by Jon Evans
Danton's face hardens. He reaches for the phone on his coffee table.
"They're blackmailing you, aren't you?" she asks. "The terrorists. Blackmailing you and Strick. What are they making you do? What do they want?"
Danton freezes. Then he turns and stares at her as if he has actually noticed her presence, in a way he never has before, as if he is really looking at her for the first time ever. Veronica realizes she just made a mistake, maybe a terrible one, in her effort to score a point and make him feel something. She shouldn't have given away what they know.
"You don't know what you're doing," Danton says quietly. "If you keep playing with fire, you will get burned alive." He pushes a button on his phone, waits only a moment, of course his call is answered immediately, all his calls are answered immediately.
"Get over here," he says to the phone. "I have a security situation."
"You can't do it," Veronica says. "Whatever they want you to do. People will die. Innocent people. God knows how many. You have to turn yourself in."
Danton looks at her, considering. For a second she wonders if he's going to allow her to depart.
Then he says, "You know why I'm here, Veronica? To save lives. I suppose I might as well try to save yours too. You should be grateful. I'm giving you one last chance. Stop interfering and go home. Today. No one's going to warn you again."
* * *
"To save lives?" Jacob asks, puzzled. His hands falter in mid-gearshift and the Toyota nearly stalls. He isn't accustomed to piloting a right-hand-drive stick-shift. "That's what he said? I mean, even if he's lying -"
"There's no if about it."
He decides not to argue the point. "Fine, but it's kind of a weird lie to tell, don't you think?"
Veronica shrugs.
"You didn't find out anything else?"
She hesitates. "Not really. I think he might suspect we know about Strick."
Jacob starts. "What? How?" If true, it's disastrous. The element of surprise is almost the only thing in their favour.
"Just his attitude, his face when he said he had friends in the US government."
"What were his exact words?"
She shrugs. "I don't remember. I was too wound up."
Jacob frowns. There's something about her body language. "You didn't give anything away, did you?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. But, I mean, we were married. He's supposed to know me pretty well. Maybe not though. He never paid that much attention to me."
"He never paid attention to you?" Jacob asks incredulously.
"Not after we got married. The way he saw it, his wife's job was to impress his friends, keep him warm at night, run the occasional errand, bear his children and acknowledge his supremacy. Not someone to have a meaningful relationship with."
"Jesus. Why did you stay?"
She sighs. "I don't know. I mean, for a long time I really believed he loved me, in his way, he was just distant and hard-working and reserved. The lies we tell ourselves. And… you know, being his wife was the good life. Villas, penthouses, yachts, private jets, expense accounts, beautiful people, amazing parties. He went away on business a lot and it was all mine. I guess on some level I must have known what I really was. And I guess I was okay with it. It was his idea to get a divorce."
"He dumped you? Why?"
"I can't have children. Endometriosis. I didn't know, whatever fucking conspiracy theory he wants to believe. You know what I think? I think when we found that out, he decided right then, that day, that moment, he would divorce me when I turned thirty. I'm pretty sure he hired a personal trainer to try to seduce me. He was worried the pre-nup wouldn't hold up in court. He definitely hired a private investigator to take pictures of me taking drugs. They were in the divorce papers I got served with two weeks after my thirtieth birthday."
After a moment Jacob says, angrily, "Well, you're almost lucky."
"Lucky?" She half-laughs. "How you figure?"
"You deserve a lot better than him."
They drive on in silence for a while through the breathtaking Ugandan countryside. Rolling hills drift past, thick green vegetation laced with red-dirt roads, maybe half of it occupied and farmed. All colours are brilliant under the searing equatorial sun. Everything seems airbrushed, too vivid to be real. Even the cultivated areas are beautiful, geometrically patterned fields cut by shining irrigation ditches, dun-coloured zebu cattle with scimitar-shaped horns thick as elephant tusks, little clusters of round bamboo-and-mud bandas in the shadows of tall trees. The ugly towns they pass through are like scars on a supermodel's face; brutal concrete shells and wooden huts in fields of filth-strewn dirt, as furrowed and uneven as a frozen ocean, littered with piles of bricks and clumps of filth.
