“No,” said Natalie, in as deliberately flat a voice as she could muster. “Dr. Deacon was born and bred in Kenya, I’m new here. She’s been digging in the gorge for decades but she tells me this is the best season, in terms of discoveries, that there has ever been. It’s natural to try to preserve something as important as Kihara. I share her enthusiasm but I saw what I saw and will say so at the trial. I have never varied in my view and all my colleagues—not just Dr. Deacon but everyone else—know that.”
Natalie wanted the morning to be over as quickly as possible and the less she said the sooner it would be.
“Tom Jellinek again. I have a question for Dr. North—have I got the name right?”
Eleanor nodded.
“Dr. North, you were sent away from the camp because of your part in this … raid on the cemetery. In the circumstances, in view of the dreadful fate that occurred to Professor Sutton, do you accept that Dr. Deacon acted responsibly, that—in effect—she saved your life?”
Russell stood up. “Ndekei had already been captured and arrested by the time I was made to leave, so no, I don’t accept that reasoning. I don’t believe anyone else would have come looking for me—an eye for an eye, so to speak, had already been achieved. I accepted because I had no choice, Dr. Deacon’s authority on her digs is absolute. But I left reluctantly.”
“And is your intervention this morning motivated by revenge?” Jellinek was as dogged as Russell had been earlier.
Russell passed a large hand over his chin. “My intervention was motivated by the gaps in the story you were told. A man was murdered during this season’s digging and, had it been left to Dr. Deacon, none of you journalists would have been any the wiser. You should ask Dr. Deacon if she is for or against Ndekei’s prosecution.”
“Well, Dr. Deacon? What’s the answer?”
“What I say doesn’t matter. The law will take its course. What Professors Sutton and North did was in my view, stupid, crass, wrong, and—yes—criminal. I am white, a graduate of a British university, but I have lived and worked all my life in Kenya. I am familiar with and sometimes—sometimes, not always—sympathic to tribal ways. Anglo-Saxon law is not the only way of organizing human affairs.”
“Does that mean you are for or against the prosecution of this cook?” Jellinek was still on his feet.
“I have said all that I want to say. But I point out that Dr. Nelson is on this platform with me today.”
There were no more questions.
Natalie’s heart was racing. She noticed that Russell was sweating copiously.
“I think we have gone as far as we can for now,” said Eleanor, getting to her feet. “Remember to pick up your photographs as you leave.”
• • •
Russell got up from his seat at the hotel bar and came towards Natalie. “You look angry but you still look wonderful. You are more tanned than I remember you.” He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek but she held back. “Hmm,” he grunted.
“I came because I promised but after your performance this morning, I can’t say I’m here with any enthusiasm. Why did you say all those things?”
He showed her to a seat. “They needed saying, the whole picture is important, relevant. If the press conference had been reported without mention of Richard, it would have been incomplete, wrong. Scotch?”
“Not yet, thank you. Is that why you did it? I think that reporter was right—what you did struck me as an act of spite, an attempt to sabotage what’s been achieved this season.”
“Too right. That too, yes. Fights always exist on several levels, and this one is no different. I told you, the evening before I was made to leave the gorge, that I wasn’t rolling over. Now you know I keep to my word.”
“How long are you going to be wounded, Russell? Will you ever get over this?”
“I’ll get over it a damned sight quicker if you’ll come over to my side, if you’ll—”
“Russell, stop! Because I agreed to have dinner with you, doesn’t mean we can just pick up where—”
“Doesn’t it mean anything that I still feel about you the way that I do?”
She shook her head. She was more certain than ever now that Russell and she could never have … the way his skin flushed, those blue eyes that seemed to have a life of their own, independent of the rest of his face …“You’re acting … you’re behaving like … like a fossil, Russell, a fossil who has occupied the same position for years and years and has turned to stone.”
He stared at her.
“You could, if you wished, agree to be part of a team—for publication purposes anyway—a team that’s made the most momentous discoveries this season, you being involved in the very first, which not only discovered the knee joint but pointed us to the area where the other discoveries would be made. That would bring us closer together, you and me. Yet you remain stuck in your anger, your vindictiveness—”
He went to interrupt but she waved him down.
“You haven’t been paying attention, all those miles away in Hollywood. The Maasai are threatening to occupy the gorge and destroy it. You know that but you overlook the fact that that means they are still on the warpath, so to speak. I have thought about it a lot and Eleanor was right to insist you leave—”
Again he went to interrupt, again she talked over him.
“Your career is the most important thing to you but she was thinking of your life—”
“Huh! And the gorge—”
“No! Sending you away always risked a scene like today’s—she knew that. It was more important to save your life—”
“You mean the dig couldn’t afford two deaths.”
She let a short pause elapse. “As it happens, there have been two deaths.” She explained about Kees.
Russell shook his head and gave a low whistle. “Poor man. Suicide. What a way to do it.” He looked up. “But it confirms that Eleanor Deacon is losing it.”
“Russell! Kees told me … that he thought Richard was homosexual. Was he? You knew him over several years, several digs. Did you know anything about that?”
