Brotherhood and Others (13 page)

A choke, as if he'd been sipping coffee, then coughing, before he replied, “Say that again.”

“You heard me. Good-bye, Mr. Lord.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” the reporter pleaded. “You can't just leave me with that.”

“I have to,” Monarch said. “But from the looks of it, you're resourceful. You'll find the evidence if you work hard at it.”

“Who are you? How would you even know—?”

Monarch shut down the connection, feeling better, as if he might have restored a little balance somehow. Then he stripped as he walked toward the shower, wondering if this time he'd feel cleansed of the stains kidnappings always seemed to leave behind.

Escape Artist

 

 

Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

March 16, 2007

3:45
A.M.

A fourth explosion ripped the night, sending off a brilliant flash that was followed by a barrage of bullets. Slipping from the side of the house toward the east stockade wall, Robin Monarch moved away from the explosion and the shots, hyperaware of the hundreds of armed soldiers around him in the pitch-dark compound.

A woman's voice came over the radio disguised as a hearing aid in Monarch's left ear.

“Slattery says well done, Rogue,” she said. “The both of you.”

“That was the easy part,” Monarch muttered. “Now to get the hell out of here.”

Twelve hours before …

The rain forest steamed. The red-dirt road, if you could call it that, was greasy slick where it wasn't potholed or washed out altogether. Making matters stranger, there was some kind of frog migration occurring.

Monarch had encountered hundreds of them as he drove north, heading toward some of the remotest, wildest terrain left on the African continent.

“You're almost to the coordinates,” Gloria Barnett said through the earbud.

A tall, ruggedly built man in his thirties, Monarch replied, “Sure feels like it. Road's getting worse by the yard.”

“I still say you should have gone in there with Tats,” Barnett said.

“This kind of thing is best done alone.”

“You are not alone,” Barnett replied firmly. “We're just not there with you.”

Monarch knew better than to argue with—in his opinion—the best operations runner at the Central Intelligence Agency. Plus it was true that as long as he maintained communications, she and the rest of his team across the border in Rwanda could support him through just about—

A silhouetted figure carrying a machine gun appeared on the road.

“Here we go,” Monarch said, as he rolled down the windows and slowed to a stop. He turned off the engine. Thirty or more figures surged out from the jungle on either side of the route.

Every one of them carried a weapon, mostly knockoff AK-47s, which they trained on Monarch. Over sweaty jet skin they wore faded fatigues, tattered shirts, and ragged shorts. Some sported filthy baseball caps with basketball logos, wearing them cockeyed, like rappers. They looked gaunt and battle-hardened, but the oldest of them couldn't have been more than seventeen.

Someone yanked open the passenger door. Monarch was aware of a rifle barrel close to his head now, but kept his eyes focused on the oldest boy, the leader, who strode toward him furiously, cheek welded to his gunstock.

“Put hands on your head,” he barked.

In his head, Monarch heard his mother say,
“Sometimes the greatest strength is acting weak
.
”

This was not long before she was murdered. She was teaching her then twelve-year-old son about the intricacies of con games, and how crucial it was for the marks to believe that they had the upper hand in all phases of a swindle, so that they willingly handed over their money.

Monarch did as he was told.

The lead boy jerked the driver's side door open. “Get out.”

Again, Monarch did as he was told, acting as if he'd never had a gun pointed anywhere near him. He glanced at the boys searching his gear, rifling through a duffel bag, and the knapsack that held his camera. Other boys were trying to pry open the locks of the metal case in the back.

“Tell them to stop messing with the case or they'll ruin my instruments,” Monarch complained as two boys came in to search him.

The friskers grabbed his U.S. passport and the documents that identified him as Robin Monarch, a mineralogist from the University of Chicago, and stepped back.

“Unlock the case,” the lead boy said.

“This kind of humidity could screw up the electronics,” Monarch said, then tapped his ear. “It's already screwing with my hearing aid.”

“I don't care,” the boy said. “Unlock it or we leave you here.”

