Closer To God, Silver Streak, Chapter VIII

Closer To God
Silver Streak
Chapter VIII

The train seemed to take forever to reach its maximum velocity, as dinner came and went inside our small cabin. We prepared for the night ahead. I sent Burt off to check on the men we had left in custody, while the Earth Mothers prepped our area for sleep. I moved into the top bunk, by direction. The laws of sociobiology reigned, much as I knew they would, and Wendy declined to join me, preferring the company of her friends on the floor. Burt would be relegated to the bench seat, which would suit his overly large body badly, while Dingo would remain zipped in below.
Women do not have sex for sport. No women. Men believe they do, because women perpetrate that myth, just as men claim to be in love in order to enjoy sex.
Each gender gets mad at the other when it is time for real cards to be turned over on the table of life. My card was the empty upper bunk, but I was not upset about it. Sex always comes with entanglements. No matter what is said going in, the old phrase: “will you respect me in the morning?” has true merit. Plus there was the group phenomenon. Women do not like to perform in front of their peers. And I was bone tired, which had to be close to Burt’s condition. You do not get shot at, or play the fugitive, without substantial psychological, and emotional, energy output.
Burt returned, but motioned me from the door.
“Secret stuff?” Wendy intoned. “I thought we’d thrown in together.”
There was a silence in the room following her remark. Burt had closed the door, no doubt pacing up and down in the outside passage. Whatever he had to say I knew I was not going to want to hear.
“I think Burt’s afraid to come in. I better go reassure him,” I said, getting some small snickers, but nothing from Wendy. I didn’t feel guilty. The Earth Mothers were bright, tough, and had been around the Horn, but they were not equipped or ready to deal with what was facing Burt and I. Collateral damage was acceptable, but I did not want it to be any, or all, of these women. I stepped out, closing the door carefully behind me. I didn’t say anything, leaning back against the hardwood.
“They’re gone. Room’s empty. None of the porters or the conductor is saying a word. What do you think happened?”
I could tell from Burt’s tone that he already knew what had happened.
The Aegis men had used the money I’d given them to bribe the train people. They had skipped right over the custody issue they’d committed to and gotten off while the train was still stopped. I had underestimated just how tough they were. I pictured the two guys with broken wrists trying to support the broken ankle off the train, and across the quarter mile, or so, of rough country to Mombasa Road. The passage would have been a physical nightmare to go through. But those guys had nightmares every night anyway, I knew. We were all brothers in Post Traumatic Stress.
“My mistake,” I said, seriously. “We’re now more than likely to have company at the station when we arrive. They don’t have cell phones but they might just find a willing soul passing by on that road tonight.”
Burt stared out of the window into the fading light. The sun was already down, but the play of evening sunset splayed through the tops of the Baobab trees.
Our movement magnified the great beauty of the Savannah.
“I don’t know. Three white guys, rough looking, damaged, and trying to thumb a ride on that road at night? We might just get lucky here.” Burt turned to meet my eyes. We both knew that we had been ungodly lucky just to be alive to ride the train.
Could our string last? But there were no options. We could stop the train and bail out ourselves. That would put us in the same pickle as the Aegis team. Our odds were best if we continued on down to Mombasa as we were doing, and rested for the day ahead.
“You’re on the bench. I’m up in the top bunk. Both alone,” I said, opening the door behind me.
“Figured. Life just isn’t that good,” he replied.
I didn’t know what time it was when a poking finger in my right side awakened me. I looked down at my wrist in the dark, but the Omega was long gone.
“Can I come in?” Wendy’s voice said quietly, near the edge of the bunk.
“Just to sleep. I haven’t slept with a man for years. I’d like that. Just too sleep?”
“Okay by me,” I replied to her request.
She settled in next to me, her back pressed into my side. I stared up into the dark, seeing nothing. Her body felt comforting and protective. I hadn’t slept with a woman in years, but I would never admit that to Wendy, or anyone else.
Kenya is one of only ten countries in the world through which the equator passes, and Mombasa was about a hundred kilometers from that imaginary line. Dawn was always, year round, at about six forty-five in the morning, and the sun set around seven at night. It was dark when I awakened to the sounds of the Earth Mothers preparing for a new day. A paraffin lamp burned atop what passed for a dresser inside the tiny cabin, sending an eerie wavering light flickering off the lacquered wood of the walls.
I checked my non-existent watch again, grimacing at the thought of not having one.
“What time is it,” I asked, noting that I was alone in the bunk.
“Five,” Burt said, his voice penetrating up from among the girl’s moving bodies. Burt appeared to be making believe he could fall back into sleep.
“What’s our plan?” Wendy said, her head popping up from below, chin
resting on the edge of the bunk. She looked like the portrait of a beautiful angel, backlit by soft yellow light from the lamp.
I slung my feet over the side of the bunk.
“What do you think, Burt?” I asked.
“Mmmmm,” was all he responded.
“They’re likely to be waiting at the depot in Mombasa, Wendy. We can’t exactly get off with everyone and get lost in the crowd.” I massaged my unshaven chin. I hated not having a shave in the morning, or brushing my teeth and a shower, for that matter.
“Silver Streak,” Burt mumbled from across the cabin, Dingo having pushed him into a sitting position, then hugging him closely.
“Yeah, it was a movie, what about it?” I shot back, impatiently.
Burt frowned at the girl, uncomfortable with her physical attention. I wondered if he was one of those people who hated any contact with humanity just after rising in the morning.
“In the movie the train ran out of control, right through the station. We could try that,” he said, massaging his temples with both hands. There had been a lot of wine consumed the night before.
“ I’m not even sure we can reach the engine on this thing,” I replied, thinking about his idea. “And the depot is just a side building along the tracks, like the one in Nairobi, but maybe the tracks continue somewhere for shipping purposes.”
I climbed down to the floor, and then put my shoes on. “We’ve got a lot of shillings. Let’s see what I can find out. Wendy, you see if you can get hold of some coffee from the dining car, maybe something sweet to get the blood flowing. I pulled out a five thousand shilling note. She took the money. We both headed for the door.
“Be right back,” I said to Burt. “Maybe you can handle all these women on your own.” The light was sufficient for me to see that Helen and Anice, unlike Wendy and Dingo, were dressed in only panties, as they prepared for the day ahead.
I followed Wendy through the dining car, and then went on into the fourth class carriages until I found the conductor. I wondered, as I shelled out another five thousand, whether he also held some of the money I had given the Aegis guys. He informed me that the engine could be reached, but it would be a climb, as the thing was attached backwards. I would have to jump down to a catwalk, and then make my way back to the engineer’s small capsule on the other end. He didn’t bother to ask why I wanted to reach the man. The conductor was having a rewarding run down to Mombasa, no matter what I might be up to.
