James PATTERSON - Cross Country

“I have to go, Bree. He’s already killed more people in Washington than anyone I’ve seen. Eventually he’ll come back and start up again.”

“And he killed your friend.”

“Yes, he killed my friend. He killed Ellie Cox and her entire family.”

Finally Bree shrugged. “So, go. Go to Africa, Alex.” And we hugged each other for a long time, and I was reminded again of why I loved her. And maybe why I was running away from her now.

HE MET UP with the white devil in a wood-paneled cigar bar just off Pennsylvania Avenue, half a dozen blocks from the White House. They ordered drinks and appetizers, and the white man selected a Partagas cigar.

“Cigars aren’t a vice of yours?” the white man asked.

“I have no vices,” said the Tiger. “I am pure of heart.”

The white man laughed at that.

“The money has been transferred, three hundred and fifty thousand. You’re going back now?”

“Yes, later tonight, in fact. I’m looking forward to being home in Nigeria.”

The man nodded. “Even in such troubled times?”

“Especially now. There’s lots of work for me. I like being lazy. Oil rich. Getting there anyway. By my standards.”

The white man clipped his expensive cigar and the Tiger sipped his cognac. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he knew who his employer was. It wouldn’t be the first time. This group’s contractors in Africa weren’t always reliable – but he was. Always.

“There’s something else.”

“There always is,” said the Tiger, “with you people.”

“You’re being followed by an American policeman.”

“He won’t go to Africa after me.”

“Yes, actually he will. You might have to kill him, but we would prefer you didn’t. His name is Alex Cross.”

“I see. Alex Cross. Not smart to travel all the way to Africa just to die.”

“No,” said the white man. “Try to remember that yourself.”

THE TIGER WAS an enigma in every way, a mystery no one had ever solved. Actually, there were no tigers in Africa, which was how he got his nickname. He was like no other, one of a kind, superior to all the other animals, especially humans.

Before he went to school in England, the Tiger had lived in France for a couple of years, and he had learned French and English. He discovered he had a gift for languages, and he could remember almost everything he learned or read. His first summer in France, he’d sold mechanical birds to children in the parking areas outside the palace at Versailles. He’d learned a valuable lesson there: to hate the white man, and especially white families.

This day he had a mission in a city he didn’t much like because the foreigner had left too much of a mark here. The city was Port Harcourt in the Delta region of Nigeria, where most of the oil wells were located.

The game was on. He had another bounty to collect.

A black Mercedes was speeding up a steep hill toward the wealthy foreigners’ part of the city and straight toward the Tiger as well.

As always, he waited patiently for his prey.

Then he wandered out into the street like some poor drunkard on a binge. The Mercedes would either have to stop very quickly or strike him head-on.

Probably because he was so large and might dent the car, at the last possible moment, the chauffeur applied the brakes.

The Tiger could see the liveried black scum cursing him from behind the spotlessly clean windshield. So he raised his pistol fast and shot the driver and a bodyguard through the glass.

His boys, wild, were already at both rear doors of the limousine, breaking the side windows with crowbars.

Then they threw open the doors and pulled out the screaming white schoolchildren, a boy and a girl in their early teens.

“Don’t harm them, I have other plans!” he yelled.

An hour later, he had the boy and girl inside a shack on a deserted farm outside the city. They were dead now, unrecognizable even if they were found eventually. He had boiled them in a pot of oil. His employer had ordered this manner of death, which happened to be common in Sudan. The Tiger had no problem with it.

Finally, he pulled out his cell phone and called a number in town. When the phone was picked up on the other end, he didn’t allow the American parents to speak.

Nor would he ever talk to the local police, or to the private contractor who worked for the oil company and was supposed to protect them from harm.

“You want to see young Adam and Chloe again, you do exactly as I say. First of all, I don’t want to hear a word from you. Not a word.”

One of the cops spoke, of course, and he hung up on him. He would call back later, and have his money by the end of the day. It was easy work, and Adam and Chloe reminded him of the obnoxious and greedy white children who used to buy his mechanical birds at Versailles.

He felt no regret for them, nothing at all. It was just business to him.

Just another large bounty to collect.

And just the start of things to come.

I WAS DETERMINED to follow the psycho killer and his gang wherever it took me, but I could see this wasn’t going to be easy. Quite the opposite.

“You took my passport? Did I get that right?” I asked Nana. “You actually stole my passport?”

She ignored the questions and set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. Overdone and no toast, I noticed. So this was war.

“That’s right,” she said. “You behave like an obstinate child, that’s how I treat you. Purloined,” she added. “I prefer purloined to stole.”

I pushed the plate away. “Ellie Cox died because of this man, Nana. So did her family. And another family here in DC. Don’t pretend this has nothing to do with us.”

“You mean you. And your job, Alex. That’s what this has to do with.” She poured a half cup of coffee and then headed for her room.

I called after her. “You know stealing someone’s passport against the law?”

“So arrest me,” she said and slammed shut her door. Six in the morning and round one of the new day was already over.

We’d been building up to this ever since I first mentioned the possibility of my going to Africa. At first she’d been coy, with news articles cropping up around the house. I found a Time cover story, “The Deadly Delta,” snipped out and left with my laundry one night; a BBC news piece with the headline “Many Factions, No Peace for Nigeria” in an envelope next to my keys the next morning.

When I ignored them, she moved on to lecturing – with a list of what-ifs and potential risks, as if I hadn’t considered nearly every one of them myself. Muslims killing Christians in the north of Nigeria; Christians retaliating in Eastern Nigeria; students lynching a Christian teacher; mass graves found in Okija; police corruption and brutality; daily kidnappings in Port Harcourt.

It’s not that she was all wrong. These murder cases were already dangerous, and I hadn’t even given up the homecourt advantage yet. The truth was, I didn’t know what to to expect in Africa. All I knew was that if I had a chance to shut this butcher down, I was going to take it. The CIA contact there had signaled the murder suspect was in Lagos right now, or at least he had been a few days ago.

I’d pulled some strings to expedite my visa application.

Then I had cashed in seventy-five thousand miles for a last-minute ticket to Lagos.

Now the only obstacle was my eighty-eight-year-old grandmother. Big obstacle. She stayed in her room until I left for work that morning, refusing to even talk about the purloined passport.