The Consignment (26 page)

CHAPTER 33

Fiona’s mouth opened, I covered it with my left hand. “Don’t speak.” Her eyes were wide-open in fear. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head. “If they hear us downstairs, we’re dead. You understand?” After a second she nodded, and I eased my hand off her mouth. We stared at each other. Then she wriggled, tried to get up, she elbowed me in the thigh. I got off her, and she sat up and rubbed her right hand. I went and got the gun that I’d knocked out of her hand and gave it back to her. I picked up the AK47.

She whispered, “What in the name of Christ—”

I raised a hand to quiet her. Then I nodded toward the internal staircase. “Is there somewhere safe we can hide down there?”

“No.”

“Any way out?”

She told me there was a fire escape outside the window of the main bedroom.

“Okay, we’ll wait in there. Anyone comes up, we’re out.”

“I think Ivan’s hiding down in the office. He was radioing Dujanka, talking to Brad, when the shooting started.”

“Brad’s still at the mine?”

She nodded. Bad news. Extremely bad. I turned for the bedroom, but Fiona grabbed my arm. “What about Ivan?” she whispered.

“He’ll have to find his own way.”

“We can’t just leave him.”

“Barchevsky’s dead.”

Fiona looked at me. Then I heard the gang start moving up the main stairs, they shouted to each other as they came on up, and I hauled Fiona after me into the main bedroom, crossed to the window, and checked the fire escape outside. It was a rusty iron staircase bolted to the exterior wall. Across the bridge, the torched Ford was now a charred and smoldering heap. Guys with guns and RPG-7s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, were wandering past the Ford and taking up positions by the bridge. I drew my head in quickly, swearing beneath my breath.

“There were a lot of soldiers at the airport,” Fiona volunteered. She was looking right through me, dazed. “Some white soldiers too.”

Congolese government troops, and Brits from Trevanian’s private military company. They were probably using the airport as an operational base. If we could get ourselves out there, we’d be safe. I asked her if Barchevsky had a car. She took some keys from her pocket, then crossed to the rear window and pointed down to a garage, a concrete shell with steel security doors that remained shut and intact. Suddenly there were noises right below our feet. The gang had entered Barchevsky’s office.

I put my mouth to her ear. “Okay,” I whispered. “We’re leaving.” I guided her back to the fire escape window. I pointed out to her the armed men on the bridge. “They might not see us, but even if they do, whatever you hear or see, just keep going down. Don’t stop for anything. Straight down, then around to the garage. Back there you’ll be out of their line of fire. Anyone around there shoots at you, shoot back. Any questions?”

She turned from the window to the door. “My passport.”

“Forget it.” I told her to check the keys, make sure she had the right ones. She checked. Her eyes glistened.

“Are you sure?” she said. “About Ivan?”

When I nodded, her hand played over her mouth. She stifled a sound in her throat. I took her by the shoulders and she looked up at me. I kissed her forehead, then turned her toward the window. “I’ll be right behind you.” I helped her out onto the fire escape. “Straight down,” I whispered, but when I let her go, she went rigid. “Go!” I whispered, my heart in my mouth. She gave me a startled look, then turned and moved like a cat across the rusted plate and on down the steps, and I went out after her.

We were halfway down before the guys on the bridge saw us. They started shouting, but Fiona kept moving and I stayed close on her tail. We were almost down before they got off their first shot. Fiona ducked and hit the ground running. I leaped off the bottom step and went after her, and the bullets smacked into the wall high above me, and we were around the back and out of sight before they could adjust their fire.

While Fiona opened the garage, I trained the Kalashnikov on the upper floors of Barchevsky’s building. The garage doors clattered open, Fiona went in, and right then a face appeared in the rear window of Barchevsky’s bedroom. He saw us, I fired a quick burst, and he ducked as the shots sprayed up the wall.

“Let’s go!” I shouted.

The engine kicked into life, revved high, and a battered Jeep shot out of the garage. It slowed beside me, I fired another burst up at the window, then I clambered into the Jeep, and Fiona jammed her foot on the accelerator. We swerved out onto the street and turned south for a block, speeding away from Barchevsky’s building, then east. Behind us, the gunfire died away.

“Where now?” Fiona gripped the wheel tight.

“Airport. Go another couple of blocks before you turn back onto the main drag.”

“Why?”

“Because I say so.”

She threw me a scorching look.

“Those guys back on the bridge have got RPGs,” I told her. “If we get back on the main drag too early, we’ll be in range.” My eyes swept the buildings up front for any sign of men with guns, and the potholed tarmac for any sign of land mines. “Are you okay?”

“No!” she shouted.