The road is good, but there isn't much traffic. A few private cars; a few of what Derek called NGO Assault Vehicles, white 4WDs with logos painted on their doors and six-foot radio antennae attached to their front bumpers; one bright red EMS Postbus; and dozens of sixteen-seat minibus matatus hurtling past in both directions, with toppling mounds of baggage roped precariously to their roofs, stopping without warning anywhere and everywhere to absorb and disgorge passengers. Spike belts and yellow metal barrels indicate the police roadblocks that are ubiquitous on all African highways. To Jacob's relief, all the police wave them on without inventing some traffic transgression and demanding a "fine."
Jacob remembers what he wanted to tell Veronica. "Derek's phone rang this morning. His other phone. The one from the Sun City."
She blinks, looks at him. "Who was it?"
"That number in Zimbabwe."
"Did you answer?"
"No. They didn't leave a message."
Veronica shakes her head. "This doesn't make any sense. Zimbabwe, Danton, Strick, Al-Qaeda, interahamwe, Zanzibar Sams that are actually Igloos, it's like something out of Lewis Carroll, none of it makes any sense."
"It does to someone."
"Why are we even going to this camp? What are we possibly hoping to achieve?"
"Understanding," Jacob says sourly.
"You really think we'll find something?"
"Susan works at this refugee camp. That's why Derek brought her to Bwindi. He visited this camp, and made phone calls to someone else there. Whoever shot Prester is going to this camp. Whatever's going on, it's all going on there."
"And we're driving straight into it. And we know from that phone Susan picked up that they were already planning some kind of attack in western Uganda."
Jacob shrugs, annoyed. He's not going to back out now. He's already made that perfectly clear. "You want to get out and take a matatu back to Kampala, go ahead."
He waits tensely while Veronica thinks.
At length she says, "No. I want to know. But first thing we do is go to Susan, make sure someone knows we're there. And we don't do anything crazy. We definitely don't go back over the border. I'm not going back into the Congo."
Jacob half-smiles, relieved. "Yeah. Been there, done that, got the bloodstained T-shirt. No more Congo. It's a deal."
* * *
They stop for lunch in Fort Portal, a small collection of low, dusty buildings in the foothills of the cloud-wreathed Ruwenzori mountains. The town's two significant buildings were the local tribal chief's hilltop castle, which looked like a modern Western university building, and the town mosque. Veronica sees that mosque and thinks of the Arab man who held a panga to her throat. She, Derek, Susan and Jacob stopped in Fort Portal for lunch on the way to Bwindi, at the same hotel where he parks now, the Ruwenzori Travellers' Inn. She opens her mouth but leaves her protest unspoken. No sense running away from memories. And they know the food here is good.
They eat beef stew with rice and chapatis. Outside, peasant farmers walk rusting bicycles used for cargo; each supports four or five beer-keg-sized bundles of bananas fresh off the tree. A group of women obviously from Kampala, wearing bright clothes and mobile phones on lanyards, their hair cut fashionably short or braided with purple high
lights, pass through the more soberly dressed local foot traffic like swans through ducks. Their amused-by-hicksville expressions are the same as those of New Yorkers in Iowa.
"I'm thinking of calling Zimbabwe," Jacob says, after tapping at his hiptop for a bit.
"Zimbabwe?"
"That number Derek used to call. The one that called him this morning."
"Why?" To Veronica it sounds like asking for trouble.
"It seems like it's all going down at this camp, doesn't it? Any information we can get before going there might help."
"What if whoever it is is on the other side? What if he figures something out and calls them to warn them?"
"He can't," Jacob says. "Unless they've got a satellite phone."
"I thought there was cell service up by the camp."
"There is. But only a single Mango base station, the other networks don't reach it at all. Probably half the reason Derek got me my job. I just disabled incoming calls and texts via that base station for every phone but yours and mine."
"What? When?" Veronica asks, amazed.
