chapter 10

Awareness came slowly through a haze of confusion, and Munroe struggled toward lucidity, attempting to attach meaning to the stimuli hammering at her senses. First came the dank smell of oxidized metal and then the cold of steel through clothing. It was dark, and the air had a salty dampness to it. She lay on her side, gagged and hands secured behind her back. Her feet were bare and, as far as she could tell, bound to something heavy. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, and voices spoke hushed and rapidly in a language that had no meaning.

Where the hell was Bradford?

There was movement—the erratic regularity of a small boat rocking on the open ocean. From behind came the low whine of an engine that indicated slow forward speed. There was starlight, and a lamp on the prow highlighted the shadows of four men. The boat was no more than fifteen feet long and, but for a small cabin on the bow, open-aired. She could smell rain in the distance, knew they could smell it, too.

Three feet away one of the men lolled against the gunwale. Near his face was the soft glow of orange that brightened as he inhaled. On his belt he had a knife and, holstered close to it, a sidearm.

The mental fog continued to lift, and confusion segued to anger. The patio with Bradford, the hotel room, darkness. The images merged and collided. Internal pressure built steadily, was rising from her gut into her chest, a hammer percussing as a war drum whose beat would end when blood was spilled. Her vision blurred to gray, and she wrestled it back. Thought before action, knowledge before battle.

Her eyes followed the guard as he smoked, and she twisted so that her hands could reach her ankles. Wrapped around her feet was a chain that ran through a section of metal pipe. A weight. An anchor. Hauled off to be dumped like garbage. No questions, no accusations, no torture, and no chance for explanation or pleading—brought to the water to disappear, to be wiped off the face of the earth.

The fucking bastards.

The internal drumbeat pounded harder, faster, and the urge to strike became unbearable.

Breathe. Think.

In the distance the sky was tinged by the glow of natural gas burn-off. She turned to the stars and, as she had on so many occasions in the past, found the map written in the equatorial night sky. The flare worked as a marker to gauge the distance. They were close to the coast. Close enough to swim if she could survive the treacherous currents. How far out were they? A quarter of a mile? It had to be less.

The man at the gunwale straightened and turned. She froze. He came closer and reached his hand out, snapping his fingers in front of her face, and when he received no response, he kicked her in the ribs. She groaned. He turned his back, and the light on the prow framed his profile. In spite of his weapons, he wore civilian clothes. He dropped the cigarette and faced her again, squatted and fumbled with the buttons of her shirt.

The percussion rose higher, louder, drowning out the sounds of the boat. One movement, swift and soundless, a serpent’s strike, was all that it would take to reach for the knife, slit his throat, and dump his body in the ocean. She tested the strength of the nylon that held her wrists. The guard’s commander barked an order, and the man stopped, stood, threw a second kick to her gut, then lit another cigarette and walked back to join the others.

Take him, take them all. Pilot the boat to the shore and then … and then what? Return to Malabo with no place to hide while attempting to smuggle herself off this prison of an island? Breathe. Think. Time. Time was necessary in order to gain information, to understand, to strategize.

Munroe glanced at the glow on the horizon. The oil companies used helicopters to airlift their sick employees to Cameroon. It was an option. She gritted her teeth, yanked her right thumb out of its socket, squeezed the hand free of the restraint, and then relocated the thumb with a silent, painful snap. She looped the nylon around both wrists to hold her arms in position and then tested the chains on her feet and found them loose. Careful so as not to let the metal grate on itself, she pulled her ankles out and, confident it would not be a problem to get free of the anchor, replaced them.

Luba. She could take the boat to Luba and refuel there.

And then the moment of opportunity was gone. From behind, the engine cut and the boat coasted, rising and falling with the rhythm of the water. Hands pulled her up by the scruff of the neck and then, positioned under her arms, dragged her to the hip-high gunwale and propped her up.

Another burst of rapid discussion in that indecipherable language. The hands slackened momentarily, and the dead weight of her body slumped forward. The hands picked her back up, and then there was silence. Through half-opened eyes, she saw the commander reach for his weapon, and in that instant she understood the argument.

