by Mark Parragh
Then his phone chimed and buzzed. Georges checked the screen and saw an international number, the code for Cameroon. He turned off the music and picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Akema?” said a man’s voice in accented French. “Georges Benly Akema?” The voice was distant, crackling through a dozen sketchy connections and satellite links to reach him. But it sent a shiver through Georges. He knew that voice immediately. It took him back to events he’d worked hard to put behind him.
“This is Officer Makoun of the Yaoundé—”
“I know who you are,” Georges said quietly.
Makoun paused. “You remember me?” He sounded pleased.
“You were kind to me at the worst moment of my life.”
“I remember you as well,” said Makoun. “They told me you were special. A genius. An Einstein right in Cameroon. You would make us all proud.”
“And I wanted to take up a weapon and go after the men who hurt my mother. But you said if I wanted justice, I should do something smart.”
“And did you?” Makoun asked.
Georges glanced around the lab. He felt the weight of expectation, suddenly heavy on his shoulders. “I’m trying,” he said at last.
“I’m afraid your sister did not.”
The words hit him like an electric shock. “Romy? What’s happened? Do you know where she is?”
“She’s here in Yaoundé,” said Makoun. “She’s in trouble. I remembered you, you see? So when I saw the name—”
“Is she all right?” Georges interrupted. He’d been looking for Romy for months but hadn’t found a trace of her. How had she gotten back to Cameroon? What was she doing there?
“She’s killed a man,” said Makoun. “Probably two. Both were known to us. Gang members.”
The pieces all fell into place in an instant. “The men who attacked our mother.”
He couldn’t believe it. Sweet Romy, her world full of nothing but clothes and boys. How could she… But of course, she could. Georges himself had killed a man now. It could be done. And the attack on their mother had reshaped his life so completely. How could it not change her too?
“A party guest recognized her,” Makoun was saying. “An old boyfriend, surprised to see her again. He gave us her name. But the gang found him before officers arrived. They’re looking for her too.”
Georges said nothing. His mind was racing as he tried to comprehend Romy driven to murder for revenge. He fought back thoughts of her lying dead in a ditch somewhere, hacked to pieces and soaked in blood.
He wondered what he could possibly tell his parents.
“Are you there?” Makoun’s distant voice asked through the hiss of line noise.
“Yes. I’m here.”
“I’ll do what I can to protect her. But you must know there’s nothing good for her in this country, whoever finds her.”
“No.”
There was another pause, then Makoun said, “Best if she were simply gone from Cameroon, where no one can find her,” he said, and let the words hang there. He was a police officer. He could say no more. But Georges understood.
“I’m sorry to bring you bad news,” said Makoun at last.
“No, thank you. I had to know.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Makoun said once more.
Makoun had to be violating police procedure by telling him about an active case. He’d done what he could. Georges couldn’t expect any more special treatment. “My family and I are very grateful,” Georges said.
“I have to go,” said Makoun. “Remember what I told you before.” And the line went dead.
Georges trembled as he set down the phone.
Do something smart.
Yes, he was supposed to be a genius. He should just do something smart and make everything better. But of course, it was never that simple. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as people thought. Or maybe being a genius with computers and technology wasn’t really all that helpful.
But his sister was lost and in danger. He had to do what he could.
Georges didn’t know how to tell his parents, but they immediately saw that something had happened, and he had to tell them everything. They were shocked, and his mother began to cry.
“What will we do? My baby girl!” she wailed.
His father tried to comfort her. “We’ll get her back,” he said. “We’ll borrow money. Pull some strings.”
Georges knew there was only one thing to do. On the way home, he’d made his decision—the only decision he could make.
“I’ll go to Cameroon,” he said.
His parents looked at him in shock.
“There’s a flight tomorrow morning. I’ll find her and bring her home.”
“No!” said his father. “It’s too dangerous. I’ll go. This is my fault. I will go. I’ll need bribe money.”
“It’s not your fault! And how will you find her?” His father couldn’t move in the underworld of youth gangs and crime. He’d get taken for every dollar he had, if not worse. “You can’t go into the world she’s found there.”
“And you can? You’re no gangster, Georges!”
Georges nodded. That was fair enough. “No, I know. You’re right. But I know her friends. I know young people. And I have resources.”
“What do you mean, resources?”
Georges said nothing. His parents still thought he developed actuarial software for the insurance industry. He couldn’t tell them what his real job was, or the things he’d done.
He took his father and mother’s hands in his. “Trust me,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her home. I promise.”
Chapter 38
Helsinki, Finland
Russian embassies had certainly gone upscale since the old days. John Crane stood in a bespoke tuxedo with a glass of champagne in one hand and watched the reception swirl around him. Actual Soviet embassies were a little before his time, but he’d seen old intelligence photos of this very room. It had been a dour little place, carved up into dingy cubicles that churned out propaganda about Soviet industrial triumphs. Now it was a palace ballroom, complete with sculpted marble and glittering chandeliers.
