The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  “So finding missing people, this is not what you do for a living?”

  “No,” she said, twisting on the seat until she was turned toward him. “What if we found a partnership that suits both of us?” she said. “Something legal that doesn’t involve getting shot at. You’d be very good at what I do—we could work together.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  They rode in silence until, rounding a slight bend, they came upon a checkpoint less than a hundred feet ahead, one that hadn’t been there earlier, a group of men closer in appearance to the well-trained and heavily equipped presidential guard than the motley band they’d encountered in the morning.

  There were eight soldiers and three vehicles, each soldier armed with an automatic weapon. Flares and portable road blades sealed off the tarmac. The vehicles, an SUV and two pickups, were black, and the windows on each tinted. From the interior of the SUV, shadows of additional men played against the windows, and the vehicle was parked so that the windshield was not visible from the road.

  Beyard slowed the car, his eyes hard, lips drawn tight. “I’ve got a carton of cigarettes in the back. If that fails, then cash. We assume the worst, which is that they’re looking for you. We act on the best—that they’re out for a joyride. On the floor underneath the seat is a cap. Put it on.”

  At a crawl the Peugeot closed the distance. Beyard’s face was expressionless, and his eyes moved rapidly from the men to the vehicles and the road ahead, and Munroe knew that, like hers, his mind had moved into a state of hyperalertness, interpreting the data and scanning the future against possible scenarios.

  Two of the soldiers stepped onto the road and ordered the vehicle off the edge of it. Munroe fished under the seat for the cap and said, “Do you have any tools? Pocketknife? Carpet cutter? Anything?”

  “Check the glove compartment. I might have a screwdriver.”

  She found the cap. It was grimy and covered in dust, and she slipped it on. Many of the locals had difficulty distinguishing the features of one foreigner from the next, even more so if working with photographs. The cap would help distort appearances. Ten meters to the checkpoint.

  Munroe kept her body upright and her eyes straight ahead while her fingers moved through the contents of the glove compartment and turned up a penlight, which she shoved into a pocket.

  Beyard brought the vehicle off the road, sandwiching it between the tarmac and thick foliage. He shut off the engine, and Munroe reached across his lap, took the keys out of the ignition, flipped the ignition key off the ring, handed it to him, and kept the remainder of the keys in her fist.

  Three soldiers approached the car, two with their weapons aimed at the occupants while the third demanded the vehicle’s paperwork. Beyard passed the documents through the open window, and when the man turned to walk with them in the direction of one of the vehicles, Munroe caught his profile and recognized him as the one who had kicked her on the boat. While the paperwork made the rounds, Beyard stepped out of the car. He kept his hands visible, pointed to the trunk, and then lifted two fingers to his mouth. “I left my cigarettes,” he said.

  The soldier nodded toward the rear of the car and followed Beyard with the weapon. Beyard pulled out the carton and returned to the driver’s seat, where he made a show of breaking out a pack. “They’ve now got another vehicle stationed behind us just where the road bends,” he said. “Two men, same equipment.”

  “At least one of these guys was on the boat with me that night,” she said. “I don’t recognize any of the others.”

  “If you see authority, point it out to me,” he said.

  “Might be in the SUV. I see shadows.”

  A bush taxi approached the checkpoint from the direction they’d come. The vehicle held six occupants, and the roof was hidden under the bundles piled high on top of it. Two soldiers standing on the opposite side of the road approached the taxi, peered through the windows, and then, without asking for papers or vehicle documents, moved the road blades aside and waved it through.

  Beyard flipped a cigarette out of the pack and fiddled with it. “If you saw what I saw,” he said, “we have a problem.”

  “I saw it,” she said. “I’ve got a residency card on me that I need to get rid of. I don’t want to give them documented proof that I’m the person they’re looking for.”