Ahead, a bus moved slowly out from a side street, I glimpsed a man with guns taking cover behind it.

“Left!” I yelled, and when she didn’t react, I shouted, “Left!” again and grabbed the wheel and swung left just as the guy stepped out from behind the bus and fired. Bullets fizzed through the air and smacked harmlessly into a nearby building.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Christ.”

“Go right at the T.”

She swung the Jeep around the corner. We were on the main drag now, the airport road, and I got up, braced my knee on the seat, and looked back toward the bridge.

“Are we clear?” she called up.

We weren’t. Way back on the bridge, a guy with an RPG on his shoulder had seen us. He went down on one knee.

“Keep going!” The smoke from the refinery fire was thickening around us. I clutched Fiona’s shoulder. “Faster!”

She accelerated. “I can’t see.”

The guy with the RPG took aim.

“Faster, for chrissake!”

“I’m doing sixty, blind!”

He fired. There was a rush of air, and the shell missed us, just to the right. A moment later there was an explosion somewhere way up ahead in the smoke.

“Jesus Christ,” Fiona said, shaken.

The bridge behind us disappeared behind the veil of black smoke, I dropped into my seat and told Fiona to slow down. She slowed the Jeep immediately, her hands trembling on the wheel, and we cruised up the center of the road, guided by the broken white lines. For a minute she was silent, then she said, “What in hell are you doing here?”

“Me?”

“You just disappeared.”

I peered ahead through the thinning smoke. I patted the air. “Slow down.”

The control tower came into view, then the hangars. We were passing through no-man’s-land, then a half mile ahead I saw a tank, part of the perimeter the Congolese army had established around the airport. I reached into the backseat and grabbed a pair of white overalls lying there, then I opened my window and flapped the overalls up and down. The AK47 was down by my feet, out of sight.

“Slower,” I said, and Fiona eased right back off the gas and we crawled up the road and finally stopped ten yards short of the tank. A Centurion. British army surplus.

I opened my door and swung out, standing on the footboard. The tank’s cannon swiveled fractionally right, but the turret stayed shut.

“We’re Americans.”

“Is that a recommendation around here?” Fiona wondered aloud.

“We got caught in town. There’s just the two of us, we’d like to come in if we can.”

There was no response.

“Tell them we’ve been shot at,” said Fiona, but before I could say anything, a Congolese soldier appeared from the rear of the tank. He walked once around the Jeep, then came closer and looked in. He saw the Kalashnikov at my feet and reached in and took it, then he went around to the back and climbed in. When he signaled for Fiona to drive on, she glanced at me. I nodded, and she eased the Jeep around the tank. We crawled slowly up the road, passing several sandbagged machine-gun nests before we finally entered through the airport gates.

There were two fighter jets parked out on the runway, and a chopper on the helipad and another one nearer the terminal. Old tanks of various European makes were positioned every few hundred yards around the airport perimeter. Sandbagged machine-gun nests and mortar emplacements had been set up between the tanks. Soldiers came and went from the terminal, but there was a real sense of order to the place, it wasn’t anything like the Internal Security HQ. This was a fully functioning and purposeful outfit.

We parked by the dozen other civilian vehicles near the first hangar. Our escort pointed to the white civilians sitting in the shade of the hangar and indicated that we should join them. Then he got out and crossed to the terminal. A white guy in uniform came out toward him.

Fiona rested her forearms on the steering wheel, her head slumped on her arms. I got out and watched our escort talking with the white soldier, then I went around and opened Fiona’s door. I remarked that we seemed to have gotten through the worst, that I thought we’d be safe now.

“Safe?” She turned on me. “It’s a goddamn war. And what about Brad? How safe is he?” She got out, pushing past me, and slammed the door. She stepped away from me, then turned back. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here? You just disappeared, not even a note.”

“I called as soon as I got the chance.”

“Were you with that Durranti woman?”

“Oh, come on.”

“You were, weren’t you.” When I hesitated, her look turned icy. “I could kill you, Ned. I could damn well kill you.”

“Don’t you want to listen to me?”

The white soldier walked toward us, Fiona flung up a hand and stalked away from me toward the hangar. I was debating with myself whether to go after her when the white soldier called out to me, asking if I was the one who’d just come in. He was a Brit. Pink-faced and clean shaven. I nodded.

“We heard some heavy ordnance out there.” He pointed west, the way we’d come.

I told him about the gang on the bridge. When I mentioned the RPG-7s, he raised a brow skeptically.

“I’m ex–U.S. Army,” I said. “They were RPGs.”

