“I know what it is to be a family man. A husband. A father. And to my own bemusement, a recent grandfather,” he said. “It is with my growing brood in mind that the commitment I’ve made toward a democratic future for our nation is constantly renewed. It is for them I wish to see Gabon become a model of social and governmental reform on our continent… and in doing so, someday make dinosaurs of autocrats like myself and insatiable bought-out scoundrels such as you gentlemen.” He paused, the smile gradually dwindling from the corners inward. The fingers of his right hand tapped the photograph of Macie Nze, his left fist thumping his chest over the wax cloth shirt. “Still, I am African. My blood and heritage is African. I am therefore, by nature, an unromantic dreamer. The reality is that my plans for our republic have come under attack from forces of subversion and terror. And the attack must be repulsed. My pledge here is this: Stand with me now, as one, and you will have my fullest protection. Any past weaknesses you have shown will be excused. But let a single man in this room stand against me, continue his faithlessness, and you will see the offer pulled back from over you, leaving your heads open to whatever may fall on them — again as one. All of you will be reminded that I, too, know how to be terrible and threatening. Remember who I am, good sirs.
A hush fell over the parlor. Though he’d continued to address the entire group as he concluded, the president’s eyes had momentarily snapped back to Assele-Ndaki. Now he shifted them to the death photograph of Macie Nze, slid it away from himself, calmly leaned back in his chair, and folded his hands over the great mound of his stomach.
The silence stretched out a while longer. His face mild, Cangele studied the section of tabletop he had cleared of the photograph.
Assele-Ndaki drank from his glass, a long swallow. He knew the question had been left for him to ask.
“How will our unity be announced?” Despite the water moistening his throat, his voice seemed to be issuing from the smallest pinhole.
Cangele smiled, as much to himself as to the others in the room. Quiet and impassive since Assele-Ndaki’s arrival, one of the presidential aides turned toward the assemblyman and regarded him with sudden interest, as if having become aware of his presence for the first time.
“We have arranged for an article to appear in the morning paper,” he said.
Pete Nimec and Vince Scull waited under the hot yellow sun in the market of Le Grand Village, holding
Nimec turned from the stall, swallowing a bite of his fry bread without appetite. It was like he’d hurled the food down into a ditch. The happy traveler.
He desperately missed Annie and the kids.
He looked over Scull’s shoulder toward the north end of the outdoor market and spotted Steve DeMarco and Andy Wade approaching through a crowded aisle. They were a conspicuous pair. Both men had on pastel short- sleeved shirts, while the Gabonese strongly preferred colorful prints… or simple undyed kaftans in the case of the population’s devout Muslims. DeMarco’s whiteness and Wade’s blackness made them even easier standouts. Whites in this country were almost always foreigners — expats or short-term visitors — and lived in a sort of proximate separation with the nationals. Stranger that he was here, Nimec’s study of his mission briefs, and his first-hand impressions of the place, pointed toward very little true social mingling between people of different races. They shared the same streets, stayed at the same hotels, and ate at the same restaurants in self-segregated clusters. What interactions they had seemed driven mainly by commerce and politics.
The relaxed companionability of the two Sword ops as they walked together would leave observers with scant doubt they were of another place and culture.
Scull had noticed Nimec looking past him.
“See anybody?” he said.
“Yeah,” Nimec said. “DeMarco and Wade.”
Scull grunted and bit into his fry bread. He was sweating profusely, his sparse hair pasted to his head, dark rings of moisture staining the underarms of his shirt.
“Ackerman’s on his way in, too,” he said. “Coming from behind you.”
Nimec gave him a nod. That accounted for everybody except Conners, who was decoying.
He and Scull waited in the pressing afternoon heat and humidity. After a few moments the men reached them.
They exchanged nods.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Scull said.
DeMarco looked briefly at him, then turned to Nimec.
“You think we ought to take a walk?” he said.
Nimec jerked his head slightly to indicate the surrounding crush of market buyers.
“I like it where we are,” he said. “Best place to be right now.”
DeMarco nodded his understanding. A congested area offered its own type of cover — the people in circulation around them would present a constant and changing impediment to an observer’s line of sight.
“Okay, let’s compare notes,” Nimec said to him.
“We were tailed.”
“Wheels or heels?”
“Wheels,” DeMarco said. “A-B.”
Meaning he and Wade had been subjects of a two-car vehicular surveillance.
“The lead driver was a cabbie outside the hotel,” Wade said, looking down as he spoke to partially mask his lips from view. “He wasn’t interested in fares, ignored a whole bunch of people at the stand. Pulls out behind us, follows slow and tight. Then he turns off, and somebody else in a regular car picks up the tail.”
“The hack show himself again?” Nimec said.
“Cruises by about five blocks farther on, disappears,” DeMarco said. “I think he might’ve been worried he got burned.”
Nimec stood in thoughtful silence.
“Heels for Scull and me,” he said after a moment. “A-B-C.”
Meaning the surveillance placed on them had consisted of a three-man foot team. And it hadn’t been half bad. There had been a man in an embroidered kufi hat and dashiki talking into a cell phone as he stepped from an apartment building near the hotel. Another two men in casual Western clothes, strolling together on the opposite side of the avenue, moving almost abreast of them. The men across the street had seemed to be conversing with each other, but then Nimec, noticing one of them wore an earbud headset, realized he was also on a cellular. Just as Dashiki had passed Nimec and Scull and turned into a store, Earbud crossed to their side of the avenue, dropping back, taking Dashiki’s position at the rear. A few blocks later they pulled another switch. Earbud quickening his pace, then passing. Dashiki reappearing behind them, trailing them again, a quick shopper that one. Meanwhile, lo and behold, Earbud’s friend had kept pace across the avenue. The leapfrogging had continued almost the entire way to the market.
Nimec glanced at Ackerman.
“How about you?” he said.
“A pair of gendarmes in a patrol car,” Ackerman said. He was shaking his head in the negative, a ploy to confuse hidden eyes. “Right up until I got into the market.”
Nimec kept looking at him. “You sure?”
“Positive. Black uniforms. They split off after Conners.”
Nimec was quiet again. When DeMarco had told him about being caught on camera at the Rio, the first thing