When I got back to the cabin, coffee steamed up from a pot set next to the paraffin lamp. Everyone was eating some sort of pastry, including Burt, who had grown more accustomed to Dingo having attached herself to his right side. The women were dressed, and all the packs were lined up near the door. Things could not have been more organized on a Marine Corps operation.
I explained the plan over coffee, standing with my back pressed against the door. Wendy poked a hole in the plan immediately.
“Right past the station the rail ends. We could only get fifty or sixty feet past it, which wouldn’t be enough to help at all. Unless the train didn’t switch tracks to run into the station, I mean.”
“What switch?” I asked, my coffee ignored in my left hand.
“The train storage facility and turn-around is right there, on the other side of the station. We have to switch tracks to curve into the station or we go right past on the other side,” she answered.
“Time?” I asked the room.
“Six,” Burt said, checking his watch. The window next to him was beginning to give off faint light. Dawn was minutes away. We were supposed to arrive in Mombasa at dawn. I wondered if the engineer had run faster because of our stop or whether we were going to be late, not that it mattered.
“Wendy, what’s the first major road the train would cross if it went through the storage facility?” I inquired.
“I don’t know Mombasa that well,” she answered, but Helen has a Michelin map.”
Helen of Troy opened a zipper in her pack, and then began unfolding a large road map. Mombasa took up on whole corner. Anice brought the paraffin lamp to the floor, holding it just above the flattened paper. I peered at the map.
“Moi,” I said, pointing at the only main road to cross the tracks after the depot. If we can get to that interchange, then we’ll be a good mile or more from the station, and I’d be willing to bet the Aegis people will take a while getting organized before they figure out what we’ve pulled, anyway. If we pull it off.”
“I’ve got to go forward, see if this can be done, then come back,” I went on. “If we can do it then you’ve got to call our Marine on the cell and have him meet us. If he’s made it himself, that is.” I pointed at Burt’s chest when I spoke.
“You have to go back up there if we can,” Burt said, after a moment. “You can’t just pay the engineer, then expect he’ll do the job. Our lives are riding on this.”
I did not miss his slight inflection, the words left unsaid, the words that would have stated my complicity in risking ourselves so badly.
“Yeah,” I replied, simply, gulping my coffee down, then went through the door. I checked my pockets filled with shillings and the small automatic. One way or the other we were going to Mombasa, but not to the station, not if I had anything to do say about it.
Standing on a small platform outside the passage car, I realized that the job I had taken on so casually was going to be fairly challenging. I stood at least eight feet above the coupling that connected us to the engine. There were no handholds to use in climbing down, or back up on the engine on the other side, if I was able to get there. The catwalk that ran around the noisy diesel was not open at the end. The only way to get over was to jump six feet through the air, catch the rail at my waist as my feet found purchase under it, and then vault over the top. Everything was made of very hard looking metal, and the light was so slight that I could not fully make out the far end of the engine. The jump was three feet down to the engine’s catwalk level. There would be no jumping back. I was a field agent in pretty good shape. I was not a gymnast. I returned to the cabin.
“Here it is,” I said, grabbing another cup of coffee from Helen. “The trip to the engine is one way. You’re right Burt, I can’t leave the man to change his mind, if this can be done. And I can’t make it back. We have to gamble that we can do it. Bailout is that I have him stop before we hit the station.” I motioned for the map again.
“There it is,” I pointed. “Makande. Quite a ways before the station, and in a lousy area, but it’ll do. If we have to bail there we’ll be running across a lot of tracks, then some through some swamp and cardboard housing. I know that area.
Give me the extra throwaway cell,” I said to Burt. He handed it over. The phone only had half a charge left. We had no charger. I checked the autodial screen.
The other phone was the only number listed. I hit ‘send.’ Burt’s phone rang once and I hung up.
“I’ll call. If I don’t, then I’ll use the train’s whistle. Three short means Plan A is a go. Two means Plan B. If there’s no call, and no use of the whistle, then you’re on your own.” I looked around the brightening room. I noted that the Earth Mother’s no longer seemed as certain of the adventure, as they’d been the night before, but there was nothing to be said. Mortal danger was upon us, and nobody sane ever took that lightly.
I wanted to grab Wendy, bend her over for a kiss and say something like “Here’s lookin’ at you kid,” but that feeling quickly passed. I headed back to the front of the car. We were operational. My body and mind were running on all twelve cylinders. I was doing what I lived to do and I felt the adrenalin kicking in to help.
The leap to the engine was not as difficult as I had considered earlier. The pain of hitting my hips on the single pipe, which served as the rail, was worse. I almost bent over the rail and fell into the face of the engine’s metal cover, but I caught myself. It took a few seconds sitting on the catwalk to get my breath back, and let the pain lessen to a tolerable level.
I made my way to the angled window where the catwalk ended. A small door was cut into the side of the engine cover just forward of the window. There was no handle on the outside. I breathed in and out deeply, considering. Finally, I took out the automatic, and then smacked the window several times hard, but not hard enough to break it. I quickly put the gun back in my pocket, took out a handful of shillings and pressed them against the glass. The engineer’s face appeared over the splayed bills. His eyes grew large. He disappeared and the door opened.
Once down inside the small enclosure I realized that the engineer and I were not alone. A woman crouched in one corner, clutching two small children to her with both arms. The children stared at me as if I had landed from outer space.
“My family. They ride for free here. You not notice. I not notice you.”
The engineer smiled a big smile, extending both arms out wide. I looked at him and smiled back. His family’s illegal presence might help me. I told him what I wanted.
“Yardmaster and switch operator control everything in the yard. I can use the remote control switches here when we get near the yard, but the yardmaster will be very very angry. The switch operator there may change the track back. He knows we are supposed to go to the station, and we don’t know what is on the tracks up ahead. There is terrible risk.”
I produced thirty thousand shillings. More than the man made in a year of operating the train.
“If you don’t tell them, go very slow, and we make it to Moi Road,” I said, handing him ten thousand. “The rest when we’re there. You can tell them what you want, but not about me.” Kenya took its railroad system very seriously. I did not want the authorities to pursue us with any kind of zeal. The engineer took the two bills, and then handed them to his wife. Her face lit up. I stared into the darkness ahead, hoping that I’d made the right decision. If we hit something, the engineer, his family, and I would certainly be among the earliest fatalities.
I pushed the button for Burt on the cell phone. He answered on the first ring.
“Three quick blips on the whistle,” I told the engineer. He complied, a look of question on his forehead.
“Got it?” I asked into the device. The sound of the engine was too loud for me to hear anything. I imagined it was the same for Burt on the other end, but there could be no misunderstanding the signal from the engine’s whistle.
The Silver Streak was headed on in to Mombasa, come what may.