He raised the gun, and she pushed with her legs, propelling herself backward, falling headfirst over the edge, into the ocean. Water churned around her with an audible hiss. Bullets. Heat like a knife blade caught her left arm below the shoulder. The anchor tightened, and the weight at her feet flipped her right side up and plunged her downward. Unable to loosen the chains, she kicked. With her hands she pried until her right foot came out. The plunge stopped ten yards below the boat, and still the anchor held tight around her left ankle. Her lungs ached for air, and in panic she clawed at the chain. No time. Think. She forced her fingers between her foot and the chain, bought an inch, and then was free. She kicked off from the ocean floor and swam toward the light, removing the gag as she went.

She broke water under the prow of the boat, only her face breaching the surface. She held her body protectively beneath its bulk as it rocked with the motion of the water, drank in the air one greedy gulp after another, then filled her lungs and sank. Under the boat she wrapped the gag around the wound in her arm and tied it as tightly as she could in an attempt to ward off the call to the deep-sea predators. She surfaced again, took another breath, and dove, this time putting as much distance as she could between herself and the boat.

The men paced about the sides, searching for movement on the water. They drew the light around the gunwales, firing shots occasionally. Their voices were angry, accusatory, and Munroe knew they could never report the incident. She was, as far as they were concerned, very dead.

She turned onto her back, gazed at the stars, righted herself, and pushed east.

The surface currents were fast-flowing, and it was nearly two hours before she felt the smooth-rough edges of worn lava rock beneath her feet, another ten minutes to stumble over the jet-black, odd-size boulders that made up the stretch of coast. Away from the waterline, she dropped to her knees and then collapsed, chest heaving, taking in air, arms and legs limp as rubber. In the far-off distance, barely more than a pinhead of light in the blackness, a boat buoyed on the water. Munroe dragged herself to where the boulders touched the jungle, a niche of shelter from both the air and the sea. There would be no hiding from the rain that would soon arrive, but that didn’t matter.

Alone in the blackness, with the ocean to the front and the jungle at her back, she heard the sound of her own laughter splitting the silence.

It was the west side of the island. No matter where she had washed up, the road could not be more than a mile or two inland, but a mile or two of raw jungle. Without a path it would mean breaking a trail barefoot. Better to wait until dawn.

She felt for her belt. It was still there, tucked safely under her pants. It increased the options somewhat; the credit cards were worthless, but there were fifty thousand CFA and two hundred water-soaked euros to barter with.

She dozed occasionally and was glad for the first rays of sun that crept between the mountains, providing enough light for her to begin moving about. Finding potable water before the heat intensified was imperative in order to avoid dehydration. She had drunk during the night when the rain had filled the porous holes in the rocks, but that water was gone now. Not far away, the shadows of tall, lean palms jutted out over the water. Under the fronds they were thick with coconuts. She flexed her wounded arm, and ribbons of heat traced up and down it.

The bullet was lodged in muscle, and the arm was weak. The thirty-foot climb was possible, but not worth the risk.

She followed the coastline south until the boulders gave way to gritty sand, and there she found groups of coconut palms with recently fallen fruit at their base. She chose a green one with tinges of brown on the ends and, using rocks to cut through the fibrous husk, reached the seed and cracked it carefully to preserve the liquid. She drank and proceeded to the others until her thirst had been quenched, then filled herself on the rubbery meat of the young nuts.

She continued along the coastline, frequently scanning the water’s horizon for boats. The soles of her feet blistered and bled from the sharp edges of the rock. When the heat of the sun became too strong, she sought shelter in the shade and slept until the late afternoon brought relief and she could set out again.

Another mile south and a faint trail led away from the coast into the green. She followed it, and after nearly a mile the undergrowth changed from thick jungle foliage to short, squat trees in uneven rows fighting for light between the giants, their stubby trunks spotted by fat pods ripe with bitter cocoa seeds. The footpath ended at a solid line of tarmac.

It was the Luba road, a two-lane highway that originated in Malabo and ran three-quarters of the island along the coast until it stopped at the second-largest city on the island—the city of its namesake—a deep-water port with a population of three thousand. It was the only road that ran along the west coast, and myriad small interior villages were joined to it by their own narrow dirt paths.

