Mission Liberty (31 page)

“Fair enough,” DeLuca said.

He was talking to Scott when MacKenzie knocked on his door. Scott had had a team poring over the image intelligence available
from the border crossing the night before, but it was too confusing. Dozens of trucks and vehicles had come and gone in the
hours before or after Paul Asabo had been seized, and it wasn’t possible to pinpoint exactly when that had happened, so he
could have been in any of them. SIGINT had nothing, no reports on the few radio stations that were still broadcasting, no
intercepted e-mails, no Internet activity on the various Liger-watch Web sites, save one that reported that a very important
person had been captured and would be tried for treason.

“Got a minute?” MacKenzie asked.

“Sure,” DeLuca said. She’d been trying to reach Evelyn Warner, who’d been there when Asabo was arrested, and, by the look
on her face, having little luck. “Anything?”

She shook her head.

“It’s not going to happen,” she said. “I think the only way to reach her would be to go in person. There’s no land lines and
the unhappy neighbors are jamming the wireless frequencies to stop the rebels from talking to each other across the border
because they’re afraid spies have infiltrated the camps. I need to talk to you. I have a conflict.”

“What’s that?” DeLuca asked.

“I understand why you want to get Paul, and I’m right there with you if you need me, 100 percent,” she said.

“I know that,” he said. “But?”

“I want to find Stephen,” she said. “I read the e-mail you sent.”

“And?”

“And I don’t think he was CIA,” she said. “Or anything else.”

“He said he was a writer,” DeLuca said. “A journalist. We can’t find a record of anything he ever published.”

“I respectfully disagree with your conclusion,” Mack said. “I know you’re the team leader, but you didn’t know him. You tell
us to trust our instincts, right? Well I trust mine. He was a member of my team, as much as Asabo was part of yours. Just
because you can’t be Googled doesn’t mean you’re lying.”

She was digging her heels in. DeLuca could have overruled her but chose not to.

“What do you have in mind?”

“I thought I could fly in through Ghana and start from Camp Cobra and see if anybody there knows anything,” she said.

“And if nobody does?”

“Well, the least I could do is trace back to Camp Seven. It’s not that far.”

“Alone?” DeLuca asked.

“I could try to arrange for something,” she said.

“I don’t want you traveling in country alone,” DeLuca said. “That’s my one stipulation.”

“I hear you,” she said. He hoped that she did.

“Do you know who to talk to about transport?” he asked. She nodded. “Make the arrangements and then leave me a flight plan.”

Sykes and Vasquez were digging up information about Daniel Bo’s prison system, the gulag where Paul Asabo might be found,
if he was still alive. For a man who portrayed himself as a devout Christian with close ties to the Catholic church, Bo’s
prisons and jails were conspicuously lacking in Christian charity. Conditions, according to the antigovernment Web sites maintained
by expatriates, ranged from horrible to hideous, “rehabilitation centers” where men were shackled to stakes in the sun for
punishment, or confined with twelve or fifteen men in cells meant for one or two. The prison population was 62 percent Da,
33 percent Kum, and 5 percent Fasori, and 92 percent of the guards and administrators were Fasori. Prisoners were, it appeared,
one of the main labor resources for government projects, and had built the soccer stadium, the Lions’ Park Casino, the presidential
palace and many of the prisons. Officially, Liger was a country that did not have capital punishment. Unofficially, Liger
was a place where people who were arrested frequently disappeared. Bo’s favorite method of execution was throwing people out
of helicopters, dropping them into either the ocean or the desert, places where the bodies would never be found.

“A lot of the prisons have been liberated, it looks like,” Sykes said. “Not that Bo would have taken Paul to one, necessarily,
but we can narrow down the ones he still has control over.”

DeLuca asked for a briefing with Robert Mohl, who’d managed to fly out of the country on a WAOC helicopter. Wes Chandler,
his boss, had flown to Langley. Mohl was surprised to hear that Paul Asabo had come back.

“He was sitting in the bar with us when I talked to you,” DeLuca said, “at the Hotel Liger.”

“
That
was Paul Asabo?” Mohl said. “I must have missed it.”

“Why do you think he was arrested?” DeLuca asked.

