Free The Night Ranger by Alex Berenson

one. I need a fixer.”
    “You called me for a recommendation, Mr. Wells? Like I’m Zagat’s?”
    “Good enough for
The
New York Times
, good enough for me. You help me, I promise I won’t forget.”
    “Tell me who hired you, I’ll hook you up with the best guy in town. He’s connected everywhere. Smart. He can give you all the background you need on the camps. And the political situation, which is complicated.”
    “Nothing free with you guys. Always trading.”
    “You called me.”
    Wells couldn’t argue the point. “You can’t use this, not yet, but Gwen Murphy’s family brought me in.”
    “From the U.S.?”
    “Yes.”
    “Have they gotten a ransom demand?”
    “No. The fixer, please.”
    “His name’s Wilfred Wumbugu. I’ll text you his number. Will I see you at the press conference tonight?”
    “Anything’s possible.” Wells hung up, thinking,
Press conference?
    —
    But first the permits. He called Wilfred, explained what he needed.
    “It’s not possible. Since the kidnapping, there’s no access. Essential aid workers with existing permits only. No exceptions.”
    “I’ll pay. Whatever it costs.”
    “We talk in person. At Simmers. Thirty minutes.”
    “Simmers.”
    “Your driver will know.”
    They were closing—slowly—on downtown Nairobi. To the northwest, office towers marked the central business district. Kenya remained desperately poor, but after decades of stagnation, its economy was reviving. New apartment buildings and office parks rose along the highway. Billboards advertised low-fare airlines connecting Nairobi with the rest of East Africa. And the traffic was horrendous, as the new middle class jammed dilapidated roads. Despite his frustration, Wells almost had to smile. Back in Montana, Evan probably imagined him with pistol in hand, cracking skulls. Instead he was stuck in traffic on his way to get a permit. The thrilling life of the secret operative.
    Though Wells didn’t doubt the skull-cracking would come.
    —
    Simmers was a restaurant and dance hall under a big tent in the midst of the office towers, smoky, almost shabby, with plastic chairs and tables and a barbecue grill. A cantina, really. Wells liked it immediately. A man at a corner table caught Wells’s eye, waved him over.
    “I’m Wilfred.” He was a slim man in a crisp white shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. Back home Wells would have pegged him as a Web designer.
    “How’d you guess it was me?” Wells was the only white person in the place.
    Wilfred waved over a waiter. “You want something?”
    “A Coke.”
    “Not a Tusker? The national beer.”
    “I try not to drink before noon.”
    “In here, time doesn’t matter. Simmers never closes. Open twenty-four hours. We call them day-and-night clubs.”
    “Coke.”
    “Two Cokes,” Wilfred said to the waiter. “Now tell me again what you want.”
    Wells did.
    “You understand, these camps, all of eastern Kenya, it’s dangerous now. Because of Shabaab. You know about them?”
    “Yes.” Al-Shabaab was a radical Muslim group that controlled much of Somalia and enforced strict sharia law in its territory. Women wore burqas. Thieves faced amputation. But the group also had a criminal side, smuggling sugar into Kenya and protecting the pirates who kidnapped sailors off the coast. The United States and United Nations had tried to destroy Shabaab for years. Lately they’d made progress. United Nations peacekeepers had pushed Shabaab’s guerrillas out of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. And Kenya had briefly sent troops into Somalia from the west. Still, Shabaab remained a threat. The Kenyan government had publicly announced that the group was the prime suspect in the kidnapping.
    “But doesn’t the government or the UN try to screen Shabaab out of the refugee camps?”
    “Wait until you see them. A half-million people. Almost ten percent of the population of Somalia. And you think they tell the truth about who they are? Oh, yes, I’m Shabaab, I shot