by Allan Folsom
Then there were the rest. Mostly they were men, ranging in age from middle twenties to late sixties. The majority of them wore tropical suits with dress shirts open at the neck. Some of the younger ones wore jeans or khakis with golf shirts under wrinkled, lightweight sport coats. Judging from their languages they seemed to be European or South African. Within a circle of twenty feet Marten heard smatterings of English, German, Afrikaans, Spanish, and Italian. His experience in his not-so-many-years-removed life as a homicide detective on the Los Angeles Police Department told him most were quick-buck artists—gamblers, manipulators, and hangers-on, whores of all trades—drawn to anywhere there was fast money to be made. And his sense of things during the few days he had been there told him there was plenty to be made in Equatorial Guinea. The dealings would be in drugs, guns, human beings, information—by the bundle or in snippets—anything at all they could sell for profit.
Marten pushed around a large man in a sweat-stained white suit and was trying to find the most direct way to the bar when he saw Marita and her medical students squeezed around a small corner table. She smiled and waved when she saw him. He grinned and nodded in return. He hadn’t seen any of them since they had been separated and the soldiers had taken him off for interrogation, and he was happy to see they had been released and were safe. He stepped around two arguing AG Striker oil workers and went to their table.
“We were concerned about you, Mr. Marten,” Marita said as he reached the table. “Please sit down.”
“I’m alright, thanks.” They made room, and he sat down gingerly. “What about you? Everybody okay?”
“We’re fine,” Marita said, then looked at her young companions. “¿Sí?”
“Sí,” they nodded in agreement.
The four were people he knew only by their first names: the slim, ever-smiling Luis; baby-faced Rosa, a little overweight and looking like a wannabe executive secretary in oversized glasses and olive-colored sack dress; the quiet, chubby, seemingly overly serious Gilberto; and Ernesto, tall and gangly with an unruly mop of bright red hair and red Converse sneakers to match. Here, in this crowded, boisterous, smoke-filled room, surrounded by a crowd of hardscrabble players from a wholly different world, they looked a lot less like people who would soon be doctors than kids who should still be living at home and going to high school.
“They collected our things from the hostel where we were staying,” Marita added, “and then brought us here, saying they would pick us up at nine and take us to the airport. We were told to leave the island tonight. From what they said we will be on the same flight you are taking.”
“To Paris.”
“Yes.”
Marten smiled. “It’s a pleasant coincidence.” Some coincidence, he thought. From what he’d learned at the front desk, it was the only flight out for the next two days, and the army clearly wanted them all off the island as quickly as possible. He looked around the table. None of them seemed to have been ill treated. Still, they had been questioned, and he wanted to know what they had told whoever had done it. He wondered if the subject of the photographs had come up, or if they even knew about them. He turned to Marita. “What did they ask you?”
“They searched us and then wanted information. Mostly about you. How we came to be traveling together. What we knew about you. The things you said to us.”
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth, of course. That we saw you walking on the beach and you collapsed and we went to help you. After that all the things you told us,” Marita smiled conspiratorially, the impishness in her rising up, then she repeated almost verbatim what he had told them on the beach and what they had gone over in the Land Cruiser on the drive to Malabo. “Afterward they asked what we were doing in Bioko, but we had already documented our purpose with the proper authorities when we first arrived. So we were okay.”
“That’s all they wanted, nothing else?”
“No.”
“Nothing about a priest?”
“No. Why?”
Marten shook his head. “Nothing.” Apparently the matter of the photographs had not come up. Perhaps because the authorities were satisfied with what he had told them and believed that the distance between Father Willy’s village and the beach where he had been found was too great to have involved a conspiracy to smuggle the pictures out. If that were the case, then the pictures would not have been mentioned. No reason to alert others to their existence if there was no need; that could only serve to complicate things later if some unforeseen problem arose, say, with the media and inquisitive reporters.
Suddenly Ernesto ran a hand through his pasture of red hair. “There was one other thing,” he said in English. “When we collected our luggage we realized everything had been gone through, even our medical supplies. But nothing was missing. Why they did it none of us knows.”
Marten half-smiled. “Don’t feel bad, they went through mine, too. Looking for what, I don’t know any more than you do.” So they had been looking for the pictures. They weren’t that incompetent. “I guess they have a revolution on their hands and aren’t taking any chances.”
At that moment a sudden gust of wind sent an avalanche of rain across a large window behind them. Seconds later a stronger gust rattled the entire building. Again the lights flickered, almost went out, then came back on.
“We’ll be lucky if we get out tonight at all,” Marita said with not well hidden apprehension. She didn’t like being stuck here any more than Marten did. Too many things could still go wrong.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Marten said.
Immediately something off to one side caught Marita’s eye, and she turned to look. Marten followed her gaze to see a tall, attractive woman coming toward them through the crowd. She was probably in her late thirties or early forties, had stylishly cut, shoulder-length dark hair, and wore expensive white linen slacks with a matching short-sleeve top. She also had the intense, almost severe air of someone used to being in charge and had something immediate and definitive on her mind.