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"We're Going To Mombasa"

Closer To God
We're Going to Mombasa
Chapter IV

We didn’t make it to the Railway Station, instead stopping the small van down around City Central near Kenyatta Avenue. The driver, conductor and two other teen passengers had remained silent during our trip, not that it would have made much difference with rock blasting from all the speakers. The conductor had rotated once to look at us, with attitude, but something about us had kept him from commenting, or doing anything else.
Burt and I were broke. We had to have cash, which meant we needed an ATM. A few businesses would take credit cards, but not many, even in a large developed city like Nairobi. Africa was third world, outside of a very few places. Our Teeny Matata plunged back into the ‘fishball’ of traffic as soon as we were out. I watched my Omega disappear with a glum expression.
“Got a cell phone?” I inquired of Burt, hoping that I had not been wrong about his over-supplied pack rat nature. I was not disappointed. He handed a small phone over to me.
“Will it work here?” I said, opening the Star Trek flip cover. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question, as I already knew the answer. Burt didn’t bother to reply.
I examined the phone. It gave the time of day in big numbers on the screen. I knew that young people did not even wear watches anymore. They got their time from cell phones. I wasn’t that young.
“Agency?” I went on.
“Safaricom chip,” Burt said back. That meant the phone was on a local system instead of any international. It was a relatively untraceable way to communicate, but I wasn’t thinking of calling anyone until we knew more of what we were involved with. Phone calls would give more information out than I was comfortable with. I wondered what other toys Burt had. The mission had been cadged together at the last minute. There had been no clearance meetings, or even initial planning sessions. Things like ingress, egress, communications, armament,
and even financing, had been thrust upon us instead of being homogeneously put together with forethought and design. I put the phone in my pocket. Now I had a bulge on each side, but high fashion was not something common to Eastern Africa.
“Braclays is over in Queensway House on Kuanda,” I pointed out.
I walked in that direction, looking around to see if any of our pursuers had picked us up. If they were Agency personnel we would not have much time on our own. The Agency was terrific at surveillance, and two white guys in downtown Nairobi would not be too hard to find no matter who was looking.
We walked into the lobby of the bank. There were private security guards stationed everywhere, including one on each side of a bank of ATMs. I inserted one of my Visa debit cards, punched in the four-digit code and hoped. Local shillings were all we were going to get from any ATM in the country, which was okay, except for the fact that the largest shilling note issued was for a thousand. With the exchange rate running at about seventy shillings to the dollar, that meant a
Thousand-shilling note was only worth about thirteen dollars.
I used four cards to get a total of sixty thousand shillings out of the machine. The stack of bills was over an inch thick. I shoved the folded wad into my back pocket and we headed for the door. Nine hundred bucks, or so, would have to do.
There was nobody noticeable on Kaunda Street, so we crossed to the Catholic Basilica. We went straight in through a huge gothic entrance. The place was straight out of the dark ages, with tourists gathered together in small guided clumps.
I took Burt all the way to the front of the huge old church and sat him in the front pew. Unconsciously, I genuflected before taking a seat next to him. The lighting was dim to the point of darkness. The place was perfect.
“Stay here. I’ve got to berth us aboard the train going east tonight.
I’m less noticeable alone. Whatever we ran into started down there, where Smith died, so we’re going back to the scene of the crime, if we live that long.”
I looked over at the big man, wondering what the hell he was doing. I was known for my rather unconventional behavior, which had gotten us into the mess we were in, but it was uncommon for wet workers like Burt to be anything but sticklers for following Agency directives and rules.
“What about the woman? You told her to meet us. You don’t think she’ll come?” Burt asked. I rubbed my forehead, thinking for a moment.
I do think she’ll come, but I don’t want to take her to Mombasa on this, not that she would go. I wanted her to meet us so I could talk to her about what she knows. We can’t drive all night down to Mombasa. We’d be sitting ducks on that rough road. The Agency has drones. We have to hope that whoever is after us will calculate that we’ll run to Jomo and fly out as quickly as we can.”
“We’re going to Mombasa?” Burt asked.
“Yes, we’ve got to get out of Nairobi.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt repeated, this time with a strange tone of enthusiasm. I had more questions about his involvement but they could wait until we were on the train.
I left him there, heading of across the downtown common area for the station. I realized that I should have asked to see if he had a second phone, when the cell phone in my pocket rang. It was Burt.
“I have another phone. The number’s on the dialer, titled King Kong.”
I thought about his self-derived nickname he had given himself. I tucked away a thought to examine his phone to see what he’d chosen for me.
“Thanks,” I responded, not knowing what to say. The man was proving to be an enigma, like maybe a bear with human intelligence would be. Burt hung up. I waited until I was tucked into a corner alcove of the Kenya Bank, right across Haile Selassie Avenue from the station, and then flipped the phone open again. I called Staff Sergeant Stevens, hoping he was still around. I was compromising the cell phone by calling the Embassy, but I had little choice. I had to have more data. I did not believe that the Agency had sent men to kill me. It was just not done. There was no need. They could just recall me and lock me up any time they wanted. They didn’t need to kill field agents. They had worse punishments. Imprisonment and loss of retirement were much more feared punishments, and very commonly applied. In the final analysis, when Burt had been instructed to shoot me, he had refused. Field agents did not kill field agents. There was no career left to an agent who participated in such action, and we all knew it. It was not even entirely believable that he had been ordered to do such a thing.
“I can’t tell you anything at this point,” Stevens said, without preamble.
I held the phone out and stared at it for a second. Whether Burt’s phone was already target material, or whether Stevens had been waiting for an unknown call, I did not know, but there was no point asking. Stevens was a Marine, first and foremost, above wife, country and even God. It resonated through him.
“Is she coming?” I asked.
“Tower, in twenty,” he said, and then hung up.
