The Trade (A Hans Larsson Novel Book 2) (25 page)

B
renda
Umchima awoke late in the humble hotel room. She groped under the pillow for
her switchblade, dropped it into her toiletry bag and headed for the shower. If
everything went to plan, the traffickers would be onto her already, although
she didn’t feel in danger at present. Skilled in the art of subterfuge, these
people wouldn’t neutralize a player without first ascertaining their identity
to establish the level of threat that existed.

Umchima posed no danger to the traffickers. She was exactly
the sort of twisted individual they sought to do business with, someone with a
conflict of identity resulting from a lifetime of oppression through being
different, someone feeling bitter, insecure and unworthy. Brenda Umchima had
been victimized all her life for her skin and eye color and mixed parentage, her
Mozambican father branded an outsider in Mali who got lucky by marrying a rich,
white
toubab
wife.

Umchima threw open the louver doors to the balcony and
stepped outside into glorious sunshine. She stretched her arms above her head
and yawned in a show of obliviousness and contentment, yet immediately spotted the
man in a shiny black BMW attempting to park innocuously – though failing
miserably in this impoverished borough – a few yards up the street.

The Malian went back into the room, grinning in
satisfaction. She had her in, and being the manager of a shabby orphanage in
the back end of beyond was about to pay dividends. Purposely leaving the
balcony doors open, she placed the laptop containing information about her role
in the orphanage on the rough wooden table and left the Pensão Lisboa for a
celebratory brunch.

Walking in the direction of the new town, Umchima took out a
compact and dabbed her cheeks with foundation. She hardly ever wore makeup –
with frizzy brown hair bleached into highlights by the African sun, and
stunning blue eyes accentuated by golden skin and natural eyebrows, she
possessed a beauty a lot of women yearn for – but the compact’s mirror allowed
her a snatch view of the BMW’s occupant. It was a bald tough guy with a goatee
beard who looked as though he’d been around the block a few times.

Fifty yards from the hotel, she noticed a white man and woman
sat chatting in a jeep parked on the other side of the road. It had a yellow
Hertz rental logo on the license plate, piquing her interest, since this wasn’t
a tourist area. She made a mental note of the registration number and hailed a
cab, wishing to put time and distance between her and the hotel, for it wasn’t
hard to predict the trafficker’s next move.

“Here,” Umchima told the cabdriver as they pulled onto Praia’s
seafront, having picked the first establishment advertising breakfast.

She ordered a
cachupa
stew of bananas, vegetables,
pork sausage and bacon, and to calm her nerves, a bottle of local beer.

The meal arrived, but with a million thoughts occupying her
mind, Umchima had no appetite. She reflected on her past, the orphanage and the
Trade, running through an escape plan in case things turned sour. She reached
into the pocket of her denim jacket and took out her cell phone but paused, as
if realizing something, then went up to the bar and asked the barman the
whereabouts of the restroom. When the Malian returned, she sat back down and
made a call.

After an hour and two more beers, Umchima stopped pushing
lumps of banana and sausage around the plate and paid the check. At the Pensão
Lisboa, she walked past the sleeping concierge, who remained blissfully unaware
of events going on around him, and went up to her room. Upon opening the door,
she smiled. The laptop was missing from the rough wooden table.

W
hile
Penny typed “Pensão Lisboa, Praia” into the satnav, Hans drove toward the city.
He didn’t hold out much hope that tracking down Brenda Umchima would turn up any
new leads – with respect to the Trade, she was obviously looking for a
connection herself – but with nothing else on his detective itinerary, he
thought he might as well check her out.

The area the satnav directed them to cast further doubt. Any
person staying in a run-down location such as this had to be a chancer
attempting to make a fanciful buck.

“Rua Michelle, next left.” Penny pointed at the satnav
screen, its synthesized voice telling them to turn into the street and that the
destination was on the right.

“Would have been quite the place in its day,” Hans mused,
taking in the rotting palm trees along Rua Michelle’s central reservation,
their drooping fronds blackened by car fumes and volcanic dust.

“Agreed,” said Penny, eyeing the gray, cracked whitewash on
the palms’ once-dazzling trunks and the forlorn state of the colonial
buildings.

“That’s the place there.” Hans pointed out the old hotel,
stopping the jeep fifty yards before it.

“What’s the plan?” Penny pulled down the sun visor.

“I was hoping you had one.” Hans sighed, staring at the
hotel’s entrance, awaiting inspiration.

“Oh honey.” She buried her head in his neck.

Hans looked at the photograph Amado had taken off the orphanage’s
website. “I guess we wait and see if this woman turns up. Perhaps something
will come to me.”

