Brotherhood and Others Read online

  “What’s happened?” Bergenheim moaned. “I just want to get back to my nice air-conditioned—”

  “Something is wrong with the helicopter,” Lieutenant Zed said sharply.

  “I thought I heard something wrong before we landed, up in the rotor,” Chatterjee said before Monarch could.

  “We all did,” Sing said.

  “This is electrical,” Gahji said, studying Monarch, who acted pissed off.

  “Are you telling me we have to walk a hundred kilometers out of here?” he demanded angrily.

  “I’ll die,” Bergenheim whimpered. “I am not meant for such things.”

  “You won’t have to walk out, any of you,” said Lieutenant Zed, sounding disgusted. “But you will have to stay the night. We’ll call in a second helicopter after dawn to take you out.”

  “Fuck,” Monarch said, exasperated. “I wanted to get those reports in tonight.”

  “I did too,” Chatterjee said. “We had a lead on the bidders coming tomorrow.”

  “Now it’s a level playing field,” Sing said, with a touch of bitterness.

  The Belgian jewel expert looked like he might be sick all over again.

  “Well done,” Gloria Barnett whispered in Monarch’s ear.

  Monarch clucked as if he were completely irritated at the situation.

  “We will feed you, and find places for you to sleep,” Lieutenant Zed said. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll know better how life is for these boys.”

  Monarch sighed, looked over at Gahji. The boy soldier’s lazy attention was still on him when the rebel leader barked, “Fasi, see to food, and beds for them.”

  The pygmy reacted as if swatted with a riding crop, hurrying away toward the bridge, which had been extended again.

  “I’ll contract some incurable disease,” Bergenheim lamented as they trudged after the pygmy. “Some snail that will get into my liver and never leave. I’ve read about it. They have them here.”

  Monarch had almost come to feel sorry for the Belgian. “You’d have to step in water with a cut on your foot,” he said.

  “Malaria then,” Bergenheim said, and looked at Gahji, who had at last taken his eyes off Monarch. “Are there mosquitos?”

  “Clouds of them,” Gahji said. “But we have nets.”

  “And whisky,” Lieutenant Zed said. “Whisky in the blood helps keep the mosquitos away. Johnnie Walker Black Label. And strong cigars. Cuban.”

  “Black Label and Cuban cigars out here?” Sing remarked.

  “We live in the jungle, but we are not apes.”

  * * *

  As agile as only the son of a cat burglar could be, Robin slipped through the door that led off the loading dock into a hallway that connected it to the jewelry factory floor. He flipped on a flashlight, and then reached into his front pocket and fingered open a bag of talcum powder. Taking a solid pinch of it, he cast it underhand out and toward the ceiling.

  He kept his light moving from the top to the bottom of the hall, looked over his shoulder, and said, “No beams yet.”

  “I know there are some in here,” Claudio warned.

  Robin nodded. He remembered them from the parts list for the alarm system that Claudio had somehow obtained. Setting off carefully, tossing the powder every few feet, they soon reached the factory floor.

  “East wall,” Claudio said.

  The three of them swept their lights over rows of assembly benches, a shipping department with stacks of cardboard, and a glass-faced office where the owner worked. The safe had to be in there.

  They reached the door to the office without incident. Julio was a master at picking locks and he was stepping forward to open the door when Robin stopped him. He crouched, lifted the cover on the mail slot, got talcum, and blew the powder through.

  When they shined their lights inside, the three red beams cutting diagonally through the office stood out like thick, taut cables.

  “There’s the safe,” Claudio said with great interest. “Standup, two-hour fireproof, just as I figured.”

  Robin saw it in Claudio’s light. “You know that mechanism?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Fuck,” said Julio, whose light was shining on the office door. “The door opens inward. Soon as we do, the alarms will be triggered.”

  “So we’ll take out one of the windows,” Robin said.

  * * *

  “You like it?” Lieutenant Zed asked with a slur in his voice, several hours after dark.