Monarch made a show of sighing. “Can I reach for the key?”

The lead boy's gun was inches from Monarch's face when he nodded.

Monarch fished out the key, which was on a lanyard around his neck, pivoted, and held his hand out to the two still trying to bust the locks. The lead boy said something sharply in a local dialect. The other boys angrily thrust the case at him.

Monarch twisted a dial, heard a faint puff at the relief of the case's inner pressure, and then fit the key in the locks. He unsnapped them, opened the lid, revealing the thickness of the case walls, and dense anti-shock foam that cradled probes, a camera that looked like a nozzle with a bug-eye on the front, various sensing devices, and a notebook computer.

The lead boy pried up the foam at one corner, and was about to pick up another, when Monarch said, “Longer you take, the greater danger to the instruments. No instruments, no bid. I don't think that's what Lieutenant Zed would want, do you?”

The lead boy snarled, “You know nothing of the Lieutenant.”

“We were told to bring whatever test equipment we wanted. Is that not so?”

The boy soldier hesitated, but then said, “Seal it.”

Monarch did just that as Barnett said into his earbud, “Nicely done.”

Built into the walls of the case were ultra-slim lithium batteries and into the handle a transmitter that would boost any signal Monarch or the instruments might send once they got in deep. Once he snapped shut the latches, the system was triggered.

“Much stronger feed now,” Barnett commented. “You might wipe the lens at some point, we're getting condensation.”

Ignoring the camera pen sticking out the pocket of his safari-style green shirt, Monarch grabbed his knapsack, held out the case toward the lead boy. “Makes you feel any better, you can carry it.”

The boy looked annoyed, dug out a cell phone, turned, and made a call. The middle of wildest Africa and the cell phones still worked. Amazing.

When he'd finished, he said, “Get in your car. Drive forward. The others are waiting.”

Monarch put the case in the passenger seat and drove over the rise. Two hundred yards farther on, two Toyota Land Cruisers and a Land Rover similar to his own were parked where the road became a path that crossed a clearing and disappeared into the jungle. He pulled in beside them just as an old construction helicopter swept in from the north, landed in the clearing, and the rotor died.

Monarch climbed out. So did men in each of the trucks. The closest was Chinese, late forties, carrying two steel cases. An Indian, younger, wearing sunglasses and plain green safari-style clothes, was next. He had shockproof luggage as well. An Orthodox Jewish man who looked absolutely miserable got out of the farthest vehicle, lugging what easily could have been mistaken for a gun case.

“This is totally unnecessary,” he grumbled. He was bald and sweat began to stream out from under his yarmulke. “Why could this not be brought to us in an air-conditioned city?”

“Lieutenant Zed cannot leave the compound,” the lead boy soldier replied. “So you come. You will be back here before dark.”

Monarch acted subservient to all of them, said nothing, and followed them to the helicopter.

They strapped themselves into jump seats inside the copter while Monarch stayed on his feet and introduced himself as Monarch, from Chicago. The others reluctantly replied. Bergenheim hailed from Antwerp. Chatterjee had flown in from Surat, India. Sing called Hong Kong home.

“And what's
your
name?” Monarch asked the oldest boy soldier, who stood at the door, holding on to a strap.

“Why do you care?”

“I don't like just calling you ‘lead boy.'”

Monarch caught the faintest of smiles.

“Lieutenant Zed calls me Gahji,” the boy said. “It means ‘the hunter.' I am good at tracking in the bush.”

“What tribe?” Chatterjee asked.

“Tribes no longer matter,” Gahji said.

“That what Lieutenant Zed believes?” Monarch asked.

“It's what all of us believe,” Gahji said before the helicopter engine started up and the rotors began to turn, making a clanking noise that clearly unnerved everyone on board the craft. Monarch glanced into the cockpit and saw that the pilot looked ridiculously young.

But Monarch forced his mind off it, yelling: “So what's with the frogs? They're everywhere.”

Gahji shrugged, said, “Mating season. What is that tattoo?”