Across the road a swath of land had been cleared, and raw cement blocks stacked on top of each other formed a half-constructed home with iron-red rebar reaching to the open sky and thick carpets of green mildew creeping up from the base of it. Other than the sounds of birds and the buzzing of insects, the stretch was completely silent. Cars would pass along eventually, perhaps even as many as three or four an hour. All that was necessary was to sit and wait.

Munroe pulled the CFA from her belt and shoved it in her pocket—she might need it to pay for space in a share taxi if nothing better materialized. She sat against the trunk of a large tree, far enough away from the road to remain hidden, close enough to spot approaching vehicles. In the shade of the foliage, the air was wet with a mud-scented humidity and the soil rich and spongy and teeming with life.

There was perhaps another two hours before dusk, when the armed soldiers who set up checkpoints every few miles along the road would be out in force, drunk and trigger-happy, and only the bravest or the craziest of drivers would attempt to travel along it. Until then the range of vehicles passing would be anything from small share taxis with their springs busted from the weight they bore to the overworked trucks of the European construction crews on never-ending development projects. With any luck one of the trademark shiny air-conditioned Land Cruisers of the oil-company executives would pass. It was the safest bet when it came to getting around: blend in with their crowd to become instantly invisible.

In the silence, Munroe plowed a stick through the dirt, etching the ground absentmindedly while working through the options and the previous day’s events. As in a football coach’s game plan, circles and lines appeared in no apparent order—rapid strokes, jagged lines—and like the circles slashed into the ground, her thoughts ran around pell-mell but always returned to their place of origin: Emily Burbank.

One second. Six inches. The mental tape replayed itself, an endless recording: the gun moving up through the dark toward her face and then the plunge backward into the water. One second before the bullet. She gritted her teeth and drove the stick faster, harder. Dumped in the ocean because she hadn’t taken the hint to leave the country. Emily Burbank.

Until last night the assignment had been business. Now it was personal: Someone had ordered her dead and had nearly succeeded in putting a bullet in her brain. Another circle, another strand of thought. If she followed the interdicted trail to Emily Burbank, the answers would come hunting, seeking her out. And when the answers presented themselves, she would take retribution, even if it turned out to be against the president of the goddamned country.

Bradford. Where the hell was he? Why wasn’t he in the boat? He’d been with her the entire time they’d been in the city. He was booked to fly to the mainland just as she was. Had he already been tossed overboard?

She rubbed her hands over her eyes and pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose. What a fucking liability he’d become. Instead of one missing person, the job now included two.

No.

Bradford was capable of taking care of himself. If they’d been hauled off in the boat together, there was nothing that could be done about it, and if he hadn’t been—she stabbed the stick into the ground and it snapped in two—he sure as hell had better be looking for her right now.

She picked up another stick and dug it through the soil, gouging one rut after another. Emily Burbank. Mongomo.

Malabo was the only city on the island where reliable and not-so-reliable transport across the water could be had. Malabo: an enticing prison, the city so easily locked down, the airport, the port, the hotels, banks, and city exits carefully watched. There were the oil companies and their compounds—to get onto one of those meant a chance, however slight, of being airlifted off the island to Cameroon. Too many ifs, so much dependent on bureaucracy and the decisions of others. No. Not the oil companies. Not Malabo.

If the mainland was unreachable through the capital, then perhaps through Luba.

Time. Information. She rested her head back against the trunk of the tree. A conversation with someone who better understood the local political climate was now a necessity—and access to money, supplies, and modern communications equipment. Above loomed the green of the jungle, and there was only stillness.

Munroe examined the wounds on her feet. The skin was stripped away from portions of her heels, and dime-size blisters had formed and burst under the balls of her toes. Another couple of weeks and she’d have several millimeters’ worth of nature’s shoe leather to pad around on, but until then walking was going to be rough. She needed shoes, and they could be found a dozen or so miles to the north. The temptation was certainly there, but returning to Malabo was out of the question. Not for shoes, not for Bradford.

