ECLIPSE by Richard North Patterson Page A

whatever crime Karama chooses to invent. Imagine the forces of law in the hands of someone who can make anopponent vanish in the middle of the night, or order police to assassinate him and disguise it as a murder-robbery. One can die for taking pictures of something Karama wants to erase from public knowledge. Like the rubble of a village full of mutilated bodies.”
    “By now I assume the bodies have vanished.”
    “Yes. They have gone to a better place—a mass grave.”
    Pierce stared into the darkness. At length, he turned back to Bara. “How is Marissa?”
    “As well as can be expected. You will see, tonight.”
    Imagining Marissa, Pierce realized that the car felt hot and stuffy. “Can I open a window?”
    Bara shook his head. “Best not to. We’re approaching the outskirts of Port George.”
    Abruptly, they reached the edge of a shantytown, an enveloping web of garbage-strewn alleys between wooden structures with corrugated roofs. The streets were dirt and rutted with potholes.
    Bara’s eyes darted from one side to the other. “Keep watching,” he instructed Pierce.
    “For what?”
    “Anyone. Even though the soldiers have come, the gangs may suddenly appear. They fight one another for territory, the right to kidnap people or tap pipelines, and their tentacles reach deep into the creeklands. They are what happens when impoverished people see their leaders getting rich.” As the road widened, cars passed in the opposite direction, weaving to avoid ruts. “For you,” Bara continued, “what I fear most is kidnapping. But if warfare breaks out in the street, we could get caught in the cross fire. Thirteen people died from gunshots last week, one inside her home when a bullet shattered a window.”
    The city closed around them. They passed between two-story buildings and beneath tangled phone lines stretching from crooked poles. Dense smoke from what seemed to be a slaughterhouse fouled the air. On a corner Pierce saw a dimly lit gas station from which projected a line of perhaps twenty cars, surrounded by beggars or peddlers.
    Bara followed Pierce’s gaze. “Ironic, isn’t it? We ship billions of dollars of our oil to America, while Luandians wait in line for gasoline. Port George is our nightmare.”
    Pierce was gripped by the strangeness of it. “Who lives here?”
    “The deluded. People who thought there was work here, and discovered that the work was violence, robbery, and prostitution.” He pointed ahead. “Look there.”
    From the haze and darkness materialized a massive garbage dump, amid which raggedly dressed scavengers, their faces masked against the fumes, appeared and disappeared like ghosts. “That is their profession,” Bara said. “Grubbing through our offal.”
    Beyond the garbage dump, Pierce realized, must be the Gulf of Luan-dia. Outlined in the torchlight of a gas flare was a massive complex of steel railings and satellite dishes seemingly suspended above the water—an oil platform no doubt owned by PGL. “Let’s find dinner,” Pierce requested. “I need to talk with you before I see Marissa.”
    Stalled behind two cars, Bara accelerated past them. “Once you’re spotted with me,” he answered, “the police will mark you. But they camp outside the Okari compound, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. The real problem is that our dinner might end before dessert. The kidnappers know where white men go.”
    Pierce strove for a certain fatalism. “Whatever I do, it seems the outcome is pretty random. Why be kidnapped hungry?”
    Bara’s glance suggested disapproval of Pierce’s careless manner. In an arid tone, he said, “Then we’ll go where you’ll fit in.”
    Abruptly making a U-turn, he sped down one side street and swerved onto another. “It’s best to reach our destination quickly,” he said. “The neighborhood draws trouble like flies. Even the locals are careful.” As they turned onto a thoroughfare dense with cars and Luandians hurrying on foot, Bara added,