He stood in front of tall windows that looked out on the snowy embassy grounds. Hedges blocked the headlights of passing traffic on Tehtaankatu. A small chamber ensemble played a waltz on the far side of the room. It was easy to imagine himself at a ball in some old Russian aristocrat’s country dacha.
That’s not so far off actually, he thought, given the state of the Russian government. Russia was run by ultra-rich oligarchs these days. Everything could be traced back to some billionaire’s control. The diplomatic corps was no different. The various factions struggled to expand their influence, fighting each other for power and wealth. And they fought dirty.
That was why Crane was here. Josh had chosen to intervene in one such struggle, to keep one of the few remaining reform-minded oligarchs from being eliminated by people who were far worse. Crane had warned Josh that getting into this game would be a lot easier than getting out again. But Josh said he was more afraid of what happened when somebody finally won. That was nearly the case now, but there were still a few oligarchs fighting for their independence, and that kept the dominant powers occupied.
And so Crane was here to pass a flash drive to a contact. The information on the drive would help their beneficiary undercut his rivals, whether by blackmail or by general public outrage when it was released. Crane didn’t know the details, and he had no idea where Josh had gotten his hands on the information. That worried him a bit as well. Josh had found new sources somewhere and was keeping them to himself for now. Crane knew Josh would confide in him eventually, but it usually didn’t take this long.
His thoughts were interrupted as a woman appeared through the crowd of diplomats, financiers, and various political celebrities. She was striking with a ballerina’s body in a deep blue satin dress with a slash of embroidered flowers a
cross the midriff and down one leg.
Well, that won’t draw attention, Crane thought as eyes turned to follow her. Crane put his glass on a passing waiter’s tray as she approached. Then he smiled and took her outstretched hand.
“It’s been too long,” she said.
“We must catch up,” he answered. “Shall we dance?”
“Of course.”
He led her toward the center of the room where couples danced to the orchestra’s waltz. Crane took her in his arms, and they made up small talk about imagined lives as they danced. Crane slipped the drive from his fingertips into hers, and he didn’t see where it went from there. Not his concern. He’d passed it along.
As the waltz ended, she pretended he’d said something funny and laughed, a soft, inviting sound. “We should both leave,” she said softly. “For appearances’ sake, let’s imagine we’re leaving separately to rendezvous someplace more private.”
“What a lovely idea,” Crane said. He raised her hand to kiss her fingertips, and then they parted. He watched her leave, then followed a few moments later.
Crane returned to the cloakroom to retrieve his overcoat and phone. The phone had been busy in his absence, he noted as he slipped it back into his pocket. At least half a dozen missed calls and voice mails. Something was happening, but he couldn’t check in right now.
The air was chill as he stepped outside. The woman was on the far side of the looping drive, passing the guards at the outer gate. He saw her turn left onto Tehtaankatu. Then his phone was buzzing again. He answered it as he walked past the limousines waiting on the drive.
“John? John, are you okay? I’ve been calling for an hour.”
It was Georges Benly Akema, and Crane could hear the tension in his voice.
“I’m fine, Georges. You know I can’t always just pick up the phone. What’s going on?”
“It’s my sister. I know where she is.”
Georges had been trying to find his runaway sister as long as Crane had known him. “Well that’s good, right?”
He passed through the gate onto the sidewalk. The woman was approaching the corner, walking quickly in high-heeled boots and a fur-trimmed coat.
“Yes, and no,” Georges said hesitantly. “She’s back in Cameroon…she’s in trouble.”
Down the block, a figure rose suddenly from between two parked cars and stepped onto the sidewalk.
Crane turned and walked quickly past the embassy’s decorative iron fence. The woman turned left again onto Ullankatu. It was a smaller side street, dark and tree lined, a perfect place for a mugging. The figure turned after her.
“Shit,” Crane muttered. “Sorry, that wasn’t for you, Georges. Go on.” He quickened his pace.
“I’m in a car for the airport,” Georges was saying. “I connect through New York, then Casablanca…”
“Uh huh.” Georges kept talking in the background as Crane closed the distance on the pursuer. Far down the street, he saw headlights approaching.
“I hate to ask you this,” Georges was saying, “but I need help. I know what she’s done, but she’s my sister. Can you help me find her?”
“Hold that thought, Georges.”
Crane dropped his phone as the pursuer whirled. It fell into a patch of snow, and Crane spun away. A knife gleamed dully in the streetlight’s yellow glow. Crane’s coat flared as he dodged the attack, and the tip of the blade sliced into the lining.
The attacker corrected and came back for another pass. Crane trapped the arm and forced the blade up. They were face to face now, the attacker in a tuxedo as well. Crane recognized him from the reception. He must have been following the contact and left while they danced.
Crane grunted as the attacker thrust a knee up into his midsection but kept his grip on the man’s wrist and forced him back against a parked Renault sedan. He slammed the wrist against the car until the knife flew free and skittered away across the roof. The attacker swung a fierce left against Crane’s temple and staggered him. Crane fell back and barely blocked a follow-up strike to his throat.
