The Informationist: A Thriller (38 page)

There was five feet of silent space between the two men. Bradford stood with the rifle still pointed toward the deck; neither moved. Wheal stared down at him as if unsure whether Bradford would use the gun or how deep the shit pile was, until finally he broke the silence. “Want to tell me what the hell’s going on?”

Bradford sighed, his shoulders slumped, and he nodded in the direction of the small boat still hanging over the ocean. “Take a look, and then I’ll explain,” he said.

Before Wheal had a chance to return to the crane controls, the trawler’s engines kicked up and the ship began to move. Bradford glanced at the pilothouse and said, “Does she know what she’s doing up there?” Wheal nodded, then brought the small boat over the deck and, like lowering a coffin into the grave, let it down into the hold.

Both men stood beside the boat. Wheal stared in silence and then with a heavy sigh turned and reached for a tarp. “I had a bad feeling about this,” he said, and he opened the plastic and laid it over Francisco. His face twisted through a range of emotions and then hardened, became expressionless. He turned toward Bradford. “The explanation better be good, or I’m going to kill her.”

Bradford described the events that had led to Beyard’s death and the bloody aftermath that followed, and when he finished, the hold fell silent except for the sound of their breathing. Wheal said, “I’ll take care of him, finish his business, do what I know he would have wanted.” He walked toward the stairs. “I won’t attempt to stop you from going to Douala—it’s the easiest way to get you both the fuck off my ship. But I still hold her responsible.”

Bradford ran a grimy hand through his hair and said, “George, whatever’s going on in your head right now, don’t engage her. You’re both likely to end up dead.” His back turned, Wheal waved him off with a gesture that could have been a middle finger, and as he stepped across the threshold, Bradford moved to the stairs. He needed to get to Munroe, get her sorted out, find out what the hell was wrong, and most of all keep Wheal out of sight. What a fucking nightmare.

He headed for the pilothouse, and when he entered it, Wheal was already there and Munroe was not. “Where is she?” Bradford said.

“Fuck if I know. If we’re lucky, she jumped overboard.”

Bradford left the pilothouse and took the stairs at a near run, paused long enough to confirm that Munroe wasn’t anywhere on deck, and found the door to the interior. He opened it to silence, called her name, and received no response. He moved down the dark, narrow hallway, opening doors and flipping on room lights, going quickly from one to the next until he found the light switch for the hallway, slammed his fist against it, and when the darkness emptied, froze for a half second.

She lay on the floor at the end of the hall, her body partly through the threshold of a door. His throat closed, and he moved forward like someone running through deep water. He knelt beside her, checked her breathing and pulse; then his eyes rose to take in the room itself, and he whispered,
“Oh, shit.”
The place breathed Francisco Beyard. Parts of his persona marked the room like a pen-scrawled signature, and whatever had driven her to enter it had not been strong enough to sustain her. As best he could tell, she had vomited before passing out.

He stared at the blood and mud and now the stomach juices that coated her skin and clothing, sighed deeply, stood, and went back through the bunkrooms searching for clothing that would fit, anything that didn’t belong to Francisco. And then he carried her out of Francisco’s room to the narrow hallway bathroom and with reverent tenderness sponged off the filth.

A
BUNKROOM ON
the trawler.

Munroe knew it by the familiar movement of a ship on calm water and the woody dankness of the air. Her eyelids were weighted, and she fought to open them, succeeded, and then, seeing nothing, closed them again in exhaustion. She was laid out flat with her arms to her sides, her head slightly elevated, her mouth dry. There were flashes of illumination against the blackness of her mind: the macabre sight of her reflection in the pilothouse windows; a walk down the hallway to Francisco’s cabin to take a shower; the chessboard, the unmade bed, the fragrance of his presence; nausea and then darkness.

Time had passed. Maybe an hour. Or a day. Or a week. She struggled to lift a hand against the wall, to place the other against the side of
the bed and create support to sit up, but found no strength, let go, and drifted back into the void.

It was light when she opened her eyes next, the source a low-wattage bedside lamp turned against the opposite wall. The room was unfamiliar—not Francisco’s, not the holding cell—and her clothes were clean and foreign and without the stench of death. She shifted, and her eyes moved to take in the room.

Focus returned in small waves, and with awareness came tension, nausea, and the iron vise inside her chest that fractured each second and made life a waking death. In a wall niche was a bottle of water; she sat up and reached for it, emptied it in several long swallows, and then rested her forearms on her knees.

From the hall came the sound of footsteps, and the door opened. George Wheal entered carrying a tray of food, and he placed it on the narrow table between the bunks, gave a curt nod, and sat opposite so that their knees were nearly touching. “We’re in Douala,” he said. “I guess you’ll want to get moving soon.”

Munroe drew away until her back was against the wall, pulled her knees to her chest, and stared silently at the tray.

“Look,” he said, “for what it’s worth, the period you were here was the happiest I’d seen Francisco. If I know anything, I know he died content, at peace.” Wheal paused as if calculating the weight of his words and then stood. “That doesn’t change anything between you and me, but I owe it to Francisco to make sure that you know. He loved you, and it’s what he would have wanted.” Wheal opened the door, then looked back for a silent moment before he stepped out and shut it behind him.

The room went silent and then claustrophobic, and in an effort to hold on to sanity Munroe reached for the boots at the foot of the bunk, put them on, and laced them up. She struggled to stand; her vision folded inward to a pinprick of light, and she braced herself through the first wave of dizziness. Then she turned, leaned into the wall, and somehow one step at a time made it out the cabin door. She’d gone only a couple of feet when Bradford was beside her, arm around her shoulders holding her up, walking her forward.

