White Bone (14 page)

“That’s the only photo she took away with her?”

“The only one that interested her.”

“Let me guess,” said Knox. “You mentioned the timing. It was
just prior to when the vaccine would have been switched—the cattle vaccine for the measles vaccine.”

Radcliffe froze. When he spoke, there was an air of reverence. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “And here I was taking you for the muscle.”

“This dead guy was a witness? Maybe a co-conspirator to the purchase or theft of the cattle vaccine. He has second thoughts. He’s killed execution-style and made to look like a poacher. Why? They could have just buried him.”

“Same reason as poor Daniel. To send a message. You don’t fuck with these people.”

“Because they’re organized,” Knox said, “and they’re everywhere.”

“Every-fucking-where,” Radcliffe said. “Your Grace asked me if I knew a policewoman, Kanika Alkinyi. If she could trust her. I’ve known Kanika for years, I told her. One of the few good cops left.”

The bogus vaccine,
Knox thought.
Closest to the source of this catastrophe,
Radcliffe had said.

“I’m thinking Grace wanted to use this tattoo to link the dead man to a specific group. She has a mathematician’s mind. A equals B; B equals C; A equals C.” Knox held the printout tightly. “Wild guess: Kanika Alkinyi’s beat is counterterrorism.”

K
nox hesitated only a moment before calling Bishoppe.

He had no time to plan and scheme, to wait for things to be perfect. He’d often worked under such pressure—always for Dulwich—often with the same stakes: a human life in the balance. Hostage extraction. Ransom payment. Yet the Rutherford Risk ops paled in comparison, and he knew why, exactly why, even if he refused to acknowledge it fully. Searching for a friend and colleague was a wholly different experience from searching for a person he knew in name only—and for a paycheck.

“You know who this is?”

“Of course, Mr. John. You’re in trouble with the police. I don’t like the police. It will cost you more.”

He could sound streetwise and boyish in the same breath, Knox thought. “One thousand shillings.” Ten American dollars. “I need you to contact a police officer. No phones. It must be done in person.”

“Are you listening to me?”

Knox smiled to himself. He liked this kid. Very much. They negotiated and settled on fifteen hundred. “Her name is Kanika Alkinyi. You will need to find the precinct she works from. You will tell her, only in person, face-to-face, that you’re speaking for a friend of Maya Vladistok.” Knox worked through his instructions. He had the boy repeat them twice. “If you sense it’s going wrong, run. Got it?”

“I have no problem running away from police, Mr. John.”

“You’re a good man. In terms of the place and time, she needs to give me at least an hour. You understand?”

“Two thousand shillings.”

“You can’t renegotiate. We have an agreement.”

“I just did.”

Knox wiped the smile off his face; composed himself so the boy wouldn’t hear the grin in his voice. “Done.”

He disconnected, wondering how it was he’d entrusted his security to a fourteen-year-old.

T
he sound of the jackals scared her the most. In the dark, Grace heard the animals following closely, too skittish to attack—she hoped—but too hungry to ignore her.

At times too terrified to continue, she would stop, turn and shout out. The jackals would scatter. She would move on, relieved, but not for long. Soon, the horrid panting would return. The dry, insistent reminder that she was prey.

Beneath the skim of dried dung and dirt, gooseflesh rose on her chapped skin. In this fashion, she moved through the chill night for hours, tracking stars, disturbed by the mysterious sounds around her. She dared not stop.

As the edges of a sky bruised purple, then royal blue, she began to sort out her immediate surroundings. She spotted what she believed to be some of the edibles Olé had shown her. She took extra care inspecting the leaves in the light of the graying dawn, measured the height of the plants and examined the berries closely. She
gathered what she thought to be jackalberry and black monkey orange and, following Olé’s rigorous routine to establish the safety of each, crushed and smelled the fruit, on alert for the scents of almonds or peaches or latex, any of which meant discard it.

At last, she dabbed a tiny bit onto her lip and waited to see if the skin went numb, stung or burned. After the lip, she tested the corner of her mouth, then the tip of her tongue, then under her tongue. Finally, she chewed a small amount. She waited. No pain or numbness. She chewed and swallowed. Then she collected bunches of each and moved on.

The rule was to wait five hours, but she didn’t think she could. The black monkey orange was distinctive enough that she gave in to her hunger and thirst and ate the insides of three.

