The group stood there talking for another five minutes or so and then moved on.
DeMarco and Wade went right, following the direction Nimec and Scull had taken to the market quarter with only few detours en route.
Ackerman and Conners walked left toward the park together, though Conners would eventually go off on his own.
As had been true since their arrival in the country, all eight men were being watched.
This time, however, they were watching the watchers.
For the second time in as many days Jean Jacques Assele-Ndaki had been shocked and horrified by the photograph of his lifelong friend Macie’s gruesome murder. But having the president himself confront him with it this time added a new and entirely different element to his reaction.
He’d been prepared to see neither as he arrived at Senateur Moubouyi’s colonial mansion and was ushered into the salon by his houseman.
Assele-Ndaki stood in the doorway now, looking into the room with frozen features. President Cangele. Here. How was this possible? It was everything he could do not to physically jump when the paneled oak door shut behind him.
“Assemblyman, hello.” The president sat at the head of a long table, two of his closest aides to his right, the rest of the chairs filled with more than twelve of Assele-Ndaki’s legislative colleagues. “We’ve been waiting for you with unanimous anticipation. And unanimity among politicians is too rare and short-lived to neglect for any period.”
Assele-Ndaki did not move. He felt staggered and weak kneed, as if struck by a hard concussion.
“Mr. President…”
“Please, come in,” Adrian Cangele nodded toward a single empty chair on his left side. The snapshot of Macie lay in front of him, its lower border pressed flat against the table by the thick fingers of his hand. “Now that you’ve arrived, there is no reason for you to stand apart. Is there?”
Recognizing the clear edge of sarcasm and double-entendre in the president’s remarks, Assele-Ndaki struggled to gain possession of himself. He had expected a huddle of government officials gathered to challenge the power and authority of the very man who was at the table with them and to determine how the UpLink license might be suspended or revoked. Expected representatives of both parliamentary chambers linked by their participation in a conspiracy, and a common warning — which had come to each of them in the form of an anonymously mailed photograph.
Instead…
Assele-Ndaki surveyed the room. Only Cangele and his aides were looking at him. All the rest of the men were focused everywhere but in his direction… some of them on the two-hundred-year-old rapiers and poniards against one wall, some on the cased set of eighteenth-century French pistols mounted opposite the sword collection, some examining the Chinese porcelain vases and expensive trinkets that filled various cabinet shelves. Others were merely staring at their hands or at vacant points in the air.
Assele-Ndaki turned his attention onto the senator whose invitation he had accepted. Seated at the president’s left with his eyes on the table, Moubouyi appeared to sense his gaze. He met it with his own for the briefest of moments, then looked back down.
Cangele’s deep-set eyes, meanwhile, continued to scrutinize Assele-Ndaki from his broad ebony face. The smile on his full mouth was quick, and often charming, but also unspontaneous and rarely invested with humor. It had a demanding severity even at the most casual and relaxed moments… and the mood in the room was worlds from either.
Assele-Ndaki pushed forward across the floor to the table. The president wore an orange and white patterned kente batik shirt, collarless with wide bell sleeves. It was unusual attire for him. Cangele typically favored Western dress, custom suits from the renowned European boutiques.
The assemblyman sat.
“I trust,” Cangele said to him, “no one present requires an introduction.”
Assele-Ndaki gave a silent nod. How could the president have learned about the meeting? About the photograph? Could someone in this room have told him, committed an act of duplicity seeking to curry favor in the belief things would sooner or later come to light? Or perhaps he had found out through his secret eyes and ears throughout the government? But in the end these questions were unanswerable. Nor did his informant’s identity and reasons matter. Cangele knew. He knew. One way or another, they would each of them who had planned to obstruct his goals bear the consequences.
“I mean no disrespect, but there are places I would much rather be,” Cangele said. His eyes held steady on Assele-Ndaki’s face. “Other ways I would have chosen to spend my Sunday afternoon.” He triggered his smile again and gestured expansively with his left hand. His right continued to rest on the picture of Macie Nze, its touch flat and heavy. “Instead, I’ve been pressed into this working visit to Port-Gentil… into slipping out of the capital like a thief.”
Assele-Ndaki said nothing. His tension was hard to separate from that of his fellow parliamentarians. It was a kind of flux in the room that seemed to radiate from each and accrete into something greater than the sum of its parts. He could feel it prickling his skin like current. When he breathed, it left the taste of steel nails at the back of his tongue.
“Mr. Assemblyman,” Cangele said to him, “I know you and Macie Nze had close personal ties, and I wish to express my regrets and condolences over his death. My own direct dealings with him were infrequent, but I remember him as a committed and estimable public servant worthy of respect.”
Assele-Ndaki nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “There are many who will miss him.”
“His savage abduction and murder was a waste. An intolerable act. You may take it as a given that the crime will not go unsolved… and that its perpetrators will not elude justice.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
Cangele took a deep breath, then released it through his nose and mouth. He was a large man with a bulging middle and his girth somehow gave the exhalation a tidal quality.
“Although they lack solid proof, my sources have cause to suspect Macie Nze’s murder was connected to his falling awry of a mysterious political-influence peddler,” he said. “An unidentified foreigner who has sought to hinder my telecommunications initiatives through means varying from financial incentives of questionable legality, to overt criminal bribes. And it pains me to say that some in our government might have been receptive to them.”
The president’s dark eyes remained clamped on Assele-Ndaki, who looked back at him in silence, not knowing how to answer, afraid to turn away.
“Jean Jacques,” Senateur Moubouyi said at last. “Before you joined us, the president was asking our opinions—”
“Off the record, we must underscore,” Ali Nagor said from farther down the table. He was an assemblyman from Mounga Province, to the east.
“Of course, I should have mentioned that,” Moubouyi said. “President Cangele polled us, informally, about a proposition of amnesty for anyone who may have been lured into accepting the foreigner’s inducements. As I understand it, explicit admissions of impropriety would not be required, but rather a simple and confidential pledge among all parliamentarians that none will occur in the future… with particular regard to the telecom issue.”
Silence again. Then Nagor said, “The president is gratified by the National Assembly’s approval of his UpLink licensing policies despite the shadowy lobbies that would have hindered them. And while he welcomes honest and open political debate, he likewise wishes to see the licenses ratified without further sabotage.”
Assele-Ndaki did not react. He was trying to plainly understand the meaning of what he’d heard. President Cangele’s dark eyes, still fixed on the assemblyman, made it difficult for him to think straight.