“Probably a mustard gas grenade,” said Jonah. “I’ve heard similar stories coming out of Italy, the Baltic Sea, even the American eastern seaboard. Fishermen find some strange artifact and they have a reaction like he described. Turns out it’s an old piece of chemical munitions.”
Burhaan waited for Jonah and Klea to finish talking and then went on with his story. Klea listened closely, asking him to slow down so she could follow.
“He says it got worse,”
“His arm got worse?” Jonah asked.
“No — the situation became worse, not for him, but for his village. Over the past three years, many people have become sick with strange symptoms, many have died. He says it is the fault of Bettencorp, Anconia Island. But he’s not calling it Anconia Island. He’s calling it… I have no idea what he’s saying. Sun-killer? The moon of death? I’m at a loss.”
“Death Star?”
Kleah translated and Burhaan nodded and repeated the words in English. “Death Star.”
Jonah drew in a long breath. “If anything could earn the name Death Star, Anconia Island would be it.”
Burhaan continued and Klea translated. “He says they’ve been piling what they find over here,” said Klea, pointing to the far end of the beach.
As Burhaan and Klea followed, Jonah led the way across the beach towards a distant dark pile. The villagers didn’t follow. Soon it became clear that the pile was a large collection of rusting barrels and tanks, all washed up from the sea and leaking.
“Apparently this is just some of it,” Klea said.
Jonah studied the pile. Collecting for years, it’d easily take four or five semis to even attempt to remove it all. He leaned as close as he dared, coughing as toxic fumes poured off the pile. He recognized multiple warning labels and military designations in Italian and Cyrillic Russian. Jonah guessed it was a collection long-obsolete munitions. Hell, a couple of the larger barrels looked like Cold Warera submarine depth charges.
“They’ve got to get rid of this stuff,” said Jonah, more to himself than anyone else. If even one of the explosives nestled in the pile cooked off—
“How?” asked Klea.
“I have no goddamn idea. Can’t burn it. Can’t bury it. Hell, stick it on a raft and mail it back to sender. Makes sense that the rest of the world would send their shit out here. Nobody’s going to be looking for it, not in this godforsaken corner of the ocean.”
“Everybody in the village seems affected,” said Klea. “When I was being dressed, I noticed most of the women had sores and burns. I didn’t know what to make of them at first.”
“Ask him about the children,” said Jonah, his voice catching on a lump in his throat. Klea nodded, and passed the message along. Burhaan responded animatedly as they backed away from the toxic pile.
“He says Qaasin and Madar are not growing as they should and that he’s worried for them. He’s already lost a son and two daughters to disease. And the same ailments have struck many of the village children. Many stillborn babies, too many to be by chance. He says he feels sometimes that his village is cursed by Allah.”
“It’s no curse,” Jonah said through gritted teeth. “This was done intentionally.”
Klea didn’t catch up to Jonah until he was already nearly two full miles down the beach, walking alone in the moonlight. He hadn’t said much since seeing the pile, disappearing soon afterwards. Old habits die hard — and for him, solitude was a familiar respite.
“Don’t leave me like that,” said Klea, half-running, half-walking to match his pace.
Jonah nodded, slowed his step and came to a stop. He sat down on the sand, looking towards the moonlit waves. Klea sat down next to him and slipped her hand around the back of his arm.
“Burhaan says we can hitch a ride on a truck,” said Klea. “His brother-in-law is on his way down to Mozambique with a load of sheep and he always stops by the village for a meal. They’re expecting him soon, maybe even tomorrow. There’s a US consulate there. We may have to hide in the back through some of the militia checkpoints, but that will be a cakewalk compared to what we’ve already done.”
“It’s a good plan,” said Jonah.
“We could go home.”
“Home for you,” he said. “Not for me.”
“You’re an American,” said Klea. “Why can’t you go back? What did you do?”
“Not me. I didn’t do anything. It was my father.”
“What could your father have possibly done?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long night.”
Jonah squinted at Klea. She wasn’t going to give up, they both knew it. He begrudgingly set aside his resistance and started to speak about things he’d long held inside.
“Growing up, it was just my father and I,” he said. “On paper, he was a mid-level functionary that specialized in security requisitions for American consulates and embassies in hot spots, areas with sudden political or social upheaval.”
“But off paper… he was what? CIA?”
“Yeah, CIA. By the time I was in the picture, his boots-on-the-ground days were long over. He was a section chief, ran all intelligence and covert operations in whatever region they’d placed him, usually to clean up someone else’s mess.”
“And your mother?’
“No memories of her. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I’m fairly certain she was one of his intelligence assets. I think she was killed not long after I was born. My father rarely spoke of her.
“I was left with my grandparents when I was very young, but that couldn’t last forever. Pops eventually took me with him. I spent a few months at a time in DC getting dropped into upper-crust private schools. We didn’t have the money — government salary, after all — but my father certainly had the right connections. Then we’d spend the rest of our time at whatever embassy he’d been assigned. If the CIA needed him there, it usually meant that most of the other kids had already left for home due to safety concerns. I got pretty good at sneaking out and hanging with local kids, when that was too dangerous, I’d hang with the marine guards.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. Once they got over the fear of my hard-ass dad coming down on them for letting me follow them around, they were usually pretty cool. Treated me like a mascot. Dressed me up in oversize battle-rattle, took me down to the weapons range, let me pop off some rounds. They’d have me play hostage sometimes, and when I got older I got to be the ‘hostile’.”
“You liked being the bad guy,” Klea said with a smile.
“Loved it,” said Jonah. “Speaking of which, have to tell you this one story. So we get a new squad into the embassy, right? They think they’re tough shit. Commander says he’s putting them through the ‘kill house’—the standard urban combat room-clearing exercise on base. They’re talking among themselves; they say they’re going to set a new course record.
“Commander laughs, says they’re going to be up against one guy. And then he trots me out. I’m fourteen at the time. All the Marines can do is stare; they think it’s some kind of a joke or something. Eight tough-as-shit Marines against a fourteen-year-old Foreign Service brat.
“Suspecting a set-up, they take no chances. I find a hiding spot in the kill house and they come in hard. They figure the commander is lying to them and they’re going to face off against a whole squad. After all, Marines have turned fucking with each other into an honored art form.”
“But it was just you.”
“Just me. And I’m hiding in the ceiling, wearing my fake haji clothes. They clear the place, then they’re all just standing around, baffled. Wondering what they’re doing, why they’re all just standing around with nobody to shoot at. Some of them start saying they got the time wrong, they’re not supposed to be there for another hour or two. One of the Marines separates from the others; I drop out of the ceiling and pop a paintball into his facemask.”