They didn’t have to wait long. Hans tapped Penny on the leg
as he spotted a beautiful bronze-skinned woman with frizzy, sun-bleached brown
hair leave the building. She began walking at a brisk pace in their direction
but on the other side of the street.

“Okay, pretend we’re chatting, but hide your face behind me,”
said Hans, turning his back to the window as the woman passed.

“She’s flagging down a cab.” Penny realized she was
whispering, watching the action out of the corner of her eye.

“Is this one stopping?” Hans asked calmly as a taxi drove
by.

“Yes, she’s getting inside.”

“Then I guess we should follow.”

Hans fired up the engine and made a U-turn through a gap in
the red-and-white-striped curbstones protecting the palm beds. Keeping a discreet
distance, he tailed the cab to the seafront, where its driver stopped at the
first restaurant and let the woman out.

Hans pulled up behind a parked truck a hundred yards away.
He waited until the woman entered the establishment and took a seat at a table
out front and then fetched the sniper spotting scope from the rucksack in the trunk
and ditched the package of crap in the nearest garbage bin.

“Well, she’s not stupid,” Hans remarked as he observed
through the scope. “She’s sitting in a chair facing the sidewalk.”

“Do you think she’s expecting someone?” asked Penny.

“No, she’s keeping an eye on anyone walking past or entering
the place. She’s taken the table nearest the bar so no one can sit behind her.”

“She could be paranoid,” Penny remarked with a giggle.

“You know what they say about paranoia?” said Hans.

“Go on.”

“If you think you’re paranoid, you probably have every
reason to be.”

Hans watched as the woman reached into the pocket of her
denim jacket and took out a cell phone. She paused, as if remembering something,
then went up to the bar, spoke briefly to the barman and disappeared into the
back. When she returned, she sat back down and made a call.

Clever
,
Hans mused, but didn’t say anything.

There was nothing to gain by observing the woman any longer,
and Hans didn’t want to risk her seeing the jeep a second time, so he U-turned
and drove back to the villa, needing peace and quiet and time to think. He also
needed a beer, plus both of them were hungry, having skipped breakfast.

F
or
the umpteenth time in three days, Brenda Umchima walked out onto the balcony to
check the street below.

Bingo!

The BMW had returned, looking completely out of place on the
forlorn boulevard, confirming the thickset bald guy in the driver’s seat was a
trafficker and that Umchima had her in.

She left the hotel and crossed the street. The trafficker
held the door open, and she climbed into the backseat. Once she was inside, he
turned and shoved a pistol in her face.

“He wants to meet you, but if you fuck with us, then this
bullet has your name on it.
Entiendes
?”

“
S
í
,
” the woman told the Spaniard – of course
she understood. But as they drove east along the coast road, she still
contemplated how to kill him if things turned nasty – a stranglehold or simply
sticking the switchblade into his neck or through an eye socket.

A couple of miles from the city the man pulled over and,
with a wave of the pistol, ordered Umchima out. He patted her down at the
roadside, finding the cell phone, switchblade, her passport and a small wallet.
He smiled at the stiletto – a precaution he could relate to – then placed it in
his pocket and thumbed through the contents of the wallet. There were business
cards with her contact details at the orphanage stamped on them in simple black
lettering, a Visa debit card, a Gambian driving license and some of the money
she’d converted at the airport. He handed everything back to Umchima but the
switchblade, then took a black hood from the driver’s-door compartment and
pulled it roughly over her head.

“In,” he ordered, forcing her to lie down on the backseat.

Umchima expected this and wasn’t overly concerned. She began
counting to sixty in her head, making a note of the minutes that passed with
her fingers and concentrating on the changes in the road surface and gradient
and the car’s turns. After an uphill climb, meaning they were heading inland,
she heard the crunch of rubber on gravel and sensed from the lack of breeze and
an echo that they had entered a large enclosed forecourt.

“Out.”

The trafficker manhandled her from the car and into a
building, slamming a heavy door behind them. It was cool inside. Umchima felt
solid stone tiles under her feet and smelled the odor of antique furnishings.
She guessed it was a precolonial build and the owner an established figure not
short of money – hardly surprising with the revenue the Trade generated.

The man grabbed her arm and shoved her along a long hall,
down a flight of steep steps into a room she sensed was small and windowless.
Having steered her into a chair, he pulled off the blindfold. Another man – sprightly,
with slicked-back white hair and a short-clipped gray beard – sat in the feeble
glow of a bare lightbulb. He stared at her across a simple metal-framed office
desk. With the exception of two chairs, there was no other furniture in the
room, only an expensive-looking computer, which seemed out of place in the damp
and moldy surroundings.

Curiosity evident in his birdlike eyes, her host remained
silent a while before speaking in near-perfect but accented English.