"Just now, when you were ordering."
"But - Jacob, that's a refugee camp. People's lives could be in danger."
"Right now I'm more worried about our lives," he says sharply, and then in a softer voice, "It's no big deal. Outgoing calls still work."
"Huh." Veronica shakes her head. Jacob's abilities, and their ramifications, continue to astonish her. "OK. I mean, yeah, I'm sure curious, so why not. What the hell. Let's call Zimbabwe."
Jacob starts to dial, then looks around. "Once we're back in the car. Privacy."
"Be funny if the call didn't work," Veronica says sourly, once they have paid the bill and returned to the Toyota. "Half my international calls from here never get through."
Jacob smalls. "Not me. All my calls are flagged as highest priority … Here we go." He taps at his hiptop, switching it to speakerphone, and she hears the doubled rings of a phone call to England or a former English colony; then the click of an answer.
"Hello?" asks a plummy English voice that sounds both eager and wary.
Veronica looks at Jacob and realizes he has no idea what to say.
"Hello?" the voice repeats, more wary this time.
She takes the initiative: "We're returning your call from this morning."
A brief pause. "And with whom exactly do I have the pleasure of speaking?"
"My name's Veronica Kelly. I'm with Jacob Rockel. We were friends with Derek."
She ignores Jacob's appalled stare. There's no point in complicated lies and evasions. The truth may set them free; even if it doesn't, lies won't do them any good.
"Veronica and Jacob," the voice says doubtfully. "I seem to recall from YouTube that you were with him in the Congo."
"Yes."
"I called this morning to speak to his partner. Prester."
"I'm sorry," Veronica says, "Prester isn't available. He's, he's been shot."
"Shot? I see. An accident? Or an act of malicious intent?"
She pauses. "Intent."
"By whom?"
"We're not sure exactly. That's what we're trying to find out. We think," Veronica says, flinging caution to the wind, "it has something to do with the Zanzibar Sams, which are actually Igloos."
After a long pause the voice says, "I think we may have a bad connection. Could you repeat that?"
"Zanzibar Sams, which are actually Igloos."
"Ah. No, the connection is fine. What in God's name are you talking about?"
"We're not really sure," Veronica admits. "We thought you might know."
"There are two of you there?"
"Yes," Jacob contributes.
"And why did you think I might know?"
Jacob answers, "We have access to cell-phone records. We know Derek called you, and you called him, repeatedly, over the last few months."
"Mobile phone records. I see. Who do you work for?"
"Telecom Uganda."
"That's not what I mean," the voice says, a little testy. "Why do you have this phone? Why are you involved in this? Why are you even still in Africa?"
"I was his best friend," Jacob says. "Who exactly are you?"
A long silence. Veronica is afraid the man will hang up.
Eventually he says, grudgingly, "Let's just say Derek and I were in some ways compatriots."
"What did he call you about?" Veronica asks. "We know he was investigating a smuggling ring. We think he found out someone American was involved, not Prester, and that's who arranged for him and the rest of us to be abducted."
After another pause, the man acknowledges, "That was what I understood as well. From inferences. He told me very little directly."
"Very little like what?" Jacob asks, exasperated.
"Pardon me, Mr. Rockel, if that is actually your name, but why should I tell you anything? How am I to know under what auspices you acquired this phone?"
Jacob hesitates. "You can't."
"Precisely," the voice says. "Pleasure talking to you."
"Wait," Veronica says. "Why did you call? What did you want to talk to Prester about?"
Another long pause. "I suppose the question itself is harmless. I called to ask for Derek's professional next of kin."
"Excuse me?" Jacob asks, befuddled.
"Either you really are an amateur or you play the part well. I mean the name of whoever has inherited Derek's work. I have something for him or her. My more official request seems to have become lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth, and I thought I might speed up the process a little."
"I'm sorry," Veronica says, "we don't have any idea who that might be."
"Pity."
"Wait," Jacob says desperately. "You're saying you have something meant for Derek? What is it?"
"Information."
"What kind of information?"