She sat and waited, and over time bright red spots formed on her uncovered neck, forearms, and feet, the telltale signs that near-microscopic insects were feasting on her blood. In the bush one could only sweat and itch and wait, and the numbing quiet of the emptiness explained why doing nothing was such a favorite pastime of the locals.

She would have checked her watch if she’d still had one.

The rumble of a large vehicle carried through the silence. Munroe crawled closer to the edge of the road and, seeing the flat nose and wide body of a construction truck approaching, stood and walked several feet onto the tarmac. The vehicle had green license plates, a variation reserved for companies with special status, and in the cab were the shadows of two.

The truck slowed and then stopped, sending a cloud of dust rolling behind it. The passenger window rolled down.

“Hello there!” Munroe called out. “Are you headed to Luba?”

The door on the passenger side opened, and a man stepped down. He wore faded jeans and a worn T-shirt, and his face and forearms were tanned to the point of being nearly brown. His work boots were dusty and spotted with cement, and Munroe couldn’t help but wish they were on her feet.

“We go Luba,” he replied, the words broken and thickly accented. He gestured with his head. “You come?”

Italians.

Munroe nodded and climbed up to the air-conditioned space between them, the blast of cold a welcome relief against her sun-dried skin.

The driver stared at her feet, her disheveled clothes, and the spots on her arms. “What happen to you?”

The vehicle lurched forward in a cloud of cement dust. The passenger handed her a liter bottle of water.

“Mi sono perso,” she replied, and drank without stopping until the bottle was empty. “Separated from my friends and very, very lost.”

With the first words in their language, the gravity of her situation was apparently quickly forgotten. Both men broke into wide smiles. “Ma tu parli Italiano?”

She smiled back. “I speak some, enough to get by.” There was something deeply affecting about language. If expected, it meant nothing. But if it came by surprise as a gesture of friendship, it was an instant opening, a form of flattery guaranteed to attain the objective for its master, and Munroe used it accordingly.

The driver was Luca, a fifty-two-year-old native of Bari who had been a construction foreman in Equatorial Guinea on and off for nearly eight years. Salvatore sat in the passenger seat, younger, but not by much.

He searched behind the seat and brought out a first-aid kit. Between bumps and jolts along the road, Munroe patched up her feet, and when the men asked about the stained cloth tied around her arm, she shrugged. “A scratch,” she said, and changed the conversation through questions of her own. They entertained her with stories of life in Equatorial Guinea and about their families back home, whom they saw only a few months out of the year.

The pay they earned for working on the island more than made up for the difficult conditions, and the malaria didn’t bother them as much as the tumbu flies whose larvae bored under the skin and used the host to feed and incubate.

They approached a bend in the road. Luca slowed the truck and turned to Munroe. “Do you have papers?”

Two passports and one of the residency cards. But she wouldn’t risk losing the passports, and under the circumstances a residency card could prove problematic. “I had nothing on me when I was separated from my friends,” she said.

Luca brought the vehicle to a stop on a narrow dirt shoulder that encroached into the wall of green. He rubbed his forehead and then motioned with his hand down the road. “We are coming to a checkpoint. They will want to see your papers. They won’t let you through without them.”

Munroe calculated the options, read them in Luca’s face, and, as if rehearsing lines for a well-scripted plot, said, “If the papers are a problem, I’ll find a way to continue on by foot.” She paused and then attempted to stand and move past Salvatore in the passenger seat. “I don’t want to cause problems for you. Thank you for your help and for the wonderful conversation.”

Luca held out his hand and stopped her. She knew he would. “It’s not safe for you on foot.” He tugged on his grubby cap and lifted it, scratching his head. “We have beer with us to offer—they won’t look in the back.”

He replaced the cap, climbed out of the cab, and motioned for her to follow. The rear portion of the truck was open and carried equipment and supplies. “Stay under the tarp until we come to get you,” he said. “There is another checkpoint beyond this one before reaching Luba, possibly two—you never know.” He made sure she was secure, and from under the tarp Munroe heard the door slam and felt the engine rumble to life.

Once past the checkpoint, she shifted so that she could see out from beneath the ceiling of blue plastic and breathe the fresh air.

