ECLIPSE (38 page)

Pierce looked at him curiously. “A commodities trader named Henry Karlin?”

Caraway seemed to search his memory. “I’m not sure about his business,” he said at length. “But, yes, I believe that was his name.”

Despite Caraway’s studied vagueness, he seemed unsurprised by the question. At once Pierce grasped that the ambassador’s anecdote was not casual and that, perhaps in league with Dave Rubin, he was conveying information that might somehow be important. “Does Karlin have a relationship with Ajukwa?” Pierce asked.

“I don’t know for sure. But it’s fair to assume that.” Caraway gave him a significant look. “You should also assume that Karlin is actively working against Okari, using whatever political influence he possesses with our current administration. That could be a problem. Another problem is time—you’re running out.” Caraway paused for emphasis. “The wheels of diplomacy grind with painful slowness; too often our favorite policy is waiting on events. Some people at the State Department resort to hoping that once Karama steals enough, he’ll give us that ‘free and fair election’ he keeps dangling, then trot off to Monte Carlo with his stolen billions.”

“Do
you
believe that?”

Caraway laughed briefly. “No. Karama
likes
having the community of nations kiss his feet. In a far less healthy, far more authoritarian way, he’s as addicted to the world spotlight as Okari. The effect on both men is malign. Your client doesn’t think he’ll die; Karama wants to kill him. What better way to show the world who’s boss?”

This assessment depressed Pierce still further. “You’ve made me realize something,” he told Caraway. “Luandia is so lethal, and this trial so rigged, that I find myself indulging in magical thinking: that the beneficent United States of America—that beacon of freedom that embraced my immigrant father and sent his youngest child to Harvard—will somehow save a black man who’s risked his life for the ideals we claim to live by. Pathetic, really. I’m too old for fairy tales.”

For a time they simply sat there in the bleak fluorescent light. “Neither of us,” Caraway said at last, “is too old for hope. We need a way to keep Okari alive, even if he’s in a Luandian prison. If we can do that, the next step will be persuading Savior Karama to send the Okaris into exile, positioning Bobby as a force for good in the post-Karama Luandia that America’s hoping for without doing very much.”

“I’d be thrilled with that,” Pierce answered. “But whatever happens to Bobby, I’m worried about Marissa. I want her out of here.”

“You
should
want that.” Caraway paused. “At least she’s an American citizen. If the time comes, I’ll do whatever I can.”

Another silence ensued. “You know what the problem is?” Caraway said at length. “Not only with us, but our allies. It’s not just grubby pragmatism. We’re also anti-historical: for all we should have learned, too many Western leaders imagine that the Hitlers, Stalins, and Pol Pots were mutants—that the mass murderers of history are somehow different than standard-issue tyrants like Savior Karama. Very few appreciate that—however insane these monsters were—like Karama they made very sophisticated calculations of the forces against them and concluded that they could advance their aims through murder.

“The only difference is a matter of scale. Hitler and Pol Pot were millions of bodies into it before they went too far; Stalin and Mao killed millions more and still died of old age. Karama understands this. In his peculiar calculus, killing Bobby Okari is a pittance.” Caraway’s tone became weary. “The West’s ultimate delusion is that Karama
won’t
kill him—that it would simply be too blatant. By the time we face reality, Karama may be watching his home video of Okari’s execution.

“I’ll help whenever I can, Damon. But your best hope is PGL. With the proper motivation, and Okari’s acquiescence, PGL might yet induce Karama to kick him out.”

C
ONCERNED FOR
P
IERCE’S
safety, Bob McGill offered to drive him to the Okaris’ compound. “If they kill you,” he said blithely, “they’ll have to get me, too. Even in Luandia, murdering diplomats is awkward.”

The young, Pierce reflected, believe that they’re immortal. When McGill pulled up to the compound, Pierce thanked him. “No problem,” McGill responded with a grin. “I like watching you in court. Kind of makes me wish I’d gone to law school.”

Opening the car door, Pierce mustered a smile. “Keep watching,” he advised. “You’ll get over it.”

Edo, the houseboy, let him in. Pierce did not ask for Marissa; he did not yet have the heart to describe his meeting with Caraway. Instead, he went to the patio, gazing out at the lights of Petrol Island as he sorted through his options.

The ringing of his cell phone broke his concentration. “Yes?” he answered.

