by Mark Parragh
One of Romy’s friends was in medical school now. One was a receptionist at an insurance company. Another was raising an infant daughter and living with her parents. None of them had heard anything from Romy since she suddenly disappeared. None had any idea she was back in Cameroon.
“Who’s this next one?” Crane asked.
Georges took his notebook from his shirt pocket and handed it over to Crane. Crane skimmed down the list.
“Odila Bassong,” he read. “Did you know her?”
“I remember her,” said Georges. He made a show of concentrating on the traffic, braking and taking a corner. “Her last name was Foncha then.”
“So she’s married.”
“Yeah.”
Crane backed off. He sensed a bit of history there, perhaps. Georges wouldn’t have been the first young man to get his heart broken by one of his sister’s friends.
They pulled into the parking lot of an apartment tower. This was an affluent neighborhood. The building was new and well-maintained, and armed security guards patrolled the sidewalk. The weaponry he’d picked up from Ntone Esua would be more trouble than help here. He slipped the Beretta pistol beneath the seat alongside the compact Mossberg Shockwave shotgun.
A pair of guards at the door carefully checked their IDs and called up to make sure they were expected. As they got off the elevator, Odila was waiting at the door of her apartment. She was a striking young woman in a sleeveless ivory dress with swirling blue trim. He suspected she’d dressed to impress Georges.
“Georges Akema!” she said. “Let me look at you!” She scanned him up and down, then laughed and embraced him. “You turned out all right,” she said, and kissed his cheek.
Georges introduced Crane without explaining why he was there, and they went inside. The apartment was tastefully furnished, with a view across the city. A photo of Odila with her husband sat on a side table. They looked well put together, careful about appearances, successful.
Odila offered them a drink, but they declined. They sat around a coffee table and she began to make small talk about their past, but Georges nervously interrupted.
“Have you seen Romy?” he asked. “Have you heard from her at all?”
Odila stopped, and Crane could see her trying to work out what was going on.
“You didn’t come back to Cameroon together? When you called, I thought—”
“I haven’t seen her in two years,” said Georges. “I’m trying to find her.”
She looked at Crane with new suspicion. “Is Romy in trouble? Are you—”
“A private detective,” said Crane. “She’s not in communication with the family, and I’m afraid her father’s in very serious condition.”
Georges looked at him in surprise. Crane thought he was about to object, but then he settled back into his chair. He looked even more upset, which Crane thought worked to their advantage.
“Oh no!” said Odila. “Is he…”
“We need to find her quickly.”
Odila nodded gravely. “She was here. A week ago, now. She called me out of the blue and said she was back in Yaoundé, so I asked her over. We hadn’t talked since you left for America. There was a lot to catch up on.”
“Did she tell you where she’s been?” Georges asked urgently. Crane gave him a quick scowl. He needed her to keep talking, not start thinking about how or why Romy had lost touch with her family.
Odila thought for a moment. “You know, she didn’t say much about that. She said she’d been working. Saving to come back home. That you were doing well for yourself. But mostly we talked about old friends. Who’s still in town. Who got married. What they’re doing. You know.”
Crane nodded. “How long was she here?”
“Oh, a couple of days!” said Odila. “We talked until late. My husband gave up and went to bed. We’d had a couple bottles of wine. And then there was some problem with her hotel reservation. They gave her room to someone else. I said she should stay here. It was fun, like the old days when we used to sleep over. Then she stayed another night until the hotel got things sorted.”
“Which nights were these?”
“Last Tuesday and Wednesday, I think. That’s right. My husband has his study group Thursday nights, and I was alone.
“So on Thursday she moved to the hotel. Which hotel was that?”
Odila thought for a moment. “Huh. I don’t know. That’s funny. She must have said.”
Crane tried a few more questions, but Odila knew nothing else. They thanked her, and Crane left the number of his burner phone with a request to call if she heard from Romy again. Then he got Georges out of the apartment before he said something to break the illusion they were trying to create.
“Why did you tell her that?” Georges asked as the elevator doors closed. “About my father?”
“Because we needed some reason for you to be frantically looking all over Cameroon for her,” Crane explained. “With me.”
“Those girls were always gossiping like a bunch of clucking hens. She’ll tell everyone she knows.”
“Good. We want her to. All we’ve got to go on is the names of some people you remember from her school days, and most of those are getting us nowhere. She’s your little sister. How much did you really know about what she did and who she hung out with?”
“Not enough,” Georges admitted.
“This one is part of her inner circle. She knows other people your sister’s close to, people she’ll trust when she’s in trouble.”
“That’s what she’s doing, isn’t it?” said Georges. “Moving around, from one old friend to the next, crashing on couches. The hotel’s just a story, right?”
“That’s right,” said Crane. “She’d be too easy to find in a hotel. She’s covering her tracks. She’s cool too. She was here after the first murder. The second was Thursday. She hung out here a couple days, caught up with her old girlfriend, then went off and killed a man.”
