The Carolina Coup: Another Rwandan Genocide? (The Jeannine Ryan Series Book 4) (28 page)

The web site for the Port of Charleston appeared on his display.  He clicked the list of vessels expected in the next thirty days.

That’s odd.  The Étoile d’Afrique is no longer listed to arrive on Saturday. What’s the delay?

He scrolled through the later arrivals.  The
Étoile d’Afrique
was not listed.

Puzzled, Bill clicked back to the previous pages, hopeful that something “bad” had happened to the vessel.

Damn!

He stared at the screen in disbelief.

The
Étoile d’Afrique
was to arrive at 22:00 this very evening.  And worse, the ship was to depart tomorrow afternoon at 15:00, not on Monday as previously planned.

He was out of time!

In a motel in North Charleston, Maximilien Gutera relaxed.  His stay in the United States would soon be over.  The change in arrival for his ship was accomplished.

He sat back in a cushioned chair, sipped his brandy and.  puffed on his Cuban cigar.  The room was “Non-Smoking,” but the rules for commoners did not apply to a leader of his stature.  He chuckled.

Then he frowned.  There was still an unresolved problem.

Angelique Uwimana.

The image of the beautiful Tutsi haunted him.  But her escape from his men in Florence could not spoil his mood.  He chuckled again and puffed once more, but stopped.

Or could it?

He frowned and called Professor Hurley at Carolina Technical University in Florence.

“Professor Hurley, Maximilien Gutera, here.  I still have money put aside for Miss Uwimana’s Research award.  I was hoping to meet with you and her.”

After a few minutes of conversation, Maximilien Gutera hung up and chuckled yet again.  The professor was naïve.  Angelique was to meet Ryan in Charleston this afternoon.

When Angelique arrived at the café in the old city this afternoon, his men would be waiting!

Maximilien exhaled and watched as a thin ephemeral circle of smoke wafted upwards, lost form, and disappeared.  He leaned back.

He shut his eyes.

After he was done with Angelique, she too would disappear.

But first he would enjoy her.  It would be
good, very good!

It was nearly noon in Huger, South Carolina, when Agathe Muteteli stopped the Toyota Corolla in front of the roadside restaurant.  Through the window, she saw Eric Nyonzima seated at a booth.  She beeped twice.  Seconds later Eric appeared at the door and waved her inside.

She stepped out of the car and went in.  He was in the booth by the door.  She sat opposite and  waited for him to speak.

“Agathe, you’re a lifesaver.  Thank you for coming, but where is Pierre?”

“Pierre!  I thought you knew.  He left me. He’s joined Maximilien Gutera and his thugs.”

Eric winced.

“I didn’t know. You didn’t tell him I called, did you?”

“I haven’t spoken with him since he left a week ago.”

“Agathe, I’m sorry.”

She shrugged.

“Maximilien is the devil.  Pierre has chosen to serve the devil.”

She frowned and stared at Eric.

“And you, Eric?  Whom do you serve?”

A familiar image flashed through his mind.

A bloody dismembered body lay among the weeds, My God, Laurette!

He wanted to throw up.  He hid his face in his hands and choked.

“Agathe, I am so sorry about Laurette.  You are right.  We were devils.  We weren’t human.”

“My sister called you her boy friend.”

He choked anew, unable to speak.  She continued.

“Eric, you were a boy then.  What have you done as a man?  Why do you want to leave Maximilien?”

“Why?  Because if he finds me, he’ll kill me, and because of Angelique Uwimana, do you know her?”

“The Tutsi?  She and Pierre were in a graduate algebra class together.  I met her.”

“She saved my life.  She talked about God.”

Eric spoke fast.  He recounted how, at Gutera’s command, he had tried to kill the Frenchman, Duval, but suffered a broken leg instead.  How he and Gutera’s men would have raped and killed Uwimana in her apartment had they found her!  How later, Duval had trapped him in Charleston.  How in the lonely pine woods, Angelique had stopped the Frenchman from killing him.  How she had spoken to him of God’s love and forgiveness.

At the end of his revelations, Agathe reached and touched his arm.