"Now that would be telling," the man says, amused. "Goodbye."
* * *
The road from Fort Portal to Semiliki weaves through the lush green hills of western Uganda, past misty crater lakes, placid villages, tiny roadside markets, vast tea plantations, a cement factory, and eleven million banana trees. Sometimes the road is wide and paved, well-signed, with painted lane markers and roadside gutters to carry away rainy-season overflow; sometimes it is well-worn red dirt; sometimes it is heavily potholed asphalt, far worse to drive on than dirt. They stop in Semiliki for gas, Snickers bars and Cokes, and for Veronica to take the wheel. By the time they finally see the sign that says UNHCR SEMILIKI beside an otherwise unremarkable road of pitted laterite, the sun is low above the western hills.
"Are we even sure this is the right road?" Veronica asks, as Jacob produces and consults his trusty hiptop.
"I'm sure the tracker is that way. Right now I'm not sure of much else."
Veronica takes a deep breath. It occurs to her that UNHCR Semiliki is miles away from civilization, home to numerous white NGOers, and very near the Congo border. They already know Al-Qaeda are planning attacks on western Uganda. This camp, so close to Athanase's smuggling route, will certainly be at the top of their list. And maybe they've just been waiting for the Zanzibar Sams to arrive before they strike.
But it's too late to back out now. She grips the wheel and the gearshift, puts her feet to the clutch and gas pedal, and steers the Toyota towards the refugee camp.
Chapter 24
The red dirt road is terrible, carved with more craters and ravines than the surface of Mars. It takes thirty bumpy minutes to drive the eight kilometres to the refugee camp. Entrance is barred by a pair of concrete guard huts and a steel bar across the road, manned by uniformed Ugandan soldiers, and for a moment Jacob is worried they will simply be denied access and sent back; but when he invokes Susan's name, the soldiers' faces clear with recognition, and they raise the bar to allow the Toyota access.
UNHCR Semiliki is an encyclopedia of suffering, a tent city of misery in a small valley surrounded by steep and largely denuded hills. A half-d
ozen brick buildings cluster in the middle of the settlement. The camp proper boasts a smattering of thatched mud huts. But most of its thousands of shelters are blue plastic or green canvas tarpaulins stretched over frames made of tree branches. Whole families live in each. A few roads radiate out from the brick buildings at the center of the camp, but in the anarchic wedges between those roads, the tents are packed so densely that there is rarely enough room for more than two to walk abreast. There are people everywhere, the camp seems flooded with them, some well-kept and clean, most dressed in rags. A few goats and chickens pick their way through the dirt. Jacob wonders what they eat; the ground throughout the camp is entirely mud, even weeds have been trampled to death. He doesn't want to even imagine what the camp is like in rainy season.
There are more women than men, and amazing numbers of children. A few have the distended bellies that said malnutrition. Many children, and a few adults, turn and wave, smiling hopefully as the Toyota passes. Others stare with lifeless eyes. A few look angry, hostile. Jacob hears snatches of French through the open window. The air holds a stale, faintly rancid smell of smoke and filth. He sees a huge tent beneath which a teacher teaches mathematics to several hundred children, in the failing red light, with no aids but chalk and a single blackboard. He sees and smells a long, low, filthy building labelled LATRINE, its wrecked door hanging open like a broken jaw. Old women lug yellow jerrycans full of water, and others queue to fill theirs from rusted taps that protrude from the ground. Pots boil over open-pit fires next to wood-and-canvas shelters.
The brick buildings with tin roofs in the middle of the camp seem like an island of peace and civilization. Here the soft background chatter of the refugees is drowned out by the hum of multiple generators. Veronica parks the Toyota at the end of the row of cars in front of another guard hut, populated by a half-dozen Ugandan soldiers. Jacob wonders if these soldiers, and those by the gate, are intended more to protect the refugees, or to keep them in the camp and under control. He wonders how effective they would be against Athanase's veteran interahamwe force.
"Susan Strachan, please, can you direct us to her?" Jacob says to the soldier who comes to investigate.