Cross Country

Chapter 27

THE TIGER WAS an enigma in every way, a mystery no one had ever solved. Actually, there were no tigers in Africa, which was how he got his nickname. He was like no other, one of a kind, superior to all the other animals, especially humans.

Before he went to school in England, the Tiger had lived in France for a couple of years, and he had learned French and English. He discovered he had a gift for languages, and he could remember almost everything he learned or read. His first summer in France, he’d sold mechanical birds to children in the parking areas outside the palace at Versailles. He’d learned a valuable lesson there: to hate the white man, and especially white families.

This day he had a mission in a city he didn’t much like because the foreigner had left too much of a mark here. The city was Port Harcourt in the Delta region of Nigeria, where most of the oil wells were located.

The game was on. He had another bounty to collect.

A black Mercedes was speeding up a steep hill toward the wealthy foreigners’ part of the city and straight toward the Tiger as well.

As always, he waited patiently for his prey.

Then he wandered out into the street like some poor drunkard on a binge. The Mercedes would either have to stop very quickly or strike him head-on.

Probably because he was so large and might dent the car, at the last possible moment, the chauffeur applied the brakes.

The Tiger could see the liveried black scum cursing him from behind the spotlessly clean windshield. So he raised his pistol fast and shot the driver and a bodyguard through the glass.

His boys, wild, were already at both rear doors of the limousine, breaking the side windows with crowbars.

Then they threw open the doors and pulled out the screaming white schoolchildren, a boy and a girl in their early teens.

“Don’t harm them, I have other plans!” he yelled.

An hour later, he had the boy and girl inside a shack on a deserted farm outside the city. They were dead now, unrecognizable even if they were found eventually. He had boiled them in a pot of oil. His employer had ordered this manner of death, which happened to be common in Sudan. The Tiger had no problem with it.

Finally, he pulled out his cell phone and called a number in town. When the phone was picked up on the other end, he didn’t allow the American parents to speak.

Nor would he ever talk to the local police, or to the private contractor who worked for the oil company and was supposed to protect them from harm.

“You want to see young Adam and Chloe again, you do exactly as I say. First of all, I don’t want to hear a word from you. Not a word.”

One of the cops spoke, of course, and he hung up on him. He would call back later, and have his money by the end of the day. It was easy work, and Adam and Chloe reminded him of the obnoxious and greedy white children who used to buy his mechanical birds at Versailles.

He felt no regret for them, nothing at all. It was just business to him.

Just another large bounty to collect.

And just the start of things to come.

Chapter 28

I WAS DETERMINED to follow the psycho killer and his gang wherever it took me, but I could see this wasn’t going to be easy. Quite the opposite.

“You took my passport? Did I get that right?” I asked Nana. “You actually stole my passport?”

She ignored the questions and set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. Overdone and no toast, I noticed. So this was war.

“That’s right,” she said. “You behave like an obstinate child, that’s how I treat you. Purloined,” she added. “I prefer purloined to stole.”

I pushed the plate away. “Ellie Cox died because of this man, Nana. So did her family. And another family here in DC. Don’t pretend this has nothing to do with us.”

“You mean you. And your job, Alex. That’s what this has to do with.” She poured a half cup of coffee and then headed for her room.

I called after her. “You know stealing someone’s passport against the law?”

“So arrest me,” she said and slammed shut her door. Six in the morning and round one of the new day was already over.

We’d been building up to this ever since I first mentioned the possibility of my going to Africa. At first she’d been coy, with news articles cropping up around the house. I found a Time cover story, “The Deadly Delta,” snipped out and left with my laundry one night; a BBC news piece with the headline “Many Factions, No Peace for Nigeria” in an envelope next to my keys the next morning.

When I ignored them, she moved on to lecturing – with a list of what-ifs and potential risks, as if I hadn’t considered nearly every one of them myself. Muslims killing Christians in the north of Nigeria; Christians retaliating in Eastern Nigeria; students lynching a Christian teacher; mass graves found in Okija; police corruption and brutality; daily kidnappings in Port Harcourt.

It’s not that she was all wrong. These murder cases were already dangerous, and I hadn’t even given up the homecourt advantage yet. The truth was, I didn’t know what to to expect in Africa. All I knew was that if I had a chance to shut this butcher down, I was going to take it. The CIA contact there had signaled the murder suspect was in Lagos right now, or at least he had been a few days ago.

I’d pulled some strings to expedite my visa application.

Then I had cashed in seventy-five thousand miles for a last-minute ticket to Lagos.

Now the only obstacle was my eighty-eight-year-old grandmother. Big obstacle. She stayed in her room until I left for work that morning, refusing to even talk about the purloined passport.

Obviously, I couldn’t get far without it.

Chapter 29

THAT NIGHT, I gave Nana Mama a little taste of her own medicine. I waited until late, after the kids had gone to bed. Then I found her in her favorite reading chair, huddled over a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

“What’s this?” She squinted at the manila folder in my hand as if it might bite her.

“More news articles. I want you to take a look at them. They tell a horrible story, Nana. Murder, fraud, rape, genocide.”

The article I’d given Nana included coverage of the gang’s DC murders. There were two long and well-written stories from the Post, one on each family, including pictures from happier times – like when they’d had their heads.

“Alex, I already told you. I know what’s going on there. I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

“You don’t have to solve every single case. Let it go for once in your life.”

“I wish I could.”

I put the folder flat on her lap, kissed the warm top of her head, and went up to bed. “Stubborn,” I muttered.

“Yes, you are. Very.”

Chapter 30

IN THE MORNING, I went downstairs around five thirty. I was surprised to see that Jannie and Ali were already up. Nana stood fiddling around at the stove with her back to me. She was cooking something cinnamony and irresistible.

I sensed a trap.

Jannie ferried glasses of orange juice from the counter to the table, where there were already silverware and cloth napkins for five.

Ali was already sitting at his place, working on a big bowl of cereal and milk. He saluted me with a drippy spoon. “He’s here!”

Et tu, Ali.

“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” I said, loud enough for the whole room.

Nana didn’t respond, but she had heard me, for sure.

Only then did I notice a yellow-bordered National Geographic map of Africa scotch taped to the refrigerator door.

And also, set down with the napkins and silverware on the table, my passport.

“So,” said Nana. “It was nice knowing you.”

Chapter 31

A CIA OPERATIVE named Ian Flaherty was “babysitting” a hysterical family down in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The parents’ teenaged son and daughter had been kidnapped. They were gathered together in the living room, waiting to learn the ransom demands, and the atmosphere couldn’t have been more desperate.

Oh no, Flaherty had thought.

His cell rang, and everyone crowded into the room looked at him with anxious faces and deep concern.

“I’m sorry, I have to take this. It’s another case,” he said, then walked out into the lush gardens just off the living room.

America was calling – another kind of emergency.

Flaherty recognized the voice on the other end as that of Eric Dana, his superior, at least in rank.

“We have quite a situation on our hands. A homicide detective named Alex Cross is on his way there. He’ll arrive on Lufthansa flight 564 at four thirty p.m. The Tiger is in Lagos?” Dana asked.

“He’s here,” said Flaherty.

“You’ve seen him yourself?”

“I have, actually. Do you want me to meet the detective’s plane?”

“I’ll leave that up to you.”

“Probably be best if I meet him. Alex Cross, you say. Let me think about it.”

“All right, but you have to watch over him. Don’t let anything happen to him… when it can be helped. He’s well liked here and connected. We don’t want a mess over there.”

“Too late for that,” Flaherty said and snickered a nasty, cynical laugh.

He went back to comfort the family whose children were probably already dead.

But they would pay anyway.

Chapter 32

WELL, THE INVESTIGATION had definitely taken a turn now. But was it for better or for worse?

The plane from Washington to Frankfurt, Germany, was nearly full, and it was incredibly noisy for the first hour anyway. I spent some idle time guessing who might be continuing on to Africa, but it wasn’t too long before I fell back into my own dark reveries.

Everything that had led to this trip ran through my head like extended case notes, going all the way back to my Georgetown days with Ellie, and then up to Nana’s grudging consent that morning.

Nana’s going-away gift, such as it was, sat open on my lap. It was a copy of Wole Soyinka’s memoir, You Must Set Forth at Dawn.

She’d bookmarked it with a family photo – Jannie, Damon, and Ali, cheesing with Donald Duck at Disneyland a year or so back – and she had underlined a quotation on the page.

T’agba ha nde, a a ye ogunja.

As one approaches an elder’s status, one ceases to indulge in battles.

It was her version of getting the last word, I suppose. Except that it had the opposite effect on me. I was more determined than ever to make this trip count for something.

Whatever the odds against me, I was going to find the killers of Ellie’s family. I had to; I was the Dragon Slayer.

Chapter 33

“AH, SOYINKA. AN illuminating writer. Have you read him before?”

I didn’t realize that someone had stopped in the aisle alongside my seat. I looked up, though just barely, at the shortest priest I’d ever seen. Not the shortest man, but definitely the shortest priest. His white collar came just to my eye level.

“No, this is my first,” I said. “It was a going-away gift from my grandmother.”

His smile got even brighter, his eyes wider. “Is she a Nigerian?”

“Just a well-read American.”

“Ah, well, nobody’s perfect,” he said and then laughed before there could be any suggestion of an insult. “T’agba ba nde, a a ye ogunja. It’s a Yoruban proverb, you know.”

“Are you Yoruban?” I asked. His accent sounded Nigerian to me, but I didn’t have the ear to tell Yoruban from Igbo from Hausa, or any of the other tongues.

“Yoruban Christian,” he said and then, with a wink, added, “Christian Yoruban, if you ask the bishop. But don’t tell on me. Do I have your word on it?”

“I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe.”

He extended a hand as if to shake, and then sandwiched mine between both of his when I reached out toward him. The priest’s hands were tiny, yet they communicated friendship, and maybe something else.

“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, Detective Cross?”

I pulled my hand back. “How do you know my name?”

“Because if not, considering the trip you’re about to take, now might be a good time to do so. Accept Jesus Christ, that is.”

The priest made the sign of the cross over me. “I am Father Bombata. May God be with you, Detective Cross. You will need His help in Africa, I promise you. This is a very bad time for us. Maybe even a time of civil war.”

He invited me to come sit in the empty seat next to him, and we didn’t stop talking for hours, but he never did tell me how he knew my name.

Chapter 34

EIGHTEEN HOURS – WHICH seemed more like a couple of days – after I left Washington, the flight from Frankfurt finally landed at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, Nigeria.

I had watched the unbelievable, and somewhat hypnotic, sweep of the Sahara from the plane; the savannas that buffered it from the coast; and the equally vast Gulf of Guinea just beyond the city.

Then, as I deplaned onto the tarmac, I suddenly felt like I was in Anytown, USA. It might have been Fort Lauderdale, for all I could tell.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you here, brother.” Father Bombata came up and shook my hand again before we separated.

He had told me he had an escort meeting him to speed up his arrival. “Put two hundred naira in an empty pocket, my friend,” he told me.

“What for?” I asked.

“Sometimes God is the answer. Other times it’s cash.”

Smiling as ever, the diminutive priest gave me his card, then turned and walked away with a final, friendly wave.

I found out what he meant around three hours later, which was the amount of time I had spent sweating on the immigration line. There were just two slow-moving officers at the counter for something like four hundred people.

Some passengers sailed through, while others were detained at the head of the line for as long as thirty minutes. Twice I saw someone taken away by an armed guard through a side door rather than being allowed to go out to the main terminal.

When it was finally my turn, I handed my landing card and passport to the officer.

“Yes, and your passport?” he asked.

I was momentarily confused, but then I remembered what Father Bombata had said and understood. I held a scowl in check. The official wanted his bribe.

I slid two hundred naira across the counter. He took it, stamped me through, and called out for the next person without ever looking at me again.

Chapter 35

THE LOW HUBBUB and frustration of clearing immigration was nothing compared with the instantaneous onslaught of noise and hurrying people that met me when I passed through the hand- and fingerprint-smudged glass doors and into the main terminal at Murtala Muhammed.

There’s where I got my first real indication that I was in a metropolitan area of thirteen million people. I think at least half of them were there at the airport that day.

So this is Africa, I thought. And somewhere out there is my killer, or rather killers.

No fewer than five Nigerian “officials” stopped me on my way to the luggage carousels. Each of them asked for verification of my identity. They all basically said the same thing. “Visa, American Express, any card will do.” Each of them clearly knew I was American. They all required a small bribe, or maybe they thought of it as a gratuity.

By the time I reached the baggage carousel, got my duffel, and pushed back out through the twenty-deep wall of people pressing in, I was tempted to fork over a few more naira to a raggedy-looking kid in an old skycap hat who asked where I wanted my bags taken.

