“I believe the world is the sum of who’s in it—that in some way what we do makes other lives better, or worse. So do you; so does Bobby. The two of you are the greatest romantics of all—you risked your own lives for a cause. For one brief moment, it’s my turn. Like you and Bobby, I’ve got no kids to consider if I crash. Except that I’m flying alone.”
Marissa’s gaze deepened. Her lips parted, as though to speak. A moment
passed, and then she squeezed his hand. “You must be tired, Damon. Let me show you where your room is.”
S
HORTLY AFTER DAWN,
Pierce and Bara reached the prison. They waited for an hour. Then Major Bangida appeared, curtly telling Pierce, “The colonel wishes to see you. Alone.”
Like an automaton, Pierce followed him past the gallows to the open door of Okimbo’s office. Catlike in his chair, Okimbo stared at Pierce, the look in his eye glassy and abstracted. On the desk was a half-empty glass of a liquid that looked like whiskey. “Close the door behind you,” he told Bangida.
As the door shut, Pierce saw the truncheon in Okimbo’s lap. “So,” Okimbo said softly, “you come here again, having blackened my name in your country.”
Pierce watched him caress the truncheon with the fingers of one hand. “I’m here to see Okari, not you.”
Okimbo kept stroking the truncheon. “What if I start with your genitals. From that, I can gauge your tolerance of pain.”
Pierce tried to detach himself. The voice issuing from his throat was a fair semblance of his own. “That would anger my government and embarrass Karama. As you say, I’ve made you known far beyond the delta.”
Okimbo’s fingers on the truncheon tightened, as though he were weighing the benefits and risks of sating his desires. Pierce was quite certain that Okimbo imagined killing him, but not before stripping him of humanness. “You wish to visit Okari?” Okimbo said. “Then I wish you to experience his life. Within fifteen minutes you’ll be screaming to get out, with no one but Okari to hear you.”
Pierce filled with apprehension. “Just take me there,” he said. “My friend is waiting.”
Okimbo’s laugh was grating. “This is Luandia. You have no friends.”
He stood, circled his desk, and walked up to Pierce. Pierce could smell his sweat and the liquor on his breath. Then Okimbo strode to the door and beckoned Pierce with a waggle of one finger. “Okari’s lonely. Perhaps, at leisure, you can describe for him your evenings with his wife.”
Deeply unsettled, Pierce followed him up the steps, Okimbo’s broad shoulders brushing the walls. Halfway to Bobby’s cell Okimbo stopped, studying a bloodstain on the stone. When Okimbo looked up at him,
Pierce sensed that the wrong word or gesture would alter the connections in the man’s synapses, sending him to a place where violence was his sole release. Coldly, Okimbo said, “Have Okari tell you of the amusement I arranged for him. However briefly, he enjoyed the company of his people.”
Okimbo led Pierce to Bobby’s cell. There was no light there; Pierce could detect no sign of movement. He was hit by a stench of feces and urine so strong that he stopped abruptly, his throat working as he suppressed the urge to gag. Laughing harshly, Okimbo fished the keys from his pocket. “The law is a hard mistress,” he said. “Serve her well.”
Before Pierce could respond, Okimbo shoved him into the pitch-dark cell. Staggering, he stumbled over a bucket of waste, then braced himself against the wall. Okimbo locked the door. His footsteps echoed off the stone, diminishing until there was only silence. Pierce fought against panic.
A soft voice said, “They took the light away.”
Staring down, Pierce saw the fetal shape of a man sitting in the corner, arms resting on his knees. “That must be you, Damon. Forgive me if I don’t stand.”
In a dispirited way, Bobby sounded as mad as Okimbo. Leaning against the wall, Pierce tried to steel himself against the smell. “What have they done to you?”
“Aside from what you see? No visitors, little food, dark always.” Bobby spoke with precision, as though practicing how to match words with meaning. “They keep me from sleep. Or they chain me in positions so painful I pass out. When I awake, darkness closes around me.”
Pierce crouched in front of him, touching Bobby’s shoulder with his hand. “One night,” Bobby continued in a hollow voice, “they put an Asari man and woman in the nearest cells, and left them alone with soldiers. As they screamed in agony, Okimbo told me what each sound signified—the insertion of a cattle prod in the woman’s vagina; a man with a razor wire tightening around his penis. ‘This,’ Okimbo told me, ‘is your legacy among the Asari.’ Then the screaming stopped.”
