White Bone (24 page)

B
rantingham swung open his front door with all the authority of a man unhappy to be disturbed.

“You’re wanted by the police.”

Somewhat round-faced and kind in the eyes, he wore his graying hair long and unkempt. His flamboyant bathrobe hung open, revealing a white T-shirt and boxer shorts. His skin had seen too much sun. He was clearly not a man to awaken at midnight.

“You must have me confused with someone else.”

Brantingham shouted to the driver. “Do I invite him in, Thomas?”

“I believe he was about to force me to drive him to the clinic, sir. You would be doing me a favor.”

“Come in and get yourself a tea, Thomas. This won’t take long.”

The driver entered and headed to the back of the house, a contemporary, low-profile adobe structure built into the hill. Like Solio, the entire wall was windowless and open to the savanna.

Brantingham said, “You are advised that our rangers, all two hundred and fifty of them, have seen a photograph of your face. We are a private agency, which means all police, all KGA rangers are ahead of us in the pecking order. Understand? If we know your face, they know everything about you.”

“It was an unfortunate accident,” Knox said. “Some kids.”

“That’s original. Let me see your passport, please.”

Knox hesitated, but he didn’t see a lot of options. He withdrew and opened the document, retaining control. Brantingham gestured to hand it over. Knox did so reluctantly. Brantingham studied it and handed it back.

“Sir?” Knox said.

“Who the hell do you work for?” He moved to a side table that held mail, an iPad and his mobile phone, which was charging. He picked up the mobile. “If that’s counterfeit, you paid a king’s ransom for it; if it’s authentic, as it appears, then I need to know what agency I’m speaking with. What American agency, I presume.”

“A woman, a Chinese woman—”

“Grace Chu. Answer the question, Knox. Which agency?”

“I’m in global import/export. Crafts, mostly. The occasional piece of art.”

“Sure you are. Thomas!”

“No, no, no!” Knox said hastily.

Thomas appeared behind them, approaching down a short hallway that, like the living room, had walls covered with enormous art photos of African wildlife.

“I’ll explain,” Knox said.

“Enjoy your tea, Thomas. Sorry to bother you.”

“No bother, sir,” Thomas said, and retreated.

Knox resigned himself to the truth for Grace’s sake. “I contract—only occasionally—for a company out of Hong Kong called Rutherford Risk. Missing persons. Negotiation and recovery.”

“Kidnappings. Extortion,” Brantingham said. “We are all too familiar with such things here in Kenya. Didn’t used to be this way.”

Knox nodded. “Grace and I have partnered on a few projects. I’m here on my own. I’m not under contract. It’s personal.” Hearing it put that way surprised Knox. Was that the first time he’d admitted it to someone else?

“You’re here because—?”

“You last saw Grace two days ago. Before that, maybe three weeks earlier.”

Brantingham raised his eyebrows, impressed. He motioned Knox onto an animal-skin couch. Knox had no idea what animal. “Don’t expect me to tell you anything about it. She asked for confidentiality, and she will have it.”

“She hasn’t been heard from since.”

“Thom-as!” Brantingham shouted.

Again, the driver appeared. Brantingham spoke boldly, like an employer. “The guest, Grace Chu. Chinese woman.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She was with us two nights ago. She headed back to the lodge, correct?”

“No, sir. She took a side trip into Tanzania.”

Brantingham grinned at Knox. “Well, there you have it. No wonder. Happens all the time.”

“Thank you, Thomas,” Knox said. “Nice to get that cleared up.”

Again, Thomas retreated. Knox wondered how much it might anger Brantingham that his guest had dismissed the driver. It was nuance that steered an interview.

“She’s not in Tanzania,” Knox said. “Nor is it likely she was ever in Tanzania. She was abducted and held and is now being returned—possibly as proof of life, possibly because of illness or some other factor unknown to us.” Knox tried to sound definite as he explained the recent intercept of satellite phone traffic to Oloitokitok and the reference to a “wounded gazelle.”

“Return a wounded gazelle?”

“You see the problem? We believe she’s being moved tonight. Dawn at the latest.”