I thought better of it, however, and pushed on, hauling my own luggage, keeping everything close to the chest. Stranger in a strange land, I thought, though I was also strangely pleased to be here. This promised to be quite an adventure, didn’t it? It was completely new territory for me. I didn’t know any of the rules.

Chapter 36

THERE WAS NO relief outside, where the air smelled of diesel, and no wonder: There was a raft of old cars, trucks, and bright yellow buses everywhere that I looked. Locals of all ages walked alongside the traffic, selling everything from newspapers to fruit to children’s clothing and used shoes.

“Alexander Cross?”

I turned around, expecting to see and meet Ian Flaherty, my CIA contact here in Nigeria. The CIA was good at sneaking up on you, right?

Instead, I came face-to-face with two armed officers. These were regular police, I noticed, not immigration. They had all-black uniforms, including berets, with insignia chevrons on the epaulets of their shirts. Both of them carried semiautomatics.

“I’m Alex Cross, yes,” I told them.

What happened next defied all logic. My duffel bag was ripped from my arm. Then my small suitcase. One of the officers spun me around and I felt cuffs on my wrists. Then a hard pinch as they snapped down too tightly.

“What’s going on?” I struggled to turn to look at the policemen. “What is this? Tell me what’s happening.”

The officer with my luggage raised a hand in the air as if he were hailing a cab. A white four-door Toyota truck immediately pulled up to the curb.

The cops yanked open a rear door, ducked my head, and pushed me in, throwing my travel bag after me. One officer stayed on the sidewalk while the other jumped in next to the driver, and we took off.

I suddenly realized – I was being kidnapped!

Chapter 37

THIS WAS SURREAL. It was insane.

“Where are you taking me? What is this about? I’m an American police officer,” I protested from the back of the truck. No one seemed to be listening to a word I said.

I leaned forward in my seat and got a baton hard in the chest, then twice across the face.

I felt, and heard, my nose break!

Blood immediately gushed down my face onto my shirt. I couldn’t believe this was happening – not any of it.

The cop in the front passenger seat looked back at me, wild-eyed and ready to swing the baton again. “You like to keep quiet, white man. Fucking American, fucking terrorist, fucking policeman.”

I had heard that some people here didn’t like American blacks referring to themselves as African American. Now I was feeling it firsthand. I breathed hard through my mouth, coughing up blood and trying to focus though my head was spinning. Humidity and diesel fumes washed over me as the truck weaved through airport traffic, the driver repeatedly sitting on the horn.

I saw a blur of cars, white, red, and green, and several more bright yellow buses. Women were walking on the side of the road with swaddled babies held low on their backs, some of them with baskets balanced on top of their geles. There were a great number of huts in view, but also modern buildings, plus more cars, buses, trucks, and animal-driven carts,

All around me, business as usual.

And business as usual inside this truck, I feared.

Suddenly the cop was on me again. He stretched over the seat and pushed me onto my side. I braced for another strike of his billy club. Instead, I felt his hands patting me down.

Then my wallet was sliding out of my pocket.

“Hey!”I yelled.

He pulled out the wad of cash I had – three hundred American, and another five hundred in naira – then threw the empty wallet back in my face. It sent a shudder of pain deep into my skull.

I coughed out another spray of blood, which hit the seat and earned me another baton strike across the shoulder.

The dark blue nylon sheet covering the backseat suddenly made sense to me. It was there for bloodstains, wasn’t it?

I had no bearings, no idea why this was happening, no idea what to do about it either.

In spite of my own better judgment, I asked again, “Where are you taking me? I’m an American policeman! I’m here on.a murder case.”

The officer barked out something in dialect to the driver. We swerved, and I fell against the car door as we came to a fast stop on the shoulder of the road.

They both got out! One of them tore open the door on my side and I dropped to the ground, cuffed and unable to break my fall.

A world of dust and heat and pain swam around me. I started to cough up dirt.

Powerful hands were under my arms now, lifting. The cop, or whoever he was, brought me up to my knees. I saw a little boy staring from the back of a packed Audi station wagon as it passed.

“You are a brave man. Just as brave as you are stupid, fucking white man.”

It was the driver talking now, stepping in for his turn. He slapped me hard, once across the left side of my face and then back across the right. I struggled to stay upright.

“You two are doing an excellent job–” I was definitely punchy. Already I didn’t care what came next.

It was a hard overhand fist to my temple. I heard a strange crunching sound inside my head, then another.

I don’t know how many closed-fist blows came after that.

I think I passed out at four.

Chapter 38

UNREAL. UNPRECEDENTED. UNBELIEVABLE.

It was dark when I woke up, and I hurt all over, but especially around my nose. At first my mind was blank. I had no idea where I was; not Africa, not anywhere. I just thought How the hell did I get here?

And then, Where is here? Where have I been taken?

My hand went up to my temple. I felt a sharp sting where I touched an open wound, and then I remembered the handcuffs. But they weren’t on my wrists anymore.

I was on my back, on a hard floor, stone or cement maybe.

Someone was looking down at me. I couldn’t make out his expression in the nearly lightless room. I could only tell that he was a dark-skinned man.

Not one man, I realized. Many. A dozen or more men were standing around me. Then I got it! They were prisoners – like me.

“White man is awake,” someone said.

My clothes gave me away, I supposed. They had made me for an American. “White man” was meant to be an insult, one that I had heard already on the trip.

“Where am I?” It came out as a croak. “Water?” I asked.

The one who’d already spoken said, “Not until morning, my friend.” He knelt down and helped me sit up, though. My rib cage felt like it was ready to explode, and I had a monster headache that wasn’t going away by itself.

I saw that I was in a bleak, filthy holding cell of some kind. Even with my nose broken, the smell was unbelievably strong and foul, probably coming from a latrine in some unseen corner. I took shallow breaths through my mouth.

What little light there was came through a grated door on the far wall. The place looked big enough for maybe a dozen of us, but there were at least three times that number, all males.

Many of the prisoners were lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor. A relatively lucky few were snoring away on wall-mounted bunks.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Midnight, maybe. Who knows? What’s the difference to us? We’re all dead men anyway.”

Chapter 39

AS MY HEAD cleared some, I realized that my wallet was gone. And my belt.

And, I realized as I felt around some more, the earring from my left ear. The lobe was scabbed over where a small silver hoop had been, a birthday present from Jannie.

Where had they taken me? How far was I from the airport? Was I still in Nigeria?

Why hadn’t anyone tried to stop them from kidnapping me? Did it happen all the time?

I had no idea about any of these questions, or their answers.

“Are we in Lagos?” I finally asked.

“Yes. In Kirikiri. We are political prisoners. So we have been told. I am a journalist. And you are?”

A metal scrape came from the direction of the door as it was unlocked, then opened wide.

I saw two blue-uniformed guards pause in the light of a cement corridor before they stepped in and became shadows themselves. Seconds later, one of them played a flashlight over us.

It caught me in the eyes and hung there for several seconds.

I felt sure they were here for me, but they grabbed the man two down from me instead. The one who had said he was a journalist.

They pulled him roughly to his feet. Then one of the guards unholstered a pistol and pressed it to his temple.

“No one talks to the American. No one,” the guard told the room. “You hear me?”

Then, as I watched in disbelief, the man was pistol-whipped until he was unconscious. Then he was dragged out of the holding cell.

The reaction of the other prisoners around me was mostly silent acceptance, but a couple of men moaned into their hands. No one moved; I could still hear snoring from a few of them.

I stayed where I was, holding it all in until the vicious guards were gone. Then I did the only thing I could, which was ease back down to the floor, where every shallow, rapid breath produced another slice of pain through my chest.

What kind of hell had I gotten myself into?

Chapter 40

I WISH I could say that my first night in the prison cell in Kirikiri was a blur and that I barely remember it.

It’s just the opposite, though. I will never forget any of it, not one second.

The thirst was the worst, on that first night anyway. My throat felt like it was closing up. Dehydration ate at me from the inside. Meanwhile, oversize mosquitoes and rats tried to do the same from the outside.

My head and torso throbbed like a metronome all night, and a sense of hopelessness threatened to overwhelm me the minute I let my guard down, or, God forbid, slept for half an hour.

I’d read enough from Human Rights Watch to know something about the conditions in this kind of prison but the gap between knowing it and living it was enormous. It was possibly the worst night of my life, and I’d had some bad ones before this. I had spent time with Kyle Craig, Gary Soneji, and Casanova.

As dawn finally came, I watched the single barred window like a television set. Seeing its slow change, from black, to gray, to blue, was as close as I could get to optimism.

Just when the prisoners around me began to stir, the cell door opened again.

A wiry guard stood at the threshold. He reminded me of a very tall grasshopper. “Cross! Alexander!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Cross! Over here! Now!”

It was a struggle to look halfway able-bodied as I slowly rose to my feet. I focused on the pain of my chest hairs being pulled out where they had fused with the dried blood in my shirt. It was just instinct, but it got me up on rubbery legs and across the floor.

Then I followed the guard into the corridor. He turned right, and when I saw the dead end ahead of us, I let go of any thoughts I’d had about getting out of the prison.

Maybe ever.

“I am an American policeman,” I said, starting up my story again. “I’m here investigating a murder.”

And then it struck me – was that why I was in this prison?

Chapter 41

THIS DEFINITELY WAS hell. We passed several foreboding, metal doors like the one to my cell. I wondered how many prisoners were kept here, and how many of them were Americans. Most of the guards spoke some English, which made me suspect that I wasn’t the only American here.

The last door on the ward was the only one without a lock. An old office chair sat in front of it, its seat nearly rusted through.

“Inside,” barked the guard. “Quickly now, go ahead, Detective.”

When I went to move the chair out of the way, he shoved it into my hands. Just as well. It was something to sit on besides the floor, and I didn’t feel much like standing right now.

Once I was in, he closed the door and, from the sound of it, walked away.

This room was similar to the holding cell except that it was maybe half the size and empty. The cement floor and stone walls were streaked dark, which was probably where the putrefying smell came from.

There was no latrine here. Possibly because the whole area had been a latrine at one time.

I looked back at the gray metal door again. Given that there was no lock, was it more foolish to try to get out of here than to just sit and wait for whatever might come next?

Probably not, but I couldn’t be sure about it, could I?

I was halfway to my feet when I heard footsteps again.

I sat back down. The door opened and two police officers came in wearing black uniforms instead of prison-guard blue. My stomach told me it was a bad trade-off.

So did the hard, pissed-off look on the guards’ faces.

“Cross? Alexander?” one barked.

“Could I have some water?” I asked. There was nothing on earth that I wanted more. I could barely speak now.

One officer, in mirror shades, glanced over at the other, who shook his head no.

“What am I charged with?” I asked.

“Stupid question,” said Mirror Shades.

To demonstrate, the second cop walked up and drove his fist into my stomach. My wind was gone, even before I hit the floor like a dry sack.

“Get him up!”

Mirror Shades hoisted me easily, then put his powerful arms around my shoulders from behind. When the next punch came, he kept me from falling over, and also made sure my body absorbed the full impact. I vomited immediately, a little surprised there was anything to bring up.

“I have money,” I said, trying what had worked before in this country, back at Immigration.

The lead cop was huge – as tall as Sampson, with a flopping Idi Amin belly. He looked down the slope of his body right into my eyes. “Let’s see what you have.”

“Not here,” I said. Flaherty, my CIA contact, had supposedly set up a money fund for me in a Lagos bank, which at this point was the equivalent of a million miles away. “But I can get it–”

The lead cop crashed his elbow into my jaw. Then came another wrecking ball of a punch to my chest. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

He stepped back and waved Mirror Shades out of the way. With an agility I wouldn’t have guessed at, the large, fat man kicked high with one boot and caught me square in the chest again. All the air remaining went out of me. I felt as if I’d just been crushed.

I heard, rather than saw, the two guards leave the room. That was it. They left me lying on the floor; no interrogation, no demands, no explanations.

No hope?

Chapter 42

BACK IN THE holding cell, I was given a bowl of cassava and a cup of water, only a few ounces, though. I bolted the water but found I couldn’t eat the cassava, which is an important vegetable throughout Africa. My throat closed when I tried to swallow solid food.

A young prisoner hovered nearby and was staring at me. With my back to the wall, I whispered barely loud enough for him to hear, “You want it?” I held out the bowl.

“We hail the cassava, the great cassava,” he wheezed as he took the bowl. “It’s from a famous poem we learn in school.”

He scrabbled over and sat next to me, both of us watching the door for guards.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Sunday, sir.”

He couldn’t have been more than twenty, if that. His clothes were dirty but seemed middle-class to me, and he had a three-stripe tribal scar on each cheek.

“Here, Sunday. You’d better not be seen talking to me, though.”

“Oh, fuck them,” he said. “What can they do – throw me in a prison cell?”

He ate the cassava quickly, looking around like he expected someone to take it away from him. Or to rush in and beat him.

