Cross Country

the limousine, breaking the side windows with crowbars.
    Then they threw open the doors and pulled out the screaming white schoolchildren, a boy and a girl in their early teens.
    “Don’t harm them, I have other plans!” he yelled.
    An hour later, he had the boy and girl inside a shack on a deserted farm outside the city. They were dead now, unrecognizable even if they were found eventually. He had boiled them in a pot of oil. His employer had ordered this manner of death, which happened to be common in Sudan. The Tiger had no problem with it.
    Finally, he pulled out his cell phone and called a number in town. When the phone was picked up on the other end, he didn’t allow the American parents to speak.
    Nor would he ever talk to the local police, or to the private contractor who worked for the oil company and was supposed to protect them from harm.
    “You want to see young Adam and Chloe again, you do exactly as I say. First of all, I don’t want to hear a word from you.
Not a word
.”
    One of the cops spoke, of course, and he hung up on him. He would call back later, and have his money by the end of the day. It was easy work, and Adam and Chloe reminded him of the obnoxious and greedy white children who used to buy his mechanical birds at Versailles.
    He felt no regret for them, nothing at all. It was just business to him.
    Just another large bounty to collect.
    And just the start of things to come.

Chapter 28
    I WAS DETERMINED to follow the psycho killer and his gang wherever it took me, but I could see this wasn’t going to be easy. Quite the opposite.
    “You
took
my passport? Did I get that right?” I asked Nana. “You actually stole my passport?”
    She ignored the questions and set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. Overdone and no toast, I noticed.
So this was war
.
    “That’s right,” she said. “You behave like an obstinate child, that’s how I treat you. Purloined,” she added. “I prefer
purloined
to stole.”
    I pushed the plate away. “Ellie Cox died because of this man, Nana. So did her family. And another family here in DC. Don’t pretend this has nothing to do with us.”
    “You mean
you
. And your job, Alex. That’s what this has to do with.” She poured a half cup of coffee and then headed for her room.
    I called after her. “You know stealing someone’s passport is against the law?”
    “So arrest me,” she said and slammed shut her door. Six in the morning and round one of the new day was already over.
    We’d been building up to this ever since I first mentioned the possibility of my going to Africa. At first she’d been coy, with news articles cropping up around the house. I found a
Time
cover story, “The Deadly Delta,” snipped out and left with my laundry one night; a BBC news piece with the headline “Many Factions, No Peace for Nigeria” in an envelope next to my keys the next morning.
    When I ignored them, she moved on to lecturing — with a list of what-ifs and potential risks, as if I hadn’t considered nearly every one of them myself. Muslims killing Christians in the north of Nigeria; Christians retaliating in Eastern Nigeria; students lynching a Christian teacher; mass graves found in Okija; police corruption and brutality; daily kidnappings in Port Harcourt.
    It’s not that she was all wrong. These murder cases were already dangerous, and I hadn’t even given up the home-court advantage yet. The truth was, I didn’t know what to expect in Africa. All I knew was that if I had a chance to shut this butcher down, I was going to take it. The CIA contact there had signaled the murder suspect was in Lagos right now, or at least he had been a few days ago.
    I’d pulled some strings to expedite my visa application. Then I had cashed in seventy-five thousand miles for a last-minute ticket to Lagos.
    Now the only obstacle was my eighty-eight-year-old grandmother. Big obstacle. She stayed in her room until I left for work that morning, refusing to even talk about the
purloined
passport.
    Obviously, I couldn’t get far without it.

Chapter 29
    THAT NIGHT, I gave Nana Mama a little taste of her own medicine. I waited until late, after the kids had gone to bed. Then I found her in her favorite reading chair, huddled over a copy of
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
.
    “What’s this?” She squinted at the manila folder in my hand as if it might bite her.
    “More news articles. I want you to take a look at them. They tell a horrible story, Nana. Murder, fraud,