The Catch: A Novel Read Free

the armoire with finality. In the living room Natan, still on the couch with his ankle propped up, called out as she strode through. “Where are you going?” he said, and she ignored him, just as she had Leo.

CHAPTER 2
    The two beat-up company vehicles were parked in the dirt space between the houses, which meant that everyone was accounted for and on the property. Like everything else, the cars were Leo’s, made available if Munroe wanted them for work, provided none of the other team members had need of them. She paused in front of the Land Cruiser, the easy way out with its keys beneath the front seat, and, with the evening dimming, walked out of the compound through the pedestrian gate.
    Touches of light from the recently set sun guided the way, augmented by the artificial glow that streamed out of nearby houses. She strode along the side of the road, over hard-caked dirt and sand and outcroppings of weeds, toward a larger junction several hundred meters away, where she could flag down a taxi.
    Voices and conversations rose and fell within lengthening shadows, clusters of people gathered on doorsteps or in gateways, part of the vitality that the cooling darkness brought to the sleepy daytime streets. The white of her skin marked her as a beacon and men called out as she passed, then followed with shocked laughter when she responded in their tongue. Language was what protected her, had guided and guarded her throughout the years, the ability to understand,to communicate in a way that, because of her foreignness, most assumed she couldn’t.
    Munroe reached the crossroads, a thoroughfare more heavily trafficked, where proper streetlights obscured the stars and clusters of pedestrians followed along the edges, while vehicles, some decrepit, some shiny and new, competed for right-of-way in an orchestrated dance of chaos. Occupied taxis slowed for her, shared rides that would charge a lesser fare, and she waved them on in favor of an empty car. She argued with the driver over the rate and, knowing he was under khat influence, climbed in, numb to the risk and the casual recklessness with which he drove, life-threatening and yet so commonplace in a galaxy of Third World experience.
    It took but a few minutes to reach the heart of Djibouti, where, like the thoroughfares that had brought them here, new money had paid for new roads, and the potholes were few and far between. She’d once heard the city described as a French Hong Kong on the Red Sea, but whoever had said it had clearly not been to the parts of the city she more often frequented—the parts where the roads were pitted and shacks were assembled with whatever material was to hand, and camels and goats played backdrop to the encroaching desert.
    The taxi stopped a block over from her destination, and Munroe paid and stepped out into the night and into early evening noise that had only just begun to trickle out from the nearby bar and restaurant that catered mainly to foreign military, expats, and what few tourists had discovered this stop on the far, far edge of the map.
    Off the sidewalk and under a portico, she pushed open a narrow door and headed up an equally narrow staircase, wooden, poorly constructed, and dimly lit by a loosely hung bulb. At the landing she knocked on the door. There was no answer, so she knocked again, and when still no one came, she let herself in with a key.
    The apartment was small, part of the repartitioning that went on in a city where the population increased faster than new construction. Light filtered in from the short hallway, and she turned on another so that the common room was fully lit. The area had beentidied up, bright colored floor pillows organized, though two opened cans of 7UP and scraps of khat said that she hadn’t missed the homeowners by much.
    Munroe stepped into the kitchen at her right and into the smell of burnt cooking oil, cumin, and cardamom. Passed around a double gas burner and counter space to get to the end