Don Pendleton - State Of Evil

He left them less than satisfied, but they were staying. It was all that mattered at the moment.

That, and finding Patrick Quinn.

NICO MBARGA HAD INFORMED his men, at the beginning of the search, that all results should be reported directly to him, without troubling the master. His troops knew the drill well enough, but it did no harm to remind them, especially when there were strangers in the village who might form a bad impression of the Process if its guards ran willy-nilly, here and there, spreading false rumors to the populace.

In this case, though, Mbarga was concerned with truth, as much as lies.

He wanted to be confident of every detail the master received about what had transpired. He also meant to be the only messenger with access to the throne.

To that end, long ago, Mbarga had commanded that his men shouldn’t address the master unless spoken to directly by His Eminence. If such a conversation should occur outside Mbarga’s presence, they were tasked to find him afterward and faithfully report whatever had been said. And as insurance against crafty liars, Mbarga had decreed that his soldiers had to always work in pairs, thus providing a witness for any chance encounter with the master.

It was the best he could do, and now it seemed that his system might be shattered by a pasty-faced American of no account.

Mbarga knew Patrick Quinn as he knew everyone in Obike, as a sketchy printout from the personal computer in his head. Quinn was a white boy from America, apparently devoted to the Process if his former words and actions were a proper guide. He’d come from money but had been cut off from access by his parents. That occurred from time to time, and while the disappointment hadn’t been enough for Gaborone to cut him loose, it ended any chance of Quinn’s advancement to the master’s inner circle. Quinn would be a cipher, toiling in the fields or begging handouts for the Process on some street corner until he either quit the sect or died.

This day, the latter exit seemed more probable.

Mbarga supervised the search, rather than rushing door-to-door himself and peering into cupboards, groping under cots. He left the grunt work to his men, as usual, and relegated to himself the task of asking questions where he thought they might be useful.

His knowledge of the white boy didn’t extend to peripheral friendships, so Mbarga questioned first the other occupants of Quinn’s barracks. Two-thirds of them were Africans, the other pair young Arabs, possibly Jordanian. In that mix, it was no surprise to find Quinn rated as a quiet loner who made few attempts at conversation. Probably, they wouldn’t understand him if he spoke, and wouldn’t care about the subject matter if they did. One failing of the master, Mbarga ruefully admitted to himself, had been the effort to dissolve racial and ethnic barriers between disciples of the Process. Sermons on the subject were absorbed, but never seemed to take.

The upshot of Mbarga’s grilling was that he knew nothing more of Quinn than when he’d started. Did the young man have a special friend inside the village, either male or female? Master Gaborone himself controlled the coupling of his congregants, selecting mates based on criteria known to himself alone. Even the married people, though, were segregated into dorms by gender, granted conjugal relations at the master’s pleasure, once per month on average.

Of course, that didn’t stop some villagers from falling prey to whimsies of the flesh. Mbarga and his men caught them from time to time, rutting like animals inside a storage shed or in the forest, passion honed to razor sharpness by the danger of discovery. In such cases, Mbarga took names for Master Gaborone, and punishments were devised to fit the crime. Public humiliation was a common penalty, sometimes accompanied by corporal punishment.

And wayward girls were marked. The master liked to counsel them himself.

In fact, the young American named Quinn appeared to have no contacts of that kind within the village—which meant none at all, since he was never sent outside Obike on his own. It seemed unlikely, then, that passion would’ve led to fire setting, and since he’d fled alone, it couldn’t be supposed that he’d eloped.

Mbarga still had more questions than answers when he carried his final report to the master, but at least one thing was settled. He knew where the white man had gone. More precisely, he knew how Patrick Quinn had left the village, though his destination still remained obscure.

He found the master standing with their foreign guests, and approached cautiously from fear of interrupting some important conversation. They had business to discuss, Mbarga knew, and it was not his place to meddle in such things.

“Nico, what news?” the master asked as he approached.

“Master, the white man is no longer in Obike, but I found the point where he departed from the village, heading south.”

“Toward Brazzaville?” Gaborone asked.

“Master, the city is two hundred miles away.”

“I know that!”

“My apologies, Master.”

“You must go after him and bring him back at once.”

“Of course, Master.”

“A hunting party, is it?” the Colombian asked. “That sounds like fun. I’ll join you.”

The Arab standing to his left immediately looked suspicious. “I will also go,” he said.

“You wish to interrupt negotiations?” Gaborone seemed more amused than curious.

“Why not?” the Colombian asked. “It won’t take long.”

“By all means, then, enjoy yourselves,” Gaborone said. “But be aware of dangers in the jungle. Trust in Nico’s judgment if you value life and limb. And, Nico?”

“Yes, Master?”

“I want the boy alive.”

“WHO ARE YOU?” Patrick Quinn demanded when his eyes swam into focus on the stranger’s face in front of him.

“A friend,” Bolan replied, not altogether sure if that was true.

“I don’t think so,” the youth challenged. He tried to rise, but weakness and the residue of drugs still coursing through his system dropped him back against the tree trunk. “I was with my friends,” he said, “before you grabbed me. You kidnapped me from Obike!”

Bolan didn’t have the time or inclination to debate the point. “That’s one way you could see it.”

“It’s the true way. But you didn’t knock me out,” Quinn said. He raised a slow hand to his neck, feeling the sore spot there. “What did you—? Did you drug me?”

“Nothing heavy,” Bolan lied. “We didn’t have the luxury of sitting down to tea and chatting. It was touch and go, you might say.”

“You’re a fool for choosing me,” Quinn told him. “I suppose you’ve heard my family’s rich, but guess what? They’ve disowned me. I don’t have a penny to my name, and they won’t pay whatever ransom you’re expecting.” Quinn produced a woozy smile. “You’re out of luck.”

“It’s not a ransom snatch,” Bolan replied, and watched the humor vanish from his young companion’s face, supplanted by confusion and a healthy dose of fear.

“You don’t want money?”

“No.”

“Then why…?”

Apparently, Quinn’s mind was clear enough to think of several possibilities. The first one he came up with was a stretch, but it caused him to tremble, even though he tried to hide it.

“No ransom. That means you’re working for the enemy!”

“I told you, I’m a friend.”

“You would say that, of course. You’re lying! Master Gaborone has warned us. But you’re making a mistake.”

“How’s that?” Bolan asked.

“I don’t have the information that you’re looking for. Whatever you came after, I can’t help you. I’m nobody, just a flunky in the village.”