I turned to my right and looked up at the tallest building in East Africa. The Times Tower. That was the tower. Twenty, in Marine parlance meant twenty minutes. She was coming. I was relieved, and intrigued, by her conduct. I hadn’t been absolutely sure that she would come. Not nearly as certain as I’d led Burt to believe.
Seeing no one of any consequence over at the long cinder block construct of a railway station, I crossed the street and entered the facility. I was always surprised that it was clean. Even the bathrooms were clean. And the rain earlier in the day had helped, giving the place a fresh, although local, scent. I went to the line of booths under a sign that said “Kenya Railroad Berthing Allotment.’ I could not help looking around suspiciously as I approached the attendant behind his bars.
“Two, first class cabin for Mombasa.”
The man looked at me, the black visor of his blue cap shined to a high luster. As a former Marine myself, I could tell that it was polished leather and not the fake Corfam junk. There was one train to Mombasa every night. It arrived there, from Nairobi, early in the morning. Tickets were booked in advance, and for cash.
“Papers,” the man said, primly, holding out one hand toward the slot under the bars.
I took out my wad of shillings, peeled off four of them, then slid them through the slot. The 1st class fare to Mombasa was posted on the chalk board behind the man. It said nine hundred shillings. I waited. He stared down.
“For two,” he said. “Private room with clean bedding and first service in the dining car.”
The money was gone when I looked down. I had not seen the man’s hands move. He took two tickets from a drawer, shoved them toward the slot, then looked behind him and made believe he was concentrating on something else. I let him, taking the tickets and walking back toward the platform, until I saw the woman.
A white woman stood out form the building, peering up and down the platform, as if looking for a train. But there was no train, nor would there be until the evening run was ready to be made at around seven. The events at the Safari Park had occurred so quickly and intently that I could not recall if the woman was the same as the one with the camera crew. But she was looking for something. And I knew I was being looked for. I went into the restroom without going out onto the platform. From a stall I called King Kong and filled him in, about the woman and about Joan’s pending arrival, now only fifteen minutes away. Burt’s analysis was better than mine. If the woman was there, then the others would be in the area. We decided that I would try for the Railroad Museum just north of the station.
Before leaving the bathroom stall I removed a full roll of toilet paper. I carried it with me in my right hand. The station was not crowded, which was unfortunate for my purposes, although no one gave me the slightest glance as I went out to the street side, gained the far edge of the building, and then darted across a twenty yard concrete expanse. The Railroad Museum was right there, with an old engine and cars lined up next to it. I hid behind the cars, kneeling to look up from under them. I did not observe any extraordinary interest or pursuit. After a five-minute wait, I did see the woman. She stood at the outside lip of the wooden platform. She gestured with one hand toward someone who seemed to be in the direction of my position, but I couldn’t see who she might be waving at. Finally, I went through the door into the museum.
The object of the woman’s attention was obvious once I was through the door. A large white male stood in front of me, his arms extending up and outward, as if to engulf me. Without thinking of the potential of terrible repercussions, my left hand went down. I brought the small forty-five up out of my pocket, flicked off the double-sided safety and walked right into the arms of the huge man. His attempt to grasp me never reached conclusion. I jammed the AMT into the side of the toilet paper roll, pressed the arrangement hard into his belly and squeezed the trigger.
The sound was not nearly as loud as I thought it would be. The toilet paper roll shredded, but the man, amazingly, did not go down. Instead he held both hands to his stomach, an awful expression of pain on his face and a mewling grown coming form his open mouth. I marveled. The man appeared to be made of something tougher than hide, gristle and hair.
I ran, using a casual lope, which covered ground quickly but made me look more like a jogger than someone running from something. The gun stayed clutched in my left hand, so small it was invisible to anyone who might have been looking my way. I could not have run with a two-pound chunk of metal in one front pocket. One thick hand waved from around the far side of the bank building, as I approached.
“What happened?” Burt asked, when I pulled up next to him, reseating the gun out of view.
“What in God’s name are you using for ammo?” I shot back. I had never known a forty-five round, at close range, fired into a man’s torso, to leave him standing and complaining0.
“Shot-shell,” Burt said, rather ruefully.
I waited, looking back around the corner for some sign of pursuit, but there was none. When my head swung back I spotted the Pajero across the side street, just pulling up to the steps of the Times Tower. Burt saw it to. We started out together while he talked.
“I load a cartridge of birdshot as the first round. In all my guns. I’ve had a few occasions where I shot the wrong guy. A few years back I decided that I’d rather apologize for causing pain and misery than live with the other result.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The man was demonstrating an application of intellect and good judgment that I had never seen from any gun or pyrotechnics expert I had ever met. His forethought had saved the day. There would be no unexplainable dead body at the museum. No Caucasian ‘tourist’ slain by terrorists or robbers. The man I had hit would be marginally injured and very likely ambulatory. No cordons. No investigations. Our train trip was still possible.
“What’s the second round, some sort of nuclear device?” I asked, not entirely kidding. Burt didn’t answer. We were upon the car, which was not driven by Joan.
A young blond male with short hair sat behind the wheel. I got in behind him, while Burt went around. The DCM was in the front passenger seat.
“Drive into the traffic,” I told the kid, assuming he was one of Steven’s Marines. Without a word he wedged us in among the Matatas, trucks, and other conveyances trying to get from Kenyatta onto Mombasa Road. I looked behind us, but could not make out anything, but realized we had been either followed to the Railway Station without our realizing it or our behavior had been predicted.
“Thanks for coming,” I said to Joan, “and who are you?” I followed, rapping the youngster on his right shoulder .
“Corporal Sam Hill, Sir,” he answered. “I got the week off for leave but nowhere to go. Sergeant said I might come with you guys, if that’s okay.”
He looked to be a teenager to me, but most Marines do, as I get older.
