lot of bloodshed, and if Striker and Hadrian are somehow trying to make a profit from it with taxpayer money we need to know. At this stage there’s not enough to alert the CIA or anyone else. Moreover, if we did, we would risk tipping our hand to Striker and Hadrian, because they have very good friends in both the Agency and in the Pentagon. On top of that, an intelligence inquiry, even a quiet one, might very well be leaked to the media, and then we would have to deal with that.”
Marten stared at the president. “I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“Joe Ryder suggested we send an ‘independent contractor’ of our own down there to quietly look around and see what’s going on. Somebody who knows what he’s doing and can have some straight talk with Father Dorhn, then report back with what he thinks is happening, if anything.”
Marten put up his hands in protest. “Mr. President, I’m honored at the suggestion, but I’ve got five very demanding accounts breathing down my neck.”
“Father Dorhn has been in Equatorial Guinea for fifty years.” The president ignored his objection and speared a neatly sliced piece of Irish potato. “If anyone knows what’s going on there he does, and from his letter he seems to know quite a lot.”
“Either that,” Marten pushed back, “or Theo Haas is just worried about him and wants someone to do something about it. Or maybe, as he said, he just has the mind-set of a novelist and is trying to create a story where there is none. He doesn’t have his rascally reputation for no reason.”
President Harris grinned. “My sense is that you’re right. Probably what you’ll end up with is a week’s all-expenses-paid vacation at an island paradise.”
Marten put down his fork and stared at the president. “Aw, come on, cousin, you can find somebody else.”
“As competent and trustworthy as you?”
“There are hundreds, probably thousands of people as competent and trustworthy as me. Probably even more competent and trustworthy.”
The president looked up and let his eyes find Marten’s. “Perhaps, my dear friend, but I don’t know them.”
7
BIOKO. 12:20 P.M.
Marten felt harsh sunlight cross his face. A second later there was a jarring bump, and his body flew upward only to be caught in a restraint of some kind and forced back down. Abruptly he awoke and through the fog of a deep, exhausted sleep saw that the cuts and scrapes on his right leg and left arm had been bandaged. Immediately there was another jolt, and his head cleared enough to realize that he was in a moving vehicle. Startled, he looked up and found staring at him perhaps the most captivatingly beautiful woman he had ever seen. With medium-length dark hair tucked behind her ears, a little turned-up nose, and dazzling green eyes, she was petite, sexy, and impish in a way that was wholly natural.
“This road is filled with potholes,” she said in accented English. “You have been sleeping. You were quite tired.”
Marten tried to shake off the lingering stupor and looked around. They were in the backseat of a battered, mud-splattered Toyota Land Cruiser that was traveling rapidly over a rutted dirt road. Two young, uniformed black men rode in front, one driving, the other sitting next to him. Marten looked over his shoulder. A second Land Cruiser was following close behind. It was dirty and plastered with mud as well. To the right, he could see open swampland dappled with splotches of bright sun that cut through an overcast sky. To the left, steep hills rose up sharply to disappear in a thick blanket of low-hanging mist.
“My name is Marita Lozano.” The young woman smiled. “I am a physician. My companions in the car behind are medical students. We have come to Bioko from Madrid to give AIDS education to the people in the southern part of the island. As you probably know, a civil war has broken out here. The army ordered to us to return to Malabo immediately.”
“The army?” Marten was suddenly alarmed.
“They stopped our cars a short time ago and told us to follow them.”
Marten looked past the uniformed men in front and through the dirty, mud- streaked windshield to see an Equatorial Guinea army Humvee of sorts kicking up mud and gravel some thirty yards ahead of them. Uniformed soldiers were seated inside, while another, standing, manned a roof-mounted machine gun.
Marten looked back to Marita. “Did they see me?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “They seemed to think you were one of us, and I let them. I simply said you were tired and were sleeping.”
“They didn’t ask for identification?”
“Only mine. Our guides told them who we were and what we were doing here.” She smiled gently and with it came the perky impishness he’d seen before. “I knew you had been caught up in the fighting in the south and that you escaped the soldiers, so naturally I assumed you didn’t want to be questioned by them.”
“How do you know all that?” Marten was incredulous. Instinctively he glanced at the guides and then looked back to Marita.
“You told us. Myself and my colleagues; the guides, too. We saw you walking on the beach. You stumbled and fell and didn’t get up. When we got to you, you were quite exhausted and exceedingly dehydrated. A little disoriented and frightened, too, when you saw the guides in their uniforms. Of course you had no way to know who we were.”
Marten studied her carefully. “What, exactly, did I tell you?”
“That your name is Nicholas Marten and you are an English landscape architect in Bioko to study native plant life. You said you met a priest who took you up into the rain forest and showed you some of the flora you were looking for. You were returning to his village when fighting erupted there, the army trucks came, and the priest told you to run and you did.”
Marten stared at her in disbelief.
“You have no memory of telling us, do you?” she said gently.
“No.”
“Whether it’s the truth is not my business.” This time there was nothing gentle in her manner, nor any hint of impishness.
“It is the truth. Just the way I said it.”
“Good, because you will want to repeat it when we get to Malabo.”
“What do you mean, repeat it?”
“The army is going to question us when we arrive. They said so. It’s why they ordered us to follow them.”
“By us, you mean me, too?”
“Yes.”
Questioning by army interrogators was the last thing Marten wanted. It was impossible to know how much they knew of his connection to Father Willy or if they had known about the photographs all along and had been trying to trap him and anyone he might have shown the photos to or told about them. Brutal as they were, they were fighting a war and would do anything to get as much information as they could about what was going on and who was involved with arming the rebellion. Father Willy had been with the natives a long time and that made him a prime suspect in anything that might appear to be supporting the insurgency. The soldiers had seen Marten with him, and Marten had turned and run when they came after him. That in itself would make any question-and-answer session with them long and probably ugly, maybe even fatal.
