Invasive Species (10 page)

“Sheila and who else?”

“My boss and this lady from the NGO.”

“Les Voyageurs?”

He nodded. Then, for the first time, he reached up and took off his sunglasses. His eyes were very pale blue underneath sparse lashes.

“I told you,” he said. “You're not allowed to talk to her.”

Trey was quiet.

“Yeah. You can follow her like a lost puppy from here to Dar to Rome, but you can't interact with her till you're at JFK. Ignore that and you'll be grabbed.”

Trey didn't even bother to ask on what grounds. When did that ever matter?

Across the lobby, the elevator door opened and four people came out: two more embassy men (one of whose gray hair and more expensive suit indicated his seniority) and a fiftyish woman in an expensive suit. And Sheila Connelly.

Tall, skinny, her skin pale, her short copper-red hair ragged. Dark hollows under her eyes. She was wearing black pants over hiking boots and a cheerful flowered blouse that she'd buttoned wrong.

The woman from Les Voyageurs was holding on to Sheila's arm, guiding her. Both embassy men had seen Trey immediately and were looking at him hard as they shepherded the two women toward the front door.

Trey got to his feet and walked toward the group. Behind him, he heard Embassy sigh and rise as well.

Sheila's gaze shifted his way, but she showed no interest. Her eyes, which were large and an unusual dark blue-green, had a blankness that might have been drug induced or might not.

Trey reached a decision.
Hell
. He hated being forbidden to do something.

“Sheila,” he said.

Her gaze sharpened a little as she looked at him.

“I know that larva wasn't from a tumbu fly,” he said.

Already the two younger embassy men had him by the arms. But Sheila said, “Wait!” And her voice had so much authority that everyone stopped still.

She took a step closer and stared into his face. Her eyes, irises so dark as to be almost black, seemed enormous in her gaunt face.

“Do you know what it was?” she asked. Her voice was deep, hoarse.

“I think so.”

Red spots rose to her ashen cheeks. “Why did my mother die?”

“I don't know yet,” Trey said. “But I'll find out.”

“Okay,” the senior embassy man said. “That's enough.”

The two others spun him around. Trey twisted in their grasp. “Wait for me at JFK,” he called out as they yanked him toward the door. “Don't leave there without me.”

“I won't,” she said.

Her voice was little more than a breath, but he heard it.

DURING HIS CAREER,
Trey had stalked rare birds, elusive frogs, poisonous snakes, a scorpion nearly the size of a lobster, even a shadowy, half-glimpsed pack of bush dogs in Suriname that he eventually realized was also stalking
him
.

Never a human, though.

Not until now.

*   *   *

HE SAT ON
a blue plastic seat amid hordes of tourists in the spacious waiting area of Nyerere Airport in Dar es Salaam. Every once in a while, he'd raise his eyes from the battered paperback he was reading—a novel by Lee Child—and look across at Sheila Connelly.

She was sitting beside the gate for the overnight Emirates Air flight they'd both be taking to Rome. From what Trey could see, she was dressed in the same clothes she'd been wearing earlier in the day.

Beside her was the elegant woman from Les Voyageurs. Her outfit had probably cost more than a typical Tanzanian earned in a year.

On Sheila's other side was another embassy man, one Trey hadn't seen before. He wore a gray suit and a white shirt and a red tie and sunglasses.

Sheila and the Les Voyageurs lady seemed oblivious of Trey's gaze, but not the embassy man. Every time Trey looked in his direction, he turned his head and gazed back, the lenses of his glasses like two distant blacked-out windows.

Trey felt a lot like a stalker.

He didn't like it.

*   *   *

HE KILLED THE
time by watching the tourists. Tanzania's lifeblood. The only thing preventing the Serengeti, the Selous, the Ngorongoro, and the other fabled wilderness areas from being plowed under and converted to cattle pasture. The last thing keeping its famous herds of wild game alive.

The tourists on their way into the country wore freshly bought khakis and were excited, anticipatory. The tourists on their way out looked exhausted, bug bitten, and deeply satisfied. They'd seen giraffes and wildebeests and lions and, if they were lucky, leopards and rhinos. Now they could head home, their adventures over, and get back to whatever they did with their lives.