“Eric, we all are wounded.  We watched our Tutsi neighbors, Hutu too, die horribly.  We stood silent while you and your gangs killed and raped our friends and neighbors, while you looted and pillaged their homes.”

She searched his eyes.

“Eric, I have no answers, but God does.  You must ask Him to forgive you.  He is your only hope, our only hope.”

Agathe sighed.  She leaned back and stretched.  Then she stood up.

“Eric, it was a long drive from Florence.  I have to go to the bathroom.  When I come back, we’ll see where you want to go.  You need to leave the East Coast.  Think about where.”

Agathe was trim, and energetic.  Eric watched her stride to the rear of the dining area and pass through double doors to the Rest Rooms.

He waited in the booth and shut his eyes.

Chopped arms and legs among the bloody weeds, Laurette!

He covered his head with his hands.

In the rest room, Agathe stood in front of the mirror.  She rubbed her hands together as she hummed a simple refrain that took sufficient seconds to ensure thorough cleansing.

She moved to the electric drier and held her hands under the blower.  The noisy fan drowned out the sounds from the dining area.

The whirring stopped and Agathe stepped out the door to a cacophony of screams and shouts.

Near the door several men stood together.  She followed their eyes to the first booth.

Eric lay slumped there, the back of his head pressed against the blood-smeared window.  Blood oozed from a single hole in his temple.

Disjointed sentences reached her ears.

“A black man shot him.  With a Glock, just like the cops carry.”

“The guy just sat there in the booth, looking up.  He didn’t care if they killed him.”

“I know guns.  I tell you it wasn’t a Glock.”

“It was a Glock, and They left in an Audi, a gray one.”

“Did you see the tag number?”

“They left too quick.”

Agathe wanted to throw up.  She ducked through the kitchen and slipped out the rear door to her Toyota.

The long arm of Maximilien had found Eric!

Agathe Muteteli drove north on Route 52.  A half hour passed before her head cleared.  She arranged her thoughts.

Prior to his phone call, she had not heard that Eric was in the United States.  She had not spoken to him since the nightmare in Rwanda when they were both young.

A single phone call!  How did they find us that quickly?

The truth appeared with awful clarity.  Her husband, Pierre Sehene, was with Gutera all the way.  He had let them bug her phone.
  The bastards!

Agathe rarely used profanity, but she was distressed, and not only because of their spying.

Suppose Pierre repented and desired her once more, wanted to return to her, to start anew their life together?  They would have no chance.

No one could quit Maximilien Gutera.  He would have Pierre killed, like Eric.

Life with Pierre was lost, and they had come so close to realizing their dreams, in only a few more months he would have graduated!

Agathe sobbed.

She jammed her foot on the accelerator.

In Wilmington, North Carolina, Stew Marks sat up in his hospital bed.  He heard the phone buzz, reached his good arm to the side, and grabbed the instrument.  The caller was Jack Marino.

“How’s the shoulder Stew?  And the bruises?”

“My left arm is dead, my eye is bandaged, and I ache all over. Otherwise, I’m fine.  What’s up?”

“I’m on my way to South Carolina.  A man was murdered in Huger, a town north of Charleston.  I should say ‘executed,’ an African named Eric Nyonzima.  The Columbia office had a file on him.  He was one of Maximilien Gutera’s men.”

Jack continued.

“Maybe that Ryan woman told you right.  There could be a Hutu plot going down, along with a weapons shipment from Charleston to Africa.”

“Jack, do you know where Jeannine is?”

“We know she left Topsail, that’s all.  Maybe she’s OK, but that doesn’t help your man, Hamm.  The rat’s with the Guerry woman.  He’s guilty as hell.  Look, gotta go.”

“Jack, thanks for the info.”

In seconds, Stew Marks was on his feet.  He went to the closet for his pants.  He struggled to put them on with one hand.

No more hospital!

He was going south.

Before Stew Marks finished dressing, his phone buzzed again.  This time the caller was a surprise.

“Stew, this is Jeannine Ryan, are you all right?”

“Who gave you this number?”