“How long have you been here?” I asked when he had finished eating.

“I come here ten days ago. Maybe it’s eleven now. Everyone here is new prisoner, waiting for processing.”

This was news.

“Processing? To where?”

“To the maximum-security unit. Somewhere in the country. Or maybe it will be worse. We don’t know. Maybe we all goin’ to a big ditch.”

“How long does it take? The processing. Whatever happens here?”

He looked at the floor and shrugged. “Maybe ten days. Unless you have egunje.”

“Egunje?”

“Dash. Money for the guards. Or maybe someone knows you’re here?” I shook my head no on both counts. “Then you have big wahala, sir. Same as me. You don’t exist. Shhhh. Guard is coming.”

Chapter 43

WHEN THE GUARDS woke me on the third morning, they had to drag me to my feet. I wasn’t going with them willingly. Not to my own execution. My chest still ached from the beating the day before. And my nose felt seriously infected.

This time, it was a left turn out of the cell. I didn’t know if that meant good news or that the bad news had just gotten a lot worse.

I followed the human grasshopper down a steep, stone stairwell, through another corridor, and around several more turns that had me thinking I never would have gotten out of this place on my own.

We finally came outside into an enclosed quad. It was just a wide expanse of sun-bleached earth with a few tufts of weeds and a ten-foot-high fence topped with ribbons of barbed wire. If this was the exercise yard, it was a sad excuse for one.

Anyway, I could barely see anything in the bright light. And it was hot, at least a hundred degrees, give or take ten or twenty.

The guard didn’t stop until he got to the high razor-wire-topped gate on the far side.

A locked door was opened to a passage through a building, through another door, then a gate, and to what looked like a parking area in the distance.

I asked Grasshopper Man what was going on. He didn’t answer. He just opened the door and let me through.

He closed it behind me, locking me into yet another passageway.

“It’s been taken care of,” he said.

“What has?”

“You have.”

He was already walking back the way we’d come, leaving me there. My heart sped up and my body tensed hard. This sure felt like an ending, one way or the other.

Suddenly a door opened on my right. Another guard stuck his head out. He gestured at me impatiently.

“Get in, get in!”

When I hesitated, he reached out and pulled me by the arm. “Are you deaf? Or are you stupid? Get inside.”

The room I entered was air-conditioned. It was like a shock to my skin, and I realized that all he’d wanted was to get the door closed again.

I was standing in a plain office that seemed quite ordinary. In it were two wooden desks and several filing cabinets. A second guard, bent over some paperwork, ignored me. Also present was the first white man I’d seen since arriving at the airport.

He was a civilian dressed in light trousers, a loose button-down shirt, and sunglasses. My guess was CIA.

“Flaherty?” I asked, since he didn’t bother to volunteer any information.

He tossed me my empty wallet. Then finally he spoke. “Jesus, you look like hell. Ready to get out of here?”

Chapter 44

I WAS WAY beyond ready to get out of this nightmarish prison, but I was also stupefied by everything that had happened to me since I had arrived in Lagos.

“What–? How did you find me?” I asked Flaherty before we were even out of the air-conditioned office. “What’s going on? What just happened back there?”

“Not now.” He walked over and opened a door and gestured for me to go out first. The two guards didn’t even look up. One of them was scribbling in a file and the other was jabbering on the phone when we left. Business as usual here in the bowels of hell.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Flaherty took my arm. “You need some help?”

“Jesus, Flaherty. Thank you.”

“They break your nose?”

“Feels that way.”

“Looks it too. I know a guy. Here.” He handed me a small bottle of water and I started to empty it down my throat. “Go slow, fella.”

He steered me over to an old off-white Peugeot 405 parked under a shade tree nearby. My duffel was already in the back seat. “Thank you,” I said again.

Once we were moving, I asked him, “How did you do this?”

“When you didn’t show up on Thursday, I figured there were only a few possibilities. A hundred got me your name. Another five hundred got you out.”

He took a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to me. It was from Citibank, with an address in Lagos. On the back in blue ballpoint was written ACROSS9786EY4.

“You’re going to want to change that pass code. And probably wire in another grand or so if you can.”

“What about my family?” They came rushing into my mind all at once. “Have you spoken with them? Do they know what’s happening?”

“Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not your social worker. I know you probably feel like you’ve been through the eighteenth circle of hell or whatever, but you can’t count on me for this kind of shit. Okay? I don’t mean to be harsh. But that’s the way it is here these days. There’s a lot going on right now.”

He tipped a Camel Light out of a pack, lit it, and blew twin streams of smoke through his nostrils. “You can call them from the hotel. Your family.”

“I’m moved by your compassion.”

He grinned straight ahead. I guess we understood each other. Mine was obviously not the saddest or worst story Ian Flaherty had heard in Lagos. Probably not by a long shot.

“You have any food in this car?” I asked him.

He reached over and popped the glove compartment. There was a chocolate protein drink in a can. It was warm and a little gritty, and nothing had ever tasted better to me.

I threw my head back, closed my eyes, and tried for the first time in three days to relax and, maybe, think in straight lines about the murder investigation and what had just happened to me.

Chapter 45

A HEAVY THUD woke me from a hot, sweaty, and unpleasant sleep.

Maybe only a few minutes had passed. My eyes jerked open just in time to see an old Adidas sneaker bounce off the roof and onto the hood of the Peugeot.

“What the fuck?” Flaherty craned his head around.

We were caught in a bad traffic jam, with cars as far as I could see in front or behind us. “Area Boys. I should have guessed.” He frowned and pointed.

I saw them in the side mirror first. There were at least half a dozen of them. Teenagers, it looked like. They were going from car to car, passing some and stopping at others, robbing drivers and passengers.

“Area Boys?” I asked.

“Like gangbangers, without the bling. Just cockroach thugs. Don’t worry about them.”

Two cars back, a flat-faced boy in an old Chicago Bulls jersey reached into someone’s driver’s-side window and threw a punch. Then his hand came out holding a briefcase.

“We should do something, shouldn’t we?” I reached for the door handle, but Flaherty pulled me back.

“Do what? Arrest all of them? Put‘em in the trunk? Just let me handle this.”

Another kid, shirtless with a shaved head and an angry spray of zits across his face, ambled up alongside our car. He leaned halfway into Flaherty’s window and raised his fist.

“Give me ya fuckin’ wallet, oyinbo man,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Give it now!”

Flaherty’s hand was already reaching down under the seat. He pulled out a Glock and pointed it at the kid from his lap.

“How about you give me your fuckin’ wallet, sucko?” he snapped. The kid stepped back, both hands up, with a sneer on his face. “Or maybe I should say boy, boy. That’s right, keep moving before I change my mind.”

“Not this one, bros,” the kid called out to his friends and made a thumb and forefinger gun for them.

One of them drummed on the trunk anyway as they passed, but they kept going. Nobody else bothered us.

Flaherty saw that I was staring at him.

“What? Listen, when I come to DC, you can tell me what’s what. Okay? Meanwhile, just try to remember where you are.”

I turned and looked through the windshield and saw another driver getting robbed while we just sat there.

“Hard to forget,” I said.

Chapter 46

I REALIZED WITH a jolt that my investigation could actually continue now, and that it was going to be something like a criminal investigation on Mars. That’s how different life was here in Nigeria at this point in time.

The Superior Hotel, where Flaherty dropped me, was sprawling. There wasn’t too much else to recommend it. It had probably been quite something in the fifties, or whenever. Now it had chipped stucco walls and a steady crew of locals in the parking lot hawking T-shirts, electronics, and phone cards.

It was also right near the airport. Three days in Nigeria, and I’d managed one small circle.

“Why’d you bring me here?” I asked as I changed my shirt in the backseat.

“I thought you might want to catch a plane in the morning. One can always hope.”

“A plane to where?”

“To home, duh. You should leave now, Detective Cross. Before they get serious about hurting you. You’re not going to get to the Tiger, but he could get to you.”

I stopped talking and stared at Flaherty. “The Tiger?”

Chapter 47

“THAT’S HIS NAME, Detective Cross. Didn’t you know? Actually, several of these gang bosses are called Tiger. But our guy was the first.”

“So, do you know where he is?”

“If I did, I’d take you there right now and get this over and done with.”

I tossed my bloodied shirt into a trash can and picked up my duffel. “What time can I meet you tomorrow?”

Flaherty grinned just a little. I think it was partial approval. “I’ll call you.”

“What time?”

“As early as I can. Get some rest. If you’re not here in the morning, I’ll know you’re actually sane.”

Before he took off, I borrowed some cash so I could pay for the first night at the Superior and also buy a phone card.

Forty-five minutes later, I was showered and fed, and waiting for my overseas call to go through.

The room was definitely nothing special. It was maybe 10 x 15, with chipped stucco walls, and the occasional water bug for company.

The bellhop hadn’t been surprised to find the bathroom sink fixtures gone. He promised new ones soon. I didn’t really care. After jail, the room felt like the presidential suite to me.

When Jannie answered the phone and I heard her voice for the first time, a lump rose in my throat. I forgot about the fact that my nose was throbbing and sporadically leaking blood.

“Well, look who’s not in school today,” I said, trying to keep it light and bright.

“It’s Saturday, Daddy. Are you losing track of time over there? You sound like you have a cold, too.”

I touched my sore and broken nose. “Yeah, I guess I’m a little stuffed up. I’ll live. I’m actually staying at one of the best hotels in town.”

“Alex, is that you?” Nana was on the extension now, and more than a little peeved, I could tell. “Where have you been for three days? That’s unacceptable behavior to me.”

“I’m sorry, Nana. It’s been a lot harder getting a line out than I thought,” I said and then started asking a lot of questions to avoid any more of my not quite lies.

Jannie told me about the fruit flies in her science experiment and about some new neighbors on Fifth Street. Nana was worried that the boiler noise in the basement was the same one that had cost nine hundred dollars the last time.

Then Ali got on to tell me that he could lind Nigeria on the map and that the capital was Lagos, and he knew what the population was more than one hundred thirty-five million.

Then Nana said she was going to put Bree on.

“She’s there?” I was a little surprised. Bree had planned on moving back to her apartment while I was away.

“Someone’s got to watch over us around here,” Nana said pointedly. “Besides, she’s one of us now. Bree is family.”

Chapter 48

I LIKED WHAT Nana had just said and also the sound of Bree’s voice when she got on the line. I heard a door close and knew we were being given some privacy.

“Finally,” I said.

“I know. Nana’s tough, isn’t she? But she can be sweet too.”

I laughed. “She’s pulling punches because you’re there. She’s manipulating you already.”

“Speaking of which, don’t bullshit me now, Alex. Where have you been for the past three days?”

“Detective Stone, is that you?” I said. “I guess you missed me?”

“Of course I did. But I asked a serious question. I’ve been worried sick for three days. We all have, especially Nana.”

“Okay, here’s what happened, and it’s part of the case. It has to be. I was arrested at the airport.”

“Arrested?” Bree said it in a whisper that registered new concern. “By who? At the airport? On what possible gounds?”

“On the grounds that due process is a relative concept around the world, I guess. I was in a holding cell for two and a half days. They never charged me with anything.”

Her voice slipped a little – more Bree and less Detective Stone. “How bad was it?”

“Scale of ten, I’d give it a fifteen, but I’m mostly okay now. I’m at the Superior Hotel. Of course, that’s just a name. There’s nothing superior about this joint.”

I looked out the window, where dark thunderheads were rolling in over the gulf. The pool area, ten stories down, was starting to clear out. It was hard to believe I’d woken up in Kirikiri just that morning.

“Listen, Alex, I don’t know if you want to hear this right now, but we had another multiple last night. Another family was slaughtered over in Petway. This time, the parents were Sudanese nationals.”

I sat down on the bed. “Same MO as the first two?” I asked.

“Yeah. Large knives, possibly machetes, extreme malice. Just ugly for the sake of ugly, cruel for the sake of cruel. Whether or not your boy and his gang were here, I’ll bet his people were involved.”

“Apparently the murderer is called the Tiger. So I’m playing Catch a Tiger. He could have ordered a hit from anywhere.”

“That’s right. Or he could be back in Washington, Alex. You could be over there, while he’s here.”

Before I could respond, there was a sudden flash from outside and a huge smack of thunder overhead. The lights in the room flickered, then went out, taking the phone with them.

“Bree?” I said. “Bree, are you there?”

But the line was dead. Shit. I hadn’t even told Bree how much I missed her.

I’d seen candles and at least one propane generator in the lobby, so I guess they were used to this kind of thing at the Superior. I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes, figuring I’d go down and check things out if the power didn’t come back on soon.

Meanwhile, what was the upshot of the new murders in DC? And what did they mean for me?

Was the killer I was chasing – the Tiger – still here in Nigeria?