  Beyard pulled a lighter from the ashtray, lit his cigarette, handed the lighter to her, and then stepped out of the vehicle with several packs of Marlboros in his hands. He leaned his back against the car door, placed the packs on the hood, and said to the soldier nearest to him, “Care for a smoke?” The man remained still, neither moving nor acknowledging Beyard’s question, and in response to the lack of reaction Beyard began a monologue, his voice loud enough to be heard by the soldiers nearest to him: the weather, the food in the city—everything and anything, it didn’t matter, he simply talked.

  Munroe set the residency card on the floor in front of her and lit a corner of it. It was a slow burn, the plastic wrapping itself around in curls while it let off noxious fumes. The flame had burned a third of the way through the card, taking with it the photo and most of the personal information when the mood outside the vehicle shifted. Munroe stomped on the flame and shoved the remainder of the card into the seat cushion.

  The soldier who had originally taken the vehicle’s documents returned without them. In a language familiar from the night she’d been shot, he barked a command to the two standing beside the vehicle, and they ordered Munroe out. Beyard pulled a long draw on the cigarette and blew smoke into the air. Not good. Beyard was a nonsmoker, and that he was going through the motions of a habit he found particularly disgusting was an old signal, a warning. Comply.

  Three soldiers crossed the road and joined the three already there. One of them ordered Munroe and Beyard onto the ground and one at a time kicked their legs apart, pulled their hands back, and cuffed their wrists. Under gunpoint she and Beyard were forced into the back of one of the trucks. They were shoved onto their stomachs, and while they lay on the bed of the truck, the soldiers sat along the rim, weapons held toward the captives. The vehicle lurched forward.

  After a few moments of driving, they left the road. Munroe could feel it in the jolts of the truck, hear it in the way the sound of the vehicle’s engine carried through the chassis, smell it in the way mud and living things permeated the air. She struggled to keep her head from slamming against the floor. They were working a small track now. The lighting changed, and she caught glimpses of green. Deeper into the bush.

  She couldn’t see Beyard—her head was turned opposite—but she could feel him. He had moved closer, a gesture no doubt meant to reassure, but there was nothing reassuring about the situation. Black, muddy boots were only inches from her face and just above them a touch of dull metal, the man’s weapon pointed at her head.

  The truck stopped without warning. The soldiers emptied the vehicle, and Munroe was pulled up from behind and dragged backward out of the truck. Her head hit the tailgate on the way out, and she fell to her knees. A throbbing penetrated her skull, followed by a telltale trickle down the side of her face and the acrid smell of blood. Her vision blurred gray, and internally the percussion of war began to beat out. At eye level was the belt of one of the captors. Sidearm. Ammunition. Knife. The urge to strike welled, instinct began to flow, and then in an instant the fury collapsed into itself, a fire without a source of fuel. And she was immobilized.

  A split second of fear brought on by the sight of Beyard had swept her back. Fear. It was probable that in working out her own escape, Beyard would be killed. Instead of every sense shifting into overdrive toward self-preservation, she was fucking worried about Beyard. It was new, this sensation of fear. She’d never had to cultivate the demons and primal instincts lurking underneath the surface. Control them yes, ward them off yes, but never to call on them. It was a god-awful time for feral instinct to go domestic.

  She was forced to her feet. Not far fr
om the vehicle lay a narrow trail that led into the bush. The soldier standing closest stuck his weapon into her ribs and nodded in the direction she should go, and when she didn’t move, he pushed her. The color of the trees phased from emerald to drab olive, and the internal percussion was a very faint tap against her chest. The undergrowth was dense and the trail difficult to find, and when she slowed, looking for direction, the weapon behind her connected with her back. The inner hammer pounded. She smiled a smile of death and clenched the fist that still held the keys. With her thumb she repositioned them so that they protruded between the slits of her fingers.

