The Informationist: A Thriller (24 page)

“I want to go with you,” he said.

Munroe laughed. It was a harsh laugh, sarcastic and unfeeling. “You weren’t much help to me the first time around. I can’t think of any reason I’d need you the second time.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” His voice was hard. “Emily is like a niece to me. I took Richard’s assignment for her, not for him. You don’t give a damn about her.
You
took this assignment for the money, and now it’s about revenge. I want in because I care about her.”

“Forget it, Miles,” she said. “I don’t need a liability on my hands, and I have all the help I need.” She hung up without giving him a chance to respond.

She pulled a sheet of paper out of the fax machine and drew a diagram, an outline of tenuous facts surrounded by big, fucking, glaring holes. And in the middle, attached to nothing, she added another: By morning the U.S. embassy was already aware of her death. Chances were they’d been notified before she’d even been taken onto the boat. She sat in front of the paper staring, willing the answer into focus.

Nothing. She needed more pieces.

It was Beyard’s hands on her shoulders that returned her to the present. “We can take it to my cabin,” he said, “go over the details there.” She nodded and folded the diagram, and he picked up a two-way radio, calling Augustin back to the pilothouse. In another hour the sun would begin to rise.

“T
HE EMBASSY HAD
already been informed of my death by morning,” Munroe said.

She lay on Beyard’s bed, her hands behind her head, studying patterns on the ceiling. He was next to her, lying on his side, quietly watching
her. “It would be useful to know who informed them, what branch of government, who in that branch,” she said. “I need to get the embassy’s phone number. I’m sure it’s on a consular sheet somewhere on the Internet.”

He traced her profile. “We’ll get it,” he said, “But first you need to sleep.” She began to sit up in protest and he put a finger to her lips. “You know as well as I do that clarity and focus will come with sleep and food. We have time. We won’t be in Kribi until sometime in the afternoon tomorrow.”

She lay back down and in that moment of acquiescence understood that Beyard was dangerous.

He continued to run his finger along her body, tracing it down her throat and over her chest. His gaze followed his hand, and so he avoided her eyes. “On one of those calls,” he said, “you used the name Michael. It’s the same name the deckhand from the
Santo Domingo
gave me.”

His hand rested on her stomach, and she took it and brought it to her lips. “It’s a moniker I’ve taken for the work that I do.”

“You’ve never told me what it is that you do.”

“It’s a topic for another time,” she said. She turned to look at him and then rolled over and straddled his pelvis, pinning his hands with hers. She leaned over him and touched his lips with hers. He breathed a sigh and then without warning jerked his hands free, grabbed her by the waist, and put her back down on the bed. “Don’t toy with me, Essa,” he said.

He was strong. Powerful.

“Why do you assume I’m toying?” she asked. “I want your body as badly as you want mine.”

He smiled. His eyes were sad; his mouth was cruel. “You couldn’t possibly.”

He stroked her hair, still avoiding her eyes. “When you were here with me, I resisted what I wanted most, and when you were gone, I spent years trying to forget what it was that I wanted.” He brushed his hand lightly over her neck and down her chest. “And here you are again. In front of me, beside me, mine for the taking. I’m not sure whether I love you or whether I hate you and want to destroy you.”

“Does it matter?” she asked.

She knelt on the bed and removed her shirt, took his hands and
brought them to her breasts, and then bent and kissed him, touching her mouth lightly against his, teasing him with her tongue. He searched out her eyes. “This is a game of control for you,” he whispered.

She grazed down his neck, and his breathing quickened.

“If it is,” she said, “what does the strategist in you tell you that it means?”

He stared at her for a second and then wrapped his arms around her, brought her to him, and filled his mouth with her, and when he did, a heat gripped her throat and shot through her body.

It was one thing to allow a man access to her body, another thing entirely to allow a man access to her soul.