Or had I come all this way… just to get my nose broken?

Chapter 49

MY PHONE WAS ringing.

And ringing.

I finally blinked awake, starting to come out of a deep comalike sleep. The clock flashed 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 on the bedside table next to my face.

It was morning, and the power at the hotel was obviously back on.

When I rolled over to answer the phone, my whole body resisted with an aching stiffness and the pain of severe bruising. It brought everything back into focus. Jail, the beatings, the murder of Ellie and her family, the investigation.

“Alex Cross,” I said.

“Don’t do that.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Flaherty. Don’t answer the phone with your name. You never know who–”

“What time is it?” I asked Flaherty. Too early for a lecture anyway.

I stared up at the ceiling, then down the length of my body. I was still in my clothes, and my mouth felt like paste. My busted nose was throbbing again too. There were bloodstains all over the pillow, both dark and bright red.

“Eleven o’clock. I’ve been calling all morning. Listen. I can give you a couple of hours if you make it soon, and then I’m out on assignment till next Monday.”

“What have you got? Anything at all?”

“Besides the eczema on my ass? I’ve got the closest thing to a cooperative contact you’re going to find in Lagos. You been to the bank yet?”

“I haven’t been to the John yet.”

“Yeah, well, sleep when you’re dead, right? Get yourself a driver. The front desk’ll set it up, but tell them you want it for the day, not by the hour. You’re welcome for the travel tip.

“Go to the Citibank on Broad Street. And tell the guy to take the causeway so it’ll sound like you know what the hell you’re talking about. If you get going, you can make it by one. I’ll meet you there. And don’t be late. Citibank on Broad.”

“Yeah, I got it the first time.”

“I could tell you were a quick study. Get going!”

Chapter 50

BY THE TIME I pulled away from the Superior with a steaming and delicious cup of dark Nigerian coffee in one hand, I felt like someone had hit my “reset” button.

Not counting the way my face looked or half my muscles felt, it was as though I were getting a first day in Africa all over again. I thought about Ellie’s being here just a few weeks ago and wondered what had happened to her. Had she come into contact with the Tiger? If so, how?

There was no case file or intelligence to go over – my clothes and passport and empty wallet had been the only things returned to me – so I spent the slow crawl over to Lagos Island just taking in the sights.

“You know they call Lagos the ‘go-slow city,’” my driver told me with a friendly smile. All the many abandoned cars on the side of the road, he said, came from people running out of gas in perpetual jams, or “go-slows,” as they called them.

Our pace picked up somewhat on the mainland bridge, where I saw downtown Lagos for the first time. From a distance, its cityscape was typical of large cities, all concrete, glass, and steel.

As we got closer, though, it started to look more like something out of an Escher painting, with one impossible cluster of buildings tucked in and around the next, and the next, and the next. The density here – the crowds, the traffic, the infrastructure – was startling to me, and I had been to New York many times and even to Mexico City.

When we finally got to the Citibank on Broad Street, Flaherty was standing out front, smoking. The first thing he said to me was, “Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.” He grinned at his little joke, then said, “You squeamish?”

“Not so much. Why?”

He pointed at my nose. “We can make a quick stop after this. Fix you right up.”

Meanwhile, he said, I should go in and get my replacement cards and also the cash I owed him. Plus whatever I needed for myself and at least two hundred American, in small bills if I could get them.

“What for?” I asked.

“Grease.”

I took him at his word and did what he said. From there, my driver took us across Five Cowrie Creek to the more upscale of the city’s major islands – Victoria – and to a private medical practice on the fifth floor of an office building. Very private.

The doctor saw me right away. He examined my face and then gave me one quick, and excruciating, adjustment. It was the strangest doctor visit I’ve ever had, hands down. There were no questions about my injury and no request for payment. I was in and out in less than ten minutes.

Back in the car, I asked Flaherty how long he’d been based in Lagos. He had obvious juice here, and plenty of it. He also knew enough not to answer my questions.

“Oshodi Market,” he said to the driver, then sat back again and lit another cigarette.

“You might as well chill,” he said to me. “This is gonna be a while, trust me. You know what they call Lagos?”

“The go-slow city.”

He turned down the corners of his mouth and exhaled a cloud of white smoke.

“You learn fast. Some things, anyway.”

Chapter 51

VISUALLY OSHODI MARKET was a lot like the rest of Lagos – crammed end to end with busy, hurrying people, either buying something or selling something, and possibly doing both.

Flaherty curled his way through the crowds and the stalls like a skinny white rat in its favorite maze.

I had to keep my eyes on him to stay with him, but the exotic food smells and the sounds of the market still came through loud and strong. I took it all in – and liked it very much.

There were grilled meats and peanutty things and sweet-spicy stews over open fires, all of it reminding me of how hungry I was. Accents and languages came and went like radio stations, or maybe jazz. Yoruban was the most common; I was starting to pick that one out from among the many others.

I also heard livestock braying from the back of trucks, babies crying in a line for vaccinations, and people continually haggling about prices pretty much everywhere we went in the market.

My pulse ran high the whole time, but in a good way. Faced with squalor or not, I was finally pumped to be here.

Africa! Unbelievable.

I didn’t think of it as my home, but the attraction was powerful anyway. Exotic and sensual and new. Once again I found myself thinking about poor Ellie. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. What had happened to her here? What had she found out?

Flaherty finally slowed at a rug stall. The young seller, negotiating with a man in traditional oatmeal-colored robes, barely glanced over as we walked through the shoulder-high slacks to the back of the stall.

Less than a minute later, he appeared like an apparition at our side.

“Mr. Flaherty,” he said and then nodded at me politely. “I have beer and mineral water in the cooler, if you like.” It felt as though he were welcoming us into his home rather than selling intel in the marketplace.

Flaherty held up a hand. “Just current events, Tokunbo. Today we’re interested in the one called the Tiger. The massive one.” I noticed that the name needed no more explanation than that.

“Anything in the last twenty-four hours gets you twenty American. Forty-eight gets you ten. Anything older than that gets you whatever you’d make selling rugs today.”

Tokunbo nodded serenely. He was like Flaherty’s polar opposite. “They say he’s gone to Sierra Leone. Last night, in fact. You just missed him – lucky for you.”

“Ground or air?”

“By ground.”

“Okay.” Flaherty turned to me. “We’re good here. Pay the man.”

Chapter 52

I HAD PLENTY of other tough questions to ask Tokunbo about the Tiger and his gang of savage boys, but he was Flaherty’s informant, and I followed his protocol. I owed it to him to keep my mouth shut until we were out of earshot anyway.

“What’s with the quick in-and-out?” I said once we had left the rug seller’s stall.

“He’s in Sierra Leone. Dead end, no good. You don’t want to go there.”

“What are you talking about? How do you even know the information’s good?”

“Let’s just say I’ve never wanted my money back. Meanwhile, you’re better off cooling your heels here For a few days, a week, whatever it takes. See the sights. Stay away from the prostitutes, especially the pretty ones.”

I grabbed Flaherty’s arm. “I didn’t come all this way to cool my heels by the hotel pool. I’ve got one target here.”

“You are a target here, my man. You ever hear the saying ‘You’ve got to stay alive to stay in the game’? This is a very dangerous city right now.”

“Don’t be an ass, Flaherty. I’m a DC cop, remember. I’ve done this kind of thing a lot. I’m still standing.”

“Just… take my advice, Detective Cross. He’ll be back. Let him come. You can die then.”

“What’s your advice if I still want to go to Sierra Leone?”

He took a breath, feeling resigned, I think. “He’ll probably go to Koidu. It’s near the eastern border. Kailahun’s a little too hot right now, even for him. If he went over ground, that means he’s trading which means oil, or maybe gas.”

“Why Koidu?”

“Diamond mines. There’s an unofficial oil-for-diamonds trading corridor between here and there. He’s heavily into it, from what I hear.”

“Okay. Anything else I should know?”

He started walking again. “Yeah. You got a best buddy back home? Call him. Tell him where you keep your porn, or whatever else you don’t want your family to find when you’re dead. But hey, have a good trip, and nice knowing you.”

“Flaherty!” I called, but he refused to look back, and when I got outside the market, I found that he’d stranded me there.

So I wandered back inside and bought some fresh fruit-mangoes, guavas, and papayas. Delicious! Might as well live it up while I could.

Tomorrow I would be in Sierra Leone.

Chapter 53

ON A SUN-BEATEN dirt road that twisted through what used to be a forest outside Koidu, a fifteen-year-old boy was slowly choking to death.

Slowly, because that’s exactly how the Tiger wanted it to happen.

Very slowly, in fact.

This was an important death for his boys to watch and learn from.

He closed his grip even tighter on the young soldier’s esophagus.

“You were my number one. I trusted you. I gave you everything, including your oxygen. Do you understand? Do you?”

Of course the boy understood. He’d palmed a stone, a diamond. It was found under his tongue. He was probably going to die for it now.

But not at the Tiger’s hand.

“You.” He pointed to the youngest of the other boy soldiers. “Cut your brother!”

The lad of no more than ten stepped forward and unsheathed a clip-pointed Ka-bar, a gift for him from the Tiger’s trip to America. With no hesitation at all, he shoved the blade into his brother’s thigh, then jumped back to avoid the spurting blood.

The Tiger kept his own hand where it was on the thief’s throat; unable to even scream, the boy just gagged.

“Now you,” he said to the next youngest wild boy. “Take your time. No hurry.”

Each of them took a turn, one at a time, any strike they chose, any kind of blow, except one that would kill the diamond thief. That right belonged to the oldest or at least the one who would now be the oldest. “Rocket,” they called him on account of the bright red Houston Rockets basketball jersey he always wore, rain or shine.

The Tiger stepped back to let Rocket finish the murder. There was no need to hold the thief down anymore; his body was limp and broken, blood pooling in the dust around his shattered face. Black flies and puffy gnats were already settling on the wounds.

Rocket walked around until he was standing over the thieving boy’s head. He was casually rubbing at the fuzz of beard he hadn’t yet begun to shave.

“You shame us all,” he said. “Mostly, you shame yourself. You were number one. Now you are nothing!” Then he fired once from the hip, gangsta-style, like in the American videos he’d watched all his life. “No more trouble with this dumb bastard,” he said.

“Bury him!” the Tiger yelled at the boys.

All that mattered was that the carcass stay out of sight until they were gone. This dead boy was no one to anyone, and Sierra Leone was a country of pigs and savages anyway.

Unclaimed bodies were as common as dirt weeds here.

He put the pilfered diamond back in its black leather canister with the others. This was the package a tanker of Bonny Crude had bought him – and it was a good trade.

Certificates of origin could be easily purchased or faked. The stones would move with no trouble in London or New York or Tokyo.

He called Rocket over from the digging of the grave. “Pull his wireless before you put him in the ground. Keep it with you at all times, even when you sleep.”

Rocket saluted and went back to supervising the others, a bigger swagger in his walk than before. He understood what had just been said. Pull his wireless. Wear it yourself.

He was the Tiger’s new number-one boy.

Chapter 54

MAYBE I ALREADY knew more than I wanted to about the small, sad country called Sierra Leone. The rebels there had murdered more than three hundred thousand people in recent years, sometimes lopping off their hands and feet first, or setting fire to homes where families slept, or tearing fetuses from the wombs of mothers. They created “billboards of terror,” messages carved into the bodies of victims they chose to spare and then used as walking advertisements.

I took something called Bellview Air overnight to Freetown, and then a death-defying prop plane all the way to the eastern border of Sierra Leone, where we landed bumpty-bump on a grassy airstrip serving Koidu. From there, I took one of the two cabs available in the region.

Thirty-six hours after Ian Flaherty warned me not to go, I was standing on the perimeter of Running Recovery, one of several working diamond mines in Koidu.

Whether or not the Tiger had done business with anyone from this particular mine, I didn’t yet know, but Running Recovery had a rotten reputation according to Flaherty.

At home in DC, I’d start by canvassing. So that’s what I decided to do here, one mine at a time if necessary.

I was a detective again.

I already knew that.

Running Recovery was an alluvial diamond field, not really a mine at all. It looked like a miniature canyon to me – two football fields’ worth of pitted and trenched yellow earth, maybe thirty feet at the deepest.

The workers were bent over in the extreme heat, laboring with pickaxes and sieves. Most of them were up to their waists in muddy brown water.

Some looked to be about the size of grammar school kids, and as far as I could tell, that’s what they were. I kept thinking about the Kanye West song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” hearing the rap lyrics in my head. Damon used to listen to the tune a lot, and I wondered now if he or his friends ever considered the true meaning of the words.

Security up top was surprisingly light at the mine. Dozens of stragglers hung around the perimeter, working deals or just watching, like me.

“You a journalist?” someone asked from behind. “What you doin’ here?”

