Chapter 3

“Just another hunter, like a wolf in the sun.
Just another junkie on a scoring run.
Just another victim of the things he has done.
Just another day in the life of a loaded gun.”
-Rush, “You Bet Your Life”

San Finzione One touched down in The People’s Democratic Republic of Uongo. Helena and Colleen were dressed again (Colleen having to change into a spare uniform.), and Helena had invited her to the castle on her next trip to San Finzione and asked her address, telling the stewardess to expect a package soon. Colleen had definitely earned her new iPad.

Five limousines were waiting on the tarmac to take the Ultimados to the San Finzione embassy. Helena instructed Capitano Ramirez to accompany her in the next-to-last limo of the convoy. The embassy had called her on the plane, saying that Maria’s captors had tossed a paper bag containing her signet ring and a flash drive over the wall outside from a passing car that didn’t slow down enough to get the plate number. As they rode, Helena asked Capitano Ramirez if he’d been to Uongo before.

“Si, Contessa,” he responded. “There was an operation once. You have clearance to know this.” She didn’t press for details.

“I have too. Your usual African dictatorship where the President For Life has five swimming pools and half of his people don’t even know that clean water exists as a thing.”

“People’s Democratic Republic usually means a Communist-backed government,” Ramirez replied, watching the passing people and noticing how many carried firearms.

“Yes. And like how that usually goes, they could hook a turbine to Marx’s grave and power the whole country with his spinning.”

“You do not seem very worried about Lady Maria,” Ramirez commented.

“They sent the ring, not a finger. So they know better than to harm her. The flash drive presumably contains their demands or their manifesto or something. They want me to see it, and I imagine they’ll be waiting for a reply. That they’ve chosen this way to contact me also means that I still have a wild card in play.”

“They may have already killed her,” Ramirez replied. “It may be an execution video.”

“If that’s so, then there’s nothing I can do for Maria but avenge her, so that ISN’T so, do you understand me, Capitano?”

“Si, Contessa. We shall recover Lady Maria.”

“That’s not in doubt,” she said as the gold leaf-covered minarets atop the Presidential Palace came into view. The embassy was a few blocks away.

“It may be the government that has her, Contessa.”

“I don’t think so. Supreme Comrade and President-for-Life Kiburi enjoys beating his chest on television too much to be this quiet about it. And he knows better than to cross me. There’s a reason nobody stopped me from entering the country with sixteen men loaded down to start a war.”

“So, the stories are true,” Ramirez asked. “That La Contessa has a way of destroying the wills of men?”

Helena smiled sweetly at that. “Don’t all women?”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant, Capitano, and I don’t feel like having that conversation right now.”

Ramirez nodded and the trip continued in silence.

“If you want to trap a witch, first you must catch her familiar.”

There was a cut in the video from the man saying those words into the camera to the interior of a shed. Two men in ski-masks with AK-47s flanked Maria, who was tied to a chair, her head hanging down. David Igazi stood behind her, his hands on her unresisting shoulders.

“They’re drugging her,” one of the Ultimados sitting around the embassy’s conference table said as they watched the video play out on a large monitor at the end of the table. Helena sat at the opposite end, staring at the screen, it’s light and her cigarette the only illumination in the room.

“No,” Helena said, taking a drag of her cigarette. “She’s been ... trained to fall unconscious if kidnapped. They won’t get anything out of her, and they don’t have a screaming hostage to intimidate us with.”

Some of the men turned toward La Contessa and wondered how she could speak of her great-granddaughter so coldly. All attention returned to the video when Igazi spoke again.

“To The She-Demon Who Birthed All Witches: David Igazi has your familiar.”

“Igazi,” Ramirez said, making an asking-for-a-cigarette gesture. La Contessa obliged him. “They say Kony has nightmares about him. The name means...”

“Blood in Swahili. I know. I’ve seen the videos of him beheading missionaries.” Helena stared grimly at the screen.

“If the Demon wants her familiar back, she will come alone to the GPS co-ordinates at the end of this video at noon tomorrow. If she does not show up or if there are any tricks...” Igazi pulled out a long knife and held it to Maria’s throat as she slept on. “A sleeping woman may not scream when you kill her, but that will not make her any less dead. The only question is if I give her to my men before or after.”

A piece of paper with GPS co-ordinates on it was held up to the camera. The video continued for another 30 seconds before ending. The ambassador opened up a laptop and started searching for the co-ordinates.

“Savannah land,” said the ambassador. “For kilometers in every direction.”

“Some of the men could be camouflaged and waiting,” Ramirez offered.

“They’re expecting a trick,” Helena replied, picking her own cigarette back up. There was only one drag left. She didn’t usually smoke them to the end. “Probably have people watching the area now in anticipation of such a move. And all it would net us is whichever flunkies he sends to collect me and Maria still dies. We may beat the location of their base out of them in time, or we may not.”

“I can speak to the Americans about letting us use one of their spy satellites to track you,” offered the ambassador. Helena nodded, and the ambassador left to start making phone calls.

She stared down at the photographs of the crash site. She slid them over to Capitano Ramirez for inspection.

“They aimed for the engines,” he noted. “They shot to bring the chopper down with minimal damage.”

“Yes,” Helena replied. “it didn’t work, though. And now two of our men and a civilian pilot are dead. And the questions of how they knew who’d be on it and the flightpath and time still need to be answered. I’ll have to take those things up with Igazi directly tomorrow.”

“So you will go to the meeting,” Ramirez asked. Helena simply nodded.

“There was no ransom demand, no political statement made. He’s playing a game, and the only way I’m going to learn the rules is by doing what he says for now.”

“This game could cost you and Lady Maria your lives.”

Helena poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and opened the small pouch that contained her worry beads.

“Then I’ll have to do what the man who was the closest thing that I ever had to a father would tell me to do in this situation, Capitano Ramirez.” She took a drink and started toying with the beads. “Cheat.”

Stavro was still unconscious. He’d been moved from the city hospital to the embassy’s infirmary. Helen stood by his bed, looking over him. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and an oxygen tube was pumping air into his lungs via his nose. She took his bandaged hand.