Shadow War (13 page)

The Wolf wasn't happy. The fallen tower, the mangled gate, dozens of destroyed vehicles. He walked through the gate and down the access road to the blind curve. The Chechens had chained the fallen trees and pulled them from the road, but it had taken time. So had moving the burned remains of the delivery truck. And the Range Rovers blocking the entrance to the main road.

This wasn't Sirko. The Wolf was sure of that. This was too . . . modern. Too carefully planned. Too clever. Karpenko had brought in help. Someone connected. No amateur could fly a plane three hundred miles into Ukrainian airspace and out again. This was a top-flight operation, and the Wolf knew what that meant: the distant enemy. The West.

He wondered, briefly, about Karpenko's story.

Then he put it behind him. The story here, in this wreckage, was more important. He had sent the Chechens out onto the roads, chasing luck, but he knew they wouldn't stick with him for long, not if the bounty and his high-end extraction team had flown beyond his reach. They were in it for the money, nothing more, and there were many opportunities to make money in eastern Ukraine. Hell, Putin was basically paying mercenaries just to cause trouble.

But if the Wolf could find any proof of what had happened here, he could pay more.

He turned and looked back down the road toward the airbase,
running through the operation in his head. Black Range Rovers, two Mercedes. Ambush with AK-47s fired by Ukrainians, not professionals. C-4. Padlock. Delivery truck. Delivery . . .

“Professionals,” Ivan said, walking up behind him.

The Wolf wheeled. Ivan was smiling, like this was nothing, even though half his men had been killed. Even though he'd been
beaten,
at the very thing he'd built his life around. Where was the pride? The professionalism?

“There's no way Maltov did this,” Ivan said. The Wolf felt the urge to shoot him, right in his big blockhead. But then . . .

“Who's Maltov?” he said.

Alie had gone to Bujumbura in 2004 for the same reason she had gone to the convent: to get away. Africa was as far from Anniston, Alabama, as you could get, after all, and even in Africa, Burundi was a backwater. It was small; it was poor (the fifth poorest country in the world, with a 65 percent Catholic population, Sister Mary Karam told her, a perfect place for mission work), and it was in the middle of the continent, away from lions, elephants, pharaohs, the Sahara desert, Nelson Mandela, and anything else anyone in America had ever heard of.

“Only the Nile River,” Sister Mary Karam had said. “It starts there. And genocide. Burundi is the sister country of Rwanda.”

Alie had stared at her blankly.

“The Rwandan genocide—where eight hundred thousand people were murdered. With machetes. In ninety days.” Alie shook her head no. She hadn't heard of it. She had only been twelve. The sister threw up her hands. Literally leaned back and threw them up in despair. “You do Burundi some good,” she said, “and it will return the blessing.”

Burundi
had
done her good. She had thought her black grandmother's crumbling farmhouse in Hale County, Alabama, had prepared her for the worst, but Bujumbura was a city of desolate one-story buildings, squalid huts, and anorexic chickens. People were sitting on the side of the dirt road, selling three or four pieces of fruit. A woman pushed a canister of propane in a ratty
baby stroller. The huts were cinderblocks or scrap metal, and there were gaunt people in doorless entryways watching their charity's Land Cruisers pass, just as people had watched when they drove their Lexuses down the backroads of Hale County to some shed where her black father had business, or knew somebody, or needed to chat in the backroom while kindly old men fed her pickled pigs' feet long after that Southern delicacy disappeared from the more prosperous gas stations along Route 411.

And Bujumbura was the capital of this country.

Eventually, they pulled up at a checkpoint staffed by two Africans holding clubs. She thought of the genocide in Rwanda, which she'd researched on the Internet, and the extreme violence of death by machete or club.

Barbaric, she thought, and instantly regretted it. She was smart enough to know that was racist, but she couldn't help it. Dear God, she prayed, as they pulled through the gate, have those men actually beaten someone to death?

The neighborhood on the other side of the concrete block wall was a different world. It was still dirt roads and chickens, but now there were electrical poles and oversized American-style houses on tiny lots. The driver stopped in front of a three-story cinderblock and plaster villa, centered on a trim green yard. In the doorway, another African lingered, this one dressed in formal attire, neat as a pin, with his hands clasped behind his back. When he reached for Alie's bags, she saw that he was wearing gloves.

“
Bienvenue à Bujumba,
” he said.