Russell hesitated. “I registered that he never had girlfriends. But no, I can’t say I thought about it more than that. Very few women come on digs in Africa, then he would go back to New York, and me to Berkeley.”
“I once caught Richard and Mutevu standing very close together. Do you think … could there have been anything between them?”
He stared at her. “No! I mean, I don’t know. Are you saying …?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. But you never saw anything that made you think …?”
He shook his head, firmly. “Nothing like that ever crossed my mind. And I’m not sure I like the suggestion …”
He tailed off and neither of them spoke for a moment.
Russell, she realized, wasn’t quite as quick as he thought. If he’d really absorbed that there might have been something between Richard and Ndekei, he would have realized she was telling him that the threat to himself was much diminished, and he should never have been made to leave the gorge. But, since he was so belligerent, and so wrapped up in himself, Natalie was not going to help him work out what he couldn’t work out for himself.
“Russell … why did you come back? … Was it only for the press conference? And how did you know about it … how did you know all those details?”
Russell sipped his drink. He had reverted to vodka by the look of it.
“Richard Sutton Senior paid for me. He has a contact in the American embassy here, who keeps him informed. We suspected the Deacons would pull some kind of stunt and so it proved—”
“Russell! It wasn’t a stunt.”
“Oh no?” He looked at her and shook his head. “Natalie, had I not intervened today, tomorrow’s papers would have been full of anthropological and paleontological details with no mention of Richard—or at least of Richard’s murder.”
“There’ll be more than enough time for that, at the trial.”
He shook his head again. “But by then, if the Deacons had had their way—unimpeded you might say—the gorge would have been established as a national treasure, one of the wonders of the world, Richard’s death would have been minimized, or sidelined altogether, an inconvenience, no more. And you didn’t give a straight answer today, either. She did try to get you to change your testimony, change your evidence, more than once.”
“I have never wavered.” She said it firmly, blushing slightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“That’s not what I said, or meant. She tried to get you to change your evidence. I can’t forgive that.”
An appalling thought struck her. “Are you …? Would you like to see the gorge destroyed? If I give evidence, and say what I saw, and Ndekei is hanged, and the Maasai do what they are threatening to do, will that please you, give you satisfaction? Because you can’t work in the gorge anymore, do you want it spoiled for the rest of us? Is that what this is all about, Russell?”
He didn’t say anything, but snatched at his drink.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Richard’s father, poor man, is devastated by his son’s death and he wants Ndekei prosecuted and found guilty for entirely normal reasons—he wants justice for his son. But you … you want revenge, don’t you? If you can’t play in the gorge, you don’t want anyone else to—that’s it, isn’t it?”
A long silence followed before Russell said, “I can’t deny it would give me some satisfaction to see the Deacons humbled. There would be a measure of justice in it, yes.”
Another long silence.
“Are you staying until the trial?”
“It was a condition of Richard Sutton Senior paying for me to come. He will be here himself, of course, nearer the time.”
“How are you going to fill in your hours? There’s more than a month to go.”
“You’d be surprised. For one thing, I’d like to talk to Marongo.”
“What? He’s as likely to kill you as talk to you.”
Russell took some ice from his glass and cracked it between his teeth. “You accuse me of being a fossil, of not appreciating how the world has changed, of being marooned in Hollywood. Don’t underestimate me.” He pointed.
She followed with her eyes. Two large black men stood just outside the entrance to the bar.
“Bodyguards?”
He nodded.
“Have I seen them before?”
He nodded.
“In Lamu? Paid for by Richard Sutton Senior?”
He nodded again. “So I know about you and Jack Deacon.”
“There’s not a lot to know.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t really care. What I care about is us.”
She ignored that. “Why would you want to see Marongo?”
He smiled. “Say Ndekei is convicted, say he’s hanged. Marongo has political ambitions, as perhaps you know, and will make political capital whichever way the verdict goes. But I haven’t been a complete fossil, Natalie. There is an alternative to destroying the gorge … let a new team take over. Run by me. I’ve been offered a full professorship at Yale. I’ll be an even bigger fish next year.”
She stared at him. “But how on earth could that work? You’re the one … you and Richard were the ones who set this whole thing in motion.”
He cracked more ice with his teeth. “You’d be surprised how money talks, money and imagination. Sutton and I have been conferring. Maybe our interests coincide. If Ndekei is convicted and sentenced to hang, there will almost certainly be trouble, political violence, on a small scale maybe but newsworthy. And there’ll be an appeal. That will provide a focus for further trouble. Richard Sutton Senior will then intervene and say that, justice having been done with a guilty verdict, he will campaign for the commutation of the death sentence and that, as a mark of respect for his son, who committed a blunder—but no more—he wants to help the tribe. He will donate several millions to whatever causes the Maasai hold dear but only so long as they spare the gorge, which from now on will be excavated by Americans chosen by Richard Sutton Senior.”
“You’d do all that? Will it work?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that Marongo is a political animal and that Richard Sutton Senior has funded politicians and political campaigns in the past, in New York City and in Washington. He is not, shall we say, without experience, hardly wet behind the ears. I remember saying in one of my letters—one of my letters that you didn’t reply to, by the way—that Sutton was a man who makes things happen, and to beware. I was right and you were warned.”
