The tingling roots of her hair declared hell yes, he had.
She shook off the sensation—or at least managed to dull it enough to work—and logged into the system. Her status with Interpol gave her limited access to the CIA files and the ongoing investigation. Her personal hacking skills would take her the rest of the way in. Keying through the layers of security, she… was… in.
Yes.
Images of the kanga cloth filled the screen, a dozen close-ups of the script. Clicking on each one, she scanned the translations, four in all on this. There was a message on each side, rather than just one down a long rectangular side. Standard stuff she would expect. Caution about the importance of saving money. Warning against chaos. Wisdom about love not seeing flaws.
Lastly, Dua la kuku halimpati mwewe. A loosely translated proverb about a chicken’s prayers meaning nothing to a hawk. The oppressor not caring about the wants of the oppressed.
Accessing her profile, she merged two programs to plug in the words, cycling through different combinations in hope of finding some rhythm or pattern. Lines and lines scrolled down the screen, and she knew Mr. Smith and all his minions had done the same. Still, she couldn’t stop from retracing their steps, hoping they’d missed something obvious. Where was the code? The real message of danger Ajaya had insisted could be found here? It was like she had a puzzle with only half of the…
Ah, damn it.
She sat back in the chair.
Where was the rest of the message? She thought back to taking the cloth from the backpack during their hideout while waiting for rescue. Smith said they’d already gone through everything in the backpack. Was there something left at the compound?
Had Ajaya realized all of that, knowing they wouldn’t find out enough to stop anything? If so, the kid couldn’t be trusted.
She stared at the list of traditional sayings, generic, standard ones that could be found in a fortune cookie.
Her mind shuffled through what little she’d learned… Could the sayings on the other piece of cloth be as standard? It was just a matter of stacking the right ones, in the right order, then pick through a sequence of letters to form a coherent message. Tedious, but doable if she had all the parts.
Made sense not to keep the cloths together. She read the interpreted phrases again, generic, nothing to draw undue attention. Most likely the other half would have much of the same.
She clicked through an Internet search for most common sayings woven into kangas. The more popular, the less likely it would draw attention. Then plugged them into the program and cranked back in the chair…She glanced at the time on the screen and—crap—she’d already been here for nearly forty-five minutes. How much longer did she have? Jose would send up a warning if there was a problem, and quite frankly, there wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t be here. Mr. Smith could be territorial all he wanted. She had rights.
It would just be easier if she didn’t have to fight for them.
Her eyes scanned along the rapidly scrolling words jumbling and shifting, her mind racing to sort through possible patterns. She narrowed the search and typed in more parameters. She’d learned long ago this kind of work was a mix of science and intuition. That instinct was a higher level of the logical, something needed here as she was looking for a message in a pattern in another language altogether…
A hum started deep in her belly, the kind that told her she was on the trail. Words came together, chemical components, not a full plan but bigger pieces… A date, but no time. A name, but no place. But those parts she could fill in for herself. Just as the kid had said. There were plans to disrupt the vice president’s wife visit, during her first day in Somalia.
And while she didn’t have all the pieces yet, the chemical sounded a helluva lot like a tetanus bio toxin.
***
Jose found Mr. Smith in the last place he would have expected—out back rolling an unsmoked cigar between his fingers. The CIA operative was in charge of the intelligence angle here; even the military dudes reported up their own chain to him. This guy had some clout for even the base commander to stay hands-off this operation.
The agent didn’t jolt or even look around, but Jose could see the second Smith realized he wasn’t alone. He stopped playing with the cigar and just held it. Jose pulled up alongside him, the African sun baking the ground so hot it burned clear through his boots.
“Mind if I join you?” Jose pulled his unsmoked cigar from his uniform pocket, looking for an excuse to keep the guy occupied while Stella worked her magic.
Smith shrugged wordlessly, apparently taking a page from Bubbles’s silent and grumpy act.
Rolling his cigar between his palms, Jose tried again, “Find out anything new about the attack outside?”
Smith flipped the unlit stogie between his fingers. “Base security caught the truck that drove off, about a mile away. Local authorities stepped in after that.”
“Well, that’s the last we’ll hear of them… until the next time they attack us.”
“We do what we can do.” Smith shrugged again, stony and stoic as ever. “Once the VP’s wife is done here, we’ll be able to draw back on our presence. Or rather you will.”
Would Stella stay? Yeah, that thought had crossed his mind about a time or fifty while she slept. “I’m just focused on getting through this week. I’ll worry about future pirate missions after that.”
“Did you need something?”
Shit. His reason for coming out here. “Uh, yeah…” He held up his unsmoked Cuban and pulled the wrapper off. “Just to smoke.”