The Informationist: A Thriller (16 page)

She broke water under the prow of the boat, only her face breaching the surface. She held her body protectively beneath its bulk as it rocked
with the motion of the water, drank in the air one greedy gulp after another, then filled her lungs and sank. Under the boat she wrapped the gag around the wound in her arm and tied it as tightly as she could in an attempt to ward off the call to the deep-sea predators. She surfaced again, took another breath, and dove, this time putting as much distance as she could between herself and the boat.

The men paced about the sides, searching for movement on the water. They drew the light around the gunwales, firing shots occasionally. Their voices were angry, accusatory, and Munroe knew they could never report the incident. She was, as far as they were concerned, very dead.

She turned onto her back, gazed at the stars, righted herself, and pushed east.

The surface currents were fast-flowing, and it was nearly two hours before she felt the smooth-rough edges of worn lava rock beneath her feet, another ten minutes to stumble over the jet-black, odd-size boulders that made up the stretch of coast. Away from the waterline, she dropped to her knees and then collapsed, chest heaving, taking in air, arms and legs limp as rubber. In the far-off distance, barely more than a pinhead of light in the blackness, a boat buoyed on the water. Munroe dragged herself to where the boulders touched the jungle, a niche of shelter from both the air and the sea. There would be no hiding from the rain that would soon arrive, but that didn’t matter.

Alone in the blackness, with the ocean to the front and the jungle at her back, she heard the sound of her own laughter splitting the silence.

It was the west side of the island. No matter where she had washed up, the road could not be more than a mile or two inland, but a mile or two of raw jungle. Without a path it would mean breaking a trail barefoot. Better to wait until dawn.

She felt for her belt. It was still there, tucked safely under her pants. It increased the options somewhat; the credit cards were worthless, but there were fifty thousand CFA and two hundred water-soaked euros to barter with.

She dozed occasionally and was glad for the first rays of sun that crept between the mountains, providing enough light for her to begin moving about. Finding potable water before the heat intensified was imperative in order to avoid dehydration. She had drunk during the
night when the rain had filled the porous holes in the rocks, but that water was gone now. Not far away, the shadows of tall, lean palms jutted out over the water. Under the fronds they were thick with coconuts. She flexed her wounded arm, and ribbons of heat traced up and down it.

The bullet was lodged in muscle, and the arm was weak. The thirty-foot climb was possible, but not worth the risk.

She followed the coastline south until the boulders gave way to gritty sand, and there she found groups of coconut palms with recently fallen fruit at their base. She chose a green one with tinges of brown on the ends and, using rocks to cut through the fibrous husk, reached the seed and cracked it carefully to preserve the liquid. She drank and proceeded to the others until her thirst had been quenched, then filled herself on the rubbery meat of the young nuts.

She continued along the coastline, frequently scanning the water’s horizon for boats. The soles of her feet blistered and bled from the sharp edges of the rock. When the heat of the sun became too strong, she sought shelter in the shade and slept until the late afternoon brought relief and she could set out again.

Another mile south and a faint trail led away from the coast into the green. She followed it, and after nearly a mile the undergrowth changed from thick jungle foliage to short, squat trees in uneven rows fighting for light between the giants, their stubby trunks spotted by fat pods ripe with bitter cocoa seeds. The footpath ended at a solid line of tarmac.

It was the Luba road, a two-lane highway that originated in Malabo and ran three-quarters of the island along the coast until it stopped at the second-largest city on the island—the city of its namesake—a deep-water port with a population of three thousand. It was the only road that ran along the west coast, and myriad small interior villages were joined to it by their own narrow dirt paths.

Across the road a swath of land had been cleared, and raw cement blocks stacked on top of each other formed a half-constructed home with iron-red rebar reaching to the open sky and thick carpets of green mildew creeping up from the base of it. Other than the sounds of birds and the buzzing of insects, the stretch was completely silent. Cars would pass along eventually, perhaps even as many as three or four an hour. All that was necessary was to sit and wait.

