“Yes, dreams. They brought me out of my coma. They weren’t really dreams. They were things that had really happened to this little girl. She needs me to help her.”
“Telepathy?” mused Jayewardene. “It would not surprise me that such a thing had happened. Tell us of this child.”
Michelle stepped back so she could see their faces. “She’s in a pit of dead bodies. And she’s a little girl-maybe six or seven. It’s horrible.”
Babel’s expression was one of complete disbelief.
Michelle ignored her. “I owe this little girl. I need to find her.”
Jayewardene got up and walked to one of the tall windows overlooking the harbor. “Do you have any idea where this pit is?”
“Not exactly,” Michelle said, “but I think I have it narrowed down.” She just wanted him to give her the damn Committee. “There were soldiers wearing uniforms and these leopard-skin fezzes. I recognized the uniforms from our training. They were Congolese. I confess, the fezzes confuse me, but it may have been part of Adesina’s trauma. She’s obsessed with leopards in her dreams.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “Leopards.”
“In her dreams, she’s being captured by these soldiers and taken away from her home. It’s almost like she’s calling me-pulling me to her.”
Jayewardene turned back from the window. “Dreams can be a powerful thing, Michelle. If you are certain that you must find her, then I suppose you must go to the Congo.”
Barbara blinked in surprise.
“Sir,” she said. “The Amazing Bubbles is one of the best-known and best-loved aces in the world right now. After New Orleans, she’s almost a legend. If she sets foot in the People’s Paradise, the Radical will… Klaus, talk to her.”
Lohengrin looked very unhappy. “Babs, if this child is in danger
… what is the Committee for, if not for things like that?”
Babel threw her hands up in dismay. “She can’t just go waltzing around in the PPA. Not with Rustbelt and Gardener already in Africa, doing God knows what. This could provoke Weathers to a fresh round of atrocities.”
Michelle flinched when Babs said Weathers’s name. It had been a long time since anyone had scared her, but Weathers had done his best to nuke New Orleans.
All she could think about was the fire running through her veins. “Mr. Jayewardene,” she said. “I know it sounds stupid, but Adesina is stuck there in a pit filled with corpses. I’m going to her. With the Committee’s help or without it.”
“I cannot give you the Committee.” Jayewardene sounded sad. “You must do what you must do, but Barbara is correct. The Nshombos keep a careful watch on who crosses their borders. These men in the leopard-skin hats that you have seen in your dream are Alicia Nshombo’s secret police, the Leopard Society. They would arrest you as soon as you entered the country.”
They could try, Michelle thought. She glanced at Joey and Juliet. Neither of them looked very happy. Joey was fidgeting in her chair as if she had sand in her underwear.
“Fuck it,” Joey blurted out. “Are you cocksuckers deaf, or what? Didn’t you hear what she said? The little fucker in her dreams is just a kid!”
Dr. Nshombo’s Yacht
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The reception was on the Nshombo yacht. Supposedly it was “the people’s yacht,” but the burly Leopard Men in their leopard-skin fezzes guarded the gangway, making damn sure none of the people actually came aboard. The word in the streets was that Alicia’s crack troops could actually turn into leopards, but how much of that was clever manipulation and how much was truth Noel had no way to know.
As the fiberglass gangway bowed slightly beneath his foot, Noel realized he had better prepare for the masquerade. He was entering the lion… leopard’s… den, and he needed to concentrate. Monsieur Pelletier presented his invitation to a grim-faced guard, and was waved aboard.
The hip beat of a jazz quartet, the chink of ice in glasses, and the roar of conversation led him to the party. He touched his dark glasses to reassure himself that Etienne’s golden eyes were obscured. He also checked his watch to verify exactly how long until sundown. He had one hour, seventeen minutes, and forty-two seconds.
Dr. Nshombo stood by the rail discussing Marxist theory with a pair of engineers from Kenya. The two men were looking longingly toward the bar and the attractive young women who wove through the crowds offering canapes and champagne off silver trays. Noel extended his hand. “Ah, Monsieur President, so kind to include me. The yacht, so ravissant, and the river, like a mighty heart through your great nation,” he said in French. Actually he thought the Congo smelled like an open sewer as vegetation, human waste, and probably bodies provided by the ever-helpful secret police rotted in the dark waters.
The engineers made a quick and tactical retreat. Noel joined Dr. Nshombo at the rail. The spare little man with his expressionless ebony face snapped his fingers, and one of the servers hurried over. Noel accepted a flute of champagne. Nshombo waved her off-he neither smoked nor drank. Personally Noel had always preferred the whoring, boozing, gambling variety of dictator over the abstemious, self-righteous variety. The hedonists were easier to bring down.
“Monsieur Pelletier, have you located a site for your factory?” Dr. Nshombo asked.
“Not yet, sir, but I’ve seen several promising locations.”
“You will find my people are good workers. They will build excellent cars.”
“And be able to afford them with the wages they’ll earn,” Noel said.
He realized his error the instant the words left his lips as Nshombo’s face closed into a tight, hard mask. “Are you suggesting my people do not earn a decent wage without the actions of a white man?”
“No-”
Nshombo ran over the start of Noel’s apology. “Before I founded the People’s Paradise of Africa, that would have been the case. Corrupt leaders working with Western flacks sucked away the fruits of their labor, but I changed that. Through me flows the wealth of a continent, and it all goes into the hands of my people.”
“Yes, yes, quite. And that was what I meant to imply, but was, alas, in-artful. It is due to your prescience that you are allowing me to found this Peugeot factory. Your people will benefit from your wisdom and hard work.”
“Dear, Mr. Pelletier, please ignore my brother.” Alicia Nshombo flowed around him like the storm bands of a hurricane. First there was the overpowering scent of her gardenia perfume, then the salty, musky scent of a heavy woman exerting herself in the stifling Congo heat. Next the folds of her brightly colored, floral print robe/muumuu/tent tangled at his legs and torso, and finally her heavy, plump arms wrapped around Noel’s shoulders. “He’s still thinking it’s the old days when we were not treated with respect, when the Western countries viewed us as just another set of black oppressors. You are one of the first white businessmen to see the potential in the PPA.”
Noel gave Alicia a small bow, and bestowed a Gallic kiss on the back of her hand. “I’m sure I’m only the first of many. Your hospitality and willingness to assist in my little venture has been overwhelming.”
Noel straightened and found himself almost mesmerized by the flat stares of the three security officers who surrounded her. He considered the motorized patrols that raced through the streets near the river, the snipers positioned on the roofs of surrounding buildings, and decided that the PPA armed forces offered a great opportunity for employment and promotion.
Alicia gave him a hug that left him breathless. “You French, always so gracious. Now, please, come and meet a few more of our illustrious citizens.”
Noel followed, feeling like a wood chip caught in the wake of a carrier. As they moved across the polished oak deck Alicia continued. “In a few weeks these decks will be draped with beautiful girls. I arranged with Jalouse for them to hold the swimsuit shoot in Kongoville aboard our yacht. You should time your return trip to coincide with that.” She gave him a wink, then tucked his arm through hers and pressed it against her side. “Though why you men prefer these skinny rails… African men are wiser. They like a woman of substance.” She leered at him.