Fugitive (3 page)

Thank you for letting me know that.

There's something else you should know. Bernadette wasn't killed because she was cheating on Baptiste, although that must have made her pain more enjoyable for the bastard. She was tortured for information.

I don't understand.

There are Batangans who want Baptiste dead or gone. She was helping us.

Pierre squeezed Charlie's shoulder. Do you want to avenge my sister's death?

Of course, but what can I do? I can barely help myself.

You know Rebecca, the bartender at the Mauna Loa? Charlie nodded.

She can put you in touch with a man who can get you out of the country. He is a mercenary and it will be expensive.

Charlie knew that he would probably die a horrible death if he stayed in Batanga. Even if Baptiste let him live, the best he could hope for was a life of fear in which every breath he took was dependent on the whim of a sadistic, homicidal lunatic. If he returned to the States, he would have to stand trial for murder, but twelve years had passed. Could the state even mount a case after all this time? The bottom line for Charlie was that even if he was convicted he would be better off on death row than in Batanga. In Oregon, the condemned experienced a quick death by lethal injection. In Batanga, the president liked to hear you scream for as long as possible.

I think I know a way to manage it, he told Pierre.

Good. When everything is in place Rebecca will get in touch with you and she will give you something to take with you that Bernadette entrusted to me.

What thing? asked Charlie, who was naturally suspicious and terrified of being caught helping the rebels.

Diamonds, Charlie, many diamonds. We need you to carry them to America. We will take them from you there and use them to buy weapons for our people.

I don't know

Did you love my sister?

Charlie's eyes misted and he nodded, too choked with emotion to speak.

Then don't let her death be in vain.

Charlie looked past Pierre to the sea. The odds were that he'd be dead before he could help anyone, but if he survived he could finally do something worthwhile with his life by helping Pierre.

All right, I' m in.

Pierre smiled. Bernadette knew we could count on you. Thank you, Charlie.

They spoke for a few minutes more. Then Pierre embraced Charlie before slipping over the side of the building and rappelling to the beach down the rope he'd used to climb to the landing.

Charlie's front door opened into a narrow hall flanked by a kitchen and bedroom on one side and a living room and the spare room he used as a study on the ocean side. He turned on a lamp that stood on a cheap wooden desk in his study. Luckily, there was electricity tonight. Charlie booted up his laptop and logged on to his e-mail provider. He assumed that the police would read any e-mail he sent, so he phrased this one carefully. It was addressed to Martha Brice, the editor in chief of World News, an ultraconservative magazine with a main office in New York.

Dear Ms. Brice: My name is Charlie Marsh. You probably knew me as the Guru Gabriel Sun, author of the inspirational autobiography The Light Within You, an international best-seller. Twelve years ago I was framed for the murder of Congressman Arnold Pope Jr. and was forced to flee from the United States. Since leaving America, I have been living in the wonderful country of Batanga under the protection of its benevolent ruler, President Jean-Claude Baptiste. President Baptiste is a source of enlightenment and a true father to his people. The Western press has falsely labeled him a dictator. I have not given an interview in some time, but I wish to do so now to set the record straight about this courageous leader, who has been so unjustly maligned.

I've seen you interviewed on TV and I've followed your career. I believe that the articles in World News present an unbiased view of world affairs. Would your excellent magazine be interested in sending a reporter to write an article that would tell the American people about the wonderful things President Baptiste is doing for the people of Batanga? If so, please contact me so we can arrange the details.

Charlie read the e-mail twice before sending it. If Baptiste saw it he might hold off killing Charlie in the hope that the interview would be published. This would buy Charlie some time, and time was his most important ally. Time would give Charlie a chance to survive; a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless, and Charlie had always been a man who seized an opportunity when he saw it.