Munroe pulled the CFA from her belt and shoved it in her pocket—she might need it to pay for space in a share taxi if nothing better materialized. She sat against the trunk of a large tree, far enough away from the road to remain hidden, close enough to spot approaching vehicles. In the shade of the foliage, the air was wet with a mud-scented humidity and the soil rich and spongy and teeming with life.

There was perhaps another two hours before dusk, when the armed soldiers who set up checkpoints every few miles along the road would be out in force, drunk and trigger-happy, and only the bravest or the craziest of drivers would attempt to travel along it. Until then the range of vehicles passing would be anything from small share taxis with their springs busted from the weight they bore to the overworked trucks of the European construction crews on never-ending development projects. With any luck one of the trademark shiny air-conditioned Land Cruisers of the oil-company executives would pass. It was the safest bet when it came to getting around: blend in with their crowd to become instantly invisible.

In the silence, Munroe plowed a stick through the dirt, etching the ground absentmindedly while working through the options and the previous day’s events. As in a football coach’s game plan, circles and lines appeared in no apparent order—rapid strokes, jagged lines—and like the circles slashed into the ground, her thoughts ran around pell-mell but always returned to their place of origin: Emily Burbank.

One second. Six inches. The mental tape replayed itself, an endless recording: the gun moving up through the dark toward her face and then the plunge backward into the water. One second before the bullet. She gritted her teeth and drove the stick faster, harder. Dumped in the ocean because she hadn’t taken the hint to leave the country. Emily Burbank.

Until last night the assignment had been business. Now it was personal: Someone had ordered her dead and had nearly succeeded in putting a bullet in her brain. Another circle, another strand of thought. If she followed the interdicted trail to Emily Burbank, the answers would come hunting, seeking her out. And when the answers presented themselves, she would take retribution, even if it turned out to be against the president of the goddamned country.

Bradford. Where the hell was he? Why wasn’t he in the boat? He’d
been with her the entire time they’d been in the city. He was booked to fly to the mainland just as she was. Had he already been tossed overboard?

She rubbed her hands over her eyes and pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose. What a fucking liability he’d become. Instead of one missing person, the job now included two.

No.

Bradford was capable of taking care of himself. If they’d been hauled off in the boat together, there was nothing that could be done about it, and if he hadn’t been—she stabbed the stick into the ground and it snapped in two—he sure as hell had better be looking for her right now.

She picked up another stick and dug it through the soil, gouging one rut after another. Emily Burbank. Mongomo.

Malabo was the only city on the island where reliable and not-so-reliable transport across the water could be had. Malabo: an enticing prison, the city so easily locked down, the airport, the port, the hotels, banks, and city exits carefully watched. There were the oil companies and their compounds—to get onto one of those meant a chance, however slight, of being airlifted off the island to Cameroon. Too many ifs, so much dependent on bureaucracy and the decisions of others. No. Not the oil companies. Not Malabo.

If the mainland was unreachable through the capital, then perhaps through Luba.

Time. Information. She rested her head back against the trunk of the tree. A conversation with someone who better understood the local political climate was now a necessity—and access to money, supplies, and modern communications equipment. Above loomed the green of the jungle, and there was only stillness.

Munroe examined the wounds on her feet. The skin was stripped away from portions of her heels, and dime-size blisters had formed and burst under the balls of her toes. Another couple of weeks and she’d have several millimeters’ worth of nature’s shoe leather to pad around on, but until then walking was going to be rough. She needed shoes, and they could be found a dozen or so miles to the north. The temptation was certainly there, but returning to Malabo was out of the question. Not for shoes, not for Bradford.

She sat and waited, and over time bright red spots formed on her uncovered neck, forearms, and feet, the telltale signs that near-microscopic insects were feasting on her blood. In the bush one could only sweat and itch and wait, and the numbing quiet of the emptiness explained why doing nothing was such a favorite pastime of the locals.

She would have checked her watch if she’d still had one.

