The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  The corners of Beyard’s mouth twitched slightly, and he turned his head to the side. He took a shallow breath, and in the split second it took for him to bring his eyes straight at her, her suspicions were confirmed.

  “If this is about Akambe,” Beyard said, “I’m speechless.”

  “Answer the fucking question.”

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “He told you that I was heading to Malabo.”

  Bravado shifted to discomfort. There was a pregnant pause. “Yes.”

  “He gave you pictures, didn’t he? You sent people to follow me, to watch my movements.”

  A deep inhalation and then, “Yes.”

  “And you had me drugged and taken out to the boat to be killed.”

  “No.”

  The tightness in his face and inflection in his voice said truth; she raised the weapon as if to fire and said, “You’re lying.”

  “Vanessa, I swear it,” he said. “I had nothing to do with what happened to you on the boat. When I spoke with Boniface, he told me he’d worked papers for you and that you were moving in the direction of Malabo. At first I felt only anger—I wanted to hurt you. And then I was curious, wanted to know what you were like, why you were here, what you were doing. I was afraid to see you personally, didn’t know how I would react. So I had you followed.”

  Munroe shook her head slowly. “ ‘Misplaced trust can be a dangerous thing,’ ” she said. “Those words meant something, though I didn’t know it at the time. All this while, at any point, you could have told me—given me the information I needed to make the connection—and you didn’t. And now twice in the past week I’ve been taken at gunpoint by the same group of men, and you’re the only connection between those events,” she said. “They never asked to see my ID, never even got a good look at me. Explain that.”

  “I’m as puzzled and confused by it as you are,” he said. “What? You think I planned that? Pretend I’m about to get my own head blown off right beside you? What a fucking stratagem that would have been. It wasn’t just you almost killed out there today. At this point I want answers almost as badly as you do.”

  “What about Malabo?” she said. “Your bumbling idiots disappeared right before I was dragged off.”

  “It was coincidence,” he said. “I swear, I had nothing to do with that. No matter how angry I was with you—to kill you? No, Vanessa, I could not do that.” He paused and looked at her with a sly smile. “I’ve known what you are capable of. If I hated you that much, I would have done the job myself, made sure it was done properly—not hired some half-assed group of fuckups to do it for me.” He paused, and when Munroe said nothing, he continued. “When I heard that you had purchased tickets for Bata, I told my guys to pack up shop and to notify me when you’d left town. It was only the next day, when you weren’t on that plane, that I knew something had happened—what exactly was anybody’s guess. Among the possibilities was that you’d gone to the GEASA office as a ruse and that your true destination was somewhere else.”

  Munroe stepped closer and, standing directly in front of him, pressed the muzzle of the gun under his chin and forced his head back. She moved behind him, tracing the weapon against his neck as she went. His eyes followed, although his head did not move. She continued until the muzzle was at the base of his skull and she stood an arm’s length behind him.

  “Emily Burbank,” she said. “How much of the information that you’ve fed me is accurate?”

  “I have never lied to you,” he said. “What would be the point in that?”

  “You did see her three years ago in Bata?”

  “Yes.”

  “The information given to us by Salim and supposedly said by the other two friends of yours—was it genuine?”

  “All true as far as I know. I had an idea that they might have seen the girl. That’s why we went there.”

  At the tail end of the explanation, Munroe heard the inaudible, words that shouldn’t be. She took a deep breath and for a brief second tilted her head toward the ceiling. “Francisco,” she said, her voice soft and singsong, “I can smell the omission, taste it, touch it. What are you not telling me?”

  He was silent.

  “I need to get moving, so say what you’re going to say. Or don’t.” She punched his head forward with the gun. “Whether you live or die—your choice.”

  He sighed. It was a deep breath, and in the exhale came the sound of defeat by the inevitable, finality, as if by whatever he was to say next he executed his own death and was willing to accept it as it was. “When I saw the girl in Bata three years ago,” he said, “I recognized the men she was with. I know who they are and where to find them.”