“And you waited to tell me in person? What the hell, Knox? I have the third-largest army in Kenya at my disposal, second only to the military and the KGA. You didn’t think you could trust me? Did you ask anyone about me?”

“Until a few hours ago, I had no idea where to look. No idea who to call.”

“You need food.”

“I’m all right.”

“Thomas!” The man reappeared, smiling this time. “Would you mind terribly preparing some food for our friend here? Anything will do.”

“My pleasure.”

Brantingham’s brow furrowed. He stared off into space for a long moment. “You believe she’s being returned to Oloitokitok.”

“It seems so. Yes.”

“By her kidnappers.”

“Again, a strong possibility.”

“You said the gazelle message was recent. So what changed?”

“As I said, I’m not sure. The hostage’s health? Outside pressure? Internal discord among the kidnappers? We had one case where they’d planned so poorly, they ran out of food.”

“You intercepted this communiqué? Why do I find it difficult to believe that a wanted man such as yourself has those kinds of contacts? If you did, someone would have arranged to get you out and install another man or woman in your place.”

“I have to keep my source confidential.”

“If you want my help, if I’m supposed to trust you, you will tell me what I need to know.”

“It was a ranger named Koigi.”

“You spoke to Koigi? Face-to-face?”

“I did.”

He barked out a laugh. “Do you drink, Knox?”

“Not tonight, sir.”

“Pardon me.” He poured himself a dark whiskey. “A great man, our Koigi. A kind of national treasure.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“There’s no chance you spoke to him. So you lied to me, and I don’t take that lightly. A brazen lie, I’ll give you that.”

Knox explained his abduction, the sack over his head, the drive—but not the location. Nor did he reveal the number of tents and vehicles. “Koigi’s a very stocky six feet. Looks more like six-foot-two.”

“Anyone could tell you that.”

“Has hands like a cat’s tongue.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Thomas delivered a poorly stacked sandwich and a cold beer. Knox asked for an iced tea instead.

“What the hell were you doing with Koigi in the first place?” Brantingham asked.

Knox passed him the crumpled photo of the tattooed arm. “The tattoo is drawn over a vaccination scar.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“A couple of Koigi’s men had similar scars,” Knox said “Bad vaccine, just like the one Grace was chasing. Koigi said a number of his men had been vaccinated while in Oloitokitok.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Free health care. The clinic drew hundreds a day at its peak. But I don’t follow.”

“He told that to Grace. The clinic keeps records. She would have been after a man named Faaruq.” Knox pointed again to the photo. “I don’t know what Grace may have told you, sir. But she came down here to access the clinic’s records. She was looking for the man’s records.”

“Which were taken or destroyed, or both, when they shut down shop.”

“She wouldn’t have come back if there hadn’t been some way for her to confirm that this Faaruq had been vaccinated there.”

“This is the same Faaruq shot at Mount Kenya. The alleged poacher?”

“It is.”

Brantingham hung his head. “Shit. She tricked me.”

“How’s that?” Knox said, leaning forward.

“She’s a clever one, your Ms. Chu.”

Knox was tired of so many people calling Grace “his.”
It isn’t like that,
he wanted to say. But the more he heard it, the more he wondered if he was projecting something he was unaware of, wasn’t intending.

“God!” Brantingham shook his head as if clearing it and poured himself more whiskey. “The first time, I mean, who would have guessed? But the second? I should have caught it. She’s into computers, isn’t she, John? IT work? Computer security?”

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

“I’m called Travis. She played sleight-of-hand with me. Not once, but twice.”

“That sounds like her.”

“She engaged me in a discussion of our antipoaching, our relationship with the clinic—nonexistent beyond our taking over some space as they moved out. Thirty minutes in, she asked for Internet access. Wouldn’t take the wireless I offered. Had to have Ethernet. Thing is, and this is the part that frosts me, she’d managed to get me to explain that we’d assumed many of the clinic’s utilities after the hurried closing. We paid some of the back bills in order to avoid an interruption of service.”

“Including the Internet provider,” Knox said, guessing.