Crane heard the woman’s heels clattering on the sidewalk as she ran away, into the approaching headlights. Then the attacker feinted and lunged. Crane caught his arm and turned with him. He guided the lunging man past himself, adding his own energy to the movement, and drove him hard into the metal uprights of the embassy fence. The man grunted in pain and reeled back, dazed. Crane took his collar, spun him a quarter turn and smashed his face into the corner of one of the fence’s stone columns. The man went limp, and Crane dropped him to the ground, blood streaming from his forehead.
A black Escalade lurched to a stop in the street, and the passenger door flew open. The woman looked back as she climbed in, and Crane saw the fear in her eyes. Then the door closed, and the Escalade took off in a squeal of protesting tires and disappeared around the corner.
Crane went back to retrieve his phone. On the far sidewalk, a passerby looked across the street in shock, talking on his own phone. To the police, no doubt. It was time to get out of Helsinki.
As he dug his phone from the snow, Crane heard Georges calling frantically to him.
“Talk to me, John! Are you all right? John?”
He brushed away the snow.
“I’m fine, Georges. I got distracted.”
“I thought I heard—”
Crane walked quickly back toward Tehtaankatu. There was a cab stand there. He could be at the airport inside thirty minutes.
“It’s okay, Georges. I’m fine. And of course I’ll help you. Where are we going?”
Chapter 39
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Georges waited at a gate at Yaoundé Nsimalen as passengers filed off into the terminal. He’d been back in Cameroon for not quite twenty-four hours now, and it still didn’t feel right. The heat, the sounds and smells, that specific accent of French spoken everywhere, the hustle of people trying to eke out a living in a hard city. This should have been natural to him. This was the country of his birth, where he grew up. He was home.
But it didn’t feel like home. It hadn’t since the day he saw his mother in a bloody, medicated heap at Central Hospital. Georges knew this city intimately, and yet somehow it was still strange to him. It had never occurred to him to come back. He had a new life in America now. It had been a hard start, but he’d made it better. But Romy. He had no idea what had happened to her after she left home. He’d pulled himself and his parents out of their slum apartment in East Palo Alto. But his sister had slipped through his fingers, and he had no idea what had happened to her since then. Whatever it was, it had brought her back here in search of revenge.
It wasn’t a path that suited her. She wasn’t supposed to be running for her life, hunted by men hardened by poverty into brutal cruelty. It was a path that ended in the cold dark of a grave.
He looked up and saw John Crane emerge from the jetway. He had a bag over one shoulder and a heavy overcoat draped over his arm. He was dressed for Finland, not equatorial Africa. Georges waved, and Crane nodded back. They met at the end of the security barrier and shook hands.
“Thank you,” Georges said, “Thank you. I’m so sorry to bring you into this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Crane. “You need help. I’m here.”
They walked through the crowded concourse. Apparently, Crane had no luggage beyond the bag on his shoulder.
“I’m going to need to do some shopping,” he said.
Georges nodded. “I got us a car, a couple of hotel rooms. I made some calls.”
Crane glanced around as they stepped out into the heat of the tropical afternoon. “Weapons?” he asked softly.
“Not a problem in Cameroon. Not if you know the right people.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t strike me as the right people.”
“I was a good kid,” Georges admitted, “but maybe not always that good. I had some friends my parents didn’t approve of.”
“Oh,” said C
rane, “bad influences? From the wrong side of the tracks?”
“This is Cameroon,” said Georges. “It’s all the wrong side of the tracks.”
Crane sat in the passenger seat of the rented Toyota crossover and soaked in the atmosphere of the city. He hadn’t been to Africa in some time, and never to Cameroon. Yaoundé was the capital, a boomtown with Chinese money pouring into the oil industry. New towers were going up in the central business district. The bank they visited had readily converted Crane’s Euros into Central African Francs. He’d found a very upscale shop to replace the clothes he’d packed for Helsinki, and they’d passed a Porsche Cayman a few minutes ago, parked outside an elegant French restaurant.
Now, less than a mile away, Crane saw how most of the city’s residents lived. They drove slowly down a crowded street behind a jitney bus that belched smoke from its tailpipe. Women in bright colors carried groceries. A man pedaled past on a crumbling bicycle, a huge pile of flattened cardboard boxes strapped to his back. There was a sense of grim desperation about the place despite all the color and the snatches of music. This was a place where it took all someone had just to keep from falling back. It took a lot to carve a path out of this place to the other city of cafes and Porsches. Most people would never make it, and the ones that tried would be hardened and sharpened by the effort. This was a place that would breed dangerous men, Crane thought. This was where they would find Yanis Kamkuma.
Georges had briefed him with what little he knew. Yanis was the son of Patrice Kamkuma, a powerful man in the country’s unsettled north. He’d proven adept at terrorizing local farmers into signing punitive resource leases, so he was useful to the corporations busily squeezing the north for oil. He’d developed a power base there, and this had all started because he wanted his son Yanis to build on that. Putting his son into a position in the regional government would give him direct access to the flow of corrupt money moving through Cameroon.