“I’ve been monitoring the news reports.”
King waited for Deep Blue to elaborate, but several seconds passed and he realized that there wasn’t anything more to be said. “How are the others?”
“Queen and Rook…” Another pause occurred, presumably Deep Blue trying to come up with a way to share his news in ambiguous terms. “… were successful. They’re checking something else out right now, but I expect them to be on their way very soon. I’ve booked their flight.”
That meant Crescent II was already en route to pick them up. Mulamba might conceivably be back in Kinshasa in time for breakfast. “Bishop and Knight?”
“No word. Doesn’t look good.”
Damn.
King closed his eyes, took a breath and went on. “What’s the best play here?”
“Remember what you’re there for. Advise and support. I know that’s not very helpful, but it’s all I’ve got. I trust your judgment on this. You’ve got a lot more experience than I’ll ever have.”
King parsed the comment quickly. The ‘experience’ to which Deep Blue was referring was the sum of several lifetimes spent roaming the planet, championing the defenseless, knowing full well that the outcome had already been written in the annals of the history King knew. His choices hadn’t been guided by knowledge of what the inevitable outcome would be, but rather by a more fundamental determination to protect the innocent, help the helpless, to do what he believed was right and the certain knowledge that he would have to live with his choices for hundreds of years thereafter. He wasn’t immortal anymore, but that didn’t mean he could just wash his hands of the situation. Walking away, or even simply staying on the sidelines as a spectator was unthinkable, especially knowing that Bishop and Knight might have already made the ultimate sacrifice. If he didn’t do something, their deaths would be meaningless.
He knew what he had to do.
He glanced at Asya, who was watching and listening expectantly, and he felt his certitude start to crumble.
“I understand,” he said. Without hanging up, he turned to Mabuki. “I need to find a way back into the Palais.”
The general looked at him expectantly. “To rescue the hostages?”
King shook his head. “No. I left my sunglasses in there. I’d like to get them back.”
26
Monique Favreau took the news of the Americans’ rescue and the death of her men in stride. It confirmed her instincts about the man and filled her with an almost sexual anticipation for the battle she knew would follow.
She was not quite so optimistic about the report that had preceded it.
As the American had hinted, President Mulamba had escaped, or rather he’d been liberated by a commando team working in conjunction with her new nemesis. The failure of her men — two teams, twenty men, against just two people, if reports were correct — was unforgivable, and the very few who had survived the debacle could count themselves lucky that the Red Queen was in a different hemisphere. The news that Mulamba was free and on his way back had forced her to accelerate her original plan. Instead of waiting for General Velle to show up and lead the charge, she’d had to settle for one of his subordinate officers, a colonel in the 1st Brigade, who had happily assassinated his immediate commander, the man between him and Velle, and taken charge, deploying his 2,000 troops throughout the Gombe commune, and personally seizing control of the Palais de la Nation.
The colonel was more ambitious than intelligent, but at least he knew how to carry out his assignments, which was more than could be said for her men in London, who had not only let Mulamba escape but had subsequently lost track of him. She had given them an hour to fix their mistake. Fifty-eight minutes later, her phone rang.
“Ace Diamonds,” the caller said.
“I hope you have something good to tell me,” she replied.
“Um, I’m not sure exactly.” Ace Diamonds had, up until about fourteen hundred hours, Universal Coordinated Time, been Four Diamonds, and was still getting used to his new position of responsibility. “We’re spread kind of thin here, but we’ve got the international terminals covered… at Heathrow, I mean…”
“Stop!” Favreau closed her eyes and took several breaths to control her rising ire. Despite his ultimate failure, the previous Ace Diamonds had at least been self-motivated and marginally intelligent. “What exactly do you plan to do if he happens to wander past you?”
“Well…”
“He won’t be traveling in the open. He’s not that stupid. The only way to regain a strategic advantage is to think one step ahead of him. What other ways are there for him to leave the country?”
“Ah, military transport?”
“If he had the support of the British Government, we would know about it.” Favreau considered her own question. “He was there to get that support. Would he leave without it?”
“Uh…”
“It was a rhetorical question. He has unfinished business. Where exactly was he when you took him the first time?”
There was a long pause, as if the man was asking someone else for the answer. “He was at the Royal Geographic Society.”
That was a surprise. Mulamba had been in the United Kingdom to build support for his African federation. Why would he visit a historical institution? She caught herself before asking Ace for more information — that way lay madness.
“Stand by,” she said, and ended the call. She immediately placed another, calling a directory assistance number for London. A few minutes later, she was talking to a receptionist at the RGS.
She introduced herself as a French journalist, covering the situation in the Congo. “I am trying to get some background information about the abduction of President Mulamba. I understand that he had just left your offices when he was taken?”
The receptionist passed her off to one of the directors who came on the line armed with a carefully worded legal statement, which could be distilled down to two basic words: no comment.
At the other end of the line, Favreau just smiled. She liked a challenge, and as a seasoned intelligence operative, she knew a thing or two about interrogations. In a voice that was seductive in its helplessness, she said, “I have no wish to scandalize your institution. It’s only that the citizens are wondering why President Mulamba would have left at such a critical time. If you could only help me to understand what he was trying to accomplish…” She let the request hang, allowing the man to fill in the blanks.
She could hear the inner conflict in his voice. “Yes, of course. I understand. It’s just that I can’t comment on the matter. You see, there’s to be an inquest, and… well…”
“Oui, of course. But if you could only just tell me why President Mulamba came to see you, how could that little thing matter? It could be our little secret. You could be my ‘unnamed source,’ no?”
“Ah… I… well… He was very interested in the diaries of Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Some foolishness about missing pages.”
“Missing pages?”
As Favreau expected, that minor concession broke the dam of his resistance. “Yes, it seems that Stanley removed several pages from his diary, relating to his meeting with Livingstone. No one quite knows why, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable and quite mundane explanation.
“We didn’t have what he was looking for. I’m not sure the pages even exist. If Stanley tore them out, he would surely have gone the added step of tossing them in the fireplace. I suggested he try the Royal Museum for Central Africa near Brussels. They have the largest collection of documents relating to Stanley, so if the pages exist, they would be there.”