Renegade by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

The three-vehicle procession pulled off the pitted asphalt highway and headed over an even rougher washboard road. In the back seat of the limousine, hidden behind the darkly tinted windows, the African stared through the glass at the tall royal palm trees. They had been uprooted from a greener area of the African continent and transplanted along both sides of the road that led to the quaint country inn toward which he was headed. The boughs and wide flat leaves at the top of the trees bent inward over the road, almost touching. The result was the feeling that the convoy was traveling through an emerald tunnel.

Kitwana Asab stuck a huge Cuban cigar to his lips and lit it with a golden lighter as he watched the top of the trees through the limo’s sunroof. The palms were kept alive by a massive irrigation system that he had convinced the Djibouti president to install, claiming that if their nation was ever to fight its way out of economic hell they needed at least one site that appeared prosperous, a place where foreign dignitaries—particularly those from the United States—could meet. Although he had turned down the cabinet post he’d been offered, the president still asked him to meet with the representatives of foreign nations willing to loan Djibouti money. The Americans in particular, he had learned, never really expected the loans they extended to Third World countries to be paid back. But they seemed to insist on the beneficiaries at least looking as if they might be able to repay their debts someday.

With the cigar now clamped between his teeth, Asab reached forward. He lifted the fluted champagne glass from the holder mounted to the back of the seat, took a sip, then replaced the glass. He had consumed roughly half the bottle during the drive from the capital, and it had been the perfect amount to relax him without making him drunk. He let his mind float dreamily as the palm leaves flashed by overhead. Djibouti might be a Third World nation but such countries had advantages to a man like him. Where else could a mere Department of Customs chief become the true power behind the throne? Where else but in such a tiny little country, which half the people of the world couldn’t even point out on a map, would the nations of the Middle East feel comfortable hiding their weapons of mass destruction?

The answer was simple. Nowhere.

The trio of cars finally left the irritating washboard and pulled up onto a graveled section of roadway. As he sipped more champagne, Asab wondered if perhaps he should have the president pave the entire route from the airport to the inn. Although the inn’s oasislike atmosphere was emphasized by the brutal and desolate terrain that surrounded it, it might be better if foreign visitors could arrive at the airport, be driven across smooth roads, then returned to their airplanes without ever experiencing too much of the poverty that saturated the rest of the nation.

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