Night of Knives

by Jon Evans

  "Christ," Julian says, in a very different tone of voice than that in which he began the conversation.

  "In particular, we believe that Al-Qaeda has been blackmailing Strick into giving them material assistance for an attack they are planning in the very near future."

  "Wait," Julian says, holding his hands up as if a wall is about to fall on him. "Wait, slow down, please."

  Jacob falls silent.

  "I need to go get my boss," Julian says. "Stay right there. I'll be right back."

  He all but scampers out of the room. Veronica and Jacob look at one another.

  "Well," she says, "at least they're taking us seriously."

  Less than a minute later the door re-opens and a thin man in his fifties enters the room. The white-haired man's skin seems unnaturally pale, and even his facial features are thin, seem slashed into taut skin. He is the same man they saw yesterday, in the picture taken from Prester's camera phone. His appearance is surreal, it's like he has stepped out of that picture into real life.

  "I'm Dr. Murray," he says, "the chief of mission here. I understand -"

  Then he recognizes them and suddenly falls silent. Veronica gapes at the white-haired man. For a heartbeat he is no less surprised to see them, his eyes widen and his step falters, but he quickly recovers his possession and continues smoothly, "Mr. Rockel. Miss Kelly. I wasn't told it was you. We're all so glad you're safe after what happened."

  Jacob and Veronica are too stunned to speak.

  "Is something wrong?" Dr. Murray asks. His voice is like warm silk.

  "No," Jacob manages. "No, we're just very tired, we drove all night to get here."

  "Drove from where?"

  Jacob flashes a panicked look at Veronica. She doesn't know how to respond. Her mind is whirling. It doesn't seem possible that this Dr. Murray is in league with Strick and Al-Qaeda. But there's no other explanation. Yesterday he was in the same room as Prester's phone, a room where Prester was handcuffed to a bed, those are established facts.

  "From the border," Jacob says haltingly. Veronica supposes there's no point in hiding that now. They just admitted everything. "Near Semiliki."

  "Indeed. And what were you doing there?"

  After a long moment Jacob begins to tell the story, speaking slowly, starting back in the Congo, expounding on irrelevant details while leaving out as much as possible. Veronica realizes he's stalling, playing for time. They have to do something. Murray already knows they know too much. They have to get out of here.

  "Where's the bathroom?" Veronica interrupts.

  "Just down the hall," Dr. Murray says absently, his thin face rigid with contemplation.

  Veronica slips out of the room and closes the door behind her, dizzy with exhaustion and panic. She walks down the hall, barely aware of the world around her, walks right past the bathroom and has to double back. She's thankful it's empty. Veronica sits in a stall, locks the door, covers her face with her hands, and tries to think.

  Her gut tells her to run, to escape and leave Jacob behind. Murray won't allow them both to leave. He'll think of some reason to have them arrested, their evidence will be destroyed. She has to get out before he calls security, once he does that it's all over, the US embassy is probably the single most secure building in all of Kampala. Jacob knows all this. He wants her to escape right now, without him, she is sure of it.

  "Jacob, I'm sorry," Veronica whispers aloud.

  Then she gets up and walks fast out of the bathroom, heading for the exit. She passes an Asian woman holding a folder of papers. She reaches a T-junction, turns left – then stops and turns back towards the junction.

  For a moment she stares at the little red fire alarm hanging on the wall there. Then she walks back, looks around to ensure no one is watching her, reaches out and pulls the alarm. It is harder than she expected, she has to use much of her strength before the little lever pulls free. A single moment of silence passes. Then a siren begins to whoop.

  Veronica quickly scuttles away. About ten seconds pass. Then doors begin to open up and down the corridor, and people begin to stream out, most of them white and well-dressed, wearing resigned or irritated expressions, most holding papers and cell phones and Palm Pilots. She joins the throng as they file sedately out of the building into the parking lot, then makes her way inobtrusively over to Jacob's Toyota. Now if only Jacob can find a way to get away, and surely he will think of something, he probably has some embassy-escape function on his hiptop -

  "Come on, let's go," Jacob says urgently, behind her, and Veronica sags with relief. Saved by American fire-safety standards.

