Genocide of One: A Thriller (30 page)

Esimo’s melancholy expression must be the product of the cruel reality his primitive
society had exposed him to. Without access to medical care he’d lost two wives and
his younger brother as well as what would have been his first child.

“After that Esimo remained without a wife. Akili is his only child.”

“I wonder if both wives died because of the fetus,” Meyers said. “If that’s true then
the chances are high that the brain mutation must be from the father’s genetic background.
There was a mutation in Esimo’s reproductive cells, and this was passed along to his
child.”

Mick smiled coldly. “A child who has an abnormal father will suffer.”

“Listen. This is important. If the mutation is really from the father’s genes, then
Akili won’t be the only one they’re after. They’ll try to eliminate his father, too.
Because if he had any more children they might have the same mutation.”

“No need to worry about that,” Pierce said. “When we leave here the Kanga band will
vanish. The forty people here will scatter and join other bands. They don’t have to
register their residence, so there’s no need to worry about Akili’s father.”

Esimo broke in in a loud voice, urgently repeating two words,
kuweri
and
ekoni
. Garrett had to ask him several times what he meant and finally was able to translate.

“He insists that Akili was born that way because of food. He said that when his wife
was pregnant she ate an animal she shouldn’t have.”

“That’s impossible,” Meyers said.

Garrett looked up and addressed the Pygmies in Swahili. When this message was translated
into their local language, people began talking loudly. The circle around Garrett
grew tighter as people pressed in closer. Yeager didn’t know what they were saying,
but to him the Pygmies’ facial expressions seemed exaggerated.

Garrett listened to each in turn and explained what they were saying. “I asked them
about Akili. All of them feel he’s not an ordinary human. Not just his looks, but
his abilities.”

“Like what, for instance?” Yeager asked.

“He learns languages really fast. Not just Kimbuti, their language, but Swahili and
Kingwana, a dialect of Swahili. And he understands English, too. And during the rainy
season, when the band lives close to a farming village, that was all it took for him
to master arithmetic. Thanks to which the band is no longer cheated when they sell
meat to the farmers, the Bila people.”

“Wouldn’t any bright child be able to do that?”

“There’s more. It’s kind of strange…” Garrett paused, unsure how to continue. “Akili
has a weird ability to manipulate tree leaves.”

“Tree leaves? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we ask him?” Meyers said. He knelt down in front of Akili. “Did you hear
what we were talking about?”

Akili nodded.

“What is this about manipulating leaves? Can you show us?”

Akili’s expression changed. His eyelids narrowed, and the corners of his tiny mouth
tightened. He’s smiling, Yeager noticed. Like a child who’s having fun playing.

Akili drew a small circle in the dirt at his feet, picked up a fallen leaf, and stood
up. He held the leaf out at arm’s length, moved around the circle as if calculating
something, then opened his hand and let the leaf fall. The leaf fluttered in the air
and came to rest in the exact middle of the circle he’d drawn.

It took Yeager and the others a moment to realize how mysterious the phenomenon they
had just witnessed really was. Meyers picked up the leaf and tried dropping it. The
leaf was tossed about in the unpredictable currents of air and wound up a good meter
away from the target.

“How can you do that?” Meyers asked incredulously.

Akili typed in his answer on the keyboard.
I understand the movements of the leaf
.

All I can say is I understand
.

Not a convincing explanation, but it was clear that Akili possessed a strange ability
unlike anything they’d ever known. Humans had sent men to the moon but couldn’t predict
the flight of a falling leaf.

“Gentlemen, can we wrap this up?” Pierce asked, switching screens on his computer.
“The reconnaissance satellite will be in range in five minutes.”

The mercenaries, not completely satisfied, exchanged glances.

“I think we have to trust you,” Garrett said. “If we’d taken that medicine we’d all
be dead.”

The others had to agree with that, and they set off toward the jungle.

Pierce stayed behind, giving instructions to the Pygmies, probably telling them to
just act normally. The Mbuti went back to their huts and soon started fires outside
so that they could cook breakfast.

