He didn’t budge.
Emily reluctantly opened the pouch strapped to her waist and forked over the wad of traveler’s checks and francs she’d had to declare on the form.
The man thumbed through the wad slowly, mouthing the amounts as he did. He looked up sharply. “There is a discrepancy. The amount here is not the same as you declared on the form.”
“It is. I—”
“This is illegal. You are smuggling currency. You will pay a fine of fifty thousand francs.”
“What! That’s ridiculous. That’s…almost ten thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of money on me!”
“But you can get it, yes? You will have your passeport confiscated until you return to the aéroport with the francs for me personally, ça va?”
Emily looked at him, stunned. Without her passport she was a prisoner in Ubasi. And illegal. She wouldn’t be able to obtain the visa all tourists had to buy in Basaroutou within twenty-four hours of landing. This was pure corruption. She cursed viciously under her breath. These men had targeted her because she was American, female, separated from her crew, and because she possessed expensive equipment. She was, in their eyes, a perfect candidate for extortion. And who the hell could she complain to? Their dictator, Jean-Charles Laroque?
She cursed again as the customs official abruptly departed, leaving the door swinging open. A guard waited outside with her bags, which no doubt had been searched.
Emily grabbed them from him as the guard took her arm, marshaled her toward the exit doors, and dumped her and her belongings unceremoniously onto the dusty streets of Basaroutou.
A riot of colors and sounds slammed into her, and for a second she just stood blinking at the chaos. People jostled her on all sides, dressed in everything from swaths of brightly colored fabric to tattered western dress and stark white tunics. Women carrying baskets on their heads hawked the contents, and on crumbling sidewalks vendors peddled everything from exotic fruits and strangely shaped vegetables to mysterious oils in brown bottles and weird-looking shriveled animals.
Poverty was clearly evident, as was a mélange of cultures. But the faces Emily saw were not ones of milling discontent. Her first impression was an air of industry and purpose.
She hadn’t expected this, but then virtually nothing was known about Ubasi under Laroque’s rule.
She shaded her eyes, sun burning down hot on her dark hair. Most of the buildings were dun-colored and flanked by impossibly tall, dull-green palms that rustled in the hot wind. Cerise bougainvillea clambered up walls pockmarked by years of war and roads were dusty and cratered with disrepair.
Emily squinted into the light as she searched for something that vaguely resembled a roadworthy cab.
Thankfully she still had what was left of her bribe cash in her boots. Passport or not, she had a job to do. She’d contact the FDS from the hotel and see what she could do about getting her papers back.
But as soon as she tried to elbow her way through the people thronging the sidewalks, she sensed a shift in energy that made fine hairs at the base of her scalp stand on end. She stilled, suddenly acutely cognizant.
There was a strange tension in the air. The mass of humanity around her was growing tighter, quieter. A dark anticipation began to throb tangibly through the crowd.
Emily’s pulse quickened.
Soldiers were beginning to clear the street and line the road, holding people back with automatic weapons.
The air literally began to crackle with a mounting expectancy. Then the crowds grew suddenly hushed, and now she could hear only the rattle of palm fronds in the wind. Something was coming.
Emily’s heart beat faster.
She began to look for exit routes. She knew from experience situations like this had a way of rapidly flaring into extreme violence. But anything vaguely resembling a cab was a good hundred yards off, and the crowds were closing her in even as her brain raced to comprehend what was going on. She was trapped, being wedged and jostled down toward the curb that edged the main street. She gripped her bags tight against her body and peered down the road, trying to see what was happening.
A burst of automatic gunfire suddenly peppered the air, and she jerked back as a convoy of military Jeeps rounded the corner at the bottom of the road. Soldiers triumphantly brandished AK-47s high above their heads, firing with abandon, the sound ricocheting between buildings as the convoy roared up the street.
Emily ducked as the vehicles neared her vantage point, but to her surprise, instead of fleeing in terror, the crowds around her surged forward, singing, ululating, chanting in such a strangely harmonious and resonant chorus it chased shivers over her skin.
Emily slowly stood, awestruck by the elemental effect of the primal sounds on her body.
The first set of Jeeps raced past in a cloud of fine dust. Then the haunting hush returned, silent anticipation thrumming in the humid air. Emily’s heart began to pound like a drum as she leaned forward, trying to see all the way down the road.
A large open-topped military vehicle flanked by smaller Jeeps rounded the corner and crept slowly up the street. The crowd was so deathly silent that the only sound above the growl of engines was of the government flags snapping on the hood. As the big Jeep drew closer, Emily saw what they’d been waiting for.
Their leader.
Adrenaline dumped into her blood. She was seeing Le Diable in the flesh for the first time.
Jean-Charles Laroque sat high in the back of the vehicle, regal, utterly confident. Everything about him telegraphed power.
The sleeves of his camouflage shirt had been rolled back to reveal gleaming biceps. His shoulder-length black hair was drawn back into a ponytail of dreadlocks that accentuated the aggressive angle of his exotic cheekbones. He wore pitch-black shades under an army beret cocked at a rakish angle over his brow.
At his side sat his faithful Alsatian, Shaka. The dog’s fur glistened in the sunlight, its teeth starkly white against a pink tongue as it panted in the heat.
A hot thrill slid sharp and fast through Emily’s stomach.
The Jeep drew close, coming right up alongside her, and a strange primal awareness prickled over her skin. Emily could not have looked away if she tried.
Laroque turned his head, slowly scanning the crowd, then his gaze collided with hers. His body tensed visibly. He raised his dark glasses slowly, looked right at her, into her, isolating her from the crowd, cutting her from the herd like prey. He was close enough for Emily to see that his eyes were ice-green against burnished mahogany skin, and just as cold, devoid of any humor or glimmer of kindness.
She could barely breathe. Her own eyes watered as she met his gaze, unable to blink. Not wanting to. The crowds around her faded into a distant blur, the silence becoming a deafening buzz as her world narrowed to focus solely on him.
Laroque shifted around in his seat, watching her as his convoy crawled up the road…then he was gone.
Emily stood rooted to the spot, dust settling around her as the crowd erupted in a riot of sound. She tried to catch her breath.
What in hell had just happened here?
This man clearly had the adulation of his people. She hadn’t expected that. Nor had she expected the effect he would have on her.
She swallowed, suddenly gravely uneasy with what she was about to do, with the very real impact her profile would have on this country, these people and that powerful man.
Because Emily wielded a power of her own.
Her professional judgment could kill him.
In less than one week.