by Chris Lowry
He let his hand drift down the small of her back and across the curve of her rounded bottom, gave it a quick squeeze and just as quickly moved it back up before anyone caught them.
She twitched away, smile splitting her tan face, her eyes gleaming with love and laughter.
"After perhaps," she grabbed the mischievous hand and gripped it in her own, fingers pressed together. It was tough to know where his hand ended and her hand began.
"If you are a good boy," she added.
"I'll be good," Brill said, thrilling at the lilt of her Duetch accent, liking the way it felt on his ears.
His heart was full even as she led him to the edge of the refugee camp.
"The War is terrible," she said in a clipped voice, and he wondered at her fluid ability to go from making him want her to opening her heart in empathetic sympathy.
Or sympathetic empathy, he wasn't sure.
He had grown up poor, so broke his family couldn't afford the "o" or the "r", so they were just po. Pine Bluff was a delta town in the middle of Southern Arkansas with two industries. The paper mill and river bottom marijuana.
His family worked in both, but not at the top of either career field.
The refugee camp held the same familiar miasma as parts of home.
There were the right side of the tracks, and the wrong side of the tracks, at least according to southern legend, and he firmly knew which side he was raised on.
The tar paper shacks with scavenged tin roofs were pressed close together, proximity adding to keep the structures upright.
Brill snorted.
He grew up in a house much like the one they were approaching, except that he had his own bedroom, and a window that looked out over a trailer park across the street.
The feeling was the same.
Not quite hopeless, but the hint of it, along with the smell of too many bodies in too tight of a space. It smelled like rubbish and feces and sweat.
It assaulted his nose and burned his eyes.
He could pick out something more acrid too, an undertone to the whole environment.
Fear, he realized just as the young girl next to him opened her mouth.
"They're afraid," she said in a whisper.
She let go of his hand, but drew closer to him, her arm pressed against his.
They weren't the only ones who were afraid.
"They spent weeks in the jungle and on the roads, trying to reach safety here," she explained.
Her low voice carried through a bubble of silence that engulfed them.
He could hear the murmur of people several streets over, children crying and what sounded like cheering as they continued up the narrow street.
Around them, the refugees stared.
Not that they were doing much to begin with, just sitting in the dark openings to the dank boxes of shelter.
A small group of men sat clustered in front of one near the end of the pathway they were traversing.
One of the men stood up and watched them approach.
His dark eyes flited across Brill, from toe to head and then alighted on Laurette. His face broke out in a giant yellow grin and he whooped.
"Laurette!" he slurred, missing teeth making him lisp her name.
She smiled and held out a hand.
The man took it and shook it in rapid happy up and down strokes, beaming.
"He only knows my name," Laurette explained. "He's still learning to speak our language."
"Laurette," the man turned to the group of others and repeated to the expressionless faces of the men.
A tall thin woman stepped around the end of the narrow alleyway and smirked.
"It's better than tripping an alarm wire," she said.
The man who greeted them turned toward the woman.
"Laurette!" he boomed.
"I see," the woman interdicted and steered Laurette away from the man.
"I'm glad you were able to make it."
She took over shaking the girl's hand but it only lasted for a moment.
"This is Brill," Laurette introduced him. "This is Dr. Howell."
"Doctor," said Brill.
"Glad you came to help," the woman gripped his hand with strong fingers.
"I hope you're not afraid of a little hard work."
Brill shrugged.
"I'll do what I can."
Dr. Howell smirked at him.
"I bet you will."
CHAPTER
Food. Water. Shelter. Triage. Those were the words Dr. Howell used, and the mantra stuck in his head like the sing song memory of a nursery rhyme.
The shelter was in place, the tin roofed one room constructions that housed small families with just enough space to lay together side by side.
Brill and Laurette were put in charge of food.
Though they weren't in charge.
They manned a table in a row of three tables and passed out rice. Brill ladled it in bags, in bowls, into pots and pans and sometimes shirt fronts and dresses that the people wore.
Laurette stood beside him and worked a water hose spigot, filling whatever container the refugees managed to scrounge from a rubbish bin so they would have liquid to cook the plain white rice.
He had moved through hundreds of people, and hundreds more stood in a long line that snaked through the camp, people waiting in uncomplaining silence in the stifling air.