  In a silent scream, Munroe clenched her teeth and kicked the back of the chair, nearly knocking him out of it. “You fucking almost got us killed,” she hissed. “For nothing! Goddamn it, Francisco, you knew! What the hell could the point of today possibly have been? You fucking knew!”

  “I wanted to be sure the information I had was up-to-date.”

  The explanation wasn’t right, it didn’t fit. Even with her judgment clouded by fury, she knew it.

  “That’s bullshit!” she said. Then she took a deep breath and, monotone, in a near whisper, said, “I’d love to kiss you right now, stroke your hair and tell you how sorry I am to have to do this.” She moved one carefully placed foot at a time until she was once again standing in front of him. “You’ve meant more to me than any other person I know,” she said, and raised the gun to his forehead. “Good-bye, Francisco.”

  His voice cracked, and in a half scream he yelled, “Wait!” And then, just above a whisper, “Goddamn it, Vanessa, what the hell do I have to do to prove to you that I’m telling the truth?”

  “You haven’t told me all,” she said. “Killing you is a matter of self-preservation, Francisco. A necessary evil. No offense. I’m sure you’d do the same if the roles were reversed.”

  He let out a long breath and then lowered his eyes. “How long is the assignment going to last?” he asked. “Two weeks, maybe three. Get in, get out, easy, simple. Well, maybe not as easy now, but I didn’t have a gauge on that this morning. When the assignment is over, what happens to you? You go back to your world, and I stay in mine. I have you only for as long as this project continues.” His eyes met hers, challenging. “Given that scenario, why don’t you give me a reason not to go into Bata?”

  However pathetic, it was the truth she’d needed to snap events into focus. She moved the light out of his eyes and shut it off. “That is the most lame-assed crap excuse I’ve heard in my life.” She flipped the safety and with a shove returned the gun to the small of her back. “What the hell were you thinking? You of all people should know better than to make tactical decisions based on emotion.” She took his wrists and released the cuffs. “Consider this payback for locking me in the cell on the ship.”

  He sat still on the chair and stared at her, rubbing his wrists where the handcuffs had been. “Even a grand master makes a mistake now and then,” he said. He looked up. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or smack you.”

  She crossed her arms and stared. “I swear, Francisco, if I find that you’ve double-crossed me, you’re a dead man. I will hunt you down, and there is nothing you or any one of your men could do to keep me from fulfilling that vow.”

  “I’ll admit I haven’t been completely straight,” he said. “I should have told you about tracking you in Malabo, and I shouldn’t have withheld information about the girl, but beyond that I’ve done nothing to sabotage your work. I don’t give a shit about your assignment or this girl that you’re trying to find, but I do want you alive, and I’d like you with me for as long as possible. Is that good enough for you?”

  “For now.”

  “And you might as well know that I haven’t been able to get in contact with one of my guys since the night you were shot. He’s possibly one of the two passing your photo around Bata, although I swear I have nothing to do wi
th that.” Beyard continued to rub his wrists. “Were you really going to kill me?”

  “I don’t know. At the least I would have left you here and taken the boat to Cameroon.”

  She moved across the house toward the bathroom, and he followed. Her fingers ran along the doorframe until she found a grip. Beyard stood behind and remained silent while she separated the segment from the wall, pulled the container from its hiding place, and slid the belt out.

  “How would you take the boat?” he asked. “You don’t have the key.”

  She strapped the belt around her waist and tucked it under her pants. “I wouldn’t need one any more than you would,” she said. “But even so, I could get it if I wanted.” She looked off in the distance toward the main house. “It’s in there.”

  “Antonia doesn’t know where it is.”

  “She knows which rooms you frequent the most, and thanks to you”—Munroe knocked on the wood in her hands and then shoved the frame back into place—“I know where to look.”

  Beyard opened his mouth to say something, and stopped. He nodded in the direction of the main house. “Let’s go.”

