"You're sure?"
"Sorry, sir, but he wasn't on the plane. I would have recognized him. I did drive him around when he was here before. He's rather difficult to miss."
"Yes. Well, thank you anyway."
The chauffeur departed, and Hughes reached for the Cuban cigar in the ashtray on the table next to the overstuffed chair in which he sat. The cigar had gone out. He carefully relit it, using one of the wooden matches from the carved ivory box.
"This is a concern for you?" Domingos said. He puffed on his own fine cigar and blew out fragrant smoke.
"Not really," Hughes said. "Platt will show up sooner or later. If not today's flight, then tomorrow's or the next day's. I have his money, and the arrangement was for him to collect it in person."
"Giles will take care of him whenever he arrives," Domingos said. "Not to worry."
Hughes swirled the brandy, lifted the snifter to his lips, and sipped it. "I'm not worried at all, Mr. President."
"Please, you must call me Freddie. We are going to have a long and very pleasant association together, no?"
"But of course, Freddie."
Platt had driven his rented Land Rover to Sedhiou, where he'd taken the dinky ferry across the sluggish and brown Casamance River, then south to Tanaf. From there, if he stayed on the road, he was only about five miles away from Senegal's southern border with Guinea-Bissau. If he stayed on the road, it would take him through Olo Province south across the Canjambari River by way of Mansoa, and into Bissau from the northeast. That was if he stayed on the road. Thing with a Land Rover was, you didn't have to stay on the road if you didn't feel like it. And most of the roads around here were dirt tracks anyhow. He didn't particularly trust the guy who'd rented him the Rover, but the guy was white, and he'd said there were more ways to cross the border unseen than you could shake a stick at, and that was probably true.
It wasn't that far, as the crow flew, from where he was to Bissau, maybe fifty miles, but if the crow had to walk it on these crappy paths it was not only longer, it was a lot slower than the bird could fly with one wing busted. Platt would probably get there while it was still dark, assuming he didn't get pulled over by some native Army patrol out for blood. He was prepared for that, having bought himself a K-bar sheath knife, a Browning 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a vintage AK-47, and enough ammunition for both guns to take out a small-town high school football stadium. Plus he had picked up two WWII surplus hand grenades — German potato mashers, the dealer told him, old, but guaranteed to work.
If he ran into some local soldiers who wanted to give him grief, he'd see if could mash them like potatoes. Nobody in this dark land was gonna stop him getting where he wanted to go, not without being real sorry if they tried.
And after he had gotten far enough out in the boonies, he had pulled over and taken time to apply a couple of coats of the darkest tanning foam he could find. He wasn't exactly black, but he was a kind of nutty brown, and with a baseball cap on to hide his hair, he didn't look much like a white man at any distance more than a few yards.
Platt found a cow path or something a couple of miles away from the border, leading through a grassy field and a couple of plowed areas, then into some woods. He stayed on the compass until he came to a fence that stretched off into the woods in both directions.
Must be the border, he figured.
The fence that protected the border was three whole strands of rusted barbed wire tacked to wooden posts that were mostly rotted away.
Damned savages couldn't do any better than that? Jesus. No wonder they never amounted to nothin' over here. This fence wouldn't keep the livestock in back home.
He hacked most of the way through one of the posts with the K-bar, then knocked it the rest of the way down with the Rover's front bumper and rolled across the border.
Welcome to Guinea-Bissau, hoss. Hope you enjoy your visit.
He had gotten kind of turned around, so he pulled over to check the map. And it was a lucky thing too. While the hot engine ticked, he heard another vehicle. He got out of the Land Rover and moved down the trail.
Ahead was a beat-up pickup, painted jungle green, with four soldiers in it, two inside, two in the back. They had AKs like his, and they were cruising along slow, looking.
Platt realized that if he hadn't stopped, he might have run right into them, and with four guns against his one, that could have been real bad — especially if they had seen him first, which they would have probably done, since they were looking and he wasn't.
He hadn't figured on a border patrol. He revised his opinion up a little. Maybe these jungle bunnies were sharper than he'd thought. Bad idea to underestimate the other side.
After the truck had time to get a couple of miles away, he went back to the Rover. Better take it slow and careful from here on in.
He figured he needed to get fairly close to the city, then find himself a place to hide the Rover, ‘cause he'd need it to leave. And he'd have to hole up for a day, until tomorrow night, because he definitely didn't want to be moving around during the day, disguise or not. Tuesday night, good and dark, he'd mosey on in and do his business.
As he drove through a field of high grass, the damp and heavy air rumbled with distant thunder. He could smell the approaching rain.
Oh, good. A storm, just what he needed to slow him down even more.
On the other hand, a thunderstorm would probably keep the local militia inside drinking bull pee or whatever it was they drank, and that would be good. He wasn't lookin' to get shot if he could help it.
He wiped sweat away from his forehead with the back of his right hand. Damn, but it was muggy here.
He saw a cloud of mosquitoes or flies or something buzzing in the air ahead of him, and he reached for the bug dope spray in the bag on the passenger seat. Be another good thing the rain would do, keep the bugs down. All he needed was to catch sleeping sickness or malaria or elephantitis from all this crap.
No two ways about it, he was gonna take a little more than the twenty million when he talked to Hughes. He sure had it coming.
"Banjul, huh?" Joanna said.
Seated next to her in the seat of the team's 747, Fernandez said, "Yep. It's in The Gambia, kind of an insert around the Gambia River, runs right into the lower half of Senegal. A little farther away than we wanted, right on the coast, but it's the only airport south of Dakar where we can put this bird down and not be noticed. The Company has a store there — we're switching to a couple of Hueys for the rest of the trip. So we'll go in at treetop level Tuesday night, land, do our thing, then come out. It worked great on that Chechnya caper, it sure ought to work out here in darkest Guinea-Bissau. I don't think their radar is exactly state-of-the-art. Even if they see us, they don't have much to throw at us or chase us with."
"Heads up, here comes the colonel," Joanna whispered.
"Sir," Fernandez said as John Howard stopped next to their seats.
"Sergeant, Lieutenant." Howard looked at them for a couple of seconds, then smiled.
"Something funny, sir?" Fernandez said.
"Not really. You know that joke you were remembering when I called you on the way back from Washington State? The one you laughed at?"
"I remember."
"I do believe I get it now, Sergeant. Carry on."
After the colonel left, Joanna looked at Fernandez. "What was that all about?"
Fernandez grinned widely. "I expect the colonel knows that you and I have been, ah… intimate."