The Night Ranger

“I think so, yes.”

But paramilitary guys were usually door-kickers. Wells wondered if they’d have any interest in the detective work required to solve a kidnapping. Another reason why the Kenyan police investigation seemed to be moving so slowly.

Martin stopped near the pickup. Two officers walked over. Special training or no, their weapons discipline was unimpressive. One guy held his AK loosely by the barrel, like a hitter heading back to the dugout after a strikeout. Even Afghans took gun safety more seriously.

The first officer leaned into the car. “Turn around. No foreigners.”

Wells handed over both permits and his passport. The officer barely looked at the papers before handing them back. He pointed down the road the way they’d come: Go home. Wells reached for the door, but Wilfred moved first. He snatched the permits from Wells and nearly jumped out of the backseat. He stepped up to the officer, yelling in Swahili. The commotion attracted the rest of the squad. The officers fanned out around Wilfred.

Wells stepped out, grabbed Wilfred by the arm, pulled him away, around the back of the Toyota. “I’m telling him, the permits are good, you’re allowed—” Wilfred said.

“You’re blowing this up on purpose—”

“It’s my country. Let me.”

The police had circled the Toyota now, rifles at their sides, muttering to each other. “He sends us back to Nairobi, you’re riding in the trunk,” Wells said. He let go of Wilfred, who walked back to the officer. The shouting match started again. Wilfred reached into his pocket and Wells heard the distinct click of a safety being dropped—

Before Wells could move, Wilfred came out with a phone. “Call Nairobi if you want, you donkey,” Wilfred said in English to the officer. “Tell Commander Embu you’re rejecting us. That or let us go. Enough.”

—

The final miles to Dadaab passed quickly. The road was deserted aside from a slow-moving food convoy, a dozen trailers with a four-truck police escort. The land around them was inhospitable, arid plain patched with scrub. They reached the WorldCares compound around noon and found that James Thompson had kept his word. When Wells showed his passport, the guards waved the Toyota through. The compound immediately impressed Wells as simple and functional, not overly fancy. Residential trailers filled one corner, the food and supply warehouse another, the kitchen and headquarters a third, and parking and mechanicals like generators the fourth. A neatly tended rose garden outside the headquarters building provided the only color.

But the place seemed to be running at half-speed. Four Land Cruisers sat under a metal sunscreen, their windshields covered in red dust. A black cat with a white blaze emerged from the roses, meowed at Wells, strolled off. The place reminded Wells of a military base set to close: Why bother? was practically skywritten overhead. He imagined the kidnapping had stunned everyone. Still, he was surprised not to see Kenyan cops around.

“You and Martin go talk to the local staff and the guards,” Wells told Wilfred. “Anyone you can find. Ask them about this guy Suggs. Who he knew in the camps, his relationship with the volunteers, if he had money problems —”

“It’s Kenya. Everyone has money problems.”

“Just do it. You hear anything I should know, find me.”

“Yes, great white hunter.”

As Wells walked toward the headquarters, one of the homeliest women he’d ever seen emerged. “Mr. Wells. I’m Moss Laughton.” She led him to her office, a simple square room with white-painted concrete walls, their only decoration maps of Hagadera. She had short hair and black glasses and sat on her couch with her legs folded. She reached out a hand and offered Wells a snaggle-toothed smile.

“Thanks for having us.”

“Jimmy’s orders.”

“People call him Jimmy?” James Thompson didn’t strike Wells as a Jimmy.

“I call him Jimmy. Whenever possible. It irritates him, but he can’t fire me, because he sure doesn’t want to be in Dadaab eleven months a year. Anyway, I’m thinking about quitting, so I do what I like.”

Thirty seconds in and this conversation was shaping up to be as odd as his encounter at Castle House. Wells wondered if Moss was trying to say You’ll get the truth from me if you ask the right questions or if she was simply half crazy from the heat and dust.

“So what do you think happened?” Wells said.

“No idea. Gwen’s family hired you?”

“Yes. I used to work for the CIA.”

“Of course. I remembered your name, but it took me a bit of Googling to figure out why.”

“That’s me.”

“And now you’re here.”

“Now I’m here.”

“Any progress so far?”

Wells shook his head. “Do you remember when they planned the trip? James wasn’t sure.”

“I don’t know exactly, but Gwen mentioned Lamu to me maybe three days before they went. She was nervous, poor thing, but the others convinced her.”

“And off they went in a WorldCares Land Cruiser.”

“Correct.”

“Which had no sat phone.”

She smiled. He saw she was pleased, that he’d passed a test he hadn’t known he was taking. “We have seven Cruisers. Four have phones. Not this one. A coincidence, no doubt. Anyway, off they went. You know the rest.”

“When did you report the kidnapping?”

“To the police? Or the embassy?”

“Either.”

“I didn’t report anything. I think Jasper—”

“The head of security—”

“Yes. He made the call. But it might have been Jimmy himself. In any case, it wasn’t until the next morning. I wanted to do it right away, but Jimmy thought we should wait.”

“Why?”

“He said the Kenyan police were useless and corrupt. He’s right about that. He said that if the kids were okay, we’d hear in the morning and there was no need to panic everyone. If they weren’t, there was nothing anyone could do until the sun came up, and we might as well wait.”

“You didn’t agree.”

“I thought the risks were the other way. Let the cops throw up a roadblock, no harm. See if anybody in Nairobi would pay attention. I thought at the time he was worried about bad publicity. Although he’s turned out to be wrong about that. From what the staff in Houston tell me, this has been pure gold. Millions of dollars in donations. Biggest week in WorldCares history.”

“He didn’t mention that last night.”

“Of course, we’re taking every dime. We have to—”

“Because your insurance company won’t cover this. And the ransom could be several million dollars. That much he did tell me.” Wells realized something else, a connection he wished he’d made before. “No insurance company paying—”

“Means no hostage negotiators on site and no pesky insurance investigation into what happened.”

Moss Laughton was throwing out some big hints. “You don’t trust your boss much.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Does Jasper feel the same?”

“You ought to ask him. Too bad you can’t. He’s in Nairobi with Jimmy.”

“The head of security isn’t here?”

“‘Head of security’ is a fancy way to describe him. Basically he makes the schedules, makes sure we have