  IN THEIR ABSENCE the cig had been refueled, and it carried enough additional fuel in storage to make the trip twice. The noise of the engine shattered the silence, and Beyard guided the boat away from its mooring. When they were on open water, he placed a small box in Munroe’s hand. “Truce,” he said. “A gesture of goodwill—without it I’m lost from my ship, and I’m giving it to you because I trust you and hope that you trust me. When you activate it, we’ll get our coordinates and George will know we’re on our way in.”

  To the east the color of the sky had shifted from star-studded black to deepest blue. By the time they coasted alongside the trawler, the sun had fully climbed into its arc across the sky. On the deck Wheal nodded at Munroe and grasped Beyard’s hand with both of his. “Didn’t expect you back so soon,” he said.

  Beyard reached for a hose that lay curled against a wall a few feet away. “We ran into a few problems,” he said, and cranked the tap, hosing himself off, shoes, clothes, and all, the force of the water carrying with it the mud and gunk of the previous twenty hours. Dripping wet, he handed the hose to Munroe, and to Wheal he said, “We’ll be up in the wheelhouse in ten minutes. Will you meet us there?”

  Still grimy but minus the mud and in clean clothes, they gathered in the pilothouse. For Wheal’s benefit, Beyard summarized the events that had brought them back to the ship. He spoke in English and even with his lack of fluency was descriptive in the telling of it, although his version neatly left out all mention of the guesthouse from the moment the pistol had been placed to his head.

  When he was finished, they sat in silence. There was no need to say what they all were thinking. The minutes passed slowly and were emphasized by the regular ticks of the radarscope that filled the quiet. Beyard bit on the edge of his thumb, Wheal tapped a pen against the table, and Munroe sat with her head kicked back and her legs stretched out.

  Wheal was the first to speak. “I want to know what happens next.” He turned to Munroe. “You know that if you go back in, you’re playing against terrible odds—it’s a high-risk venture, the stakes being your life and”—he paused and nodded at Beyard—“more important as far as I’m concerned, Francisco’s, if he decides to go with you. Is what you’re after worth that much?”

  Munroe tapped her fingers against the table, a steady Morse rhythm, and then nodded almost imperceptibly in answer to Wheal’s question. “Yes and no,” she said. “I’m willing to put my life up against it, I’m not willing to put up Francisco’s—or anyone else’s, for that matter. It’s a decision he has to make for himself, but I’ve got to go back in regardless.”

  Wheal rested his forearms on the table. “Listen,” he said. “We’re all a little nuts to be in this business, a little fucked in the head, a little short on fear. I don’t give a rat’s ass that you’ve got a death wish, but what you’re setting out to do is suicidal, and that’s where I draw the line. Not because of you. Go fucking die, I don’t care.” Wheal nodded again toward Beyard. “My job is to keep him out of trouble, and you”—he pointed at Munroe—“are trouble.”

  “Oh, how sweet,” she said with the high pitch of patronization. “You’re playing daddy. Does Francisco get grounded if he breaks curfew?”

  Predictably, Wheal eased back from the table, straightened, and crossed his arms. Outwardly, Munroe’s face was placid; inside, she was amused. He had an eight-inch, hundred-pound advantage, and his was the posture of an alpha male adept at intimidation. She’d taken on guys his size before, and what she lacked in bulk and strength she more than made up for in speed and agility. In another time and another place, the challenge would have been more than welcome. She would’ve continued to provoke him until he exploded, then, and like lightning, would have gone up over the table, and the pain from the ensuing fight would have been cathartic—but not here.

  “I can’t give you what you want,” she said. “The status quo has already been disrupted, and even if I walk away, nobody, especially not you or me, has the power to put things back the way they were. I don’t want to see what you have here ruined any more than you do, but it’s out of your hands now, you know that.”

  “If I’m going to lose my friend, I’d like to know it’s fucking worth it.”