“So, you have met Fernando. He is – how can we say? – my butler,
chauffeur, aide-de-camp. Naturally, he is also somewhat protective of our
little operation and of me, no? He was once Sargento Chavez, when he and I were
soldiers. We have been through rather a lot together. Er, English is okay?”

“English, Portuguese, French, Bambara, Mandinka . . .”

“If we are to do business together, I feel it is best to use
English. Besides, my Mandinka is a little rusty, no?” He smiled. “But tell me,
how come the manager of an orphanage in Gambia speaks so many languages?”

“How do you know I’m the manager of an orphanage in Gambia?”

The man reached into a drawer and held up her laptop. “I
have taken the liberty of reading your files and Internet history. It all
checks out – but for security you shouldn’t leave yourself logged into your
email.”

He handed the laptop to Umchima and then turned his computer’s
screen around to show the orphanage’s webpage.

“Then you will know from my staff profile I was born in Mali
to an American mother and Mozambican father – and of course it helps to speak
French in a French-speaking country.”

“Yes, yes, but we couldn’t find any official records
relating to your parents, only an entry for you on the Ministry of Justice’s
website. It hasn’t been updated since 2011 – I’m assuming because of the
collapse of democracy following the rebel takeover.”

“Correct. My parents were Christian missionaries, murdered
in the initial uprising when the Islamists forced sharia law on the North. As a
government official I was on the Tuareg’s kill list, so I escaped through
Senegal to seek asylum in Gambia.”

“Terrible, terrible,” the man muttered. “But tell me, if
your mother was American, why you did not flee to the USA on your American
passport?”

“I’ve never owned an American passport,” Umchima spoke with
venom. “I am African, and I will live and die in Africa. When the fighting is
over, I will retake my rightful place in government and work to rebuild
my
country.”

“It’s okay,” said the man, his smile warming as the
conversation unfolded. “I know you don’t have a US passport – I have contacts
in high places. But tell me, why do you want to trade in
los niños
?”

“Children – why not? What other life can they have? When
they leave the orphanage, someone will try to exploit them for financial gain –
either that or they’ll end up living on the street with a drug problem, prostituting
themselves to survive. I know that you have the connections to send them to a
new life in Europe.”

“This is true, but you must understand their new life can be
even harder there. Do you know what I am saying?”

“
Senhor
!” Umchima glared into his strange flitting
eyes. “I watched my parents dragged into the street and mutilated, screaming as
they burned to death wrapped in gas-soaked car tires. I know hardship, and I
know life is not fair. But if one or two children sacrifice themselves so we
can prosper, how can that not be worth it?”

“
Exactamente
!” The man beamed, but then his demeanor
changed abruptly. “Just one last thing.”

The brute Fernando stepped forward with the woman’s cell
phone.

“Call up your orphanage and say hi.” A reptilian blink
appeared to flicker across the man’s cagey green eyes. “And use the loudspeaker
so we all can listen.”

“Okay,” she replied, thumbing the phone’s keypad and then
placing it on the desktop.

It rang . . . and rang and rang.

The man’s face twisted into a sneer. “So, there is no—”

“
Kairabe
, Kankaba Dindinoly Dimbaayaa,” the voice of
the secretary came over the speaker, greeting the caller with the name of the
orphanage.

“Isatou! How many times have I told you to answer the phone
in English?” Umchima reprimanded the woman for speaking Mandinka and not the
national language.

“Miss Brenda!” the secretary replied, giggling in delight. “How
is the life in Banjul?”

“The capital is busy, Isatou, and smelly,” Umchima replied,
having lied to the staff about the destination and purpose of her trip.

“And did you manage to raise more funding for us?” the
secretary shouted above the noise of the children running around yelling in the
background.

“I am working on it, Isatou.” Umchima gripped a fold in her
pant leg with her free hand. “I have a meeting with the Red Cross this afternoon.
And how are the children?”

“Musa ran away.”

“Don’t worry. Musa is a street child. He will always run
away.”

“Nyima has the fever, and a man arrived saying he was Llana’s
uncle and removed her. Shall I call the police?”

“The police will only want a bribe and then do nothing to
find her. Has Nyima seen the doctor?”

“Yes. Sister Ungjina took her this morning. She is with me
now. I will pass the telephone.”

“Hello, Brenda,” the nun greeted her, and then screamed at
the children to keep the noise down.

“Sister Unjina, how is Nyima?”

“Ah, the doctor says she will live! How is the big city?”

“The city is fine, Sister, but I must go now and meet
another charity. Will you be okay until I get back?”

“
Yeeess
. . . of course we will be okay! Take care in
Banjul. It is a very dangerous place. And may God walk with you.”

“And with you too, Sister – oh!”

“What is it?”

“Please tell Isatou she must answer the telephone in
English.”