The Informationist: A Thriller (17 page)

When the truck fell silent for the last time, it was in a barren compound outside the city. Neither Luca nor Salvatore came as they had promised, and after waiting what felt to be a half hour or more, Munroe worked through alternative scenarios. She would sleep now while she could and slip away when the deep of night settled.

It was footsteps that woke her. She reached for her knives and only after her hands came up empty did she remember where she was; it was an instinctive reflex she had not made in nearly seven years. She flipped to her stomach and prepared to move. The footsteps came closer, and Salvatore called out softly.

Munroe answered in a whisper and then slipped out from the tarp. She sat on the edge of the truck bed, feet dangling over the side, and Salvatore climbed up next to her. He had been delayed, he said, because there was military around town demanding to see papers. Since she was without hers, they thought it best to wait before coming. Salvatore handed her a pair of shoes and then some socks. “I don’t know if these will fit,” he said. “But you can’t go walking around with your feet like
that.” The shoes explained the stop in town. They were canvas stitched directly to flat rubber soles, imported from Nigeria or Cameroon, and they were at that moment the most beautiful pair she had ever seen.

Munroe placed them on her feet. They were a little loose but would work. She handed him a five-thousand-CFA note. He smiled and refused it. “The hostels in town are full,” he said. “They are always full. If you can’t find your friends tonight, you can stay here on the truck. But the workers will start unloading early in the morning.”

She pointed to the shoes. “Are you sure I can’t pay for these—or for the ride?”

“No, no,” he said. “You’re not the first traveler to find yourself in a difficult position in this lunatic country. We help when we can.”

Munroe waited until Salvatore was out of sight and then slid off the flatbed and slunk into the shadows. She kept off the streets and wound in the direction of the shoreline.

The pervasive smell of wood smoke and fish gnawed at her until she gave it notice, and once aware of it she worked her way back toward the source. It came from a clearing south of the town where small homes had been constructed out of homemade cinder blocks and topped with corrugated metal. Women tended a cooking fire outside the back of the largest structure. Around them men and children sat on upturned crates and straight-backed wooden chairs, talking, eating, and laughing. Ducks waddled and roosted nearby, and chickens scratched near the fire, picking up small morsels that had been dropped. A kerosene lantern hung from a tree not far from the group and another from the door of one of the structures. Other than the fire, the lamps provided the only source of light.

Bubi was the language spoken by those native to the island, a soft singsong of words strung together in a manner distinctly different from the harsher Fang that dominated the mainland and the capital. Munroe had heard it spoken occasionally, but not often enough to converse, and so she opted for Spanish to call out an evening greeting.

The adults responded with smiles and conversation, the children with bashful stares. She played the part of the quintessential traveler, and they answered her questions, chatting about the city and describing the best places for swimming. They invited her to eat, and she offered a
few thousand CFA, which they refused and she insisted upon their taking by placing the money in the palm of one of the young children. In addition to the fish, there were plantains cut into strips and deep-fried in palm oil, plus forest snails in an oily tomato paste.

She made small talk with the young men and asked about boats capable of handling a trip to the mainland. They shook their heads and then discussed the question among themselves in their own tongue while she listened intently. Such boats were in Luba occasionally, they said, but not now. They offered to take her to the shore in the morning and introduce her to men who owned boats, and she countered with additional CFA for a spot under one of their roofs. Her bed was the concrete floor with a jacket bundled beneath her head for a pillow. Sleep came easily, everything about the evening having been comfortingly familiar.

The next morning Munroe stood on the shoreline under a half-moon and stars in front of a row of boats resting on the sand, a miniature armada ready for deployment. Their condition was as the young men had described, wooden fishing vessels old with dry rot. The smallest of them were pirogues, some with outboard engines and others without. A few of the boats had sails, and the largest, a wooden boat ten feet long, had a near-new outboard motor. She paced around it and ran her hands along the hull. It had the space to carry enough fuel to travel the distance, but it didn’t have the integrity to make the trip over the open water.

In silence she walked away from the others and stood beyond the edge of the breaking water. She picked up pebbles and threw them out into the waves in rapid succession, attempting to quell a building rage. Trapped on the island, a prisoner, time lost for nothing. It would mean having to risk the return to Malabo after all and, from there, finding a way to the mainland. The airport was out of the question. So was the main port. She stared up at the patterns of light in the black sky and willed a solution into existence.

There was another way. Boniface Akambe had said
he
could be found near Ureca. She’d wanted to see him, yes, but not under these conditions. But then limited options meant working with what was available. She negotiated a ride to the south of the island on a skiff.

She would travel to Ureca. Best known for the sea turtles that
returned to its shore each year to nest, it was an isolated village where conservation groups had made headway against poaching by paying the locals to guard the beaches during nesting season. The village was accessible only by sea or via a thirteen-hour trek through the jungles between the Grand Caldera of Luba and Mount Biao.

Somewhere in that direction she would find Francisco Beyard.

The sun’s first rays had already begun to peek over the mountain by the time the boat’s owner returned from town. He brought with him extra fuel, drinking water, and a piece of cloth that would work as a tarp. Two young boys with him loaded an assortment of supplies that had nothing to do with the trip. They would be bartered and sold in Ureca, providing the entrepreneurial boatman with extra money.

The trip passed in relative silence. They hugged the coastline, following it around the widest part of the island. The occasional small village broke the monotony of green that advanced to the border of unending blue. Under the tarp Munroe dozed fitfully, in turn lulled to sleep by the steady rock of the boat and the cloud-covered sky and awakened by apprehension at meeting Beyard.

