James PATTERSON - Cross Country

VISUALLY OSHODI MARKET was a lot like the rest of Lagos – crammed end to end with busy, hurrying people, either buying something or selling something, and possibly doing both.

Flaherty curled his way through the crowds and the stalls like a skinny white rat in its favorite maze.

I had to keep my eyes on him to stay with him, but the exotic food smells and the sounds of the market still came through loud and strong. I took it all in – and liked it very much.

There were grilled meats and peanutty things and sweet-spicy stews over open fires, all of it reminding me of how hungry I was. Accents and languages came and went like radio stations, or maybe jazz. Yoruban was the most common; I was starting to pick that one out from among the many others.

I also heard livestock braying from the back of trucks, babies crying in a line for vaccinations, and people continually haggling about prices pretty much everywhere we went in the market.

My pulse ran high the whole time, but in a good way. Faced with squalor or not, I was finally pumped to be here.

Africa! Unbelievable.

I didn’t think of it as my home, but the attraction was powerful anyway. Exotic and sensual and new. Once again I found myself thinking about poor Ellie. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. What had happened to her here? What had she found out?

Flaherty finally slowed at a rug stall. The young seller, negotiating with a man in traditional oatmeal-colored robes, barely glanced over as we walked through the shoulder-high slacks to the back of the stall.

Less than a minute later, he appeared like an apparition at our side.

“Mr. Flaherty,” he said and then nodded at me politely. “I have beer and mineral water in the cooler, if you like.” It felt as though he were welcoming us into his home rather than selling intel in the marketplace.

Flaherty held up a hand. “Just current events, Tokunbo. Today we’re interested in the one called the Tiger. The massive one.” I noticed that the name needed no more explanation than that.

“Anything in the last twenty-four hours gets you twenty American. Forty-eight gets you ten. Anything older than that gets you whatever you’d make selling rugs today.”

Tokunbo nodded serenely. He was like Flaherty’s polar opposite. “They say he’s gone to Sierra Leone. Last night, in fact. You just missed him – lucky for you.”

“Ground or air?”

“By ground.”

“Okay.” Flaherty turned to me. “We’re good here. Pay the man.”

I HAD PLENTY of other tough questions to ask Tokunbo about the Tiger and his gang of savage boys, but he was Flaherty’s informant, and I followed his protocol. I owed it to him to keep my mouth shut until we were out of earshot anyway.

“What’s with the quick in-and-out?” I said once we had left the rug seller’s stall.

“He’s in Sierra Leone. Dead end, no good. You don’t want to go there.”

“What are you talking about? How do you even know the information’s good?”

“Let’s just say I’ve never wanted my money back. Meanwhile, you’re better off cooling your heels here For a few days, a week, whatever it takes. See the sights. Stay away from the prostitutes, especially the pretty ones.”

I grabbed Flaherty’s arm. “I didn’t come all this way to cool my heels by the hotel pool. I’ve got one target here.”

“You are a target here, my man. You ever hear the saying ‘You’ve got to stay alive to stay in the game’? This is a very dangerous city right now.”

“Don’t be an ass, Flaherty. I’m a DC cop, remember. I’ve done this kind of thing a lot. I’m still standing.”

“Just… take my advice, Detective Cross. He’ll be back. Let him come. You can die then.”

“What’s your advice if I still want to go to Sierra Leone?”

He took a breath, feeling resigned, I think. “He’ll probably go to Koidu. It’s near the eastern border. Kailahun’s a little too hot right now, even for him. If he went over ground, that means he’s trading which means oil, or maybe gas.”

“Why Koidu?”

“Diamond mines. There’s an unofficial oil-for-diamonds trading corridor between here and there. He’s heavily into it, from what I hear.”

“Okay. Anything else I should know?”

He started walking again. “Yeah. You got a best buddy back home? Call him. Tell him where you keep your porn, or whatever else you don’t want your family to find when you’re dead. But hey, have a good trip, and nice knowing you.”

“Flaherty!” I called, but he refused to look back, and when I got outside the market, I found that he’d stranded me there.

So I wandered back inside and bought some fresh fruit-mangoes, guavas, and papayas. Delicious! Might as well live it up while I could.

Tomorrow I would be in Sierra Leone.

ON A SUN-BEATEN dirt road that twisted through what used to be a forest outside Koidu, a fifteen-year-old boy was slowly choking to death.

Slowly, because that’s exactly how the Tiger wanted it to happen.

Very slowly, in fact.

This was an important death for his boys to watch and learn from.

He closed his grip even tighter on the young soldier’s esophagus.

“You were my number one. I trusted you. I gave you everything, including your oxygen. Do you understand? Do you?”

Of course the boy understood. He’d palmed a stone, a diamond. It was found under his tongue. He was probably going to die for it now.

But not at the Tiger’s hand.

“You.” He pointed to the youngest of the other boy soldiers. “Cut your brother!”

The lad of no more than ten stepped forward and unsheathed a clip-pointed Ka-bar, a gift for him from the Tiger’s trip to America. With no hesitation at all, he shoved the blade into his brother’s thigh, then jumped back to avoid the spurting blood.

The Tiger kept his own hand where it was on the thief’s throat; unable to even scream, the boy just gagged.

“Now you,” he said to the next youngest wild boy. “Take your time. No hurry.”

Each of them took a turn, one at a time, any strike they chose, any kind of blow, except one that would kill the diamond thief. That right belonged to the oldest or at least the one who would now be the oldest. “Rocket,” they called him on account of the bright red Houston Rockets basketball jersey he always wore, rain or shine.

The Tiger stepped back to let Rocket finish the murder. There was no need to hold the thief down anymore; his body was limp and broken, blood pooling in the dust around his shattered face. Black flies and puffy gnats were already settling on the wounds.

Rocket walked around until he was standing over the thieving boy’s head. He was casually rubbing at the fuzz of beard he hadn’t yet begun to shave.

“You shame us all,” he said. “Mostly, you shame yourself. You were number one. Now you are nothing!” Then he fired once from the hip, gangsta-style, like in the American videos he’d watched all his life. “No more trouble with this dumb bastard,” he said.

“Bury him!” the Tiger yelled at the boys.

All that mattered was that the carcass stay out of sight until they were gone. This dead boy was no one to anyone, and Sierra Leone was a country of pigs and savages anyway.

Unclaimed bodies were as common as dirt weeds here.

He put the pilfered diamond back in its black leather canister with the others. This was the package a tanker of Bonny Crude had bought him – and it was a good trade.

Certificates of origin could be easily purchased or faked. The stones would move with no trouble in London or New York or Tokyo.

He called Rocket over from the digging of the grave. “Pull his wireless before you put him in the ground. Keep it with you at all times, even when you sleep.”