I turned around to find three older men staring hard at me. All three were “war” amputees. They were probably not soldiers, but some of the thousands of civilians who had suffered a kind of trademark brutality during Sierra Leone’s ten-year conflict, largely over control of the diamond industry.

Diamonds had already done to this country the kind of thing that oil was poised to do to Nigeria. There was no harsher reminder of that fact than the men standing in front of me right now.

“Journalist?” I said. “No, but I would like to speak with someone down there in the field, one of the workers. Do any of you know who’s in charge?”

One of them pointed with the rounded stub of an elbow. “Tehjan.”

“He won’t talk to journalist,” said one of the others. Both of that man’s shirtsleeves hung empty at his sides.

“I’m not a journalist,” I repeated.

“It don’t matter nutting to Tehjan. You American, you journalist.”

Given the kind of press coverage I’d seen about these mines, the sensitivity was almost understandable.

“Is there anyone down there who will speak to me?” I asked. “One of the workers? You know any of these men? You have friends down there?”

“Maybe tonight at the hall in town,” said the first man who’d spoken to me. “After the keg comes ’round, tongues loosen up.”

“The town hall? Where would that be?”

“I can show you,” said the most talkative of the amputees. I looked at him and as he held my stare, I wondered how it was that paranoia hadn’t eaten this part of Africa alive. And then I decided to trust him.

“I’m Alex. What’s your name?”

We shook left hands. “I am Moses,” he said.

I had to smile at that and thought of Nana. She would have smiled too and patted him on the back.

Show me the way, Moses.

Chapter 55

I WAS ON the job now, definitely working the case I had come here to solve.

The walk into town took about an hour. Moses told me a lot on the way, though he said he’d never heard of the Tiger. Could I believe him about that? I couldn’t be sure.

Diamond trading for oil, gas, weapons, drugs, and any number of illicit goods was no secret around here. Moses knew that it went on the same way everyone knew that it went on. He’d been a diamond miner himself as a teenager and in his twenties. Until the civil war.

“Now, they call us ‘san-san boys,’” he said. I assumed he meant those who could no longer do the work, like him.

At first I was surprised at the man’s apparent openness. Some of his stories seemed too personal to share with a stranger, especially one who might be an American journalist, or maybe even CIA. But the more he spoke, the more I realized that talking about what had happened to him might be all he had left.

“We lived over that way.” He pointed abstractly in a direction without looking.

“My wife sold palm oil at market. I had two fine sons. When the RUF soldiers came to Kono, they came for us like the others. It was at night, in the rain, so there were no torches. They say to me, if I watch them kill my boys, then they will spare my wife. And when I did as they told, they killed her anyway.”

The RUF was the revolutionary force responsible for the death of thousands. He was devastatingly matter-of-fact about it – a terrible family massacre, not unlike the ones in Washington, I thought.

“And you lived,” I said.

“Yes. They put me on a table and held me down. They asked if I want short or long sleeves for after the war. Then they cut my arm, here.” He pointed, though of course it was obvious what had happened.

“They were to cut the other arm, but then an explosion came from the next house. I don’t know what happened after that. I fell unconscious, and when I woke up, RUF soldiers were gone. And my wife too. They left my murdered sons. I wanted to die, but I did not. It was not yet my time.”

“Moses, why do you stay here now? Isn’t there anywhere else for you to go?”

“There is nowhere else for me. Here at least sometimes there is work. I have my friends, other san-san boys.” He smiled at that revelation for some reason. “This is my home.”

We had walked all the way into town by now. Koidu was a sprawling village of dirt roads and low buildings, still recovering from “the war” six years ago.

I saw a half-finished hospital as we walked, and a mosque in decent shape, but other than that, I found mostly abandoned buildings, burned-out husks of small homes, everywhere I looked.

When I offered Moses money for his trouble, he said he didn’t want it, and I knew not to force it on him.

“You tell the story I’ve told you,” he said. “Tell it to America. Still, there are rebels who would like to kill all of us from the war. They want to make it so no one can see what they did.” He held up what was left of his arm. “So maybe you tell people in America. And they tell people. And people will know.”

“I will, Moses,” I promised. “I’ll tell people in America and see what happens.”

Chapter 56

THE HALL IN town was named, incongruously, Modern Serenity. The name was scrawled in blue on an old wooden sign out front, and it made me think of an Alexander McCall Smith novel, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

Maybe the building had been a church once. Now it was an all-purpose sort of place – one large, dingy room with tables and chairs that started to fill up as the sun went down.

Someone turned on a boom box, and the guy who showed up with a keg of Star Beer dispensed it into previously used plastic cups and took money.

Moses and his friends wouldn’t come inside and let me buy them a drink. They said they’d be kicked out if they couldn’t pay for their own beer. Instead, Moses told me, he’d hang out with some other men around an open fire, singing and talking, not far from the hall, and he pointed in the direction where he’d be.

I spent the next few hours casually asking around and mostly getting nowhere. Even the few people who would talk to me about mining shut up as soon as I moved my questions anywhere else… such as to the subject of the illegal diamond trade.

Twice I noticed men in camos and flip-flops licking their palms. Diamonds for sale, they were saying. You need only swallow them to get them out of the country. Both of them stopped and spoke with me, but just long enough to figure out I wasn’t selling or buying.

I was starting to think this night might be a washout, when a teenage kid came over and stood next to me against the wall.

“I hear you lookin’ for someone,” he said, loud enough just for me. Busta Rhymes was doing his thing on the boom box at high volume.

“Who do you hear I’m looking for?”

“He’s already gone, mister. Left the country, but I can’t tell you where he is. The Tiger.”

I looked down at the kid. He was maybe five foot nine, muscled, and cocky-looking. Younger than I’d first thought too – sixteen or seventeen maybe. Barely older than Damon. Like a lot of teenagers I’d seen on the continent, he wore an NBA jersey. His was a Houston Rockets jersey, an American basketball team that had once featured an excellent player from Nigeria named Hakeem Olajuwon.

“And who are you?” I asked the boy.

“You wanna know more ’bout anything, it’s a hundred dollars American. I’ll be outside. It’s dangerous to talk in here. Too many eyes and ears. Outside, mister. We talk out there. One hundred dollars.”

He pushed off from the wall and pimp-strutted toward the front door, which was wide open to the street. I watched him drain his cup of beer, drop it on a table, and leave the hall.

I had no intention of letting him get away, but I wasn’t going to walk outside the way he wanted me to either. It was his accent that told me what I needed to know. Not Sierra Leonean. Yoruban. The boy was from Nigeria.

I counted thirty, then slipped out the back of Modern Serenity.

Chapter 57

SURVEILLANCE. I WAS decent at it, always had been good at keeping a step ahead of an opponent. Even, hopefully, some as tricky and dangerous as the Tiger and his gang.

I worked a wide perimeter around to the front. When I got to the corner of the neighboring building, I had a pretty clear view of the town hall entrance.

The kid in the red Houston Rockets jersey was standing off to the side with another, younger boy. They were facing different directions, surveying the street while they talked.

An ambush? I had to wonder.

After a few minutes, the older one went back inside, presumably to look for me. I didn’t wait to make my next move. If he had half a brain, he’d go exactly the way I’d just come.

I skirted the dirt intersection and changed position, moving to a burned-out doorway on the opposite corner of the street. It was attached to the black concrete skeleton of whatever the building had once been, possibly a general store.

I pressed back into the empty door frame and hung there out of sight, watching, doing the surveillance as best I could.

Considering that I was working on Mars.

Sure enough, Houston Rockets came out a minute later, then paused right where I had been standing before.

His partner ran over and they conferred, nervously looking around for me.

I decided that as soon as they made a move, I’d follow them. If they split up, I’d stick with the older one, Rockets.

That’s when a voice came from directly behind me.

“Hey, mister, mister. Want to buy a stone? Want to get your skull crushed in?”

I turned, and before I saw anyone in the dark, something hard and heavy clocked me in the head; a rock or a brick, maybe.

It stunned me and I fell to one knee. My vision whited out, then went black before it started to come back.

Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the street into a building. Then more rough hands – I didn’t know how many – forced me to the ground and flat on my back.

My awareness swam in fast circles. I was working hard to get my bearings. I could feel several people gripping my arms and legs, holding me to the floor with their strong, lithe bodies.

As my vision got a little sharper, it was still hard to make any of them out in the dark. All I saw were vague, small shadows, but lots of them.

All the size of boys.

Chapter 58

“YO!” ONE OF the threatening shadows called out with a voice too cocky and young to be anything but a street punk’s. “Over here! We got di bastard good now.”

I was flying blind, almost literally, but I refused to go down for the count so easily. I figured that if I did, I was probably dead.

I shook off whoever was on my right arm and swung at whoever had my left. None of them was stronger than me, but collectively they were like fly paper covering every inch of my body. I fought even harder, fighting for my life, I knew.

I finally struggled to get halfway to my feet, each leg carrying an extra hundred pounds, when the other two bangers from the street came running in.

One of them shined a flashlight on me; the other smashed the butt of a pistol into my face.

I felt my nose snap. Again!

“Sonofabitch!” I yelled.

The blinding pain ran up into my brain and seemed to spread through my whole body. It was worse than the first time, if that was possible. My first thought was, You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

The killer boys swarmed all over me, half as many this time, and brought me down. A sneakered foot came to rest on my forehead.

Then I felt the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed hard into my cheek.

“He da one?” someone asked.

A flashlight’s bright light sent another spike of pain through my eyes.

“He da one, Azi.” I recognized the voice from the town hall. The speaker crouched down next to my head. “Listen, we gonna send you out of here with a message. No one fuck with us, you understand?”

I tried to raise my head and he fired a shot into the ground right next to my temple. “You understand?”

I stopped straining and lay back. I couldn’t hear in one ear. Was I deaf in an ear now too? It was the pistol that kept me where I was. More than anything, I was seething mad.

“Go ahead,” the lead punk said. I saw the silhouette of a long blade in somebody’s hand. A machete, I thought.

Jesus, no!

Houston Rockets leaned in close again, rubbing his pistol up and down my temple. “You move, you die, Captain America. You stay still, most of you goin’ home.”

Chapter 59

“THIS GONNA HURT real bad. You gonna scream like baby girl. Starting now!”

They pulled my arm out straighter and held it tight so I couldn’t move. Either they were getting stronger, or I was starting to lose it. I had never been closer to panic in my life.

“At the joint, Azi. Less bone,” said Rocketman in the coolest, calmest tone.

The blade touched the crook of my arm softly once. Then the machete was raised high. They boy called Azi grinned down at me, enjoying this like the psychopath that he was.

No way. No way. Not going to happen, I told myself.

I wrenched my arm free and rolled hard to one side. The machete whiffed and the pistol fired, ringing sharply.

But at least I wasn’t hit. Not yet, anyway.

I wasn’t done. Or even started. I entwined my arm with the shooter’s and snapped his wrist. I heard it break, and the gun fell from his hand.

The first one to get to it was me!

Everything was shadows and noisy chaos after that. The punks were all over me again, which was lucky in a way. I think it kept the machete blade away long enough for me to get off a warning shot.

Then I scrambled up, my back to the door. “Get over there!”

I shouted, motioning with the gun. I had them covered, but it was dark, and the layout of the building was a complete mystery to me. They would figure that out soon.

Sure enough, Rockets barked an order.

“Go! Outside!”

Two of the gang whipped away in opposite directions. One of them vaulted out an empty window frame. I didn’t see where the other one went.

“What you gonna do, man?” Rockets said with a shrug. “Can’t kill us all.”

“I can kill you,” I told him.

The others were doubling around behind me, I knew. I was either going to have to start shooting these boys or run like hell.

I ran!

Chapter 60

I HAD ENOUGH of a head start and enough cover from the darkness to get out of sight fast. Suddenly I could smell a combination of things – burning, rotting, and growing – all at the same time. I flew down a couple of dirt streets and around a corner and eventually saw the light of a fire in a vacant lot.

Moses? I was in the vicinity of where he’d said he’d be.

I threw myself down in a stand of high weeds and waited for the thugs to run past. They shouted as they went, one small group to another, splitting up and looking for their prey – me.

It was difficult to accept that boys this young could be hardened killers, but they were.

I’d seen it in their eyes, especially Rockets’s. That boy had definitely killed before.

I waited several minutes. Then, keeping low, I cut around behind the fire until I was close enough to call out quietly.

Thank God Moses was there! He and his friends were eating crumbly rice and homemade peanut butter. He was tentative at first, until he saw who it was skulking in the tall brush.

“Come with me, sah,” he told me in hushed tones. “It’s not safe for you to be here now. Boys lookin’ for you. Bad boys everywhere.”

“Tell me about it.” I wiped a stream of blood from my face with the back of my arm, forgetting how much it was going to hurt it. “Shit!”

“It’s not much, ya’ll be okay,” said Moses.