In the jungle, out of sight of the satellite, the four operatives met up with Pierce,
Esimo, and Akili.

“I’d like to set off right after breakfast,” Pierce said. “Can you show me your map?”

Yeager took out his map and laid it in front of them. “Here’s what I suggest. Operation
Nemesis has been meticulously planned, but they’ve only devised an emergency plan
for inside the Congo. If we can get over the border—that’s like the end zone in football.
We’ll try to break through, to get out of the country. Of course the enemy will do
everything it can to prevent us from escaping.”

Their present position was in the eastern region of the Congo, only 130 kilometers
from the Ugandan border, a distance they should be able to traverse in four days.
The problem was the twenty-some armed groups stationed at all points along the border.
It would be a fierce struggle from the five-yard line, as it were, to the end zone.

“Have you decided on a route to the border?” Yeager asked.

“Several,” Pierce said. “We’ll choose the best route based on the situation at the
time.”

Pointing to the map, Pierce outlined three possible escape routes, all aiming for
the eastern border of the Congo. The first went straight east, to the town of Bunia;
the second went southeast, past a town called Beni and over the border to Uganda;
and the third went south, near Goma, and then over to Rwanda. Any other routes were
out of the question. If they went west, the huge size of the country itself would
prevent their escape.

“What do you think?”

“I agree we should go east, but we don’t have much time,” Yeager replied. “We only
have five days’ worth of rations left. We could survive by hunting, but that would
take up most of the day. We’d never escape.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m not saying it’s a hundred percent sure thing, but
we’ve arranged supplies and transportation at spots along the way.”

“Are you serious?” Garrett said, impressed. “But remember, that’s not all we have
to worry about. The more time passes, the more countermeasures the Pentagon will come
up with. If there’s any delay at all it’ll just make it harder for us to fight back.”

“Then let’s take the shortest route. We’ll set a course due east. Just before Bunia
we have a car waiting, in a town called Komanda. Considering the road, it should take
less time than going southeast. We’ll be on foot until we reach Komanda.”

One hundred kilometers—a three-day march. “Contact Zeta,” Yeager said to Garrett.
“Tell them Meyers has contracted malaria and that Angel will be postponed.”

“Roger that.”

They still had five days left on the Operation Guardian schedule. If they could deceive
the Pentagon they should be able to escape the Congo before anyone noticed. “I want
all of you to turn off your GPS before we leave this camp. Otherwise they’ll know
our position.”

Mick immediately objected. “How are we supposed to navigate? There aren’t any landmarks
in the jungle. We’re supposed to find a spot a hundred kilometers away with just a
compass and pacing it out?”

“Esimo will be with us part of the way,” Pierce said.

“Esimo?”

As everyone stared down at him, Akili’s father smiled modestly.

“That’s even worse. The guy doesn’t even have a compass.”

“Esimo knows the jungle best,” Pierce said sternly. “A lot more than you do.”

“Don’t complain. You’ll be able to go home,” Meyers scolded Mick. He turned to Pierce.
“You said Japan’s our final destination. After we get out of the Congo, how are we
supposed to get there?”

“I have a couple of ideas, but at this point it’s premature to decide on a route.
I want you to do everything you can to get us past the border first. That’s the biggest
obstacle we face right now.”

“Got it.”

Yeager glanced at his watch. “We’ll leave at oh six hundred. Finish eating by then.
And don’t forget about the satellite overhead.”

Just as they were breaking up they heard an electric buzz. Pierce took a small computer
out of a waist pack. This was a different computer from the one he used to communicate
with Akili. The black computer was linked to his satellite phone.

As he stared at the display, Pierce’s face gradually clouded over.

“E-mail?” Garrett asked. “From who?”

“Don’t ask.”

“You have somebody abroad helping you out?”

“I can’t give you the name, but yes, we have somebody providing information.”

“What did he say?”