Brill moved as fast as he was able, scooping and dumping, scooping and dumping.
Dr. Howell had told him only one scoop per person, but the ladle wasn't big and he felt like there was no way it could be enough.
He compromised by making each scoop larger, bigger.
The refugees noted it and offered smiles and chattered words that he hoped meant thank you. Not all of them, but enough that he felt like he was making a difference.
"We're almost out," he leaned over and whispered to Laurette.
There were still dozens of people in line, and he was scraping the bottom of the last bag of rice.
She glanced at the bag and then the line in worry.
"I'll go get Dr. Howell," she told him and shut off the spigot.
He ladled a small scoop into a man's shirt cupped in his hands, trying to stretch the meager portions remaining.
The man started yelling.
Brill couldn't understand what he was saying.
"I'm sorry," he said. "That's all there is."
The man kept screaming, his high pitched voice growing louder. The other people in line began yelling too, adding to the cacophony of noise.
The line collapsed as they surged forward and crowded the table.
"We're out!" he shouted. "No more!"
Someone reached under the table and tried to yank the bag away from him. He gripped it with both hands and fought with the woman trying to take the empty canvas.
She screamed, white teeth flashing against dark skin, eyes glistening in unshed tears.
Brill yanked the sack out of her hand and backpeddled away from the table as it collapsed.
Laurette and Dr. Howell rounded the corner of one of the buildings and rushed to him.
Dr. Howell pushed herself between Brill and the small crowd of hungry angry refugees and spoke to them in their own language. Laurette put her hands on Brill's arm and led him back toward the building.
"What is she telling them?" he asked. "Is she telling them we're out? There's no more food."
"Don't worry about it," said Laurette.
The crowd turned away from Dr. Howell, but they didn't seem appeased. Brill could hear the angry murmuring and frantic sporadic shouts of anger directed at them even after they moved out of sight on the far side of the building.
Dr. Howell turned the corner and watched him for a moment. She shook her head.
"Portions," she said and then motioned them to follow.
"Can't we just give them some more," Brill asked as he fell in line behind her.
"There isn't any," said Dr. Howell. "Not until tomorrow. If
it arrives even then."
She led them toward the entrance to the refugee camp.
Brill could hear the noise of the crowd flowing after them. The sound bounced off the ramshackle
buildings, yells, and screams and shouts that grew louder and louder the closer they got to the entrance.
"We need to go," Dr. Howell began to rush them.
The crowd moved from one narrow intersection and cut them off from the street. The people were starving, angry and howled in frustration as they spotted the trio. Bodies surged up the narrow passage toward them.
Dr. Howell yanked them between two buildings and pulled them along after her.
Brill could hear the klaxon sound of sirens wailing toward the entrance to the camp as authorities responded to the seeds of a food riot.
"They're not here to help us," Howell said as she caught the look on his face. "They'll lock it down to keep it inside the camp."
The narrow space between the two buildings spilled out onto an empty pathway that ran parallel to the main road that split the camp.
There were no people around, not yet, and Howell directed them toward the entrance.
A man lurched out of the shadows and latched onto Laurette.
She screamed.
Brill grabbed him by the arm and tried to yank him off of her.
The man turned on him and knocked the boy down. He rode Brill to the ground, dirty hands scuffing and scratching his neck and face.
Brill could feel his hot breath on his face, the fetid stink of starvation washing over him as the man grappled with him.
Laurette started to scream, but Dr. Howell slammed a hand across her mouth to keep her quiet. It came out muffled.
Brill tried to buck the refugee off, but the man clenched his legs and clamped down even tighter.
He couldn't breathe, his arms hampered by the whipcord thin muscles of the man's legs on his torso.
He arched his lower back and swung a leg up, wrapped it around the refugee’s neck and whipped him backwards on the ground. The man's skull bounced off the dirt with a resounding whack.
Brill rolled over and struggled to his feet even as the man jumped up, rubbing his wounded head and glaring at Brill.
Just when he thought the man was going to charge again, the refugee threw back his head and let out a yodeling scream.
They could feel the ground vibrate as hundreds of sets of feet pounded toward the source of the yell.
Howell grabbed them by the back of their shirts and yanked them toward the hidden entryway to the camp.
