Blood Ransom (22 page)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 8:10 A.M. EST

NORTH BETHESDA, MARYLAND

Gabby stared at the ringing cell phone that sat on the kitchen table beside her while the yellow center of her egg oozed across the plate onto a slice of half-burnt toast. Any appetite she’d managed to recover vanished.

“Gabby, what are you doing?” Sabrina entered the room from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and reached for the offending object. “Your phone’s ringing.”

“Don’t answer it.”

“You have to—”

Gabby knocked the phone from Sabrina’s hands and watched it slam onto the tile floor. The persistent ringing stopped. “I said don’t answer it.”

“Hey.” Sabrina pushed aside the pile of
Bride
magazines cluttering the table for her and Michael’s Valentine’s Day wedding in order to set her coffee mug down, then slid into the seat beside her. “What in the world’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Look at yourself. You can’t sleep, and you’re not eating.” She picked up her fork, then dropped it back onto the plate. “You’ve been a wreck ever since you returned from Africa.”

Gabby pressed her fingertips against her face. She’d tried to sleep, but how could she sleep when her dreams were haunted with images she couldn’t forget.

Sabrina took a sip of her coffee. “I thought we were best friends. Tell me what’s going on.”

Rising, Gabby stalked into the kitchen with her uneaten food and dumped the cold eggs down the garbage disposal. Sabrina would pester her until she told her, and she didn’t have the energy to fight. “I’ve received some threatening phone calls and e-mails the past couple of days.”

Just like her father.

Sabrina followed Gabby back into the dining room, where she sank back into the padded chair. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“Because you’d worry—like my mother worries—and try to convince me not to have my series printed.”

“An article isn’t worth your life.”

Gabby waved the notion away. “You don’t understand.”

“What happened over there?”

Gabby flipped through the pages of one of the magazines, wondering how different her life would be today if she’d opted to cover wedding trends. “Apparently someone didn’t like all the questions I was asking.”

“Do you know who’s behind the threats?”

Gabby shrugged, wishing the answer wasn’t so elusive. “I talked to at least a dozen investors from Lusaka to Bogama to Dar es Salaam. There were some who seemed to legitimately want to help the people working for them, and others who were obviously exploiting their workers and pocketing all the profit. All it would take is one who didn’t like what I wrote about them.”

“Apparently you found that one.”

“That’s not all.” She toyed with the rounded handle of her half-empty
coffee cup. “The last night we were in Bogama, I was involved in an…incident.”

“An incident?”

Gabby sat back and folded her arms across her chest. She could still hear it all—the shouts, the glass, the gunshots…“We stopped at a red light. A gunshot shattered the driver’s window, and a half dozen men surrounded the car and dragged the driver out onto the street.”

“Oh, Gabby…”

“The men were scrambling to get into the car when another shot was fired,” she continued. “Apparently our driver had a weapon they hadn’t counted on. In the confusion, my translator, Adam, managed to scoot into the driver’s seat and drive away. It all happened so fast…”

“What happened to the driver?”

“We found out later he was taken to the hospital with several broken bones and a concussion, but he lived.”

“He’s lucky.”

“We all were.” Gabby shoved back a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “But I can’t live in fear. My father didn’t.”

“No, he didn’t, but that doesn’t mean you can take chances with your life.”

Gabby glanced up and caught Sabrina’s gaze. “So I live in fear and never go out until…when? I can’t even trace this guy.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now? Living in fear?”

Gabby pressed her lips together. She’d spent the past twenty-four hours trying to figure out where to go with this. Holing up in her house wasn’t the direction she wanted to take.

Sabrina reached out and squeezed her hand. “Maybe the truth in this case isn’t worth your life.”

This was the conversation she’d wanted to avoid. “I’m not the first journalist who’s believed they’re onto something that’s worth the risk of exposing. Look at Don Bolles, Ivo Pukanic, Anna Politkovskaya—”

“And your father?”

Gabby slumped against the back of the chair and shut her eyes.
She could still read the headlines as if it were yesterday.
“Freelance journalist murdered for his hard-hitting commentary that angered corrupt officials…”

She opened her eyes and caught her friend’s worried gaze. “This isn’t about my father—”

“This has everything to do with your father. Everything to do with your trying to finish what he wasn’t able to do.”

Gabby slammed her fists against the table, rattling the remaining dishes. “Did you even read what I wrote? Businesses, foreign investors, and even governments are coming into these small, unknown countries promising schools and roads and hospitals, but in exchange they’re stripping them of their natural resources and exploiting their people. Working conditions are deplorable, children are dying because of the lack of safety regulations—”

“I read your article and saw in it the compassion you have for those people, but it’s not worth your life.”