Charlie had drunk a lot at the banquet but the horror in the basement had sobered him. He doubted he could sleep, even though it was almost three in the morning. He poured a glass of scotch and carried it to his balcony, which was the best thing about his dingy apartment. Before sunset, he could watch the native fishermen surf the waves in their canoes as they brought their catch in to shore. After dark, the stars would shine bright in the African sky and he would gaze at the lights of ships anchored in the Freeport. During the rainy season he was presented with lightning storms that were as dramatic as a fireworks display.

Charlie took a stiff drink and tried to imagine what Bernadette had suffered before death had shown her mercy. A tear trickled down his cheek and he brushed it away. The tear was as much for himself as for his dead lover.

THE HEAT OF the sun woke Charlie. He opened his eyes and stared at the sea, wondering why he was outside. There was a chair next to Charlie. In the second after waking he thought he saw Bernadette out of the corner of his eye, sitting beside him, laughing in that way of hers that lit up any room she was in. Then Charlie remembered the events at the mansion and suppressed a sob.

Six years ago, Baptiste had introduced his fourth wife to Batangan high society. Charlie had been taken by her elegant beauty and warm smile but he knew she was untouchable and soon forgot her. Over the next few years, he saw Bernadette from a distance at state dinners and a party or two. He remembered the way her pregnancy suffused her features with a maternal glow and the way she smiled when she gazed at Alfonse. But she wasn't smiling the first time he was alone with her.

A little over a year ago, the secretary of state had hosted a party for a visiting dignitary from Ghana. Charlie was bored by the company, annoyed by the noise, and tired of just about everything else that was going on. A set of stairs led down to the beach from the patio of the secretary's house. Charlie set off along the shore and found Bernadette sitting on a thick log that had washed up in the tide. It was dark and neither the moonshine nor the ambient light from the house were strong enough to breach the shadows that obscured Bernadette's face. When he drew closer, as well as tears glistening on her ebony cheeks, Charlie saw a split lip and a swollen eye. The darkness and the damage to Bernadette's face prevented Charlie from recognizing her right away or he would have fled. God knew what Baptiste would do to a man found alone with his wife. By the time he realized who she was, Bernadette's head was on his shoulder and her tears were dampening his shirt.

Bernadette had given up on kindness and now she'd met someone who was tender and compassionate. When she stopped crying and began to think clearly, Bernadette realized the threat she posed to Charlie. She thanked him, squeezed his hand, and left him alone on the beach. But then, a month later, while the president was in Las Vegas, gambling and whoring, Bernadette saw Charlie at a gala at the Batanga Palace, the country's only luxury hotel. This time she lost her heart to him.

At first, Charlie resisted his desire to be with Bernadette, because he didn't want to be cut into tiny pieces by a chain-saw or slowly turned into barbecue by a blowtorch, two of the president's favorite methods of execution. But Charlie had never been in love before and he was stunned by the depth of his feeling for this beautiful lost soul. They began meeting in a room at the hotel, which Charlie rented under an assumed name. During their first tryst, Bernadette confided that the all-powerful ruler of the Batangan people was anything but in the sack. Charlie learned that Baptiste blamed Bernadette for his many failures in bed and beat her when he was unable to perform. The beatings had gotten so bad that she'd begun to fear for her life.

Bernadette and Charlie talked of escape and a life together, even though they should have known that the affair and their dreams were insane. But people in love lose touch with reality. Charlie never asked himself how it was possible for their trysts to go undiscovered in a country where everyone was a spy and the one person most likely to be the subject of surveillance was the supreme ruler's wife. Now Charlie knew that Baptiste had always been aware of every move they'd made.

Charlie wept quietly as he wondered how it was possible for someone as wonderful as Bernadette to be dead. When he'd exhausted his tears, he closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and felt the sun on his face and the caress of a sea breeze. Waves were washing over the rocky beach below his apartment as they did every minute of every day. The world continued its beat and Charlie was alive to enjoy it. And as long as he was alive, there was a chance he would survive and win some measure of revenge for his lost love.

