“By then we should know more.”
“But if you don’t.”
“That he passed out suddenly, that we have no idea why. What’s he going to do, ask for a tox screen at the MSF hospital?”
“He’ll know you’re lying.”
“He won’t be able to prove it, and he can’t touch me anyway. If Shabaab really does have these kids deep in Somalia, there’s not much I can do. I’ll switch passports and disappear. And if something else is going on, if he’s involved somehow, I’ll be the least of his problems.”
“I can’t see you as the least of anyone’s problems.”
—
Wells and Wilfred carried Thompson inside Gwen’s trailer. He was bigger than Wells had realized, two hundred pounds of deadweight. They laid him on his back on Gwen’s bed.
“What happened?” Wilfred said.
“Tell you later.”
“You hit him with mzungu magic.” Wilfred mimed beating drums. “A curse from the ancestral spirits.”
“A curse from Roche.” Wells put two fingers to Thompson’s carotid, picked up a slow, steady pulse, fifty beats a minute. He rummaged through Thompson’s windbreaker, found his passport and international phone. In his pants, a wallet and a local phone. Wells recognized the number taped to the back. This was the legitimate phone.
Wells couldn’t believe Thompson had left the third phone in Nairobi. He’d want it close by. In the laptop bag, he found a computer and a half-dozen Cadbury wrappers. So far the only secret he’d discovered was Thompson’s sweet tooth.
He patted Thompson’s legs down. The man didn’t stir. Wells had the unsettling feeling that he was robbing a corpse. He found nothing. He double-checked the windbreaker—
And finally found a tiny Samsung handset zippered into an inside compartment just above the waistband. No number taped to the back. Wells booted it up, but it demanded a four-digit password. Wells tried 1-1-1-1. No good. Hopefully, Moss would have some ideas. Wells pocketed the phone, turned Thompson on his side so that if he threw up he wouldn’t choke on his vomit.
“Watch him,” Wells told Wilfred. “Call me if he wakes up.”
“And if he stops breathing?”
“Call me then, too.”
Back in Moss’s office, Wells booted up Thompson’s laptop. It was password-protected and the obvious choices failed. The NSA could break it, but Wells couldn’t. He switched on the phone. It demanded a combination, four digits. Wells tried 1-2-3-4, then 4-3-2-1. No good.
“What’s his social?”
“His what?”
“The last four digits of his Social Security number.”
“How would I know?”
“It’s got to be on a record somewhere,” Wells said. She reached for her laptop, but he put a hand on her shoulder. “Forget it. Let’s try his birthday first. Egomaniacs love to use their birthdays for passwords.”
“That’s March 19, I think.” Moss flipped through an old-fashioned planner. “Yes.”
Wells keyed in 0-3-1-9 and the phone unlocked. He scrolled through the menus until he found the phone’s number. It was almost the same as the number Thompson gave Wells, but two digits were transposed. If Wells asked, Thompson could say he’d made a legitimate mistake.
The call registry showed that Thompson had used the phone sparingly, making just a handful of calls to three numbers in the last week, all with Kenyan prefixes. Most calls ran less than two minutes. In the hours after Wells demanded that Thompson come back to Dadaab, Thompson made several late-night calls, none of which were answered.
“Recognize these? Suggs, anyone?”
“No.”
“Let’s call them.”
Moss reached for her phone.
“Use Skype so they can’t trace the call,” Wells said.
Moss pulled up Skype on her laptop. Her first call went to a voice mail without a greeting. So did the second. The third rang three times before it went to voice mail. A man offered a greeting in Swahili and then said in English, “Joka-joka-joka call back-back-back.”
“Is Joka-joka-joka Kenyan slang?”
“Not that I know of. What he says in the Swahili part of the greeting is standard, leave a message and I’ll call back.”
“Is that Suggs?”
“Not sure. Let me hear it again.” She redialed. This time the call went straight to voice mail. “I’m about ninety-five percent sure it’s not Suggs.” She redialed one more time. This time a man answered. He said something, laughed, hung up.
“What’d he say?” Wells said.
“I don’t know. He was speaking Somali. Not Swahili.”
“But the voice mail message was Swahili?”
“Yes.”
“So either the greeting is intentionally misleading or the phone has been taken by someone who speaks Somali.”
“Correct.”
Wells tried to come up with a happy explanation for that particular fact pattern. He couldn’t. He called Shafer. “I got Thompson’s third phone.”
“Want to tell me how?”
“I roofied him and took it.”
“You what-ted him?”
“You heard me. I gave him a cup of coffee with some special sweetener.”
“This is why I love you, John. You’re insane. You’re telling me you drugged James Thompson so you could steal his phone.”
“We both know I’ve done worse.”
“He’s going to want your head when he wakes up.”
“That’s why I’d like you to run the number, Ellis. And three more. All Kenyan country codes, but they’re either in Kenya or Somalia.”
“It’s almost midnight here, John. But I’ll try. Give them to me.”
Wells did. “Names would be nice, but what I really need is an approximate location for the receiving handsets. Anything new on your end?”
“The level of interest here is extreme.”
“Because of the press conference.”
“Because they’re oh so pretty. Because of the wall-to-wall coverage on every network. This thing’s picking up speed. We could wind up invading Somalia.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“Not really. The Kenyans want it. They think we can solve their problem with Shabaab once and for all. Then they’ll say Somalia’s been pacified, close the camps, send the refugees home. They’re talking to the White House.”
Now Wells understood why the Kenyan police weren’t trying to find the volunteers. “But Duto—”
“Would rather you find them yourself. Even better, tell me where they are so he can send in a SOG team, play the hero. A nice liftoff for his campaign. He’s watching. You want help from us or Fort Meade, I can’t hide it from him.”
“Including these phone numbers I just passed along.”
“If it turns out some Somali gang has your friends, you might be glad for the help.”