“But you didn’t see what I saw.” Gabby choked back the tears. “Children, some of them only three or four years old, caked in mud from riverbeds, were working in narrow tunnels mining coltan for cell phones. Others I found sifting through sand for gems inside homemade mineshafts. These children are dying from dynamite accidents and floods and…” She pressed her fingers against her pounding temples. “I can’t get them out of my head. I see them at night when I close my eyes, and they’re still there in the morning when I wake up. They need a voice—”

“And you can’t be their voice if you’re dead.”

Her cell phone started ringing again from beneath the kitchen table. Her hand trembled and knocked over the coffee mug in front of her. Lukewarm liquid ran off the edge of the table and splattered onto the floor. She grabbed for a napkin and stopped the thread of coffee snaking its way toward the stack of magazines.

“This has gone too far.” Sabrina picked up the phone and answered the call. “I don’t know who you are, but—”

She stopped mid-sentence.

“Excuse me?” Sabrina’s face paled. She listened to the response, then handed Gabby the phone. “I think you ought to take this. It’s someone from Interpol.”

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 3:04 P.M.

UNITED STATES EMBASSY, BOGAMA

Joseph stared across the room as if he were watching the nightly news on his uncle’s color television. This couldn’t be happening here. Blood dripped from his forehead and now stained his pants, but he couldn’t feel anything. Nor did he care. All he noticed at the moment was the gaping hole on the other side of the room. From his vantage point, he could see the green lawn of the embassy. Sirens screamed in the background. People rushed by. Paramedics pushed a man on a stretcher.

“Joseph?”

He heard his name but couldn’t stop staring at the hole. Bricks and debris filled the side of the room where Dr. Talcott had been sitting just moments earlier. Now he was gone. A wave of nausea struck. They’d killed him. Just like they’d killed his grandfather. And the way they’d kill his father.

Someone touched his shoulder. “I need to look at your head, Joseph.”

The doctor’s chair lay upside down beside the pile of bricks. “Where is he?”

The woman pulled out a sliver of glass, then pressed a cloth against his head. “Who?”

“Dr…Dr. Talcott.”

“Dr. Talcott—”

Someone shouted.

The woman hovering over him looked away. “Press this against your forehead. I’ll be right back.”

Joseph couldn’t wait. He got up and walked toward the sunlight streaming in through the hole. Ducking down, he started scooting through the opening. A brick scraped against his back. Someone hollered at him to move. He stumbled backward at the order.

A portion of the wall crumbled in front of him.

Still pressing his hand against his head, he tried to escape the roar of voices pressing in around him. He left the room and ran down the hall, looking for a sign of the doctor. Paul Hayes, one of the men he’d met earlier, stood in the center of one of the offices shouting orders.

Joseph tried to slow down his breathing. Natalie had told him that prayer worked. Maybe it was time he started praying.

If you happen to be there
,
God…we need a miracle. Several, to be exact.

“Joseph.”

Joseph turned around at the sound of his name. Dr. Talcott stood in the doorway.

Joseph’s jaw dropped open. “Dr. Talcott…I thought…”

“I heard you got cut on the forehead. Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

“Can I take a look?”

Joseph nodded, noting the long scratch across Dr. Talcott’s left arm. Other than that, he seemed fine. They’d both been lucky. He squirmed as the older man touched the wound.

“No stitches this time, but you’re going to have matching scars.”

Joseph smiled. Maybe Natalie was right and prayer really did work.

“Why don’t you sit down over there and wait for me, Joseph? We’ve got a triage set up outside where we’re treating the injured,
though so far there don’t seem to be any life-threatening wounds.” Dr. Talcott turned back to Mr. Hayes. “I was told you had an extra first-aid kit in here?”

He watched as Mr. Hayes rummaged in the bottom drawer of a desk and tossed a kit to the doctor. “Boy, I’m glad you’re here.”

“So am I.” Dr. Talcott shoved the kit under his arm and caught Joseph’s gaze. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

Joseph pressed his hand against the bandage, wondering if he really was safe. He hadn’t felt that way for days. If only he could disappear into the walls like he didn’t exist. Maybe there he wouldn’t feel any more pain.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 9:17 A.M. EST

WASHINGTON, DC

Gabby stood gazing out the window that overlooked the front lawns of the office building, hoping that her tailored black slacks and white button-down shirt projected the image she wanted. Typically, she thrived on the unexpected, but Tuesday’s attack still had her reeling. She licked her lips and turned to the door as it opened. No need for the law to see that.