“Easy for you to say.” I forced a grin.

I followed him through the back of the lot and up the next road to a narrow side street. We were in a shabby tenement neighborhood, one long row of mud-brick hovels. Several huts had people in front, cooking and tending fires, socializing at this late hour.

“In here, sah. This way, please. Hurry.”

I kept my head down and followed Moses through an open doorway into one of the huts. He lit a kerosene lamp and asked me to sit down.

“My home,” he said.

The place was just one room with a single window cut into the back wall. There was a thin mattress on the floor, and a jumble of cookware, some clothing, and caved-in cardboard boxes stacked in the corners.

Moses deftly tossed a dirty cloth onto two hooks over the open doorway and said he’d be right back. Then he was gone again. I had no idea where he’d gone or even if I could trust him.

But what choice did I have right now? I was hiding out for my life.

Chapter 61

IT TOOK A minute for me to catch my breath, and to check out the handgun I’d grabbed from the gang of boys. It was a subcompact Beretta, not a cheap piece. The magazine had the capacity for only seven rounds, and five were gone. With luck, I wouldn’t need the other two to get through tonight. Make that – with a lot of luck.

I was sweating profusely and I was scared. No way around it. I’d almost lost an arm back there. Things could easily have gone the other way. Talk about close calls.

I heard a noise outside and raised the Beretta. Who was there? Now what was happening?

“Don’ shoot me, sah.” It was Moses, and he had a small pot of water. He gave me a rag to clean my face.

“What do you do now?” he asked me.

It was a good question. My instincts told me Houston Rockets hadn’t lied; the Tiger was already gone. Most likely he was on his way to Nigeria with his diamonds. I’d missed him again. The killer and gang leader was no fool.

“I guess I need to see about a flight out of here in the morning,” I said to Moses.

“The airport is small, sah. They can easily find you there. The boys, or maybe police.”

He was right about that. It wasn’t even an airport; it was just an airstrip with no cover anywhere that I could remember.

For that matter, I still didn’t know who had arranged my little “Welcome to Lagos” party the first time around. If the Tiger knew where I was – and I had to assume he did now – I could be setting myself up for another round of the same hospitality, maybe with a worse ending.

Suddenly shouting rose up outside. Young men’s voices. It was hard to tell how many – at least half a dozen, I was sure.

Moses ducked his head out the open doorway, then came back in and blew out the lantern.

“They are here,” he said. “You should go. You must go, sah.”

I had to agree, if for no other reason than to keep Moses out of this terrible mess.

“Tell me when it’s clear.”

He hung in the door sideways, watching. I stood opposite, ready to bolt at his signal.

“Now!” He motioned me out to the left. “Go now! Go quickly.”

I darted across a narrow road and straight up another dirt alley. The next street I came to was wider, but completely deserted. I turned left and kept going that way.

It wasn’t until then that I realized Moses was still with me.

“This way.” He pointed straight into the dark. “I know where you can buy a truck.”

Chapter 62

I FOLLOWED THE brittle-looking, one-armed man to an old stone house on the outskirts of the village, back toward Running Recovery. It was at least eleven o’clock by now, but the house lights were still on. I wondered if Moses was an anomaly, or if many people around here would help a stranger, even an American. From what I’d heard, most of the people in Sierra Leone and Nigeria were good, just victims of circumstances and greed.

A salt-and-pepper-haired man answered the door. “What do you want?” he asked.

A brood of kids was clustered behind him, trying to see who had come to the house in the middle of the night.

“The American wants to buy a vehicle,” Moses said simply. “He has cash for it.”

I hung back at first, at Moses’ advice. Before I offered any money, we needed to see exactly what our options were.

“You’re lucky,” the man at the door said and smiled thinly.

“We stay open late.”

The best of the old wrecks he had out back was an ancient Mazda Drifter, with a tattered canopy over the bed and an empty space in the dash where the odometer used to be.

But the engine turned over, gingerly, on the first try. And the price was right – five hundred in leones.

Plus, he didn’t mind our spending the night right there in the truck.

I told Moses he had done more than enough and that he should go home, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He stayed with me until morning and then went out to secure the few things he said I’d need for my safe journey, including a police clearance sheet to leave the country.

While I waited, the gravity of this trip back started to sink in. I had to cover more than a thousand miles of unfamiliar countryside to Lagos, over multiple borders, with no more guidance than the maps that Moses only hoped he’d be able to find for me.

So when he came back, I had a proposition for him.

“Make this trip with me and you can keep the truck,” I said. “As a fair trade for your services.”

I expected a conversation, or at least a pause, but there was none.

He hoisted a goatskin bag of provisions from his shoulder into the truck, then handed me back the money he hadn’t spent.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I will do it.”

Chapter 63

“SAMPSON?”

“Yeah?”

“This sucks big-time, you know that? I hate you.”

“Should have called tails, Bree.”

The house on Eighteenth Street was quiet now, not the nasty hive of activity it had been on the night of the murders. Today, this morning, Bree and Sampson had it to themselves. Not that either one of them wanted to be here at the crime scene.

That was why they’d tossed a coin on the front stoop.

Sampson got the master suite.

Bree got the children’s bedroom.

She blew into a latex glove, put it on, and unlocked the door, letting it swing to a stop before she stepped inside. Then she put her head down and hurried upstairs.

“I hate you, John,” she called out.

The kids’ bodies were gone, of course, but there was the residue of printing powder everywhere. Otherwise, the murder scene looked the same: matching yellow comforters soaked through with blood; wide spatter pattern on the bunk bed, rug, walls, and ceiling; two small desks on the opposite wall, undisturbed, as if nothing unspeakable had happened here.

Ayana Abboud had been ten. Her brother, Peter, seven.

The hit on their father, Basel Abboud, was a hell of a lot easier for Bree to comprehend. His columns in the Washington Times had been an early and insistent voice for US military intervention in Darfur, with or without UN Security Council buy-in. He wrote of widespread bribes and corruption both in Africa and Washington. By definition, the man had enemies on at least two continents.

The kind of enemies who go after your wife and kids while they’re at it? It sure looked that way. All four of them had been slaughtered in their house.

Bree turned a slow three-sixty, trying to see it all for the first time again. What jumped out at her now? What had they missed before? What would Alex see if he were here instead of in Africa?

Africa! For the first time, it made some sense to her for him to be there. This kind of violence – Africa was where it came from. This warning could only be fully understood in the context of Lagos, Sierra Leone, Darfur.

Certainly, the killers made no pretense of covering their tracks or hiding anything. Patent prints were visible everywhere that there was blood. Hundreds of latents had turned up as well, all over the house – the walls, the beds, the bodies of the dead.

Food had been hastily consumed in the kitchen: the remains of a pork chop dinner, Neapolitan ice cream scooped from a tub, soda pop, and liquor.

Imagine the level of stupidity, or the indifference to being caught, tried, and sentenced to lifetime in prison for these unspeakable murders.

Bree didn’t need results to know that none of these prints would flag in the FBI’s fingerprint ID system. Her best guess was that the killers were young African nationals with no priors in the US and, most likely, no record of having entered the country either. Some of them would probably match prints taken at Eleanor Cox’s home, some would not. They were savage ghosts whom someone older could use to do his dirty work, she thought. Very efficient. And very much fucked up in their heads. God, she hated him – whoever was behind this!

She came full circle and was staring at the children’s beds again when a soft tap-tap sounded at the dormer window behind her.

Bree wheeled around and nearly cried out in surprise. She had always had a fear of getting shot in the back.

A young boy, small and wide-eyed, hung on to the fixed burglar bars outside, and he was looking in at her. When their eyes met he let go of the bars with one arm and beckoned her over.

“I saw the bad murders. I saw every thing,” he said in a quiet voice meant only for her. “I know who the killers are.”

Chapter 64

“PLEASE? I CAN tell you what happened in the house. Everything.” The boy’s small voice came muted through the glass. Bree was thinking that he couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.

He was either scared or a good little actor or maybe he was both.

Sampson was in the bedroom behind her now. Neither of them drew a weapon; not that they trusted the boy for a second.

Bree had a hand on her piece.

“Tell me what you know about this,” she said.

She and Sampson approached the window from opposite angles. Bree moved in first. She had to duck her head to get inside the dormer alcove.

From here, she could see that the boy had his feet on a lip of decorative brickwork outside.

Beneath that was the roof of the back porch, and a small, November-dead garden maybe ten feet below.

“No further,” the boy warned, “or I run away. I can run very fast. You never catch me.”

“Okay. Let me get this out of the way, though.”

The old rope-and-pulley window sash took some coaxing, but finally Bree forced it up about six inches.

“What are you doing out there?” she asked.

“I know how it happened. They kill the girl and boy in dis very room. The others down de hall.”

His accent was African. Nigerian was Bree’s guess.

“How do you know so much?” she asked. “Why should I believe you?”

“I am the lookout, but soon they will make me go with them to kill others.” He looked past Bree and Sampson to the scene inside. “I do not want to do dis. Please – I am Cat’lic.”

“It’s all right,” Bree told him, “You don’t have to hurt anyone. I’m Catholic too. Why don’t you come down from there, and we can–”

“No” He took a hand off again, threatening to jump and run. “Don’t try nah tricks on me!”

“Okay, okay.” Bree held up her hands, palms out. Then she knelt down a little closer. “Just talk to me. Tell me more. What’s your name?”

“Benjamin.”

“Benjamin, do you know anything about a man they call the Tiger? Was he here?” Alex had told her about the Tiger during their phone call. Supposedly the killer was in Africa now, but maybe Alex’s information was wrong.

The boy nodded slowly. “I know, yes.” Then he said, “More than one, though. Not just one Tiger.”

That certainly stunned Bree and she assumed it would surprise the hell out of Alex too.

“Many men are called the Tiger?” she asked. “You’re sure about that?”

Another nod from the boy.

“Here in Washington?”

“Yes. Maybe two or three.”

“And in Nigeria?”

“Yes.”

“How many Tigers, Benjamin? Do you know?”

“They do not tell me, but there are many. Bosses of gangs are all Tigers.”

Bree looked over her shoulder at Sampson, then back again at the boy. “Benjamin, do you want to hear a secret?”

The question seemed to confuse him. His eyes went from side to side; he looked down again, checking his escape route.

And when he did that, Bree moved. Fast! Much faster than Benjamin thought she could.

Chapter 65

SHE REACHED IN through the bars and got her hand around the lookout’s skinny wrist.

“Sampson, go!”

“Let go of me!” the boy yelled at her.

He tried to step away, and his weight wrenched her arm against the bar. There was no leverage from this angle. She could only try to ignore the pain, and hold on until Sampson got to the boy from below. Hurry, John, I’m losing him!

“Benjamin, we can keep you safe. You need to come with us.”

He screamed at her. “No, fuckin’ bitch! You lied to me!”

His transformation was startling. The scared eyes had gone fierce. He clawed at her hand and drew blood. Had he lied to her? Was he one of the killers?

Finally, Bree could hear Sampson’s feet pounding somewhere outside. Faster, John!

Just when she thought her arm might break the kid twisted free. He dropped to the porch roof and all but bounced another eight feet to the ground.

Two quick strides and then he was scrambling up a small ash tree, barely big enough to support his weight, much less an adult’s.

Just as Sampson came running around the back, the boy flipped sideways over the top of a high cedar fence into a service alley beyond.

Seconds later, Bree came out the front door.

There was no gate to the alley. They had to sprint back through the house, out another door, and around the block just to find out what they already knew: The boy named Benjamin was long gone.

The so-called lookout for the murders had gotten away from them.

Five minutes later, they had an APB out, but Bree wasn’t holding her breath. Her thoughts had already turned to Alex, and how to reach out to him.

“He needs to know about this. Like, last week. Only I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t even know where he is now.”

Chapter 66

THIS PART OF Africa wasn’t recommended for backpacking or camera safaris. The yowl of hyenas was a constant reminder of where I was now. So were the road signs that said things like warning-lions-crocodiles!!

Getting out of Sierra Leone and back to Nigeria was proving to be even more complicated than I had expected. And dangerous too, treacherous at almost any curve.

Like right now. Two military-issue jeeps sat nose-to-nose across the road, blocking our way. This was no ordinary border crossing, though. We were less than an hour outside Koidu.

“Are these guys actually government?” I asked Moses. “Any way to tell?”

He shrugged and shifted uncomfortably on the seat of the Drifter. “Could be RUF.”

There were six of them by my count, all wearing a mix of fatigues and street clothes and the familiar flip-flops. All of them were armed, including a mounted gunner in the back of one of the jeeps.

A lanky guy in a maroon beret came striding over to my window. His eyes were bloodshot, like he might have been stoned. He raised his rifle with one arm and held out the other hand.

“Papers.”

I played it cool for now and showed him the police clearance and my passport.