The first floor was wide, but through the back doors, open for the breeze, she could see a cinderblock wall with broken glass embedded on top. There were desks, papers, the sounds of activity behind doors, but the man didn't hesitate or inform. He carried her two small bags up the stairs—
I should have carried
one of those,
she thought—and into a large room with a balcony and a queen bed. There was a ceiling fan, mosquito netting, African art, even a private bathroom. The air smelled like perfume and mosquito repellent.

“
Votre chambre, mademoiselle,
” the man said. Your room, miss.

“
Tout pour moi?
” she asked. All for me?

“
Oui, mademoiselle,
” he said, turning on his heels.

She opened the doors, walked onto the balcony, and leaned on the railing. She was looking out over the roofs, water tanks, and backup generators of maybe twenty similar houses, all within the compound walls. Beyond them was a startlingly large blue sky, bracketed by gorgeous green hills.

Africa,
she thought, with a thrill.

“The Switzerland of the equator,” someone said, and she turned, startled, to find a lean man in a white suit standing in her doorway. “That's what some call it, anyway. I'm not so sure. Maybe Alsace, I think. But the lake is beautiful.” He walked onto the balcony beside her and stared at the view. Alie followed his gaze and saw the thin line, right in the middle of the blue. The sky wasn't bigger here; it was reflected in a lake.

“Lake Tanganyika. Over eighteen hundred kilometers long. The second deepest in the world. Over there,” he said, pointing toward a hill, “was where Stanley found Livingstone and said, ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume?'”

It was the first story expats told newcomers, something Alie found even stranger now that she knew it probably wasn't true. She must have heard it three dozen times, or maybe three hundred. When she found herself saying it, she knew it was time to leave. But that was years away. On the first day, she was impressed.

“What's over there?” she asked.

“Congo,” the man said. “You don't want to go there. It's dangerous.” He extended his hand. “I'm Gironoux. I'm the secretary here.”

She would see Gironoux almost every day of her stay in Bujumbura, or “Buj” as the expats called it, but never outside the compound walls. He was a sixty-year-old charity professional, tasked with handling the white part of the business: fundraising, tours, parties.

She was a twenty-four-year-old fallen nun, who spent her days in the community. She sat with the sick and dying in crumbling rooms, quietly terrified of the legendary African maladies: the fly that laid eggs in your eyes and made you go blind, the worms that fed on your organs, HIV. She shopped with a guide at the Central Market (it burned down in 2013, she remembered sadly), where the meat was covered in black flies, and served humble meals out of a community center. She watched babies and filled out forms and helped women set up small market stalls, until she realized she was so ignorant of the local culture that she might actually be setting them back and begged to teach children instead. After that, she spent four days a week in an open-air, mud-walled church that reminded her of the one made out of old tires and broken windshields back in Hale County, watching small girls weave hot pads and pan holders out of scavenged wire.

I'm helping. I'm making a difference. I'm risking myself,
she thought, even though every night she was back in the compound, and every Saturday afternoon she was at the embassy beach. It wasn't safe at night, they told her, and she believed it. There was electricity only in the wealthy pockets of town, and most of the city was dark by the time the rebels came out of the hills.

She heard the gunfire on the second night, while she was hav
ing dinner with Gironoux and three other natty Europeans at his villa down the road. They were eating goat stew (she was at that precise moment fishing out a few hairs, she recalled) and drinking Bordeaux when the popping started. She put down her spoon, but nobody else seemed to notice.

“Yes, it's gunfire,” Gironoux said finally. “You'll get used to it. Now what do you think of Sister Mary Agnes?”

At least guns are better than clubs,
she thought, although now, after ten years in war zones, she wasn't so sure. She met Locke two weeks later, right about the time she got bored with the place.

It was the Friday night party at the Marine House, a Buj tradition for young American expats. No, an African tradition. There was a Marine House near every American embassy, she understood now, and while the size and style varied depending on country, they were all the same: young men living in group rooms, in the kind of house none of them would ever be able to afford again. The United States embassy in Burundi was tiny and decrepit, but the twenty Marines sent to guard it lived in a mansion with a swimming pool, large-screen television, pool table, and barbeque. They had a butler for beer duty, a cook for meals, and maids for laundry. The frat boys at Auburn never had it so good.

Or partied so hard. These kids had gone straight into the Marines from high school, and now here they were, in one of the most obscure postings in the armed forces, where they could afford anything, even on their salaries, since everything was cheap. So they created a nonstop beer commercial: BBQ, music, women, satellite television for their favorite sports, a projector to show movies over the pool. She was squeezing through the crowded living room, trying not to spill her margarita, when she saw him, on the other side of the room, in the glow of the neon Budweiser sign.