There was silence on the other end, then the brief crackle of static. “Is this Damon Pierce?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes.”

“This is Trevor Hill. I assume you know who I am.”

Pierce was startled. “You’re in charge of PGL’s operations in the delta.”

Another pause. “I’d like to see you. Tonight.”

Swiftly, Pierce considered the ethics of meeting a key PGL executive—a witness in Bobby’s lawsuit—outside the presence of Clark Hamilton. That this could lead to Pierce’s punishment by the California Bar was not, after the day’s events, nearly enough to stop him.

“Tell me where,” he answered.

H
ILL SENT TWO YOUNG
L
UANDIAN SOLDIERS TO DRIVE PIERCE FROM
the compound.

Sitting in the rear of the jeep, Pierce considered the entwinement between PGL, who no doubt paid these men, and the Luandian military. But they served a purpose besides providing transportation: the state security men outside the Okaris’ gate did not follow. The soldier stationed at the entrance to PGL’s walled compound waved them through without question.

Inside the walls, Pierce felt as if he had entered a world utterly foreign to the menacing squalor of Port George. It was past eleven; the well-lit streets, manicured gardens, and uniform ranch houses reminded Pierce of a middle-class American suburb whose residents, all respectably employed, had retired to bed. He wondered at the schizoid life of a white petroleum engineer who, leaving his family in this ersatz version of home, risked kidnapping or worse outside these walls.

The jeep entered a tree-lined cul-de-sac that ended at a sprawling villa, shadowed by palms, whose windows showed the faint glow of light from the inside. One of the soldiers pointed toward a pathway to a carved wooden door. “It’s unlocked,” he said. “You can enter.”

Pierce followed the path in a darkness so quiet that it sharpened his sense of a surreptitious meeting. Reaching the door, he hesitated. Then he turned the iron knob and stepped inside.

He stood in a tiled alcove. To the right, illuminated by a single lamp, was a spacious living room. Even in the shadows, the decor bespoke a love of Africa: wooden masks; statuary carved from mahogany; wall hangings
of patterned mudcloth or woven mats; a framed map of colonial Luandia, faded to sepia by time. To Pierce the surroundings reflected a man who had embraced Luandia as his home. Then Pierce saw Hill, sitting in a high-backed African chair with a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. “Evening, Mr. Pierce,” he said in a grainy British accent.

Hill stood, putting down his drink with exaggerated care. When he crossed the living room to shake Pierce’s hand, Pierce caught the scent of whiskey. Pierce’s first impression was of ruddy, weathered skin, reddish hair, sky-blue eyes, and the frank expression of someone schooled in practicality rather than politesse. Hill’s calloused grip was firm. “Care for a drink?” he said. “I’ve been at it since sundown.”

His enunciation was clear enough, though its deliberation, perhaps a compensation for drink, also conveyed a sense of quiet despair. “Whatever you’re having,” Pierce said.

Hill walked to a thatched bar tucked into a corner of the room, producing a heavy crystal glass and a bottle of Bushmills. “Good choice. Do you drink whiskey like a Brit or an American?”

“Neat is fine,” Pierce said. “Ice melts.”

Briefly, Hill laughed, then handed Pierce the tumbler with an air of decorous courtesy. He waved Pierce to a chair near his own, its twin. “I suppose you’re wondering what this is about.”

Though Hill seemed steady enough, Pierce sensed a man on the edge of a psychic implosion, drinking either to dull his apprehension or to liberate his conscience. “A little.”

Hill looked at him sharply. “You missed my deposition. A deposition, I discovered, is no place for subtle truths. All it does is deepen one’s disquiet.”

Pierce smiled a little. “How many times, I wonder, have I told my clients things like ‘Only answer the question asked’ or ‘Never volunteer information’ or ‘There are many ways to tell the truth.’ You probably heard all three. The effect is often to leave the witness with his job intact and a guilty conscience. Assuming he has one.”

Hill’s expression turned inward. “Ever read
Heart of Darkness?”

“In high school, yes.”

“Then I assume you remember Mr. Kurtz, who immersed himself in Africa only to experience man’s descent into the barbarism that lies waiting in our souls. By the end, all Kurtz could do was mumble, ‘The horror, the horror.’”

Pierce tried to ascertain the rules for this surreal but oddly civilized conversation. “Is that your experience of Luandia?”