“A guy just got shot back at the museum, and we’re being hunted by people we don’t know. Are you sure you want a piece of this?” I retorted. I didn’t mention that I’d done the shooting.
“Yes, sir,” the boy-child replied, filled with enthusiasm.
“Why’d you come?” I asked Joan, noting that her medium cut brown hair was perfectly combed. It seemed to float around her head. When she turned to face me, it bounced on its own a few times. I felt a warm glow. She’d carefully prepared to see me again.
“I wasn’t doing anything else,” she said, then smiled for the first time since I’d encountered her. I had a million questions I wanted to ask her but none of them had anything to do with our current situation.
“Thank you,” I repeated, getting control of myself, enough to find out what we needed to know. “How did your husband get involved in a CIA operation?” I asked her, directly.
“He’s not my husband, and I don’t know, but I know he did. What was it all about?” she asked me, in return.
I noted that the nails of her left hand, draped over the side of the seat, were manicured, and painted to a high gloss. I could not tell the color, as blue was the only color I really saw well at all. Her eyes were intensely blue, with thick brows over them. I could see those. She had a stunning presence.
“What happened to Smith, down in Mombasa?” I countered, ignoring her question.
“It didn’t’ start in Mombasa,” she replied. “It ended there, down in that prison outside of town.”
“Shimo la Tiwa?” I asked? I knew the prisons of Kenya. Not hellholes like the prison typified in the movie Midnight Express, put out in the seventies, but dirty bad places to try to survive in, especially for a Caucasian.
“G.K,” she said, shaking her head, “I think it was called, from what I heard.”
G.K. were the two letters mounted above the iron grate entrance to Shimo prison. I’d never found out what they stood for, but I said nothing to Joan. We had a location to work back from. It was also instructive that Smith had been in prison, not in jail. It spoke of an unlikely permanence.
“Where did it start?” I asked her.
“What?” Joan replied, not focused on the data I was trying to get from her.
“Smith. You said all of it started somewhere. Where?” I asked, patiently.
“Oh,” she answered, taking her time. I wondered if it was because of perplexity or evasion. “At the Embassy. Smith came to see Paul at the Embassy.
Neither of them were happy about the meeting, but I don’t know what they talked about.”
“Was your Communications Director present for the meeting?” I inquired, wanting to know if the local CIA ‘cowboy’ stationed at the Embassy was involved.
“That guy?” she came back. “Tyrell? No, why would he be there?”
I couldn’t believe that the DCM of a major embassy could remain unaware of the facility’s only CIA operative, however ceremonial his role was, but I let it pass. I would deal with Tyrell later.
“We’re going down there, to Mombasa,” I told her, not really understanding why I was giving her any information whatsoever. I just felt that I had to trust somebody and, for some reason I could not fathom, I found the DCM to be imminently trustable.
“The train. You’re taking the train tonight, aren’t you?” she correctly assumed. “You’re going after Rafiq, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Rafiq Salim was the name of our Lebanese target from the mission. I tried to think of why Joan would think we would pursue him down in Mombasa. The Agency had informed me that he lived in Nairobi where he ran a jewelry business. Without prompting, she gave me the answer.
“He lives down there. His family runs one of the ferries.”
I almost groaned aloud. Whatever we were involved in just kept getting more and more complex. I couldn’t seem to find any truth in anything.
“What do you want me to do, sir?” the corporal asked.
“Well for one, Sam Hill, I want you to stop calling me sir. My name is Jack.” I didn’t make the obligatory joke about ‘Sam Hell’ as I presumed he had been living with that all of his life. “Then, when we’re done here, I want you to drive this vehicle down to Mombasa. You have a cell phone?” The boy handed me a white card, like the generic Marine Corps card Staff Sergeant Stevens had given me. There was a Kenyan number on it in pencil. A ton of numbers really, but they seemed to work.
I noted that he was attired in a worn canvas outfit, with lots of pockets. He looked like an assistant to a tour director for one of the tourist ‘safari’ adventures, or maybe one of the redemption-seeking workers for an aid agency. In Kenya to seek redemption from living a life of spoiled ease and meaninglessness. Joan’s information, if it was valid, changed everything. Mombasa was revealing itself as the key to our mystery, or at least the place where the key might be found.
“When you get down there, and you should arrive hours before us, go to the Inter-Continental and hang out. I’ll call you. We need a car down there, and it might as well be this one.” I could not rent a car for cash in Kenya. Renting another car, no matter what the bribe, would take a host of paper and plastic backup I was not willing to give out. I no longer believed that the Agency was after us. But somebody with assets and motivation was. I was not going to give them anymore than I absolutely had to.
“The embassy is locked down,” Joan said.
“How’d you get out?” I asked, but then didn’t wait for an answer, already knowing that Stevens was at work. The Ambassador would be howling mad when he discovered his ex-wife, his DCM, was not there. “When you going back?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll catch a Matata home. I don’t understand any of this and I need to think, and maybe drink half a bottle of Grey Goose while I do it. Can we go somewhere and talk? Do you have time? Is there some place?”
I was surprised by her request. I was also surprised, however, that she had gotten out from under an embassy lockdown. The woman was starting to amaze me even more than Burt. We had several hours to kill before getting aboard the train, and we needed to be someplace where we could be off the streets. The bottle of Grey Goose sounded wonderful, but it was not to be.
“The Java House, on Argwings, just off Kenyatta, you know it?” I said to the corporal.
“Kinda,” he answered, biting the sir off before it came out of his mouth. He made me feel old and slow, totally unlike what I got from Joan.
“Make it so,” I said, emulating Jon Luke Piccard from Star Trek.
“Engage,” he laughed back, diving out of the traffic, across two medians and reversing our course of travel. I noted that another vehicle tried the same maneuver but only managed to create a massive traffic tie-up behind us. Whoever they were, they were persistent and good. Just not as good as a crazy teen-aged Marine driving a Pajero in downtown Nairobi.
“What changed?” I said to Joan, as the Pajero rocked back and forth, avoiding all manner of obstacles I tried not to pay attention to, only too happy to be taking the train instead of riding with Sam.
“What changed about what?” she retorted, holding fast to the sissy bar mounted above her window.
Communicating with the woman was maddening.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt said, unaccountably.