  They dive into the Toyota. He reverses out, they have to move slowly, their path is blocked by the fringes of the crowd. Veronica looks around, afraid Murray will suddenly loom out of the assembled masses, but he is nowhere to be seen. The office workers around them make way for the vehicle. Then they are at the security gate - and they are waved past. This security system is built to keep terrorists out, not white people in, and Dr. Murray doesn't yet know that they know he's conspiring with Strick.

  "How'd you get away?" she asks.

  "Halfway out I said I'd left my hiptop, ran back before he could say anything, found another set of stairs. But he got the CD."

  "Shit."

  "I've got other copies. Online and off."

  "I can't believe it. Not just Strick, but the deputy chief of the embassy."

  "They were both smuggling," Jacob says grimly. "And now they're both being blackmailed."

  Veronica nods, but somehow that doesn't sound quite right. Would a man like Dr. Murray actually have met with Athanase, and put himself in a position where he could be blackmailed, if he had Strick to do the dirty work for him? And Danton too? Any two of them, maybe, but all three – it doesn't sound right, it feels like a jigsaw piece that doesn't quite fit. But it must be true. What other reason could there be for Murray, Strick and Danton to conspire?

  "They'll be looking for us," Jacob says. "We have to get out of here."

  "How?"

  "Entebbe. The airport. We have to get out of the country before they can find us."

  * * *

  He has just turned onto the Entebbe highway when his hiptop rings. Jacob puts it to his ear for a moment, listens. "Are you sure?" he asks. Then, in a taut, brittle voice, "All right. Thank you. It's a misunderstanding, Henry. Don't worry. It will all be cleared up soon."

  He hangs up. Then he pulls the Toyota over to the side of the highway and brakes so hard the tires screech and Veronica is thrown up against her seat belt.

  "What is it?" she demands.

  "That was Henry," Jacob says, his voice weak. "He says the police just came to his house. You and I are wanted for the murder of John Katumbi, aka Prester John, whose body was apparently discovered in my apartment."

  Veronica feels like she is falling. "Oh my God."

  "They'll have notified the airport. We can't fly out."

  She thinks a moment. "We have to drive to the border. To Kenya."

  "There's a half-dozen police checkpoints on the Jinja highway alone. And that's on a normal day. Probably twice that when they're actually after someone. We're lucky he called before we reached one on this road. The police have cell phones, they'll broadcast our descriptions via text message. A runaway white couple isn't exactly hard to find in Uganda."

  "Can't you do something about the broadcast?"

  Jacob hesitates. "Not if it's already gone out - but maybe."

  He grabs his hiptop, tries to log in to Telecom Uganda's master database server - and stares at the words LOGIN FAILURE. He retries, typing his password very slowly and carefully. Same result.

  "They locked me out," he says dully. "Maybe last night, maybe just now. Prester must have told them what I could do. I never put in a back door. I should have, of course I should have, but I never thought I'd need it, I just never imagined we'd find something this big. What a fucking idiot I am."

  "It's okay," Veronica says.
/>   "No, it's not. We have to turn our phones off, all of them. I made them invisible but if they look hard they'll be able to reverse that and track us. Take the battery out too. Just to be sure."

  She nods quietly. Cars whiz past in both directions as they remove the batteries from their cell phones. Veronica feels like they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg. She wonders how long before a police car passes and notices the two white people pulled over on the shoulder.

  "How can they do this?" Veronica asks. "How can they make the Uganda police come after us?"

  "Because they have friends in high Ugandan places. Remember what Danton wrote about bought-off locals?" Jacob takes a deep breath. "This is bad. This is extremely bad. If the police find us, no way we live long enough to tell our story to anyone who cares. We'll be shot trying to escape or something. Like Prester."

  "Then what can we do? Where can we go?"

  Jacob shakes his head. "I have no idea."

  Chapter 28

  Jacob stares out at the Kampala-Entebbe highway, stretched before them like a black ribbon laid across Uganda's green hills, and tries to think of a way out. No solution is apparent. Despite the equatorial heat he feels cold, his heart is thumping, panic is threatening to swamp his mind like a tsunami, wash it clear of all reason.