He reconsidered me a moment, then told me to accompany him to the terminal. He said he thought the colonel would probably want to see me. I glanced over my shoulder, but Fiona had already disappeared into the hangar, so I went with the Brit. As we neared the terminal entrance, I slowed, my head swiveling toward the service block. Beside the service block, six containers sat in a line. I’d seen them loaded, and I’d seen them shipped, there was no mistaking them. The Haplon six. Their doors hung open, the containers were empty.

My face burned. I’d chaperoned tons of materiel from New York into a war zone, and now it was out on the field of battle, destroying lives. People were being killed because we had screwed up.

“In here,” said the Brit, guiding me into the terminal.

Inside, a large communications suite had been set up on the mezzanine, looking out over the runway. A white guy in fatigues and several Congolese soldiers were manning the radios. Other Congolese soldiers were taking scribbled messages from the radiomen and delivering them upstairs.

The Brit took me on up past the radios to the next level, where another big area of floor space overlooked the runway. Here a giant map of the Congo was spread out on a huge central table. Smaller detailed maps were pinned to the wall. Older Congolese soldiers were moving between the maps, receiving messages from downstairs, and talking. There were colored ribbons on every pocket, and on every shoulder, epaulettes braided in silver and gold. It was clearly a command center. The temporary war room of the Congolese government. A couple of these officers glanced at me, then immediately returned to poring over the maps.

My Brit escort led me to a desk where an epauletted colonel had his back to us, he was talking into a phone. My escort stepped around the desk, caught the colonel’s eye, then tossed his head in my direction. The colonel swiveled in his chair.

Trevanian. We stared at each other a moment, then he hung up the phone.

CHAPTER 34

“Colonel?” I said.

“Honorary. And don’t get clever.” Trevanian led me along the hall, away from the war room. He asked me what I could tell him about what I’d seen in town.

“It’s not my fight,” I told him.

“Then why’m I wasting my time talking to you?”

“I guess because you’d like to know if I noticed the Haplon containers you’ve got parked outside.”

We stopped by a drinks dispenser, he inserted some coins and got himself a Coke. He inserted some more coins, then, finger poised over the buttons, he asked me what I wanted.

“I want to know what’s happening in Mbuji-Mayi.”

He glanced at me. “Thought it wasn’t your fight.”

“My son’s out there.”

“Bullshit.”

“He’s a geologist at one of the diamond mines. Dujanka.”

Trevanian cocked his head, still not sure. Then he hit the dispenser button, another can of Coke rolled out and he handed it to me. He popped his own can, took a swig, then led me across to the room he’d made his office. A linoleum floor, a desk, and a phone. There was another map of the Congo on the wall, he went over and put his finger on Mbuji-Mayi. After studying the area a second, his finger moved. “Dujanka,” he said, his eyebrows rising. I went over and looked at the name on the map. It lay southeast of Mbuji-Mayi. Trevanian dropped into his chair, rocking as he swigged at his Coke. “The miners out that way were evacuated.”

“My son didn’t get out.”

“You sound like you think I can do something about that.”

“Can you?”

“Hard to say. Your friend from U.S. Customs still with you?” When I told him Rita had been flown out to the carrier, he nodded. “If she wants to make an issue of anything,” he said, “there’s a ton of paperwork says the Haplon containers got shipped to Nigeria.”

“We saw them unloaded from the
Sebastopol
.”

“So? You saw six containers unloaded.”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “The same six containers you’ve got outside.”

“A lawyer might dispute that.”

“You broke the goddamn embargo. Unless you help me get my son out, you’ll be arrested the moment you set foot on U.S. territory. Or any other country where there’s an extradition treaty. That includes Britain, right?”

He studied me. “My information was, you got arrested by Internal Security.”

“Your order?”

“Nothing to do with me.” He squinted. “How’d you get out?”

“I had a chat with Cecille.”

He looked at me, but said nothing.

“She told me about the side deal you had going with Greenbaum on the diamonds.”

He screwed up his face. “What?”

“She said you were trying to scam Rossiter and your client at the same time. Taking a piece for yourself out of the middle.”

“Oh, for fucksake.” He was shocked.

“Not true?”

“You crazy?” He pushed back his chair, then stood up. “A piece out of the middle, what’s that worth? Am I really going to try to rip them off, then come back here and have one of old man Lagundi’s goons shoot me through the head? Jesus. A piece out of the middle. She said that?”

I nodded. He hitched his belt, then pushed both hands up through his hair. He stared out the window, stunned. He wasn’t pretending. Cecille Lagundi’s claim was a total, and very unwelcome, surprise.

“Cecille’s setting you up to take a fall for the theft of the diamonds,” I said.

He swung around. “I hardly saw the bloody things.”

“You took them to New York.”