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Give Me Strength

CLOSER TO GOD

Give Me Strength

Chapter I

God is out there somewhere. I don’t know where. Once, when I was in an African prison I yelled back at some would-be reborn Christian preacher: “God has never come to my bunk.” He had been, as is the custom of reborn preachers, ministers or flock-leaders, indicating that God had spoken to him in the night, and instructed him regarding something I ought to do. For some reason God never instructs His acolytes in what they ought to do on their own, other than raise money and make members of the flock serve them.

It does not say, anywhere in the Bible, that God will not give you a burden too heavy to carry. That common saying is just pure bullshit. Think about the death camps in Germany, just for a second, and consider such idiotic God-driven nonsense. I do not believe you can ‘Trust in God,’ or even ‘Let go and let God.’ I think those are buzz-phrases created by reborn idiots. I do believe that if you pray to Him for strength, however, that He will definitely send you more problems so you can grow stronger in attempting to deal with them. My own life is proof of that little homily.

Nobody knows I smoke. Not one soul living on this planet. A couple of people used to know, but they died shortly after they discovered my secret. I don’t like to execute people without some ceremony. Instead of offering the intended victim a cigarette, however, I have one myself. They get the extra time while I finish the process of smoking it. That’s only fair. I smoke Marlboro cigarettes. The long ones with filters. Like the guy on the horse in those old ads. He died of lung cancer, I heard sometime back. I don’t think I’m going to die of lung cancer. I picked a career, or rather it picked me, that will likely preclude that.

It was raining just beyond my tucked-in corner of the railroad station. I smoked there because the station was filled only with members of the native population.

They knew I was nearby, back pressed firmly into the peeling wooden boards, but they made believe I didn’t exist. To me that was the same as not knowing anything.

About my smoking secret, I mean. The natives were like Knuckle-draggers, they didn’t count as living souls. They were just there, like the rocks, the trees or even the rain. I’m not prejudiced on the basis of color. I’m just prejudiced on the basis of the business I’m in.

When it rains in Nairobi, it rains for quite some time. The water coming down is clean, however, unlike the rest of the dusty dirty city. I love Nairobi, don’t get me wrong. And I love the rain in Nairobi because it drives everyone inside, then cleans the streets and universally broken sidewalks. I walk in the rain. I breathe it in. Plus its cool. Nairobi is pretty hot most of the time. I like it cool, but I don’t get many assignments up on the Bering Sea, or down in Tierra del Fuego. Africa is kind of my beat. And I’m not a Knuckle-dragger either. I don’t do the wet stuff at all. I’m one of the rather more rare guys who have guys who do that sort of thing. Maybe there are a few women who do what I do, I don’t know. I’ve never met one, or even heard of one, but these are changing times. Some of those guys, the Knuckle-draggers, were who I was standing near the rain waiting for. The train was overdue out of Lake Victoria, stopping in Nairobi, before making its way down to Mombasa.

