Gabriel took the electrodes and popped them off the wires and put them in a small bag. The cap he carefully dusted off and put inside the briefcase. “No one owes you anything,” he said as he did this. “Innocent bystanders die all the time. In the great scheme of history, empires fall, and you’re a statistic sitting next to the debris. You’ll tell your children about how you lived through this pivotal event one day.”
He snapped the case closed. Anika cocked her head and looked at him. Patronizing, decrepit, creepy little man. She stood up and blocked his way to the door.
Maybe, she thought immediately, that had been the wrong move. But she wasn’t backing down now.
“That’s a bad idea, Anika,” he said softly.
“We’re all going to die, not just the bystanders,” she said. “We’re all just statistics, in the long run. That is true. But in this modern world, I am not some anonymous creature, like a serf in the middle ages. I bow to no man. This is a flat world, Mr. Gabriel. One of information, and democracy, and access. I am your equal. And I am not moving.”
His nostrils flared. “What is it you want?”
“Quid pro quo. There is a nuclear weapon floating around the Arctic Circle. You don’t know for sure why, but what do you
For a moment he stood still. Then he looked tiredly over at her. “Use your God-given imagination, Ms. Duncan. I can think of fifteen worst-case scenarios where Canada’s enemies could creatively destroy everyone’s interests out here. You remember Karachi?”
“What were those globes the ship was transporting?”
And there, for a moment, she’d scored … something. She wasn’t sure what. But he flinched. Just as hard as if she’d slapped him. His thin lips tightened, his lined face hardened. “That … is none of your business.”
He hadn’t asked any questions about them, during the interrogation, she realized.
Anika frowned. He hadn’t been surprised when she’d mentioned them either.
“It’s time for me to leave,” Gabriel said. In the distance, she could hear the sound of the helicopter starting up.
“And what happens to
“You will remain out of the way.” Gabriel pushed past her. “You will thank me later, when this is all over and settled.”
Anika opened her mouth. It sounded like Gabriel knew far more than he was letting on, and it looked like he believed he was doing her a genuine favor.
In her experience, all the people who did harm believed they were doing it because they had to. His conviction only chilled her further.
But there was nothing she could do as he stepped out, the door clanging shut behind him.
19
Anika banged on the door until a young Coast Guard crewman opened it. Her guard. He had a pistol holstered at his hip, and he looked nervous. His name patch said OSTERMAN.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Where are you taking me?” Anika asked.
“I can’t say, ma’am.”
She leaned against the door, and he took a step back, hand going to the holster. Anika sighed and stepped back, showing that she wasn’t going to try anything stupid. “Can I have a phone, to call my lawyer?” They’d taken everything from her: extra prepaid phone, the wad of cash Vy had given her, her IDs.
Osterman looked around, as if seeking support from an officer. But there were none in the corridor outside the room. “No. You can’t,” he said.
“How is that legal?” Anika demanded.
Osterman looked miserable. “I can’t comment, ma’am.”
He took a step forward, one hand still on the holster, and raised the other to close the door again.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Anika said. “Surely that isn’t something you can’t comment on either.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll take you.”
This type of patrol ship usually had eighteen or so sailors and two officers crewing it. The ship had maybe six days of range, which meant it harbored somewhere fairly close by. The ship was based on the same Damen Stan hulls that the UNPG used for its small patrol vessels, so it wasn’t too unfamiliar to Anika.
It meant she also could guess that wherever she was going, it would most likely be a day or two away.
Her personal guard walked her through the crew bunks, and several relaxing members of the crew watched curiously as she was led past them to the bathrooms at the end of the corridor.
She used some paper towels, the industrial-smelling soap in a dispenser, and water from the basin to wash the stench of the anchor rope off her as best she could. Near the end, her guard banged on the door. “What’s taking so long?”
“Cleaning up,” she yelled back. “I was hiding in an anchor locker for almost an hour.”
She opened the door, and he looked suspiciously around and sniffed. She smelled strongly of cheap soap, but had gotten the worst of the dead ocean smell off her.
“Do you have anything to drink or eat?” she asked.
He escorted her back to the sparse room. “I’ll call for something.”
That something was a ham sandwich, a granola bar, and Coke. Anika sat them down on her chosen bunk and ate them as she was locked in again.
She had a day or two left before she was locked up wherever Gabriel had decided to put her, where she would be out of everyone’s way.
And what did he mean by that? That he knew what was happening. And it was something big?
He didn’t mean her harm, she understood that. He did feel he was doing the right thing. And yet, she was still in the dark. She didn’t trust him. And then there was that nuclear device out there.
Remember Karachi? he’d asked. She’d grown up watching the before and after images of crowded Pakistani markets and streets on Lagos cable channels turned into flattened wasteland. She’d had nightmares about the stains: human shapes etched in black silhouettes on the ground. The famous photo of a woman with a veil half- melted onto her face, waiting for medical help outside a UN tent. A second century had tasted the hell of a nuclear event. Who could imagine more?
And then there was this question of vengeance that stirred her mind up every time she returned to it. She couldn’t let it go. The anguish in Jenny’s voice. The smack of the car against Karl’s bike, the feel of a killer’s muscles against hers.
What did it take for evil to prevail? Simply for good people to step aside and let it happen.
She thought of her father’s stories about what Nigeria was like when he grew up. The violence between the religions, the military cracking down too hard while trying to keep order, burning cars in the streets of the small towns far from the stable urbanity of Lagos.
Even when she grew up, when that was all long past, sometimes she saw the scars when out in the countryside: the skeletons of vehicles in the undergrowth by the side of the roads, or still-abandoned houses with blackened, peeling walls.
These things had always been around, an unconscious series of tombstones marking conflicts that only existed in an academic sense for her. And yet, as her father had told her stories, they’d solidified and called out to her more and more vividly.
A brick ruin that was once a grocery store owned by a Muslim man. That empty lot: once a schoolhouse. That new bridge: built over a bombed-out old one.
Her father worshiped stability and had a love of rights, an indignation about suffering. Anika now found herself surprised to find how thoroughly he had infected her with it, despite the things she had seen once she’d left Nigeria.