“Not until now.” Though suffused with melancholy, Hill’s tone was calm and lucid. “I was born here, when Luandia was still a British colony. My parents were missionaries in Port George before anyone struck oil; to me, this was home. I loved the outdoors, the creeklands, the fishing. Most of all I loved the people, fractious though they were, the traditions through which they found harmony with the earth. Compared to now, living outside modernity was not so mean a fate. And then came oil, the serpent in what—if not the Garden of Eden—was a place that did not destroy its peoples’ souls.

“I was near college age. I thought, as did my father, that this elixir would provide roads and health care and education.” His tone filled with rueful memory. “So I went off to become an oil geologist, planning to return here. By the time I did, after years in the Middle East, the delta was in the last throes of a wasting disease that had devoured nature and man himself.”

This explanation as expiation, Pierce intuited, was a precursor to discussing Bobby Okari. Standing abruptly, Hill returned to the bar, his careful movements seeming to derive from muscle memory. He poured himself a full tumbler of whiskey and brought the bottle back with him, placing it on the table between his chair and Pierce’s. Then he sat back a moment, gazing about, as though he perceived something in the light and shadows that no one else could see. “Still,” he said in a tone of weary rumination, “I felt the bad old days of oil extraction were slowly coming to an end. What I didn’t fully appreciate was that PGL had become inextricably entangled in a nightmare of our creation that we lacked the power to end. Before anything else, my charge was securing the safe operations of PGL in a moral twilight—not just our equipment but the lives and safety of our people. And so I, too, became complicit in the horror.”

Pierce took a swallow of whiskey, feeling once more the shadow of Goro. “Gladstone might say you had no choice.”

Hill’s bark of laughter was surprisingly harsh. “I could have resigned—or been fired. But I told myself that
that
would be like deserting my troops in a foxhole, surrounded by enemies and enemies posing as friends: thieves, kidnappers, a government contemptuous of its people, ‘protectors’ who oscillate between being predators and murderers and whose secret alliances
may change from day to day.” His voice softened. “Survival is a dirty business, Mr. Pierce. No one in my job stays clean.”

Pierce poured himself another inch of Bushmills. “I think I understand.”

Hill shook his head, a gesture of reproof. “I sat in that deposition the other day, answering questions from your smart young partner, Ms. Rahv. And every answer, however true in itself, falsified an environment she’ll never understand. She can’t—you can’t—imagine what it is to live without law.” Suddenly, his voice quickened with anger and remorse. “You arm men who should have no arms. When you call on them to protect your people, as we did after Asari Day, you’re nauseous with fear about what they’ll do. And no one else wants you to get out. Not the government; not the West; not FREE; not the other crooks and kidnappers; not our management or shareholders getting rich at a safe distance; not the avatars of American oil strategy who imagine us the Praetorian Guard of national security. Who would you have in your place, they ask, the Chinese? They’d destroy what’s left of the environment and empower Karama to do whatever he wants.

“So PGL and the government have become like a couple trapped in an abusive marriage. The partners despise each other yet wallow in their dysfunction, afraid of what will happen if they divorce. For Karama, we’re reliable and technologically superior—quite reasonably, he doubts whether the Chinese could generate as much for him to steal. For PetroGlobal, the longer it stays, the more it makes: if the world price of oil spikes because of some fresh tragedy in Luandia, it profits; if operations are more stable, production rises and it profits. At whatever cost, a corrupt regime with a brutal military delivers a certain predictability—God only knows what might follow Karama. So, like any toxic relationship, it ends up changing who you are.”

“And you?” Pierce asked.

After taking another sip, Hill spoke more quietly: “I’ve become a man in a catatonic trance, perfectly aware of the evil all around me but unable to speak or move. I still know what the delta needs: leaders who care, revenue sharing, and a sense of community. But that’s like dreaming of Utopia in a Hobbesian state of nature. In the end, only Okari claimed to still believe in Utopia.”

They were approaching the heart of Hill’s malaise, Pierce sensed. “’Claimed’?” he repeated.

Hill poured himself a more cautious share of whiskey. Pierce took stock of the toll liquor was adding to his own fatigue; his tongue and brain felt a few clicks slower. “Perhaps he’s innocent,” Hill responded. “Perhaps not. Perhaps he caused the deaths without wishing to know that. Violent death happens here almost at random, as though you’re stepping off a sidewalk when a careless driver careens around a corner. Karama and Okimbo don’t have a monopoly on killing.”