Trey felt a sense of dislocation a lot like sorrow. For a moment he envied those who could look upon the wilderness—or what was left of it—as a temporary break from real life, not life itself. For all the joy he got from hopscotching around the globe, from taking his life in his hands while sitting beside Malcolm in rattletrap prop planes, from trekking through disease-ridden and rebel-haunted forests, sometimes he wished that he could unlearn what he knew.

That he, too, could dress up in adventurer's clothes and choose to be blind.

*   *   *

THE HOURS PASSED.
Trey read his book. Lee Child's protagonist, Jack Reacher, was enormous: six-and-a-half feet tall and 250 pounds of pure muscle. He was smart and clever and relentless, but in the end he tended to solve problems with his fists. No one had fists like Reacher's.

Trey thought of his parents. His father had been tall and slender, nonviolent, gentle to the core. His mother, short and compact, had possessed a strength and volatility that made those around her instantly treat her with respect. Trey had never seen her lose her temper, not fully, but he always knew she would be a force to be reckoned with, to be feared, if she did.

Still, neither she nor his father could have survived a single blow administered by any of the villains Jack Reacher shrugged off in a typical day's work, much less by Reacher himself. There was something comforting in that superman's strength, a sense that the world could be measured, controlled. That all it took was smarts and brawn to make things right.

On the other hand, all of Reacher's power would do him no good at all if he happened to run into the kinds of enemies Thomas and Katherine Gilliard had faced in
their
typical day. Their enemies, the villains in their stories, didn't aim at you with a gun or stand toe-to-toe with hands clenched into fists.

They attacked you as you sat eating dinner, as you drove to work, as you talked to a friend, as you made love, as you slept. They bit you or stung you—you might not even notice—or they simply entered your body in a mouthful of food or a breath of air. Then they got into your bloodstream and killed you before you even knew you'd been attacked.

Jack Reacher could make the world right because all of his enemies were human.

And humans were easy.

*   *   *

SHEILA AND HER
chaperone were among the first to board. The embassy man watched them as they went through the gate and down the walkway. Then he spun on his heel and came over to Trey. His mouth was a line as he looked down through his sunglasses.

“Not a word to her until you get to JFK,” he said.

Trey smiled. “Yeah, I've been told.”

“There'll be an air marshal on board. You won't know who he is, but he'll be keeping an eye on you the whole flight.”

Trey didn't say anything.

“He's got orders to restrain you if you so much as approach Sheila Connelly. You'll be detained in Rome, and you'll never see her again.”

That sounded like a threat, but not necessarily aimed at him. Trey said, “Why do you have your pants in such a bunch over this?”

Of course the embassy man, scowling at the question, didn't explain. But Trey knew anyway. It was obvious. They—the Tanzanian government, the U.S. Embassy, and Les Voyageurs—wanted her out of the country. They wanted Trey out of the country. And they wanted no complications in the meantime.

He thought about the old woman in the marketplace, her gesture when she'd indicated where the thieves had gone.
Out there. Into the world.

All the cover-your-ass on earth wouldn't be enough if she was right.

“Don't worry,” Trey said to the embassy man. “I'll stay away from her.”

The truth this time.

He could wait a few more hours.

*   *   *

TREY WAS ONE
of the last to board the 777. Already some of the tired tourists were asleep under mounds of blankets, while others were frowning at their iPads or getting ready to watch movies on their seatback screens. The atmosphere had a festive feel, as was typical of the onset of these long flights. A “we're all in this together” vibe that would last for a while, until everyone started getting bored and cranky.

Trey's seat was on the aisle about halfway down the plane. He looked back and saw Sheila leaning against a window near the back, her pale face peaceful in sleep. Her chaperone, sitting next to her on the aisle, watched Trey, an unreadable expression on her face. He raised his hands in a placatory gesture, and after a moment she nodded.

Trey took another quick look around.

It took him about fifteen seconds to identify two plainclothes air marshals, one male, one female. The way they peeked at him reminded him of meerkats popping up from their burrows.

He made sure not to let the marshals know they'd been spotted. He didn't want them to feel bad.