The elevator deposited them on the ground floor, and they headed back out into the afternoon heat.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Georges. “I know she’s smart enough to get away with it. But…”
“Don’t worry,” said Crane. “We’ll find her. Now we’ve got an in into her network. That story about your father will spread. They’ll want to help her. If we’re lucky someone will call us.”
They got into the car, and Georges sighed. “More likely they’ll just tell her,” he said.
“Probably,” said Crane. “What will she do then? She took off two years ago and hasn’t been in touch since. What’s left of the relationship? If she thinks your father might be dying, will that get her to surface?”
“If she believes it,” Georges said after a moment. “I think so. But she’ll be suspicious.”
That made sense, Crane thought. She’d have to wonder why Georges had followed her here now, after two years, and with a private detective no less. That detail would surely be part of the story as it spread. Having them show up searching for her just as she was running for her life was a lot of coincidence to swallow.
If she didn’t believe the story they’d set out for her, what would she believe? Why would she think they’d come? She had no reason to think they knew what she was doing. But if they didn’t, how did they know to look for her in Yaoundé instead of back in the States?
Perhaps his private detective persona could help there. She might believe he’d been able to turn up her travel documents somewhere, in a State Department or airline database. Of course, a regular PI wouldn’t be able to do that, but she might not know that.
Ultimately, she’d either believe the story or she wouldn’t. If she didn’t, she might break contact with her old friends and go deeper underground. On the other hand, learning they were searching for her, that they knew about the killings, might bring home just how much trouble she was in. Perhaps she just wanted to get safely out of Yaoundé ahead of Kamkuma and the police. If they were very lucky, Romy might cal
l them for help herself.
“What are you thinking?” Georges asked in the driver’s seat.
“I’m just figuring the odds,” said Crane.
“You know what Josh would say right now.”
Crane grinned. “Never tell me the odds.”
Georges started the car, and they headed out toward the next name on the list.
Chapter 43
After the cold of St. Petersburg, Yaoundé’s tropical heat was oppressive. But Einar was used to being uncomfortable. And he had bigger things on his mind.
He’d easily cleared customs with the forged documents Choi had given him. They hadn’t gotten a second look. Now he was on the street outside the terminal, his one small bag at his feet, waiting. Around him, travelers wrestled luggage, and cabs jostled for position to scoop them up. Every so often someone would swoop down on Einar, offering him the safest, cheapest, or most luxurious ride into the city. He sent them off with a growled obscenity or two. He was waiting for someone in particular, though he wasn’t entirely clear on who. He assumed they would make themselves known.
Here came another one, stepping out of a nondescript Korean sedan. He was a bit better dressed than the others, Einar noticed. He left the car idling at the curb and headed straight for Einar.
“I don’t want a fucking ride,” Einar snarled.
“Actually, this one, I think you do want, Mr. Persson,” the man said in faintly accented English.
Einar gave a vaguely apologetic nod. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
They walked back to the car, and the man opened the front passenger door for him. Einar glimpsed a couple hard cases on the back seat. One had the unmistakable dimensions of a long gun case.
His contact got in and drove smoothly out of the airport.
“Are those for me?” Einar asked, with a nod toward the hardware in the back.
“Yes. So is the car.”
Einar nodded. “What’s back there?”
The driver accelerated around a rattling jitney bus. “Springfield M1A carbine with a Nikon scope and one hundred rounds of .308. The pistol is a Sig Sauer P226 in .40 Smith and Wesson. Laser sight and two hundred rounds.”
Einar nodded. It would do. It would do very well. “Good.”
“You’ll also find a stun gun, a camera with telephoto lens, as well as a phone with some custom software loaded.”
“What kind of software?”
“Your target is traveling with someone. He seems to be a local fixer, but —”
“A black man? Young?”
His driver gave a wry smile. “It’s Africa, Mr. Persson. We’re all black here.”
“But this one’s not from here, is he? He flew in as well?”
“That’s right. You know him?”
“He was in Iceland too.”
“Is it a problem?”
Einar remembered the other one as well. He’d appeared suddenly in Akureyri and begun wreaking havoc. He’d been the one to sabotage the helicopter, Einar had realized later, and to hack his team’s communications. He’d been there at the end, on the boat. John Crane was mainly responsible for the stolen data recorder making it out of Iceland and destroying his life. But the other one had played his part too.
“No,” he said. “No problem at all.”
“The fixer got hotel rooms and a car,” said the driver. “They don’t know someone is looking for them, so they weren’t careful enough. Their rental has a tracker installed. There’s a lot of car theft in Yaoundé. We’ve penetrated the company’s servers. The car pings the servers with its location every thirty minutes, and your phone will tell you where they are.”
“Very convenient.”
They were in the city now, in heavier traffic. They stopped at a light, beside a black SUV.
“You’ve a hotel room as well. Address is in the car’s satnav. Is there anything else you need?”
Einar smiled. “You’ve been very thorough.”
The driver nodded. “Then I will leave you here. Good hunting, Mr. Persson.”
He put the car in park, got out, and climbed into the passenger side of the SUV. The light changed, and the SUV pulled away. Einar got out and hurried around to the driver’s side as the cars behind him honked impatiently.