Scripts of possible introductions worked through her mind. The promise of money would possibly appeal to him. If not that, then what? Appeal to the memories of a friendship destroyed when she disappeared without so much as a word? If he would not take her off the island, the alternative was a grueling hike back to Luba and a return trip to the capital to face the possibility of a permanent resting place at the infamous Black Beach Prison.

Francisco Beyard was a risk worth taking.

E
VIDENCE THAT THEY
had arrived at Ureca came from signs of humanity along the shore and the landmark rock that jutted upright out of the empty beach twenty feet into the air like an isolated obelisk. The boatman brought the boat as close to the beach as possible, tilted the engine upward, and together he and Munroe—gritting through the pain in her arm—pushed it thirty feet through shallow waves until it rested solidly on dry land. The sand was soft and deep brown, unlike the stretches of porous boulders and black rock that lined the western shore.

Young boys shirtless and shoeless played nearby and ran to greet them as the boat came to rest. The boatman barked orders to them and passed out trinkets. They took up his bundles and led the two of them inland.

The trail to Ureca climbed steadily upward through a quarter mile of lush greenery still wet with recent rain. The village was a tidy collection of houses, neatly demarcated and separated by narrow dirt pathways that had never been used by a motorized vehicle. Unlike the cinder-block houses in the villages to the north, most of the homes in Ureca were wattle and daub, their roofs covered with thick thatchwork.

The boys brought Munroe to the home of the village elder, chattering as they went inside. They soon came scuttling out, followed by an aged woman. She wore a worn T-shirt, and wrapped around her waist was a colorful cloth, a matching band around her hair. Her weathered face was adorned with cutting scars. She greeted Munroe and motioned her inside.

Munroe was offered a seat opposite a man who was certainly much younger than he looked. He sat regally on a wooden chair, his hand atop a polished stick. Munroe was treated graciously, and when she had accepted coffee and they had begun to drink, he asked why she had come and he requested the documents that permitted her to travel to the village.

She handed him her residency card and explained that although she did not have a paper from the Ministry of the Interior, she was part of a diplomatic mission with several requirements, not the least of which was to visit Ureca. Because of its uniqueness, she explained, it was one of the most important villages on the island, and as the village elder he was one of the most important men. He nodded in agreement and asked no more about the papers. As indirectly as possible, she asked questions that would lead her to Beyard’s location.

The elder was thoughtful and slow to speak. He provided information judiciously, and his reticence gave Munroe reassurance that Beyard’s reach had extended into the elder’s pocket.

He was not far away.

Full of dignified humility, she apologized for coming without a gift for such an important representative and explained that part of her responsibility on this mission was to meet with a man who would provide
transport. Because she had traveled in haste, she had come empty-handed, but this man would aid her in bringing back a gift.

The elder was silent for a moment, and Munroe refrained from speaking, knowing that he weighed potential reward against the potential loss of reward should he displease his paymaster. Finally he spoke.

“I cannot say for sure what is or what isn’t,” he said. “My eyes and ears are not as young as they once were. But there are whispers that at Point Delores young men occasionally find work.”

“It is obvious,” she said, “that you are a very wise man and that your people are fortunate to be blessed with a leader such as yourself.” He nodded again, and with his permission she took her leave.

She found the boatman with his wares spread about him, surrounded by the women of the village. Voices were raised and spoke in rapid succession as they bartered. Munroe understood traces of the conversations, words coming to her in flashes of illumination. Another few days and she would be conversing, another week and she’d be fluent.

When the racket settled and the crowd thinned, she called to the boatman. Just one more small trip and his end of the bargain would be complete. Point Delores, she had learned, was a nesting area a few miles farther along the coast.

They beached the boat as they had earlier in the day, and from the sands Munroe searched for signs of humanity. A small pirogue sat above the waterline and, not far from it, a path recognizable only by an occasional footprint and foliage that had been disturbed. She knelt and touched the earth. It was wet, heavy with water. The footprints had been recently formed. The path led inland for less than half a mile and ended at a small clearing that encircled three buildings.

The largest of the buildings was a block house similar in style to those on the north of the island; the others were wattle and daub. On the roof, together with the corrugated metal, were several solar panels, and electrical wires leading from one of the smaller structures intimated at a generator. A screened-in porch fronted the central building, and to the side of the porch two young men sat dozing in the shade.

They did not move when she approached. She knelt beside them and in their own tongue said softly, “Excuse me.”

Her aim had been to avoid startling them, but from the looks of
fright they bore, she had failed miserably. In Spanish she said, “I came to find the Merchant.” And when in their faces she found affirmation of the property’s owner, she added, “Is he at home?”

The shorter of the two shook his head and then said, “He returns in the evening.”

“Good.” She smiled. “I will wait for him inside.”

Munroe paid the boatman the last of her money and instructed him with words to repeat if questioned about her purpose for visiting this part of the island.

In the silence she turned toward the house and opened the screen door. She let herself in through the front door, and the young men watched with obvious indifference. Memories played like time-lapse photography.

Another life.

She entered directly into the living room, an open space that belied the small size of the house. It was sparse and empty, the walls plastered and painted white, the furniture consisting of a rough-hewn sofa and two chairs. The floor was concrete painted over with brown floor paint, and it was all spotlessly clean, somehow suggesting the sterile environment of a well-kept clinic. The shutters were closed and the air hot and stale. She tried the fan. There was no electricity.

From the living room there were doors off a small hallway, and she could see through the open door to the kitchen. She lay down on the sofa, ignoring the temptation to look around. She had invaded his house, but some things were still sacred. In the stillness and quiet, her eyes grew heavy, and she was pulled downward into sleep.

I
N THE FOGGY
distance of consciousness, Munroe heard shouting. Aware that time had passed but not how much, she struggled to wake and pull herself out of the sticky haze of sleep. A web of heat and exhaustion enveloped her and dragged her back down.