  “I have no answers for you, George. It’s possible we’ll wind up a couple of decomposing bodies in a ditch. It would be tragic and, considering statistical probability, long overdue. Yes, I could walk away and guarantee myself a few more days, but for what? So this can haunt me for the rest of my life? No thanks. Whether I want it or not, I’m locked in. I’d also like to get my hands on the bastard who wants me dead. And there’s the issue of Emily Burbank: If she really is alive, I need to find her, out of principle and to fulfill a promise I made to a mother in Europe.” She turned to Beyard. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, and I really don’t expect you to accompany me, but I am going back, and when I start setting things in motion, it would be helpful to know what you’re planning to do.”

  Beyard, who had been silent throughout the exchange, with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest, raised his eyes and said, “Do you even have to ask?”

  Wheal leaned forward into Beyard’s line of sight. “This thing is worth your life?”

  Beyard let out a snort. “You know me better than that.”

  “Then why the hell go?”

  Beyard sat back and wrapped an arm over the chair. “I have my reasons.”

  Wheal stood and placed his hands on the table, leaning down so that his head was almost level with Beyard’s. “This is fucked up, Francisco, you know it’s fucked up. You’re risking everything we’ve had. Seven years of friendship.” Wheal snapped his fingers. “Seven years of partnership. For what?”

  When Beyard said nothing, Wheal walked toward the door. “The two of you can sort it out. This is insane, and I want no part of it.”

  When Wheal had left the room, Beyard said, “I’ve crossed the Rubicon.”

  “You can still change your mind.”

  Beyard rested his elbows on the table and placed his chin against his folded hands. “No,” he said. “Regardless of how events play out, there’s no going back.”

  Munroe put her feet on the table and tilted back in the chair. “All right then,” she said. “We’re going in again, and this time we do it my way.”

  The look of concerned sadness that had been on Beyard’s face opened into a smile of amusement, but he said nothing. Munroe ignored what the smile implied. War was a boys’ club that she’d infiltrated long ago, and he, like so many others before him, would figure it out eventually. “We’ll need supplies that you don’t have,” she continued, “so I’ll need to make a few calls. If you’ve got connections and friends in the government, this would be a good time to call in some favors, find out what they know, and see if we can’t learn something.”

  “Do you s
till have the number that you got from Salim? What we get when the phone is answered could be enlightening.”

  “It’s pulp in one of my pockets.”

  It took Beyard an hour to make the rounds by phone, during which time Munroe assembled a supply list that she e-mailed to Logan, and then, unable to reach Logan by phone, she and Beyard retreated to the galley, where they put together a meal from an odd assortment of frozen and canned goods. It was the first they’d eaten in over a day, and between shoveled-in bites they discussed what little Beyard had learned.

  The events that had transpired off the coast of Bioko Island and by the edge of the Boara River had apparently never happened. No word or rumor floated through the capital, and if the orders had come through official channels, they had escaped each of the people Beyard relied on for information. The U.S. embassy in Malabo provided few additional clues. Notification of Munroe’s death had come from a fisherman who’d described in graphic detail a body found along the shoreline and who’d produced a residency card he claimed had come from it.

  Munroe brought a piece of paper to the table and began to sketch. “We’re working through an information blind,” she said. “What are the givens?”

  “We know that this girl was alive a few months ago,” he said. “That she lives in Mongomo, that she’s married to or is the mistress of Timoteo Otoro Nchama, vice minister of mines and energy, and that someone in the Equatoguinean government is willing to kill to prevent you from getting to her.”

  Munroe kept her eyes on the paper and rapidly diagrammed. “The big question to which we have no answer is why. We also don’t know who.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that this girl does not want to be found? That it is she who is pulling the strings to keep you away?”

  Munroe stopped writing, looked at him, and one corner of her mouth turned up, twisting her lips into a half grin. “I’ve considered a lot of possibilities,” she said. “But not that one.”

  “It’s worth a thought.”

  “Yes it is,” she said, and returned to the paper. “We can assume that wherever Emily is, she’s being watched—protected or threatened. We can assume that, like in Bata, at each of the country’s gateways someone is watching for me, and that no matter how many times I attempt to enter, I will be tracked. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but since it’s me that the trouble follows, I won’t be going in again.”