William was a long way from home.
–
Having carefully chosen his menu, William sat down in a corner of the lounge where there was a chair; a sofa with thick, patterned covers reminiscent of the seventies; and a timeworn coffee table on which a pair of dewy glasses of beer had already been placed.
“I always get two in at a time whenever I’m down here,” said the corpulent man seated next to him, speaking in English. “The beer’s so thin it trickles out of the pores again as quickly as you can get it inside you.” He chuckled.
He pointed at the necklace that William was wearing, with the small masks hanging from it. “I can tell you’ve just arrived in Africa. You must have run into some of those jewelry bandits out at the airport.”
“Yes and no.” William fingered the necklace. “I’ve just got here, yes, but I’ve had this for a number of years. It is African, though. I found it once when I was inspecting a project in Kampala.”
“Ah, Kampala. One of Uganda’s more interesting cities.” He raised his glass to William. Judging by the diplomatic-looking bag, he too was a civil servant.
William produced his portfolio from his leather briefcase and placed it on the table. To begin with there was the specific issue of fifty million kroner and how to channel it on to the Baka project. Then there were a number of documents to be skimmed and a series of questions to be prepared. He opened the manila folder and arranged its entire contents in three piles in front of him. One containing spreadsheets, a second comprising project descriptions, and a third of memos, e-mails, and other correspondence. Even the yellow Post-it note was there, with Louis Fon’s text message jotted down on it.
“Do you mind if I sit and do some work here? There seems to be no desk in my room.”
The man replied with a friendly nod.
“Danish?” the man asked, indicating the logo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the head of the documents.
“Yes, and you?”
“Stockholm.” The man extended his hand and switched to Swedish. “First time in Cameroon?”
William nodded.
“In that case, welcome,” the man said, shoving his extra glass of beer across the table toward him. “Cameroon isn’t a place a person ever gets completely used to, you know. Skål.”
They raised their glasses, the Swede downing his in one gulp and then gesturing toward the waiter for a refill, all in one seamless movement. Alcoholic public officials like him were a regular feature in equatorial regions, as William well knew. He had seen a number of their own people return home firing on less than all cylinders after a stationing abroad.
“You might think I’m given to drink, but you’d be wrong,” said the Swede, as though having read William’s thoughts. “Truth is, I just pretend to be.”
He pointed discreetly toward a sofa arrangement at which were seated two black men in light-colored suits.
“They’re from the company I’m negotiating with tomorrow. At the moment they’re checking me out and in an hour or so they’ll report back to their boss on what they’ve seen.” He smiled. “No skin off my nose if they think I’ll be turning up the worse for wear.”
“You’re in business, then?”
“You could say. I close contracts for Sweden. I’m a controller, and a good one at that.” He nodded to the waiter who appeared with his next two beers and raised one to William. “Skål, then!”
William tried in vain to keep up with the Swede’s liquid intake. A good thing he wasn’t playing the same game. His stomach wasn’t geared to it.
“I see you’ve got a coded message.” The Swede indicated the yellow Post-it note in front of William.
“Well, I’m not sure, to be honest. It’s a text message that came in from a partner of ours who disappeared down here a week ago.”
“A text message?” The man laughed. “A beer says I can decode it in less than ten.”
William frowned. Decode it? What did he mean?
The Swede took the note, placed a blank sheet of paper in front of him, pulled out his Nokia mobile from his pocket and put it down on the table.
“It’s not likely to be a code, if that’s what you think,” William said. “That wouldn’t really be how we operate in the ministry. Frankly, though, we’ve no idea what it’s all about, or why it should look like that.”
“OK. Written under difficult circumstances, perhaps?”
“Perhaps. We can’t ask the man. Like I said, he’s disappeared.”
The Swede put pen to paper and began to write:
Cfqquptiondae(s+l)la(i+l)ddddddvdlogdmdntdja.
Beneath each letter he wrote another, all the while glancing at his mobile.
After a couple of minutes he looked up at William.
“Let’s assume the message was indeed written under difficult circumstances, like I said. In the dark, maybe. I suppose you know that when the mobile’s predictive text is turned off each key still represents several characters. Key number three, for instance, is D, E, and F. Press once and you’ve got D. Twice for E, three times for F. Then you can get other characters altogether. Add to that the eventuality of pressing the wrong key, usually the one just above or below the one you want, and all in all you’ve got any number of possible combinations. I’ve done this before, though, and it’s fun. You can start my ten minutes now.”
William frowned again and nodded for the sake of appearance. He couldn’t care less how much time the Swede took. If he could solve the riddle, even partially, the drinks would be on him regardless.
It didn’t look easy by any means, but when the first sequence, Cfqquption, turned out possibly to be a word beginning with “C,” then a typo produced by incorrectly pressing key number three instead of six below it, then twice “Q,” that should have been twice “R,” followed by the correctly typed “uption,” they suddenly had the word Corruption.
William sensed the furrows in his brow deepen.
Corruption. Not exactly a word with the most positive connotations.
After a quarter of an hour, and William having bought two more rounds, the Swede had solved the puzzle.
“Well, it seems plausible to me,” he said, studying his notes.
He handed the sheet to William.
“Can you see what it says? ‘Corruption dans l’aide de development Dja.’” The Swede nodded to himself. “The French isn’t entirely correct, but still. ‘Swindle with development funds in Dja,’ give or take. Simple as that.”
William felt a chill run down his spine.
He glanced around. Was it him or the Swede that the black men in the corner were watching with such interest? Could there be others?
He looked again at the note in front of him, the Swede once more raising his hand in the direction of the waiter.
Corruption dans l’aide de development Dja was what Louis Fon had texted, and then he’d disappeared. Knowing this was not a pleasant feeling. Not pleasant at all.
William gazed out the window and tried to shield himself against the endless expanse of black beyond the pane.
The thought had occurred to him before, and now it returned.
He was truly a long way from home.
Far too long a way indeed.
–
“What is it you’re saying, Mbomo?”
René E. Eriksen felt the perspiration gathering in his armpits as he tried to concentrate on the crackling voice.
“I’m telling you that William Stark was not at the hotel this morning when I went to pick him up, and now I have been told he has taken a plane home.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mbomo, how could that happen? He was your responsibility.” René tried to gather his thoughts. The agreement had been that Mbomo or one of his gorillas would pick up Stark at the hotel that same morning and that would be the end of it. Where and how Stark disappeared didn’t matter, as long as it couldn’t be traced back to them. And now he was being told that Stark was on his way home to Denmark. What the hell was going on down there? Had Stark got a whiff of something that might incriminate them?