His entire body went into overdrive. He’d been tasting success, a taste as fine as any caviar or champagne. Refined and heady. And now he had the taste of ashes in his mouth.
The bitch should have died back in Laka! He’d had no fucking idea she was out there in the compound, none, otherwise he’d have had her shot through the head just like that other bitch, Diur.
He was just too good, that was it. When he’d heard, months later, that Claire Day had been found badly wounded in the embassy compound, he’d contemplated sending one of his men down. Easiest thing in the world to slip into a hospital room dressed in scrubs and inject 20 ccs of air or press the carotid arteries gently enough to stop blood flow without leaving a mark.
Christ, he’d been tempted.
But his man said she was in a coma, and she was half crazy when she came out of it. Couldn’t even walk for fuck’s sake. So he’d weighed the slight risk of sending a man down against the almost zero risk Claire Day represented and had made a strategic decision.
The wrong one.
Fuck!
There was no doubt whatsoever why Claire had flown to Lungi. She was making her way to Laka. He checked his watch. She was there now, had been for almost a day. What was she doing? Who was she seeing? Had she gone to the embassy?
He was tempted to give Mbutu a call and have some of his men take care of this. But Mbutu’s men were not efficient. They were clumsy, their violence a club, not a scalpel. There could be a real stink if a US citizen showed up dead in Makongo, bludgeoned to death by the trademark beating of Mbutu’s goons.
At least she didn’t have the fucking jarhead with her. He’d probably dumped her. Smart man. Claire Day was trouble on a stick, not worth it, no matter how beautiful she was.
The jarhead had fucked her and left her. Good for him.
He sat in his chair, gently swiveling back and forth, thinking it through. Finally he leaned forward to his computer, sent Wizard another two hundred thousand dollars and typed him a message, encrypted it and sent it.
Ck yr account. Ck list of guests Etoile Africaine, hotel in Laka, for name Claire Day.
This required immediate action.
He picked up his phone and punched the button that would connect him with his secretary.
“Sir?”
“Have the Lear brought around. I want to fly to Laka. Now.”
Dr. Aba Gawey née Diur had come out from the bowels of the hospital into the lobby and walked briskly across the great marble expanse to stand in front of her. She crossed her arms, standing erect, torso slightly back.
Her body language couldn’t be clearer. She wasn’t happy to see Claire and couldn’t wait to get rid of her.
And yet Claire eyed her hungrily. She was still the beautiful Aba she remembered and had had so many happy meals with at the Diur household. She and Marie had been invited several times to eat with Aba and her husband. The husband who was now dead.
Claire had liked Aba a lot. She’d loved Marie, but she’d felt Aba was her friend, too.
It was so hard to stand here, wanting to throw her arms around the friend she hadn’t seen in a year, only to have Aba show such steely resistance, almost repugnance.
This was going to be so hard.
“Aba.” Claire sketched a smile and touched Dan’s arm. “This is former Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Weston, the detachment commander at the embassy at the time of the bombing. He’s accompanied me here. It’s really good to see you. You’re looking good.”
It was true, though it was as impossible for Aba as it had been for Marie to look bad. The last year had taken its toll on Aba, though. There were lines bracketing her beautiful mouth and her deep brown eyes, always so expressive, were now so cold and bloodshot.
But she was still as erect as an arrow, still impressive in her hospital whites, still filled with the light of intelligence.
Aba didn’t follow Claire’s gentle opening. “
Maman
told me you’d be coming.” Her eyes flicked to Dan, standing straight and impassive by Claire’s side. “Together with your friend.”
Claire threaded her arm through Dan’s. He had picked up on Aba’s hostility and was stiff and disapproving. He clearly didn’t like Aba’s attitude to Claire. Surreptitiously, Claire patted his hand.
It’s okay.
It wasn’t, really. This past year had taken so much away from Claire, including, apparently, Aba’s friendship. Tight bands of emotion wrapped around her chest.
“What are you doing here in Laka?” Aba checked her wristwatch, which she wore with the dial on the inside of her wrist. The message was clear.
What are you doing wasting my time?
“Aba—” Claire began, then looked around at the busy lobby. It was also the A & E entrance, and it was filled with men and women patiently waiting to be seen by a doctor.
Everyone was talking at once. A number of men were sitting on the floor playing what looked like a variation on jacks, only with bones. It was more like a village fair than a waiting room. Several babies were wailing and every couple of minutes the loudspeakers came on to make service announcements. The noise level was as loud as a rock concert.
“Can we go somewhere to talk?”