Across the bar some of the British journalists were gathering, men who had been at the press conference. One or two looked in Natalie’s direction but she did her best to ignore them.
“Russell, when Richard Sutton Senior came to the camp, with his wife, he said some very unpleasant things—”
“Yes, he’s not the choirmaster type, is he?”
“That’s unfair and unkind and it’s not what I meant. He threatened me, he threatened me, he actually boasted about some of the … unorthodox things he has done in the past, corners he has cut, toes he has trodden on, and he guaranteed to make my life a misery if I didn’t give evidence. He had me followed to Lamu, as you well know, because, presumably, he thought I might abscond, something that never crossed my mind.” She paused. “Are you sure … are you certain you want to be mixed up with that sort of person, that sort of … roughneck?”
“Hmm,” growled Russell dismissively. “All he wants from you is that you testify. Since you are going to do that there’s no problem—”
“No problem? You’ve seen the lengths he’ll go to, to ensure I do testify. This is a man … a man who isn’t shy of taking the law into his own hands.”
“Which, as I seem to recall, is exactly what Ndekei did.” He snorted again. “So we are all square there. But—” he went on as she tried to protest, “I agree that Sutton Senior is the type who knows how to—well, cut corners, shall we say, when it’s needed. But where his son is concerned there’s a difference. If he can’t have his son alive, then he wants his memory up there in lights—respectable, academic, professional lights, and my plan has tickled his imagination and sense of power. He doesn’t like Eleanor Deacon any more than I do, or her view that the gorge is more important than his son.” Russell wiped his lips with a paper napkin. “So get used to the idea that, over the next few weeks, this whole can of worms is going to slither and slide and writhe out of control, with one of only two possible results, assuming you give evidence. One, the Maasai will destroy and reoccupy the gorge; or … two, I will take over and you lot will be out in the cold—on your way, dare I say it, to becoming fossils.”
He paused, to let this sink in.
“Of course, all this doesn’t necessarily apply to you. Through it all, Natalie, you say you have never wavered, about your testimony, and I have never wavered in my feelings about you. That must mean something—and one of the things it means is that there’s still time for you to change sides.” He leaned forward and touched her knee. “I know you went to Lamu with Jack Deacon and you know I know. Did anything happen?”
“It’s none of your business, Russell.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, that you spent the night with him. Lucky him. If I hadn’t been kicked out of Kihara, before he came on the scene, maybe I—”
“Russell!”
Some of the journalists looked over as she raised her voice.
“The Deacons look after each other, don’t they? And now you’ve joined them, jumped into bed with them, metaphorically and physically—”
She slapped his face.
Now all the journalists were looking.
There was an imprint of her hand on his cheek, where she had hit him. That part of his face was redder than ever. “Oh Russell, stop feeling so sorry for yourself! You’re behaving like a fossil all over again, stuck in one level. The world doesn’t stand still—”
“It’s only been a few weeks!”
>
“What has only been a few weeks?”
“Us. Our whiskey sessions, listening to the baboons.”
She gasped. “There never was an ‘us’! I told you that before you left. Yes, there were a few evenings of illicit whiskey drinking, a few—a very few—episodes of physical contact, and maybe—what?—one kiss, or was it two? All of it cut short by a piece of monumental stupidity, which was your fault. That’s not enough for an ‘us’ to be created. So you’re mad to expect me to leap over to your side just because you ask. I told you all those weeks ago, during one of our fabled whiskey sessions, that this season’s digging would be remembered for all the wrong reasons—and then along came the discoveries, the jaw, the skull, the vertebrae, Kees’s hand axes, and I forgot my own warning.”
She swept her fingers through her hair. She noticed some of the journalists still looking in her direction. She ignored them.
“Then you come back again and raise all the old problems, all out of spite, envy, and resentment. All caused by Richard’s and your gross stupidity. And then you have the gall to invite me over to your side!”
She took a deep breath.
“Russell, what I do with Jack Deacon, or Christopher Deacon, or Eleanor Deacon, should I choose to, is none of your business. You do your worst. Get into bed with that crook, Richard Sutton Senior, and fight the Deacons. I can’t stop you. But if you do, you do it on your own, without me.”
She stood up, looking down at him.
“There was never an ‘us.’” She touched his cheek where she had slapped him, and softened her tone. “And there could never have been.”
She turned, pushed through the scrum of journalists, and left the bar.
• • •
“You know Marongo better than anyone, Jack, better than any other white person anyway. Will Russell’s plan work?”
Natalie was in Jack’s room at the hotel. After she had stormed out of the bar, leaving Russell with his slapped face, she had joined Eleanor, Jack, Christopher, and the others where she knew they were having dinner, in the hotel coffee shop, and had relayed what had occurred.
Everyone had been surprised, upset, and bewildered, but because they were all in a kind of limbo, waiting for the press reaction to the conference, and Russell’s intervention in it, no one seemed too prepared to get to grips with the threat he appeared to pose.
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