  All of them were back out at the table on the veranda again. Torches burned some kind of insect repellent, but they barely kept the mosquitos at bay. The generators ran, brightening the two bare lightbulbs over the table. The onions and garlic in the tomato sauce filled the air. An empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label sat mid-table. A second one, close to half empty, was in Lieutenant Zed’s hand as he poured himself a refill. He clenched a burning cigar in his teeth.

  “Excellent sauce,” Sing said.

  “And the fish?” Monarch said. “Tilapia?”

  “The lakes are full of them,” said the rebel leader with a slight slur in his voice. “Fasi knows twenty ways to cook them. Don’t you, Fasi?”

  The pygmy, who had been standing at nervous attention, nodded, said in French, “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “His mother taught him,” Lieutenant Zed said. “More whisky?”

  “For me,” Bergenheim said, drunk and holding up his tin cup. “Trying to make my stomach as polluted as possible. Kill everything. And I’ll take that cigar after all.”

  Fasi darted over, snagged the second whisky bottle, and hustled it and a cigar to the Belgian. He filled his cup, and then Chatterjee’s and Sing’s. Monarch shook his head when he was offered more.

  “Why the boys?” Monarch asked finally. “Why haven’t adult men joined your army, Lieutenant?”

  Gahji, who sat off to one side, eating, now stopped, looked up.

  The rebel leader’s demeanor hardened. “Many men have joined,” he said. “They run the other camps.”

  “So many more boys than men?” Monarch said reasonably.

  Lieutenant Zed studied him critically before he said, “Only the young can change the world. You start them early, they cannot help but succeed.”

  Monarch nodded, said, “I see your point.”

  “My point and my strategy,” the rebel leader insisted, draining his cup and pouring another. “The best warriors I have ever seen have all been boys, me included. Boys make up for their lack of strength with ferocity and battle smarts. Most simply have no fear. The ones who become afraid, die. The ones who don’t, get very good.”

  He drained that cup too, stood, and said, “Gahji will show you where you are to sleep. Fasi will wake you early. The helicopter will be here after dawn.”

  “Will we see you, Lieutenant?” Bergenheim said.

  “Of course,” he said as he moved somewhat unsteadily toward the door. “What kind of host do you think I am?”

  Fasi brought mats and mosquito nets to the veranda. Gahji and one of the other boy soldiers Monarch had seen earlier in the day moved the table out onto the ground behind the old plantation house.

  Bergenheim looked ready to cry, but, still smoking his cigar, got to his knees and crawled in under the mosquito net. He put the burning cigar on the cement near his head. The Belgian was snoring before Sing and Chatterjee returned from the outhouse.

  “In the morning,” Gahji said, snagging the whisky bottle from the table. About a third remained.

  “He’ll never remember how much was left,” Monarch whispered.

  For the first time since the helicopter failed to start, Gahji reacted with something resembling a smile, and said, “I know.”

  Monarch set his instrument case beside his mosquito net, crawled inside and curled up. The generator died and with it the electric lights. The torches flickered weakly, throwing shadows, and he was acutely aware of the symphony of bugs and frogs and night animals calling.

  He lay there un
til the torches died, close to two hours, long enough for the boys on sentry duty to drowse, before finally making his move.

  * * *

  Once Claudio and Julio pried off the trim that held the glass in place, the windowpane came out easier than Robin expected.

  “I’ll find what else we need,” Julio said, and set off through the factory.

  Robin went into the office first. Tossing more talcum powder, he studied the three light beams and saw a path that would take him to the safe. He straddled the first beam, belly-crawled under the second, and climbed up on the desk to jump over the third. He landed in the eighteen inches of free space in front of the safe.

  “Doesn’t look too bad,” Claudio said.

  “It would have stopped most thieves,” Robin said.

  “True,” Claudio said as Julio returned carrying a small tank of acetylene, a hose, a face shield, and two torch heads.

  “Every bench has got a set,” Julio said. “Just like you said.”

  “I told you I knew everything about this place,” Claudio replied as he crawled in through the window frame.

  He accepted the tank from Julio, said, “I’ll need three or four more.”