“Yes.” Brantingham exhaled dramatically. “Would that have helped her somehow? Their computers were gone. First things they took away.”

“I don’t know enough about it.”

“Well, I know a little, just enough to get me into trouble. I know for a fact she couldn’t hack their computers. They were gone. Removed. But we’re using their router, their account. We took over their account.”

“The cloud,” Knox said. “She probably compromised their cloud storage or even e-mails.” He tried to keep the awe out of his voice, but it wasn’t possible. “She’s very good at it.”

“And then she came back and did it again. A second time.” Brantingham sounded astonished. “That’s humiliating.”

“To get at their patient records,” Knox said. He swallowed hard. The sandwich tasted far better than it looked. He was still awaiting the iced tea. He wiped his lips. “Tanzania or not, she’s being moved tonight,” he said flatly.

“If it came from Koigi’s sources, it can be trusted. He and my people share a great deal.”

“Maybe not enough this time.”

Brantingham didn’t appreciate the rebuke.

“Thomas claims I have to wait for daylight to drive to Oloitokitok.”

“He’s right about that,” Brantingham said. “You can ride with me. I’ll pick you up outside the lobby at four thirty.”

W
atching the two men die was no kind of sport.

At first, Grace had cheered on the cook’s hand, reaching down blindly into his pile and grabbing hold of the root she’d slipped him. She’d celebrated each slice of the knife and the steam that slowly rose from the pot. The soup took time to cook.

Then came the moment when the two portions were poured out. The other man tossed his cigar into the fire; Grace watched the amber sparks rise from the coals and take flight. The men drank their soup and talked in the casual, comfortable tone of two friends, and Grace wondered at what she’d done.

When death came—first to the cook, who much to her alarm had taken early sips from the broth to taste its readiness—it arrived as a seizure, a cramp that locked the whole body as if it were a single muscle.

Despite the agonies she witnessed, Grace felt no remorse. Unable
to stop herself, she walked from the dark into the rim of light thrown by the fire, standing close to the Kalashnikov. She was possessed with desire, the need for them to know this was no accident.

In her mud-slathered nakedness, she stood watching, the cook likely dead already, the other man wild-eyed and terrified by her visage. The veins swelled just as Olé had described, more like a special effect from a comic book movie than anything real. People didn’t die this way, alarmingly fast, their eyes bulging, the veins growing from their arms and neck and face. The bodies looked like road maps.

She didn’t know the woman who savored this moment, didn’t recognize herself.

The poison took the second man more slowly. Paralyzed, he twitched and tried to speak, his tongue swelling to the size of a cow’s. He fought to move his right arm. Grace picked up the rifle and aimed it at him in case he found his pistol. She could have—should have—ended his life then, but instead she savagely looked on, savoring his agony. His hand found his pocket. Grace aimed for his head. His final effort showed a surprising will and strength; he not only pulled a phone from his pocket, but he managed to throw it into the fire.

Grace, not wanting the sound of the gunfire, smashed his face with the gun stock, driving him back. He was dead before he hit the ground. She dove, threw her hand into the fire, burned it trying to retrieve the phone. Furious, she scooped its withering plastic husk out and threw it onto the dirt at the dead man’s feet. She kicked the men to confirm their condition. The poison had made them solid with rigor.

The phone’s keys were melted and inoperable, the clothing she stole ill-fitting and sour, though as welcome as a hot bath. The backpack held two thin blankets, mosquito netting, a few spare magazines
for the Kalashnikov, some pieces of fruit and, most important, three liters of bottled water. Grace knew better than to gulp, though the temptation was there, just as it had been with the dead driver’s tea.

Sobbing dry tears, laughing, dressed in the stinking clothes of the dead men who now lay naked by a dwindling fire, she left the useless phone behind, not wanting an ounce of added weight.

With the hint, the suggestion, that she might yet make it out of this place came the unwanted realization that she had lived more fully in the past few days than at any other time in her life. In a strange, sickening way, she didn’t want to leave.

At that moment, she heard the trumpeting of an elephant.