Illegal Holdings

At three fifteen that afternoon—Aisa had just corralled the staff for another unscheduled office conclave—the door to the Nossa Terra office opened and a visitor entered. That was the first anomaly. Visitors didn’t just show up. They made appointments. He was tall but not big and wore a dark-gray jacket over a beige shirt, tan slacks, and brown leather shoes. He was also white, another anomaly. White visitors meant important visitors—heads of foundations, funding agencies, European development NGOs. They never arrived without prior announcement and they never arrived alone. Aisa looked out of the window and saw a taxi drive away. That was the final anomaly. White visitors usually had a car and driver.

The man nodded and scanned the room with his pale blue eyes. He was clean-shaven, mid to late forties with a northern European countenance. Not so much British as continental. Looking tense, he pushed back a lock of blond hair that had fallen down his forehead. He was probably wondering whom to address. Aisa waited. Would he pick one of the two men in the room to speak to? Helton was the most likely candidate because his blue suit appealed to the Western sense of hierarchy.

The man didn’t get his chance to make the wrong choice because Bartina stood up and said in her rudimentary English, “Bom dia. We help you?”

The man relaxed a little and smiled.

“Bom dia. Yes, you may. My name is Valentin Vermeulen. I’m with the United Nations and I’d like to speak to Aisa Simango, please.”

The room fell quiet again. United Nations? They’d never had a visitor from the United Nations. Aisa rose from her chair. Why had no one called to schedule the visit? Even though a large part of the money Nossa Terra received originated with the United Nations, by the time it reached them, it had gone through three or more organizations. Getting a visit from the very top was a big deal. And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

“I am Aisa. What can I do for you?” she said.

He stretched out his hand and walked toward her. Aisa shook it. He looked around.

“Is there a space where we can speak in private?”

He sounded solicitous, eager to lessen the tension in the air, which stood in sharp contrast to his request for a private conversation. The knot in her stomach tightened again. She suppressed a wince.

“Please, come this way.”

She led the man to the meeting room, which was littered with folders, left after the unsuccessful search for the Sofala documents.

“Please, excuse the disarray,” she said. “We didn’t know you were coming; otherwise we would have been prepared.”

Bartina, as usual tuned into her boss’s internal turmoil, stuck her head into the room.

“Tea, coffee?” “Yes, coffee please. Thank you,” Vermeulen said.

“Aisa?”

“Tea. Thank you, Bartina.”

She picked up a stack of files from one end of the table and dropped them at the other end. Vermeulen followed her example. They sat at the cleared side of the table.

“I understand that unannounced visits are rather unorthodox,” Vermeulen said. “I apologize for that. Ordinarily, we would have sent an announcement of my visit. is case, however, is urgent, and I decided to skip the formalities. I hope I didn’t trouble you unduly.”

Why did his calm demeanor and friendly words have the opposite effect on her? She hadn’t done anything. She wasn’t guilty. Yet telling herself didn’t make it so. Something had gone terribly wrong in her organization. Maybe it was a simple error; maybe one of her staff had had a hand in it. It didn’t matter. Files were missing, and she didn’t know what to do next.