Aba’s beautiful mouth tightened. She was clearly struggling with “no.”
“Please?” Claire asked quietly.
The doctor turned on her heel and Claire followed her, Dan right behind them. Dan was in warrior mode. Unsmiling, grim, alert.
The hospital was a shocker. Claire had, thank God, never had occasion to enter the old Charité hospital but the embassy had called it the Roach Motel—you checked in but you never checked out. It had been a dank, unwelcoming building along the banks of the Makongo River and Claire had often thought, driving by it, that Dante’s warning “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” should have been chiseled on the stone portico.
The old building had been torn down and in its place was this one—light, airy, scrupulously clean, gleaming even.
The staff, doctors and nurses, bustled by just like in any urban hospital, looking busy and competent.
Aba led them down several corridors and finally opened a lacquered white door with a key. Inside was a modern office, neat and tidy. One wall was filled with medical textbooks, another with Aba’s various diplomas and certificates.
And on another wall . . .
Claire walked over, mesmerized. It was a wall of framed photographs, mostly of Aba—in lycée, in medical school, graduating, with a white coat and stethoscope in a small clinic in the jungle, arms over the shoulders of her colleagues.
And then Aba with her parents, with her husband and . . . oh God. Claire’s heart gave a huge thump in her chest. She touched the largest photograph of Marie. It must have been taken several years ago; her hair had been long then. Claire traced the outlines of Marie’s face and it was as if she had somehow sprung back to life and was right here in the room with them.
Marie was smiling in the photograph and that was as it should be because Marie was always smiling. It was her default expression. Sometimes the smile was ironic because she’d been an intelligent woman and there was much in life that didn’t bear thinking of. She’d been so funny, so incredibly cutting and smart in her take on things, at times devastatingly witty. Claire remembered her imitations of Crock-of-Shit and Danielle Crocker that had had her in stitches. And God, when she walked like Bowen, with that stiff, pompous gait of his, Claire had laughed until she was gasping.
Marie. The best friend she’d ever had. Devastatingly funny. Fiercely loyal. Always there.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her,” Claire whispered. “I miss her . . . so . . .
much
.”
A long, slender black hand rested on her shoulder and Claire turned into Aba’s arms, clutching her desperately. They were both crying and that felt so right because Marie not being in the world left this aching black hole that nothing could ever fill.
They cried their loss and their sorrow and their outrage, until no tears were left and Claire’s arms dropped from Aba’s waist.
A strong male fist clutching a bloom of tissues appeared and they both accepted them gratefully.
Claire glanced at Dan, wavering through the prism of her tears as if he were a mirage in a hot desert. For a moment, she’d completely forgotten about him. What did he think of this, two women weeping their hearts out?
But he didn’t look embarrassed or disdainful or exasperated. He simply stood, handing out tissues to the two women, face sober and sad.
He was a soldier. He understood loss.
Something in Aba had broken, certainly her anger at Claire. Before, anger had swirled in the room, so intense Claire thought she could see it. Now there was an ease, an acknowledgment of their shared loss.
“Sit down.” Aba pulled two chairs out in front of her desk and sat behind it in a swivel chair. She looked at them both once they’d been seated. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you.” Claire leaned forward, wanting to dive in right away and talk about Marie’s actions that day. But there had been a tentative peace made with Aba and she didn’t want to break it. So she looked around and sketched a smile. “La Charité has certainly changed in this past year. It seems completely new.”
Something flickered in Aba’s face, gone before Claire could decipher it. “Yes, it is completely new. The old building was razed to the ground a month after the bombing and this new building was erected in record time. We have the New Day Foundation to thank for it. Another hospital is being built two hundred miles upriver where it will provide health care to over a million people who have no health care at all at the moment.”
Claire nodded. “So . . . maybe something good came of that day?”
Again, that look. A flash, then gone. Anger. No, rage.
“Are you writing an article?” Aba asked.
“Good God, no!”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Good question. Claire was finding it a hard one to answer. Maybe it was the crying jag, maybe the long trip was finally catching up with her. All of a sudden she was seized with a deep weariness. The words simply wouldn’t come.
Dan took over, leaning forward a little, looking Aba straight in the eye. “Claire doesn’t remember anything about that day. She suffers from amnesia, which is not surprising given the level of damage she sustained. But I was there and I remember. The two of us were the only ones in the embassy on the twenty-fifth. We were in Post One, which is a secure area behind bulletproof glass, while the Red Army flooded the streets.” He held his hand up when Aba opened her mouth. “Now, your mother told us that in her belief, it wasn’t the Red Army at all that invaded Laka. Is that correct, in your opinion?”