  It was impossible to tell how many of the men followed behind, or if Beyard was following the same trail or had been forced onto his own private death march. She could make no movement, no plan until she knew where he was and how many men walked between them. She risked another jab to the ribs and called out, the bleat of a Peters’s duiker, one of the small antelope that inhabited the underbrush. A few moments later, it was returned. Beyard was back there somewhere following the same path.

  The trail ended abruptly at the edge of a small gully. Fifteen feet of mud and gnarled and twisted root systems separated the top, where she stood, from the bottom, where a murky, rust-red river cut through the landscape. During the rains the river would be pregnant and swollen with water, but now it was only a remnant of itself. Between the trail and the river’s edge, there were a few feet of space, nothing more. The soldier yanked at her wrists and pushed her to her knees, his weapon pressed into her neck. She faced the river, her back to the trail, and his belt was at eye level, his weapon only inches from her cheek. In the stillness the sound of footsteps came from behind and with them the call of the duiker.

  Beyard was placed as far away from her as the foliage would allow. His hands were secured behind his back, and she was sure that, like her, he was on his knees with a soldier positioned next to him, weapon angled toward his head. And then there was relative silence.

  There were more men approaching. They were near, still moving down the trail; how many was impossible to tell, although instinct told her they could be no more than six.

  An execution would take place, and the men guarding them now would do nothing without the orders that were getting closer by the second. Munroe closed her eyes to focus. She could possibly get out alive. If she had to worry about Beyard, there was no telling, and every heartbeat of hesitation was a hastening to her own demise. Things were what they were; it was now or never.

  She moved her right thumb out of its socket and slid off the cuff, popped the thumb back, and tightened the keys in her hand. She shifted her weight forward, pulled taut, and then looked up at the soldier. When he turned toward her, she smiled sweetly and in Portuguese said, “Will you kill me now?” He said nothing and turned his face so that he stared out across the water, but she had spotted what she wanted. His eyes had dilated in registered recognition. He was Angolan.

  She continued, “I cannot die without speaking of the treasure.” Her voice was soft and lilting, each word uttered slowly and precisely. “You will find it buried underneath the mound on the beach five kilometers south, where the mouth of the river meets the ocean.” With each word she lowered her voice until at the end the lie trailed to only a whisper. It was involuntary—the man could not help himself; with each word his head moved nearer to hear what she said.

  She struck like a mamba. Deadly. Silent. Fast. Without a sound the keys tore through the man’s neck, replacing his trachea with a gaping hole. The force knocked him to the ground, and air and blood bubbled from his throat. His fingers struggled to find his weapon, which lay just beyond reach, and Munroe kicked it with her foot. There could be no gunshot, only stealth and silence. She moved on top of him, grabbed his head, and twisted for the snap. She rolled to her belly, held on to his body with one hand and the weapon with the other, and slid down into the gully, catching her footing on the root system protruding through the mud banks. She grabbed the knife from his belt, took the sidearm and shoved it in at the small of her back, slung the assault weapon over her shoulder, and then let go of the body. It slid down the embankment, landing facedown in the muck of the river, lending a deeper red to the water. It had taken five seconds, long enough for Beyard to die ten times, but there’d been no sound of gunfire, no noise from the distance where he’d knelt. Munroe rose to the edge, ready to take the soldier that guarded him, and was greeted by Beyard’s boots as he slid after her into the gully, dragging a body with him.

  Her hands worked quickly, searching the body of Beyard’s guard for a key to the handcuffs. “How the hell did you manage that?” she asked. She found nothing.

  “You think I survived this long by letting other people fight my battles?” He breathed out a cruel whisper of a laugh. “Thanks for the distraction.” He gave a forced smile and then dropped the body into the gully and hissed, “Move.”

