State Of Evil

And then his eyes snapped open.

“EXPLAIN THE PROBLEM once again, if you don’t mind,” Pablo Camacho said. His frown was thoughtful, almost studious.

It angered Gaborone to have his concentration interrupted, but he couldn’t show impatience to Camacho or the man who stood beside him, likewise waiting for his answer. One of them would soon pay millions for the key to Armageddon, and until the contract had been executed, Gaborone couldn’t afford to vent his spleen toward either one.

“The fires were set deliberately,” Gaborone replied in even tones. “Having discovered that, I realized that someone might be injured, or else missing from the camp.”

“The fire setter.” Adnan Ibn Sharif remained impassive as he spoke.

“Perhaps. In any case, a survey of our people has revealed one absent from his dormitory. An American. My men are searching for him now in other barracks, the latrines, mess hall.”

“You have guards here,” Camacho said. “Can anyone simply walk out, unseen?”

“It’s a community, Mr. Camacho, not a prison camp. My people stay because they wish to. They have faith in me and in the Process. We await the end times here.”

Camacho fairly sneered. “Someone grew tired of waiting, it would seem.”

“We don’t know yet if the young man in question set the fires. He may still be in camp, somewhere. In any case, he will be found and questioned.”

“Found in any case?” Sharif was plainly skeptical. “What if he’s run into the jungle? Can you find him there?”

“Some of my men are native hunters. They can track a leopard through the thickets to its lair.”

“This is a man,” Camacho said, “not some dumb animal.”

“A white man from the U.S.A.,” Gaborone said. He forced a smile. “If this one ran into the forest, he’ll be lost by now.”

“But going somewhere, all the same,” Sharif replied. “We’re wasting time.”

“On the contrary. Even as some search the village, others are scouting the perimeter. They will discover any signs of recent passage.”

Camacho shifted restlessly, hands clinched to fists inside his trouser pockets. “Tell us something more of this American you’ve lost. How do you know he’s not a spy?”

“I know my people,” Gaborone replied. “They’re converts, gentlemen, not infiltrators. Each has sacrificed to demonstrate devotion. They have given up their lives and families to follow me.”

“Still, if a spy wants to impress you,” said Camacho, “he could do all that and more. I’ve been indicted in absentia by the government in Washington. For all I know, your arsonist is a narcotics agent and these fires were signals for a raid.”

“In which case,” Gaborone asked his uneasy guest, “where are the raiders? Do you hear the sound of aircraft circling overhead? The only landing strip within a hundred miles is guarded by my men, and they have radios as well as weapons. You are perfectly secure in Obike.”

“Why don’t I feel secure?” Camacho asked.

“Perhaps you’ve lived in fear too long,” Gaborone said. “In fact, the young man whom we seek converted to the Process months ago. Before I had the pleasure of your company—or yours, Mr. Sharif. Could he predict that we would meet and come to terms on business matters, gentlemen? I doubt it very much.”

“We have not come to terms,” Sharif reminded him. “Not yet.”

Gaborone was rapidly reaching the end of his patience. “Indeed,” he replied, “have we not? Please pardon my presumption. I assumed that our discussions had some basis in reality. If you prefer to look elsewhere for what you seek, I won’t detain you any further. I can halt the trivial pursuit of one young man and have you taken to the airstrip. Are your things in order? Is an hour soon enough?”

Camacho fanned the muggy air with an impatient hand. “No one said anything about leaving. I can’t speak for Sharif, but I still want the merchandise, if we can strike a bargain on the price.”

“And I!” Sharif confirmed. “I’ve come empowered to close a deal.”

“Then, by all means,” Gaborone said, “leave petty matters of internal discipline to me. I’ll soon find out who set the fires and what possessed him to make such a grave mistake. Until then, gentlemen, please take advantage of our hospitality.”

He left them less than satisfied, but they were staying. It was all that mattered at the moment.

That, and finding Patrick Quinn.

