The Informationist: A Thriller

by Taylor Stevens

  Munroe observed the three and was drawn to the sister. She was sixteen, seventeen at most, had curly dark hair, dark eyes, a beautiful smile, and a playful personality. She was the younger sibling, there with her girlfriend no doubt, and oblivious to the smoldering lust between the two across the table. She would make an excellent mark.

  If all other things were equal, Munroe would prefer a female. While men had to be bribed or threatened or their suspicions overcome while they were befriended to get them to spill their secrets over drink, women naturally loved to talk. And while it was no secret that a man would say most anything when desperate to get between a woman’s legs, that was not the way Munroe worked. Women, on the other hand, responded to attention, and while in the persona of a male she could bypass whatever insecurities the female form brought on and gain direct access to a woman’s mind. The problem was that things were very seldom equal.

  Munroe tapped her fingers lightly against the table and watched the trio over the top of a traveler’s guidebook. The girl would be the easiest way to the parents and, from them, to the rest of the community.

  She stood, walked to the table with the guidebook in hand, and in broken French and then fluent English introduced herself as Michael and asked for clarification on several of the book’s entries. She conversed with the brother and between words made eye contact with his sister and passed her a flirtatious smile or two. The brother was helpful, but it was the sister who invited Munroe to sit and join them, and at the end of forty-five minutes Munroe had also been invited to dinner at their house the following evening. In another place, another climate, the invitation might have seemed audacious, but not in the world of the Cameroonian expatriate, where the community was small and far away from home.

  The girl’s name was Zemira Eskin, and with that piece of information as well as the phone number and directions she’d been given, Munroe headed to the British cultural center. It took less than half an hour of chitchat to discover that she’d been invited to the home of Colonel Lavi Eskin, commander of the Israeli forces in Cameroon.

  The news brought Munroe’s plans in Yaoundé to a full stop. There was no point in digging further; contact with too many in the community would only backfire. She had no choice but to wait, and in the solitude Francisco filled her mind. He was disruption from the focus needed for tomorrow, broken strands of thought in the web of information her mind attempted to spin.

  Unable to concentrate, Munroe called the United States and after several attempts got through to Kate Breeden. The conversation was brief. Munroe received confirmation that the money had been wired to the account in Douala and reassured Kate that she was indeed alive and well and had no plans to reenter Equatorial Guinea, at least not until after Bradford arrived.

  And then Munroe called Francisco. Hearing his voice dropped her into a cocoon of warmth where it was dark and familiar and safe. The conversation lasted only long enough to pass on the transfer details, but what she wanted more than anything was to remain on the line, to drag out the information if only to continue to hear his voice. What she wanted was to return to Douala, to him.

  Munroe replaced the phone in its cradle and hung her head in her hands. This frame of mind was dangerous; it was how mistakes were made; it was why business and emotion were necessarily disparate; it was why she should have shut down that night outside of Bata. She could still do it—needed to do it—but didn’t want to. In the silence, voices filled her head, but they were not the demons from within—they were Francisco.

  It was nearly seven the following evening when Munroe stood at the gate in front of the house that Zemira had directed her to. The neighborhood consisted of large compounds, their upper stories and clay-tiled rooftops peeking beyond the eight- and ten-foot walls that surrounded them. Like most cities on the continent, Yaoundé had no street addresses or house numbers. There would never be mail service to the door—not even DHL or FedEx could manage that. Directions were composed of road names and landmarks, distance and neighborhoods, gate colors and house descriptions. And what Munroe faced now fit with what she had been given.

  Armed guards opened a walk-through portion of the gate and called ahead before allowing her onto the property. Zemira welcomed her at the door, and Munroe greeted her with a kiss on each cheek, each lasting only inappropriately long enough for the teenage imagination to flourish, and she then presented a bouquet of flowers. “For your mother,” Munroe said.

  “Ima,” Zemira called over her shoulder. “Come meet Michael.”