T
he sea was an endless sheet of steel gray reflected off the cloud-covered sky and the trawler a small black blemish on the horizon. It was nearing sunset, that period of day when the sky would change into brilliant hues and the ocean would undulate with color. Munroe leaned into the wind and the ocean spray, closed her eyes, and allowed her thoughts to flow in random patterns, willing synapses to connect and make sense of patchwork pieces of information that continued to bring more questions than answers—and found nothing.

The cigarette boat cut across the water with considerable speed, closing the distance on the city of Bata, which was now at some invisible point over the horizon. Three hours earlier the trawler had weighed anchor off the southern coast of Cameroon, and, with the exception of George Wheal, who had agreed to remain with the ship until Beyard returned, the crew had dispersed to the mainland. In the pilothouse Munroe, Beyard, and Wheal had sat poring over hand-drawn maps that Beyard had assembled throughout the years and debated over supplies and transportation for the few possible routes through Bata and into Mongomo.

The project was Beyard’s now. Munroe had never officially given it to him; he’d taken it, dissected it, and then meticulously planned it, a master strategist setting out pieces to one more living chess game.
It was a throwback to another life, another world, and as it was then, there would be no discussion now about doing the job her way. Beyard was no lackey; conceding command was the price she would pay for his participation.

And then Bata was there, its red-and-white visage faintly visible on the horizon. They continued south a few miles past the city, just beyond the reach of the port, to one of Beyard’s properties, where they would exchange the boat for a land vehicle.

T
HE WOOD OF
the dock was worn smooth and weather-beaten, held fast by solid pier beams driven deep. It ran from the back of a well-manicured property over the sands of the beach, fifty feet out into the water, and tied to it was a small fishing boat, the wood still raw and new. Beyard guided the cig to the opposite side of the pier and with a confident hop moved from the boat with the mooring ropes.

The house stood on two acres, a single story that seemed to spread out and melt into the lush landscape. From the back door, a woman walked toward them. Her skin was soft brown, her features smooth and perfect, and behind her a small child followed, barely walking and clinging to the shapely dress that skimmed her ankles. Her smile was genuine, and she greeted Beyard with a familiar hug. In all the planning of the afternoon, Beyard had failed to mention a woman or her child, and when she greeted Munroe with the casualness of an equal, Munroe pushed away hostility and forced a mask of pleasantry.

The woman smiled when Beyard spoke, and the electricity that flashed between them betrayed a history far beyond the platonic. Beyard knelt to the eye level of the child and tickled his rounded tummy, then pulled the youngster to his arms and tossed him in the air. Peals of laughter filled the property, though Munroe heard nothing but the rush of blood pounding in her ears and stood paralyzed with an ersatz smile plastered to her face.

Beyard put the child down and turned to Munroe. His mouth was moving, and she forced the sound to register. “This is Antonia,” he was saying. “She, her husband, and their three children live here—it’s their house and their land unless I happen to be in town.” He nodded beyond
the house. “There’s a guesthouse on the far end of the property. That’s where we’ll stay the night.”

The guesthouse was furnished with necessities and not much else. The building consisted of two rooms: a bedroom with a small bathroom annexed to it and a larger room that functioned as a living room on one end, a kitchen on the other, divided by a four-place table. There was no air-conditioning, but the ceilings were high and a steady breeze tempered the humidity.

By the time they had showered, darkness had settled, and Antonia, not one of the servants, brought food from the main house. From the bedroom Munroe heard her enter, and from behind the closed door she traced portions of the muted conversation. There were spaced silences. Lingering. And then the front door closed, and both Beyard and the woman were gone, and Munroe realized that she’d been holding her breath and felt a stab of self-loathing because of it.

The emotion she felt was a violation of the cardinal rule of survival; it skewed reason, clouded logic, had to be eradicated. Munroe took a deep breath and exhaled. She needed control, and to regain it required internal shutdown. Another intake of air, and she closed her eyes and then against her better judgment fought it, argued against it, and finally postponed it. Beyard was a rare equal, a man with skill and motive to destroy both her and the assignment. The danger was an intoxicating lure, difficult to abandon.

