Johnson Denis - The Laughing Monsters

I sat down and took from my carrier-kit an accessory disguised as a cigarette lighter, a NATO-issued device similar to a USB stick, with the algorithms built in. It actually makes a flame. I held it to my face and scanned my iris and stuck it into the side of the machine in front of me and powered up and logged on. Through the NATO Intel proxy I sent a Nothing To Report — but I sent it twice, which warned Tina to expect a message at her personal e-address. For this exchange Tina would know to shelve the military algorithms. We used PGP encryption. As the name promised, it’s pretty good protection.

I logged off of NIIA and attached my own keyboard to the console and went through the moves and established a Virtual Private Network and sent:

Get file 3TimothyA for me. Your NEMCO password will work.

Nothing now but the sound of my breath and the prayers of three small cooling fans. The fans cooled the units, not the user. I wiped my face and neck with my kerchief. It came away drenched. My breath came faster and faster. My Nokia’s clock showed a bit after 1300—noon in Amsterdam. I hadn’t allowed time for getting lost. Tina might have gone to lunch. It irked me that I couldn’t slow my breath.

But Tina was at her desk, and she was ready. I sent: “I’m ready for those dirty pictures.”

Within two minutes it was done.

I believe that by making this transaction the two of us risked life sentences. But only one of us knew it. Like anyone in the field of intelligence, Tina asked no questions. Besides, she loved me.

I came up the stairs and into Elvis Documents with my kit clutched against my chest, as if it held the goods, but it didn’t. A Cruzer device snugged in the waistline seam of my trousers held the goods.

Mohammed waited in his broken chair, his gaze fixed studiously in another direction.

“Let’s eat,” I said.

* * *

We ate down the street at the Paradi. Decent Indian fare.

During the late nineties and for a few years after, when this place had drawn the interest of the media, Kallon had worked as a stringer for the AP and as a CIA informant, and then the CIA had levered him into the Leonean secret service to inform from down in the nasty heart of things, and he had hurt a lot of people. And now he’d got himself a job with NATO.

That the CIA once ran Mohammed Kallon was, I acknowledge, my own supposition, prompted merely by my sharp nose for a certain perfume. Snitches stink.

I let Kallon order for both of us while I went to the men’s lavatory. I slipped shut the lock and took my passport from my shirt pocket and the Cruzer from the seam in my trousers. I felt desperate to be rid of it. Cowardly — but the situation felt all too new.

Normally I carry my passport in a ziplock plastic bag. I removed the passport from the bag and replaced it with the Cruzer, wound the Cruzer tightly in the plastic, and looked for a hiding place.

The toilets, two of them, were set into the floor, each with a foot pedal for flushing. I examined the tiles on all four walls, fiddled with the mirror, ran my fingers around the windowsill. I tried lifting the posts of the divider between the two toilets — one came loose from the floor. With my finger I scratched a delve at the bottom of its hole, dropped the tiny package in, and replaced the post to cover it.

For the sake of realism, I pressed the pedal on one of the toilets. It didn’t flush. The other one sprayed my shoe. I washed my hands at the sink and rejoined Mohammed Kallon.

Over lunch we talked about nothing really, except when I asked him outright, “What’s going on?” and he said, “Michael Adriko is going on.”

* * *

Having nowhere else to be, I arrived an hour early at the Scanlon, a hotel more central to Freetown than the better ones. When the region had drawn journalists, this was where many of them had lodged, a four-story place sunk in the diesel fumes and, when the weather was dry, in the hovering dust.

Inside the doors it was mute and dim — no power at the moment please sir — but crowded with souls. In the middle of the lobby stood a figure in a two-piece jogging suit of royal purple velour, a large man with a bald, chocolate, bullet-shaped head, which he wagged from side to side as he blew his nose loudly and violently into a white hand towel. People were either staring or making sure they didn’t. This was Michael Adriko.

Michael folded his towel and draped it over his shoulder as I came to him. Though we had an appointment in an hour, he seemed to take my appearance here as some kind of setback, and his first word to me was, “ What -what.” Michael often uses this expression. It serves in any number of ways. A blanket translation would be “Bloody hell.”

“Thanks for meeting me at the airport.”

“I was there! Where were you? I watched everybody getting off the plane and I never saw you. I swear it!” He always lies.

He put out his monumental hand and gave mine a gentle shake, with a finger-snap.

“For goodness’ sake, Nair, your beard is gray!”

“And my hair is still black as a raven’s.”

“Do ravens have beards?” He had his feet under him now. “I like it.” Before I could stop him, he reached out and touched it. “How old are you?”

“Too close to forty to talk about.”

“Thirty-nine?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Same as me! No. Wait. I’m thirty-seven.”

“You’re thirty-six.”

“You’re right,” he said. “When did I stop counting?”

“Michael, you’ve got an American accent. I can’t believe it.”

“And I can’t believe you bring a lovely full beard to the tropics.”

“It’s coming off right away.”

“So is my accent,” he said and turned to the waiter and spoke in thick Krio I couldn’t follow, but I got the impression at least one of us was getting a chicken sandwich.

I asked the clerk if a barber was available, and he shook his head and told me, “Such a person does not exist.”

I asked Michael, “Do you still carry your clippers?”

Smiling widely, he caressed his baldness. “I’m always groomed. Send the sandwich to my room,” he told the clerk. “Two three zero.”

“I know your room,” the clerk said.

“Come, Nair. Let’s chop it down with the clippers. You’ll feel younger. Come. Come.” Michael was moving off, calling over his shoulder to the desk clerk, “Also bottled water!” Looking backward, he collided with a striking woman — African, light-skinned — who’d tacked a bit, it seemed to me, in order to arrange the collision. He looked down at her and said, “ What -what,” and it was plain they were friends, and more.

It didn’t surprise me she was beautiful, also young — not long out of university, I guessed. Such women succumbed to Michael quickly, and soon moved on.

She wore relief-worker or safari garb, the khaki cargo pants and fishing vest and light, sturdy hiking shoes. On this basis, I misjudged her. Really, that’s all it was — I judged her according to her clothes, and the judgment was false. But the first impression was strong.

Michael looked put out with her. “Everybody’s here at once.”

“Not for long — I’m off exploring.” She sounded American.

“Exploring where?” He was smiling, but he didn’t like it.

“I’m looking for postcards.”

I said, “You’ll have to go to the Papa for that.”

“Yes, the Papa Leone Hotel,” Michael explained, “but it’s too far.”

“All right, I’ll take a car.”

Michael sighed.

“Don’t pout,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Wait. Meet my friend Roland Nair. This is Davidia St. Claire.”

“Another friend? Everybody’s his friend.” Davidia St. Claire was speaking to me. “Did he say Olin?”