  She leaned into the bank and crab-walked, a half swing, half jump, throwing her weight forward and balancing against whatever she managed to hold on to. Speed was all that mattered. Beyard was close behind, and like her he had an assault weapon slung across his back as he worked the bank, hanging on to whatever he could to keep upright and avoid sliding to the bottom. Sounds of confusion filtered across the gully, and Munroe and Beyard scrambled up into the foliage. They’d managed to get about forty meters from the spot of execution. On their stomachs they began the slow crawl forward. Silence was now their best friend. The empty cuff dangled off Munroe’s hand, and it made her nervous. In spite of precautions, the cuffs made noise when any two parts of metal connected. Faint. But noise nonetheless, and any noise would attract gunfire.

  Elbows to the spongy ground, they moved deeper into the bush. Munroe had a guess as to where they were, but only a guess, and when she was certain there was no way to be seen from the banks, she rolled to the side and motioned for Beyard to lead. The unmistakable hiss of a Gaboon viper sounded not far from her head. She remained motionless and after what seemed an eternity cautiously rolled back. The snake’s venom could kill in fifteen minutes, and civilization was a hell of a lot farther than that.

  A staccato of gunfire sounded from the way they’d come, and then silence. They crawled forward a foot at a time, listening and then moving again. If the soldiers had followed them into the gully, they had not found the area where they’d entered the bush; all sounds of pursuit had moved in other directions. Another round of gunfire disturbed the canopy, farther away than the previous burst and far enough in the distance that no voices could be heard.

  They moved from their stomachs to a crouch and, as they covered distance and the silence deepened, to a full walk. And then thirst and time became the enemies.

  It would have been different during the rains, when red clay mud would ooze through their clothes, into their hair, across their faces, and would sting when it mixed with sweat and dripped into their eyes and the taste of it filled their mouths. It would have coated their skin and worked as camouflage and kept the biting insects at bay. And the rain that transmogrified the clay into mud would have been plentiful and easily quenched their thirst. But the rains had begun to dissipate weeks ago.

  At some point in the hours of the nocturnal morning, when the silence was deepest, when the calls of the night jungle had stilled, and before the predawn awakening, they made it back to the guesthouse. They’d utilized the dirt road for the last kilometer, hanging tight to the edge in case they needed to disappear into the foliage. They had maneuvered past one checkpoint, the typical ragtag group of warriors, several of them drunk and passed out, the others half dozing. Beyond that, no sign of military.

  Their thirst was nearly unbearable, and by the light of a near-full moon they maneuvered skillfully through the kitchen to water. They drank in rapid gulps, water dribbling down their faces streaking the grime and dirt, a strange form of war paint, and when Munroe could drink no more, she searched for a paper clip, wire, anything she could use to open the handcuff l
ock or work as a shim. She found nothing. Those were items so familiar in the West, that other world.

  Beyard left for the bedroom and then returned, cuffs off, and placed a key in her palm. She released the lock. “Thanks,” she said, and in one drawn-out movement slapped the mud-crusted cuffs around his wrists and pulled the pistol out of the small of her back.

  She leveled it at his head.

  chapter 15

  Beyard’s eyes found hers, and even in the dark it was evident that his face registered shock.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  His words came in a garbled, half-choked whisper that held no control or calm.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Munroe said, “but I’ll blow your fucking head right off if I have to.” She kicked a chair toward him. “Sit.”

  He did as he was told, and it was clear that he did it out of confusion and an attempt to understand rather than because of any genuine fear. She pulled the penlight from her pocket, aimed it at his right eye, and stood in front of him just beyond his reach. “I consider you a personal and strategic threat,” she said. “I’m tired, hungry, and mad as hell, so don’t try my patience. I want answers, and I want the truth, even if you think it’ll piss me off. I haven’t got time to waste, and lies, distortions, and half-truths will only cause this to end with you dead and me gone.”

  Beyard squinted at the light and shifted away from it. “I’ve never lied to you,” he said.

  “There have been omissions,” she said. “Do you take me for an idiot?”

  She waited for a moment, allowed silence to fill the room, and studied his eyes and the shifting tension of his face for the invisible cues that would betray his deception. “When was the last time you spoke with Boniface?”