“That
is why I cannot die. I alone can deliver all of us from this nightmare. Without me, there will be no one left who can negotiate a peace.”
Pierce looked into Bobby’s eyes. Perhaps sleeplessness and hunger
had stripped the veneer of humility from Bobby’s self-belief, exposing its molten core; perhaps his anguish at the massacre cut so deep that to insist on his own transcendence was his only defense against the fear of failure and death. Pierce looked at Bobby’s hands and then into his face, attempting to fathom how this man must feel now. Quietly, he asked, “Do you know anything about who hung those workers?”
Bobby’s eyes dimmed. “No.”
“Not followers who might have believed they were acting in your name?”
“That is not what I believe.”
“What
do
you believe?”
Bobby inhaled, releasing Pierce’s shirt. “That it was Okimbo.”
“What reason would he have?”
“If Okimbo fails to crush the Asari movement, he loses what matters most to him, power and money—whether from Karama, PGL, or militia groups like FREE. Maybe he even imagines himself as Karama’s successor.” Bobby spoke more softly. “When I found those men, Okimbo was already there. And yet they were not protected from death.”
Pierce smiled a little. “I’ve wondered about that myself.”
Taking Pierce’s hand in both of his, Bobby finished with quiet urgency, “Then do not doubt me, Damon. Help us. Help Marissa.”
Meeting Bobby’s eyes, Pierce felt the weight of his helplessness. Slowly, he nodded.
Footsteps sounded behind them, and then the soldier who had taken Pierce to Bobby’s cell led him away again.
B
ARA WAS PARKED
outside. Above the shantytown Pierce saw a thick cloud of smoke split by tongues of flame. Gunfire sounded in the distance.
Drained by his encounter with Bobby, Pierce slid into the passenger seat. Bara’s face was grim. “Okimbo?” Pierce asked.
“Yes. The army’s decimating the so-called neighborhood where they claim the killers of that soldier came from. Unless Bobby lives, that is the face of our future.”
“So he believes.” Pierce reflected for a moment, then took out his cell phone and asked his security team to book a flight to Waro.
P
IERCE LANDED IN A COCOON OF PROTECTION
. A
S SOON AS HE GOT
off the plane, his chief security adviser, Hank Vorster, shepherded him to a private corner of the airport, cordoned off from the sea of Luan-dians departing and arriving. Though they had never met, Pierce had seen Vorster’s photograph, a safeguard against kidnapping by an impostor. Vorster was a veteran of the South African special forces; the second member of the team—Dennis Clellan, formerly a British marine—awaited them. Though Vorster was taller and sported a beard, both men wore close-cropped hair, looked remarkably fit, and had the same expression of tensile alertness. Their mission, honed by protecting visiting businessmen, was to keep Pierce safe. Their briefing was to the point.
“It’s forty kilometers to Waro,” Vorster told Pierce. “The traffic is stop-and-go at best, especially on the bridges. That’s where criminals can break into the van and take you away—or, in your case, worse guys pretending to be criminals who work for God knows who.
“The goal is not to stop between here and our destination. There’ll be a police truck in front and in back of our vehicle, both with a trained driver and an armed guard.” Vorster looked at Pierce intently. “Your job is to follow a few simple rules. If we have to slow down, or there’s trouble, we’ll handle it. Don’t open a window. Don’t make eye contact. Keep your hands where anyone can see them. Some of these guys are twitchy—reach for your cell phone and they’ll shoot you. That we don’t want—a stupid death is unforgivable. Any questions?”
“Yeah. You just hire Luandian police like they’re security guards?”
Vorster shrugged. “Everything’s for sale here. These guys don’t make squat.”
“But don’t they know why I’m here?”
Vorster grinned. “They think you’re an oil company executive. We’ll wait for someone else to disabuse them.”
He nodded to Clellan. Looking around warily, they shepherded Pierce through the chaos, one at each elbow.
T
HE WHITE
SUV was double-parked between two police trucks watched over by Luandian policemen with semiautomatic weapons. Vorster and Clellan hustled Pierce inside it.
The dark, hawk-faced man in the back, Bryce Martel’s former CIA colleague, extended his hand. “Dave Rubin,” he said. “Welcome to the wonderful world of Waro. Hope we can tell you enough to make the trip worthwhile.”
