The Geneva Decision (11 page)

With no one else in sight, they decided to make a break for it. Running for the hotel, they charged at Tania. Twenty yards out, she pulled up short and raised a hand. They didn’t even slow down. She glanced around, then pulled a gun out of her waist pack. The boys stopped in their tracks.

The taller one narrowed his eyes and bent into a fighting stance. The shorter one stepped sideways, splitting her aim. Neither of them saw Pia coming up behind them faster than they could have imagined.

Her slide tackle took down the short guy and distracted the tall one. Tania stuck the gun in his right eye.

Pia’s target scrambled to his feet. Seeing the situation, he pulled up two fists and growled at her. She smiled and shook her head.

“We only want to talk to you,” she said.

The taller boy said something that sounded vaguely French.

Pia looked at him, “Do you speak English?”

“Hell yeah they speak English.” Tania kicked the taller boy. “They spoke to Marty. Ain’t that right, skinny boy?”

The short boy lashed out with a kick to Pia’s midsection. She twisted right, his foot glancing off the back of her thigh, then unwound with a right cross that connected her open hand to his temple. His head spun over his shoulder, his body following in the twist. He collapsed on the sand.

“Holy shit!” Tania said. “Did you kill him?”

Pia looked at Tania and the tall boy, their eyes wide, faces shocked. She shook her head and said, “He’s counting sand while he sorts things out.”

On cue, the shorter boy spit sand and rose on his elbows, then on his hands and knees. He flopped around and sat in the sand shaking his head. Slowly, his eyes rose to Pia’s.

“All I want to know is who hired you to follow me,” she said.

The tall one glared at his friend. “No talkin dem to da lady, abi.”

Pia turned to the tall boy. “You talk to da lady, abi.”

He squinted at her and shook his head.

“We ain’t getting anywhere with these guys,” Tania said. “Can I shoot ’em?”

The whites of his eyes bulged out. Pia nodded and Tania popped a dart into the short boy. He fell over. They turned to the tall boy.

“No, no, no.” He waved his hands in front of him as if swatting away flies and backed up. “No bosses for we. Dis tins happens for anoder raison.”

“What was that?” Tania asked Pia. “Was that your Bantu?”

“No, sounds like Pidgin English. I think he said he doesn’t have bosses for a reason. Guess that means he doesn’t know who’s in charge.”

“Who was he calling then?” Tania waved the gun at him. “Hey, you. Who were you calling then?”

“Not knowing. Call for we side, she answer.”

Pia drew her gun and pulled the trigger.

“Yeah,” Tania said, “he was getting boring.”

“He was saying he just called in and spoke to someone without knowing who.” Pia patted him down.

She found a phone in his pocket and pressed the redial button. Three rings later, a woman’s voice offered a quick and curt
allo
. The voice sounded familiar. Pia waited, hoping the woman on the other end would repeat the greeting or ask something, anything that would help her identify the voice. Without another word, the woman clicked off. Pia called her back. This time the woman played Pia’s game—she picked up the call but said nothing.

After a couple beats, Pia said, “This is Pia Sabel, who are you?”

On the other end, Pia heard a surprised intake of breath. The line went dead. It had to be someone Pia knew, or she would have responded with “wrong number” or made some lame excuse for the boys. That didn’t narrow it down much—people speaking French included the maid, the bishop’s wife, guests at the hotel, and countless others.

She copied the phone numbers involved and returned the phones to the boys. She and Tania dragged them into the jungle, then propped them against a tree to keep their airways open. They administered the injectors.

“How come you hit that guy with your hand open?” Tania asked. “I thought you were a boxer or something.”

“With gloves on, you’re protected,” she said. Pia made a fist and pointed to her knuckles. “Lots of little bones in there. If you’re street fighting without gloves, use the heel of your hand or your elbow. Fewer broken bones that way.”

Satisfied the boys would wake up safely in a few hours, they wiped the sweat from their brows.

“Interesting solution.” The Major stepped from the dense foliage an arm’s length away.

