There were rumors that Aslim Taslam, in an effort to collect money as quickly as possible, had entered the black-market organ trade. Occasional victims appeared with slices in their lower backs or opened chest cavities, missing vital parts.
But not even in his secret soul did Paul fear this. He could live with fewer hands, with half his kidneys or one less lung. He would never wander willingly into that world of pain, but he didn’t fear it with the intensity that he feared the actual end point.
For most people it was the reverse: They feared pain but not death. Paul could not understand this. When a film ends, the viewer can replay it in his head for the rest of his life. But each person is the sole witness to his own life, and when that witness dies, no memory of the viewing remains. Death works backward; it eats up the past, so that even that sweat-stained couch on which he’d stopped loving his girlfriend would cease to exist.
Paul said, “I’m not going to pretend I’m not scared. You’ve locked that door, and I saw the gun the man outside is wearing. I can only tell you what I know. I work for Banque Salève, and Mr. Wallis asked me to fly here to perform an account transfer.”
The unnamed one, who had earlier used his fists on Paul’s back, spoke quickly in Arabic, and Nabil said, “All right, then. Let’s do the transfer.”
“I’ll need Mr. Wallis’s authorization. Where is he?”
“I don’t think you need Sam.”
“You don’t understand,” Paul said patiently. “The transfer is done with a computer. It’s in my hotel room. It has a fingerprint scanner, and we calibrated it to Mr. Wallis’s index finger.”
“Which hand?”
“Excuse me?”
“The left or the right index finger?”
“The right.”
Nabil pursed his lips. He had a young, pretty face made barely masculine by a short beard that reached up to his cheekbones. Paul imagined that he would have had to work particularly hard to be taken seriously in an industry full of battle-scarred compatriots. He wondered if, in a final need to prove himself, Nabil would someday end up driving a car full of explosives through a roadblock, or sitting in the pilot’s chair of a passenger airplane, praising his god and then holding his breath. Men like Nabil were careless about the only important thing. They were as foolish as Sam.
There had been a Kenyan contact waiting in his stuffy hotel room. Benjamin Muoki, from the National Security Intelligence Service, was sitting on Paul’s bed when he entered, sucking on a brown cigarette that streamed heavily from both ends. After they had exchanged introductory codes, Benjamin said, “This is what happens when you run an operation without proper help.”
“Sam got your help, didn’t he?”
“This isn’t help. I’m giving you a machine, that’s all. This is what happens when your people are not completely open with us.”
“I don’t think we’re the only ones keeping secrets,” Paul said as he began to unpack his clothes.
“Is that what Washington tells you?”
“Washington doesn’t have to tell us anything.”
“We get no points for giving you a president?”
“If another Kenyan tells me that I’m going to have a fit.”
Benjamin sucked on his cigarette and stared at the floor, where a heavy black briefcase lay. His color was lighter than that of most of his countrymen, his nose long, and Paul found himself wondering about the man’s parentage.
“That’s the computer?”
Benjamin nodded. “You know the codes?”
Paul tapped his temple. “Right here. As long as the machine works, it should be a cinch. You’ve tested it?”
The question seemed to make the Kenyan uncomfortable. “Don’t worry, it works.” He lifted the case onto the bed and opened it up to reveal an inlaid keyboard and screen. “Turn it on here and press this to connect to the bank. Type in the codes, and there you are.”
“Where’s the fingerprint scanner?”
“The what?”
“For Sam’s authorization.”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
Paul wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a joke. “Does it really connect to the bank?”
“How should I know? I’m just the courier.” Benjamin closed the briefcase and set it on the floor again. He squinted as if the light were too strong, though the blinds were down. “They picked up Sam yesterday. They suspect him, and so they suspect you. They will be after you.”
“They already are,” Paul told him. “They followed me from the airport.”
That seemed to surprise the Kenyan. “You are very cold about this.”
Paul slipped a shirt onto a wooden hotel hanger. “Am I?”
“Were I you, I would be planning my escape from Africa.”
Paul didn’t bother mentioning that he was here to clean his soul, or that the idea of running had already occurred to him a hundred times; instead, he said, “Leaving’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“All you must do is ask.”
Paul reached for another shirt, waiting for more.
“Listen to me,” said Benjamin. “I keep secrets, and so do you. But no matter what Washington tells you or Nairobi tells me, we are in this together. Your friend Sam, he’s been captured. He was stupid; he should have asked for my help. There’s no need for you to follow in his footsteps. If you show up dead, missing your liver or your heart, then that is a tragedy. The operation is already blown. If you stay, you will die.”
Benjamin Muoki made plenty of sense. More than Sam, who placed abstract principles above life itself. Only a man with such a twisted value system could have been able to forgive Paul his failure in Rome. So he agreed. Benjamin whispered a prayer of thanks for Paul’s sudden wisdom. They settled on an eight-o’clock extraction, and Benjamin insisted that Paul remain in the hotel until then.
Paul didn’t contact Geneva, or Sam’s case officer in Rome. They would either agree to eighty-sixing the operation, or they wouldn’t, and in that case, he didn’t want to be forced to refuse a direct order. There were far better places to die when the time came. Places with air-conditioning. He repacked his bag, left it beside the briefcase computer, and went down to the ground-floor bar. It was there, during his third gin and tonic, that they arrived.
He hadn’t been able to see the faces that had followed him from the airport, but he knew that these were the same men. Tall, hard-looking, pitch black. They asked him to come quietly, pressing into his back so that he could feel their small pistols. He began to do as they asked, but then remembered the simple equation Benjamin had drawn for him: If you stay, you will die.
He swung his arms above his head. They wanted quiet, so he screamed. Hysterically. “I’m being kidnapped! Help!” The bartender froze in the midst of cleaning glasses. Two Chinese businessmen stopped their conversation and stared. The other few customers, all Kenyans, ducked instinctively even before they saw the guns his kidnappers began to wave around as they shouted in Arabic and pulled him out onto the street, into the waiting Mercedes.
They were infuriated by Paul’s lack of cooperation. While one drove, the other pushed him down in the backseat and kept punching his kidneys to keep him still. It made Paul think that, if nothing else, they had no plans to take that organ. But all hierarchies are riddled with fools and bad communication, and there was no reason to think that later, in the operating room, the Aslim Taslam surgeon wouldn’t recoil at the sight of his bruised and bloody kidneys.
It was cooler when Nabil finally returned. No one had turned off the blaring white ceiling light during the hours he’d been gone, but Paul suspected it was night. Nabil looked pleased with himself. He said, “You can do what you came here to do.”