Kevin paused at the glass door to the exterior. Across the square he could see the usual coterie of Equatoguinean soldiers beneath the arches of the old town hall. They were up to their usual sedentary pursuits, aimlessly passing the time of the day. Some were sitting in old rattan furniture playing cards, others were leaning up against the building arguing with each other in strident voices. Almost all of them were smoking. Cigarettes were part of their wages. They were dressed in soiled, jungle-camouflage fatigues with scuffed combat boots and red berets. All of them had automatic assault rifles either slung over their shoulders or within arm’s reach.

From the moment of Kevin’s arrival at Cogo five years previously, the soldiers had scared him. Cameron McIvers, head of security, who had initially shown Kevin around, told him that GenSys had hired a good portion of the Equatoguinean army for protection. Later Cameron had admitted that the army’s so-called employment was in reality an additional payoff to the government as well as to the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Territorial Administration.

From Kevin’s perspective the soldiers looked more like a bunch of aimless teenagers than protectors. Their complexions were like burnished ebony. Their blank expressions and arched eyebrows gave them a look of superciliousness that reflected their boredom. Kevin always had the uncomfortable sense they were itching to have an excuse to use their weapons.

Kevin pushed through the door and walked across the square. He didn’t look in the direction of the soldiers, but from past experience he knew at least some of them were watching him, and it made his skin crawl. Kevin didn’t know a word of Fang, the major local dialect, so he had no idea what they were saying.

Once out of sight of the central square Kevin relaxed a degree and slowed his pace. The combination of heat and hundred-percent humidity was like a perpetual steam bath. Any activity caused a sweat. After only a few minutes, Kevin could feel his shirt beginning to adhere to his back.

Kevin’s house was situated a little more than halfway between the hospital-lab complex and the waterfront, a distance of only three blocks. The town was small but had obviously been charming in its day. The buildings had been constructed primarily of brightly colored stucco with red tile roofs. Now the colors had faded to pale pastels. The shutters were the type that hinged at the top. Most were in a terrible state of disrepair except for the ones on the renovated buildings. The streets had been laid out in an unimaginative grid but had been paved over the years with imported granite that had served as sailing ships’ ballast. In Spanish colonial times the town’s wealth had come from agriculture, particularly cocoa and coffee production, and it had graciously supported a population of several thousand people.

But the town’s history changed dramatically after 1959, the year of Equatorial Guinea’s independence. The new president, Macias Nguema, quickly metamorphosed from a popularly elected official to the continent’s worst, sadistic dictator whose atrocities managed to outclass even those of Idi Amin of Uganda and Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic. The effect on the country was apocalyptic. After fifty thousand people were murdered, a third of the population of the entire country fled, including all the Spanish settlers. Most of the country’s towns were decimated, particularly Cogo, which had been completely abandoned. The road connecting Cogo to the rest of the country fell into ruin and quickly became impassable.