On the center console, the smartphone chimed, and the map refreshed the blue pin that showed the location of the rental car. Thirty minutes on the dot. Einar’s contact had been as good as his word. He didn’t really need the tracker now. He’d closed in long enough to get a visual on the car. Now he followed from a distance and observed as his targets crossed the teeming city.
Still, he was grateful for the tracker. Yaoundé was a bewildering patchwork of mismatched roads, noise, strange smells, and most of all, people. People everywhere, jamming their battered and scraped vehicles through overcrowded streets or walking among the idling cars. Poorly muffled motorbikes spat smoke into the air. Hawkers sat on corners shouting about clothes, cigarettes, and bootleg DVDs. Einar drove through a roundabout, past a group of young men doing bicycle stunts on the center island while a video crew filmed them. The city was a swirling, chaotic cauldron of humanity in all its glory and all its squalor. It would be easy to lose his targets in this place.
A block away, their car pulled out of a shining luxury high rise, and they drove past him on their way somewhere else. He turned around at a gas station and followed. They were meandering around the city with no apparent pattern, but Einar knew there was purpose to this. They were looking for something, or perhaps someone. If he knew what they were seeking out, he could hunt them more effectively. He wondered if his new employers knew what had brought Crane and his sidekick to Yaoundé. He could always call and ask them. The phone’s contact directory had a single stored number with no name attached. But he knew his performance was being evaluated, and he meant to prove his worth. He would call the number only if it meant the difference between success and failure. It was too bad, he thought as he followed the Toyota through the city’s maddening road network. He would have liked a chance at another clue to who he was working for.
Einar had been asking himself that from the moment the man calling himself Andrew Choi had disappeared into the St. Petersburg night. More recently, he’d wondered why they needed him at all since they clearly had sophisticated assets on the ground here, and all the equipment a hunter could ask for. They’d carefully told him almost nothing about themselves, just enough to convince him of their shared intentions.
They were using him to maintain distance, he had decided. Plausible deniability. If something went wrong, there would be nothing to connect him back to them. That was the only thing that made sense. Einar didn’t like being expendable, but he was in no position to complain at the moment. And it was true that he wanted John Crane dead as much as they did.
Ahead of him, the car pulled over and parked. Einar turned into a side street, parked, and got out, slinging the camera bag over his shoulder. He reached the corner in time to see Crane and the other man crossing the street. The neighborhood was sketchy, even by Yaoundé’s standards, the streets unusually empty. He watched them enter a shop that appeared to sell used electronics. In any European city, Einar would have assumed the place was a front for fencing stolen property. But he was still developing his sense of this new city. Perhaps it was legitimate after all.
Down the street was the mouth of an alley. From there, he might be able to see through the windows. Einar quickly circled the block and found the other end of the alley. The packed dirt was strewn with broken bottles and smelled of cheap beer and vomit. Flies buzzed in the heat. Einar made his way to the far end until he could see the shop’s windows across the street. He crouched down and removed the camera from its bag. He powered it up and zoomed in with the telephoto lens until he could see the interior of the shop.
Crane and the other man stood at the counter, talking to the clerk. There was no one else in the shop. The clerk didn’t seem intimidated. This was a friendly conversation. Einar
let the lens drift over John Crane, his hair, his face, his build. He carefully expanded his mental picture of the man, deciding who he was, how he would move and fight. The man who traveled with him had useful talents, Einar knew, but he’d be no threat in combat. But Crane held himself like a fighter. Einar had underestimated him at Akureyri. Never again.
Then there was a voice behind him, low and hissing. Einar turned to see a man threatening him with a knife, speaking in rapid French. Einar didn’t understand him, but he got the message well enough. He wanted the camera, and anything else of value. Einar picked up the twitchy eye movements and small pupils that came with heroin use.
“Okay, okay, just be cool,” he said in English, trying to sound afraid. The man waved the knife and barked something back in French.
Einar pulled the camera strap over his head and slowly held it out. As the man reached for it with his free hand, Einar suddenly dropped it. The man’s eyes were still following the camera down when Einar slapped the knife away and punched him in the throat. He took the right wrist and spun the man against the wall, his arm behind his back. The mugger protested in French, his voice a frustrated wail. Einar ignored him and twisted the knife from his grasp. A moment later, the man let out a final groan as the blade slid between his ribs and into his heart.
Einar held him against the wall until the trembling ceased, then lowered him to the ground. There was very little blood with the knife still pressed tightly into his side. Einar snatched up the camera and prepared to flee, but as he looked around, he realized no one had seen or heard them. He was alone with the body. The only sound was the traffic a block over. He glanced back at the electronics shop and saw Crane and his companion leaving. They headed not toward the alley but toward their car. A few moments later, the Toyota rolled past the alley mouth. John Crane was in the passenger seat, but he didn’t look in Einar’s direction as they passed. Then the car was gone. He would lose track of them by the time he got back to his car, but the tracker would tell him where to go.