“Why?” Mohl repeated. “Well, I suppose the fellow at the border made a phone call of some sort to somebody. I don’t expect
there was a standing arrest warrant posted. They wouldn’t have been anticipating his return.”

“Called who?” DeLuca asked. “Best guess.”

Mohl thought.

“I suppose it could be a simple kidnapping for ransom,” Mohl said. “There’s an awful lot of that going around. That’s how
the Lord’s Republican Army in Uganda has been funding itself for years. Maybe the guards saw an opportunity. Seize somebody
important, and then either ransom him themselves or sell him over to somebody else who knows how to do that sort of thing.”

“Who would that be?”

“A local warlord,” Mohl suggested. “A tribal chief, maybe. Or else the government itself. They could have taken your man to
a third party who’d sell him back to the government and split the take with the border guards. Or maybe it was straighter
than that. Maybe the guards called their superiors, who called theirs, who called theirs, and the word came back from on high
to arrest him.”

“And bring him where?”

“Who can say?” Mohl asked. “A jail? Somebody’s house? The presidential palace? There’s been a story for a long time that Bo
had a private prison there in the basement. Do you remember the stories of Idi Amin having a freezer full of the heads of
his enemies? I think Bo might have a similar mentality, without the freezer, keep his enemies close, where he can keep an
eye on them.”

“Close and alive?”

“I don’t know,” Mohl said. “It was never more than a story.”

“Asabo is a threat to Bo?” DeLuca asked.

“Oh, yes, I should think so,” Mohl said. “People look back at the king as the last unifying benevolent leader of Liger. The
man who got rid of the British, or made a deal with them to leave, but either way. He wasn’t just king of the Fasori. The
Da loved him, many of the Kum did, too. Any heir to all of that would be a huge threat. What was the region?” Mohl asked.
“The place where this happened?”

DeLuca showed him on the plasma screen.

“I could ask a few people,” Mohl said. “Call in some favors, I guess. I don’t even know that the phones will work.”

“Do what you can,” DeLuca told the CIA man.

Preacher Johnson said he had a few angles to work as well. Deluca had even e-mailed Walter Ford and asked him to track down
any properties that Bo might have owned outside Liger, on the chance that he’d simply wanted to hustle Paul Asabo out of the
country and stash him somewhere for later disposal. The breakthrough came when DeLuca’s cell phone rang, and on the other
end, John Dari.

“I told you I would call you,” Dari said.

“So you did,” DeLuca said. “How can I help you?”

“Paul Asabo has been arrested,” Dari said. “I was hoping you could ask President Bo to spare his life.”

DeLuca covered the phone with one hand and asked Vasquez to contact SIGINT and see if they could get a lock on Dari’s signal.

“All our people are out of country,” DeLuca said. “Including Ambassador Ellis. We pulled them out days ago.”

“You have channels,” Dari said.

“We
had
channels,” DeLuca corrected him. “We haven’t been able to get through to the president lately, but there’s a chance we still
could, yes. Why, may I ask, are you asking for intervention?”

“Why?” Dari said. “Simple. Paul Asabo owes me a favor. I’m not going to be able to be repaid if he’s in prison.”

“After this call, he owes you two,” DeLuca said. “I’m glad to hear you’re all right. I was afraid you’d think I gave information
to Ngwema about our last meeting.”

“I thought so at first,” Dari said. “But then I thought harder about it. It would not make any sense for you to have brought
violence to me. Not without using the threat of it for leverage first to corrupt me.”

“Wrong department,” DeLuca said. “My business is trading favors, not making threats. I’ll be honest with you, John. We don’t
know where Paul is. We can’t do anything until we find that out. And even then, our options may be limited.”

“He’s being held in the castle,” Dari said after a pause. “The Castle of St. James.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am certain,” Dari said. “I have a man in the castle. He has seen him. He might be able to help you, but we cannot contact
him. He can only call us.”

“What’s his name?”

“Henry,” Dari said. “Henry Mkembasasso.”

“I have a favor I need from you in return,” DeLuca said. “I’m putting a woman into the shantytown across the border from Camp
Seven. She’s going to be looking for a friend. I want her to be safe. Her name is Mary Dorsey.”

“I can help you,” Dari said. Vasquez held up a sign to tell DeLuca Scott had the coordinates of Dari’s SATphone, a northern
suburb of Port Ivory. DeLuca put his hand over the phone again.