Munroe moved in a daze, aware but not, body present and mind
somewhere else, shut down. Sounds, sights, and smells filtered into her brain as if through gauzy film while Bradford ushered her through the motions and took care of logistics. They entered Douala at the southern edge of the port where Francisco’s driver waited to take them into the city and, at Bradford’s instruction, bypassed Francisco’s flat for Akwa Palace, the crown jewel of the city’s hotels, a place where one could almost forget what part of the world this was.

At the hotel-room door, awareness kicked in, and Munroe realized that Bradford intended for them to share the room. She stopped in the foyer, propped against the wall for support while Bradford entered and dropped his things on one of the chairs. He looked back to where she continued to stand.

“I’m staying here with you whether you like it or not,” he said.

Munroe nodded and moved toward the closest bed and, with her legs still on the floor, tilted over onto the pillows. With her back to Bradford, she whispered, “We need to get tickets out of here, need to get to Houston.”

“I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

She wrapped an arm around a pillow and pulled it to her chest. “You’re worried about leaving me?”

He walked to the edge of the bed and sat behind her, angled so that he could see the side of her face. “Very.”

A long silence filled the space until Munroe said, “I play it over and over, and no matter what direction I take, there’s nothing I could have done to save him.”

“I know,” he said, and he brushed a finger along her forehead.

“It doesn’t make it any easier,” she whispered. “Somehow it should, but it doesn’t.” She grasped the pillow tighter and pulled her knees to her chest, while tears spilled down her cheeks.

Bradford shifted to lie behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and drew her close.

The tears flowed faster, and Munroe shook with silent sobs until the shadows in the room deepened and the hush of evening settled, and there was nothing left to cry. And when the water of emotion had dried and all that remained was a hollow emptiness, she said, “You know, you’re the first to live through what my demons are capable of doing.”

His arms were still around her, and he whispered, “It wasn’t without cause.”

“That’s not the point,” she said.

“It’s not the first time?”

“No.”

“The scars?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly and said, “The missing years. You’ve wanted to know, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You deserve to know,” she said, and tilted her head to give him a pained, exhausted smile. “It starts with Francisco. I met him for the first time when I was fourteen.”

It was completely dark by the time she’d finished a confession that encompassed nine years of buried secrets, embracing details even Logan didn’t know. They lay on their backs and stared at the ceiling, engulfed in silence for a long while, and then Bradford turned his head toward her. “It’s surprising you’re still sane,” he said.

“Sane?” She sighed. “There are days, months, sometimes even years that go by when I’m sure I’ve attained some state of normalcy, when I can look at myself in the mirror and really believe that somehow I’m like ‘them’—those people out there who’ve lived normal lives and have no fucking clue what the dark side of humanity can do to a person’s mind. And then there are days like today and yesterday, when it’s obvious that the demons are still there, waiting in the background, taunting me.”

She turned to face him. “Thank you,” she said. “For saving my life in Mbini, for getting me out, getting me here.”

And then, without waiting for a response, she let go and tumbled backward into the void, a mental freefall into the darkness of the abyss.

B
RIGHT SUNSHINE STREAMING
through day curtains was what woke her. Bradford was gone, the room was empty, and she was numb. Not the dead of internal shutdown or the muted silence of mental noise held at bay by adrenaline and distraction. There were no words or phrases or voices, no tension or anxiety, only acceptance, tranquillity; strange and unfamiliar.

She lay on the bed, arms behind her head, and breathed in each passing moment of peace, oblivious to time until Bradford walked in the door. He had entered quietly and, seeing her awake, moved directly to her.

He sat on the bed. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, and stretched, smiling. “Surprisingly good. How long was I under?”

“About seventeen hours. Didn’t want to leave you, but we couldn’t wait another day to get tickets.” He dropped the documents on the bed. “Flight’s tonight at nine.”

“I need to contact Logan.”

He nodded. “Business center will be open for a few more hours. First you need to eat.”

It was strange, this process of conversing, interacting, eating, going through the motions of daily life without anxiety, without mental noise embossing itself onto synaptic activity and guiding reflex. It was calm, collected silence, and it remained that way through attempt after attempt to reach Logan, until after nearly two hours of intermittent dialing Munroe gave up and called Kate Breeden.

The conversation was brief, Munroe unwilling to discuss the assignment or the events of the past few days and Kate unaware of Logan’s whereabouts, having also been unable to contact him. Munroe wanted the bike in Houston—for that she needed Logan—and the best she could do was provide Kate the flight-arrival information and hope the message eventually got to him.

While most people trying to locate Logan might have trouble reaching him by phone, the number Munroe used was known to few, was always carried and nearly certainly answered. There had been occasions in the past when Logan had dropped off the radar—each had been its own relative nightmare—and so Munroe heaved an internal sigh, reached for the tickets, realized Bradford had walked off with them, and then promised Kate she’d send the information by e-mail.

And there, waiting in the mailbox, unbelievable as it was, sat the final puzzle piece that transformed the present and gave context and meaning to everything that had taken place from the day Munroe accepted the assignment. She blinked now at the page, information tumbling
in her mind like cotton cloth in a dryer: flashbacks, conversations, awareness, and understanding. She scrolled and reread:

Munroe scrolled through photo after photo of Kate Breeden and Richard Burbank, each a snapshot in time that left no doubt their relationship went far beyond the tradition of lawyer-client privilege. There was a fragmented moment when Munroe’s internal stillness became overwhelmed by rage and the piercing stab of betrayal, and it seemed that the newfound calm would dissipate into the ether. But there were no voices. There was no anxiety, no internal percussion, simply controlled anger and the knowledge that there was work to be done.