With her was a handsome man in a tan suit with a light blue shirt open at the collar. He looked to be a little older than she, was well over six feet tall, had dark, close-cropped hair, and appeared to be more than physically fit. He, too, held the aura of authority. It was in the cut of his clothes and the way he carried himself: shoulders back, chest out; his movements smooth and fluid; his presence bordering on the aristocratic. It was a characteristic Marten had seen in some of his clients in Manchester, a studied military bearing born in the career officer ranks of the armed forces. There was something else, too, and it nearly took Marten’s breath away. He was one of the SimCo men he had seen in Father Willy’s photographs transferring weapons to the insurgents in the jungle.
13
“I believe you are Mr. Marten,” the woman said as she reached him.
Marten looked at them warily. “Yes, why?”
“My name is Anne Tidrow. This is Conor White.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m a member of the board of directors of the AG Striker Oil and Energy Company,” Anne Tidrow said. “Mr. White is head of the security firm we have retained to safeguard our workers in Equatorial Guinea. We understand that you were caught up in the rebellion in the south where a German priest was killed. Since Striker has many employees in various regions of Bioko, we are naturally concerned for their safety. Anything you could tell us about what you saw or experienced might help us be better prepared to protect our people.”
“I went over the details at great length with army interrogators. Why don’t you ask them?”
“Unfortunately the army does not share that kind of information with us, Mr. Marten,” Conor White said, his accent noticeably British. “Might we have a few moments of your time? And in private, if you don’t mind. This room is filled with large ears, and we wouldn’t want to inadvertently create a climate of fear where there is none. Or at least where we hope there is none.”
>
Marten hesitated. Here was a situation he could hardly have imagined. The oil company’s chief security contractor, a man photographed supplying arms to the rebels, standing in front of him asking him to give him details of what he knew about the rebellion, and the woman with him, a member of Striker’s board of directors, going so far as to mention Father Willy, though not by name. Maybe the army didn’t share information with SimCo, but Conor White undoubtedly knew about the photographs and possibly knew that Marten had spent time alone with the man who took them. It meant that he, like the army, suspected Marten knew where the pictures were and wanted to retrieve them as quickly and quietly as possible. That explained Conor White and why he was here. What about Anne Tidrow?
It was interesting to wonder why she was even in Bioko, let alone here with White. There was little doubt she knew about the photos, too, or White wouldn’t have dared expose his involvement with the rebels by bringing her along. So why would she be trying to protect SimCo when that was the firm her company had hired to safeguard its employees from the insurgency it was helping to fuel? It was the same question he had asked Father Willy.
“I came in here hoping to find a gin and tonic,” Marten said finally. “Then I ran into my friends, and so far a waiter hasn’t been by.”
“Gin and tonic sounds good,” White said. “Why don’t we see about it at the bar?”
Marten nodded. “Why not?”
7:35 P.M.
Conor White led them to a corner of the bar that was away from the crowd and relatively quiet, seemingly safely devoid of the “large ears” he had referred to. An aging Asian barman wearing a dark toupee, who looked like he’d been there since the building was erected, came over, and White ordered drinks. As he did, Marten pulled back a worn rattan barstool for Anne Tidrow.
“Thank you.” she said, smiling.
“How did you know my name and that I was, as you put it, caught up in the rebellion in the south? Who told you?”
“My people,” White answered for her. “We often monitor army radio communications. It helps us keep up on what’s happening inside the country.”
“It does until you get caught.”
White grinned. “We are not in the business of geting caught, Mr. Marten.”
Just then the barman brought the drinks, and White handed them around.
Anne Tidrow picked up her glass and looked at Marten. “Perhaps you could tell us something of your experiences during the fighting. What went on, what you saw.”
“I wasn’t exactly in the middle of it.” Marten picked up his glass and took a solid pull at his drink. “What I remember was seeing two little native boys come running along a very muddy road in the pouring rain yelling for Father Willy Dorhn, the priest you were referring to. A couple of minutes later I heard gunfire from the village. The next thing, a couple of army trucks full of soldiers showed up. The first one stopped beside Father Dorhn and the boys. Soldiers jumped out. One of them hit the father with a rifle butt hard and knocked him down. Maybe you don’t know, but he was an old man. Another soldier did the same to the boys. One right after the other. I found out later all three of them died. The soldiers in the second truck came after me.” Marten paused; then his eyes came up to hers and held there. “What else do you want to know?”
“Did you get to the village beforehand?” Now it was Conor White asking the questions. “By that I mean were you there earlier, before the rebels came?”
“I never said the rebels came. I’d met Father Willy several hours earlier, and he took me into the rain forest to show me some native plants. I’m a landscape architect. That’s why I came to Bioko. To study the local flora for some clients back home. It was afterward, when we came down out of the jungle and were nearing the village, that all the trouble started. The father told me to run, and I did.”
“Were you in his church? His living quarters?”
“Why?”