Pierce forced himself to believe that he remained a lawyer, free to go. Finding Bobby’s wrists, he gripped them tightly. “Before I left, Gladstone made you an offer. I’ve got way more leverage now that there’s a lawsuit. Let me try to get you out of Luandia—for your sake
and
Marissa’s.”
And mine,
Pierce thought but did not say. Curling forward, Bobby
rested his face on his knees. “If I leave the Asari,” he whispered, “our sacrifice means nothing. Imagine me in London, begging for alms at cocktail parties until no one cares to come. I’d sooner die or go insane.”
A fresh wave of odors made Pierce swallow. Softly, he said, “Maybe you already are. Dying brings you nothing but a martyr’s grave. For the Asari and Marissa, less than that.”
“I’m not insane.” Suddenly Bobby’s head snapped up, and there was a hard edge in his voice. “I can embody courage for my people, or take it from them.”
“You face Karama’s tribunal.
If
you live.”
Bobby drew a breath. “How long until my trial?”
“Thirteen days.”
“Thirteen days. At least there I can speak for the Asari. Surely I can last till then.”
His tone was at once weary and determined. Despite his misgivings, Pierce felt an unfathomable pull that compelled him to respond. “If you do,” he said at last, “I’ll be there.”
Bobby’s torso sagged again. “In Berkeley,” he murmured, “how little I understood you.”
Pierce waited for a moment. “About the trial: there’s something I must tell you.”
“Yes?”
“There are two witnesses against you. They claim to have heard you order those workers lynched.”
“To whom did I give these orders?” Bobby asked with quiet despair.
“We don’t know.” Pierce hesitated. “Do you know who might have said this?”
“Yes.” Bobby raised his face. “Someone who wishes me to die.”
Footsteps echoed on the cobblestones. At once, Pierce felt both fear and hope. Head turning at the sound, Bobby said quickly, “Tell me about Marissa.”
“She’s scared for you. But safe—at least for now.”
“Then she
must
stay strong. Please, do not tell her how you’ve found me.”
Okimbo’s massive frame loomed above them. When Pierce stood to face him, he could smell Okimbo’s whiskey breath between the bars. “Do you wish to go?” Okimbo asked. “Okari doesn’t.”
Relief flooded Pierce’s mind. He touched Bobby’s shoulder. Then
Okimbo opened the door, and Pierce stepped onto the stone path outside the cell. He heard the click of the passkey as Okimbo secured the lock.
Pierce began walking. Behind him, the measured thud of Okimbo’s footsteps echoed as before. Only when they reached the prison’s metal door did Pierce trust himself to speak.
“Feed him,” Pierce said. “Let him sleep. It’ll mean less trouble for you, trust me. He’s not alone anymore.”
Okimbo’s smile was a ghastly stretch of lips. “What trouble? What you just experienced never happened. The lies Okari told you are a symptom of insanity.”
Pierce stared at him. But he could not risk saying more—he had to catch a flight to Waro. Tomorrow, across the table, Michael Gladstone would take an oath to tell the truth.
E
SS THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER
, P
IERCE STUDIED
M
ICHAEL
Gladstone.
In that time, Pierce had barely slept. His first task had been to contact Grayson Caraway, human rights groups, Joshua Kano, and their publicist in Washington, detailing Okimbo’s treatment of Bobby Okari. Then, cloistered with Rachel Rahv and their team at a hotel in Waro, he had reviewed the documents they had culled from PGL, preparing for his cross-examination of Gladstone and, on the following day, Roos Van Daan. Then he had briefly called Marissa, telling her a semblance of the truth that omitted only the worst of Bobby’s ordeal; in the back of his mind, he worried that Okimbo imagined her as his prisoner. The thought shadowed his consciousness: sitting across from Gladstone and his lawyer, Clark Hamilton, Pierce felt as though his last two days did not belong to the same life.
PGL’s headquarters was like a corporate compound transported from America to Waro, gated and walled, with a golf course, gym, meeting center, dining room, and executive housing. The sole difference—elaborate security apparatus and an armed complement of Luandian police—completed its isolation from the city. Across the lacquered conference table, Pierce contemplated Gladstone in his handmade suit and silk tie, the human embodiment of these contradictions—a man of superior intelligence, caught between his American overseers and his appreciation, however reluctant, of PetroGlobal’s entanglement in the tragedy of his native country. Pierce hoped that this complex psychology had left cracks he could exploit.