Vorster got in front, Clellan behind the wheel. Abruptly, the lead police truck turned on its siren and flashing lights, and the three-vehicle caravan pushed into the six-lane road amid the worst traffic Pierce had ever seen—not only congested but without discernible rules. There were no sidewalks: in the sweltering late-afternoon smog, pedestrians scurried along the edge of the road, inches from being struck; men on mopeds sliced through narrow spaces between cars and trucks; vehicles stopped so abruptly that bumpers often collided. Their caravan careened through traffic, forcing aside other cars and herding pedestrians to the side, the reflexes of each driver so remarkable that Pierce began to laugh. “Is it always like this?”
Vorster turned to answer. “Unless it’s worse. Traffic governs the life of everyone here—all movement can stop for hours, and you sit there in a catatonic trance, afraid of being snatched or robbed.” He pointed to an adolescent tapping on the window of a stalled car. “He’s selling SIM cards for cell phones. Waro runs on them—it’s the only way you can tell someone you’re suffering from vehicular paralysis.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Rubin interjected. “You’ll see when we get closer to Waro. Someday soon the traffic will stop, the sewage will back up, the power grid will give out; bands of armed criminals will occupy the hotels, and the whole place will cease to function. No wonder Karama left.”
“I thought this was a police state,” Pierce said.
Rubin shook his head. “It’s a kleptocratic autocracy. Karama doesn’t
care if Waro is an urban jungle. He doesn’t worry about criminals unless they’re stealing from him. The only ‘law breakers’ he cracks down on are people like Okari.
“The result is the slow disintegration of civil order—or, in places like the delta, the entire fabric of society. Young men either join a militia or find some other way to extract money from PGL. A teenager who doesn’t like those choices can leave for the city.” His voice filled with disgust. “You saw Port George.”
The SUV squealed to a stop. Briefly, Pierce was distracted by the sight of a New York Yankees cap passing, as though suspended on air. Peering out, he saw that it belonged to a man without legs, his torso balanced on a skateboard he propelled with his arms. Then the caravan started forward again, sirens screeching. “In the creeks,” Pierce said, “we saw militia men bunkering oil, and no military in sight. That can’t work without graft.”
From the front seat, Vorster smiled, the corners of his blue eyes crinkling. “Ah,” he said amiably, “the dawn of wisdom.”
“Aside from Karama,” Rubin told Pierce, “the criminal militias have been Okari’s greatest challenge. But who’s to say that Karama and the militias are strangers to each other? In the grand kleptocracy of Savior Karama, corruption is the sole ideology that can unify opposing forces.”
“In other words,” Pierce said, “illegal bunkering needs—or feeds—corrupt officials.”
“Assuredly. But don’t forget the element of competition.” Rubin sat back. “Hank and I make a dime or two advising folks in the oil business about security issues in the delta. So I’ve distilled militia predation to its essence.
“Start with the raw materials—a pool of youth who are underedu-cated, unemployed, and pissed off that their standard of living is
worse
because of oil. They go three places: armed gangs with names like ‘Blood Suckers’ and ‘Creek Vipers,’ ethnic militias, or FREE—”
“What’s the difference?”
The SUV lurched, bouncing the three men in their seats as Clellan braked to avoid a boy in a wheelchair who was begging amid heavy traffic. “The gangs are local,” Rubin answered, “the ethnic militias, tribal. FREE is delta-wide, and spouts high-sounding principles it swiped from Okari. But most of these guys originated as election enforcers for rival politicians; all depend on oil theft and kidnapping. The upshot is a proliferation of
nonstate rival armies—maybe fifteen thousand men with twice that many weapons—engaged in a Darwinian battle for territory and control.
“One’s always attacking another. Often the boys are high on confidence builders like pot or cocaine, which don’t do a lot for their judgment—lucky one of the guys you ran into didn’t use your head for target practice. Whatever the inspiration, they kill one another indiscriminately. The more enterprising among them pay the heads of local army units to help eliminate their rivals.”
Vorster laughed at this. “When I see news about the army battling some gang, I always wonder what other gang paid them.”
“Unless it’s a local politician,” Rubin amended. “The governor of Asariland uses state oil money to finance a militia group that steals
more
oil, which in turn funnels him a share of the profits. That also assures him of a standing gang of enforcers available to rig the next election—”
“Behold,” Vorster announced to Pierce, gesturing toward the windshield. “Beautiful Waro Harbor.”
