Sending him to Guinea-Bissau, a little dirt-poor tropical country on the North Atlantic coast of west Africa shoe horned in between Guinea and Senegal, was an invitation to disaster.
Platt was so white he gleamed, and ninety-nine percent of the population in Guinea-Bissau was black; worse, they spoke Portuguese or Criola, or French, plus a slew of African languages with names like Pajadinka, Gola, Bigola, and the like.
As far as he knew, Platt didn’t have any foreign languages.
He had trouble enough making himself clear in English past that Georgia cane syrup of his, but somehow he always managed.
Being six and a half feet tall with a build like Hercules probably helped–people tended to be polite to Platt even if they didn’t like him. And while he was crude, he wasn’t stupid.
He liked to play the good old boy and let people think that was all there was to him, but he knew his way around computers, from laptops to extended mainframes, he could shoot any weapon capable of firing, and fix a computer or a gun if either of them broke.
“Anyway, what El Presidente said was, you don’t come and set down for a little chat, it’s nooo deal.” Damn! Hughes fumbled for his electronic calendar, punched up the month of January, and looked at it. It would be tricky.
He’d have to come up with some kind of hurry-up junket not too far away, then sneak into the country.
He had a couple of passports and visas he could use. It was a bitch, and it wasn’t going to be cheap, but it was do able. He said, “All right. Tell President Domingos I will be there on.
January 13th. That’s a Thursday.” “Thursday, the 13th. I got it.” “And you come to Washington. I have other business for you.” “Washington.” That came out as “Warshing-ton.” “Shoot, there’s almost as many jigs there as there arc here.
You know what else? There ain’t but four thousand telephones in this whole country. They still use drums, I reckon. You know, the natives are restless? And uppity too. I get one more buck staring at me, I’mon put the hurt on him.” “Don’t kill anybody.” Platt laughed.
“Me? Shoot, I am gone kill nobody.
I’mon just knock a few ub’m off the sidewalks.” He laughed again, a gravely, raucous noise.
“Only thing is, they ain’t got no sidewalks most places here. I guess I can wait to do that in Washington.” “Just come back. What about the leaks?” “I got the next one on a timer. Set to go off bright and early Monday morning matter of fact.” “Good. Goodbye.” Hughes uncapped the phone’s mouthpiece and dropped the scrambler into his pocket. Jesus.
Platt was a lunatic, probably psychotic and sociopathic, and a sharp and dangerous tool.
Necessary, but just as apt to cut the hand that held it as anything.
Hughes would have to be careful, and pretty soon he would have to figure out a way to make Platt. go away.
For good.
Hughes opened the phone booth’s door. A blast of cold wind hit him, raising chills on his neck. He could smell the snow coming. Better get back to the city before it turned the roads into parking lots.
He nodded at the driver as he got back into the limo.
“Let’s go home.”
Chapter 5 Monday, December 20th, 8:55 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
The invisible green-eyed demon had its claws sunk deep in Tyrone Howard’s back, and it hurt like he wouldn’t have believed only a couple of months ago. He felt sick to his stomach, he wanted to throw up, scream, or punch somebody-maybe do all three at once–and none of these were viable options. The students at Eisenhower Middle School were used to seeing some weird things in the dingy green halls, but a thirteen-year-old boy running amok in a jealous rage was not one of them.
The reason for Tyrone’s pain stood thirty feet away, smiling up at the quarterback of the football team, one large and muscular Jefferson Benson. Belladonna Wright was a year older than Tyrone and, without a doubt, the most gorgeous young woman in D.c. On the East Coast.
Maybe in the whole world.
And since he had done her a favor by helping her pass her computer class, they had spent a little time together. She had more or less ditched her old boyfriend, Herbie “Bonebreaker” LeMott, who was in high school and the captain of the wresling team. Since then, she and Tyrone had gone to the mall, had done VR, and had sat in her bedroom and kissed until he thought he was going to explode. He was absolutely, totally, triple-back-somersault-in-a-full-layout in love with Bella. And there she stood, in her micro skirt and halter top and squeegee slope-plats, talking to another man. Smiling at him. At a man who could tie Tyrone into a square knot and shot put him fifty feet without breaking a sweat.