“HOLY SHIT, Major!” Tania shouted. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Reassuring to know you’re guarding the boss.” The Major turned to Pia. “You’ve now shown an adversary what kind of weapons we use and how willing we are to use them. Nice. Remember when you asked me to be your mentor?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember when we came up with a plan to interrogate the boys: lead them to me and let me use my twenty years of experience to question them?”

“Um.”

“What happened to the plan, Pia?”

Chapter 16

26-May, 3AM

T
he room swirled around Pia before coming into focus. It was dark, nothing familiar in sight. Her dream still echoed in her head, her mother saying,
You hired the Major. Why don’t you listen to her?

Pia shook her head, pushed herself out of bed, stretched and glanced at the clock. Three hours of sleep. She looked for a light switch. A silhouette outside, backlit by moonlight off the ocean, caught her eye.

Her breath stopped. It looked distinctly human but short. Either someone crouched or was seated on the porch. She reached for her gun on the nightstand. When she reached, whoever it was moved. Was it one of the boys from the beach? She couldn’t tell which way it faced, in or out. Were they watching her? Or looking out to sea? Impossible to tell. Who had watch at this hour, Jacob or Ezra? Didn’t look right for either.

She tightened her hold on the gun and considered her next move. Opening the sticky wooden door would alert the lurker. Darts couldn’t penetrate the glass. Bluff? Scare him off?

She stepped closer to the window. A board creaked under her foot.

The figure outside spun into a standing position, gun drawn. For a full second they aimed at each other. Then the figure relaxed, lowering the gun.

“Jesus, Pia,” the Major said. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“We’re even, then.” She started breathing again.

“The manual says you don’t sleep much, but I didn’t expect you up this early.”

“What are you doing out there?”

“I sent Marty in and took his watch overnight. Did I wake you up?”

“No, come in, Major.” Pia opened the door. “I was just going to check out what our experts back home could learn from the phones.”

“You can call me Jonelle when we’re alone.”

“I call you Major out of respect. Doesn’t matter who’s around.”

The Major bowed her head a moment. Then she said, “There’s one thing that kept me up, Pia. You brought us to Cameroon because of a pack of matches and a bus ticket. I thought we were wasting resources. Now I realize you were on to something—you hit a nerve somewhere. Those boys might have been cheap amateurs, but someone sent them to watch you. Which means you have us in the right place.”

Pia stared at her for a beat. “Thank you, Major. I appreciate that.”

“It also means we’re in greater danger than I thought.”

The Major nodded and walked outside to keep the watch.

Pia’s phone buzzed, caller ID showed Dad. As much as it pained her, she let it roll to voicemail.

She pulled up the report. The boys’ phones originated in Vienna. Someone had converted them for use in Africa on an anonymous pre-paid plan over the MTN network. The phones had no GPS location capability. The woman who answered could have been anywhere from Ghana to Gabon. The two recorded conversations between the boys and their handler revealed nothing but whining about the tedium and lack of things to report. They wanted to leave.

They got even less from the woman’s end of the conversation:
Allo
and
Non
.

Pia slumped back in her chair and heard the Major’s words echo in her head.
What happened to the plan?
Caught up in the euphoria of domination, she’d picked up on Tania’s impulsiveness. She darted the boys because it seemed like fun, like something within her power to decide. It was irresponsible. An opportunity lost.

She picked up her e-reader and went outside. The Major returned, sat in one of two chairs next to her and watched the beach. Moonlight between the clouds occasionally lit a wave, all else was blackness.

“What are you reading?” the Major asked.

“
The Memoirs of Jack Reacher
.” Pia looked up from her book. “Hey, he was an MP too. Did you know him?”

“I was a new recruit, he was my CO. Worked for him on and off over about five years. He taught me everything I know.”

“Did really he do all this stuff?” Pia held the book up.

“Never read the memoirs. But if he said he did—he did. That’s for damn sure.”

“Pretty violent guy.”

“He never hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming. Keep reading, he’s a good role model.”

She put the book down. “I need a plan for today.”

“You have great instincts, Pia. Have confidence in that. But, in front of the others, everything has to come from you. I’ll only jump in to prevent a serious mistake. Now, let’s start with the goal.”