NICO MBARGA HAD INFORMED his men, at the beginning of the search, that all results should be reported directly to him, without troubling the master. His troops knew the drill well enough, but it did no harm to remind them, especially when there were strangers in the village who might form a bad impression of the Process if its guards ran willy-nilly, here and there, spreading false rumors to the populace.

In this case, though, Mbarga was concerned with truth, as much as lies.

He wanted to be confident of every detail the master received about what had transpired. He also meant to be the only messenger with access to the throne.

To that end, long ago, Mbarga had commanded that his men shouldn’t address the master unless spoken to directly by His Eminence. If such a conversation should occur outside Mbarga’s presence, they were tasked to find him afterward and faithfully report whatever had been said. And as insurance against crafty liars, Mbarga had decreed that his soldiers had to always work in pairs, thus providing a witness for any chance encounter with the master.

It was the best he could do, and now it seemed that his system might be shattered by a pasty-faced American of no account.

Mbarga knew Patrick Quinn as he knew everyone in Obike, as a sketchy printout from the personal computer in his head. Quinn was a white boy from America, apparently devoted to the Process if his former words and actions were a proper guide. He’d come from money but had been cut off from access by his parents. That occurred from time to time, and while the disappointment hadn’t been enough for Gaborone to cut him loose, it ended any chance of Quinn’s advancement to the master’s inner circle. Quinn would be a cipher, toiling in the fields or begging handouts for the Process on some street corner until he either quit the sect or died.

This day, the latter exit seemed more probable.

Mbarga supervised the search, rather than rushing door-to-door himself and peering into cupboards, groping under cots. He left the grunt work to his men, as usual, and relegated to himself the task of asking questions where he thought they might be useful.

His knowledge of the white boy didn’t extend to peripheral friendships, so Mbarga questioned first the other occupants of Quinn’s barracks. Two-thirds of them were Africans, the other pair young Arabs, possibly Jordanian. In that mix, it was no surprise to find Quinn rated as a quiet loner who made few attempts at conversation. Probably, they wouldn’t understand him if he spoke, and wouldn’t care about the subject matter if they did. One failing of the master, Mbarga ruefully admitted to himself, had been the effort to dissolve racial and ethnic barriers between disciples of the Process. Sermons on the subject were absorbed, but never seemed to take.

The upshot of Mbarga’s grilling was that he knew nothing more of Quinn than when he’d started. Did the young man have a special friend inside the village, either male or female? Master Gaborone himself controlled the coupling of his congregants, selecting mates based on criteria known to himself alone. Even the married people, though, were segregated into dorms by gender, granted conjugal relations at the master’s pleasure, once per month on average.

Of course, that didn’t stop some villagers from falling prey to whimsies of the flesh. Mbarga and his men caught them from time to time, rutting like animals inside a storage shed or in the forest, passion honed to razor sharpness by the danger of discovery. In such cases, Mbarga took names for Master Gaborone, and punishments were devised to fit the crime. Public humiliation was a common penalty, sometimes accompanied by corporal punishment.

And wayward girls were marked. The master liked to counsel them himself.

In fact, the young American named Quinn appeared to have no contacts of that kind within the village—which meant none at all, since he was never sent outside Obike on his own. It seemed unlikely, then, that passion would’ve led to fire setting, and since he’d fled alone, it couldn’t be supposed that he’d eloped.

Mbarga still had more questions than answers when he carried his final report to the master, but at least one thing was settled. He knew where the white man had gone. More precisely, he knew how Patrick Quinn had left the village, though his destination still remained obscure.

He found the master standing with their foreign guests, and approached cautiously from fear of interrupting some important conversation. They had business to discuss, Mbarga knew, and it was not his place to meddle in such things.

“Nico, what news?” the master asked as he approached.

“Master, the white man is no longer in Obike, but I found the point where he departed from the village, heading south.”

“Toward Brazzaville?” Gaborone asked.

“Master, the city is two hundred miles away.”

“I know that!”

“My apologies, Master.”