Forty minutes later they were sitting in Danjuma’s office.
Rakeem wasn’t happy about being treated like a servant, but he’d gone out to pick up breakfast for the four of them. There was something about the man that Dominique didn’t quite trust, but she couldn’t say exactly what.
There was certainly something going on between him and Danjuma.
Travis on the other hand just seemed grateful to be out of the room and not being punched. He drank several cups of strong black coffee and cleared his plate before Dominique had eaten even half of hers. The man looked more alive than he had before, having cleaned himself up, shaved, and put on a change of clothes. But there were still several bruises on his face and the scabs of a couple of cuts, one above the eye, one to his fat lip. Even so, he looked much better.
The way that he got in and out of a chair though, suggested that his body had taken a beating that would be slower in healing.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked. His question was addressed to Danjuma, but it was Dominique who answered.
“Nothing,” she said. “At least nothing more than get us inside. You don’t need to be a great actor. We will have the consignment with us, it’s business as usual.”
They’d spun a story about needing him to get her inside so Dominique could take a look at what was going on in the old army base. There was no benefit in telling him more than that; the more he knew, the more likely it was he would screw up.
“What’s to say this prick won’t just throw you to the wolves once he thinks he’s safe?” Rakeem asked. He got a sharp look from Danjuma.
The American looked up from his coffee. “Because if I do that, I’ll be the one at fault. I’ll be the one who lied to them to get her in there. Best case, they’ll kill both of us and keep the drugs. That’s why. And frankly, I’m not sure what’s stopping you from killing me when I come out.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” Danjuma said. “Unlike your partner.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I haven’t decided. Do you have any special requests?”
“Naw, I don’t have anything against him. He’s going to be in enough shit as it is.” Travis said, a sudden spark of fire in his eyes before he shook his head.
“Feeling guilty?”
“I’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. He was planning to do the same to me. I just got my retaliation in early. When the goods were on the boat that would be it. I would be surplus to requirements.”
“Whatever happened to honor amongst thieves,” Danjuma laughed.
“You come here acing like the big white man,” Rakeem grunted, “Come to teach the poor black men a thing or two about this bad world, like we don’t know shit.”
Danjuma slapped a palm on the table, rattling cutlery on plates and splashing coffee onto the wood. “That’s enough,” he said. “It’s neither the time nor the place for a lecture on equality. We give our friend here the drugs, he takes them and Dominique into that place. He gets to do his deal and drives away with the cash, and that’s the end of his part in the story. That’s not what this is all about. We get my little girl back or I kill every last muthafuckah in that place.”
“My passport?” Travis asked, not sure if he was pushing his luck in asking for it, but knowing he needed it to sell the illusion and drive away with the cash.
Danjuma opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out two US passports, opened the first to check the photograph, then dropped it back in the drawer. He examined the second one before sliding it across his desk. “Here you go,” he said.
They were interrupted by the arrival of two men who looked like they hadn’t slept. Dominique guessed they were the men Danjuma had spoken to in the car. There were no more chairs in the office, but they were happy to stand.
Danjuma nodded to them in greeting. “Everything okay?”
The two men looked at the American and frowned before Danjuma said, “It’s okay, you can talk in front of him.”
“All quiet,” one of them said. “No vehicles in or out.”
“Lookouts?”
“Four to start with but it soon went down to one.”
“Sloppy,” Domonique said.
“The others were out of sight. He kept looking down inside the compound.”
“Did he see you?”
There was a moment of hesitation, followed by a moment of truth. “Almost. But we were too far away for anyone to have been able to see us properly. It was dark.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
The two new arrivals looked at each other, as if deciding which of them should speak. “He kept looking in our direction, staring at us, but he couldn’t have seen us.”
“Which one of you got out of the car?” Dominique asked, refusing to believe that they might be as stupid as she feared.
“We both did,” one of them said, but we’d turned off the overhead light, we ain’t stupid.”
Danjuma nodded but Dominque wasn’t satisfied.
Something had drawn the lookout’s attention.
“Must have been a long cold night,” she said. “Especially when you couldn’t turn on the engine to get warm. Bet you got through a packet of cigarettes.”
“We only had half a packet between us,” one of them said. “We had to make them last.”
And then the penny dropped. She knew exactly what the lookout had seen. So did Danjuma.
“You stupid fucks.”