Fugitive

Charlie took a stiff drink and tried to imagine what Bernadette had suffered before death had shown her mercy. A tear trickled down his cheek and he brushed it away. The tear was as much for himself as for his dead lover.

THE HEAT OF the sun woke Charlie. He opened his eyes and stared at the sea, wondering why he was outside. There was a chair next to Charlie. In the second after waking he thought he saw Bernadette out of the corner of his eye, sitting beside him, laughing in that way of hers that lit up any room she was in. Then Charlie remembered the events at the mansion and suppressed a sob.

Six years ago, Baptiste had introduced his fourth wife to Batangan high society. Charlie had been taken by her elegant beauty and warm smile but he knew she was untouchable and soon forgot her. Over the next few years, he saw Bernadette from a distance at state di

A little over a year ago, the secretary of state had hosted a party for a visiting dignitary from Ghana. Charlie was bored by the company, a

Bernadette had given up on kindness and now she’d met someone who was tender and compassionate. When she stopped crying and began to think clearly, Bernadette realized the threat she posed to Charlie. She thanked him, squeezed his hand, and left him alone on the beach. But then, a month later, while the president was in Las Vegas, gambling and whoring, Bernadette saw Charlie at a gala at the Batanga Palace, the country’s only luxury hotel. This time she lost her heart to him.

At first, Charlie resisted his desire to be with Bernadette, because he didn’t want to be cut into tiny pieces by a chain-saw or slowly turned into barbecue by a blowtorch, two of the president’s favorite methods of execution. But Charlie had never been in love before and he was stu

Bernadette and Charlie talked of escape and a life together, even though they should have known that the affair and their dreams were insane. But people in love lose touch with reality. Charlie never asked himself how it was possible for their trysts to go undiscovered in a country where everyone was a spy and the one person most likely to be the subject of surveillance was the supreme ruler’s wife. Now Charlie knew that Baptiste had always been aware of every move they’d made.

Charlie wept quietly as he wondered how it was possible for someone as wonderful as Bernadette to be dead. When he’d exhausted his tears, he closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and felt the sun on his face and the caress of a sea breeze. Waves were washing over the rocky beach below his apartment as they did every minute of every day. The world continued its beat and Charlie was alive to enjoy it. And as long as he was alive, there was a chance he would survive and win some measure of revenge for his lost love.

CHAPTER 3

Four days after his escape from the mansion, at a little after eight in the evening, Charlie walked through the milling Waterside crowds. The dusky air was filled with the competing rhythms of native drummers and radios blaring hip-hop and African highlife. Smoke from cooking fires curled into the night sky. The fires had been built in front of tumbledown shacks made of corrugated tin and other junk. They were stacked one against the other near open sewers. Women wrapped in rainbow-colored cloth sold fish fresh from the canoes of the fishermen while other vendors squatted on low stools beside small grills, hawking roasted yams.

Charlie passed bands of bare-chested boys wearing ragged shorts. They played in the dust near open-front stores protected by thick metal gates. These children believed that all white men were rich, so they approached Charlie with hands outstretched, crying, “Papa, papa, gimme five cents.” Many had distended bellies. One boy dragged a horribly mangled foot behind him. Another had a large lump on his stomach and sat in the road, his dull eyes staring. Older beggars with missing limbs or blind eyes pleaded for alms more quietly, thrusting rusty tin cups out when he walked by.

Charlie ignored the children and the beggars as he struggled up the hill toward the center of Baptisteville. At the top was Main Street, divided by a tree-shaded center island that stretched the length of the city. On either side were Western-style drugstores, movie theaters, restaurants, and gift shops that catered to wealthy Batangans, expatriates, and the rare tourist. The evening crowds were smaller here, because the European or Middle Eastern owners had closed their stores, but the streets were still crowded with taxis and money buses. Charlie crossed the road and turned into Lafayette Street, the center of Batanga’s nightlife. Here were the Cave, the Peacock, the Mauna Loa, and other brightly colored shack bars where bar girls hustled a mostly white clientele to the incessant beat of rock and hip-hop.

Charlie maneuvered past several Batangan men in shorts and ripped T-shirts who sat on the curb outside the Mauna Loa, joking, arguing, and drinking from bottles filled with warm beer. A cigarette vendor tried to interest Charlie in one of the packs that rested on a tray he’d balanced on a wooden stand. Several beautiful African girls in tight, flashy, low-cut dresses leaned against the outside wall of the bar. Charlie greeted the women, who knew him by name. One girl promised him a night of ecstasy unlike any ever experienced by mortal man. Charlie begged off, claiming that a night with any one of them would end with him dead from pleasure. The women were laughing when Charlie entered the shack.

Expatriate white men and African women sat along a wooden bar or at the few small tables that took up most of the floor space. Charlie edged past two Batangan girls who were dancing with each other to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and took the only empty stool at the bar.

“Eh, Charlie, why you not come more?” asked the bartender.

“Rebecca, you know I love you too much,” he answered. “If I come too much, I will say you must marry me.”

“Maybe I will say yes, eh?” she answered coyly.

Charlie shook his head, feigning sadness. “I can hope, but I know you will break my heart.”

Rebecca laughed raucously. “I say, Charlie, you bullshit me too much.”

Charlie smiled. “Do you think you can find me a cold Heineken?”

Almost everyone in Batanga lived from day to day. Baptiste’s secret police exploited their destitution by paying for information. Charlie had learned that it was wise to trust no one, but Pierre had told Charlie that he could trust Rebecca, a beautiful Batangan woman who had once been the mistress of the cabinet minister, who owned the Mauna Loa. Charlie frequented the bars on Lafayette Street and knew Rebecca. He had never heard her utter a subversive thought or discuss politics, and he was shocked to learn that she was part of the underground.