Cross Country ак-14 Page 5

  “Nana already knows, but I wanted to tell you myself. I made the varsity. As a freshman. That’s pretty good, right? Oh, and I got As on my midterms.”

  “Listen to you – ‘Oh, and I got As.’ Nice one-two, Damon. I guess you’re doing pretty good up there,” I said, and suddenly I found myself smiling.

  It was weird to be having this conversation under neon lights in a hallway that smelled of liquor and death, but it was still great news. Cushing Academy’s sports and academic program had been a real draw for Damon. I knew how hard he’d been working to do well at both.

  “Sir?” A uniform leaned her head into the hallway. “Nine-one-one dispatch for you?”

  “Listen, Damon, can I call you later? Like in daylight, maybe?”

  He laughed. “Sure, Dad. This is a big one, isn’t it? Your case at that club. I saw you online.”

  “It is a big one,” I admitted. “But it’s still great to hear your voice. Any time. Get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, I will. You get some sleep too.”

  I hung up, feeling guilty. If this is what work meant – two a.m. conversations with my son – then I better make the work count. Dispatch relayed the call over to me, and I got the same woman from the Nigerian embassy as before. This time, though, her voice was thick with emotion.

  “Detective, I’m sorry to tell you, but Ambassador and Mrs. Njoku were killed tonight. We’re quite in shock.”

  I didn’t feel shocked, I felt sick. “When did it happen?” I asked her.

  “We’re not entirely sure. Within the past few hours, I believe.”

  And within minutes of their son’s murder? Had that been the plan all along? And whose plan? To what end? What was going on here?

  I slid down against the wall until I rested on my haunches. Another family dead. And this time, the murder had crossed two continents – two completely different worlds. At least I thought so at the time.

  Chapter 24

  THE BIG HEAT was on all of us now. It took me all of the next day to locate the CIA’s Eric Dana again, and then I found him only because he showed up at the Daly Building.

  I caught Dana coming out of Chief Davies’s office, and I saw the boss sitting inside before the door closed again. He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look up at me, though I was pretty sure he knew I was there.

  I walked up to Dana. “Where have you been all day? I called at least half a dozen times. I need your help on this case. What’s the problem?”

  The CIA man didn’t even break stride. “Talk to your CO. Metro is out of this. Chantilly was a disaster from our point of view. Our division head, Steven Millard, is involved at this point.”

  Millard. I’d heard that name from my buddy Al Tunney. I caught up with Dana at the elevator and elbowed my way through the closing door. “Where is the killer?” I asked him. “What do you know about him?”

  “We believe he’s left the country. We’ll let you know if he heads this way again,” the CIA man said, and he actually looked at me for the first time. “Stick to your own crime scenes, Cross. Do your job. I’ll do mine.”

  “Is that advice or a threat?” I asked Dana.

  “As long as you’re working in DC, it’s advice. I have no control or influence over you here.”

  His superior attitude was no surprise, and it didn’t steam so much as focus me. I reached over and flipped the red toggle in the elevator. We jerked to a stop, and a warning bell went off.

  “Where did he go, Dana?” I shouted. “Tell me where the hell he is!”

  “What’s the matter with you? This isn’t how the game is played.”

  When Dana reached for the switch, I grabbed his arm and held it.

  “Where did he go?” I asked again. “This isn’t a game to me.” Dana looked at me with hard eyes. He said, very evenly, “Let go of my arm, Cross. Get your hand the hell off me. He went back to Nigeria. The killer is out of your jurisdiction.”

  I knew I’d taken this too far, and it made me realize how emotional I was about this case, maybe even more than I knew. I let go, and he flipped the elevator back on without a word. We rode to the lobby in silence and I watched the CIA prick leave the building.

  The only question now was whether or not I could get around him. Maybe if I hurried. I dialed my cell phone from right there in the lobby of the Daly Building.

  “Al Tunney,” I heard a voice on the other end answer.

  “It’s Alex Cross. I need a favor,” I said.

  Tunney said, “No,” and groaned.

  Then he asked, “What is it?”

  I told him, and he groaned again, and I really couldn’t blame him.

  Chapter 25

  “ALEX, YOU’RE TAKING this too far,” Bree said.

  “I know that. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done.”

  Late that night, Bree and I were taking a ride around town. I like to drive late at night when the traffic thins out, and sixty, even seventy, isn’t a dangerous speed on most of these avenues. Once we got back to Fifth Street I was feeling better, but Bree was still wound up. She couldn’t stop pacing up in the bedroom. I had never seen her like this, agitated and unsure of herself.

  “See, the thing is, I’ve always been the one on the other side of this particular argument, the one trying to do the convincing. I’ve never been the person sitting there not buying it. You’re going over the top here, Alex. This latest plan of yours. Chase the killer back in Africa? Even under the circumstances, it’s – I don’t even know what to call it.”

  I started to speak, but she went on.

