Jungle Of Steel And Stone vk-2

by George C. Chesbro

  Floating in a bodiless dream state through the Kalahari night, he watches as a tall Bantu crawls slowly and silently, like some great black desert lizard, to the crest of a steep star dune and peers over its spine. Below, in the dune's trough, the huge fire that had painted the sky an hour before is dying, reduced to a broad grid of glowing embers that pulse like a breathing creature in the desert wind just beginning to rise from the north.

  The man can tell from the layout of this camp that it is K'ung, not Bantu, and he knows that not even the presence of Christian missionaries—indicated by the Land-Rover parked on the lee side of a smaller dune to the west—will guarantee him a welcome. Missionaries or no, the man knows that he may be killed if he hails the camp; at the least he will probably be beaten, then stripped of the precious medicinal herbs he has spent the last six days gathering in the open desert.

  The man inches backward, then abruptly freezes as a strong puff of wind causes the bed of coals below him to flare briefly. In that instant the man glimpses something a short distance from the fire that causes him to grunt softly with surprise and intense interest.

  A wooden statue, perhaps half-a-man high, rests on a flat, hard-packed bed of sand.

  This is not just any K'ung tribe, the Bantu thinks as darkness once again washes over the statue in the wake of the passing wind. It has to be the small band of which stories are told, the Lonely Ones of the deep desert with their strange, unshakable beliefs—and strange missionaries that other missionaries make jokes about. The statue must be the Nal-toon, the idol this tribe believes to be the Maker and Protector of all things.

  Theirs is a silly faith, the man thinks. For almost three years he has been a Christian, a believer in the Jesus-God, Who is invisible. Unlike the Nal-toon, the Jesus-God cannot be stolen, burned, or harmed in any way. The Jesus-God is the mightiest warrior of all and does not have to be guarded by anyone who might fall asleep—as the K'ung warrior the man has glimpsed sprawled on the sand near the idol has done.

  The man's lips draw back in a sly smile. Obviously, he thinks, the sleeping man is not the legendary Tobal'ak, about whom so many fantastic stories are told. Tobal'ak, it is said, does not require sleep like ordinary men, and he is never far from the Nal-toon.

  The Bantu rests his forehead on the night-cool sand, breathing deeply and regularly as he tries to weigh the risks and consequences of a failed attempt to steal the idol against the certain rewards that success will bring. He knows he will be killed if he is caught. But who will catch him? Tobal'ak? The man does not believe all the stories that are told about the K'ung warrior—indeed, he is not even sure he believes there is such a warrior as Tobal'ak, any more than he believes that the Nal-toon is anything but an ugly piece of carved wood.

  On the other hand, the man knows that the idol will be worth a great deal to the white hunters who regularly pass through the Bantu camps at the edge of the jungle looking for such objects, which, it is said, are sold to other tribes in faraway places. An object as large as the Nal-toon should be worth many steel knives, the man thinks, as well as a large pouch of matches. He may even ask for the most precious gift of all—a radio like the missionaries carry.

  The Bantu makes his decision. He rises, picks up his bundle of herbs, and moves stealthily along the spine of the dune until he is directly above the Nal-toon and its sleeping guard, upwind of any dogs that may be in the camp. He puts his bundle down, then slides silently down the inner face of one of the radiating arms of the dune. He puts his hands out to his sides and brakes to a stop as he comes abreast of the idol. He waits for a time, pressing back against the sand and listening in the darkness. However, there are no sounds of alarm, and the guard continues to sleep.

  Then, in an unbroken series of smooth and silent movements, the man reaches over the spine of the radiating arm, seizes the idol with both hands, then starts back up the face of the dune. The Nal-toon is much heavier than the man thought it would be, and he finds himself clumsily plowing in the sand, driving with his legs and gasping for breath. But he makes it back to the top of the dune safely.

  Standing on top of the dune, the Bantu's lips curl back from his teeth in a contemptuous sneer as he looks down on the sleeping camp. The K'ung—at least this tribe of K'ung—are like children, he thinks. If this piece of wood is their only god, as he has been told it is, they should have taken more care in guarding it.

