The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  Over a midday meal, Beyard regaled his crew with stories of times gone by, exaggerating with poetic license events that needed no exaggeration. Munroe enjoyed the humor and the retelling of happenings she had blocked out for nearly a decade. Beyard spoke animatedly and caught her eye on more than one occasion. When he did, her face flushed.

  After the meal the mood of the crew changed from festive to somber. They would be traveling north through the night, and preparations would need to be made before the handoff. The galley emptied, and the ship fell ghostly silent.

  There was nothing but time—that and the rocking of the ship. Munroe walked the vessel, familiarizing herself with every space, and then, restless and with nothing more to do, she searched out Beyard’s team. The only member of the crew who appeared to be left on board was in the pilothouse. George Wheal was Beyard’s second-in-command on the ground and first mate at sea. An African-American ex-SEAL, at six foot six he towered over the rest of the crew.

  She stuck her head beyond the door and knocked on it. “Can I keep you company?”

  “Sure, come on in.” Wheal’s voice had a booming quality that reminded her of Boniface Akambe.

  She sat in the chair next to him, both of them watching the water as the trawler churned up the coastline. Munroe was first to break the silence. “So what got you into this fine mess of a job?”

  Wheal swiveled his chair, peaked his forefingers, and peered over the tops of them. “When you’re trained to blow things up, there aren’t a lot of options in civilian life. Francisco needed a guy who could make things go boom, and I needed a job. Voilà, here I am.”

  She studied his face and his chocolate skin, then turned toward the ocean and smiled. “The locals treat you differently from the others, don’t they?”

  Wheal chuckled and rubbed a hand over his head where his hair would have been if he’d had any. “Yeah, until they know better, they treat me like I’m Beyard’s houseboy. Or, if we happen to be going through the bush, a porter. It helps being a big guy,” he said with a laugh that filled the room. “It gets you some respect at least.”

  She nodded knowingly. “Works both ways, doesn’t it? You mention Africa back home and all that comes to mind is animal documentaries and Masai running around with spears.”

  Wheal smiled. “Yeah, it works both ways.”

  They sat in silence until Wheal rose to fiddle with the knobs on the console. “Is it true what they say about you?” he asked. “That you speak to the locals as a god and they see you as divine?”

  Munroe laughed and then said, “No, it’s not true.”

  “So someone just made that shit up?”

  “Not exactly. They believe I’m a powerful witch and are terrified of the juju.” She shrugged. “I speak the languages, know the cultures, and understand the nuances behind what they do—legends grew from that. You can’t really blame them, considering the level of superstition. Hell, there’s still even the occasional human sacrifice.”

  “You and Beyard,” Wheal said. “You used to be tight, huh?”

  “Yeah, we were.” She tucked her legs up in the chair. “Has he told you much?”

  “He only talks about you when he’s drunk, but I’ve been with him for seven years, long enough to make some sense out of his ramblings. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find your presence here troubling.”

  “Do you find me threatening?”

  He flashed a toothy grin. “Not even if all the stories I’ve heard are true.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Which they probably aren’t.” And then, meeting his gaze, she stared at him for a moment and said, “So what is it?”

  He shrugged and turned away. “I’m only looking out for him. Looking out for myself. We’ve got a decent thing going here. Don’t mess it up.”

  “You think I will?”

  “I know you will,” he said. “Francisco doesn’t do this because he likes it. He does it because he’s a fucking brilliant strategist and it comes naturally to him.” He glanced at her. “With you around, his mind’s not going to be on the next job, it’s going to be on you. For me that’s a problem.”

  She stood to go. “I can appreciate your perspective. If the roles were reversed, I might look at it the same way.” Her hand was on the door. “You’re a good man, Wheal. For what it’s worth, I’m glad Francisco found you.”

