The Geneva Decision (20 page)

Pia scowled. “I know Alphonse, you don’t. He’s clean.”

To her surprise, Tania laughed. “Well, since you’re going to hook up with him in Vienna you can pump him for information. Get it? Pump him—”

“Yeah. Ha ha ha.”

The Anglican girls scored and the crowd jumped to their feet, shouting and singing and dancing.

Tania jumped up and joined the celebration. Pia stared straight ahead. The game continued but she watched without seeing the action. Her mind was consumed with thoughts of Alphonse. When they broke at halftime, the score was one-all.

A woman walked along the sidelines, looking over the crowd.

“Pia Sabel, you come to Cameroon and you don’t look me up?” the young woman called with a smile in her voice. “Come out and play!”

It took Pia a minute to recognize Adisa Ngandy, midfielder for Cameroon’s national team and Canon Sportif in Douala. People on the hill turned to look at Pia.

Pia waved at her then turned to Tania. She said, “Watch that passageway, Tania. This is when they’ll have to move in close if they’re coming tonight.”

She wove her way down to join Adisa on the field. A cheer went up from the crowd when they hugged.

Adisa said, “They want us to play with them for the first ten minutes.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t be fair—”

“I went to Yaoundé Catholic.”

“And I went to St. Muriel’s Episcopal in DC,” Pia said. “You’re on.”

An Anglican player loaned Pia her cleats and shin guards.

The ref blew the whistle and Catholic kicked off. Their first play, a diagonal pass to the outside, was followed by a quick back-pass to Adisa. Pia darted to defend against her rival, who sent the ball to the outside. Adisa blew past Pia’s right, running onto a give-and-go from the outside mid. Pia wheeled around and gained on Adisa but not in time to stop a perfect pass to the top of the eighteen-yard box. The Anglican defense, surprised by the distance and accuracy, was caught too far forward. They ran between the ball and the net but they were out of position, in defensive disarray. Catholic’s speedy forward drove into the penalty area, crossed to an attacking mid, and scored.

Pia’s forwards kicked off and back- passed to their defensive mid. Adisa followed the ball like a racehorse. Her aggressive speed scared the intended kicker, who ran for the sidelines and lost the ball out of bounds.

Pia called, “Can you win it back?”

Her teammate nodded, stepped back from the sidelines, watched the thrower’s eyes, and ran into the ball’s path. With an extraordinary leap, she intercepted, headed the ball to her midfielder, and called for the back pass. On her second try she didn’t let Adisa’s charge scare her—she struck the ball hard and sent it to Pia.

Pia chested it toward the sideline as three defenders ran to hold her. One approached on the sideline, one covered the goal, the third moved in to stop the pass. A perfect defense. Pia tossed the ball from left foot to right foot and faced her tallest defender. She pointed to her head and the six-yard box. Her defender, after a second of shock, took off running while Pia drew Catholic’s defenders into a tighter circle. When they were aligned in a perfect triangle, she began her run to the goal. Three players converged. Three feet connected at the same time. One foot pushed through. Pounding her way out, Pia popped the ball in the air and smacked it hard with her head, sending it fifteen yards.

Her defender was in position in front of the last defender and the keeper, unguarded, on the six-yard line. She leapt into the air, turned her head toward Pia, and snapped it back to the goal as she connected with the ball and drove it into the lower corner, near post. Goal!

When Catholic kicked off, a charged-up Anglican stole the ball and headed up field for a breakaway. Pia ran the sideline, then darted for center field. Her move froze three defenders and allowed the Anglican girl an angled run to the left. Pia checked the right defense to find open space.

Instead, she saw two dark silhouettes standing in the passageway. The boys. Pia froze. Adisa stole her pass and ran up field. Tania had to have seen them. Pia decided to trust her agent. Her competitive nature kicked in—she sprinted after Adisa and stole the ball back. Flying toward the corner, she sent a cross that her forward tapped in. Goal!

Pia slowed, allowing Adisa the chance for an equalizer goal. Neither of them wanted to tip the balance for their teams. They played on until the pre-arranged time limit, then Pia and Adisa hugged and walked off the field together to cheers from the crowd, the score tied at three.