“As happy as I am to see Mr. Gladstone,” Pierce told Hamilton, “our request was to first depose Trevor Hill, PGL’s principal supervisor in the delta.”
“As we told you previously Hill has business in Saudi Arabia—”
“Which has airplanes,” Pierce cut in. “Hill is closest to the facts on the ground. He supervises Van Daan, and reports to Mr. Gladstone. Questioning Hill is a necessary predicate to deposing the next two witnesses.”
“In due course,” Hamilton said calmly, “we’ll produce him. PGL has turned itself inside out to give you everything. Including its managing director.” He pointed to the telephone. “If you think we’re not cooperating, call Judge Taylor. We can reschedule Mr. Gladstone to follow Trevor Hill.”
Pierce felt certain that there was a tactical reason for Hill’s nonap-pearance. But Hamilton had him trapped in the press of time. “I want Hill within three days,” Pierce said.
“Duly noted,” Hamilton answered with affected boredom.
Pierce sat back, briefly taking in the setting—the court reporter, the witness and his two lawyers, framed by a glass wall through which Pierce could see the high-rises of Waro. Facing Gladstone, he asked, “The Luandian National Petroleum Corporation and PGL are business partners, correct?”
Gladstone nodded. “The government has a sixty percent interest, PGL forty.”
“And those profits emanate almost entirely from the Luandian Delta.”
“That’s also true.”
Sitting next to Hamilton, his associate Camilla Vasquez began scribbling notes. Idly, Pierce wondered how long it would take him to make her change expressions. “With respect to security matters in the delta,” he asked, “who was principally responsible for your liaison with the Luan-dian military?”
For an instant, the question made Gladstone freeze. “Mr. Van Daan.”
“What is his background?”
Gladstone steepled his fingers. “I believe his original career was in the South African military. Later as a hired soldier in various conflicts in West Africa.”
“How did Mr. Van Daan’s particular talents come to your attention?”
Gladstone hesitated. “We had a recommendation from Ugwo Ajukwa, national security adviser to General Karama.”
Surprised, Pierce sifted this answer with what he knew about Ajukwa: that he was well connected in Washington and, according to Rubin, rumored to be involved in illegal bunkering and, perhaps, with FREE. “Did you discuss your concerns about security with Mr. Ajukwa?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That as our business partner, the Luandian government considered it essential that we have a capable and experienced man to interact with the Luandian military. And that, from personal acquaintance, he knew that man to be Roos Van Daan.”
“Did you take that to be a suggestion, a request, or a demand?”
Gladstone smiled faintly. “I considered it a strong suggestion.”
Sitting back in his chair, Pierce stretched, adopting a position of relaxation. “After you hired Mr. Van Daan, did you have another meeting with Mr. Ajukwa regarding PGL’s security?”
“Yes. In London. Perhaps four months ago.”
“Who else was present?”
“General Karama,” he said at length. “Also Colonel Okimbo. From PGL, Hill and Van Daan. And me.”
“Who suggested London, by the way?”
“Karama,” Gladstone answered with palpable irony. “He likes London.”
Hamilton, Pierce saw, watched the witness closely. With an air of mild curiosity, Pierce said, “How did that meeting come about?”
“Our executives had been kidnapped, our pipelines tapped, our facilities vandalized. We also faced an organized campaign in Asariland led by Bobby Okari. Our message was clear: our ability to continue to operate in the Luandian Delta depended on the
government’s
ability to protect our personnel and facilities.”
“Of the problems you faced, Mr. Gladstone, which did you consider the worst?”
“Kidnappings. There had also been a murder at one of our compounds, the daughter of an executive. As far as facilities go, bunkering was a real problem—it affects production, and the ancillary damage to
the environment from leakage was considerable. FREE and the like aren’t big on cleanup.”
Still watching Gladstone, Pierce reached for a document. “On the subject of bunkering, how did Karama and Ajukwa respond?”
“Ajukwa said that bunkering was difficult to control. And that the worst potential problem was the Asari movement.”
Gladstone, Pierce sensed, had not believed this answer. “And Karama?”
“He was vehement about the Asari—that Okari was building a secessionist movement that would finish Luandia as a nation.”
“Did you share that fear?”
“Karama stated the worst case. But did the Asari movement concern us? Yes.”