  THE CLOCK ON the dining-room wall showed that it was after midnight. Even with the steady rocking of the ship and the hum of the engines, Munroe hadn’t been able to fall asleep. Too many memories clashing with puzzle pieces that didn’t fit. She poured a cup of coffee and then on impulse poured a second for whoever was in the pilothouse.

  She knocked on the door, and when Beyard answered, she hesitated, debated, and then let herself in. She handed him the mug. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Figured whoever was up here would want the company.”

  He took it from her, placed it on a narrow ledge, and squeezed her empty hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “What about?”

  The silence was filled by sounds from the radarscope, its monochrome band keeping time, a metronome of sorts. Beyard gave a glance at the console, stood, and then took her mug from her hand and placed it on the ledge next to his. With one hand around her waist, he drew her close and traced the curve of her neck with his fingers. He brushed his lips against hers. “Just thinking about you,” he whispered. He moved his lips closer, his hands behind her neck, his fingers through her hair. He smelled of salt and the ocean and all things familiar. Her eyes followed his as they traced the outline of her body. And then he kissed her lightly, hesitated, and pulled her again to his mouth. The kisses were deep, passionate. His hands ran over her shoulder blades, to her neck, and down her spine.

  She didn’t resist and didn’t reciprocate. After what he’d said in the hallway, she understood where this came from and hadn’t yet sorted through the options of what to do with it and how to use it. Francisco reached for the buttons of her shirt, then he stopped and backed away. He stroked her face. “I have wanted to do that for eleven years,” he said, drawing her close and holding her to his chest. “I could be consumed by you. It would be so easy.” Then he let go and turned away to face the windows and the navigation console. With his back to her he said, “Stay with me through the night?”

  She took a seat behind him, and they sat in silence for some time, she staring at the back of his neck and he facing the prow.

  “Tell me about your life,” he said.

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Have you been happy?”

  “I haven’t been unhappy.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” he said. “What about marriage? Have you found your match?”

  Such a simple question, so many complex ways to answer. She said only, “No, I haven’t.”

  He turned to look at her briefly and then faced front again. “It’s difficult, isn’t it? For people like us, to find someone who understands and can live with who we really are, without judgment, without trying to make us conform to their own preconceived notions of life.”

  He was quiet again, and the time passed between them.

  “I left the continent, Essa,” he said, “after I tracked you down and knew more or less where you’d gone and that you were alive. You never told me of the legends that followed you. By the time I figured that part out, we’d had several disastrous deliveries. Then Jean left. I had put together enough of a fortune to pull out, so I did. I packed up and left, tried to start over in France, and when that didn’t work, I went to Spain. I was back in Africa within two years.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “It wasn’t the business that failed. I made money in Europe, set up new contacts that I still use. Could have gone on indefinitely.” He pounded a fist into his chest. “It’s inside. I couldn’t live their life, couldn’t adjust.” He got up to check the navigation console and then sat down again. “So he
re I am, back where I started, back in my element where I thrive—hate it but thrive. No matter how despicable it may be to you, at least I am there to look at myself in the mirror each morning, which is better than the alternative.”

  She stood and, putting her hands on his shoulders, worked out the tension in his muscles. “We all have our demons, Francisco. Some are harder to fight than others.”

  He reached a hand up and placed it on hers, then gently pulled her in front of him. “What are your demons, Essa?”

  Her smile was sad, and she shook her head. “The aloneness. The invisible walls. Always the outsider looking in. Different. Unusual. I despise their world and the superficiality of it all and yet still want to be a part of it. I wonder sometimes how much simpler a life of naïveté and unawareness would be.” She moved away and returned to the seat behind him. “I have on occasion found people I could trust with who I really am, and when that happens, I walk away.”

  He turned to look at her, clearly puzzled.

  She shrugged. “It’s safer that way—for them, for me. It’s far easier to bear personal pain than the responsibility of someone else’s. I feel safe around people as tough as I am, but they don’t come along that often.” She smiled wanly. “So I walk away.”

  She stayed with him until shortly before dawn and then stood to go.