*   *   *

TREY HATED SLEEP.
Hated how much time it sucked up that could be better spent doing more productive things. Hated how it eventually won every battle, no matter how strong you were, no matter how hard you fought it.

He hated being . . .
away
.

But there was one thing he'd learned after hundreds of flights: If you didn't sleep on airplanes, you were an idiot. Whatever else you could do on a plane, you could do better almost anywhere else. Sleep was the most productive thing you could get out of the way while strapped to a seat.

So on both flights, all the way till the announcement came of their final approach to JFK, Trey read his book and ate airplane food, but mostly he slept. Knowing that when they arrived, and the important work began, he'd be ready.

*   *   *

HE GOT OFF
the airplane in New York before Sheila and her chaperone. Waited by the gate as the hordes made their way past, faces bleached gray by the barren lights of the terminal. It was only eleven at night here, but most of these travelers' bodies were stuck in the timeless limbo of jet lag.

The two women finally came through the door. Sheila's face was slack, but her eyes were alert. Beside her, despite her expensive clothes, the older woman just looked worn out.

They came up to Trey. He said to Sheila, “I almost thought they'd spirit you away. Make you disappear.”

The chaperone straightened and stared at him. “Are you nuts?” she said, her incredulity sounding funny expressed in such a crisp, cultured tone. “I'm handing her over to you, and now I'm
done
.”

She brushed her hands together, the age-old gesture of dismissal. “One night in the airport hotel for me, and back home tomorrow.”

Then, unexpectedly, she switched her gaze to Sheila, and her expression softened. “Are you sure of your decision, dear?” She looked back at Trey. “We were supposed to be met by someone from the New York office, but she didn't want to.”

“I'm sure,” Sheila said. “You can go.”

The woman looked at Trey. Her expression said,
Are
you
sure?

No, Trey wasn't. But he knew he had no choice. He nodded.

“Thank you,” she said.

Which really meant,
Better you than me, pal.

*   *   *

THE EX-CHAPERONE WAS
barely out of earshot, her heels clicking away down the quiet terminal, when Sheila said to Trey, “Tell me what it was.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a copy of Jack's drawing.

Sheila stared down at it. “You've seen these?”

Trey nodded.

“Where?”

“In southern Senegal.”

He watched her take in the new information. It seemed she hadn't been completely undone by her days of confinement, by exhaustion and grief. He shouldn't have been surprised: You had to be strong to work with ill and dying refugees.

“That's where they're native?” she asked.

“We think so.”

She blinked. “Who is ‘we'?”

Trey looked around, saw a café still open at the far end of the terminal. He pointed to it and said, “Let's sit, and I'll tell you what I know.”

First at the café and then, when it closed, on adjacent seats at a deserted gate, they talked. By the time they were done, it made no sense to try to find her a hotel room.

“People coming through the city stay in my place all the time,” he said.

Her gaze was unblinking. “‘People'?”

“Folks I've met along the way. Scientists. Field researchers. Aid workers. People like you who have business here but can't afford the rates.”

“People like me,” she said.

Trey waited.

“Okay.” She paused. “Thank you.”

Her acquiescence came a little quicker than he'd expected. He wondered whether it was because she already trusted him or whether she didn't much care whether he was a friend or a psychopath.

He thought she hadn't quite decided, not yet, whether she had anything left to lose.

Aboard the MV
Atlas

HIS NAME WAS
Arjen. He was tall, at least a foot taller than Mariama, and as skinny as a fig sapling, with big knotty hands and a prominent Adam's apple that moved up and down when he laughed. Which he did often.

And a thin, bony Scandinavian face that lit up whenever he saw her. Green-blue eyes that glinted with amusement as he told tall tales of his years aboard freighters like the
Atlas.
Stories of sea monsters, ancient as dinosaurs, rising from the calm surface of the horse latitudes at dawn. Of a wooden house floating a hundred miles from the mouth of the Amazon River, a family of monkeys clinging to its roof. Of a flying saucer hovering over Hong Kong harbor, illuminating thousands of upturned faces on the boats below before ascending and disappearing at unimaginable speed.

Laughing when Mariama mocked him. Saying, in his thick and joyful accent, “Yes, you doubt me. But can you
prove
I am lying?”