  Zemira’s mother was a petite woman who looked young enough to be her sister and left no doubt as to the origin of her daughter’s good looks. She introduced herself, took the bouquet with a gracious smile, and asked a few polite questions before returning to whatever part of the house she had come from.

  It was when they were seated at the table that Munroe met the compelling focus behind the trip to Yaoundé. Colonel Eskin entered the room, and seeing Munroe, he reached for her hand, and she stood to shake his. His lips smiled, his eyes said, If you touch my daughter, I’ll castrate you, and the rest of the table heard, “Welcome.” He was five foot eleven, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and what Munroe later realized was a delightfully dry sense of humor. By all appearances he was a husband and a father at home for dinner with his family, and if he was used to giving orders and having them obeyed, it was obviously not under this roof.

  “So, Michael,” he said, placing a helping of food on his plate, “Zemira tells me you are new to Yaoundé. How long have you been in Cameroon?”

  “This time only a couple of weeks, but I was born here.”

  The mother passed a bowl in the direction of her daughter. “How interesting. Were your parents military? Diplomats?”

  “Missionaries,” Munroe replied, and shrugged. “It’s been interesting coming back. It’s amazing how little changes over time, at least according to what I remember.”

  Then the colonel: “How long do you plan to stay?”

  “Only another week, unfortunately, but I’ll return eventually.” The truth, however obfuscated, was always the best story, least likely to be questioned and easiest to modify.

  Under the table Zemira brushed lightly against Munroe’s hand, and Munroe winked at her. So began the tightrope walk of the evening. Munroe had no background research to pull from, no idea of the man and his history or interests or passions, and so she was forced to listen for clues in the talk around the table. And then as each piece became a clearer part of the composite, she shifted into the character that would endear the mother, earn the father’s approval, and keep Zemira just slightly off balance. Munroe’s mind worked in a state of hyperawareness, of ratiocination and calculation that translated into exact responses, and by the time the evening was over and the colonel had offered his driver for the trip back to the hotel, Munroe was mentally and physically exhausted. The results had been better than she’d hoped: lunch tomorrow at the colonel’s office to view his collection of model military aircraft.

  At the hotel sleep came easy and lasted long. It was the healthy exhaustion of an assignment, exhaustion that brought focus to the present, which silenced the internal voices and kept her mind free of Francisco.

  The next day’s lunch turned into a partial tour of the facilities, and while the colonel played guide, he recounted abstract snippets and stories of daily life in the training of the elite forces. By the time Munroe returned to the hotel, she had seen and heard all she’d needed.

  There was nothing holding her in Yaoundé, no reason to stay. Good-byes weren’t obligatory, but neither was there any point to being an ass and skipping town, and so she called Zemira, invited her to dinner, and was sure to have her home early enough to keep the colonel happy. Then, unwilling to wait for the morning bus, Munroe hired a taxi, paid a round-trip fare for a one-way ride, and left Yaoundé. The insanity of driving the roads at night was a risk. A calculable risk. Francisco beckoned.

  It was after midnight when she
arrived in Douala. She’d told Francisco that she would be back in ten days, and she had wrapped it up in six. She stood now on the doorstep of the apartment, key in hand, and knocked first before inserting it. The door opened from the inside, and Francisco stood facing her, bare-chested and barefoot, face blank, simply staring. Except for a table lamp that illuminated a side of the living-room sofa, the flat was dark, and it was obvious he’d been up reading.

  “Are you going to let me in?” Munroe asked.

  Francisco stepped aside to let her pass. She entered and dropped the backpack on the floor. He closed the door and turned toward her, the shock on his face replaced by neutrality.

  “If this is a problem,” she said, pointing first to her head and then to her body, “I have other clothes and a wig.” In response he pulled her close, held her head to his shoulder, and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. “I missed you,” he said.

  “I know,” she whispered. “Me, too.” And then, “Trouble sleeping?”

