“Don’t speak to me of sorrow,” Begela said once their plane left the Gamba airport runway. “It isn’t you who must face our backer.”
“He paid us to lobby—”
“He expected us to deliver.”
With that curt interruption, Begela had risen from beside Nze to take an unoccupied seat up the aisle, and afterward had presented him with nothing but silence and his back.
Until the 11:17 telephone call.
Last night.
Nze remembered standing quietly with the receiver to his ear for several moments after their exchange of pleasantries. Studying his ornate centuries-old clock. Noting the swing of its pendulum’s polished brass rod as droplets of light splashed over it from a chandelier overhead.
“We’ve gotten a break,” Begela had said. “I’ve met with the individual we spoke about on the plane. Things went far better than expected.”
“He doesn’t blame us for the vote?”
“Let’s say I’ve managed to raise his consciousness about the Libreville hearing, and our political system in general.”
“How so?”
“Our lack of success was a disappointment to him. As is the arrival of the UpLink advance group. But he understands the complexities we dealt with in the capital, has revised his objectives accordingly, and remains hopeful we can barter influence with our opposition, sway them to rescind their decision.”
Nze had shaken his head. “With the Americans in our country, I don’t see any chance of making inroads—”
“Hear me, mebonto,” Begela broke in, using the familiar Fang term of address reserved for members of a nuclear kin group. “Our associate still asks for our favors, and we should oblige him. He knows it does not come without ample compensation.”
Nze had paused to think. He’d reached for his glass of Clos du Marquis, sipped. Begela’s implication was plain. The foreigner had been a brimming well of profit neither of them was eager to abandon.
“Was he specific about what he wants from us?”
Begela gave an affirmative grunt.
“It’s best we discuss that in person,” he said. “I’ll send over my car to bring you to the office.”
Nze was surprised. “At this hour? I’ve just gotten settled in…”
“Consider it worthwhile overtime,” Begela said. “We mustn’t delay. There are steps we can take in the morning that will reassure our backer, yet are consistent with a phased approach that will satisfy your cautious inclinations.”
Nze had taken another drink from his wineglass, let the warm and mildly bitter flavor of the Saint Julian grape settle over the back of his tongue.
Ample compensation.
“Give me fifteen minutes to get ready,” he’d said at last.
The black Mercedes 500E coupe pulled in front of his colonial townhouse a quarter hour later on the dot, and Nze had noticed nothing unusual approaching it across the empty sidewalk. Begela’s personal driver, Andre, had whisked around to the curb, nodding dutifully as he opened the rear passenger’s side door.
Nze was leaning into the Benz when he saw the man in its backseat — a man the coupe’s double-glazed windows had at first concealed from view. In his dark coverall fatigues, he very definitely was not one of the minister’s regular employees.
For a confused, off-kilter moment, Nze had wondered if he might be an official escort of some kind. But then a scent that was at once recognizable and incongruous wafted over him from the car’s interior… the pungent, leafy smell of khat.
Although the stimulant drug was legal in Gabon — as it was throughout the rest of Africa — Nze knew no ministerial guard would have the effrontery to chew it while on duty.
He’d stopped halfway inside the car, hesitant, suspicion abruptly taking root inside him.
A profanity was husked in his ear: “Encule-tête!”
Powerful hands closed around Nze’s neck from behind, wrenched it backward before he could react. The hood fell over his head and was pulled down below his eyes, his face. Then Nze was shoved into the rear of the car, where his mouth was quickly wrapped with duct tape outside the sack.
Someone pressed into the car after him and the door of the Mercedes slammed shut.
An instant later, Nze heard the driver get inside.
Nze made smothered sounds through the tape, struggled to move, but could scarcely wriggle his body. He’d been crushed between the man in dark fatigues and whoever boosted him into the car.
An object jabbed into his right side. Hard. The blunt barrel of a gun.
“Ça suffit!” The order to stop squirming had been spat by the same gruff, husking voice he’d heard out on the sidewalk. Again, close against his ear.
Nze became still, heard a different voice from his opposite side.
“Dépêche toi, vas-y continue!” the khat chewer shouted at the driver. Urging him to hurry up, get on with it.
The car had jumped forward into the street.
Nze was certain the hideaway to which they brought him was near the ocean harbor — perhaps a storage warehouse, or indoor berthing space. It had taken only minutes to get there. As they pulled him from the car, guiding him roughly along, he had felt the transition from asphalt to old wooden boards under his feet, smelled saltwater and diesel fuel, heard what sounded like the rhythmical knocking of a ship’s hull against its moorings. Then a roll-down security gate being raised on rusty metal tracks in front of him.
He was led indoors. Thrust into a chair. Told he’d be shot if he put up any resistance.
The gate clanged shut.
Nze sat without budging for hours before he was shuffled out into the 4×4. At the time, he had no idea why they had kept him at that interim place… but much later, after his captors passed out of the city, he would conclude they had been waiting for the night to run itself thin. It only made sense. The roads leading into the bush were slow to traverse by daylight, and filled with unseen hazards in darkness, becoming more arduous as Port-Gentil’s outlying townships and settlements were left behind in the distance. They would have wanted to limit the amount of ground that had to be covered before the first rays of dawn came bleaching through the sky.
Now the sun was up, its heat building in the cargo section around Nze as the 4×4 gyrated along over pebbled, foliage-tangled jungle roads and trenches. In September, the days were quick to grow sweltering, and air-conditioners were useless and unused in motor vehicles. He could feel sweat pouring down his face under the canvas hood, feel the tire rubber wedged against his side getting warm. His entire body ached, besides, and his arms and legs were tingling from lack of circulation.
There was no way to be certain how many men were riding with him, but Nze had mentally indexed at least four voices from snatches of overheard conversation. One of them was very soft, belonging to someone who spoke French with a perceptible foreign accent… an American accent, he believed. The khat chewer from the backseat of the Mercedes was also among his hostile, unchosen companions, and Nze did not have to hear the man speak to know it. The combination of his drug of choice’s sickly sweet odor and the stultifying heat inside the cargo section had pushed Nze to the verge of nausea. And his constant tossing about hadn’t helped. With his mouth taped, he’d been afraid he would choke on his own vomit if the trip stretched on much longer, heaving up what little was left of yesterday’s dinner — and fine wine, he recalled miserably, thinking of the glass he had set down to answer the phone.
Nze actually found himself grateful when the vehicle bounced to a halt, its engine cutting off with a shudder… and then was struck by how odious his circumstances must be to evoke such a feeling, the constant realist in him serving up another reminder that having reached his destination could not prove a good thing at all.