  “And you know why I don’t buy your arguments now, Alex? Because sometimes in your position, I’d lie. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my family there was nothing to worry about, or how safe I was going to be, when really I had no idea. You have no idea what you’ll find in Africa.”

  “You’re right,” I said, and not just to get her to stop pacing.

  “I won’t try to sell you some bill of goods here, Bree. But I will tell you that I’m not going to do anything stupid over there.”

  It was about eight hours after my confrontation with Eric Dana and my subsequent conversation with Tunney. Tunney had gone as far as setting me up with a CIA officer stationed in Nigeria – just before he told me never to call him again.

  I had the frequent-flier miles, so that wasn’t a problem.

  I had vacation time banked with the MPD. Now I just had to convince two of the strongest women I’d ever known that it made sense for me to do this – Bree tonight, Nana Mama tomorrow.

  The air, the tension, between Bree and me was as thick as I’d ever felt it.

  “What exactly are you hoping to accomplish over there?” she finally asked me.

  “Ultimately? Use Tunney’s guy to set up some local cooperation. Then steer the killer into custody if I can. I can get this guy, Bree. He’s arrogant, thinks he can’t be caught. That’s his weakness.”

  “Kyle Craig was a lifer, several times over. It’s no guarantee, Alex. That’s if you catch him.”

  I allowed myself a sheepish grin. “And yet we keep doing our jobs anyway, don’t we? We keep trying to catch these killers.”

  I finally reached out and took her hand. Then I pulled her over to sit next to me on the bed.

  “I have to go, Bree. He’s already killed more people in Washington than anyone I’ve seen. Eventually he’ll come back and start up again.”

  “And he killed your friend.”

  “Yes, he killed my friend. He killed Ellie Cox and her entire family.”

  Finally Bree shrugged. “So, go. Go to Africa, Alex.” And we hugged each other for a long time, and I was reminded again of why I loved her. And maybe why I was running away from her now.

  Chapter 26

  HE MET UP with the white devil in a wood-paneled cigar bar just off Pennsylvania Avenue, half a dozen blocks from the White House. They ordered drinks and appetizers, and the white man selected a Partagas cigar.

  “Cig
ars aren’t a vice of yours?” the white man asked.

  “I have no vices,” said the Tiger. “I am pure of heart.”

  The white man laughed at that.

  “The money has been transferred, three hundred and fifty thousand. You’re going back now?”

  “Yes, later tonight, in fact. I’m looking forward to being home in Nigeria.”

  The man nodded. “Even in such troubled times?”

  “Especially now. There’s lots of work for me. I like being lazy. Oil rich. Getting there anyway. By my standards.”

  The white man clipped his expensive cigar and the Tiger sipped his cognac. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he knew who his employer was. It wouldn’t be the first time. This group’s contractors in Africa weren’t always reliable – but he was. Always.

  “There’s something else.”

  “There always is,” said the Tiger, “with you people.”

  “You’re being followed by an American policeman.”

  “He won’t go to Africa after me.”

  “Yes, actually he will. You might have to kill him, but we would prefer you didn’t. His name is Alex Cross.”

  “I see. Alex Cross. Not smart to travel all the way to Africa just to die.”

  “No,” said the white man. “Try to remember that yourself.”

  Part Two

  SIGN OF THE CROSS

  Chapter 27

  THE TIGER WAS an enigma in every way, a mystery no one had ever solved. Actually, there were no tigers in Africa, which was how he got his nickname. He was like no other, one of a kind, superior to all the other animals, especially humans.

  Before he went to school in England, the Tiger had lived in France for a couple of years, and he had learned French and English. He discovered he had a gift for languages, and he could remember almost everything he learned or read. His first summer in France, he’d sold mechanical birds to children in the parking areas outside the palace at Versailles. He’d learned a valuable lesson there: to hate the white man, and especially white families.

  This day he had a mission in a city he didn’t much like because the foreigner had left too much of a mark here. The city was Port Harcourt in the Delta region of Nigeria, where most of the oil wells were located.

  The game was on. He had another bounty to collect.

  A black Mercedes was speeding up a steep hill toward the wealthy foreigners’ part of the city and straight toward the Tiger as well.

  As always, he waited patiently for his prey.

  Then he wandered out into the street like some poor drunkard on a binge. The Mercedes would either have to stop very quickly or strike him head-on.

  Probably because he was so large and might dent the car, at the last possible moment, the chauffeur applied the brakes.

  The Tiger could see the liveried black scum cursing him from behind the spotlessly clean windshield. So he raised his pistol fast and shot the driver and a bodyguard through the glass.

  His boys, wild, were already at both rear doors of the limousine, breaking the side windows with crowbars.

  Then they threw open the doors and pulled out the screaming white schoolchildren, a boy and a girl in their early teens.

  “Don’t harm them, I have other plans!” he yelled.

  An hour later, he had the boy and girl inside a shack on a deserted farm outside the city. They were dead now, unrecognizable even if they were found eventually. He had boiled them in a pot of oil. His employer had ordered this manner of death, which happened to be common in Sudan. The Tiger had no problem with it.