  Veronica reaches out and takes his hand. He squeezes it tightly. There must be a way out. There has to be, for Veronica's sake, he got her into this mess, he has to get her out. This is a solvable problem, it has to be.

  "Lake Victoria," he says. "Maybe we can charter a boat to Tanzania."

  "There are police at the port. They'll be looking for us."

  "Yeah. Fuck."

  "Maybe the Canadian embassy? Or the media?"

  He considers. "No. Embassies don't help you when you're wanted for murder. They'll just turn us over and promise to visit in jail. Media, by the time we convince anyone we're not crackpots it'll be too late. We have to get out of the country first."

  "At least we've got our passports."

  Think outside the box, he tells himself. But this box seems like an inescapable cage. "OK. We have to get out of Uganda. We've got passports. Maybe five hundred dollars cash. Clothes. Cell phones we don't dare turn on. A car that will get us exactly as far as the next police checkpoint. Nobody we can trust." He shakes his head and sags back in defeat. "I'm sorry. We're fucked. There's no way out."

  Veronica says, "Rukungu."

  Jacob blinks. They dropped Rukungu off at the Hotel Sun City this morning, just after arriving in Kampala. As far as Jacob was concerned the man then ceased to exist. "What about him?"

  "We can trust him. Lydia too."

  "Great. An interahamwe murderer and a refugee hooker dying of AIDS. I'm sure they'll be a big help. What do you want to do, hide in that hotel forever?"

  "It beats sitting here."

  Jacob can't argue with that. A potential hiding place isn't much, but it's something. Maybe with time to concentrate he can think of a way out. They have until tomorrow morning at the latest. Then their faces will appear on the front page of all Kampala's newspapers. He puts the Toyota into drive, eases it into a U-turn, and heads back towards Kampala.

  * * *

  Something moves in the corner of Veronica's vision, and she starts, but it's only a cockroach scuttling across the bathroom floor. Jacob lies on the bed next to her. His eyes are closed but she can tell by his breath that he's awake. She looks around the tiny room, at the holes in the wall, the shredded mosquito net dangling from fan that doesn't work above the thin torn mattress on which they sit, the mattress beneath which they found Derek's notes and secret second cell phone less than a week ago. She starts breathing hard again, feels herself break out in sweat, this room is too small, too much like a coffin, she feels a desperate, fluttering need to escape, to get out by any means necessary, she feels a panicky scream begin to build up in her gut.

  Veronica closes her eyes and tries to make herself breathe slowly and deeply, to think of anything but the tight confines of this room. It shouldn't be hard. There are so many other fears to focus on. It feels like they're up against some kind of enormous machine, a steamroller that will annihilate them for the sin of accidentally getting in its way. She tries to tell herself that the walls closing in are the least of her problems, but it doesn't help, her heart keeps thumping erratically, like a frightened bird in her ribcage.

  "We should never have stayed," she says angrily, trying to displace her fear with rage. "We should have gone home like Prester told us, like everyone told us. Jesus, this is so crazy. We didn't do anything wrong. How did we wind up hiding in this shithole?"

  Jacob doesn't answer.

  "If they'll find us they'll kill us, won't they? They'll actually kill us. This is so fucking crazy. We were so stupid. We should have gone home."

  "Well, we didn't," he says harshly, opening his eyes. "Yes, we should have. Yes, it's my fault, is that what you're getting at? I don't know what to say. I'm sorry."

  "Your fault?" Veronica looks at him, astonished. "What are you talking about? You didn't make me do anything."

  Jacob shrugs. "It feels like my fault."

  She changes the subject. "How long has it been?"

  "Hours. Look. It's almost dark out." He gestures to the single cracked window, covered with gunk, that faces a sheer concrete wall.

  "We can trust them. They won't tell on us."

  "No. They'll just take our money and run."

  Lydia and Rukungu have taken Jacob and Veronica's ATM cards and gone to the downtown Barclays to withdraw as much money as possible. They didn't dare go themselves and risk discovery. Driving into Kampala, finding a place behind the Sun City to park, and sneaking into the hotel was terrifying enough.

  "I don't think so," Veronica says.

  "I don't see why they wouldn't. She's a hooker. He's a sociopath."