Locating a source of water—the most urgent necessity—presented a greater challenge.
Forget the jackals,
she thought. Dehydration was her most feared enemy.

Navigating now by landscape, she continued in her ever-increasing spiral outward from the thick bushes where she’d staged her own mauling. Hours later, she neared a low escarpment that fronted a wide section of dry riverbed, fifty yards across, cut by spring runoff, the gravel interspersed with tall islands no more than a few yards wide. A vehicle lay on the far side of the wash, smashed, rolled up against a tree.

Ducking and hiding behind the rocks, Grace ate half of the berries and monkey oranges and felt better for it. After a time, convinced it wasn’t occupied, she dared to approach the vehicle. She found the keys in the ignition, the battery dead. A smashed starburst in the windshield, she imagined, was meant to tell the story: the driver’s head, collided on impact, giving him the later excuse of forgetting where he’d lost her.

Grace inventoried any and all materials available to her, not surprised to find the spare tire toolkit missing. She knew the engine would have oil in it, possibly petrol. The car had four good tires and a fifth mounted to the back; two windshield wipers in front, one in back; a radio antenna that would serve as a whip; under the hood, a sheet of flexible insulation backed by aluminum foil that could serve as a small blanket. The variety of mirrors could be detached and used for signaling. She tore loose an elastic net from the back of each front seat; they could be used for storage. The owner’s manual gave her hundreds of pieces of paper she might use to start a fire.

Fire. The idea had barely occurred to her. She knew the wood-on-wood technique, but in the dark had found no wood thick enough. The escarpment plateau was heavily treed. She broke one of the mirrors and used its glass to slice the seat upholstery. She hit a layer of plastic and spent time delaminating it. She kept the plastic and fashioned a skirt out of the upholstery.

Working fast, determined to set the vehicle on fire as a signal, she stripped out the plastic ceiling fabric. From beneath the listing vehicle she collected black grease that she smeared onto a few pages torn from the manual. By cutting rubber hoses in the engine compartment, she struck oil and captured it in the plastic sheeting. Digging a hole, she set the bowl of oil inside.

Euphoria coursed through her. She’d made it through the night alive. The rising billow of black smoke would . . .

. . . signal whoever had left her here.

Before she burned the vehicle, she had to have a damn good plan for self-defense. What if they brought dogs to hunt her?

Grace paused, reconsidered. No matter how tempted, she was not prepared for the possible consequences. “Victory in battle is as much about preparation as it is execution”—her army drill sergeant
had told her that repeatedly. Her enemy was counting on her dying of exposure. By shredding her clothes, she’d begun a ruse. To attract attention now could easily backfire.

Undaunted, she spent more time stripping the vehicle. She gleaned lengths of nylon thread from the seats, several meters of wire from under the hood, two long dipsticks, shards of glass from the lightbulbs. She gathered her take into a piece of seat upholstery, tied it off and threw the sack over her bare back.

If her driver returned to confirm the kill, he would come here first. He would see that someone had salvaged the vehicle. Burning the car would prevent that, but would reveal her. She needed a plan—and quickly. The man wouldn’t allow much time to elapse before he checked for her. The longer it took, the more difficult it would be to find her remains.

Grace prioritized. She would remain close to the vehicle, hopefully with a distant view of the kill site. If dogs were brought, the smear of mud and dung might keep them at bay.

As she worked over the vehicle, she found herself wondering again where she’d gone wrong, who had betrayed her. She’d taken a circuitous route, to be sure. Nairobi. Then the Oloitokitok Clinic. Back to Nairobi. Up to Mount Kenya, in pursuit of the substitute vaccine. The breakthrough she’d needed. Again to Oloitokitok.

Now, alone and abandoned. Discarded. The spider silk connecting and binding each piece to the next appeared as fragile and tenuous as the facts at the start of any investigation. This uncertainty was part of the thrill of what she did. Grace thought her exposure had likely come from whoever had tried to hack her. Either from that person directly, or from wherever he or she had managed to sell the information.

Asian Container Consolidated or Archie Nadali came to mind. Had her investigation into Samuelson tipped the scales? Had she
shared Radcliffe’s photo of the tattoo with one too many? And what of the embittered and embattled Radcliffe himself? To what lengths would he go to avenge the death of his wife and his fellow reporter?