Across the tracks I could see old rusting steam engines sitting on bare ground. Steam had given way to diesel ten years back. I remember riding the steam-powered train down to Mombasa, so long ago. The night had been filled with burning cinders, falling down and away past the dining car windows. It had not seemed romantic at the time, but in retrospect it was all of that, and more. I wistfully drew in the last of the Marlboro smoke, then pinched out the stub and replaced it in my red and white cardboard pack. I would leave no evidence of my secret behind, not that anyone around me cared. Kenyan natives are great. They pretty much respect and appreciate white folk, like me. They give deference and they don’t get in your face, as in some other cultures.

The train came in. Just like that. No whistle of warning. I was not in Europe or America. The rules were different. The old cars rocked slowly to a stop, compressed air hissing out from the brakes, resembling steam, up and down the line. I waited.

The natives crammed aboard the train as the passengers tried to get off. It was a mess of water-soaked bedlam, but it wasn’t noisy. The people of Kenya are a quiet lot. Another feature I like.

My guys climbed down just as the whistle of the engine finally sounded, indicating that the train was pulling out. Conductors in blue sweaters and black caps pushed and pulled stragglers aboard. The train creaked as it eased from the station. I turned and headed for the gray Nissan Pajero parked illegally in front. It was an old rental thing with a five speed, unlocked because there were no locks, only holes in all the doors. But I had left nothing inside. I carried nothing except my cigarettes, money and a passport. The rental papers for the car were not even there, as I wouldn’t return the vehicle, just call and tell the agency where to pick it up. My guys would have stuff. It was what they did. If they got caught with any of it, then they’d have to count on some other operatives to get them out of trouble. Or not.

I drove. Two of them in the back and one up front with me. We didn’t talk. They knew the mission. We were not, and were not going to be, friends. If there was to be violence I didn’t want to be grieving over the loss of any of them, or they over me.

"Fucking New Guy" Syndrome we’d called it, after the Nam. And it had its proper place in our work.

I drove fast. As fast as a three liter Pajero would go, which was not that fast at all.

One hundred and forty kilometers per hour was about max, which was about seventy miles an hour, or so. The roads out of Nairobi were built for about half that, however, so it was a rough scary ride. The guys gave no indication of discomfort or fear, however. It was that kind of business.

We were headed for a village just South of the big National Wildlife Park outside of Nairobi. I never could remember the park’s name. The village is a Masai place. The Masai are tall lanky natives who wear weird throw-back attire and carry long ugly spears. The men, anyway. And they stink to high heaven, as they never ever wash. Ever. I like them, but then, my former wife had once told me that I had no sense of smell. I guess didn’t have much taste in women either. I’d never found any who trusted me. And I couldn’t be around people who didn’t trust me. If they were ‘inside the wire’ kind of women, part of my tribe, then my trustworthiness should have been beyond question. I trusted them. But women don’t trust so easy, I discovered. So I was alone. I worked in a field that did not lend itself well to either trust or believability. Alone was not okay, but it simply had to do.

The village appeared next to the road about twenty clicks on the other side of the park. The inside of the Pajero was filled with dust, even though the rain had done a lot to cut it back. The park had been nothing but dirt roads and dust. Rain only sealed the top inch of the dust, and the dust went down a good four inches deeper than that. The village was a ram-shackle affair of branch constructed hovels, mud huts and half-thatched roofs behind flimsy fences. The fences were to keep animals in, not out. No self-respecting lion would ever allow itself the indignity of being speared full of holes on the interior open plaza of a Masai village.

I drove through a likely hole in the fence. Chickens and a few dogs scattered. I knocked down a few small pieces of stacked junk, and maybe a three-stone fireplace or two. I parked in the center of the village and shut off the engine. We sat. Nobody appeared. The knuckledragger next to me spoke for the first time.

“I’m Burt, and these are Tom and Walt,” he said, as he pointed toward the back seat.

I didn't laugh when a cloud of dust formed near the end of his extended finger.

“Hey,” I responded, looking carefully at each of them. We would not be friends, but our mutual survival was now dependent upon the performance of each of us. Missions involving violence seldom ever went smoothly. Aberrantly strange things were always cropping up.

“The target is being held somewhere nearby. I don’t know where. Our contact is supposed to meet us here." I said the words with finality. We were not going to go social at this tense point of the mission.

I looked at my Omega. It was the same watch the astronauts had worn to the moon. Or so the salesman had told me when I’d purchased it. It was pretty damned accurate, I had to admit. Our source had twenty minutes to make contact or I’d scrub the mission. While we waited, we were targets ourselves. It was a risk that came with the territory. We waited in the vehicle. It wasn’t likely that any force was going to take out four white guys, armed to the teeth, sitting inside a rental four-wheel-drive in the middle of a pacified Masai village. Getting out could lead to booby-traps or other hidden hazards. We waited inside.

A tall Masai warrior appeared between two of the hovels to our front. He motioned with his characteristic spear. The four of us got out of the vehicle. I looked at my guys to assure myself that nobody was coming out locked and loaded. Violence escalates from the things you do before violence happens, I knew. We needed to be just four white guys walking, escorted, across the Serengeti. Everyone was cool.

We followed the nearly seven foot tall native through the saw grass just East of the village. It was a well-beaten path so we had no trouble. We could have followed the tribesman with blinders on, as his aroma was that overpowering, even twenty feet back. I do have a sense of smell I thought, sending a mental message to my ex-wife.