THE TRUCK SHUDDERED to a stop on one of Luba’s few paved roads. Puzzled, Munroe retreated farther under the tarp. Luca and Salvatore spoke rapidly in a muted conversation that she strained to overhear but could not make out. After several minutes the cab door slammed, and for the third time the vehicle lurched forward.

When the truck fell silent for the last time, it was in a barren compound outside the city. Neither Luca nor Salvatore came as they had promised, and after waiting what felt to be a half hour or more, Munroe worked through alternative scenarios. She would sleep now while she could and slip away when the deep of night settled.

It was footsteps that woke her. She reached for her knives and only after her hands came up empty did she remember where she was; it was an instinctive reflex she had not made in nearly seven years. She flipped to her stomach and prepared to move. The footsteps came closer, and Salvatore called out softly.

Munroe answered in a whisper and then slipped out from the tarp. She sat on the edge of the truck bed, feet dangling over the side, and Salvatore climbed up next to her. He had been delayed, he said, because there was military around town demanding to see papers. Since she was without hers, they thought it best to wait before coming. Salvatore handed her a pair of shoes and then some socks. “I don’t know if these will fit,” he said. “But you can’t go walking around with your feet like that.” The shoes explained the stop in town. They were canvas stitched directly to flat rubber soles, imported from Nigeria or Cameroon, and they were at that moment the most beautiful pair she had ever seen.

Munroe placed them on her feet. They were a little loose but would work. She handed him a five-thousand-CFA note. He smiled and refused it. “The hostels in town are full,” he said. “They are always full. If you can’t find your friends tonight, you can stay here on the truck. But the workers will start unloading early in the morning.”

She pointed to the shoes. “Are you sure I can’t pay for these—or for the ride?”

“No, no,” he said. “You’re not the first traveler to find yourself in a difficult position in this lunatic country. We help when we can.”

Munroe waited until Salvatore was out of sight and then slid off the flatbed and slunk into the shadows. She kept off the streets and wound in the direction of the shoreline.

The pervasive smell of wood smoke and fish gnawed at her until she gave it notice, and once aware of it she worked her way back toward the source. It came from a clearing south of the town where small homes had been constructed out of homemade cinder blocks and topped with corrugated metal. Women tended a cooking fire outside the back of the largest structure. Around them men and children sat on upturned crates and straight-backed wooden chairs, talking, eating, and laughing. Ducks waddled and roosted nearby, and chickens scratched near the fire, picking up small morsels that had been dropped. A kerosene lantern hung from a tree not far from the group and another from the door of one of the structures. Other than the fire, the lamps provided the only source of light.

Bubi was the language spoken by those native to the island, a soft singsong of words strung together in a manner distinctly different from the harsher Fang that dominated the mainland and the capital. Munroe had heard it spoken occasionally, but not often enough to converse, and so she opted for Spanish to call out an evening greeting.

The adults responded with smiles and conversation, the children with bashful stares. She played the part of the quintessential traveler, and they answered her questions, chatting about the city and describing the best places for swimming. They invited her to eat, and she offered a few thousand CFA, which they refused and she insisted upon their taking by placing the money in the palm of one of the young children. In addition to the fish, there were plantains cut into strips and deep-fried in palm oil, plus forest snails in an oily tomato paste.

She made small talk with the young men and asked about boats capable of handling a trip to the mainland. They shook their heads and then discussed the question among themselves in their own tongue while she listened intently. Such boats were in Luba occasionally, they said, but not now. They offered to take her to the shore in the morning and introduce her to men who owned boats, and she countered with additional CFA for a spot under one of their roofs. Her bed was the concrete floor with a jacket bundled beneath her head for a pillow. Sleep came easily, everything about the evening having been comfortingly familiar.

The next morning Munroe stood on the shoreline under a half-moon and stars in front of a row of boats resting on the sand, a miniature armada ready for deployment. Their condition was as the young men had described, wooden fishing vessels old with dry rot. The smallest of them were pirogues, some with outboard engines and others without. A few of the boats had sails, and the largest, a wooden boat ten feet long, had a near-new outboard motor. She paced around it and ran her hands along the hull. It had the space to carry enough fuel to travel the distance, but it didn’t have the integrity to make the trip over the open water.