  He nodded, brought her mouth to his, and when she kissed him back, he pushed her away and held her at arm’s length. He unbuttoned the shirt, pulling it down over her shoulders.

  “I’m still the same person,” she said, but saw on his face that the words were unnecessary. He loosened the bandage that secured her chest, allowing the elastic to unfurl and drop, and forced her against the door. All the reserve, all the control was gone. She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him back just as forcefully. He grasped for her face, for her mouth, and somehow, after knocking first against the hallway door and then against the wall, brought her to the bedroom but never made it to the bed.

  Afterward as they lay on the floor, tangled in sheets that had been torn from the bed, pillows scattered beyond them, he said to her, “We could find a compromise, perhaps take the trawler to an island, someplace where we could live and forget the world.”

  She smiled, rolled over, and then straddled him. She had no words for this: to care, to want, to fear, to hurt in the knowledge that for his sake and hers there would necessarily be a good-bye. She leaned forward, placed a kiss on his forehead, his chin, his mouth, and then, saying nothing, lay beside him, head on his shoulder.

  The next morning Munroe knew it was late before she’d opened her eyes, and when she did, Francisco was beside her, staring. She smiled and whispered, “How long have you been watching me sleep?”

  “An eternity and a heartbeat,” he said, and then traced his fingers along her forehead and down her jawline. “Promise me that you’ll never walk away without warning. I can bear it if you promise me just that.”

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  No pain of captivity came with the words, and she smiled and closed her eyes.

  IT WAS FOUR days later at Douala’s international airport that Munroe stood in a pilot’s uniform on the tarmac near the Jetway, waiting for the Air France flight to taxi to the terminal. The A340 had landed minutes earlier and was now a mark in the distance, growing larger by the second. Not far from where she stood, baggage handlers and ground crew prepared for the disembarkation, and they paid little attention to her or to the white van that passed as an ambulance idling nearby. Such was the simplicity of uniforms: No one looked, especially in a place like this where an extra ten euros were all the identification a person needed.

  Bradford was bringing with him two trunks courtesy of Logan. They would be filled primarily with junk that would pass for what a typical traveler would pack, and if Munroe was lucky and Logan had been kind, some of it would be in her size and style. Buried among the superfluous would be communications equipment, uniforms, video equipment, GPS systems, and a mobile satellite phone high-tech and expensive enough to catch a signal from the remoteness of the equatorial jungle. The trunks would have been specifically tagged, and Munroe had taken great pains to be sure that Beyard knew what he was looking for.

  Once the matériel was inside the country, they would be fully equipped for the run to Mongomo, and these were items that they couldn’t afford to have pass through Cameroonian customs, not even a cursory check by a bribed official. The ambulance would make sure the goods were safely escorted into the country, and Bradford’s unconscious body would help complete the picture.

  The A340 turned toward the gate. Munroe waited to see if the machine would position for the passengers to disembark at the Jetway or, as was typical, via a mobile staircase. The plane continued to the terminal, and the Jetway began to scroll, so she headed up the stairs. According to plan, the trunks would be loaded into the ambulance by the time she returned with Bradford.

  Munroe stripped off the pilot bars that had done their job through a perfunctory security check, tucked them into a pocket, and stood waiting beside the door hatch with a wheelchair. She greeted passengers as they disembarked, and if the airline personnel felt she was out of place, they said nothing. Munroe spotted Bradford before he stepped off the plane, and his eyes went from hers to the wheelchair and back again, the look on his face saying, I can’t believe you’re doing this.

  She stepped beside him and said, “If you would, Mr. Bradford, it’s for your own well-being.”

  He sat, and before Munroe began to wheel him away, she handed him a small bottle of orange juice. “We’re taking you out in an ambulance,” she whispered over his shoulder. “So be a good little boy and take your medicine.”

  “I’ll go along with the ruse, but there’s no way I’m taking this,” he said.

