James PATTERSON - Cross Country

While she was gone, the conversation got more serious, and her father spoke of the tragic murders of Christians in northern Nigeria, and then of the reprisals by Christians in the east. He told me the story of a Christian schoolteacher who was recently beaten to death by her Muslim students.

Finally, Uchenna talked about the provocative newspaper articles his daughter wrote on a weekly basis and said how dangerous they were.

But mainly there was laughter in the house that night. Already I felt at home. This was a good family, like so many families here in Lagos.

After Nkiru took the boys to bed and Adanne rejoined the group, the conversation turned to politics and grownup talk again. There had been four bombings in Bayelsa State that week, down in the Delta region near the oil fields. The pressure for Nigeria to split into independent states was growing along with the violence all around the country.

“It is all about bad men. All of it, always has been,” Adanne said. “It’s time that the world was run by women. We want to create, not destroy. Yes, I’m serious, Daddy. No, I haven’t had too much wine.”

“It was the beer,” her father said.

AROUND MIDNIGHT, ADANNE led me to a small bedroom where I’d be staying in the rear of the house. She touched my arm, came in behind me, and sat down on the bed.

I could see she was still in a playful mood, still smiling, a different person from the one who had taken me to Darfur a few days ago, and very different from the suspicious, serious-faced reporter I’d met in her office.

“They like you, Alex, especially my mother and sister-in-law. I can’t see why. I don’t get it.”

I laughed. “I guess I fooled them. They’ll catch on to me soon.”

“Exactly right. Just what I was going to say. So now, we’re thinking the same thoughts, I see. So what are you thinking at this moment? Tell me the truth, Alex.”

I didn’t have a very good answer for Adanne. Well, actually I did, but I didn’t want to say it out loud. But then I did anyway.

“I think there’s an attraction between us, but we have to let it go.”

“That’s probably right, Alex. Or maybe not.”

She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek and held her lips there for a few seconds. She smelled nicely of soap, clean and fresh.

Adanne looked up into my eyes and she was still smiling. She had perfect white teeth. “I just want to lie here with you for a while. Can we do that? Just be here together without any more intimacy than that? What do you think? Can we do it two nights in a row?”

I finally kissed Adanne back, on the lips, but I didn’t hold the kiss for very long.

“I’d like that,” I told her.

“Me too,” she said. “I have love in my heart for you. It’s just a crush, I think. Don’t say anything, Alex. Don’t spoil this, whatever it is.”

I didn’t. We held on to each other until sleep took us both. I’m not sure if it took us farther away or closer together that night, but nothing happened for either of us to regret.

Or maybe I would come to regret that nothing happened.

THE NEXT MORNING, Adanne was up early, making coffee and fresh-squeezed juice for everyone. Then she volunteered to drive me to my meeting with Flaherty. She was more serious and businesslike now, the way I’d seen her away from her family.

“Why are you wearing a dumb tie?” she asked. “You look like a downtown lawyer. Or a banker. Ugh.”

“I have no idea,” I told her and smiled. Now I was the one smiling all the time. “It’s another Nigerian mystery, I guess.”

“You’re the mystery,” she said. “I think so.”

“You’re not alone in that.”

She stopped the car in front of the bank on Broad Street.

“Be careful, Alex.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “It is dangerous out there, more than ever.”

Then I hopped out of the car and gave a wave, and she was off. I decided immediately not to think about her, but then I was thinking about nothing else but Adanne – her smile, last night at her house, things that we didn’t do.

Flaherty! I reminded myself. What the hell does he want from me?

The CIA man was nowhere to be seen, though. I waited about twenty minutes, just long enough to start getting paranoid, when his Peugeot skidded up to the curb.

He threw open the door on my side. “C’mon, let’s go. I don’t have time to waste.” When I got in, I saw there was a blue folder on the seat and picked it up.

“What’s this?”

Flaherty looked dirty and sweaty and totally stressed out, more weaselly than usual. He pulled away and started driving. Typical of him, he didn’t bother to answer my question.

So I opened the file. It was just a single photocopied form with a passport-size picture of a young boy stapled to it.

“Adoption papers?”

“Orphanage records. That’s your Tiger. His name is Abidemi Sowande. Born Lagos, nineteen seventy-two, to wealthy parents. Both of them died when he was seven years old, no living relatives. Apparently little Abi wasn’t exactly the picture of mental health. He ended up on a ward for a year after that. When he came out, the old family fortune was gone.”

“What happened to it?”

Flaherty shrugged, and a little smoke from his cigarette got into his eye. He squinted and rubbed at it.

“Sowande was supposed to get transferred to state care, but somewhere between hospital and orphanage, he disappeared. He was a bright boy apparently. High IQ anyway. He spent two years at university in England. Then he disappeared until a few years ago here. That’s it, all I have. No further record of any kind until now. We think he might have worked as a mercenary.”

I stared at the picture in my hand. Could this boy be the man I’d seen in Darfur? The killer of so many people here and in Washington? Ellie’s murderer?

“How do we even know it’s him?” I asked.

“The dead guy in Sudan – Mohammed Shol? We got a source says he was bragging about doing business with ‘the Tiger,’ supposedly knew a thing or two about him. It seemed like a long shot, but then someone dug up this record and we got a print match to the crime scene at Shol’s. Sweet, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said, holding up the folder. “I mean, really, what am I supposed to do with this? Seems a little convenient all of a sudden.”

Flaherty glared over at me and swerved out of his lane.

“Jesus, Cross, how much help do you want here?”

“Help?” I said. I wanted to hit him. “You hang me out to dry, then show up and give me the name of someone who doesn’t seem to exist anymore? Possibly a mercenary, but who knows? Is that the kind of help you mean?”

“This is gravy, Detective. I told you not to count on me from day one.”

“No, you told me that on day four – after I spent three nights in jail.”

FLAHERTY ANGRILY FLICKED his lit butt out the window and wiped the sweat off his face. “Do you even know why you’re not dead yet? It’s because everyone thinks you’re CIA, and we let them think it. We’ve been babysitting you. I’ve been babysitting you. Don’t bother to thank me.”

I clenched my hands several times, trying to cap my anger. It wasn’t just Flaherty’s arrogance getting to me, or his condescension. It was this entire case. The Tiger was worse than any of the serial killers I had ever arrested – so why was he allowed to roam free here?

I looked over at Flaherty. “What is it you do, exactly for the agency?”

“I service the copiers at the embassy,” he said, deadpan.

Then he lit another cigarette and blew out smoke. “Actually, I’m on record here as CIA. Okay by you?”