He barely looked at them. “Fifty dollars. To pay for your visa.”

Whether these men were government officers or not, I knew right then that this was grift, pure and simple. A holdup.

I raised my gaze and looked into his red eyes. “I just spoke with the US embassy in Freetown this morning. Deputy Ambassador Sassi assured me himself that my papers were in good order. So what’s the problem here?”

He stared back hard at me, but I didn’t flinch. Two of the other guards started over from the side of the road, but he held up a palm to save them the trouble.

“Still, it is ten for the passenger. Twenty, if it’s in leones.”

Somehow, we both knew I’d pay that one. I didn’t want to push my luck. I gave him two American fives and we were on our way – to the next roadblock anyway.

We hit four of them before the actual border crossing. Each rite of passage went about the same. It got easier as we went, cheaper anyway, and by the time we finally crossed at Bo Waterside to Liberia, I’d paid out only another fifteen bucks or so.

The precious thing we did lose was time.

We didn’t get into Monrovia until after dark, and with no guarantee of supplies east of there, we had to spend the night.

I worried through the night and didn’t sleep very well.

We were safe so far, but the speed we were traveling was no Tiger’s pace.

He was getting away again.

Chapter 67

WE DROVE ALL the next day and into the second night, alternating at the wheel, trying to make up time. As we traveled, Moses told me that he was representative of most people here – not the RUF, and certainly not the Tiger and his murderous gang.

“There are many good people in Africa, sah, and no one to help them fight back against the devils,” he said.

Less than half an hour east of Monrovia, we passed the last billboard and radio tower and entered dense rain forest that went on for hours.

Sometimes it opened up into clear-cut fields, with stumps like grave markers for miles in every direction.

Mostly, though, the road was a tunnel of bamboo, palm, mahogany, and vine-choked trees such as I’d never seen before – with leaves and low scrub slapping and slathering the sides of the truck as we pushed through.

Late in the afternoon, we were near the coast, driving through tidal flats and then wide swaths of open grassland that were the antithesis of the jungle we’d just left.

I saw a huge colony of flamingos around sunset, thousands and thousands of stunningly beautiful birds, an incongruous sea of pink in the orangish light.

Finally we had to stop for the evening. We were both too tired to drive. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how many fathers got to tell their kids they’d spent a night in a real African jungle.

Chapter 68

I WOKE UP some hours later. Moses was already laying out breakfast on the tailgate of the Drifter.

Canned sausages, a couple of bruised tomatoes, and a two-liter jug of water to sip from.

“Looks good,” I said. “Thank you, Moses.”

“There is a river. Over there if you wish to wash up.” he pointed with his chin to the opposite side of the road. I noticed his shirt was soaking wet. “It is not far.”

I bushwhacked with my arms, skirting a huge knot of thorny scrub the way Moses had obviously done before me.

About twenty-five yards in, the brush opened up and I came out onto a mud-and-gravel bank.

The river itself was a wide, murky green piece of glass. I could barely tell it was moving. I took a step toward the water and sank up to my ankle mud.

When I pulled back, the mud sucked the shoe right off my foot. Shit. I’d wanted to clean myself up, not get filthier.

I looked up and down the bank, wondering where Moses had gone to wash.

First, I needed my shoe back, though. I reached down into the guck and felt around. It was actually nice and cool down there.

Suddenly the water in front of me boiled up. Some thing rough, like a huge log, came to the surface very, very quickly.

And then I saw that it was a full-blown, honest-to-God crocodile. Its black eyes were set on me. Breakfast was on the table.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Good-bye shoe. Good-bye leg or arm?

I stepped back ever so slowly. So far, the croc showed just a layer of tiled skin at the water’s surface. I could see the bulge of its snout. The great beast’s eyes didn’t leave me for a second.

Never taking a breath, I kept inching backward.

On the next step though, my foot turned in the mud. I fell! Like it had received a cue, the crocodile sprang forward.

Nine, ten, maybe as much as twelve feet long, it surged out of the water, slashing in and out of an S-shape as it leapt straight at me.

I tried to pull in my legs, if only to postpone the inevitable savage bite. How could this have happened? Everyone had been right– I shouldn’t have come to Africa.

Suddenly a shot exploded behind me!

Then a second shot!

The huge croc let out a strange, high-pitched noise that was part scream, part gasp. It reared up off its front legs, then smacked back down into the mud. I could see a red ooze on the side of its head. It thrashed once more, then rapidly backed away into the river and disappeared.

I turned to see Moses standing behind me. He was holding the Beretta.

“I am so sorry, sah. I meant to say that you should take this with you. Just in case.”

Chapter 69

AFRICA! WAS THERE anywhere in the world like it? I didn’t think so.

We reached Porto Novo the next day and decided it would be best if I took the bus from there to Lagos. A man stood outside the public toilet at the bus station. He tried to get me to pay to enter, until I told him I would pee on his shoes first. He laughed and stepped away.

Then Moses and I parted, and he drove off proudly in his truck. I never found out whether he was a good Samaritan or an opportunist, though my nature favored the former. I will always think of Moses as my first friend in Africa.

Back at the hotel in Lagos, I showered off three days’ worth of dust, sweat, and blood. I looked at my crooked nose in the bathroom mirror. Alex, you are a piece of work. Finally, I plopped down on the bed to call home.

I started with a call to Bree’s cell this time. It was good just to hear her voice again, but the warm hellos between us were quick.

She had news that couldn’t wait – about a new murder, on Eighteenth Street, and about the young boy she’d found there and what he’d said: There was more than one Tiger. Flaherty had told me the same thing, but I was pretty sure I was looking for one killer – I could feel it in my gut.

Bree countered, “If this boy is for real, it’s the closest thing we’ve got to inside information. He was in the gang, Alex. You could be doing just as much damage control in DC, maybe more. Come home.”

“Bree, you’re talking about a phantom witness back there. A young boy. I know that the man who killed Ellie and her family is here right now. He’s in Lagos.” At least my instincts told me he was. Who knows now?

“I’ll see what else I can find out, specifically about him.” Her voice was tight. We’d never really fought before, but this conversation was feeling pretty close.

“Listen, Bree,” I said. “I swear, I’m not going to stay here any longer than necessary.”

“I think we have very different definitions of what that means, Alex.”

“You could be right about that.”

I might have kept that to myself, but the only thing I could offer Bree right now was the truth.

“I miss you like crazy,” I finally said, telling Bree another kind of truth, while trying to change the subject. “What are you wearing?” I joked.

She knew I was kidding and laughed. “Where do you think I am? I’ve got Ugly Fred looking at me across my desk” – I heard a shout of protest in the background – “and half the Major Case Squad’s in the room with me. You want me to keep going?”

I took a rain check and we said our good-byes. Then, before I could dial home to Fifth Street, I heard a rattle at my door.

“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

The door swung open so fast I didn’t have time to get off the bed to look. I recognized the front-desk manager.

But not the two dark suits with white shirts standing in the hall behind him.

“What are you doing in my room?” I asked the desk man. “What is this all about? Who are they?”

He didn’t say a word to me. He just held the door open for the other two and then closed it from the outside as they moved across the room toward me.

I jumped up off the bed and set my feet on the floor. “What’s going on here?” I said. “What’s happening now?”

Chapter 70

“SSS!” ONE OF them shouted at the top of his voice. I had heard the initials before. State Security Service, if that’s who these two men really were.

They went right at me, totally unafraid of any consequences. One of them bear-hugged my arms and shoulders; the other scooped my legs out from under me.

Now what was happening? Were they really State Security? Who had sent them for me? And why?

I struggled, but both of them were freaks sizewise, incredibly powerful men, quick and athletic too. They had my body twisted in a corkscrew and it was impossible to break free.

We crossed the room like that, with me tangled and helpless in their arms. Then I heard a window slide open, and I felt the rush of humidity on my skin.

My whole body tensed and I started to yell for help as loudly as I possibly could to anyone who might hear me.

There was a blur of sky and earth and swimming pool and then my back slammed hard into the hotel wall.

I was suddenly outside – and hanging upside down!

“What do you want?” I screamed up at the one holding my legs. He had a very round face, flat nose, kind of a Mike Tyson squint. It was a struggle to keep still and not fight him, but I sure didn’t want him to lose his grip.

The SSS man, or whoever he was, grinned down at me over the curve of my knees.

“You been here long enough, Cross. Time to cross you off.” He laughed over his shoulder, sharing the joke with his partner.

Even if the swimming pool had been directly below me, which it wasn’t, I figured I was too high to survive any fall. My blood coursed through me. I could feel it everywhere, especially in the growing pressure in my head.

But then my body was moving again. Inside!

My spine scraped hard against the aluminum window track, and I came down on the floor of my hotel room.

Chapter 71

I JUMPED UP and went at the nearest SSS man, until the other pressed his gun into my ribs.

“Easy,” he said. “You don’t want to get shot now, do you?”

I saw that my duffel was out on the bed.

And packed.

“Pick up the bag.”

“Who sent you?” I asked them. “Who are you working for? This is insane!”

He didn’t answer me. Instead, they grabbed me and moved me out into the hall. Freak One shut the door behind us and pocketed the key.

Then they both just turned and walked away.

“Go home, Detective Cross. You’re not wanted here. Last warning.”

There was a bizarre half minute or so while they waited for the elevator, talking low to each other. Then they calmly got on and left me standing in the hallway.

Clueless.

And keyless.

Obviously they’d taken this as far as it was going for now. Whoever they were, police or not, and whatever connection they might have to the Tiger, they didn’t kill for him.

They hadn’t even tried to put me on a plane.

But why not?

What was going on in this crazy country of theirs?

Chapter 72

IT WAS HARD to fathom or predict, but my situation in Lagos actually got worse over the next hour or so. The front-desk people at the Superior insisted that I had “checked out” and that no rooms were available, something I knew to be untrue.

I tried half a dozen hotels on the phone and got the same story everywhere – credit card denied. It was looking more and more like the two strong men who had evicted me from the Superior were indeed representatives of the state, whatever in hell that meant here in Lagos.

I tried Ian Flaherty several times and left a voice mail twice, but I didn’t hear back from the CIA man.

So I did the next thing I could think of. I got a driver and asked him to take me to Oshodi Market. If I couldn’t get hold of Flaherty, I’d go back to his valued informant. I was quickly running out of options.

I knew I was in the middle of something bad – but what was it? Why did everybody seem to want me out of the country? What did it have to do with the murder of Ellie Cox?

It took over an hour to get to the market and another fifty minutes of wandering and asking around to find the rug stall I was looking for.

A middle-aged man with one dead eye, not Tokunbo, was working today. His English was poor. He nodded at Tokunbo’s name – I was in the right place – but then shooed me off for a customer.

I couldn’t afford to just hang around hoping for a miracle, so I cut my losses and found my way back to the car. The only Plan C I could think of was to go to the US consulate.

But then, crawling through more traffic on the way to Victoria Island, I thought of something else. Plan D.

“Can you pull over, please?”

The driver stopped on the shoulder behind a burned-out old Ford Ranger. I asked him to pop the trunk, then went around and got my duffel.

I dug inside, looking for the pants I’d worn on that first day. I’d already trashed the shirt, but I was pretty sure–

Yes, here were the trousers, smelly and bloodstained from my time in jail.

I looked in the front pockets, but both were empty.

When I checked the back, I found what I was looking for, the one thing they’d missed when they took just about everything else at Kirikiri: Father Bombata’s card.

I turned to the driver, who was waiting impatiently for me, half in, half out of the car.

“How much to use your cell phone?” I asked.

Chapter 73

TWO HOURS LATER, I was dining in style with Father Bombata in his office at the Redeemed Church of Christ, a sprawling complex right in the heart of Lagos.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said. “And for all of this. I was hungry.”

We were sharing a meal of kudu, squash, salad, and a South African Zinfandel over the expansive desk in his office. The priest’s tiny body was all the more dwarfed by a high-backed chair and the floor-to-ceiling windows looming behind him. Heavy red drapes kept out all but two slits of fading evening light.

“What happened to your face?” he asked me and actually seemed concerned. “Or should I ask ‘What happened to the other man?’”

I’d almost forgotten how I looked. The nose had stopped hurting somewhere around Ghana.

“Shaving accident,” I told him and forced a crooked smile.

I didn’t want to give one more person a reason to think I should go home on the next available plane. What I needed were allies, not more advice.

“Father, I’ve gotten some disturbing information about a killer called the Tiger. Do you think it’s possible that there is more than one Tiger? Maybe operating in different locations? Like here and in the US?”

“All things are possible, of course,” he said with a kind smile. “But that is not your real question, is it? Still, I suppose I would have to say yes, it is possible, especially if the government is involved. Or big business. There are a number of employers of killers for hire. It is a common practice.”

“Why the government? Or a corporation?”