All Tyrone had going for him was his brain, and while the mind might be mightier than muscle in the long run, in a face-to-face match up, the guy with the muscle would pound you into a breaded cutlet if all you could wave at him was your brain.
“Uh-oh. Looks like trouble in paradise,” came the voice from behind him.
Tyrone wasn’t looking directly at Bella. He was using his peripheral vision as he stood fiddling with the door to his locker. He didn’t have to look at the speaker–it was James Joseph Hatfield, a hillbilly from West Virginia who had such bad eyes he couldn’t even wear contacts, and thus went around peering through thick plastic lenses that made him look like a giant white hoot owl.
“Shut up, Jimmy-Joe.” “Hey, nopraw, rider, she’s just talkin’ to him, not fishin’ for his trouser eel–” Tyrone turned to glare atomic bombs at his best friend.
“All right, all right, be cool, fool,” Jimmy-Joe said.
“But think about it, bro. If she wanted a big dumb jock, she’d still be with Bonebreaker, right? I mean, he makes Benson look like a shrimp.” And Benson made Tyrone look like a microbe.
“Yeah.
Maybe.” “Go slow mo, Joe, you worry too much.” Jimmy-Joe slapped Tyrone on the back.
As Tyrone watched peripherally, pretending not to, the large and muscular Jefferson Benson turned and headed down the hall, moving in that oiled-ball-bearing rolling walk of his.
People moved aside to let him pass.
Bella looked up, saw Tyrone and Jimmy-Joe. She smiled and waved.
“Hey, Ty!” Tyrone’s sick feeling lifted when he saw her smile at him.
He felt like Atlas must have felt when Hercules took the world from him.
All of a sudden, life was wonderful. He could sing, he could dance, he could float like a cloud.
Bella came toward him. People stopped to watch her. Queen of the Hall, she swayed like a palm tree in a tropical breeze as she walked. His heart pounded like native drums in Tyrone’s head.
Man–to She stopped in front of him.
“I’m going to the mall after school, if it doesn’t snow again,” she said.
“You going?” “Oh, yeah,” Tyrone said.
“I planned to.” “Exemplary, Ty. See you at the Shop.” Bella flashed her perfect smile again, patted him on the shoulder once, then left. Tyrone watched her go, a man in a trance, unable to look away. His shoulder was hot where she’d touched him.
” “Calls you Ty. Puts her hand on you.
Slip, you are about as DFF as it gets,” Jimmy-Joe said.
“Data flowin” fine.” Tyrone grinned. Yes, yes, that was true.
Life didn’t get much better, did it? How could it? The most beautiful woman in the world had just arranged to meet him instead of the football thud. It was absolutely amazing, was what it was.
Amazing. Wonderful– “So, how’s the upgrade going’?” Tyrone watched Bella round the corner and vanish from view. He savored the memory of her from behind.
” “Hel-lo? Mission Control to Deep Space Vessel Tyrone, do you copy?” He made the sound of a stat icky radio.
“Come in, DSV Ty…” Tyrone shook off the trance. Jimmy-Joe was asking about the revision to the net game he’d built and posted, DinoWarz.
“Oh, that. I haven’t had much time to work on it.” “Haven’t had time? You are fee kin” me, right?” “No feek,” Tyrone said. He had been spending every spare minute he could scrounge with Bella. And when he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her. Dreaming about her.
Lusting after her… “Rider, you are stalled out backslash was “It’s just a game,” Tyrone said.
Jimmy-Joe stared at him as if Tyrone had just morphed into a giant roach and started doing a demented jitterbug.
“Just a game? Just a gamee? You got a testosterone short in your cerebrum, chum.” The bell for class rang, and Jimmy-Joe walked off, shaking his head.
“I will see you later, slip.” Tyrone stared at his friend. He didn’t understand.