The entire chopper had begun to vibrate as it struggled to lift off. Monarch had grabbed one of the safety straps, revealing a tattoo on his inner right forearm. The letters FDL were laid out in scrollwork, with a hand coming off the D, the fingers about to pluck something.

“The initials of my first love,” Monarch said. “Almost broke my heart.”

Gahji frowned.

They rose and swung away from the road, and the clanking eased. Quickly they were above the jungle canopy, flying north.

“Volcano,” Gahji said, pointing out the other side of the helicopter.

Monarch used the straps to cross, looked where the boy soldier was pointing, and saw a huge smoking volcano with a massive slag-colored lava field stretching through the jungle to the south. More volcanoes, dormant, were visible to the north.

“When was the last time that went off?” Monarch asked.

Gahji shrugged, said, “This one goes off many times. Last year?”

Bergenheim, sitting nearest to them, asked, “How long have you been with Lieutenant Zed, Gahji?”

“Thirteen years. When I was four, he saved my life during the fighting that killed my parents.”

Monarch saw fathomless depth in the boy's eyes. Gahji's story unnerved him, made him think of himself at that age, still fighting for his place in life back in the squalid slums of Buenos Aires.

“Someone saved my life like that when I was thirteen, soon after my parents were murdered,” Monarch said.

Gahji looked at Monarch suspiciously, said nothing. He turned away from the volcano and looked to the north into hilly terrain choked by jungle. Something about the way the boy soldier held his head so defiantly led Monarch to think back to those long-ago days.

*   *   *

The eighteen-year-old Robin, no longer the awkward and lanky kid he'd been at sixteen, had filled out and was just coming into his strength. But that day he was tired and in a bad mood as he and his closest friend, Claudio, headed back through the streets of the Villa Miserie, the Village of Misery. This was the slum where he'd ended up, in the wake of his parents' murder. Four years before, Claudio had saved him from the garbage heap, recruiting him to a gang, La Fraternidad de Ladrones, the Brotherhood of Thieves.

During those four years, in situations where the odds had been heavily stacked against him, Robin had managed repeatedly to steal valuable items for La Fraternidad. Which was contributing to his bad mood.

“I
am
the best thief, Claudio,” Robin complained.

“Of that there is no doubt, my brother,” said Claudio, older by two years, and already thickening through his middle. He stopped, gestured to a red gate set in a high wall. “I like this red, like cow's blood, don't you think?”

Claudio was a thief of the highest order, a talented safecracker, and the Brotherhood's part-time fence. But he dreamed of being an artist, a painter, and was obsessed by the various shades and hues he saw all around him.

“It's an interesting red,” Robin allowed. “But I was talking about Julio.”

“Were you?” Claudio said. “I thought you were talking of being the best thief.”

“Julio takes more than half of what I steal for himself,” Robin complained.

“That is the deal,” Claudio reminded him. “You share with those above you.”

“I see too much of it going to Julio. If I am to take risks, I want to be paid.”

Claudio scratched at his sparse beard and grinned. “You will be a rich man someday, I think.”

“Men who think for themselves become rich. My father taught me that.”

“Your father was a cat burglar,” Claudio said skeptically.

“And a good one,” Robin shot back.

“Thought we were talking about Julio,” Claudio said, walking again.

“I am talking about Julio,” Robin insisted. “He doesn't think, sometimes. He makes mistakes.”

“Such as?”

“The kidnapping.”

“That was two years ago.”

“He still drinks too much, talks too much. And he gets crazy around girls.”

A squealing piglet ran by them. A little girl went running after the pig.

“Julio is still Julio,” Claudio said firmly. “He still leads. The Brothers support him without question.”

After several moments, Robin said, “He suspects us, I think.”

“What, that we let the girl go?” Claudio said. “Or that we stole the ransom for ourselves when he was blind drunk?”

“Maybe both.”

“I haven't said anything to anyone. I haven't spent any of the money.”

“I haven't either,” Robin said. “But the way he looks at us, even when we have done a great thing, and especially when he has been drinking rum…”