“We didn’t take them. They were already there in the bank vault. Christ, I wish I’d never heard of the damn stones. She told you I stole them? She actually said that?” When I nodded again he shook his head in disbelief. Then a thought struck him. “Why’d she tell you that?”

“Because she thought I might corroborate her story.”

“Her story’s crazy.” We looked at each other a moment, then his face fell. “You didn’t,” he said.

“I was a prisoner in her father’s jail.”

“Oh, shit.” He closed his eyes, then opened them. “You didn’t put anything in writing, did you?” He read the answer in my face. “Christ Almighty.”

“You help me get my son out of Dujanka, and I’ll retract the statement.”

“She stole the fucking diamonds.”

“That’s not really my problem. All I want is to get my son out.”

We looked at each other.

“You might be lying to me now.” He pointed. “You might have dreamed this up just to blackmail me into helping you get your son.”

“I didn’t dream up those empty Haplon containers.”

He waved that off. He didn’t seem to care that I knew he’d broken the arms embargo. What concerned him was the statement I’d given Cecille Lagundi, and the possibility that the goons from Internal Security might be ordered to put a bullet through his head. He knew I wasn’t lying.

At last he turned and studied the map on the wall. He could see what I couldn’t, the positions of the Congolese army units in the field, and the broad outlines of the major battles under way across the country. He considered the map a long time.

“You go back to the hangar,” he finally decided. “Don’t try coming back in here till I send for you.” When I asked him what he intended to do, he faced me. “I’m going to figure out whether I should let myself be blackmailed,” he said. “Or whether it might not be easier just to shoot you.”

I started out in the direction of the hangar, then drifted left toward the service block. Nobody stopped me. A minute later, I was walking along the line of Haplon containers, looking in. They were absolutely bare. Not one loose round of ammo, not one spare part, remained. I glanced around. None of the soldiers back by the terminal were watching me. I stepped into the last container, pulling the steel doors half-closed behind me. At the rear of the container, I knelt and put two fingers into the open end of the triangular steel tube that formed part of the corner brace. The electronic homing device I’d planted back in Connecticut was still in place. Using my fingers like tweezers, I pincered the beacon and pulled it free of the battery beneath, then extracted it. It was the size and shape of a fountain pen. I slipped it into my pocket and went back to the doors, and right then a Congolese soldier put his head in. I pushed open one door and stepped out. When he said something in French, I shook my head and spread my hands in a show of ignorance. Then I turned toward the hangar and walked. He shouted, but when I didn’t respond he seemed to give up. After fifty yards, I glanced over my shoulder and he was walking down the line of containers, closing doors.

Fiona wasn’t in the hangar. I wandered through, past the bunk beds and the trestle tables. There were twenty or thirty European and American civilians in there, people who hadn’t made it to the embassy. They sat around in small groups, talking, some playing cards, a few lying alone on their bunks, reading. When I’d passed through, I saw a door out back and went over and looked out. There was a stack of worn and discarded aircraft tires dumped fifty yards away by some palm trees. Fiona was sitting on the edge of the stack. Her arms were folded. She was staring at her feet. I walked across and stopped five yards short of her. She didn’t lift her head.

“I’ve spoken to someone about Brad. This guy might be able to help us.”

She didn’t reply.

“Look,” I said. “I’m really trying here.”

“Can he get to Brad?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked up. “I killed Ivan.” When I made a sound, she went on. “I wouldn’t leave when he wanted to get to the embassy. When the shooting started, it was too late to try.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Isn’t it?”

I moved around and settled my butt against a tire. I asked her what she was doing in the Congo anyway. “Your office told me you were in Johannesburg.”

“I was. But you’d disappeared. I was worried about Brad.” She shrugged. “I called Ivan.”

I asked if she hadn’t picked up the message I’d left for her at home.

“On the voice mail?” She made a face. “It didn’t tell me a damn thing. As usual. Ivan got me on a planeload of mining analysts coming up here from Joburg. Day after I got in, the trouble started. That was two days ago.”

“You saw Brad?”

She shook her head. She said they’d spoken on the radio.

“How was he?”

“Worried. He and three other guys missed the evacuation, they’d been working out in the bush. Last night they were talking about abandoning the mine, driving out.” She looked at me. “That goddamn diamond you had me analyze, that’s got something to do with why you’re here, hasn’t it.”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part? Making sure your clients can use the guns properly? Maximum kill rate, or whatever you call it?” I hung my head. “Or did you come out to see what else they might need?” she said bitterly. “Rossiter must be loving this.”

“I don’t work for Rossiter.”

“Don’t you dare tell me you do your job for Brad and me. Don’t you dare tell me that. That you do it for us.”