“Let’s keep this to ourselves,” he said to Vasquez. “I don’t want some asshole sending a Tomahawk into our business.”

He returned to Dari.

“We know what happened in Sagoa,” DeLuca said. “If there’s anything we can do to help you along similar lines, you let me
know.”

There was another pause.

“I’ll give you my number,” Dari said. “Unless you’ve already traced it. You can tell me if you know anything. Like where he
has gone.”

“We’ll do that,” DeLuca said. “I’ll tell the birds to look for a red Hummer. There can’t be too many of those in Liger.”

MacKenzie could find neither Evelyn Warner nor Dr. Claude Chaline when she reached Camp Cobra, around 1400 hours, arriving
on a CH-47 from the USS
Cowper
carrying medical supplies as well as twenty U.S. Marines brought in at the request of the Ghanaian government to help keep
order at the border and prevent armed marauders from robbing the refugees. The fighting in Liger had swelled the numbers of
refugees in Camp Cobra beyond the breaking point, but international relief had begun to arrive, white SUVs and trucks from
UNHCR, Oxfam, the World Food Program, the Red Cross, United Way, the Red Crescent, Catholic World Relief, and the Gates Foundation
bringing in workers and supplies.

MacKenzie found Cela in the crowd as she was helping a USAID official talk to the queen mother about setting up a school for
the children in Camp Cobra. Sara Ochora was at her side, helping her. Cela threw her arms around MacKenzie and screamed and
hugged her when she saw her.

“I am so glad to see you,” Cela said. “How are you? Are you well?”

“I’m all right,” MacKenzie said. “The others are, too.”

“I was so worried,” Cela said, pulling at her hair and tucking it behind her ear. “Forgive my appearance. There’s not enough
water here yet for adequate bathing for the adults. Not even enough for drinking, really.”

“You look beautiful,” MacKenzie said. “Where’s Evelyn? Where’s Dr. Chaline?”

“They went with Ms. Duquette to talk to the local governor about the water,” Cela said. “The local governor is a big fan of
American movies.”

“I was actually wondering,” Mack said. “I’m looking for my friend Stephen Ackroyd. Have you seen him? I was going to ask Ms.
Warner if she knew where he was.”

Cela looked puzzled.

“I have not seen him,” she said. “But there are so many people.”

“But not so many
Obroni,
” Mack said. “Thank you, Cela. Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” the translator said. “A little hungry.”

MacKenzie recognized one of the journalists DeLuca had said was at the Hotel Liger in Baku Da’al, filming a report and squinting
into the sun in front of a cameraman, with the shantytown in the background and the American troops mingling in the crowd
in full battle rattle, smiling and shaking the hands of the children who were beseeching them for food. She waited until the
cameraman put down his camera, then approached the journalist.

“I’m Mary Dorsey, from the United Nations Women’s Health Initiative,” she told the journalist. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” the man said, smiling. “Tom Kruger, Fox News.” He gestured to his cameraman to keep filming and pointed to MacKenzie,
who ignored the intrusion.

“I’m looking for someone,” she said. “A magazine writer named Stephen Ackroyd—do you know him?”

“I met someone named Stephen Ackroyd,” Kruger said, “but he wasn’t a magazine writer. I suppose that must be who you mean.”

“He was on assignment,” MacKenzie said. “Maybe his editor would know where he went. He said he was working for
Men’s Journal.
”

Kruger shifted his gaze briefly, moving closer.

“
Men’s Journal
? Well, he told me he was working for
Esquire,
but when I called an editor friend of mine who works there, he told me they’d never heard of him. I figured he was one of
those blog people filing to their own Web sites and bragging about how many hits a day they were getting.”

“If you see him,” Mack said, “tell him Mary Dorsey is looking for him.”

“I will,” Kruger said, “but more to the point, where do you and I go from here?”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Where are you staying?” he asked her. “A bunch of us white folk have taken over a motel down the road. There aren’t any rooms
left, but you could stay with me, and just so you know, I’m huge. I’ll make you happier than any man ever has before.”

MacKenzie stared at him for a moment.

“If your estimation of your penis size is as accurate as all the other facts you people at Fox News disseminate,” MacKenzie
said, “I think I’ll have to pass.”