Arjen, the
Atlas
's first officer, knocking on Mariama's cabin door when his shift was over. Sometimes this was at 4:00
A.M.
, but Mariama was always waiting for him.

Sweet Arjen. Doomed, she thought, like all those others who spent their lives on ships like the
Atlas
.

The coal mine's canaries.

*   *   *

WHEN HER HOSTS
in Fuerteventura told her about the next stage of her journey, Mariama sighed and shrugged.

“The slow boat,” she said.

But she wasn't surprised. With no passport, she could not fly. When you couldn't fly, and governments knew who you were, the world became a huge place once again. A huge place where you had to move slowly, quietly, to avoid notice.

For enough money, though, you could always find a freighter that would take you aboard. No passport necessary, and entry to any of a hundred port cities. It was hardly even a risk. No one would be paying attention.

Mariama's hosts chose the MV
Atlas
. They knew the captain, knew that he and the crew would look the other way. They'd done it many times before.

But it could just as easily have been another ship. The port of Las Palmas, where Mariama embarked, was overrun with freighters. At least half would cross the Panama Canal, the next step on Mariama's slow journey.

And then? As the ship made its transit across the Atlantic, and she laughed with Arjen, and shared her bed with him, and talked with the other passengers aboard the
Atlas
, Mariama allowed herself to dream.

To dream of cold, and the safety cold could bring.

*   *   *

“VALPARAISO,” ARJEN SAID
to her one night, close to dawn. He stretched in her little bed, years of experience somehow allowing him to lie comfortably without crowding her. Too much.

She wasn't sure she'd heard of it.

“In Chile. A beautiful city on the Pacific Ocean. All hills. Staircases and outdoor elevators and these little trains that take you up and down.”

He grinned in the dim light that came through the porthole of her cabin. “And the
curanto
! The best seafood stew you will ever eat.”

“Where is it?” she asked.

“I told you. In Chile.”

“No. I mean the latitude.”

He turned his head to look at her across the pillow. “Thirty-three degrees south, more or less.”

“Not far enough.”

Not cold enough.

Arjen stayed silent for a few moments. Mariama was still, feeling the motion of the boat across the Atlantic's long swells as a pull on her bones. The first night or two, the unceasing movement had bothered her, but now she only noticed it in quiet moments like this.

Then he propped himself up on his elbow. “Every day,” he said, “you walk the decks, even going places you should not. Some of the crew believe you are a terrorist, but I don't think so.”

“Thank you,” Mariama said.

“Me, I just think you are strange.”

She smiled. “Thank you very much.”

But now his expression was serious. “When you walk, Mariama,” he said, “what are you afraid of?”

She felt her chin lift. “I am afraid of nothing.”

He didn't smile. “All right. Then what are you searching for?”

For a long time she just looked into his eyes. Then, deciding, she reached out and took his rough, callused hand in both of hers.

“Listen to me,” she said.

*   *   *

WHEN SHE WAS
done, he was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I have seen birds, rats, spiders, snakes on board. But never one of these—”

“We call them thieves.”

“No. Nor smelled them.”

Mariama sighed. “Not yet.”

“But I will?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe not on this ship, but others, certainly. Airplanes, cars. Any place they can hide.”

“This is happening already?” he asked. “Now?”

She said, “Oh, yes.” Then paused. “I am standing still, and they are not.”

“But you know of a way to stop them?”

She was silent.

He thought for a while. Finally he said, “Valparaiso. I know why you asked where it is.”

She waited.

“You wondered if you would be safe there, because it is cold. Those . . . thieves could not live there.”

Mariama shook her head. “No. Not there. It would need to be farther south.”

“Magallanes?” he said. “Tierra del Fuego?”

She did not reply.

Again he thought. Then he said, “Would you do this? Know what you know, and run away?”

Again Mariama was silent.

Gatun Locks, Panama

SHE SMELLED IT
soon after she stepped off the ship. Drew in a single breath and felt her heart flip inside her chest.

Arjen was there, walking her past the Customs officials who met every ship, but who also looked the other way if provided with the proper inducement. The
Atlas
was in dock for two days, maybe three, and his plan was to enjoy all the delights Panama City offered for every minute he was free, starting immediately. He'd asked Mariama to come along, but hadn't seemed either surprised or disappointed when she'd smiled and shaken her head.