I didn’t see much sense in holding back now. I didn’t want to hold back. So I repeated it, the only thing that might finally reach her. “I don’t work for Rossiter.” I lifted my head. “I don’t work for Haplon.”

She took a second. “You’ve what, resigned?”

“I haven’t resigned. I never did work for Rossiter.” I found I couldn’t face her.

“Don’t do that.” She pulled me around. “I don’t need any head games here, Ned, not right now. What are you saying to me? You don’t work for Rossiter? What kind of cryptic bullshit is that? Who’s the guy who drives up to Connecticut each morning. That’s you, isn’t it?”

I looked her in the eye. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. “My job at Haplon’s a cover. I’m working for Defense Intelligence. I’ve been working for them since I quit West Point.” She didn’t speak, she just stared at me. I’d had nearly two years to prepare for the moment. At times I’d even kidded myself that I was prepared. But when Fiona kept staring at me without speaking I felt my world cracking like a brittle shell.

“Defense Intelligence,” she said at last.

“It wasn’t safe for you to know.”

“You quit West Point two years ago.”

“Twenty-two months.”

“Two years,” she said.

“It was an intelligence-gathering operation. I thought it was something I had to do.”

Her brow creased. She looked away from me, then back. It still hadn’t quite sunken in.

“Guys like Rossiter were breaking the law,” I said. “I lost men in the Gulf because of that. The DIA gave me a chance to do something about it. I took it.”

“You’re not going to tell me this is a morality thing.” She slipped down from the tire, walked away a few paces, then turned. “You’ve been risking your life for this?”

“I’ve been gathering intelligence on Haplon.”

“You’re on active service?”

“It’s not like I’ve been working for an enemy state. It’s not something I’m ashamed of.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“And I wasn’t cheating on you.”

“What?”

“The so-called affair. That woman in the photos, Durranti, she’s a Customs officer, like I told you. She was my contact. That’s who I was passing the intelligence to.”

Fiona tilted her head. She regarded me closely, then seemed to recognize that I was telling the truth. There was a brief flicker of something other than anger in her eyes, but the next moment it was gone. “I think I’ll skip the champagne,” she said. “You’ve been on active service for two years. And you’ve been lying to me about it for two fucking years.”

“I was protecting you.”

“You were deceiving me. You deceived me because you knew how I felt about all that. You knew if you’d told me the truth I would have divorced you. That’s it, isn’t it. You didn’t have the guts to tell me.”

“You’re pissed off because I didn’t want to destroy our marriage?”

“If you didn’t want to do that, all you had to do was stay at West Point.”

“That job was killing me. Did you really expect me to spend the rest of my days teaching kids about breechblocks? Was I meant to watch them all go on to be soldiers while I sat around greasing guns for next year’s intake?”

“You were in the Army. That’s what you wanted.”

“I was wasting my goddamn life.”

“You’re not saying this is my fault.” She gestured around. “That we’re caught up in this because of me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you’re thinking it. You’re thinking that if I hadn’t been so unreasonable, if I hadn’t wanted you off active service, if I hadn’t wanted a husband all in one piece, we wouldn’t be here now. Maybe Brad wouldn’t be here.”

“Okay.” My heart was pounding and my chest was tight. “Let’s say I am. You don’t think that’s part of it?”

She jabbed a finger at me. “I told you to your face. I told you I couldn’t take it, I wasn’t proud of that, Ned. I was ashamed of it. I was ashamed of myself. I married a soldier, I should have known what I was in for, but I didn’t. Christ. When they told me you’d been shot in Mogadishu I cried for two days, do you think I’m proud of that? But at least when I figured it out, I faced up to it. And I told you to your face. I didn’t lie to you.” Tears stood in her eyes, tears of anger and pain. She swiped them away.

“Fiona—”

“Don’t ’Fiona’ me. What’s wrong with you? I’m your wife. For two years I haven’t known a thing about you.”

“That’s not true.”

“That Durranti woman. She knew.”

“She was a professional contact.”

“She knew what you were doing. She knew all about you. She knew about me too, didn’t she. She must have.”

“This has nothing to do with Rita.”

“Oh,” she said. “Rita.”

“Be serious.”

“I am serious. What do you want me to say, that I don’t care? Two years, for chrissake.”

“I get the message.”

“No you don’t. You don’t even start to get it. I believed you, Ned. I believed in you.” She wrapped her arms around herself, defensive. Furious. “Now I don’t want to even look at you.” I stepped toward her, and she lifted her eyes and stopped me dead. She did not want me anywhere near her. I looked at her a long moment, then finally turned on my heel and retreated to the hangar.