And then there was the country at large—the vast open sore of distaste over the Kikuyu government, hoarding public funds at great cost to the Kenyan people, the wildlife and the country’s future, all while allowing the Chinese to take over everything but the Parliament House.

What did any of it, or all of it, have to do with the missing cache of elephant tusk? Ironically, Grace had believed she’d been close to uncovering the mystery of the missing cache.

I’m the one person who knows how to find it,
she thought grimly,
and I’m stuck in a desert with no way to communicate.

And what of Travis Brantingham, the head of Larger Than Life? He’d been her last interview before this. Someone in his ranks had switched drivers on her.

The dry wash of the seasonal stream created a warren of erosion eight to ten feet deep. A desolate, barren pit, void of anything green or living. Grace felt something evil about it, but recognized it as a good place to hide. It was easy to move through without being seen.

Beyond it, the escarpment rose, the ground of the savanna lifted by volcanic upheaval. Atop its plateau grew twisting shrubs and struggling trees. She would find more to eat there, and possibly water. The wash ran left to right, parallel with the face of the escarpment, which continued half a kilometer farther. The rock face drew a line that pointed toward the kill spot where she’d left her clothes.

Grace made for the end of the outcropping, wanting the higher ground and wondering if it might afford her the ability to see both
the vehicle and the kill site. As she walked, she mentally inventoried the items in her knapsack, deciding upon a use for each one. She struggled to better recall Olé’s teachings. And for the first time since the horror of undressing and slathering herself with animal shit, she felt a ray of hope.

A
s he entered Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, Knox took note of the woman sitting next to Bishoppe on the molded plastic bench. Wearing black pants secured by a wide black-leather belt with a bold silver buckle, and an army-green, loose-fitting boat-neck shirt that spilled off her right shoulder to reveal a strong collarbone and a sky-blue bra strap, she didn’t look much like any detective Knox had ever known.

He saw her come off the bench, her strength masked by a controlled gracefulness. Thin face, small eyes. A strong neck and square shoulders. Not for the first time he wondered how smart it was to take a meeting with a policewoman when he was wanted for the murder of a cop.

The woman joined Knox but kept an arm’s-length away. Bishoppe trailed behind. They remained on the park’s central path. The cop impressed Knox with her ability to match his long strides.

“I am Inspector Kanika Alkinyi.”

“John Knox.”

“Yes. We have your face pinned to our board. You’ve got yourself in a bit of trouble, haven’t you, Mr. Knox?”

“I didn’t do it.”

“I phoned Maya after the boy found me. She told me your story. I’m inclined to believe you both, or I wouldn’t be here.”

Was the tone of concern normal for her? Knox didn’t know. He was out of his depth. Hell, the minute he’d entered baggage claim, he’d felt that way. And he wasn’t comfortable following on a dance floor. He liked to lead.

Eyes trained forward, mouth dry, the smell of dirt and dust commingling with automobile emissions in his nostrils, he grew impatient.

“Should we need to speak again, we will not use telephones,” she said.

“Agreed.” He had no idea what she was proposing.

“The boy can be our go-between, if needed. That was a wise choice. Why do you risk seeing me?”

“Maya said you were trustworthy. If there’s a hotel video, which I assume there isn’t, it’ll show a pair of kids knocking that cop off the balcony with a baggage cart.”

“There is no such video. I am under the impression that you are requesting transit to Mombasa, passage on a freighter.”

“Not yet, I’m not. Maya and I don’t see eye-to-eye on that one.”

The policewoman reversed direction, heading back toward the gate she’d come through. Ahead was burned-out grass and a few plastic benches, litter like fallen leaves.

Knox caught up with her. “You’re counterterrorism!”

“I don’t discuss assignments with anyone. Certainly not you, Mr. Knox.”

“Please.” He was able to stop her—barely. “The sergeant at the
hotel told me I had visa problems and plane reservations in three hours. Who could arrange such a thing?”

In profile, Kanika Alkinyi was strikingly pretty. An upturned nose and pouty lips. Earthy and sophisticated at once. Urban chic. “There was a man rumored to be in the city. Very risky, his coming here. It is possible the two are linked. But it will take time to prove, if such proof is even possible.”

“I’m out of that commodity, time.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You’ve seen this, I assume?” He unfolded the printout of the tattooed arm from Radcliffe’s illegally acquired crime scene photos. It showed the dark-skinned arm bearing a roughly circular three-inch medallion with an Arabic word tattooed over it.

