The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  “Did you realize what you were getting yourself into when you took it?”

  The corners of his mouth turned slightly upward.

  chapter 8

  The package from Boniface Akambe arrived at the hotel five days later by way of a knock on Munroe’s door and a small brown envelope hand-delivered by Akambe’s eldest son. While the teenager sat silent on the bedside chair, Munroe placed her original against the forgeries, brushed her fingertips along their faces, and then angled them against the light. Satisfied, she tipped the young courier and sent him on his way.

  And then, alone, on the edge of the bed, elbows to knees, she tapped the packet against her knuckles. The cards were invitations that beckoned a return to the past. She tightened her fist around the envelope. Fuck it. It was one step closer to Emily Burbank and five million dollars, and maybe a clean break from the madness in her head.

  She shoved off the bed and headed across the hall. Bradford opened the door before she knocked, and she moved past him into the room. “Malabo awaits us,” she said. She sat on the bed, and next to the notebook that Bradford had lately carried everywhere, laid out four cards. “Your residency permits for Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.”

  Bradford moved the book away and then tossed it into his backpack. He flipped the cheap laminate of a Guinean residency to and fro. “It seems so homemade.”

  “Probably is,” she said, “just like the real ones.” She paused. “Look, Miles, I know you’re no stranger to dangerous places, and again, I really don’t want to insult your intelligence. Humor me.”

  Still looking at the cards, he said, “I march to your orders.”

  “You may not need the Cameroonian pieces. In Equatorial Guinea you’ll be asked to show documents regularly, and police and military often confiscate them for ransom. Better these than your passport—whatever you do, don’t let them have your passport. The residencies list you as a diplomat, so if it comes down to it, they should keep you from being hauled into a police station.”

  Bradford returned the cards to the bed and with a playful smile said, “And if they demand to see my passport or I’m hauled off anyway?”

  “Well,” she said, and blew out an exaggerated sigh, “since your job is to stick by my side, I doubt you’ll end up in a situation that I can’t talk you out of.” She smiled. “But if you still manage to get yourself thrown in jail, then you can figure out how to get your own self out.”

  “Well, thank you,” he said, and winked at her.

  She stood. “It’s too bad you’ve been hired to be a pain in the ass, Miles. Under other circumstances I think I’d rather like you.”

  “That doesn’t count as flirting, does it?”

  “No,” she said. She walked to the door and turned to look at him before closing it behind her. Maybe under other circumstances.

  THE FLIGHT WAS scheduled to depart in thirty minutes, and even by African standards the check-in procedure was moving slowly. Bradford glanced at his watch, the same stealthy flick of the wrist he’d been making for the last hour. Munroe placed a hand on his. “We’ll be fine,” she said.

  At the front of the line, two women haggled with airline personnel over weight and piece allowances. Next to them a cardboard box, taped and tied with twine, leaked a sticky mess over the concrete floor, and the translucent walls of a zippered bag hinted of an assortment of vegetables and clucking chickens.

  Bradford pulled the notebook from his backpack and scribbled across a page, the same rapid, illegible scrawl he’d been putting down since they’d arrived in Cameroon. Munroe angled herself to look over his arm. He winked and then deliberately turned to shield the page. Another line and half a minute later, he shut the book and shoved it back into his pack.

  The local flight lifted off from Douala two hours late, with no apology from the airline or expectations of such from the passengers, only relief when the ventilation system kicked in, dissipating the odors of garlic and bush meat and bodies packed too closely together.

  From the air, Malabo was a white-and-red swath that notched a piece of the coastline, a breach in the carpet of deep green that otherwise bordered the sea and rose into the mountains, and the fifteen-minute flight seemed a mockery in the face of the three-hour ordeal that had come before.

  On the ground, evidence of change was everywhere. Hangars and new buildings carried signs of life and industry in place of overgrown vegetation and burned-out aircraft that had previously stood sentinel over a deserted runway.

  Their passports were stamped without question. Women customs officers searched methodically through their belongings while armed military personnel stood watch in uniforms less tattered than Munroe remembered, and with weaponry more sophisticated.

  Outside, while taxi operators clamored for attention, Munroe’s focus was jolted by a man who stood in her peripheral vision.

  He was near the terminal doors, one foot propped against the wall, a neglected cigarette in his fingers and on the ground the used remains of nearly a pack. When she made eye contact, he averted his gaze. She settled into the taxi, turned again toward the building, but he was gone.

  The taxi picked up speed, and heat blew through the open windows. It was a two-kilometer stretch into the capital. Streetlights lined the median of well-paved tarmac, and along the road on either side were warehouses and container yards, businesses and buildings, all new and nicely maintained.

  It was impressive change for the little country, which ten years prior had a tin-topped terminal connected to the city by a swampy, potholed road that ran through encroaching jungle and detoured over a marshy creekbed because the one-lane bridge had fallen apart.

  The driver took them to the Bahia, the best hotel the city had to offer: three stories, clean and cool, and situated at the end of a small peninsula overlooking a panoramic view of the ocean. Inside the lobby the desk clerk was absent, and at the far left wall the bartender slept with his head on the bar. The quiet was broken by the hum of an air conditioner.