Aba nodded. “Absolutely. Marie and I recognized a number of officers of Mbutu’s army, all dressed up in red rags. We didn’t understand what was going on, but one thing was clear. The Red Army wasn’t involved. I’m not saying they aren’t crazy, because they are. But my information from colleagues working in the bush was that they were at least five hundred miles away, intent on controlling the diamond mines in the hinterland, and certainly weren’t planning on taking over the central government. They simply didn’t have the strength.”
“And why do you think Mbutu’s men pretended to be members of the Red Army?”
Aba gave a cynical smile. “I went to a Catholic school, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“Dan will do, doctor.”
“Dan.” She bowed her head, eyes never leaving his. “Well, Dan, in this Catholic school we were taught Latin and Roman history. The Latins had a saying when something unusual happened and no one could figure out why.
Cui bono?
Who gains? Who benefits? And, well, who gained in the end from the bombing?”
“Mbutu,” Dan answered. “Mbutu gained. The US poured money into Makongo, buckets of it. The Red Army was destroyed. The central government became the new flavor of the month.” He waved his hand around the new hospital room. “New hospitals, new schools.”
There it was again. That cloud crossing Aba’s face.
“Aba,” Claire said, reaching across the desk to hold her hand. “What did Marie tell you? Why did she go back to the embassy for me?”
Aba looked away, but her hand tightened on Claire’s. “She’d understood, too, that it wasn’t the Red Army. And she’d seen something. Someone. Someone she didn’t trust. It wasn’t clear to me why she felt it was important but for her you were in terrible danger. She went back for you.” Aba swiveled her head back to Claire. “She loved you,” Aba said simply. “She went back to save you. And she lost her own life.”
“Oh, God.” Tears swam in Claire’s eyes. Her heart was simply breaking. “
Why?
Who did she see?”
Aba shrugged and pulled her hand from Claire’s. She stood, the interview at an end. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
A bolt of electricity ran through Claire. Marie had given her life to make sure Claire lived. And now she had a duty to find out why.
“There’s something wrong, isn’t there? Here. At the hospital.”
Aba’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Here? This hospital? So shiny and new? What could be wrong?”
Claire looked at her steadily. “And yet there is.”
Aba was still for a long time, then nodded jerkily. Her voice was bitter. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Okay. Let me show you something.” She sat back down, reached in a drawer under her desk and brought out two packages. She threw them on the desk.
Claire picked them up and examined them carefully. Inside each package were two blisters with ten capsules each. Twenty capsules. The two packages were identical. Medicine by a famous international pharmaceutical company, but she had no idea what kind of medicine.
“Do you know what that is?” Aba asked.
Claire shook her head.
Aba picked up one. “This is a latest generation antiretroviral drug, to combat AIDS. The very latest drug, proprietary, not generic, and cutting-edge. The very best modern medicine has to offer. Taken properly, it extends the life span of an AIDS sufferer by at least twenty years. Makongo currently has an AIDS epidemic. One in five adults is infected, one in six children. This is literally a miracle drug, which will keep children alive until we finally find a cure. This kind of medicine doesn’t come cheap. Look at the price on the box.”
Claire turned it around in her hand until she saw the price printed in the back lower left-hand corner. Her eyes widened.
“Indeed,” Aba said dryly. “This costs eight hundred euros a box. That’s about a thousand dollars. And it’s not being doled out sparingly, either. Our pharmacopoeia has plenty and there’s a warehouse full of this drug and other very expensive miracle drugs out at the airport, ready to be airlifted into the hinterland. No expense has been spared.”
She stopped. There was silence in her study, broken only by a distant loudspeaker calling for a doctor to come to the emergency ward.
Aba picked up the other box of medicine between her thumb and forefinger and wagged it. “And this?” She threw it back down on the desk. “This is about a dollar’s worth of paper and talcum powder pressed into capsules and put into blisters.” She laid them side by side on the desktop and looked at Claire and Dan.
“So. Which is which?”
“I can’t tell,” Claire whispered.
“Neither can I,” Aba said. “And I live with that, daily. I’ve had ten boxes of this drug, ten boxes of our most powerful antibiotics and ten doses of chemotherapy secretly tested in a lab in Paris. I paid for it myself. About two-thirds are fakes. And so every time I have a child dying of cancer or a mother dying of AIDS and I administer medicine to them, I’m either saving their lives or condemning them to death, and I don’t know which.” She slapped the desktop with her open hand, her voice suddenly harsh.
“I don’t know which!”