  “Will you sleep?” he asked.

  “If I can.”

  “Take my cabin, please. You’ll rest better there and”—he held up his hand—“I swear on my own life that I won’t lock you inside.”

  “All right,” she said, and left.

  His cabin was larger than the others. Instead of dual bunks sandwiched tightly together, his had a double bed and its own bathroom. The cabin was well lived in, a home whose occupant never left for long, yet it still managed to have an aura of sterility, testament to Beyard’s fastidious nature. Built into one of the walls was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with volumes ranging from the intellectual to the mundane and, in a recess that appeared to be built specially for it, a marble chessboard. Munroe glanced at the board, at a game in play, and lifted one of the pawns. A tacky gum had been stuck to the bottom of each piece to keep them from spilling across the board with the rolling of the ship. She analyzed the game and then showered and for the second time slept in the clothes she was wearing, falling asleep on top of his bedspread. Sometime later, somewhere on the border of awareness, she heard him come into the cabin, felt him lie next to her on the bed, and then sleep came again.

  By next nightfall they had moved into the waters off Nigeria’s coast, their position precoordinated and pinpointed by GPS. The lights on the trawler were out, the engines quiet, and there was enough heavy artillery on hand to supply a small conflict. On top of the pilothouse, Lupo, the Romanian, lay hidden with a silenced sniper rifle, and the rest of the crew were stationed around the ship wearing Kevlar and cradling submachine guns. Clouds thick with rain blocked out what light the moon and stars would have provided, and at ten minutes after two a single light flashed on the horizon, followed several minutes later by the sound of engines across the water.

  Beyard stood on the prow. He faced the approaching ship, and Munroe stood behind him at a distance; it was her position, the observant, silent shadow. He was an outline, tall, shoulders squared, a shape blending with the night, a man in control and secure in his surroundings. She knew that his mind ran strategy, a giant chessboard to be played in real life. To watch him and stand in awe of him was familiar from the past, but the emotion running beneath the admiration took her by surprise. In Beyard’s confidence was a power, a force that lesser men could never hope to imitate, and she was drawn to that power.

  From over the darkened waves, the other ship loomed, not as large as the trawler but sleeker and no doubt faster. Munroe watched as a Zodiac bearing five men closed the distance between the two ships. She waited until she could gauge the extent to which they were armed, then, as the first began to climb the ladder, retreated into the shadows. Three of the Zodiac’s five boarded, and Beyard strode toward them.

  Their leader was a short, heavy figure in battle fatigues. His men stood silent where they’d stepped onto the deck, and he moved forward, greeting Beyard with a strong handshake that implied a shared camaraderie. He handed Beyard a briefcase, and the banter between the two was easy and familiar. The commander’s English was perfect, absent any indication of pidgin, and crisp with enunciation that contrasted sharply with Beyard’s bastardized English.

  The wind stifled the sounds of their conversation, and so Munroe turned her focus to the trawler’s crew, confirming their positions in relation to one another. She moved around a railing near the side of the ship, and it was then that she heard the low, nearly inaudible whine of an electric engine. She glanced at Beyard, who was nodding in approval over the open briefcase, then up toward Lupo, invisible on the pilothouse roof.

  The sound of the engine cut. Munroe turned toward the ladder, saw that the commander’s men were no longer there, and in that instant a burst of gunfire shattered the night.

  She dropped, palms to the deck, and the first rush of adrenaline coursed through her veins. She waited. Listened. And then inched toward the side of the ship, peered over, and confirmed a second Zodiac, empty. She swore under her breath. The commander and his men were familiar with the trawler and its layout; she’d seen that in their interaction with Beyard. This wasn’t a handoff at sea but a goddamn hijacking—the pilothouse and the hold with its cache of weapons, those would be their targets.