Pia found Tania on the hillside chatting with a tall man, a fresh beer in her hand. The warnings echoed in her head, ‘short attention span’ and ‘a screw loose’. She approached the pair, stopping a yard away.

Pia said, “Did you catch them?”

Tania’s smile waned. “Catch who?”

Chapter 29

27-May, 3AM

“P
ia! Pia! Are you OK?” Tania shook her.

Pia looked around. An unfamiliar room, a sleepy looking Tania bent over her. A faint gray light leaked in the window. A cross on the wall. The convent.

“Yeah, I’m OK. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Damn, girl, you woke the dead. Screaming about getting that sonofabitch and I’ll kill you. Talk about dropping f-bombs. You sure you’re OK?”

Pia smacked her dry lips and looked around the room. She said, “Yeah, I just … I have these dreams.”

“Nightmares about your parents’ murders?”

Pia snapped a look up at her. “You know about that?”

“Everybody knows about that. There’s a paragraph in the employee manual that says we’re not supposed to talk about it. Oh.”

“Holy shit.” Pia shook her head. “Employee manual? So everyone in the company knows?”

“Just the section for those on guard duty at your estate. I tried out for it once. But. Um. Anyway, I asked the Major about it in a roundabout way and she didn’t know anything.”

“Maybe she paid attention to the part about discretion. So, what’s it say?”

“Your parents were murdered when you were four. Alan Sabel was the first on the scene and adopted you the next day. Then someone tried to kill you when you were ten. So he started the Security division to keep you out of danger. So, is that it? You dream about the murders?”

“That would be too cliché. My mother yells at me about working harder, doing more. Just now, she was screaming at me for letting Ezra die.”

Tania dropped on her bed. “Whoa. That would suck big time. My mom can get a little wacko but she’d never haunt me. I hope.”

“Don’t worry about it. I confused the best psychologists until I gave up on them.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Tania shook her head. “Wasn’t your fault. You know that right? I mean, Ezra had his own reasons for going out there.”

Pia asked, “Hey, those boys still across the street?”

“Yeah. I still say we should take them down and—”

“No.” The next step required something outside Tania’s core strengths. “Go back to sleep.”

Tania lay back, pulled a sheet up, closed her eyes, and commenced snoring.

Pia pulled on running shorts and shoes, strapped on her waist pack and gun, slipped out the door, and down the hall. She passed the napping church guard in the convent’s lobby, went through the cathedral, made her way to a side door, and crept outside.

Thick clouds that smelled of rain obscured the moon and stars. The lone streetlight on the block hung on the cathedral’s far corner, giving her plenty of shadows. Clinging to the darkness, she leaned out—just far enough to see two pairs of shoes in a dark doorway a hundred yards up the street.

Turning in the opposite direction, Pia made her way to the far end of the lane, crossed over a block, and worked her way back toward the boys, approaching from behind.

She studied them. Backlit by the cathedral’s light, she could see they were nervous. They squirmed and paced and talked and took an occasional peek at the convent’s front door. Either they were waiting for someone or building up the courage to do something dangerous.

She slipped closer, her back to the wall, moving sideways one foot at a time. With each step she felt for loose stones or objects with her toe. Once within range, she took aim and thought through how the Major might handle the situation.

One of them lit a cigarette, which made her want to dart him right then. His inhale turned the burning end white before settling back to red. He sucked it in, then blew out a small cloud. His friend coughed and pushed him away. The smoker walked down the block, around the corner and out of sight. She considered her options. The safest was to dart him and be done.

But that wouldn’t answer any questions.

The lone boy waiting in the doorway turned, putting his back to her. She took three quick steps and pressed the gun to his neck.

“Shh…”

The boy trembled. A feeling she understood all too well. She made him turn to the door, put his hands high up, and spread his feet. She patted him down, found a phone and a small revolver she slipped in her waist pack.

“Second time I nailed you,” she whispered. “You get in trouble the first time?”

He nodded.

“Then I’ll let you walk away if you answer two questions, What were you supposed to do here tonight? And who sent you?”

He didn’t speak.

