Have a seat,” Atari said brightly, the wound on his forehead stitched and bandaged. He was also wearing a new button-down shirt, one that fit him much better than the Star Wars and Doctor Who tees he wore when he was with the rest of us. Maybe Vermeulen lent him one to make up for his … racist … bullsh …
Daan Vermeulen was dead. A bullet hole marred his gray suit jacket right over where his heart would have been. He sat in the chair exactly as if he had been alive, no stiffness setting in yet.
Meaning he had been shot quite recently. I guessed it was about the time of the Code Black that sent everyone scurrying into closets and boardrooms. I could also guess that the missing security guards had been compensated well enough not to make a big deal out of the whole thing.
But by who? Atari?
“Have a seat, I said,” Atari repeated, all smile gone from his face. “Sit on his lap if you don’t want to touch a dead man, Ellie. You’ll be around another soon enough, anyway.”
“What the hell is going on, Atari?” Ellie snapped, not thrown by his weird demeanor and threatening words. “You killed Vermeulen? You’re killing people now? What happened to ‘I’m a Buddhist, I don’t like killing—”
“Sit down!” he shouted, and suddenly he looked less like a young and chubby audiovisual enthusiast and more like a bloated mobster holding every ace in the deck.
I sat down in the open chair and Ellie sat on my knee. Not my lap, but Atari had been close enough. Even if we were willing to move the body, it didn’t look like the luckiest seat in the house anyway. “We’re sitting,” I said. “Now please tell us what in the hell is going on.” I was surprised that my own voice didn’t sound more angry, but this day had just about used up every ounce of anger my system could produce.
Or so I thought. “First of all,” he said, “my name isn’t Atari. It isn’t Nintendo or Xbox, either, smartmouth, before you try to get all hilarious on me.”
A jibe of that nature had occurred to me, but luckily he hadn’t given me a chance to deliver it.
“Second, I just killed this son of a bitch twenty minutes ago, tops. I came in here and delivered my message from Cephu and the boys—Salomon didn’t have to hit me that hard, shit. Old Daan here wasn’t terribly impressed. In fact, he told me he didn’t need a gang of tree-swingers telling him what to do with his company. That didn’t make me feel well-disposed toward him, I admit.”
“So you shot him,” Ellie said.
“Who’s telling this story, you dumb whore?”
“Whoa, whoa, Atari! That’s going too—”
He jumped up out of the cushy chair and yelled, “My name ain’t Atari, asshole!”
He was holding quite the hand-cannon. I believe if we moved Daan Vermeulen, we would find a .357 slug had gone right through him, the back of the chair, and well into the thick wall. My hands went up automatically—I was almost getting used to people sticking guns in my face—and I felt Ellie freeze on my knee. Should I say som
ething? Or would that just set off not-Atari? I calmed my breath and asked, “Then what is your name?”
The person who I am going to continue to refer to as “Atari” smiled ruefully, and the gun went a little slack in his hands, so we weren’t dead yet. “You really don’t recognize me, do you?”
Ellie and I looked at each other, then back at our host. “Me?” Ellie said.
“No, I mean Mister Commando, Mister Number-One Operative.”
What the shit? “I was in the Special Forces, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I mean your job since then. What we call ‘The Organization.’ Ring a bell?”
Did everyone know about this top-secret entity and my role in it now? I played dumb, but half-heartedly. He obviously knew whatever he knew, and that obviously included who I was and what I did. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Yeah, I thought not. Nobody pays attention to the IT guy, the underpaid, overworked son of a bitch who has access to your emails going back and forth to ————,” he said, giving a name to the person I only know as the Boss. “Plane tickets, weapons purchases, it’s all there. The Organization—by the way, its name is”—here he gave an actual name to our shadowy employer, nothing I had ever heard before—“is breaking so many international laws and treaties at once, I could bring the whole house of cards down with one well-placed phone call.”
I’m an asshole, okay? So I couldn’t stop myself, and even if I could have, I wouldn’t have: I said, “Is this monologuing? Are you a villain? We get to hear your whole evil plan now, right?”
Atari raised his .357 magnum again and pointed it at Ellie. “One more comment like that and she gets it in the breadbasket, all right? She’ll go septic and die before you can even get her into sorry excuse for a hospital.”