A man walked into the room. Late forties, gray suit. “Miss Mackenzie. Thank you for coming. I’m Mickey Chandler.” He set a file beside his can of Coke on the table and shook her hand. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, tea, or maybe a soda?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.” She drew in a deep breath, still curious about Interpol’s interest in her articles.

“Good, then we can get started.” He motioned for her to take the chair across from him, then sat down. “I appreciate your agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I understand you just recently returned to the States?”

“Yesterday.”

“Still a bit of jet lag, then, I’m sure.”

“Some.” She set her briefcase down beside her, then clasped her hands in front of her on the long conference table. “Mr. Chandler,
I’m still not sure I understand what this is all about. On the phone, you mentioned my recent article in the newspaper and the need to see my research.”

He took another sip of his Coke, then flipped open the file. “I was flying back from New York yesterday and happened to read in yesterday’s paper the first installment on your series on the surge of investors going into Africa. It was extremely well written and thought provoking.”

Enough to catch Interpol’s attention?

“I’m hoping that what I wrote will catch the public’s eye, as well as that of the governments involved.” Gabby spoke from passion as much as facts. “It’s time we forced these businesses and investors to change the despicable working conditions thousands are forced to live under. Nothing will change if they aren’t held accountable.”

“I can see that you’re quite the advocate.”

“It’s a heart-wrenching reality in our world, especially when one realizes human trafficking, child slavery, and a booming sex industry are all alive and well right here in the United States.”

Mr. Chandler tapped the edge of his drink against the desk. “I assume you have proof backing up your claims of negligence for each of the investors you named?”

“I wouldn’t be a good journalist if I didn’t, now would I?” Was it possible for Interpol to help? “I have all the proof you need to start an official investigation. I’ll admit, though, that I never imagined that Interpol might want to be involved—”

Mr. Chandler held up his hand. “While I admire greatly what you are doing, at this point I’m only interested in one person. Alexis Yasin.”

“Yasin?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Yasin is only one of a number of wealthy investors and corporations mentioned in my series.”

“I realize that, but for now let’s just talk about Yasin. Your article
said that you weren’t able to secure an interview with him, but that you had proof of his involvement in a number of the mines.”

“I tried numerous times to contact him after a source informed me he was staying in the capital of the Republic of Dhambizao. I even stayed in the country an extra day in order to track him down, but I was never able to verify he was there, and any attempts on my part to get his side of the story were completely ignored. I can, though, verify his financial involvement with at least two questionable mining companies operating in Central Africa whose low standards of safety and—”

“I’m going to need everything you have on him.”

Gabby’s gaze narrowed as she fingered the leather briefcase beside her. “I don’t understand. If this doesn’t have to do with my article—”

“You understand that much of the evidence we have is classified, but we believe he is involved in money laundering throughout Africa and Western Europe.”

Gabby’s mind spun through the implications. “Which means he’s using these mines along with other legitimate businesses as fronts?”

“That’s what I intend to prove.”

She opened her briefcase, flipped through the copied files, and pulled out everything she had on Yasin before sliding it all across table. The three photos she’d printed out from Natalie stared up at her from the back of the folder.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

She pushed one of the photos toward Mr. Chandler and pointed to one of the men. “I’ve been trying to identify him.”

“In connection to your series?”

She nodded.

“Off the record?” Mr. Chandler picked up the photo. “His name’s Benjamin Ayres. He works directly under Yasin.”

Which potentially put Yasin in the middle of whatever had
happened in the RD. Which meant he was probably the one after her. Gabby felt her lungs constrict.

“Where did you get these photos?”

“Off the record?” she asked.

Mr. Chandler shot her a half smile.

“Natalie Sinclair is an American working in the RD as a health care worker,” she began, then quickly filled him in on what she knew of the situation. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get ahold of her since my arrival back in the States, so I still have a lot of unanswered questions.”

From the look on the older man’s face it was obvious they were thinking the same thing: Gabby might not be the only person on Yasin’s bad side.

“I’ll keep trying to get ahold of her.”

“Keep me informed, then. And there is one other thing I wanted to mention to you.” He stopped her before she left the room. “You know there’s a chance that these people aren’t going to stop at e-mail threats. I know about your father—”

“My father?”

“I read about his death in Sudan.”

“I’ll take my chances.” Her frown deepened. “Just like my father did.”

Mr. Chandler pulled out a card with his private number on it and handed it to her. “I’ll be in touch, but if you find out anything else…or if you need something, call me. Anytime, twenty-four hours a day.”

She took the card and slipped it into her front pocket. She had to find Natalie. It was time to connect the dots.