  “You’ll do it or I use a hypodermic.” She smiled, not at him but for the benefit of those who might be watching. “You fucked up in coming back, Miles. Deal with it. You want to be here, you play it my way.” She took the bottle of orange juice from him, unscrewed the cap, and handed it back. “Drink up.”

  His expression was a mixture of anger and helplessness. After watching him tilt the contents of the bottle into his mouth, Munroe grinned and wheeled him down the Jetway.

  chapter 17

  Douala, Cameroon

  It was warm, but not in a suffocating way. Mosquito netting hung from the ceiling, draped in a kind of shroud. Miles Bradford blinked and then took a deep breath. He was on a narrow bed, still clothed, although his shoes were no longer on his feet. A row of small windows lined the left wall, and filtered light came through them, casting odd shadows about the room. His head hurt and he was hungry, and recollections of the last words he’d heard from Munroe tumbled around in his mind. He hadn’t expected to be greeted with a hero’s welcome, but a friendly “Hi and welcome back” wasn’t asking much. Sure, he’d gone against her wishes in returning to Cameroon, but it hadn’t called for this level of hostility. He should have expected it, though. The woman really didn’t play well with others.

  In other circumstances he would already have been at the windows, already gotten a bearing on the surroundings and known what the chances for getting out were, might have even knocked a few heads in, Munroe’s included. But this was different. He didn’t want to escape, he wanted her trust, wanted to be there when she went back to Equatorial Guinea to search for Emily—had to be there. He lay still for a moment and then, when he reached through the netting for the glass of water standing on the low table by the side of the bed, saw that he wasn’t alone in the room.

  In a chair to the right, a few feet away from the bed, sat a man with features slightly distorted by the folds of netting that separated them, and although the man’s head didn’t move, his eyes followed when Bradford shifted to reach for the glass. Without breaking eye contact, Bradford brought the glass to his mouth. The man had a strong, toned body, was a little taller than he, perhaps older. He had no visible weapons, and the way he was sitting indicated no ill intent or threat.

  Bradford drank the water in several long-drawn-out swallows, and when he had finished, the man leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and said, “Good morning.”

  Morning. How long had he been under?

  Bradford nodded in reply and held the glass
lightly, ready to utilize it as a weapon if he had to. This was Munroe’s game; he would see where she was taking it.

  The man asked, “Do you know who I am?” Bradford remained silent, and the man said, “You are Miles Bradford, American, private security, mercenary, assist to Vanessa Munroe in this assignment of hers, am I correct?” The voice was rich with accent, and although the words were neutral, the tone had an edge and brought with it something else—a warning, perhaps.

  Bradford nodded again.

  “I am Francisco Beyard: gun runner, drug runner, businessman, and strategist. It falls on my shoulders to decide your fate. Welcome to my world.”

  And then it made sense. Munroe’s missing years and the way she’d regrouped back on the Equatoguinean mainland as quickly as she had without money or supplies. These were old connections, and this man was a figure from her unknown past—“Vanessa’s” unknown past. Bradford drew himself up to lean back against the wall and said, “Am I here as a guest or a prisoner?”

  Francisco Beyard shrugged. “I would hardly call you a prisoner. Escape from this room, from this house, would be fairly simple, and were you to vanish into the streets of Douala, it would make my job so much easier. You have brought the supplies Vanessa needed, and so you are free to go anytime. But you don’t want to leave, you are determined to return to Equatorial Guinea with us, and that is why you and I are here in this room having this …” He paused. “This conversation.”

  “I’d like to talk to Michael if she’s around.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, Mr. Bradford …”

  “Miles.”

  Beyard nodded. “You see, Miles, I care nothing about this project of yours or this girl you hope to find. My interest in this venture—my only interest—is protecting Vanessa. As I understand it, you were the one responsible for bringing her into the assignment. You were the one with her in Malabo when she was taken from the hotel and for some reason you were left untouched. Now you insist on returning to Africa to accompany her, though your help is unneeded and unwanted. This does not bode well for you. I’m sure you understand my position.”