  Suddenly he feels the curious, empty feeling in his stomach, which the missionaries have told him is guilt. The man knows that, as a Christian, he is not supposed to steal—not even from his enemies. But he reminds himself that he has not been a Christian for very long and thus cannot be expected to follow all the many rules which have been laid down for him by the missionaries. Also, he has been told that the Jesus-God will always forgive him, as long as he is sorry.

  And he is truly sorry, the Bantu thinks; he would not have stolen this tribal god were it not for the fact that he wants knives, matches—and maybe a radio.

  The Bantu hefts the idol under his arm, slides his carrying sling over his shoulder, and starts toward the north, leaning into the wind that swirls around him and quickly erases the evidence of his passage.

  Veil leaves the man's mind and rolls away from the dream to another, to be with Sharon.

  Chapter Five

  Veil was up before dawn. He ate a breakfast of black coffee, cheese, and bread as he listened to the news. Toby had not been found, and the police dragnet had now shifted to a systematic search of abandoned buildings, alleys, and unused storefronts on both the East and West Sides. By six-thirty, Veil was entering Central Park at Sixty-ninth Street, retracing the steps of the K'ung warrior-prince.

  Nobody goes to ground like a K'ung warrior.

  He did not bother looking for signs where Toby had gone in, for he knew that any spoor would have been obliterated—first by the feet of police officers—and later by reporters and the curious. Instead he walked straight ahead, glancing to his left and right, studying the general terrain and looking for the most likely escape route for a fleeing bushman to take.

  Veil smiled thinly and shook his head at the thought of how preposterous was the thing he was trying to do. He hadn't done any tracking in more than seventeen years, and in the jungles of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia he had been tracking Viet Cong and Pathet Lao, whose sandals left the distinct imprint of tire tread. Here he was in Central Park—an area larger than some countries, used every day by thousands of people wearing everything from sneakers to combat boots. Toby, Veil thought, could be anywhere; he could even be where the police thought he was, cowering in some rat-infested basement. But Veil did not think so.

  Nobody goes to ground like a K'ung warrior.

  He kept walking in a straight line, down into a grassy bowl ringed by trees. Despite the early hour, lovers on their blankets were already—or maybe still—at each other, and joggers of every shape glided or huffed along. Veil ducked when someone shouted a warning and a purple Frisbee sailed just over his head.

  Tracking the K'ung had been a great idea, Veil thought as he climbed halfway up the opposite face of the bowl, turned, and sat down on the grass. It was just impossible to execute.

  Then he saw Reyna Alexander come crawling on her hands and knees out of the trees directly across the way. The anthropologist wore jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved cotton blouse. Her long, blue-black hair was tied back in a ponytail that flowed like an ink stain across her back as, oblivious to the startled and curious stares of lovers, joggers, and Frisbee players, she slowly crawled fifteen feet out onto the grass, then stopped before a small patch of bare ground. After almost a minute of staring at the ground she rose, brushed grass and dirt off her jeans, then headed back into the wooded area.

  Anyone who even presumed to track someone else through Central Park had to be good, Veil thought, and he sensed that the frail woman was, indeed, very good. He was about to rise and follow her when he realized that he was not the only one with that idea. He caught a mo
vement out of the corner of his eye, looked across the bowl to his right, and saw a man in tan chinos and a red tank top appear to wave at him. Then the man passed the edge of his hand across his throat. A moment later a man rushed past from behind, brushing Veil's shoulder. The man—squat, balding, and wearing a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts with matching shirt—was clumsily trying to stuff a pair of binoculars back into a leather case as he ran. The men joined up on the sidewalk, then entered the wooded area. Veil rose and ran down the hill.

  Like a brother to the night that had just passed, Veil slipped silently into the trees, perhaps twenty yards from where Reyna, and then the men, had entered. He had no trouble following the sound trail of cracking branches and muttered curses of the men ahead of him, and Veil followed, gliding from tree to tree through the shadows.

  The two men stopped for a few moments to have a whispered conference, then moved to their left. Veil did the same, moving parallel to the men, and was twenty-five yards behind them when they emerged from the trees and onto a large expanse of rolling lawn.