The city, Pierce saw, was built on islands connected by a network of bridges, one of which was choking the traffic ahead. As they reached the bridge, Vorster scanned the pedestrians on both sides, alert for danger. Pierce focused on the water. In the foreground was a floating slum, thousands of wooden houses perched on stilts above their own bobbing refuse, their rusted tin roofs wreathed in the haze of cooking fires. A few fishermen in canoes skimmed the surface of the water, as sludgy as an oil slick. The walls of the public housing on the adjacent island had turned a leprous gray-black. In the sooty air, the high-rises beyond looked like a mirage.
“Eighteen million people,” Vorster remarked. “The world’s largest slum. Those of us who love Africa find this a sorry sight.”
Rubin’s gaunt face, as he stared out the window, took on a melancholy cast. “So let us return to FREE. It has a fascination unique among the militias, and it’s essential to understanding the forces that bear on Okari’s fate.
“To FREE, as much as to Karama, Bobby Okari is the enemy. FREE has cynically embraced his stated goals: resource control, redistribution of oil revenues, and rebuilding the delta. But if nonviolence succeeds, FREE’s whole rationale for ‘armed resistance’—that is, kidnapping and bunkering—evanesces.”
“In other words,” Pierce said, “FREE could have killed those oil workers and hung the murders around Bobby’s neck.”
“Or paid someone to do it. But here’s another thing about FREE: no one knows for sure who runs it, or what their motives are.”
“The other gangs are merely killers,” Vorster put in. “But FREE has a highly sophisticated command structure, and their military operations are so effective that Dave and I are convinced their leaders were trained abroad—my own guess being the Middle East. They’re also way better armed than their rivals
or
the army—including grenade and rocket launchers—which means they’re connected with the most serious arms dealers on the planet.”
“Politically, FREE is as shapeless as an amoeba,” Rubin explained. “Their field commander is a Luandian who calls himself General Freedom. But their head is a man known only as Jomo.” Rubin smiled wryly. “The fascinating thing about
him
is that no one knows if he exists. Jomo communicates with the world only through a series of highly articulate e-mails. No one outside FREE claims to have met him, and the man who reports to him, General Freedom, claims he’s sworn to secrecy.
“Theories abound. Some believe Jomo doesn’t exist; others, that he’s General Freedom. Still others argue that he’s a South African arms dealer, a Luandian general, an American financier, or even someone close to Karama himself.” Rubin’s look of amusement faded. “Whoever’s calling the shots, FREE’s attempting to absorb or destroy the other militias. If it succeeds, whoever controls FREE will control a multibillion-dollar business—oil theft.”
The convoy reached the end of the bridge, still weaving through dense traffic. Above its sirens, Pierce heard horns blasting, drivers shouting, radios blaring. Vendors dodged cars, hawking T-shirts or candy or magazines. A boy of ten or eleven with a hideously burned arm waved a basket at Pierce’s window, begging for money. Ignoring him, Rubin continued: “It doesn’t end with stealing oil. Luandia is a transit hub for drug smuggling, illegal arms trading, and money laundering—all interrelated with oil theft, all generating payoffs for people in government. FREE’s tentacles now reach into every one of them.”
Pierce absorbed this. “Only as long as the delta remains unstable,” he ventured. “FREE still depends on oil theft, right?”
“FREE,” Vorster responded, “depends on PGL. The trick is to steal
enough but not too much. That way PGL remains in business, Karama stays in power, and America gets the lion’s share of Luandian oil.”
Pierce considered that. “To help Bobby Okari, I need to put pressure on PGL. A huge missing piece is how deeply PGL was involved in the destruction of Goro.”
Rubin glanced at Vorster, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “We have no idea,” Vorster said. “PGL’s security guy in the delta, Roos Van Daan, is a blight on my fellow Afrikaners—a racist for hire who’s been on the worst side of some of the dirtiest wars in Africa. But it’s hard to say what Van Daan knew or did, or how clearly anyone at PGL anticipated Okimbo’s methods. In an environment like the delta, PGL doesn’t call the shots, and things have a way of spinning out of control.”
The convoy entered a street flooded with a sewage overflow. Traffic slowed to a halt. “We should catch some dinner,” Rubin told Pierce, “sit out this mess. After that you’ve got some attractive entertainment options.”