The rumble of a large vehicle carried through the silence. Munroe crawled closer to the edge of the road and, seeing the flat nose and wide body of a construction truck approaching, stood and walked several feet onto the tarmac. The vehicle had green license plates, a variation reserved for companies with special status, and in the cab were the shadows of two.

The truck slowed and then stopped, sending a cloud of dust rolling behind it. The passenger window rolled down.

“Hello there!” Munroe called out. “Are you headed to Luba?”

The door on the passenger side opened, and a man stepped down. He wore faded jeans and a worn T-shirt, and his face and forearms were tanned to the point of being nearly brown. His work boots were dusty and spotted with cement, and Munroe couldn’t help but wish they were on her feet.

“We go Luba,” he replied, the words broken and thickly accented. He gestured with his head. “You come?”

Italians.

Munroe nodded and climbed up to the air-conditioned space between them, the blast of cold a welcome relief against her sun-dried skin.

The driver stared at her feet, her disheveled clothes, and the spots on her arms. “What happen to you?”

The vehicle lurched forward in a cloud of cement dust. The passenger handed her a liter bottle of water.

“Mi sono perso,”
she replied, and drank without stopping until the bottle was empty. “Separated from my friends and very, very lost.”

With the first words in their language, the gravity of her situation was apparently quickly forgotten. Both men broke into wide smiles.
“Ma tu parli Italiano?”

She smiled back. “I speak some, enough to get by.” There was something deeply affecting about language. If expected, it meant nothing. But
if it came by surprise as a gesture of friendship, it was an instant opening, a form of flattery guaranteed to attain the objective for its master, and Munroe used it accordingly.

The driver was Luca, a fifty-two-year-old native of Bari who had been a construction foreman in Equatorial Guinea on and off for nearly eight years. Salvatore sat in the passenger seat, younger, but not by much.

He searched behind the seat and brought out a first-aid kit. Between bumps and jolts along the road, Munroe patched up her feet, and when the men asked about the stained cloth tied around her arm, she shrugged. “A scratch,” she said, and changed the conversation through questions of her own. They entertained her with stories of life in Equatorial Guinea and about their families back home, whom they saw only a few months out of the year.

The pay they earned for working on the island more than made up for the difficult conditions, and the malaria didn’t bother them as much as the tumbu flies whose larvae bored under the skin and used the host to feed and incubate.

They approached a bend in the road. Luca slowed the truck and turned to Munroe. “Do you have papers?”

Two passports and one of the residency cards. But she wouldn’t risk losing the passports, and under the circumstances a residency card could prove problematic. “I had nothing on me when I was separated from my friends,” she said.

Luca brought the vehicle to a stop on a narrow dirt shoulder that encroached into the wall of green. He rubbed his forehead and then motioned with his hand down the road. “We are coming to a checkpoint. They will want to see your papers. They won’t let you through without them.”

Munroe calculated the options, read them in Luca’s face, and, as if rehearsing lines for a well-scripted plot, said, “If the papers are a problem, I’ll find a way to continue on by foot.” She paused and then attempted to stand and move past Salvatore in the passenger seat. “I don’t want to cause problems for you. Thank you for your help and for the wonderful conversation.”

Luca held out his hand and stopped her. She knew he would. “It’s
not safe for you on foot.” He tugged on his grubby cap and lifted it, scratching his head. “We have beer with us to offer—they won’t look in the back.”

He replaced the cap, climbed out of the cab, and motioned for her to follow. The rear portion of the truck was open and carried equipment and supplies. “Stay under the tarp until we come to get you,” he said. “There is another checkpoint beyond this one before reaching Luba, possibly two—you never know.” He made sure she was secure, and from under the tarp Munroe heard the door slam and felt the engine rumble to life.

Once past the checkpoint, she shifted so that she could see out from beneath the ceiling of blue plastic and breathe the fresh air.

T
HE TRUCK SHUDDERED
to a stop on one of Luba’s few paved roads. Puzzled, Munroe retreated farther under the tarp. Luca and Salvatore spoke rapidly in a muted conversation that she strained to overhear but could not make out. After several minutes the cab door slammed, and for the third time the vehicle lurched forward.