  Finally, he pulled out his cell phone and called a number in town. When the phone was picked up on the other end, he didn’t allow the American parents to speak.

  Nor would he ever talk to the local police, or to the private contractor who worked for the oil company and was supposed to protect them from harm.

  “You want to see young Adam and Chloe again, you do exactly as I say. First of all, I don’t want to hear a word from you. Not a word.”

  One of the cops spoke, of course, and he hung up on him. He would call back later, and have his money by the end of the day. It was easy work, and Adam and Chloe reminded him of the obnoxious and greedy white children who used to buy his mechanical birds at Versailles.

  He felt no regret for them, nothing at all. It was just business to him.

  Just another large bounty to collect.

  And just the start of things to come.

  Chapter 28

  I WAS DETERMINED to follow the psycho killer and his gang wherever it took me, but I could see this wasn’t going to be easy. Quite the opposite.

  “You took my passport? Did I get that right?” I asked Nana. “You actually stole my passport?”

  She ignored the questions and set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. Overdone and no toast, I noticed. So this was war.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You behave like an obstinate child, that’s how I treat you. Purloined,” she added. “I prefer purloined to stole.”

  I pushed the plate away. “Ellie Cox died because of this man, Nana. So did her family. And another family here in DC. Don’t pretend this has nothing to do with us.”

  “You mean you. And your job, Alex. That’s what this has to do with.” She poured a half cup of coffee and then headed for her room.

  I called after her. “You know stealing someone’s passport against the law?”

  “So arrest me,” she said and slammed shut her door. Six in the morning and round one of the new day was already over.

  We’d been building up to this ever since I first mentioned the possibility of my going to Africa. At first she’d been coy, with news articles cropping up around the house. I found a Time cover story, “The Deadly Delta,” snipped out and left with my laundry one night; a BBC news piece with the headline “Many Factions, No Peace for Nigeria” in an envelope next to my keys the next morning.

  When I ignored them, she moved on to lecturing – with a list of what-ifs and potential risks, as if I hadn’t considered nearly every one of them myself. Muslims killing Christians in the north of Nigeria; Christians retaliating in Eastern Nigeria; students lynching a Christian teacher; mass graves found in Okija; police corruption and brutality; daily kidnappings in Port Harcourt.

  It’s not that she was all wrong. These murder cases were already dangerous, and I hadn’t even given up the homecourt advantage yet. The truth was, I didn’t know what to to expect in Africa. All I knew was that if I had a chance to shut this butcher down, I was going to take it. The CIA contact there had signaled the murder suspect was in Lagos right now, or at least he had been a few days ago.

  I’d pulled some strings to expedite my visa application.

  Then I had cashed in seventy-five thousand miles for a last-minute ticket to Lagos.

  Now the only obstacle was my eighty-eight-year-old grandmother. Big obstacle. She stayed in her room until I left for work that morning, refusing to even talk about the purloined passport.

  Obviously, I couldn’t get far without it.

  Chapter 29

  THAT NIGHT, I gave Nana Mama a little taste of her own medicine. I waited until late, after the kids had gone to bed. Then I found her in her favorite reading chair, huddled over a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

  “What’s this?” She squinted at the manila folder in my hand as if it might bite her.

  “More news articles. I want you to take a look at them. They tell a horrible story, Nana. Murder, fraud, rape, genocide.”

  The article I’d given Nana included coverage of the gang’s DC murders. There were two long and well-written stories from the Post, one on each family, including pictures from happier times – like when they’d had their heads.

  “Alex, I already told you. I know what’s going on there. I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You don’t have to solve every single case. Let it go for once in your life.”

  �
�I wish I could.”

  I put the folder flat on her lap, kissed the warm top of her head, and went up to bed. “Stubborn,” I muttered.

  “Yes, you are. Very.”

  Chapter 30

  IN THE MORNING, I went downstairs around five thirty. I was surprised to see that Jannie and Ali were already up. Nana stood fiddling around at the stove with her back to me. She was cooking something cinnamony and irresistible.

  I sensed a trap.

  Jannie ferried glasses of orange juice from the counter to the table, where there were already silverware and cloth napkins for five.

  Ali was already sitting at his place, working on a big bowl of cereal and milk. He saluted me with a drippy spoon. “He’s here!”

  Et tu, Ali.

  “Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” I said, loud enough for the whole room.

  Nana didn’t respond, but she had heard me, for sure.

  Only then did I notice a yellow-bordered National Geographic map of Africa scotch taped to the refrigerator door.

  And also, set down with the napkins and silverware on the table, my passport.

  “So,” said Nana. “It was nice knowing you.”

  Chapter 31

  A CIA OPERATIVE named Ian Flaherty was “babysitting” a hysterical family down in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The parents’ teenaged son and daughter had been kidnapped. They were gathered together in the living room, waiting to learn the ransom demands, and the atmosphere couldn’t have been more desperate.

  Oh no, Flaherty had thought.