  While Julio went to gather the gas tanks, Robin threw talcum powder into the air and met Claudio halfway. Two trips and they’d ferried the equipment they needed through the light beams without incident.

  “Two-hour fireproof, you said?” Robin asked.

  “Got to be,” Claudio replied, lowering the face shield. “But that’s a regular fire, hot, but not aimed, you know?” He turned on the gas, lit the torch with a pop. “Nothing intense as this.”

  He fiddled with the torch control until the flame was short, stubby, and so brilliant that Robin and Julio had to look at it sideways when Claudio started to cut about an inch and a half away from the dial.

  * * *

  Monarch turned off the satellite radio in his ear and shut off the camera. He didn’t want to be distracted in any way. He grabbed his knapsack and slipped out from under the mosquito net, glad that he’d thought to wear crepe-soled shoes. This was going to be the most delicate creep he’d ever been on. He saw no other way around it: he was going to have to slip in, find the rebel leader’s bedroom, and somehow get the—

  He caught a flash of movement near the back door to the old plantation house and froze against the rear wall, watching a small figure amble by and leave the veranda. In a split second, Monarch’s instincts reversed and he padded after the pygmy toward the outhouse.

  Monarch had excellent night vision and scanned the area back toward the boys’ bivouac, seeing no movement. In five soft bounds he was behind Fasi, threw his left hand over the little man’s mouth and caught him around the chest, lifted him into the air even as the pygmy squealed softly.

  “Ecoutez,” Monarch whispered harshly in French. “I am an American agent. I am here to help you. Do you understand?”

  Until that point, Fasi’s body had been rigid with fear. But then it softened and he nodded. “I’m going to set you down,” Monarch continued. “Then we are going to talk. Okay?”

  The pygmy shook his head. Monarch set him down anyway, removed his hand from Fasi’s mouth. “Why not?”

  “If the Lieutenant finds out I…”

  “He won’t know anything for certain until it’s too late,” Monarch said. “Where’s the diamond?”

  “The diamond?” Fasi hissed before spitting with disgust. “The diamond is mine! My people’s. You said you were here to help us, but all you want is what belongs to us. Just like everybody else.”

  His story came out in a rush of harsh whispers. Fasi’s people had known about the mine for decades, and had explored it, protected it. The pygmy had been all through the place as a boy. He’d left the jungle and attended school for a while in Goma, near the Rwandan border, but then returned here because he never felt like he fit in the outside world.

  Lieutenant Zed showed up five years ago because he’d heard about the abandoned mine. When Fasi’s family refused to show him where it was, the reign of terror began. Lieutenant Zed killed Fasi’s sister and then his young brother. When he threatened to kill the rest of Fasi’s family, the pygmy broke down and agreed.

  “And you’ve been his slave since?”

  Fasi nodded. “And these boys. They are his slaves too. He fills their minds with hate and revolution, but he is only interested in the diamonds. The boys are here to defend and work the mine. When they try to escape…”

  Monarch could hear the raw emotion in Fasi’s voice.

  “The canal?”

  “It’s horrible,” he choked.

  Monarch had underestimated the pygmy. “You’re a very brave man, Fasi, and I promise you that the United States government will make sure that Lieutenant Zed is punished, and your claim to the mine is recognized. But you’ve got to help me get the diamond. And it’s not about the money. It’s too complicated to explain right now, but that diamond isn’t about pretty rocks for women’s fingers. It could change science, medicine, all sorts of things. Save people’s lives. You have to believe me.”

  For several moments there was no noise but the rustle of birds on their roost, and off in the darkness the constant rumble of frogs.

  “He’ll know I took it,” Fasi said in a dull voice.

  The implications of that were clear: Monarch would get the diamond, but Fasi would surely see the crocodile pit up close and personal.

  “You know the land between this lake and the one south ten miles or so?”

  “I grew up in there,” Fasi said.

  “Then once we get that diamond, you’re coming with me.”