“Option one, your boss finds you asleep on the job with your phone missing,” she said. “Option two, you report in and say I was surrounded by people the whole time, then you go home. Which one do you want? If you don’t start talking in three seconds, I’m going to dart you and offer the deal to your buddy. First question, who sent you? Three… Two…”

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

“Last chance. Who pays you?” She pressed her gun harder into his skin.

“Monique Tsogo.”

Pia sucked in a quick breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds. She said, “What were you supposed to do with this gun?”

“Kill you.”

Pia pulled her trigger. The boy fell to the ground.

“Changed my mind about the dart,” she whispered.

She heard the second boy heading back around the corner at a trot. She backed into the doorway, waited until she sensed him close enough, then spun around the wall and into his path. She fired. He fell.

After taking his cell phone and gun she formed a rough plan in her head. Risky, but she had the advantage of the early hour. She’d wandered many cities around the world at this time of night and knew how empty they were. Security patrols were at their lowest ebb. People were at their weakest. Her plan might work.

After injecting the antidote, she propped the boys up in a doorway and called a cab. The tired, grumpy cabbie declined the midnight drive to Douala until she offered a large bonus. His enthusiasm skyrocketed when she produced three crisp hundred euro notes. As they drove, she looked through the text messages on the captured cellphones. Nothing useful.

Half an hour into her trip, her phone rang. Dad.

“You know, one day you’re going to wake me up,” she said.

“I just read Jonelle’s report. You led a successful mission, you saved those women, you—”

“Dad … Ezra died.”

“And he wouldn’t have been the only one if it weren’t for your leadership. You’ve done it, Pia. You proved you can face down killers and win. From here on, let the professionals handle it. I want you packed up and home as soon—”

“No.”

“Pia, we all know what you’re really trying to prove. If you’d just been a little older, maybe six or seven, you’d have stopped those bastards before—”

“Do you have the information on international banking I asked for?”

“Everyone I spoke to agreed it had to be a high-ranking insider laundering the pirate money,” he said. “Either the bank president or the director general, nothing less.”

She said, “But those officers are dead.”

“Maybe another bank is involved, or someone gained access. Hacking into a bank is nearly impossible but not completely. The fact that it went on for a year has all my banking friends saying it was Marot or Wölfli or both.”

“Suicide pact? I don’t see that. Maybe they wanted out? Or maybe they cheated the pirates?”

“Jonelle will figure it out. She’s been figuring things out for twenty years. Just get on the jet and come home.”

Pia paused for a moment. “Why are you so fixated on me coming home? What are you afraid of, Dad?”

He sighed.

“Are you afraid I’ll learn something from field work?”

Chapter 30

Douala, Cameroon

27-May, 4AM

P
ia stood at the end of a block and looked at the walls around Monique Tsogo’s home. It was nestled in a tidy neighborhood of Douala’s upper middle class and stood out as the finest on the street. The cabbie slumped down to nap while he waited. Pia gathered a few things including a rubber floor mat and approached the house on tiptoe.

She threw the mat over the broken glass embedded on top of the security wall and scaled it. In the middle of a small estate spread out on an acre of land was a two-story house, small by American standards but huge for Cameroon. She crept around it in a wide circle. The thick grass in the front yard smelled freshly mowed. A groomed garden of peonies and King Proteas took up much of the backyard. A footpath down the middle led from the back door to a bench surrounded by more flowers. A light shone through drawn curtains in one downstairs room. Everything else was dark.

A path of white gravel led from the street gate to the front door. A swinging bench hung on the front porch. She looked in the windows to get a feel for the layout. Kitchen, dining, family room, and the lit room downstairs, presumably bedrooms upstairs. Pia tried the back door and found it locked. The door’s window, however, slid up easily. She reached in, unlocked the door, and opened it with a delicate pull.

She took one of the confiscated phones, placed it on the bench among the flowers, turned the speaker on high, hit redial, then snuck back into the darkened kitchen through the back door. She flattened herself against the interior wall and waited for the phones to connect.

“Allo?” Monique’s voice echoed from both inside and outside the house. Monique walked down the hallway, repeating
Allo?