“Doubtful.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.” Shafer hung up.
—
“The United States government can track those phones?” Moss said. “Even if they were inside Kenya the whole time?”
“In a country like this, one where we more or less don’t care about the diplomatic consequences if we get caught, we have tracking software on every mobile network. Manufacturers install it or we sneak it in later. Don’t ask me how it works, because I don’t know. But it does work. I can tell you firsthand. Hopefully, they’ll have something for us before Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”
“But if Jimmy and Suggs faked this kidnapping, why did Jimmy make such a fuss that first day when the reporter from Houston said she was going to write? Wouldn’t he have wanted the media to know?”
“I think he did. He knew she was going to write something even if he told her not to. He figures he holds a press conference, raises a few million bucks, and then in a couple weeks gives everyone the good news. The hostages escaped. Or WorldCares paid the ransom. Or, best of all, the kidnappers heard his appeal to their humanity and let these poor aid workers go. The publicity will be huge. He’ll sell a million copies of his book. The hostages will probably all get paid too, books and movies and who knows what else. Best part is that once the volunteers get home, it’s not like the Kenyan police will keep looking for the kidnappers. Everyone will be happy to drop it. Like you said yesterday, there’s not even an insurance company to care.”
“But he didn’t understand how big this would get, and how soon,” Moss said.
“I think that’s right. He figured he could control it, but now it’s running away from him. Maybe that’s why a Somali answered that phone call we just made. Maybe Suggs decided he wants more money, so he’s moving the hostages someplace where Thompson can’t get them so easily. Like Somalia.”
Moss looked unconvinced. “Suggs is Kenyan, and Kenyans prefer this side of the border. So are you going to hit Jimmy with this theory that has absolutely no factual support?”
“Not just yet. For now I’m leaving your boss to you. I decided after you told me to forget the camps that I should see the kidnapping site for myself. Meantime, NSA will run the numbers. With any luck between us we’ll come up with enough to put some heat on James by the time he wakes up.”
“And if you don’t?”
“I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. Meantime, I do have one more favor.”
“You never quit, do you?”
“I don’t think Martin’s car can handle these roads. Can I borrow a Land Cruiser, preferably one without WorldCares’s name on the side? No offense.”
“None taken. I might have another present for you, too—” Moss led Wells to a closet beside Thompson’s office. Inside, a padlocked case held a Glock .40-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun with a matte blue barrel, a mean-looking weapon. Boxes of ammunition were heaped on the floor.
“Aid workers aren’t supposed to need guns. But Jimmy wanted them.”
“Sure you don’t mind giving them up?”
“I never liked them.”
Wells didn’t like shotguns much either. They were overkill up close, useless at a distance. They were heavy, clumsy, and hard to hide. But for sheer intimidation, they couldn’t be matched. A Mossberg could stop a riot. Wells pulled it from the case, checked to be sure it wasn’t loaded, then put his nose to the barrel. It smelled of oil, not powder. It had been fired only a few times. The Glock was similarly new. Anne would be pleased. Wells tucked the pistol into his waistband and reached for the ammunition boxes.
—
Thirty minutes later, the WorldCares gates swung open. Wilfred was driving, Wells beside him. Wells had insisted Martin stay and watch Thompson. An excuse. Martin had a wife and three kids. Wells didn’t want to subject him to the risks they were about to take.
The camp stretched for miles, with only an occasional acacia tree to break the monotony. Women wearing long black abbayas clustered around a pumping station, pails in hand. A group of kids waved. But after the Land Cruiser passed, one grabbed a clump of dirt and flung it at the SUV. It hit the rear window, leaving a red-brown smear.
A GSU checkpoint marked the intersection of the camp track and the road that connected Dadaab with Ijara District. “To Dadaab?” an officer said.
“No. South.” Following the path of Suggs and the volunteers.
“I don’t advise anyone to go that way. The situation is unstable.”
“Then we’ll fit in fine.”
—
Even with the Cruiser’s four-wheel drive and big tires, Wilfred rarely got out of second gear. The land seemed set on rewind, endless miles of scrub and red dirt. Twice they passed flocks of sheep and goats watched over by armed herders. About an hour out of Dadaab, Wilfred made his way around a caravan of five camels, the tall humped beasts loaded with sacks of grain and charcoal.
After ninety bone-jarring minutes, the Cruiser reached Bakafi. Wells’s map showed it as the only village of any size on the road. Though size was relative. A handful of stores sold food and charcoal. A green-domed mosque marked the middle of town, followed by a police outpost and a school whose red paint had faded to a weak pink in the sun. Barefoot kids shouted as they passed.
Near the south end of town, a sign in English and Arabic marked a plain white building as “King Fahad Muslim Infirmary. Gift from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” Even in this flyspeck town, the Saudis spread charity and Islamist teachings. A hundred meters farther down, a tall concrete building stood alone. Four men stood outside, smoking. The place was painted a striking canary yellow. A torn plastic banner hanging from the roof proclaimed: “Broadway Hoteli/Best in the District/Live Premier League Football/Tusker TOO!”
“A hotel? Here?”
Wilfred pulled over. “‘Hoteli’ is our word for a restaurant. Serves fried potatoes, mutton, all those things. A whole meal one hundred fifty, two hundred shillings. Usually it’s okay, but when they use the grease too long—” He rubbed his stomach.
“And this one serves beer? In a Muslim town?”
“Bakafi must not be all Muslim. Kenyan and Somali, Christian and Muslim. So the alcohol is okay.”
The place was the Kenyan equivalent of a Montana roadhouse, Wells thought, a way to keep drinking and trouble outside the middle of town, but close enough for the police to step in if a fight got out of control. Past the hoteli Wells saw a man on a motorbike. He fit the Somali stereotype, small head, coffee-colored skin. He held a cell phone at arm’s length, like he was taking a picture with it. A picture of the Toyota, maybe. The motorcycle between his legs was a dirt bike, stubby tires and thick shocks. As they moved closer, the guy tucked away the phone, kicked the bike into gear, rode south.
Wells wondered if he should have Wilfred follow. But if they got close, the guy could go off road, find a patch of soft ground that would trap the SUV. Plus Wells couldn’t imagine that the volunteers were being kept in a town where the Kenyan cops had a presence. No. If they were still in Kenya, they’d be at Dadaab, or in a cluster of huts that wasn’t on a map. Probably close to the Somali border. If the police had cared, they could have made the same calculation, hit every settlement within fifty miles of the border. But either they truly believed Shabaab was behind the kidnapping, or they had received instructions from Nairobi not to look.
“Let’s find where they were taken,” Wells said.
Wilfred lowered his window, shouted to the men across the street. One walked over and had what seemed like an endless conversation with Wilfred before finally wandering back to his buddies.
“It’s around twenty kilometers south,” Wilfred said. “The road takes a turn. A few kilometers before the intersection.”
“That’s all he said.”
“These men, it takes them an hour to answer a question. Country people. Not like Nairobi.”
Wells understood. He’d grown up in the seventies in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, a little town called Hamilton, south of Missoula. Back then the houses on the edge of town still had shared phones—party lines, they were called. The ranchers could make a conversation about the weather last an hour. Why not? The cattle weren’t going anywhere.