  * * *

  “Almost there,” Claudio said as the acetylene torch cut through the last bit of metal holding the locking mechanism into the door of the safe. “I’ll need a hammer to finish the job.”

  Julio had remained outside the office, watching them work. He trotted off, and was gone longer than Robin would have thought necessary. Claudio had cut full around the dial by the time he returned.

  “Should do it,” Julio said, handing Robin a hammer and several plastic shopping bags at the window.

  The leader of La Fraternidad smelled of rum. He was drinking on the job? Robin couldn’t believe it, but said nothing, took the hammer, stuffed the bags in his back pocket. Thank God Julio hadn’t insisted on coming inside the office. The alarm would have already been triggered.

  But he compartmentalized that idea and quickly worked his way back to Claudio, who took the hammer, shone his light on the dial, and gave it a sharp rap, and then another. On the third it budged. A fourth blow dislodged the mechanism and they heard it thud inside.

  “Brilliant!” Robin whispered. “We’re in.”

  “Not quite,” Claudio said, reaching into the seared hole with a screwdriver. “Gotta get the rods to disengage.”

  Several frustrating moments later, Robin heard the sound of metal sliding through metal and the safe door sagged open on its hinges.

  “Careful,” Robin said. “You’ve only got eighteen inches to play with.”

  Claudio nodded, softly tugged at the hole in the door. It swung open enough that they could get their lights inside.

  “Oh my God,” Robin whispered.

  “Sonofabitch,” Claudio agreed in awe.

  “What?” Julio cried. “What do you see?”

  * * *

  According to Fasi, the diamond was stored beneath the floorboards under Lieutenant Zed’s cot in a south-facing bedroom on the second floor of the plantation house.

  Monarch thought about that, asked, “Where’s Zed’s escape route?”

  The pygmy hesitated. “What?”

  “A second way out of here,” Monarch said. “The Lieutenant’s smart; he’d have another way to leave other than the front gate and the bridge.”

  After a beat, Fasi said, “There’s a ditch that runs under the wall to drain rainwater. It’s in the back under a pile of brush.”

  Mon
arch remembered the brush pile and the fishing boats behind the fortress. It took him several minutes to devise a plan and explain it to the pygmy.

  “That way he’ll have no idea it was you until it’s too late,” Monarch said.

  Fasi reluctantly agreed and led the way to the generators. They took four cans of gasoline and snuck them back toward the outhouse where they took the towel from beside the wash basin, and then moved closer to the north wall of the stockade where two rectangles of lashed bamboo lay on the ground.

  “I’ll take it from here, get them all up and moving,” Monarch whispered. “You know what to do once it starts.”

  He couldn’t see the pygmy very well, but could smell fear in the little man’s sweat. Fasi said, “Okay,” and trotted away.

  Monarch waited until he could no longer see him, and then quickly set about improvising a bomb. He opened the gas cans, tore the towel into rags. He tied two strips together, making a cord about twenty inches long. He doused the cord with gasoline and set it aside. Then he stuffed more rags into the mouth of each can. Careful to make no noise, he lifted one of the bamboo covers and lowered the cans down on top of the boxes of ammunition.

  He positioned half of the soaked rag down the wall of the pit and stretched out the other half of the soaked cord in the dirt. He fished the cigar he hadn’t smoked from his pocket along with a box of matches. They were damp and took several strikes before they flamed.

  Monarch puffed hard on the cigar, cupping the end so it would not be seen. Satisfied that it would not go out, he lathered the butt end with saliva and set that part of the cigar on the gas-soaked rag, the smoldering coal a solid six inches away.

  When he was done, Monarch flipped back on the satellite radio, started moving back toward the outhouse, and whispered, “Rogue.”

  He heard Barnett sigh with relief. “Where have you—?”

  Monarch cut her off, whispered, “In about five minutes I’m either going to have the diamond and be heading toward that lake, or I’ll have sent an innocent man to his death, and probably me along with him.”

  A pause. “It’s rarely gray with you.”

  “Tell me about it,” Monarch whispered.

  * * *

  “What’s in there?” Julio demanded again.