The man who assaulted them jogged after, shouting, yelling, screaming. Other voices from unseen pursuers joined in.
He lowered his head and sprinted toward Brill.
Laurette glanced over her shoulder and yipped a wordless warning.
A blur streaked between two buildings and slammed into the refugee. Two bodies crashed to the ground a rolling tumble of thrashing limbs.
The man who greeted them when they entered the camp stood up and grinned at her.
“Laurette!” he hissed and shooed them away.
They ran for the entrance and turned out onto the street.
Two white police cruisers were parked nose to nose at the opening to the camp. Four officers stood behind the cars, guns aimed at the opening.
Brill thought they would shoot.
If they had been refugees, they might have. But their white skin saved them and the officers rushed them away from the danger of the riot as more police cruisers wailed toward the camp.
CHAPTER
"Quite the adventure yesterday," Mr. Van Housen said as his delicate fingers stirred a cube of sugar into his morning tea.
"Adventure," Brill mumbled as he sat in the chair opposite Laurette's father. "I could do without that much adventure."
The man picked up a folded newspaper and slid it across the smooth surface of the table to the boy. It was folded to a black and white picture of the burning refugee count, with a headline in bold print that read: HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD.
"I started that?" Brill licked his lips.
His throat felt suddenly parched and he poured warm tea into a tiny cup with shaking hands, spilling it over the edge and into the saucer.
"God no," Mr. Van Housen said as he took the tea pot from Brill and finished off the cup without spilling a drop.
"That situation has been brewing for years."
"But I made them run out of food."
Laurette's father shook his head.
"The UN doesn't provide enough food," he said. "Our Council has advised, begged and traded for more provisions, but there are a hundred thousand people in that one camp alone. Supplies are limited and do not last."
Brill tried to swallow around the lump in his throat.
There were four times as many refugees in the camp than in the town he grew up in, and they were packed in tighter than the small downtown he knew.
If food and water were limited, then the refugee camp was a powder keg.
"But I lit the fuse," he said, staring at Mr. Van Housen.
The man shook his head.
"There's no reason to blame yourself," he told Brill. "You came upon the situation at the wrong time, and you two were in the wrong place."
"But if I'd listened to Dr. Howell-," he started to say.
"Then the riot would have happened today," Van Housen shrugged. "The food trucks weren't coming, which means another day of going hungry for them."
"How horrible," said Laurette as she breezed into the room.
There were large circles under her eyes. Brill figured she had slept about as well as he had, which was to say, not well and not much at all.
"Can't we do something?" she asked her father as he poured her a cup of tea and placed it in front of her.
"I'll petition for relief supplies," he told her. "But we can't deliver until the riot is over."
"How many more will die?" Brill asked.
But they couldn't answer him.
CHAPTER
He answered the phone on the first ring. Shelby Johnson sat at a large mahogany desk in his DC office.
The blinking lights of the city night winked in the darkness behind him.
Cones of white spotlights bounced off the memorials and marble, but he ignored it.
The large desk was empty but for two simple manila file folders.
He kept one hand on the edge of one of the folders, and answered the phone with the other.
“Yes?”
“I’m reporting in, like you asked,” said Brill.
“Good work,” Shelby purred. “I’m told the transmitter is working. What have you learned?”
“Nothing. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you.”
Shelby bit back a sigh.
He had worked with trained operatives before, but this was something new, a program designed by his own making.
Information was the key to power, and he planned to gain information through as many channels as he could create.
Brill was one of those.
“You’re in the home of one of the administrators of the South African government,” he told the boy. “Just repeat to me the conversations you’ve heard.”
And so Brill shared.
He talked about the refugee camps and the disdain for the UN.
He talked about random snippets of conversation shared over the dinner table.
He talked about the riot.
Throughout it all, Shelby took notes.
“Does that help?” Brill asked after seven minutes or so.
Shelby glanced down at the words he had written. They were in a form of short hand, but he knew there were nuggets of intelligence hidden inside.
Two stock trades that should yield substantial rewards from companies that provided foodstuffs for the country were particularly interesting for him.
And a weapons deal.
If the South Africans were scared of dealing with a ref
ugee crisis from the Angolan war, there were more opportunities to make money by providing supplies to both sides of the conflict.