It was twenty minutes before Beyard returned. Over dinner they conversed—Munroe knew it with her eyes—Beyard’s moving mouth, a shrug, a flirt, the sound of her own voice traveling through her head and Beyard’s charming smile in response. It continued through the meal, external harmony enshrouding internal turmoil. Shutdown was inevitable. But it could wait.

They were awake before daybreak, that time of darkness when the jungle came to life with ascending simian and avian orchestras that shut out the predatory calls of the night. The air was damp with a light mist, and when the sun rose, it brought a thickening to the humid heat.

Beyard’s transportation was a nondescript Peugeot, originally beige or possibly white, now permanently rust-colored. Unlike everything else he owned, whereby aged appearances disguised state-of-the-art equipment,
the Peugeot was decrepit. In response to Munroe’s reluctance to use it, Beyard insisted. “It’s better for us this way,” he said. “My other vehicles are known. With this one we are provided a certain sense of anonymity, and in any case we’re not going far—in about five kilometers the roads become paved.”

“We’re not taking this thing to Mongomo?”

“No,” he said. “We’ll use the Land Rover for that, possibly one of the Bedford trucks.”

“Do you have easy access to one?”

“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” he said. “When I’m not using them, they’re leased out to the Malaysians and Chinese—I have a company that handles logistics from the logging cut sites to the port. It’s a legitimate cover for the trucks and gives me the opportunity to pay my dues in terms of hefty contributions to the local fraternity of nepotists. During the rains I’ll use them if we have to haul through the bush, so it won’t be out of place.”

Munroe nodded and then said, “If I want to leave a few things behind, do you have a secure spot?”

“I do,” he replied, then led her back to the guesthouse bathroom and with a skilled set of hands removed a section of the doorframe and pulled out from the wall a narrow sealed container that held several thousand euros. “Should still be some space in there,” he said, and handed it to her.

She pried the lid loose. “How secure is this property?”

“No military will enter, if that’s what you mean.”

She removed the Equatoguinean residency card from the security belt and placed the belt with her passports, credit cards, and Emily’s death certificate into the container. “What guarantee do you have?”

“Antonia is the oldest and favorite niece of one of the president’s wives, and Antonia’s husband is connected to the president through the military. Between the two of them, the property is safe.”

She sealed the lid. “That’s good for them, but it doesn’t protect your valuables.” She nodded toward the container in her hands.

He smiled and took the container, slid it back into the wall, and replaced the boarding. “You have to know everything? All my secrets?”

Munroe shrugged. “Whether you tell me now or not doesn’t really matter. When I want information, I get it. I’ll find out one way or the other.”

“All right then,” he said. “Antonia and I, we go way back—I’m the father of her eldest son. He’s eight, so you can do the math.” While he spoke, Beyard walked toward the front of the house, and Munroe followed. “About four years ago, when our relationship was shot to hell and there appeared to be no future for us, she married her current husband—she’s wife number three. He lives in the capital, and she sees him once or twice a month.”

Beyard opened the door of the Peugeot for Munroe and fiddled with the handle in order to get it to remain closed. He slid into the driver’s seat and slammed his own door several times before cranking the engine. “I bought this place for her,” he continued. “Put it in her name. It’s her insurance policy and will buy her freedom if that’s what she chooses—you know how it goes here—and now that the oil companies have their compounds nearby, it’s a valuable little piece of real estate.”

Munroe knew well. When an Equatorial Guinean woman married, she became bound to the husband and his family, often becoming a form of property. Divorce, although technically possible, placed an impossible burden on the woman: By law the husband kept the children from the marriage and the woman was required to pay back the dowry or else be imprisoned, and imprisonment in the country’s decaying mixed-gender jails was little better than a death sentence.

The vehicle sputtered forward. “I think you would agree,” Beyard said, “that my confidence is well placed and the property is safe.”

Munroe looked at him sideways and crossed her arms. “Yes, I would agree.” She paused and turned toward him. “It may have been nine years, but you haven’t changed much. There’s always a price. You’re using her.”