Their faces broke into grins and they both stepped forward.
As they did so, the cloak worn by the taller of the two men fell open—and Natalie gasped.
Under the cloak, something shiny was revealed, something metallic.
A gun.
The Maasai, embarrassed by what had happened, angry at being tricked by Daniel, took a step back, shouted at him, pulled their cloaks more tightly around them and, spurning the offer of cigarettes, started walking away from the vehicle.
Natalie, Daniel, and Kees watched them go.
“What was that all about?” she said at length.
“It’s a Russian gun,” breathed Daniel. “A Kalashnikov. They got it in Tanganyika. I’ve been hearing rumors for days now, weeks. Some Tanganyikans were trained in Russia, and the Russians were invited back to train more Tanganyikans. To train the army, I mean, special forces. And they bring Russian guns. These men will have got that Kalashnikov in Olinkawa—that’s about twenty-five miles from here. They will have left in the dark and crossed the border in the dark. That’s why they are off the tracks.”
“How will they have paid?” said Kees. “Those guns don’t look cheap.”
“Cattle maybe. Precious stones. The Russians are trying to sow trouble, so the guns may not be as expensive as they look.”
“And what’s it for?” Natalie suddenly had a craving for a cigarette herself.
“Let’s ask them,” said Daniel. He started the engine and caught up quickly with the two Maasai.
There was another exchange, though this time they didn’t stop walking and Daniel was forced to keep the Land Rover trundling along. Eventually, he braked and let them go on.
He looked across to Natalie. “They say that, in the first instance, the gun is to guard the burial ground. So there is no repeat of the break-in.” He put the Land Rover in gear. “And then, when the time comes, it will be used to defend the gorge.”
• • •
The strains of Sibelius’s Karelia Suite filled the night air, the strings offering a cooling image of a near-frozen fjord—clean, compact, crisp. Natalie stared into the scarlet and crimson embers of the campfire. She was thinking about Christopher and Jack. This evening at dinner they hadn’t fought, exactly, but there had been niggles throughout. Eleanor had been away for a few days in Nairobi, visiting the bank, picking up money with which to pay the ancillary staff, and doing other chores. In fact, she had only just returned, as they were finishing dinner, having driven there and back. It turned out she hated flying and, when she could, took the Land Rover, even if it meant driving through many hours of darkness on dirt roads.
At one point during the evening, the conversation had turned—as it inevitably did turn, most nights—to the trial, and what might happen to the gorge. Everyone was even more gloomy now, now that the Maasai had increased the pressure by acquiring a gun. Jack had tried to lighten the mood by explaining that the practice of burying the dead was not only a Christian idea, but had been taken over from the Datoga tribespeople, who had been conquered by the Maasai in the early nineteenth century.
“The Datoga buried their famous warriors and, it seems, fig trees, which can grow to massive proportions, like the soil where humans are buried. That’s why you have the tradition, in this part of the world, of worshipping fig trees. They are sacred because they are infused with the spirit, the blood, of powerful ancestors. Because the fig trees that grow over the graves of past chiefs are especially vast, that proves how powerful their spirit is.”
“Nonsense!” Christopher had cried. “Romantic rubbish.”
Jack had fallen silent.
“Look around,” said Christopher. “There are fig trees all over the Serengeti—small, large, massive. Their size has nothing to do with who’s buried where, but how close they are to rivers, how deep the soil is, how exposed to the wind they are. Like all plant life.”
“I was just explaining Datoga and Maasai beliefs—”
“Why do only men worship the fig trees, then? The women worship those shifting sand dunes. That has nothing to do with the Datoga.”
“Those dunes aren’t very big. Maybe they didn’t exist in the nineteenth century.”
“You have an answer for everything, Jack.”
Christopher had left the table then, and stalked back to his tent.
Jack had gone and sat by the fire and, after a few minutes of desultory conversation, everyone else dispersed, embarrassed by the brothers’ behavior. Some went to their tents, Natalie to join Jack, just sitting, letting the shadows from the fire play over his face.