  Reyna's ebony-crowned head was just disappearing over the crest of another knoll. The two men hurried after Reyna, and Veil followed them.

  Strung out over almost a quarter mile, the procession crossed the East Drive. Reyna angled in the direction of the zoo, walked another hundred yards, then once again dropped to her hands and knees on the perimeter of a large patch of bare ground. The two men stopped. Veil stopped, lay down on his back, and watched over the top of his crossed ankles.

  Reyna raised little clouds of dust as she slowly crawled forward on the dirt, head very close to the ground. She rose when she reached the other side, cupped her hands to her mouth, and uttered a strange, guttural cry that carried clearly across the meadow, startling a flock of pigeons at the same time as it caused a jogger to glance up sharply, stumble, and fall.

  Then Reyna began walking quickly to her left, disappearing into another wooded area. The two men exchanged a few words, then hurried after her. Veil, remembering the throat-cutting gesture the thinner man had made, sprang to his feet and ran after them.

  He found Reyna and the two men thirty yards inside the line of trees, behind the thick trunk of an ancient oak. Any concern Veil might have had about the men being police was instantly dispelled: the man in the Bermuda shorts was trying to drag a struggling Reyna to the ground, while the man in the tank top waited, switchblade in hand. Veil took the man with the knife first, hitting him with a powerful side kick in the solar plexus that sat him down hard on the ground, knife still in his hand. His face turned purple, and his eyes bulged as his mouth gaped open and his chest heaved in a desperate, silent plea for air that simply would not enter his lungs. In a continuation of the same motion Veil spun around and smashed the flat of his hand into the other man's face with enough force to crush the man's nose and snap off his front teeth. The squat man keeled over backward, unconscious.

  "Excuse me," Veil said with a wink to the white-faced, astonished Reyna as he grabbed the man in the tank top by the hair and pulled him behind a clump of brush. "I'll be right back."

  Veil took the switchblade from the gasping man's hand, pushed him on his back, then straddled him. "Let's chat," he said in a flat voice as he tested the sharpness of the blade against the thickness of the hairs on the man's bare left shoulder.

  "Gaa . . . gaa . . ."

  Dissatisfied with the switchblade, Veil sank its tip into the trunk of a tree just behind the man's head and snapped off the blade. Then he reached down inside his boot and withdrew one of his most prized possessions—a short dagger with a blade made of the rarest Damascus steel, a gift taken in barter from a knife maker on Staten Island for whom Veil had performed a service three years before.

  "Are . . . you a . . . cop?" the man managed to say.

  "You should be so lucky." Veil pulled up the edge of the man's T-shirt and slit it from waist to neck; there was virtually no tug at all on the blade, and the cotton parted with a soft whisper. "That was to get your attention. If you don't give me the right answers, I cut you next. Who hired you to follow the girl?"

  The man, still struggling to draw a full breath, stared wide-eyed at the man with the long yellow hair and glacial-blue, gold-flecked eyes who was holding the tip of his knife just above the man's sternum. "A guy by the name of Picker Crabbe," he muttered hoarsely, licking his lips. "He's—"

  "I know Picker. How much is he paying you?"

  "A grand each if we brought him the statue the guy stole last night. Picker said that the girl was a friend of this guy, and she might lead us to him."

  "She couldn't lead you to anybody after you jumped her. Why the hell did you do that?"

  "Who the hell are you?"

  Without hesitation Veil flicked his wrist, opening a three-inch gash just below the man's right nipple. Blood welled in the slit, rolled down the man's side. The man started to yell, but Veil clapped his hand over the open mouth, then held the tip of the knife against the man's throat. The man rolled his eyes and shook his head. Veil took his hand away and repeated the question. His voice was flat—absolutely devoid of emotion, implacable.

  "She moves like a ghost," the man answered in a voice quivering with terror. Ignoring the knife now, he stared up at Veil as if he were looking at an angel of death. "We lost her for almost twenty minutes a while back. We didn't want to take a chance on losing her for good, so we decided to grab her and force her to tell us what she knew."