F our days after his escape from the mansion, at a little after eight in the evening, Charlie walked through the milling Waterside crowds. The dusky air was filled with the competing rhythms of native drummers and radios blaring hip-hop and African highlife. Smoke from cooking fires curled into the night sky. The fires had been built in front of tumbledown shacks made of corrugated tin and other junk. They were stacked one against the other near open sewers. Women wrapped in rainbow-colored cloth sold fish fresh from the canoes of the fishermen while other vendors squatted on low stools beside small grills, hawking roasted yams.

Charlie passed bands of bare-chested boys wearing ragged shorts. They played in the dust near open-front stores protected by thick metal gates. These children believed that all white men were rich, so they approached Charlie with hands outstretched, crying, Papa, papa, gimme five cents. Many had distended bellies. One boy dragged a horribly mangled foot behind him. Another had a large lump on his stomach and sat in the road, his dull eyes staring. Older beggars with missing limbs or blind eyes pleaded for alms more quietly, thrusting rusty tin cups out when he walked by.

Charlie ignored the children and the beggars as he struggled up the hill toward the center of Baptisteville. At the top was Main Street, divided by a tree-shaded center island that stretched the length of the city. On either side were Western-style drugstores, movie theaters, restaurants, and gift shops that catered to wealthy Batangans, expatriates, and the rare tourist. The evening crowds were smaller here, because the European or Middle Eastern owners had closed their stores, but the streets were still crowded with taxis and money buses. Charlie crossed the road and turned into Lafayette Street, the center of Batanga's nightlife. Here were the Cave, the Peacock, the Mauna Loa, and other brightly colored shack bars where bar girls hustled a mostly white clientele to the incessant beat of rock and hip-hop.

Charlie maneuvered past several Batangan men in shorts and ripped T-shirts who sat on the curb outside the Mauna Loa, joking, arguing, and drinking from bottles filled with warm beer. A cigarette vendor tried to interest Charlie in one of the packs that rested on a tray he'd balanced on a wooden stand. Several beautiful African girls in tight, flashy, low-cut dresses leaned against the outside wall of the bar. Charlie greeted the women, who knew him by name. One girl promised him a night of ecstasy unlike any ever experienced by mortal man. Charlie begged off, claiming that a night with any one of them would end with him dead from pleasure. The women were laughing when Charlie entered the shack.

Expatriate white men and African women sat along a wooden bar or at the few small tables that took up most of the floor space. Charlie edged past two Batangan girls who were dancing with each other to the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar, and took the only empty stool at the bar.

Eh, Charlie, why you not come more? asked the bartender.

Rebecca, you know I love you too much, he answered. If I come too much, I will say you must marry me.

Maybe I will say yes, eh? she answered coyly.

Charlie shook his head, feigning sadness. I can hope, but I know you will break my heart.

Rebecca laughed raucously. I say, Charlie, you bullshit me too much.

Charlie smiled. Do you think you can find me a cold Heineken?

Almost everyone in Batanga lived from day to day. Baptiste's secret police exploited their destitution by paying for information. Charlie had learned that it was wise to trust no one, but Pierre had told Charlie that he could trust Rebecca, a beautiful Batangan woman who had once been the mistress of the cabinet minister, who owned the Mauna Loa. Charlie frequented the bars on Lafayette Street and knew Rebecca. He had never heard her utter a subversive thought or discuss politics, and he was shocked to learn that she was part of the underground.

Bartenders meet a wide range of people and Rebecca had acquaintances, Batangan and otherwise, up and down the social ladder. Pierre had told Charlie that Rebecca would find someone who would help him escape from Batanga. This morning, a small boy had begged him for money using a code phrase. While Charlie was giving him a quarter, the boy told Charlie to come to the Mauna Loa at eight thirty.

Rebecca set a frosted green bottle on the bar, while Charlie casually scanned the room. The men in the bar were in groups or chatting up women. None looked the least bit interested in him. When he swiveled back, a white man who'd been sitting two stools away leaned across the bar girl who sat between them.