  Munroe called out, and after a moment a woman shuffled in from a room off to the side, sleepy-eyed and with a look of annoyance. From under the front counter, she pulled out a transaction book, flipped indifferently through the pages to the day’s date, and with deliberate tedium wrote into the book their names and passport information. After taking the money for two rooms, she informed them that the hotel had only one room vacant and that the second could be acquired that evening.

  The room was clean and spartan, the bathroom bare, without even the customary bar of wafer-thin soap, but unlike lesser hotels here there was a roll of toilet paper and, besting the rest of the city, running water supplied by giant tanks that sat on the roof.

  Munroe watched from the bedroom door as Bradford walked the length of the hallway noting ingress and egress and scoping the surrounding area from the windows. “If the second room is on another floor,” he said, “we need to share space.”

  She shrugged and pushed off from the doorway. “We can discuss it,” she said, “if it happens.”

  The restaurant was closed until evening, so they left the hotel in search of a meal and found the city quiet, streets and sidewalks empty as if the entire population had gone to sleep or simply disappeared in the middle of the day. A steady breeze blew in off the ocean, mixing with diesel fumes and mildew and the stench of garbage left rotting in the sun.

  Malabo was a mixture of once-beautiful Spanish architecture, with its porticoes and colonnades that had somehow endured nearly half a century of abuse and neglect, and a jarring contrast of newer cinder-block buildings—assorted shapes and angles slapped together in any space wide enough to fit them.

  At four, restaurants and grocery stores reopened, and the city’s small matrix of one-way streets—originally constructed to accommodate horses and carriages, now paved and potholed—returned to a state of gridlock, unable to bear the burden of vehicles brought on by the rapid influx of money.

  The face of the city changed with the setting
of the sun. Streets that ran along the oceanfront hosted a series of hole-in-the-wall bars unnoticeable during the day but that, like those in a navy town, came alive for the evening. They filled with foreigners from the oil industry, and where the foreign men went, the local women followed, fawning over them, drinking with them, and, more often than would be readily admitted, accompanying them home for the night.

  Away from the artery of the city, where the money flowed less freely, where the streets were dark without electricity and the population dense and overcrowded, the faces were different but the scene the same. Life and vitality and laughter came with the darkness. Cheap Cameroonian beer ran plentiful, while meals were prepared over outdoor fires and small children played in the empty streets.

  There, at an open-air bar, barely discernible but for the crowd around it, Munroe and Bradford sat on rough-hewn wooden chairs around a makeshift table that had been covered in a red-and-white plastic laminate. Munroe leaned her head back and closed her eyes, breathing in the essence of the city.

  They had come to this part of town only because Bradford couldn’t dissuade her from it and she would have gone without him. He was alert, measuring the threat, judging the crowd; it was evident in the tightness that ran along his neck.

  Eyes still closed, she said, “Miles, you can relax.”

  “I’m not paid to relax,” he said.

  She smiled, ignored him, and allowed surrounding conversations to swallow her. A few moments later, a discussion at the periphery brought Munroe upright, and she angled slightly to observe.

  On a bench just at the edge of her line of sight, two men were joined by a third—the same man so focused on her at the airport. Like the two on the bench, he was young, probably early twenties, and like the others, he was dressed in casual slacks. Hanging off his belt were two cell phones.

  Threads of the conversation lifted on the breeze. The men spoke in Fang of many things, including her and her companion, but the details wafted away. When the men had each drunk several beers, Munroe turned to Bradford and suggested another part of town.

  They walked in the direction of the ocean through streets dark and devoid of cars. Along the sidewalks, on steps, and in doorways, people clustered, their laughter and conversation streaked by light and bathed in music that filtered from open windows.

  The chatter that followed in Munroe and Bradford’s wake told of humor in finding foreigners in this part of town. They were occasionally called out to, and several times children ran up asking for sweets.

  Non-police street crime, like everything else in Equatorial Guinea, was rapidly increasing. Even so, compared to any city of its size in the surrounding countries, Malabo was relatively safe. Munroe felt and heard no threat, though her reassurances did little to set Bradford at ease. His posture said that he was prepared for an attack from any of the dark shadows they passed.

  Unlike Bradford, she was not concerned about street thugs.

  They found another watering hole, this one frequented by as many foreigners as locals and run by a Chinese matron and her daughter. Several minutes after they were seated, the young men from the previous bar arrived. They were now two instead of three, and when they sat at a half-empty table, the hostess treated them deferentially.

  Munroe watched Bradford’s body language and knew that he, too, was aware of having been followed. He turned to her, and she nodded a silent acknowledgment of what he didn’t say. They sat and drank, and when she’d had enough of observing and being observed, they returned to the hotel and retrieved the key to the second room.

  Bradford stopped her at the threshold of her door. “When did you first pick them up?”

  She opened the door, held it for him to enter, and said, “One at the airport, two at the first bar.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  She pulled off her shoes and tossed them against the bed. “No idea.”

  He stared toward the window. “I don’t like it.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “You’re not paid to like it.”

  He gave a humorless smirk, paused, and said, “Did you make out much of what they were saying?”