What was Jack thinking? she asked herself. Was Christopher smarting from his pilot error in front of her and Jonas?
Suddenly a figure slumped into the chair across the fire from hers.
Eleanor.
Jack looked up at his mother and smiled.
“You must be exhausted,” said Natalie. She looked at her watch. “It’s gone ten.”
“Those last thirty miles are bumpy,” Eleanor said. “We saw a lot of zebra and rhino and had to wait for them to move on. But I’ll live.”
She looked up as Naiva brought her a coffee and a small plate with a sandwich on it.
She sat, leaning into the fire, drinking her coffee and biting into the sandwich.
Jack hunched forward. “You heard about the Kalashnikov?”
Eleanor nodded. “Nasty. Highly illegal, of course. They won’t have a permit, but then they make a point of not recognizing Western—white—law. I’ll tell the local rangers but I doubt they’ll move in for just one gun. If they get more, however …” She shook her head.
“Did you get done what you needed to get done?” Jack kicked the fire.
Without speaking, still eating, Eleanor nodded. When she had finished swallowing, she said, “More than that. I saw Max. He had news from New York.” She bit into her sandwich again, chewed again, swallowed again.
The others waited.
Eleanor looked from Natalie to Jack and back to Natalie. “It would appear that Mr. Richard Sutton Senior is, as they say in America, a real piece of work.”
More biting, chewing, and swallowing. Eleanor was very hungry.
“So far as I can make out, he or his company have been the subject of more than one investigation by the New York Police Department, but they have never been able to get enough evidence to make the charges stick.”
“Those charges being—?”
Eleanor was again nodding and chewing at the same time. “Tenants, tenants in apartment blocks, are quite protected under American law. A landlord can’t just evict them, if he wants to upgrade a building, say, and sell it on. Sutton’s employer, however, the man who actually owns the real estate company, has a reputation for bringing pressure to bear on tenants—beatings, excrement through the letter box, their cars vandalized, that sort of thing. Of course, the tenants who receive this treatment are much too frightened to tell the police. They move on, which is what Sutton’s employer wants. And Sutton himself is the one who handles all the court cases and applications.”
She finished her sandwich. “But that’s not all, or the worst of it. Apparently at one point—this was a couple of years back—he was involved in a bidding war over a piece of land being sold for redevelopment. There were just two people competing for the land, Sutton’s employer and someone else. During the course of the bidding, the other man’s daughter was kidnapped—she was seven. Naturally, this other man, Sutton’s employer’s rival, lost interest in the bidding and dropped out while he searched for his daughter. The girl was returned, safe and sound, and no money changed hands. But, of course, that’s what makes it so suspicious. The handover of the money is always the most dangerous point for a kidnapper. In this case, the girl was just left outside a church. The only beneficiary of the whole business was the company Sutton is the corporate lawyer for, but again nothing could be proved.”
“The girl wasn’t harmed, you say?”
“Well, she wasn’t harme
d physically. I can’t say what psychological damage she suffered and Max, or Max’s contact, didn’t know either.”
“That’s not what I meant,” replied Jack. “Do we think Sutton, or Sutton’s contacts, are capable of violence, real violence?”
Eleanor finished her coffee. “Beatings, intimidation, kidnap … if it’s true, it’s bad enough. And think: those actions were to secure buildings, they were done for money, for financial gain. In this case, in Natalie’s case, it’s Sutton’s own son, his only son, who is the center of the whole weather pattern. How much more determined will that make Sutton now, how much more ready to commit violence?”
She nursed her empty cup with one hand, warmed the other over the fire. “It was a long drive back from Nairobi and, yes, wearing. The roads are hard. But it gave me a chance to think, and I’ve come to a decision, two decisions actually.”
Her son looked at her.
“Max also happened to let slip that the British government is flying out a cohort of British journalists, for a background trip on Kenya ahead of the independence conference in London in February. They’re coming during a quiet time for news, between Christmas and the New Year. That seems too good an opportunity to pass up.” She paused. “We can’t dissuade Natalie from giving evidence, Jack—that would put her safety at risk. I see that now. Your solution, your idea, is the only road open. Let’s call a press conference. But here in Kenya, in Nairobi.”