“This man was shot execution-style,” Knox continued, “two months before Samuelson, a reporter for—”

“I’m familiar with the Samuelson shooting. What is the significance of this photo, Mr. Knox?”

He wanted to be careful, didn’t want to report Grace as a missing person. It was one thing for Winston to have alerted British Intelligence. What happened from there was up to them. Involving the mostly corrupt Kenyan police, on the other hand . . .

“Execution-style. This man. Then Samuelson and the man with him. The work of terrorists made to look otherwise? Corrupt rangers?”

“You’re familiar with gunshot wounds, I suppose?”

“I drove supply convoys out of Kuwait. I’ve seen my share of bodies, including those lined up on their knees and shot from behind. It’s not pretty.”

She nodded, spoke. In spite of himself, Knox appreciated the singsong of her colonial British accent, the rhythmic, almost musical, cadence to her speech.

“The tattoo translates, ‘Always. Constantly.’ It is Arabic, as I assume you know.” She returned the photo. “I can, perhaps, help you leave the country. I can advise you on how to secure relatively safe transit to Mombasa. These are the limits of my involvement. You understand?”

“Of course. But the photo,” he said, waving it. “That’s all? Nothing more?”

“The problem with foreigners, especially Americans, is that you move too fast. You are smart, but impatient. And always so independent.” She slowed their walking pace. “I am aware of your missing friend. Maya told me. Do not be alarmed. I will not act upon this information without your request, but I tell you this: not all Kenyan police are corrupt, Mr. Knox. Far from it. We can help in these matters.”

Knox took in the stark park grounds and its carefree visitors. A pair of older men planted like sculpture on a bench. A woman entertaining a young child with blowing bubbles.
The farther you travel,
he thought,
the less distance separates us.

“Get away while you can. This is my advice. Leave the missing persons to us.”

“She came to you. She was looking for a terrorist connection.” He had no idea what he was talking about, but it was worth a try. “Bernard Radcliffe sent her.”

“Smart but impatient, just as I said.”

“The tattoo is tribal? Gang? Militant? Help me out here. Please.”

“I told you what it means. It is an Arabic symbol. It is . . . we see it worn a great deal by those with allegiance to al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and al-Qaeda.”

Knox sorted out possible explanations. She wasn’t about to volunteer information. “So, in this killing, they apparently killed one of their own in the same method used on Samuelson and the other man. Why? Was this man with the tattoo an informer of yours?”

“I could never confirm such a thing. Let me say my best guess is betrayal. His execution was a message to others. If not, there was no reason to allow the body to be found.”

“Understood.”

“I can get you to Mombasa. I can give you the name of one who can arrange passage. From there, you are on your own. Every police officer in Kenya knows of you. You are a cop killer. Most would gladly gun you down.”

“My friend was tasked with connecting certain funds to terrorism. The funds led to Achebe Nadali.” She snorted. “You know him. Daniel Samuelson began investigating Nadali two months prior to his murder. He was executed in the same manner as this alleged terrorist. You can see why it would have interested my friend.”

“Her interest ran deeper than this. The tattoo does not mark him a terrorist, per se. It’s of interest, certainly, but nothing close to evidence. If your friend traced illegitimate funds to Minister Nadali, she should have shared such information. Too independent, you see?”

“She’s not American. A Chinese national.”

“All the worse. Much worse.”

“You said her interest ran deeper.” Knox heard the exasperation in his voice.
What to hold back? What to reveal?
Winston had tasked Grace with three objectives: trace the money, recover it if possible, and connect the clinic to terrorism. “Please. She shouldn’t have tried it alone. On that, we agree.”

Inspector Kanika Alkinyi leveled Knox with a look of frank disappointment. “She is a smart woman. She has likely gone to ground.”

He shook his head. “Yes, she’s brilliant, but no. She’s an accountant. Ambitious to a fault. She had no business taking this beyond the computer work. Radcliffe put the reporter Samuelson onto Achebe Nadali. Then he put Grace onto him as well.”

“Archie’s had a hell of a time.”

“Radcliffe drew a timeline between a payoff to Nadali and the disappearance of the ivory from the government vault.”

The woman sucked air through her teeth, whistling. “Did he? That’s the first I’ve heard of any such connection.”