“Nobody, I called the resident agency in Wilmington.  They said you were injured and on sick leave.  They wouldn’t say more.  This is the third hospital I’ve called.”

“I had a brush with Maximilien Gutera.  He won.  Your pal Hamm rescued me, he and that woman, Denise Guerry.”

“Denise Guerry?  She was with Bill?”

Jeannine knew about Denise’s good looks.  She had seen her photograph  in the briefcase.  She stared at the phone.

“How did they get together?”

Stew collected his thoughts.

“I wouldn’t know.  When they saved me from Gutera, I was only half conscious.”

He added.

“She helped Bill escape from Jack Marino and the FBI at Topsail Beach.  I followed her into a trap set by Gutera’s men.  Look, I’m all mixed up.  They saved me.  I don’t know what to say.”

At her silence, he changed the topic.

“Jeannine, if you know where Bill is now you must tell me.  The plot he has uncovered is real.  Besides, he needs to clear himself if he can.  And why is he with Denise Guerry?”

She wanted to know the answer to that herself!

“I don’t know where Bill is, but he will surely go to Charleston.  That’s where Gutera will be.”

He was silent.  After a moment, she made her decision.

“Stew I have to be in Charleston this evening to meet someone.  Are you able to travel?  Would you come with me?”

Would he!

“I can come, but I can’t drive.”

“I’ll do that.  I’m parked outside the hospital.  If you come down now, we’ll leave right away.”

A stunned Stew shed his slippers and put on his shoes.  He left them untied and slipped into the corridor.

No one!  And the nurse at the station had her head down.

He entered the stairwell and started down the stairs.

Despite his aches, he was a happy man. He would be with Jeannine.  And she liked him, or at least trusted him.

At the library in Summerville, South Carolina, Bill Hamm searched for Denise Guerry in the stacks.  He found her at a computer in a secluded cubicle.  She was staring at an encoded email.

He watched as she took a thumb drive from the pocket of her jeans, and inserted it into the library’s computer.  She tapped a key.  The decoded message appeared on the screen.

d.g.la|lutte|captain|

is|french,|but|hutu|

sympathizer|captain|

of|etoile|d'afrique|

is|hutu|and|loyal|to|

maximilien|gutera|

his|crew|hutu|too.|at|

mombasa|paid|german|

techs|to|finish|

assembly|and|smuggle|

rockets|to|southern|

rwanda.launch|from|

there.jacobin|5|m|

“Denise, who is Jacobin5.  What’s this about?”

“Jacobin5 is my cousin.  He can be a pain, but we trust each other.  He doesn’t like his father, my uncle, any more than I do.  I hoped we could call the captain of
La Lutte
and stop him from offloading the radioactive modules, so I sent my cousin a message.  This is the answer.”

She looked up at him.

“The captain of the
La Lutte
is committed to Gutera.  He would never cooperate with us.  And the
Étoile d’Afrique
is loyal to Gutera too.  We can’t stop the modules from reaching Mombasa.”

“But in Mombasa, maybe we could pay the German techs to not complete the rocket assemblies?”

“They are strictly independent mercenaries, chosen because they’re not French.  We could never outbid my uncle’s Euros.”

The computer dinged.  Another email had arrived.

“Denise, what are these numbers?”

“I’m not sure.  It must be another message from my cousin.  I’ll decrypt it.”

She typed rapidly on the keyboard.  After a few moments the decrypted message appeared.

d.g.|uncle|roland|

furious|with|you|he|

wants|you|back|in|

france|tds|what|did|

you|do|to|him?||

watch|your|step.|

he|is|dangerous.|

jacobin|5||31ww.ff

Bill read fast.

“What does ‘tds’ mean?”

“It stands for ‘tout de suite.’  It means ‘right away.’  My uncle wants me back in France, now!  That’s not good.”

She set her lips and continued.

“Maximilien knows I killed Jules and that I’m with you.  He has told SÉGAG.  I’m a danger to them, and a problem for my uncle too.”

Her eyes misted
.
She looked up at Bill.

“Now do you trust me?”

She leaned on his shoulder.