Natalie’s heart lifted.
Jack, obviously pleased that his mother had come round to his view, nodded and sat back. “You said two decisions.”
It was Eleanor’s turn to nod. “Yes, I’ve added in a little thought of my own.” She stood up. “When we announce our discoveries, we shall say we think we have found an early form of mankind, a new species which not only stood upright but built man’s first structure. And we shall name him Homo kiharensis, we shall name him after the gorge. Let’s see the Maasai—Marongo and his elders—deal with that!”
• • •
Eleanor sat bolt upright in the refectory tent and tapped the table with her pen. “Let’s make a start, shall we?”
She looked around her. “Now that the decision has been taken to hold a press conference—and I can’t pretend that I’m any happier about it than some of you are—we need to make sure that we conduct ourselves as efficiently and effectively as possible. I have given some thought to logistics and how we might divide up the responsibilities between us.”
She had a sheet of paper in front of her and consulted it now.
“I will myself handle the invitations. I don’t think I’m being immodest if I say that my name, the Deacon name, is best known in relation to ancient man in Kenya, so we must use that. I can liaise with the High Commission in Nairobi, find out which newspapers are coming, add in some East African papers, the wire services, like Reuters, and some American papers that have correspondents here or elsewhere in East Africa, and I can also find out when the British delegation has its freest day.”
She looked up. “Christopher, I’d like you to find a place where we can hold the conference. Not a hotel, of course, all the main ones are whites only. I suppose a lecture room in a college somewhere would be a suitable alternative. And I’d like you to be in charge of the exhibits themselves—the jaw, the teeth, the skull, and the vertebrae. Good boxes, polished wood, colored cotton wool or satin, something that shows them off clearly and makes them seem special. Yes?”
Christopher nodded.
“You will do the pictures as well, of course, Christopher—very important. The knee joint, the jaw and teeth, the boulders. These must be as clear as possible—if we are successful they will be used in newspapers right across the world, so I want lots and lots of copies. Okay?”
Christopher nodded and smiled.
“And I want a few slides. That means we can darken the room where the conference is held, to make more of a dramatic impact. Can you do that?”
“Yes, of course. No problem at all.”
“But that’s not enough!”
All eyes turned to Jack.
“I’m sorry, Mother, but this is journalism, not paleontology. We need general shots of the gorge, of the places where these objects were found—and above all of the people who found them … us … Daniel here, Natalie, you, the rest of the team.”
“Surely they will have their own—”
“You know I’m right. Not every paper will send a photographer on a background trip. If we want the coverage we do want, now that we have decided we need it, we must make it as easy for them as we can.”
Eleanor looked at him for what seemed an age. Then, “Very well. See to it, Christopher, please.”
Christopher made some notes on an old piece of paper he had in his pocket.
“Jack, I’d like you—with Natalie, Jonas, and Arnold—to draft the actual document, the press release itself. Obviously, I want to see it, and finalize it, but I’d like you four to do the preparatory work. We’ll keep Kees in reserve, in case something goes wrong.
“We’ll decide which of the team, which of us, actually faces the press nearer the time, we don’t need to take a decision on that right now.”
She looked around the table. “Any questions?”
No one spoke.
“Good. It’s now the eighth of December. The Christmas break isn’t far away, when many of the ancillary staff have a week off anyway, people like Aldwai, and the other guards, so the timing is fortunate. I’ll let you have a date for the conference as soon as it is settled, but I think we want the press release and the photographs ready by—what?—let’s say, December 28. I’ll make sure the conference isn’t before the thirtieth. Is everyone clear on that?”
No one said anything, but they all nodded.
Eleanor scraped back her chair and stood up. The meeting was over.