They talked for thirty minutes. When they were done, Pia changed into her running shorts and shirt, grabbed a pair of water runner shoes, and headed back outside. Ignoring the Major’s security protests, she did her ten-kilometer warm-up. In the dark, with only a small headlamp for guidance, she had a chance to clear her head and plan her day. Thirty-five minutes later, she was back in the hotel’s gym lifting weights.

When she finished, she found a text from Alphonse: call me.

“I was not certain when you wake,” he said.

“I told you, I’m an early riser.”

“I like that in the woman.”

“Easy there, Romeo,” she said. “Hey, I found two teenagers following me yesterday.” She explained the phone source and the French woman’s voice.

“Vienna?” he said. “Perhaps stolen from tourists? Or is that where the pirates live?”

“Their attacks came from a pretty nasty area of swamps and jungles. No electricity or running water, so they probably live somewhere else between attacks. But Vienna? Kind of land- locked for a bunch of pirates. Anyway, we’re heading up the coast for some recon. Hopefully, we’ll know something by this time tomorrow.”

“We have found little on our end. Capitaine Villeneuve has ordered me to interrogate the wives. She thinks perhaps there was the love triangle. But, this is not possible. It would have to be the love pentagram.”

Pia laughed. “Orgy, maybe? You know how wild bankers are.”

“It makes me ill to think. Mme. Marot is difficult to question. She is superior, only speaking to le Capitaine, and even then she is quite rude. Sandra Bachmann lived with the sister who knows nothing of banking. Eren Wölfli’s wife, Ramona, would be the suspect in my mind. She has the questionable past, some arrests before she married Wölfli. But why kill so many? It makes no sense. Sara Campbell’s husband, drunk at every interview. Reto Affolter’s wife, Antje, was most devoted.”

“Did you find anything on the accomplice?”

“Affolter’s murder in the parking garage was on video, but there is not much to see. Two men beating him before shooting him. Faces are not visible.” His voice perked up. “Oh, and the gendarmerie in Lyon has made identification of your attacker. A soldier from Norvège, no past, no records. He went to Cameroon a year ago and came back the day before the killings.”

“Sounds like assassins to me.”

“Even le Capitaine admits you could be correct about this. Is your offer to have Sabel Security help us still open?”

“Absolutely. I’m already trying to find them, may as well join forces.”

“I will mention it again. She is most insistent now that I find something new.”

“What about the money at Banque Marot?”

“Quoi? What money?”

Pia relayed what Sara Campbell had told her about having too much money. For a while, Alphonse was silent.

“This is most interesting,” he said. “It is unfortunate that she was killed before…”

As his voice trailed off, Pia understood the implication.

“You should go, Alphonse. Follow up on that one.”

“Oui, au revoir.”

She’d expected the police to make more headway, at least a few clues for her to follow in Cameroon. So far, they were living up to her original assessment of them. Were they ever going to start investigating?

Chapter 17

26-May, 6AM

A
s the sun rose into another gray haze, Pia showered and dressed for the day in black compression shorts, sports top, and her water runner shoes. She joined her agents and Monique Tsogo on board the
Limbe Explorer
.

They headed north, swinging wide around the massive Limbe tanker pier, where two tethered tankers were being filled with crude oil.

Captain Whittier, the
Limbe Explorer’s
proud captain and a California expat, insisted on giving Pia a personal tour of his Dvora class patrol boat. Capable of forty-five knots should Pia wish to pay for the extra fuel consumption, the twenty-seven-meter boat had a low radar signature and a draft of only one meter. Captain Whittier beamed as he showed her the open-air bridge up top. Below was the main control room, an armored pilothouse that allowed him control in adverse conditions. They had enough supplies to last three days, plus a water filtration system. Four Zodiacs were stowed for side trips.

Captain Whittier rattled off several oil companies as his primary clients. He said, “Their geologists and oil hunters often required the
Limbe Explorer’s
speed for escape in case of attack.”

“Attack from whom?”

“This isn’t the Great Lakes, Ms. Sabel. There are desperately poor people living in this region.”

“Have you been attacked?”

“Oh no, ma’am. But I’ve left in a hurry quite a few times. Don’t worry, if I see anything dangerous I’ll get you out of there before the shooting starts.”