  “Not enough to be of value.” She stripped off her sweat-dried shirt and draped it over the back of a chair. The sports bra underneath was equally drenched, but that would wait until Bradford was gone.

  He was silent, and she followed his eyes to her arms and abdomen, where slivers of white reflected the neon light of the room.

  “Forty-two of them,” she said. “If you must know.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He raised his eyes to meet her stare. “I’m not usually surprised like that. I thought …” His voice trailed to silence.

  “Your file isn’t as complete as you imagined it was,” she said. And then she grinned.

  He scratched the back of his head. “The men following us …”

  She nodded. “They’re dressed well. They aren’t military or police, which is a relief. What’s puzzling, maybe troubling, is that, waiting as the first man was, they had to be expecting our arrival—or else we’ve been mistaken for someone else.”

  “What about being set up for a hit?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. “Seriously? I think that if they intended to relieve us of our meager worldly possessions, they would have made the attempt when we were conveniently on the wrong side of town.”

  She paused and then stood. “If I pick up even a wisp of information, Miles, I’ll be sure to let you know.” With that, she opened her door and motioned her head toward it.

  THE MINISTRY OF Foreign Affairs was an aging colonial structure that had been gutted and renovated and somehow through the process had come out looking tacky through improvements. The building was shaped like a lowercase n, the bottom floor tiled and open for people and vehicles to pass through to an overgrown courtyard. On the left and up a flight of stairs, they found the office of the minister. It was eight in the morning.

  The minister’s secretary sat at a metal desk that was bare but for a half-sharpened pencil, a ballpoint pen missing its cap, and a well-worn notebook. From her they learned that appointments were made on a daily basis—first come, first served—and provided that the minister was in town, he might or might not take the time to see those who waited for him. She was able to confirm that as of yesterday he was in town, but she had no idea if he would be at the office today or tomorrow, or for that matter any day at all. She motioned to a cracked vinyl sofa and suggested that they sit and see.

  Munroe sat, stretched out, and leaned back with closed eyes. Without the distraction of sight, she heard things otherwise missed: conversations in the background, whispers in the hallways, and the continuous scratch of Bradford’s pen on paper.

  She would wait today, tomorrow, as long as it took, within reason. She held no illusions as to how much information the ministry would provide even if they had it available; information was not the foremost purpose of the appointment. After Malabo the search would shift to parts of the country where few unaccompanied foreigners went. Meeting the minister would lay the groundwork to dispel suspicion of their movements and to provide the means to name-drop if necessary.

  Over the course of the morning, several more appointment hopefuls joined the room. The hum of nearby air-conditioning units filled the silence, although in the foyer, where they waited, there was only heat and humidity, which the elevated ceilings did little to alleviate. By midmorning their shirts were heavy with perspiration. By early afternoon the minister had not shown up, and the secretary rose to leave, suggesting to those waiting that they try again at three or four.

  Outside the building, mingling with a group of men loitering in the shade, was one of the men who had followed them last night. When they passed, he trailed behind. He was an amateur at best; his shadow nearly blended with theirs as he kept pace. They nicknamed him Shadow Two, caught a cab back to the hotel, and at three returned to the ministry, where they spent the afternoon as they
had the morning: on the vinyl sofa, in the heat, waiting for an audience.

  It was shortly after four when Munroe sat up from her half-prone position. “He’s on his way in,” she whispered.

  The bustle started at the bottom of the wide stairwell and increased in volume as the minister, followed by a small entourage, breezed through the hallway leading to the foyer. He was on the phone, ignoring the few who followed, and in the waiting area he stopped, nodded, and then retreated to his office, where he remained for an hour before leaving again, apparently finished for the day. When he and his retinue had gone, the secretary picked up a purse from behind the desk and to the small waiting crowd said, “Try again tomorrow.” And then she left the building.

  The crowd filtered out, and Munroe stood and stretched, breaking up the kinks in her neck. She turned to Bradford. “Let’s go get dinner.”

  He tucked his pen into the notebook and put it away. “How would you rate today?” he asked. “A total wash?”

  “Not in the least,” she said, twisting sideways until her spine popped. “The discussions in the waiting area were fascinating.” She waited a beat and then laughed when his face clouded over. “Waiting is a part of life here, Miles. There’s no point in trying to rush it. In the meantime I listen, observe, and learn. We’re in no hurry.”

  They walked in the direction of the hotel, and when they rounded the block toward the coast, caught sight of Shadow One, the man from the airport.

  As they neared the coastal avenue that functioned as the city’s main artery, the sidewalks were crowded and there was an unusual level of police activity. Whistles shrilled through the distance, and makeshift barricades blocked vehicles from entering the street.

  Preferring to avoid contact with the local police if at all possible, Munroe flagged a taxi. The driver shook his head at her request and rattled off an explanation before driving away.

  “The president is passing through,” Munroe said to Bradford. “The city is basically shut down—roads to the airport, the port, anything across the main street as well. Could be an hour, ten hours, two days, or who knows until it clears, so we walk. If anyone talks to us or asks us for our papers, don’t say a word. Do you have your Guinean residency handy?”