The priest rolled his eyes, but then he gave me a straight answer.

“They have the means for controlling information that others might not. And for controlling misinformation as well.”

“Any idea why they would want to do that? Be involved, I mean.”

He stood to pour me some more wine. “I can imagine any number of reasons. But it would be irresponsible of me to suggest that I actually think it’s happening. Because, truthfully, I have no idea. The name is symbolism – the Tiger. You realize that there aren’t any tigers in Africa. Maybe in a zoo someplace.”

“I know that. In any case, I’m chasing at least one real man here,” I said. “I need to find out where he’s gone. He killed my friend and her family. Other families were murdered too.”

“If l may?“He looked at a mahogany clock facing him on the desk.”From what you’ve told me, your more immediate need is for somewhere to sleep.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

“You don’t have to, Detective Cross. I can’t offer you anything here. It’s a risk I would take for myself but not for my congregation. However, I can take you to our men’s shelter. There’s a five-night maximum, and it’s no hotel–”

“I’ll take it. Thank you,” I told the priest.

“As for your mysterious Tiger, I’m in less of a position to help.”

“I understand.” I was sorely disappointed but tried not to show it.

Father Bombata held up a hand. “You think quickly, don’t you? Maybe sometimes your mind works too fast. What I was going to say was that I can’t help you there. But I do know someone who might.

“My cousin, actually. She’s the most beautiful woman in Nigeria. But of course I’m biased. You be your own judge.”

Chapter 74

HER NAME WAS Adanne Tansi, and, as promised by the priest, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in person. She was also a reporter with the Guardian, Lagos’s biggest newspaper.

Her office was maybe 6 x 8, if that. As I entered, I only hoped that I didn’t smell like I’d just spent the night in a crowded homeless shelter.

Over the next hour, Adanne told me that she had been covering the original Tiger and his gang for two years, but he was still something of a shadow figure.

“I am not certain there is more than one Tiger. But I have heard the rumor too. This could be gangster myth. Who knows, maybe he spreads it himself. Anyway, who can tell what a man like that could do to the newspaper if he wanted to.”

“Or to a reporter?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Some things are worth more than a life. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re taking chances with your life?”

I smiled. “I guess I am.”

I found that I couldn’t take my eyes away from Adanne Tansi, though I tried not to be rude. She was stunning in the manner of some actresses, and it was impossible not to notice her high cheekbones and her dark doelike eyes but also the way she carried herself. She seemed unafraid, and I wondered why that was so. She had much to lose but carried it lightly.

She picked up a pen. It had escaped me that she had a pad at hand among the mess of other papers at her work area.

“No notes,” I said. “This isn’t an interview. I’m just a tourist here. That’s been made very clear to me.”

Adanne immediately put the pen down, smiling as though she had had to at least give it a try.

I went on. “Do you have any sense of where the Tiger is now? Or any idea how I could find out?”

“No to the first,” she said. “And I believe so to the second.”

Chapter 75

I WAITED BUT she left it at that. After a few seconds, I realized that in Lagos even a newspaper office was a marketplace.

“In exchange for what?” I finally asked her.

Adanne smiled again. She was very coy – and clever. “A good story about an American detective looking for a criminal and murderer like the Tiger – that would be hard not to print.”

I put my hands on the arms of my chair, ready to go.

“No.”

Suddenly her eyes were locked onto mine. “Detective Cross, do you realize how much good could come from a story like this? This human monster is responsible for hundreds of deaths, maybe more.”

“I know,” I said, working hard to keep my voice in check. “One of them was a friend of mine.”

“And one was my brother,” said Adanne. “So you can see why I want to write this story.”

Her words resonated in the small room. She wasn’t angry, just measured, and, within that, passionate.

“Ms Tansi–”

“Please call me Adanne. Everyone does.”

“Adanne. You obviously care a great deal about this, but I don’t know you. I wish I could trust you but I can’t.”

Her stare told me I hadn’t lost her yet. “But I hope you’ll help me anyway. I’m Alex, by the way. Everyone calls me that.”

She thought about what I had said, and I could see she was conflicted. It was unusual to see this in a journalist, at least the ones I knew back in Washington – this kind of transparency.

Finally she stood. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do for you. I’m in.” She picked up her pen again, a silver-topped onyx roller, the kind people give as gifts. “Where can I reach you? Alex?”

At the Redeemed Church of Christ men’s shelter – that’s where I live now.

I don’t know if she noticed my pause. Whether or not it was wise, I found that I wanted to impress Adanne Tansi.

“I’ll call you,” I said. “First thing tomorrow. I promise.”

She nodded, and then she smiled. “I believe you, Detective Cross. So far, anyway. Don’t disappoint me, please.”

How could I even think of it, Adanne?

Chapter 76

A BUSINESSMAN WITH rumored connections named Mohammed Shol stood like an expensively framed portrait of himself in the open double doors of his enormous home. The main building was twenty thousand square feet, and the guesthouse was another eight thousand. He was among South Darfur’s wealthiest men and never missed an opportunity to show it off.

The gated compound with its high walls and attached citrus greenhouse made its own statement: Who but the devil lives like a king in the middle of hell?

Not that the Tiger minded dealing with devils; he did it all the time. This was his business, and if he had carried a card, a black devil might have been the logo.

Shol smiled broadly as he shook hands to elbows with the large and quite handsome fixer and murderer. “Welcome, my friend! Your team will wait out here, of course.”

“Of course.”

“They will be fed.”

“They are always hungry.”

The Tiger left Rocket in charge of the others and knew he would maintain discipline. The boys waited by the front gate, across the yard from Shol’s two plainclothes guards, who watched the younger ones with unconcealed amusement. The guards at the estate had come up from the streets themselves.

Let them be cocky and sure of themselves, the Tiger thought as he eyed the older watchdogs. Underestimation had always worked in his favor.

He followed Mohammed Shol through the estimable front hallway and across an interior courtyard. Cooking smells, cardamom and beef, came from one side of the house. Boys’ voices came from the other – reciting in Arabic, which further defined Shol’s politics.

They came to a glass door at the far end of the courtyard.

An enclosed grove of exotic fruit trees showed on the other side. Shol stopped.

“We’ll meet in here. Can I offer you tea? Or perhaps grapefruit juice?” The latter was a boast, since such juice was a delicacy here.

“Nothing,” the Tiger said. “Only what I came for. Then I will be gone.”

Shol dismissed his houseboy with a quick flick of the wrist, then used a key from his jallabiya pocket to let them inside.

It was pleasant in the greenhouse, temperature controlled with a waft of humidity lacing the air. The tiled floor was shaded under a low canopy of green. Above was the geometric pattern of a glass-and-steel ceiling.

Shol gestured for the Tiger to enter a small dining area in the back.

Four rattan chairs surrounded a luminescent bai wood table. Shol moved aside a potted sapling. Then he ran the combination on a floor safe hidden behind the tree.

Inside the safe was a paper envelope, stuffed thick. Shol took it out and placed it on the table between them.

“I think you’ll find it’s all there.”

Once the Tiger had checked the contents, he set the package on the floor and sat back. Shol smiled.

“You’ve done much here,” the Tiger said, gesturing around the room. “It’s impressive.”

Shol smiled, puffed up by the compliment. “I’ve been blessed many times.”

“Not just blessed. You’ve been busy. You are clever, I can tell.”

“It’s true. Between the legislature and my businesses, there’s little time for other things.”

“Travel,” the Tiger said. “Meetings day and night? And your family, of course.”

Shol nodded, clearly enjoying that the subject was him, “Yes, yes. On most days.”

“Saying things you shouldn’t. Putting your loved ones at risk.”

The nodding stopped. Shol seemed to forget that he was afraid of looking the Tiger in the eye, and did it now. “No,” he said. “Truly. I’ve not talked about my business dealings with you, or anyone else.”

“Yes,” said the Tiger, without moving. “Truly. You have. You know a reporter – a woman? Adanne Tansi?” He reached with one finger and tipped open his collar an inch. He spoke into a microphone.

“Rock da house! Now, Rocket. Spare no one. Make an example of them.”

Chapter 77

A FEW SECONDS later, the entire greenhouse reverberated with a half dozen or more gun blasts coming from outside. And then bursts of machine-gun clatter.

Mohammed Shol tried to get up, but the Tiger was fast and agile and already had his hands around the man’s throat and was choking him. He slammed Shol into the far wall and a spider web pattern blossomed in the glass.

“Do you hear that?” the Tiger shouted at the top of his voice. “You hear it? All your fault!”

There was more gunfire. Then screams – women first, followed quickly by boys, their voices high and pitiful.

“That,” the Tiger told him, “is the sound of your mistakes, your greed, your stupidity.”

Shol grappled with both hands at the Tiger’s huge and unmovable wrists. His eyes reddened and veins appeared ready to burst at his temples. The Tiger watched, fascinated.

It was possible, he’d learned, to bring a man to the edge of death, and then keep him there for as long as he liked. He liked this because he despised Shol and his kind.

The greenhouse door shattered as two bodyguards arrived to rescue their employer. “Come in!” shouted the Tiger. In one motion, he spun Mohammed Shol around and pulled a pistol from the paddle holster at his ankle. He charged forward, Shol in front as a shield, firing as he came!

One bodyguard went down with a nine-millimeter hole in the throat. The other sent a bullet through his employer’s outstretched hand, then into his shoulder.

Shol screamed, even as the Tiger launched him the last several feet across the floor, where he crashed into the guard. Both men went down. Then the Tiger shot the second bodyguard in the face.

“Oga!” Rocket said as he appeared in the empty doorway. Oga meant “chief” in Lagos street parlance. The Tiger liked the designation, and it came naturally to his young soldiers.

The screaming had all but stopped in the house, but there were still sounds of breakage and gunfire as his boys let off the last of their venom and steam.

“There was a tutor. Children being taught.”

“Taken care of,” said Rocket.

“Good.” The Tiger watched as Shol struggled to stand. He fired once into his leg. “You’ll need a tourniquet or you’ll die,” he said to the businessman.

Then he turned to Rocket. “Tie Mr. Shol up. Then put this in his mouth. Or up his ass, if you like.”

“This” was an M67 – a grenade.

“Pull the pin before you leave.”

Chapter 78

EVERYTHING CONTINUED TO feel unreal and fantasy-like to me.

All the doors at the church shelter for men were locked after nine o’clock. No one could get in or out. With traffic being what it is in Lagos, I barely made it back there in time.

My cot was at the far end of one of three lodges, long high-ceilinged dorms off the main corridor where breakfast would be served in the morning.

Alex Cross, I thought. What have you come to? What have you done this time?

The guy in the next bed was the same guy as the night before, a Jamaican man by the name of Oscar. He didn’t talk much, but the strained look in his eyes and half-healed track marks told his story.

He lay on his side and watched me while I rooted around for a toothbrush.

“Hey, mon,” he said in a whisper. “Dey is some shorty man o’ God lookin’ your way. He dere now.”

Father Bombata was standing at the door. When I saw him, he beckoned with a finger, then walked back out of the dormitory.

I followed him outside and into a hall packed with last-minute arrivals. I pushed upstream toward the front doors, until I caught up with the priest.

“Father?”

I saw then that he was dialing a cell phone and wondered who he was calling. Was it good news or bad that I was supposed to hear?

“Ms. Tansi wishes to speak with you,” he said and handed over the phone to me.

Adanne had news! An assassination in South Darfur had occurred that day. One of the representatives to the Sudanese Council of States was dead – and his family had been slaughtered.

“Any connection to Basel Abboud in DC?” I asked her.

“I don’t know yet, but I can tell you that the Tiger does frequent business in Sudan.”

“Weapons? Heroin?” I asked her. “What kind of business, Adanne?”

“Boys. His loyal soldiers. He recruits at the Darfur refugee camps.”

I took a breath. “You might have told me about this earlier.”

“I’ll make it up to you. I can have us on an air freighter to Nyala first thing in the morning.”

I blinked.

“You said ‘us’?”

“I did. Or you can fly commercial to Al Fasher and see about ground transport from there. I leave it to you.”

Any other time I never would have considered it. But then, I’d never been five thousand miles from home without a lead and sleeping in a men’s homeless shelter before.

I put my hand over the phone. “Father, can I trust this woman?” With my life?

“Yes, she is a good person,” he said without hesitation. “And I told you, she is my cousin. Tall and beautiful, just like me. You can trust her, Detective.”

I was back on the line. “Nothing goes into print until we both say so? Do we have a deal on that?”

“Agreed. I’ll meet you at the Ikeja Cantonment, at the main entrance by five. And Alex, you should prepare yourself emotionally. Darfur is truly a horrible place.”

“I’ve seen a few horrors,” I said. “More than a few.”

“Perhaps you have, but not like this. Nothing like this, believe me, Alex.”