It wasn't the first time. She had seen him around for at least a week, including that afternoon, at the embassy beach. It was a beautiful day. She was in her pink bikini, enjoying the tropical sun, even though her golden skin never needed a tan. He had been wearing pressed slacks and a linen suit coat; the man he was talking with wore fatigues. He glanced at her, but to her surprise, he didn't seem interested. Her mother always told her she was twenty pounds overweight, her mom told her a lot of terrible things, but she knew men loved her curves.

It was that cursory glance, or maybe just curiosity, that drove her that night. He was handsome, and sure of himself, but more than that, he was mysterious. In a community where everyone had defined roles—military, charity worker, debauched and/or bored diplomat—he didn't fit. He was older, but not old. Martial but not military. He seemed, somehow, to be all three at once, but also none at all.

When he glanced at her this time, she held his stare, and neither of them turned away. Ten seconds later, she was standing in the Budweiser glow.

“I'm Alie,” she said.

“Um . . . Locke. Doctor Thomas Locke.”

“Médecins sans Frontières?”

He laughed. “No, no. That was stupid. I'm sorry. I'm a doctor of international relations. From Harvard. The Carr Center for Human Rights.” He passed her a business card. Who had business cards in Burundi? “I'm studying genocide.”

“The civil war?”

“And a few others, all the way back to the Belgians. There's a long history.”

“I'm an NGO worker,” she said. “Catholic Relief Services.”

“I know.”

“Really? Did you look me up?”

“The indigenous shawl,” he said, pointing to the light wrap she had thrown over her shoulders. “All NGO girls wear them.”

She remembered that she and the younger women had gone to the market together, and she and Mary (and the other Mary) had bought similar wraps.

“You have a good eye for detail,” she said.

He smiled. “I know what to look for.”

Flirtatious. Maybe. “What do you think of Bujumbura?”

“It's a good place to study genocide.”

They must have talked. She didn't remember now. She only remembered the end of the night, when she was half in the bag, wearing a sombrero with little tassels along the rim and fending off an overly persistent Marine.

“Let's dance,” the Marine insisted, when the piano started. She had agreed. Why not? But the music was odd. It was wild, rhythmic, and toe-tapping, but . . . strange. Not Marine House style. She was about to complain, when she noticed it wasn't the stereo, but Dr. Locke on a battered upright piano covered with half a hundred empty beer bottles. Marine House had a piano? By the time he was finished, she had wandered over to watch.

“What was that?” she asked.

He turned, surprised to see her. “A fandango,” he said.

“From Broadway?”

“No, Padre Antonio Soler. Baroque.” He was clearly embarrassed. “You'd like him. A Spanish priest who liked to rock the harpsichord. Um . . . can I escort you home?”

She hadn't been thinking about leaving, but once they were outside, she was glad she had. The Marines had full-time staff, but the house was filthy. She had once made the mistake of going into a bedroom. The stench of floor clothes and sweat almost made her sick.

“I can't believe those guys went through Parris Island,” Locke said, when they were outside.

She stopped, waiting, but Locke walked on. No one was allowed to travel in Buj after the sun went down without escort from cleared security personnel. Was Dr. Locke cleared? Where was his personal security detail, the one from the beach?

“I thought we might walk,” he said, as if he didn't know this was dangerous.

It was a warm August night. The city was dark, so the stars were bright. She always found it odd to live in a city where you could see the stars. They were walking the ridgeline when the gunfire started somewhere in the darkness below. Someone was shouting. She recognized Kirundi, the native language. It was coming from a walkie-talkie hooked to Locke's belt.

“Sorry,” he said, lowering the volume but not turning it off. “Someone reporting the shooting.”

“Oh,” she said. Most people wore walkie-talkies, since there were no landlines and the cell service had an annoying habit of cutting out for hours at a time. But the reports were always in French or English.

“Where did you learn to play piano?”

He blushed. “I was . . . a bit drunk,” he said. “I shouldn't have done that.” She didn't say anything. It was three blocks to the Catholic house, and she figured he'd answer eventually, if only to break the silence.

“I'm a classically trained musician,” he said finally.

“On the piano?”

“Violin.”

“That's an odd skill for a scholar in the middle of Africa.”

“I had an odd childhood.” He smiled. “How else would I have ended up here?”

She felt the truth in that. It was her own tough childhood that had pushed her into this forsaken part of the world.

“May I take you to dinner?” It was oddly formal, this idea of
walking a girl home and asking her for a date, especially here. She wondered if he would give her an old-fashioned good-night kiss on the cheek at the door.