“Mr. White is just trying to get some sense of what was going on before the rebels attacked.” Anne Tidrow took a sip of her drink and set the glass on the bar.
“You people keep telling me the rebels attacked. I never saw a rebel. Only soldiers.”
“But you were in his church and his living quarters,” Conor White pressed him.
“I met him in the village square, if that’s what you want to call it.” Marten deliberately locked eyes with White. “First it was the rebels. Now you’ve asked me twice if I was in the priest’s church or his living quarters. Just what is it you’re trying to find out?”
“If he was encouraging the rebellion. If you saw anything that might indicate that.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“It might interest you to know the savagery has escalated greatly in the last weeks. The army is literally slaughtering suspected insurgents as well as their families, the elderly and women and children included, and afterward burning their villages to the ground. In response the people are butchering soldiers and bystanders alike. It is becoming very dangerous to have our people here, both mine and the employees of Striker Oil.”
“Why don’t you get them out?”
“Because if we did we might well not get back in again for a very long time. Striker has a major investment here. So, at the moment, that option is not realistic.”
“Well, that’s your business, not mine.” Marten’s eyes left White and went to Anne Tidrow. “If you don’t mind, I’ve had a long couple of days. I want to join my friends at the table so that we’re all together when the soldiers come to escort us to the airport. Maybe you haven’t heard, but the army kicked us out of the country. We’re leaving on the ten-o’clock flight to Paris, assuming it gets off. One way or another we’ve still got a lot of night ahead of us.”
Suddenly the thunderous beat of a bass drum rocked the room. Instantly everything went silent. Even the storm seemed to quiet down. Anne looked to Conor White.
“Here we go again.”
In the next second an honor guard made up of a dozen black African soldiers in gold-and-blue dress uniforms and wearing white gloves appeared in the main doorway. Each carried a gold-plated AK-47.
Again came the thundering boom of the drum. Immediately eight more soldiers in the same uniforms marched smartly into the room and stopped in unison. One had a large bass drum harnessed in front of him. The others carried gold-plated trumpets. In unison they raised them to their lips and blasted out what sounded like some kind of fanfare.
“President Tiombe is coming,” Conor White said quietly. “He does this at whim, whenever it is his pleasure.”
Marten looked toward the doorway as the drummer and trumpet soldiers stepped to the side and a lone black African in an elegantly tailored full-dress military uniform entered. He was tall and wide at the same time and visibly soft, giving more the appearance of a buffoon than of the warrior-king of a merciless army. For an instant he surveyed the room, then without further hesitation started forward, accompanied left and right by the gold-plated-AK-47-carrying guards.
“What’s going on?” Marten asked.
“He’s making himself known to the foreign guests,” White said. “He wants to be recognized as Equatorial Guinea’s great host and benefactor.”
Marten watched as president/dictator Francisco Ngozi Tiombe worked the room like a politician, choosing this person and that at random, shaking hands, chatting briefly, and sometimes touching them warmly on the shoulder as he moved on to the next. Thirty seconds and a dozen handshakes later he stopped in front of them.
“Good evening, Ms. Tidrow, Mr. White,” he said in a low rumbling voice and in impeccable English. “I trust you are enjoying your stay.”
“Yes, of course, Excellency, thank you,” Conor White said, bowing slightly at the waist as he did. President Tiombe smiled, and then his eyes shifted to Marten.
“This is Mr. Marten, Excellency,” White offered. “Unfortunately circumstances are such that he has to leave your most hospitable country this evening.”
; “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Marten.” Tiombe smiled. “Please say good things about my nation and my people when you reach your home. I look forward to welcoming you personally the next time you visit Malabo.”
“That is most generous, Mr. President.” Marten nodded but did not bow. “Thank you.”
Tiombe fixed Marten with a stare that could only be called chilling and then abruptly moved on.
“Now you can say you’ve met the president of Equatorial Guinea,” Conor White said with a smile.
“All the more reason to be leaving.” Marten finished his drink and set the glass on the bar. “I hope I’ve been some help to you.”
“It was kind of you to take the time to talk with us,” Anne Tidrow smiled.
“The pleasure was mine,” Marten said and, with a nod to Conor White, walked off.
White waited until Marten was out of earshot, then turned to Anne. “What do you think?”
“He knows more than he’s telling.”
“I agree.” White picked up his drink. “The question is what to do about it.”
7:52 P.M.
14
HEADQUARTERS, AG STRIKER OIL & ENERGY COMPANY,
HOUSTON, TEXAS. STILL THURSDAY, JUNE 3. NOON.
A deeply troubled forty-seven-year-old Josiah “Sy” Wirth, chairman of AG Striker, stared out at the glare of the city from the window of his sixty-fourth-floor office. Tall and lanky, his face creased by time, the Texas sun, and the lifelong strain of intense ambition, he wore faded jeans, a weathered, pearl-studded western shirt, and ostrich-skin boots. He looked more like a cowboy just in from the range than like the top executive of a booming oil company.