Cross Country (10 page)

B
Y THE TIME I pulled away from the Superior with a steaming and delicious cup of dark Nigerian coffee in one hand, I felt like someone had hit my "reset" button.

There was no case file or intelligence to go over — my clothes and passport and empty wallet had been the only things returned to me — so I spent the slow crawl over to Lagos Island just taking in the sights.

"You know they call Lagos the 'go-slow city,' " my driver told me with a friendly smile. All the many abandoned cars on the side of the road, he said, came from people running out of gas in perpetual jams, or "go-slows," as they called them.

Our pace picked up somewhat on the mainland bridge, where I saw downtown Lagos for the first time. From a distance, its cityscape was typical of large cities, all concrete, glass, and steel.

As we got closer, though, it started to look more like something out of an Escher painting, with one impossible cluster of buildings tucked in and around the next, and the next, and the next. The density here — the crowds, the traffic, the infrastructure — was startling to me, and I had been to New York many times and even to Mexico City.

When we finally got to the Citibank on Broad Street, Flaherty was standing out front, smoking. The first thing he said to me was, "Jack Nicholson in Chinatown." He grinned at his little joke, then said, "You squeamish?"

"Not so much. Why?"

He pointed at my nose. "We can make a quick stop after this. Fix you right up."

Meanwhile, he said, I should go in and get my replacement cards and also the cash I owed him. Plus whatever I needed for myself and at least two hundred American, in small bills if I could get them.

"What for?" I asked.

"Grease."

I took him at his word and did what he said. From there, my driver took us across Five Cowrie Creek to the more upscale of the city's major islands — Victoria — and to a private medical practice on the fifth floor of an office building. Very private.

The doctor saw me right away. He examined my face and then gave me one quick, and excruciating, adjustment. It was the strangest doctor visit I've ever had, hands down. There were no questions about my injury and no request for payment. I was in and out in less than ten minutes.

Back in the car, I asked Flaherty how long he'd been based in Lagos. He had obvious juice here, and plenty of it. He also knew enough not to answer my questions.

"Oshodi Market," he said to the driver, then sat back again and lit another cigarette.

"You might as well chill," he said to me. "This is gonna be a while, trust me. You know what they call Lagos?"

"The go-slow city."

He turned down the corners of his mouth and exhaled a cloud of white smoke.

"You learn fast. Some things, anyway."

V
ISUALLY, 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.

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.

"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.

O
N 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.

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."

Rocket saluted and went back to supervising the others, a bigger swagger in his walk than before. He understood what had just been said. Pull his wireless. Wear it yourself.

He was the Tiger's new number-one boy.

M
AYBE I ALREADY knew more than I wanted to about the small, sad country called Sierra Leone. The rebels there had murdered more than three hundred thousand people in recent years, sometimes lopping off their hands and feet first, or setting fire to homes where families slept, or tearing fetuses from the wombs of mothers. They created "billboards of terror," messages carved into the bodies of victims they chose to spare and then used as walking advertisements.

Thirty-six hours after Ian Flaherty warned me not to go, I was standing on the perimeter of Running Recovery, one of several working diamond mines in Koidu.

Whether or not the Tiger had done business with anyone from this particular mine, I didn't yet know, but Running Recovery had a rotten reputation according to Flaherty.

At home in DC, I'd start by canvassing. So that's what I decided to do here, one mine at a time if necessary.

I was a detective again.

I already knew that.

Running Recovery was an alluvial diamond field, not really a mine at all. It looked like a miniature canyon to me — two football fields' worth of pitted and trenched yellow earth, maybe thirty feet at the deepest.

The workers were bent over in the extreme heat, laboring with pickaxes and sieves. Most of them were up to their waists in muddy brown water.

Some looked to be about the size of grammar school kids, and as far as I could tell, that's what they were. I kept thinking about the Kanye West song "Diamonds from Sierra Leone," hearing the rap lyrics in my head. Damon used to listen to the tune a lot, and I wondered now if he or his friends ever considered the true meaning of the words.

Security up top was surprisingly light at the mine. Dozens of stragglers hung around the perimeter, working deals or just watching, like me.

"You a journalist?" someone asked from behind. "What you doin' here?"

I turned around to find three older men staring hard at me. All three were "war" amputees. They were probably not soldiers, but some of the thousands of civilians who had suffered a kind of trademark brutality during Sierra Leone's ten-year conflict, largely over control of the diamond industry.

Diamonds had already done to this country the kind of thing that oil was poised to do to Nigeria. There was no harsher reminder of that fact than the men standing in front of me right now.

"Journalist?" I said. "No, but I would like to speak with someone down there in the field, one of the workers. Do any of you know who's in charge?"

One of them pointed with the rounded stub of an elbow. "Tehjan."

"He won't talk to journalist," said one of the others. Both of that man's shirtsleeves hung empty at his sides.

"I'm not a journalist," I repeated.

"It don't matter nutting to Tehjan. You American, you journalist."

Given the kind of press coverage I'd seen about these mines, the sensitivity was almost understandable.

"Is there anyone down there who will speak to me?" I asked. "One of the workers? You know any of these men? You have friends down there?"

"Maybe tonight at the hall in town," said the first man who'd spoken to me. "After the keg comes 'round, tongues loosen up."

"The town hall? Where would that be?"

"I can show you," said the most talkative of the amputees. I looked at him and as he held my stare, I wondered how it was that paranoia hadn't eaten this part of Africa alive. And then I decided to trust him.

"I'm Alex. What's your name?"

We shook left hands. I am Moses, he said.

I had to smile at that and thought of Nana. She would have smiled too and patted him on the back.

Show me the way, Moses.