“The enemy forces are stronger than we expected. And they’ve already noticed what
we’re up to.” Pierce shut the display. “Operation Nemesis has entered the emergency
response phase. We’ve all been designated terrorists, and there’s a ten-million-dollar
bounty on our heads. All the insurgent groups in this region will be out to get us
now.”

But not one of the Operation Guardian soldiers was shaken by the news.

“Can we change our escape route to the south?” Meyers asked.

“Negative,” Garrett said, shaking his head. “There are forces that control the south,
too. If we head there they’ll get us from both sides.”

Garrett unfolded the map and studied it. “The eastern border is a good hundred kilometers
long. Even with tens of thousands of troops that guard it we should be able to find
a way through. We’ll stick to the plan and head east.”

“Mr. Yoshinobu Suzuki, please come to the seventh-floor counter.”

The announcement was repeated so many times it was getting annoying. Kento was standing
in a huge bookstore in Shinjuku, one that boasted the largest selection of any bookstore
in Tokyo. Tonight, as soon as Jeong-hoon arrived at his place, they would begin development
of the drug to treat PAECS, and he was searching for some specialized texts. With
the university library off-limits to him, he needed to get the reference materials
they would need to develop the drug.

“Mr. Yoshinobu Suzuki…”

The thick scholarly books were all expensive. But money was no object for him now,
and he could buy any books he needed, thanks to the ATM card under the name of Yoshinobu
Suzuki.

“Would Mr. Yoshinobu Suzuki please come to the seventh-floor counter?”

Startled, Kento looked up.

Yoshinobu Suzuki?

Suzuki was a common enough last name, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that the first
name was the same. Somebody was paging him.

But
who?

Was it a police trap? Kento was about to dash away when he realized that a trap made
no sense. The police wouldn’t know he had an ATM card under that name. If they did
they would have frozen the account so he couldn’t withdraw cash. And one other thing
was odd—being paged here meant that whoever it was knew he was here, in this bookstore.
If they were detectives, wouldn’t they just arrest him?

Kento tried to calm down. The chain of events that had occurred after the first message
from his father had all followed a rigorous logic. If there were a third party who
knew the name Yoshinobu Suzuki, then this had to be someone with inside knowledge
of what his father had been planning.

Maybe I have an ally, Kento concluded. Maybe it’s the same person who warned me to
get out of my apartment the morning the detectives stormed in. But there was something
else Kento didn’t understand about that phone call, besides what was actually said.
His phone hadn’t indicated
UNKNOWN CALLER
but
OUT OF AREA
. Which meant that the call was likely from abroad. That would also explain the caller’s
unnatural Japanese. Was this person in Japan now, trying to get in touch with him?

Kento returned the book he was looking at to the shelf. Whoever had paged him must
be counting on him to decide that it wasn’t a detective.

The full bookshelves blocked his view of the store. Kento left the pharmacology section
and walked toward the checkout counter, doing his best to act calm and casual. From
between the bookshelves he could see only clerks at the counter, no other customers.

One of the uniformed women at the counter glanced at her watch, went over to a microphone,
and began speaking into it. “Mr. Yoshinobu Suzuki. Mr. Yoshinobu Suzuki—”

Kento made up his mind and walked over to the counter.

“My name is Suzuki,” he said, and the clerk at the microphone turned around.

“Oh, Mr. Suzuki. We found something you lost.”

“Lost?”

“Isn’t this yours?” she said, holding out a cell phone.

“I’m sorry, but I had to open it to see whose it was,” the woman said, indicating
the screen. The profile column listed a cell phone number, e-mail address, and the
name Yoshinobu Suzuki in Chinese characters. “I haven’t looked at anything else, of
course.”

“Thank you very much,” Kento said. He knew he had to react normally to this unexpected
event. “Where was it?”

“In front of the organic chemistry shelf.”

“Who found it?”

“We did.”

“It was on the floor?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Kento reached out to take the phone, but before he could the clerk said, “Just to
make sure, do you have any identification to verify your name?”

“My name?” It took everything he had not to show his distress. “My name…Well, all
I have on me right now is an ATM card.”