As everyone dispersed, Jack took Natalie’s arm and led her across to Arnold and Jonas. “Look,” he whispered, “Natalie and I are ahead of the curve here. We anticipated this and have been working on a press release. It’s too hot now but let’s gather at my tent before dinner tonight and we can start going through the drafts we have prepared. What do you say?”
“What time?” said Jonas.
“Six, six-thirty; that will give us an hour and a bit before dinner.”
Arnold grinned. “I’ll bring the sherry.”
8
LOST
“Kees, what on earth are you doing?” Natalie stood over the Dutchman, near the wall of the gorge. It was another baking day.
Kees was kneeling before two piles of stones. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “So far I’ve been looking at the shape of the hand axes we find here, trying to fit them into some sort of sequence. The ones in this pile on the right,” he said, gesturing, “are from below the two million years ago level. The others, on the left, are from above that level. See, they are—on the whole—smaller, with sharper edges, and narrower points. It looks as though we have a change in technology, associated with your wind shelter, if that is what it is, and with the skeletal remains we have found.” He looked up. “Something else for the press conference, maybe.”
Natalie examined the piles of stones. She could see that what Kees said was right. “But this is wonderful. I can see the change clearly. Have you told Eleanor?”
“I’ve hinted at it, yes.”
“You must tell her immediately. If you are right, it’s major news. Why haven’t you brought these stones back to camp?”
He sat back on his haunches and wiped his face with the towel he kept in the back pocket of his pants.
“Because I wanted to be certain about my second idea.”
Natalie crouched down alongside him. “Go on. I’m all ears.”
He pointed to the stones. “Look at the hand axes. Whether they are the earlier, bigger, blunter shapes or the later, narrower, more pointed ones, they are greeny-gray in color and very hard. Geologically speaking they are chert.” He waved his arm
in a horizontal sweep. “Look at the gorge. Here it’s relatively soft, reddish rock, quartzite, with iron oxide in it. So where did ancient man find the stone for his tools?”
Kees replaced his towel in his back pocket. “Homo kiharensis, as we are calling him, obviously found out, by trial and error, that chert is harder than quartzite, but where did he find chert in the first place?” He coughed. “What I’m saying is that somewhere near here—I assume it’s near here—will be a mine, man’s first mine, a place where he dug for chert, dislodged lozenges of hard stone to make chert hand axes. It may be an old streambed.” He looked up and smiled. “That’s my next project, to look for the mine. That should get me my Ph.D.”
“Brilliant, Kees,” breathed Natalie. “But how do you start looking?”
“As I say, chert is harder than sandstone. It produces smoother terrain, covered by fewer trees, more likely just savannah grass, or is washed out by streams when they break cover. I’ll get all these axes back to camp today and start looking for the mine tomorrow.”
“Let me help you now.”
“Great, thank you. Just make sure to keep the piles separate. I’ve painted a little number on each one, in white paint. And I have a map here in my pocket, recording where each one was found.”
“Sounds like another Ph.D. to me.” Natalie smiled at Kees as she picked up some of the stones and started the trudge back to the Land Rover.
How good it was to be back in the gorge, what she thought of as her natural habitat now, despite all its attendant discomforts—the heat, the airlessness, the smells. Today’s variety was baboon dung again—she was becoming a connoisseur.
She reached the Land Rover, with Kees not far behind.
They put one set of axes on one towel, the others on a second, of a different color, so there could be no mix-up. Then they went back for the rest.
Aldwai, leaning on his gun, watched all this from a distance.
“How far away might this mine be?” Natalie asked Kees as they retraced their steps.
“How long is a piece of string?” He smiled. “All we know so far is that early man acquired obsidian from as much as one hundred and fifty kilometers away. I don’t expect the mine in this area to be anywhere near as far away as that. Obsidian is light and the objects it makes, as you have seen, are small and for ceremonial use. Chert is much heavier, and those early hand axes, as you can see, are quite big, for everyday use. I don’t think early man would have ventured more than—what?—five to fifteen kilometers away, though you never know. Anyway, tomorrow I start looking. If I find something, it will be an extra announcement at the press conference.”
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