  "He's not a sociopath. He saved my life. He didn't have to."

  "He's a mass murderer."

  "That was a long time ago. I'm sure he came to Kampala for Lydia. I wonder what their story is."

  Jacob smiles mordantly. "Oh, you know. Same old cliché. Boy meets girl, boy commits genocide, boy loses girl."

  She winces. "That's not funny."

  "That's Africa."

  "I don't think he's a sociopath. I think he's, he's repented."

  "I think he's using us, just like he was using Derek, and we'll never see him again."

  She shakes her head. "What do we do if you're right?"

  Jacob has no answer. Veronica lies back on the bed, closes her eyes and tries to think. Something has been bothering her since the embassy, a mental itch that won't go away, a vague but nagging notion that they have misunderstood something vital.

  The idea that Danton, Strick and Dr. Murray conspired to smuggle gold and coltan out of the Congo, and are now being blackmailed by Al-Qaeda – the more she thinks about it, the less it makes sense. Veronica would have sworn that Danton would never have gotten involved in something as sordid as African smuggling. Prester was totally convinced that Strick was not corrupt. And the idea of Danton, Strick and Dr. Murray, smart and cautious men, all being so careless as to leave evidence that could be used to blackmail them – it just seems unlikely.

  She thinks of the expression on Danton's face when he said he came to Uganda to save lives. She was married to him for seven years, and she knows he meant it.

  She thinks back to Rukungu telling them that the man who killed Derek wasn't Al-Qaeda, wasn't even a Muslim, was one of Athanase's interahamwe thugs dressed up in a dishdash, and furthermore that the only Arab among the interahamwe was a trader with no religion but money.

  Veronica opens her eyes wide.

  "Jacob," she says.

  He looks at her.

  "Tell me something," Veronica says slowly. "How do we know, how do we actually know, that there were ever any terrorists?"

  Jacob stares at her. "What are you talking about? You mean in the Congo
?"

  "Yes."

  "But - we saw them."

  "No we didn't. We saw three black men in dishdashes. One of whom we now know was just one of Athanase's men. And one Arab guy who, if you think about it, never actually did anything except pose for the camera."

  Jacob considers, remembers. "True. But why would Athanase pretend to be working with Al-Qaeda?"

  "Maybe because Strick and Danton and Dr. Murray told him to."

  "What?"

  "I don't know," she admits. "Maybe I'm wrong. But something about all this just doesn't seem to make any sense."

  "They don't benefit from a fake Al-Qaeda scare. Nobody does."

  "No." Veronica sighs. She should have known the idea was too crazy to be true.

  Then Jacob says, thoughtfully, "No, wait. That's not actually true. There is one guy who did very well off our abduction, isn't there?"

  She looks at him.

  "Our friend from Zimbabwe. General Gideon Gorokwe. Remember what Prester said? A couple weeks ago he was an evil general from a pariah state. Today he's getting weapons, meeting with American diplomats, he's a valuable ally in the war on terror."

  "Right," Veronica sits up. "Maybe Gorokwe invented fake terrorists to get American support. Maybe he and Athanase were in cahoots."

  Jacob shakes his head. "No. Sorry. If Al-Qaeda aren't really in the Congo, then what's with the surface-to-air missiles?"

  "Maybe they're for Gorokwe."

  "What does he need them for? More to the point, why did Strick want to get them to him? Why would Danton and Strick and Dr. Murray get in bed with Gorokwe and Athanase?"

  Veronica can't think of any answer. She tries to imagine what could bind her multimillionaire ex-husband, a senior American diplomat, and a CIA agent to an interahamwe warlord and a Zimbabwean general, and fails.

  "To save lives," she says, repeating her ex-husband's words. "That's why Danton said he was here. He actually said it like he meant it."

  "Yeah? Whose lives?"

  She shrugs. "He does donate a lot of money to Africa. Mostly to Zimbabwe, his mother was born there. Until last year, when Mugabe threw out most of the NGOs and stopped accepting money. So I guess that's one way Danton might be connected to Gorokwe. But I don't see how you save lives with surface-to-air missiles. I mean, he's deluded enough to believe you can, if you kill the right person."