The idea came to Knox like a premonition. Out of the ether and into his lap. “Tell me something: is there a reward for the ivory?”

“Indeed. It’s the new national lottery. Twenty-five percent. The government, no matter how complicit, must take a stand, must attempt to recover this ivory and keep it off the market. This theft is an embarrassment of epic proportions, Mr. Knox. A demonstration of the depth of corruption. It’s catastrophic, politically.”

She turned to him and leveled another of those looks. She wasn’t a woman to waste time. She drove home her points and expected Knox to think them through on a variety of levels. She was a marathon runner who expected him to keep up.

“If what you say is true about Nadali, he’s a dead man. He’ll have an accident. A house fire. Something. The government will want to destroy the ivory in a very public setting. Returning it to the vault is not an option.”

“Twenty-five percent,” Knox said. “That’s a million U.S., or more.” He fell silent, his mind spinning. The sum nearly matched the exact dollar figure of Winston’s loss, the amount Grace had been tasked to retrieve.

Grace was after the ivory to complete her assignment trifecta. And to think he’d chided her for being Winston’s lapdog. Trace the
money and leave the rest to Winston and his staff? She just couldn’t do it.

He felt violently angry. Grace never stopped pushing.

“What is it? Are you not well?”

“Samuelson would have had a laptop, papers.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Cloud storage.”

“She’s clever,” the policewoman stated. “Look. The stories about the health crisis resulting from the bad vaccine included references to a vaccine intended for cattle. Miss Chu asked me about bigger cattle operations in the vicinity of—”

“Samuelson’s killing. Mount Kenya.” Knox nodded. “Smart.”
Shit,
he thought.

“There’s a ranch called Solio, out of the village of Nanyuki. No theft was reported to police. No insurance claim has been filed.”

“The first victim. This man,” Knox said, shaking the printout of the tattoo. “Is the timing right to connect him to a theft of the vaccine?”

“Speculation.” Kanika shook her head. Her short hair held to her head like a helmet. Her upturned nose lent her a haughty impression. She was clearly considering Knox’s question. “My offer to get you out of country won’t stand for long. Please, accept it.”

“I can’t,” Knox said. He took a breath, asked, “Is there someone, anyone, in Nanyuki or this Solio you trust?”

“The people at Solio are good people. They are part of the Eastland group.”

Eastland had arranged Knox’s airport pickup. The owners were friends of Winston’s.

“There is a ranger on the Solio reserve, I’m sure. I can’t speak for him. And there’s another man, someone called Koigi. But he won’t
see you. And listen, going up there is out of the question for you. You’re wanted.”

“You said the provincial police might be a day or two behind.”

“That’s not a risk you want to take.”

“Do you know Koigi personally?” he asked.

“I know of him.” Kanika blinked. It was the first lie she’d told him. “He is a complex man,” she added. “Passionate. Single-minded. The Kenyan government has been talking about the menace of poaching for decades. Koigi takes a more . . . proactive stance. It puts him at odds with people in my department and the KGA. He’s caught between the laws and the lawless. He will take every measure to ensure self-preservation.”

Kanika stopped, took in their surroundings and sat down again on another park bench. This one was made of recycled pink plastic. She covered her mouth as she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “Where Koigi’s rangers and tactics have been installed, the elephants are on the return. This is no coincidence. Folklore abounds, but his stories need no exaggeration. As a policewoman, I turn a deaf ear, as do a few others. Poachers who find their way into Koigi’s territory do not find their way out. In fifteen years, he has arrested three that I am aware of. Three. All under sixteen years of age.”

Knox wondered if she was putting him on. Folk heroes arose from rumor and want.

“There is a story that says Koigi once entered a newly formed Muslim village on the border of one of the reserves under his protection. Alone, he cautioned the residents that anyone found across the park boundary would be beheaded. He said he would drink soup from their hollowed-out skulls. To the people of Islam, this is the ultimate threat, for they cannot reach the promised land, the
afterlife, without proper burial. It is said that no one from that village has ever tested the threat. This is because it is Koigi. His reputation is the stuff of legend. He has given his full life to the elephant and rhino. His whereabouts, and that of his team, are rarely known. His kills are never found, never investigated. The people of Kenya, people like me, will protect him, Mr. Knox. Believe me.”