In silence she walked away from the others and stood beyond the edge of the breaking water. She picked up pebbles and threw them out into the waves in rapid succession, attempting to quell a building rage. Trapped on the island, a prisoner, time lost for nothing. It would mean having to risk the return to Malabo after all and, from there, finding a way to the mainland. The airport was out of the question. So was the main port. She stared up at the patterns of light in the black sky and willed a solution into existence.

There was another way. Boniface Akambe had said he could be found near Ureca. She’d wanted to see him, yes, but not under these conditions. But then limited options meant working with what was available. She negotiated a ride to the south of the island on a skiff.

She would travel to Ureca. Best known for the sea turtles that returned to its shore each year to nest, it was an isolated village where conservation groups had made headway against poaching by paying the locals to guard the beaches during nesting season. The village was accessible only by sea or via a thirteen-hour trek through the jungles between the Grand Caldera of Luba and Mount Biao.

Somewhere in that direction she would find Francisco Beyard.

The sun’s first rays had already begun to peek over the mountain by the time the boat’s owner returned from town. He brought with him extra fuel, drinking water, and a piece of cloth that would work as a tarp. Two young boys with him loaded an assortment of supplies that had nothing to do with the trip. They would be bartered and sold in Ureca, providing the entrepreneurial boatman with extra money.

The trip passed in relative silence. They hugged the coastline, following it around the widest part of the island. The occasional small village broke the monotony of green that advanced to the border of unending blue. Under the tarp Munroe dozed fitfully, in turn lulled to sleep by the steady rock of the boat and the cloud-covered sky and awakened by apprehension at meeting Beyard.

Scripts of possible introductions worked through her mind. The promise of money would possibly appeal to him. If not that, then what? Appeal to the memories of a friendship destroyed when she disappeared without so much as a word? If he would not take her off the island, the alternative was a grueling hike back to Luba and a return trip to the capital to face the possibility of a permanent resting place at the infamous Black Beach Prison.

Francisco Beyard was a risk worth taking.

EVIDENCE THAT THEY had arrived at Ureca came from signs of humanity along the shore and the landmark rock that jutted upright out of the empty beach twenty feet into the air like an isolated obelisk. The boatman brought the boat as close to the beach as possible, tilted the engine upward, and together he and Munroe—gritting through the pain in her arm—pushed it thirty feet through shallow waves until it rested solidly on dry land. The sand was soft and deep brown, unlike the stretches of porous boulders and black rock that lined the western shore.

Young boys shirtless and shoeless played nearby and ran to greet them as the boat came to rest. The boatman barked orders to them and passed out trinkets. They took up his bundles and led the two of them inland.

The trail to Ureca climbed steadily upward through a quarter mile of lush greenery still wet with recent rain. The village was a tidy collection of houses, neatly demarcated and separated by narrow dirt pathways that had never been used by a motorized vehicle. Unlike the cinder-block houses in the villages to the north, most of the homes in Ureca were wattle and daub, their roofs covered with thick thatchwork.

The boys brought Munroe to the home of the village elder, chattering as they went inside. They soon came scuttling out, followed by an aged woman. She wore a worn T-shirt, and wrapped around her waist was a colorful cloth, a matching band around her hair. Her weathered face was adorned with cutting scars. She greeted Munroe and motioned her inside.

Munroe was offered a seat opposite a man who was certainly much younger than he looked. He sat regally on a wooden chair, his hand atop a polished stick. Munroe was treated graciously, and when she had accepted coffee and they had begun to drink, he asked why she had come and he requested the documents that permitted her to travel to the village.

She handed him her residency card and explained that although she did not have a paper from the Ministry of the Interior, she was part of a diplomatic mission with several requirements, not the least of which was to visit Ureca. Because of its uniqueness, she explained, it was one of the most important villages on the island, and as the village elder he was one of the most important men. He nodded in agreement and asked no more about the papers. As indirectly as possible, she asked questions that would lead her to Beyard’s location.