We came upon a clearing at the base of one of those huge Baobab trees, its trunk at least twenty feet thick. A man lay on his side next to the tree, his hands tied behind him with what appeared to be vines. The man was white, wearing the phony safari gear so common to visiting tourists. Even his canvas hat was there, on the ground next to him. I was surprised by that, as the Masai are known for stealing anything not tied, glued or welded down. The warrior stood next to the laying man, planting the base of his spear down on the man’s torso. He looked at me, but said nothing.

I pulled a two inch stack of Kenyan Shillings from my back pocket. I’d exchanged two hundred dollars worth of U.S. currency at the rail station. I handed the warrior the cash. He grabbed it, then walked away immediately, back toward the village. I waited until the five of us were the only humans evident out on the Savannah. Then I crouched.

“You alive?” I asked the downed man. His eyes opened. He nodded vigorously. I stepped back. Automatically, Tom and Walt grabbed the man by his shoulders and roughly seated him, back to the Baobab trunk. They backed away.

“Burt,” I whispered. Carefully, Burt took a medium sized automatic out from under his rain coat and handed it to me. Then he reached inside the coat a second time and came out with a polished black cylinder. I handed the automatic back. Burt finished assembling the silenced killing machine.

“We’re not supposed to talk to you, but what the hell, I never do exactly what they tell me to do anyway,” I offered to the man against the tree, by way of passing time, as I moved to get my pack of Marlboros out.

“I did it,” the man whispered out. “I know you’re his people. I did it. I went to that prison and told them about him. I admit it. But I had to do it. If I didn’t do it he’d have ruined my family. Our business would have been gone. We have nowhere to go. We’re Lebanese. We’re not welcome anywhere. We don’t even have passports.

I even dressed like a tourist, just like he told me.”

I sat on my haunches, no longer reaching for my box of cigarettes. The mission was to take out the man who had deliberately informed on one of our agents, getting that agent very dead, indeed. Payback was uncommon to the intelligence business, I knew, at least payback in violence, but there were certain circumstances. This had appeared to be one of them, as the dead agent had also been a highly decorated former Marine Officer and well connected politically. Unlike myself, he’d also been rumored to be well-liked. The fact that I’d been instructed not to talk to the target had not gone down well with me, although I had not remarked at the time. If I have to be involved in someone’s passing, I like to make certain that some sort of justice in the universe is being balanced.

“What have you got for me?” I asked. The Lebanese just looked back at me.

“If we are not to end this all right here, then you have to give me some reason why your passing should not take place.” I stared into the man’s black eyes, seeing nothing but truth. Everything thing he’d said so far had reeked of truth, and that made me very uncomfortable.

“I don’t have anything,” the man said, his chin sagging to his chest.

“Who was going to destroy your family?” I prompted him. He looked up. Then he looked from Burt to the other two Knuckle-draggers, then back at me. I stood, both knees and the small of my back in pain at the same time. I grunted.

“Take a hike out on the Serengeti for a bit,” I said to Burt. He grimaced, then handed the suppressed weapon to me. I took it. I knew the three of them probably had six more weapons among them, or more. Knuckledraggers were big on toys and equipment, cramming diplomatic sacks with all manner of pyrotechnics.

I waited for the guys to get a good thirty yards down the path, before I squatted back down.

“Paul Haggerty,” the Lebanese expelled with one soft breath. I said nothing back.

I didn’t have another question. I was too shocked. Paul Haggerty was the American

Ambassador to Kenya. Ambassadors never ever get involved in operational agency business, at least I had never heard of it happening before. For an Ambassador to be involved with the killing of a field agent was almost too impossible to consider.

“I understand that you have to kill me. But my family. They won’t be hurt, will they?

I have a wife and four children.” He tried to go on but I held up one hand in front of his face.

“Do you have any idea why Paul would want the agent dead?” The Lebanese shook his head violently. “Do you have any idea who killed our man?” I followed up, beginning to wonder exactly what had taken place in that prison outside of Nairobi.

Kenya was not exactly an enemy of the United States. The Soviets were long gone.

Terrorism was mostly a geographically limiting situation, excepting 9/11, of course.

Why the revelation that a man was an agent of the CIA would get him killed in a place like Kenya had no comforting answer that I could come up with.

The man shook his head again. I believed everything he’d told me. But I didn’t know what to do with it.

I rose to my feet once again with same groan. I stepped away from the Baobad and saw Burt pacing in the distance, nervously. If I got myself killed it would not look good in the after-action report, for him, or the other guys. They had to do what I said, but they also had to protect me. I waved him back.

“Cut him loose,” I said, when the three had shambled back. I handed the silenced weapon to Burt. “We won’t be needing that.”

Tom and Walt got the Lebanese to his feet and cut through the vines. The man glanced around him like he was some sort of hunted bird, looking for the next direction of attack.

“What do I do?” he asked, finally. I took the eighteen remaining hundred dollar bills of mission cash from my front pocket. I put the small stack into his hand.

“We’re taking you back to your family. Then you’re going to disappear for a few weeks while I get this all sorted out. And I mean disappear. Do you understand?”

“You did not know?” the Lebanese asked me, looking at my three guys, without going on. I shook my head.

“There will be trouble, I think,” he said, with an air of finality.

The village was as dead when we returned, as it had been when we’d arrived. It was obvious that no one had touched the Pajero. The villagers wanted nothing to do with us. As I drove madly toward Nairobi, the Lebanese wedged in between Tom and Walt in the back seat, I supposed that nobody in the U.S. Embassy was going to want anything to do with us either.

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