  On deck, Beyard was gone, as was the commander, and the ship had turned driftwood silent. Munroe took a deep breath, mentally placed the crew, then knelt and took off her boots. The cold of the ship’s metal spread from her toes to the marrow of her bones. There would be no halfway tonight, no truce. If the trawler were to be taken, she and the crew would be executed, and should they succeed in defending it, the enemy must die. It was the cold-blooded reality of treachery: One way or the other, the ocean would claim her dead. Munroe stood, bare feet fueling the savage ecstasy of the hunt to come.

  Another burst of gunfire erupted aft, followed by the muted clap of the sniper. Munroe hugged the wall and moved toward the foredeck, where Wheal had been. There was another hiss from the sniper, followed by a padded thud, then an exchange of gunfire.

  Silence.

  Munroe slid around the corner. Wheal, crouched low, signaled in her direction, motioned fore, then held up three fingers. She nodded and gestured for a knife. He slid one to her, and Munroe took it, retreating the way she’d come. With the blade between her teeth, she slipped over the side of the trawler.

  The Zodiacs had been left empty. Stupidity or overconfidence, Munroe wasn’t sure, but their failure to guard egress would cost them. She sliced at the fabric of the first Zodiac, eyeing the silhouette of the enemy ship less than three hundred meters away. The Zodiac collapsed under the knife, took on water, and sank while the ghost rising out of the waves stood sentinel, no doubt waiting for a signal to close the distance. Munroe slit the material on the second boat, scurried up the ladder, and slithered onto the deck, cautious not only of the intruders but of moving into the kill zone of one of the crew.

  A fusillade of bullets from one of the submachine guns ricocheted off the stairwell that led to the pilothouse. There was return fire, silence, and then another thud on the deck. Hidden as he was with a night-vision scope, Lupo had a temporary advantage. Against how many, though? That was the question.

  Munroe moved amidships to a hatch that would feed away from the deck with its high probability of getting caught in the crossfire, then to the hold, the only direction in which Beyard could have disappeared. She dropped down into the dank belly of the ship, and the black swallowed her. Disoriented by the lack of light, Munroe’s fingers traced the railing, and, sightless, she moved forward, one cautious step at a time.

  Awareness of a presence came finally, not from the front as she expected but from behind, an expulsi
on of breath so soft it raised the hair along her arms. In a fluid movement, she slipped over the top of the railing and held herself in place while a whiff of body odor and soap, cigarettes and cooking oil, passed by. There was no way to gauge his height or even the strike distance, rendering the surprise of a knife useless. But there were legends and superstitions. Here in the dark, they were a weapon.

  Unable to pinpoint her location in relation to the items in the hold or ascertain the length of the drop, Munroe hung to the bottom rail, turned to face the opposite wall, pitched her voice an octave higher, and in accented pidgin English hissed, “Who dares disturb my sleep?”

  Hesitant footfalls mixed with the chambered echoes of her voice, and so she said again, this time more forcefully, “Who dares disturb my sleep?”

  The presence swore, mumbling under his breath just clearly enough that she could discern his language. In Ibo she repeated the phrase once more. She traced his reaction by the elevated breathing. Soft and singsong and slightly louder, she said, “Leave me.”

  He did not turn but faltered, and she persisted, reaching out into the dark until she snagged his bootlace. “Mek you no woreemee,” she wailed. “Or I go kee you.”

  His breathing became frantic. She could follow him now, knew the direction he faced, gauged the height of his head, knew that she must strike, and as she slid over the railing, the man bolted back the way he’d come. Munroe followed only far enough to guarantee that he’d gone through the hatch. With any luck, Lupo would have him as soon as he hit the deck.

  Munroe returned to the railing where it joined the stairs. Whatever others were in the hold—and she was certain that at the least this was where the commander remained—they had heard the voices, and she would draw on that to flush them out. Following the stairs to the floor of the hold and moving cautiously through the dark, she cycled through Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba, calling and taunting, gradually becoming aware of more than one presence through the footsteps and shuffling.