  "You're idiots twice over. Picker's got a hole in his nose; every cent he can get his hands on goes for coke. Where in hell did you think he was going to get two thousand dollars to pay you?"

  "He swore he could get the money. I think he was taking orders from someone else."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know."

  "Take a guess."

  "I really don't know, man! Hey, my partner and me just do odd jobs—things we pick up on the streets. Nothing else was happening, so we took this. Besides, if we had gotten our hands on the statue, we wouldn't have given it to Picker until he gave us the money. We ain't that stupid."

  "Why shouldn't Picker do the job himself and pocket the two grand if he got lucky?"

  The man laughed nervously. "Hey, man, I don't know. Maybe Picker was afraid you'd be around."

  The man was joking, Veil thought, but what he'd said could well be the truth. It was also true that the two men were nothing but low-level street thugs, "odd-job men." No one else would be working for Picker Crabbe. Veil clipped the man on the jaw with the heel of his left hand, then rose and walked from behind the brush to where Reyna waited. Her mouth was still slightly open, and she was staring at him dumbfounded.

  "Good morning," Veil said, taking the woman by the hand and leading her out of the copse of trees. "Let's go get some coffee."

  * * *

  "Who were they, Veil?"

  "Munchkins. Two very stupid street thugs working for another very stupid street thug. The man, or men, pulling their strings may not be so stupid, though. There are some nasty criminal types in the city who are definitely not art collectors but who want the Nal-toon. Do you have any idea why?"

  Reyna sipped at her black coffee and grimaced. "Maybe they want to sell it?"

  "No. Victor told me that the idol is worth only a few thousand dollars at most, and then only to a select clientele that collects primitive art. The people who control the smuggling route used to bring in the Nal-toon wouldn't cross the street for anything worth much less than a hundred thousand. Of course, the idol could have been hollowed out and stuffed with something—drugs, microfilm, gold, whatever. The problem is that nothing contraband that could have been stuffed in the idol would have been, not by these guys. The Nal-toon is just too ungainly and obvious, which is why Alan Berg was able to trace it in the first place. We're still left with the question of why a gang of mafiosi are looking to pick up a three-foot-high piece of carved hardwood."

  "Oh, Veil," Reyna whispered. There was a slight tremor in her voi
ce.

  Veil glanced up from his coffee. Reyna, sitting across from him in the booth at the rear of the diner on Seventy-second Street, had her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her, as if in prayer. Although she was just a few years shy of thirty, Veil thought, her appearance was that of a troubled child. He reached out and stroked her hair. "Easy, Reyna," he said gently.

  "You sound so cold when you talk about it."

  "I don't mean to. I was just trying to figure out what the bad guys' interests are. I do care."

  Reyna looked up, smiled wanly, and squeezed his hand. "I know you do," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "You came to the park to look for Toby, didn't you?"

  "Well, I had the notion. I remembered what you'd said about 'going to ground'—hiding. I've had some experience with tribal hunter-gatherers, and I've done some tracking."

  "It was in the Army, wasn't it?"

  Veil said nothing.

  "How old are you, Veil?"

  "Pushing forty."

  "Vietnam?"

  "Somewhere in the vicinity," Veil replied with a thin smile. "Anyway, the minute I walked into the park, I knew I'd been suffering from delusions of grandeur. If an army of police who knew the territory hadn't been able to find him, then I wasn't going to be able to. Then I saw you at work. You're good."

  For the first time since Veil had met her, the woman's face broke into a warm smile that was free of anxiety. "Why do you say that? I didn't find him, either."

  "But you obviously knew what you were doing—whatever it was you were doing. What could you hope to find after all that traffic had been through there last night?"

  "Oh, what I was doing isn't really all that mysterious.

  The first thing Toby would have done when he got into the park was kick off his shoes and socks. K'ung have big splayed toes, so they leave distinctive footprints."

  Veil shrugged. "Then we'll go back together and look for K'ung footprints."

  Reyna shook her head. "I don't think we'll find any. Even at night, and even on strange terrain, Toby would have instinctively looked for and found hard or grassy ground to run on. He has jungle lore; the tribe occasionally hunts in the jungle along the edge of the desert."