Now he was looking at the expression on her face. “What?”

She breathed in again, then said, “Come with me.”

They walked past the visitors' center, the big concrete-and-glass building that overlooked the locks, the carts and trucks selling candy and Coca-Cola and batteries for your camera. Beyond lay a row of ramshackle stone and wood buildings that, like thousands of others throughout the Canal Zone, had belonged to the Americans before they handed over control of the canal to the Panamanians in 1999.

Mariama told Arjen to stay where he was, then walked up to one building, another, a third. She rattled doorknobs, looked inside when the doors were unlocked, stood still and breathed in.

At the sixth building she tried, a one-story stone structure little larger than a shed, she saw what she knew she'd find. Closing the door again, she gestured for Arjen to join her.

“Stay beside me,” she said as he came up.

She swung the door open. Inside were jugs of cleaning fluid, bottles of bleach, mops, brooms. The bitter odor she'd detected was stronger, making Arjen wrinkle his nose.

“There,” she said.

The thief moved forward, out of the shadow and into the rectangle of sunlight that splashed through the open door. Seeing it, Arjen cursed.

Mariama saw at once that there was something wrong with it. With its wings, which twitched and whirred but did not lift it off the concrete floor.

The injured thief crawled toward them. Mariama knew it could have been close to death, missing half of its body, and it still would never think to hide. Thieves attacked.

Its head was tilted, and its shining green eyes were focused on Arjen. She sensed his anxiety, his desire to run, and did not blame him for it. There was something about the intensity of a thief's gaze that terrified even the bravest men.

But Arjen stood his ground.

When it was about two feet away from him, it reared up on its long legs like a demonic spider. Arjen gave a sudden gasp, as if awakening from a daze. He took one quick step forward, shifted his weight onto his left leg, and lifted his right boot into the air.

The wasp's eyes were like multifaceted mirrors, but somehow they still conveyed . . . fearlessness. Rage.

Arjen brought his boot down.

In the last instant, he altered his aim. The wasp's long body was the obvious target, but all its venomous intelligence seemed to radiate from the creature's head. So it was the head he crushed with his heel.

His foot hit the stone floor with a crack. Instantly the bitter odor intensified a thousandfold. Mariama heard Arjen gag, but again he held his ground. When he lifted his foot, they looked down at the black-and-green pulp smeared across the floor.

Beside the remains of the wasp's head, the nearly intact body writhed, first on its belly, then its back. The long black legs stretched and twitched, grasping at air. The abdomen pulsed, and as they watched, the needlelike white stinger emerged from its tip, then withdrew, leaving a drop of black liquid gleaming like an evil jewel on the floor.

“Let's go,” Mariama said.

Arjen didn't move. She had to say it again, and then put a hand on his arm, before he allowed himself to be led away.

*   *   *

OUTSIDE HE SPENT
more time than he needed scraping the bottom of his shoe in the dirt. “The smell is all over me,” he said.

“It just seems that way,” she told him. “It will fade, I promise.”

Eventually he straightened and looked at her. His face was pale. “You were not afraid,” he said.

Mariama didn't reply.

“You said you did not fear anything, and you were telling the truth.”

She made a gesture of frustration with her hands. “I am standing still,” she said. “And soon they will be everywhere.”

Arjen didn't seem to absorb what she was saying. Again he stared at the shed's closed door. “That thing,” he said, “it wanted to kill me.”

Mariama laughed. He gave her a surprised, nearly offended look.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course it wanted to kill you. I told you. That's what the thieves do.”

Then her amusement ebbed.

“One of the things they do,” she said.

*   *   *

AS THEY PARTED,
he asked, “You need a place to stay?”

She nodded.

“For how long?”

A shrug. “A few days.”

Every stop just another way station.

His eyes had cleared, though his gaze was still troubled. “And when you move on, will you be heading south like you said? To Magallanes? Tierra del Fuego?”

She shook her head. “No. That was just a dream. I have a job I must do.”

“You alone?”

Mariama closed her eyes for a moment.

“I hope not,” she said.