The elder was thoughtful and slow to speak. He provided information judiciously, and his reticence gave Munroe reassurance that Beyard’s reach had extended into the elder’s pocket.

He was not far away.

Full of dignified humility, she apologized for coming without a gift for such an important representative and explained that part of her responsibility on this mission was to meet with a man who would provide transport. Because she had traveled in haste, she had come empty-handed, but this man would aid her in bringing back a gift.

The elder was silent for a moment, and Munroe refrained from speaking, knowing that he weighed potential reward against the potential loss of reward should he displease his paymaster. Finally he spoke.

“I cannot say for sure what is or what isn’t,” he said. “My eyes and ears are not as young as they once were. But there are whispers that at Point Delores young men occasionally find work.”

“It is obvious,” she said, “that you are a very wise man and that your people are fortunate to be blessed with a leader such as yourself.” He nodded again, and with his permission she took her leave.

She found the boatman with his wares spread about him, surrounded by the women of the village. Voices were raised and spoke in rapid succession as they bartered. Munroe understood traces of the conversations, words coming to her in flashes of illumination. Another few days and she would be conversing, another week and she’d be fluent.

When the racket settled and the crowd thinned, she called to the boatman. Just one more small trip and his end of the bargain would be complete. Point Delores, she had learned, was a nesting area a few miles farther along the coast.

They beached the boat as they had earlier in the day, and from the sands Munroe searched for signs of humanity. A small pirogue sat above the waterline and, not far from it, a path recognizable only by an occasional footprint and foliage that had been disturbed. She knelt and touched the earth. It was wet, heavy with water. The footprints had been recently formed. The path led inland for less than half a mile and ended at a small clearing that encircled three buildings.

The largest of the buildings was a block house similar in style to those on the north of the island; the others were wattle and daub. On the roof, together with the corrugated metal, were several solar panels, and electrical wires leading from one of the smaller structures intimated at a generator. A screened-in porch fronted the central building, and to the side of the porch two young men sat dozing in the shade.

They did not move when she approached. She knelt beside them and in their own tongue said softly, “Excuse me.”

Her aim had been to avoid startling them, but from the looks of fright they bore, she had failed miserably. In Spanish she said, “I came to find the Merchant.” And when in their faces she found affirmation of the property’s owner, she added, “Is he at home?”

The shorter of the two shook his head and then said, “He returns in the evening.”

“Good.” She smiled. “I will wait for him inside.”

Munroe paid the boatman the last of her money and instructed him with words to repeat if questioned about her purpose for visiting this part of the island.

In the silence she turned toward the house and opened the screen door. She let herself in through the front door, and the young men watched with obvious indifference. Memories played like time-lapse photography.

Another life.

She entered directly into the living room, an open space that belied the small size of the house. It was sparse and empty, the walls plastered and painted white, the furniture consisting of a rough-hewn sofa and two chairs. The floor was concrete painted over with brown floor paint, and it was all spotlessly clean, somehow suggesting the sterile environment of a well-kept clinic. The shutters were closed and the air hot and stale. She tried the fan. There was no electricity.

From the living room there were doors off a small hallway, and she could see through the open door to the kitchen. She lay down on the sofa, ignoring the temptation to look around. She had invaded his house, but some things were still sacred. In the stillness and quiet, her eyes grew heavy, and she was pulled downward into sleep.

IN THE FOGGY distance of consciousness, Munroe heard shouting. Aware that time had passed but not how much, she struggled to wake and pull herself out of the sticky haze of sleep. A web of heat and exhaustion enveloped her and dragged her back down.

The deep roar of a generator split the silence and drowned out the human voices. The lights in the room blinked on and off and then put out a steady wattage. A breeze cut through the stale air in the room as the fans began to oscillate. The temperature had changed, dusk had come. The mosquitoes would be out in force, held at bay by the netting that covered the windows.

Footsteps on the porch were followed by another barrage of shouting. The voice was familiar. She was awake now, and uncomfortable. She shifted on the sofa. The front door slammed open and shut. He stormed into the room and then, making eye contact, stopped in midstep, almost tripping over himself.