White Bone (3 page)

“Not I. No way. A bomb with a question mark. What was she into?”

“Is,” Dulwich emphasized.

“You don’t know that. We don’t know that.
Is
, if we’re lucky. If we’re fast.
Was
, if we’re slow to respond. You know the drill, Sarge.”

“Hello?” Winston said. “I do not know the drill. Please.”

“John believes she’s been abducted, which would explain, to his way of thinking, both the text sent to him and our not hearing from her last night.”

“But we were told—”

“Yes. Tanzania, all the way up to Israel. A satellite failure or something.”

“I’m listening through Grace’s ears and I’m not hearing what I want.” Knox drank more of the coffee.
Who could make a cup of coffee this good in their home?
he wondered, envying Winston’s wealth. Odd, that wasn’t his way. “If she’s blown, then by whom? Cops? Spooks? Mob? The original job was . . . ?”

Knox worked on the smoked salmon while keeping his eyes on Dulwich.

L
ast year I made a donation,” Winston said, “of over a million pounds to fund measles vaccinations at the Oloitokitok Clinic in southern Kenya. The clinic is privately funded. It services a sizable geographical area, including northern Tanzania. There’s a long version if you want. But you strike me as an impatient man, John. So. About two months ago, data started coming in showing we had made one hell of a lot of people extremely ill with our vaccine. We now suspect the original measles vaccine was stolen in shipment and replaced with one to prevent leptospirosis in cattle. We caused meningitis, lung infections and quite possibly worse. We were told that in all probability the original vaccine was resold out of country at a high price, and that the cash funded terrorism. I sent Grace to find out where my money went, who took it and, if possible, to undermine whoever stole it. If the clinic is directly or indirectly involved with terrorism, then it’s also connected to the poaching of
elephant tusk and rhino horn, another pet peeve of mine. I want that made public.”

“Follow the money,” Knox said. “Her specialty. By ‘undermine,’ you mean get it back.”

“Yes.”

“You asked her to steal money from terrorists.” Knox grimaced. “Nothing risky about that. You know her,” he said accusingly to Dulwich. “Shit!”

Silence.

Knox addressed Dulwich. “Her daily reports?”

“Not reports. Just confirmation she was on the right track. Two sites to check for posts. If one, things were moving. The other, a setback. Two weeks ago, the clinic shut its doors unexpectedly and without explanation. It was empty, all equipment gone, within days.”

“She scared someone,” Knox said.

“Indeed,” Winston said.

“And you honestly believe she hasn’t been kidnapped or killed? Jesus, Sarge.”

Dulwich twitched. “It could be coincidence. However unlikely.”

“She turned over a rock and the bugs ran for cover,” Knox said. “I don’t buy you had her working in a vacuum. Why no calls? Grace can encrypt anything.”

“Metadata,” Dulwich said. “The call, sure. But not the origin or destination tagged onto that call.”

“Kenya is a place of corruption by degrees, John,” Winston said. “Phone lines. Airwaves. The Internet.” He shook his head. “We all agreed up front: it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“The first forty-eight,” Knox said, referring to the critical hours after a kidnapping.

“Not there yet. It’s not a kidnapping,” Dulwich said. “It’s not anything. It’s a fucking solar flare knocking out the Internet.”

“Because you’re prescient.”

“Because I only heard of this text ten minutes ago. The Internet being down, that’s for real, John.”

“She’s been blown.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We’re going after her, you and I, Sarge. That’s what we do. If we’re wrong, we get a round-trip on our host here. But we’re not wrong.”

“I’m out,” Dulwich said. “We—Rutherford—did a thing there, not even a year ago. Pissed off the Chinese—those guys are so in bed in Kenya that they’ve got monogrammed pillows. I’m tagged—no good. They have facial recognition at Jomo Kenyatta. Lots of terrorism they’re dealing with. I might make it into the country from the Ugandan side, but that’ll take days. A week, maybe. It’s overland shit.”

“How convenient! When I just happen to be available.”

“You don’t put an operative in jeopardy by running after him or her. If Grace is nearly blown, the worst thing we can do is show up looking for her.”

Knox knew it was true, but was loath to admit it.
How could Sarge sit there so calmly?
he wondered. How could these two not see the obvious? She’d thrown up a smoke signal and they were turning a blind eye. Her letter warmed in his pocket.

“Fuck,” he said. “I’m going down there. Today. Now. If you hear from her tonight, fine. I’ll ride a giraffe or whatever one does in Nairobi, and return in a day or two. Agreed?”

“Our people can look into it, John. No need for that,” Winston said.

“British Intelligence? And you don’t want me giving her away? Tell him, Sarge.”

Dulwich looked trapped. He wasn’t one to play lapdog. He’d pop
a nun in the nose if she held out on him. But a client as important, as wealthy and powerful, as Graham Winston kept Sarge on a short leash.

“You know the sign in the petrol station window?” Winston said in his buttery accent. “Ten bob an hour. Twelve, if you watch—”

“Fifteen if you help,” Knox said. “Yeah. Ha-ha. So, I’m paying twelve. I’ll take a look, and then I’ll turn tail. No spooks. Don’t do that to her.”

“What exactly would you need?” Winston asked.

“A full download.” He addressed Dulwich. “I’m assuming tech services is tracking her mobile, her movement. If not her mobile, then her log-ins. Expenses? Credit cards?”

“Cash,” Dulwich said.

Winston took a neat bite of toast. “It’s toxic there, John. Corrupt police. The military, government, wildlife service, health care . . . there are degrees of corruption in every institution.”

“You sent her in alone,” Knox said to Dulwich.

“For computer work, John. Follow the money, like you said.”

“And you thought, what, she’d just sit around her hotel room?” Indignant, Knox spat out pieces of food unintentionally as he spoke. “You know her! She’s been sucking up to you for two years! She wants to run the company someday! So, one or both of you provided her with local contacts and connections. I’ll need that same information, exactly what she got.”

Knox looked down at his plate; he was eating off china, with actual silverware, and where was Grace? Tied up in some Kenyan warehouse? “I need to get down there.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “I’ll stay away from her, contact only the people you trusted, but I need that list. Hotels you may have recommended, restaurants. Bars. Coffee shops. I don’t care. Anything. Everything.”

Now Knox spoke directly to Dulwich. “My flight shouldn’t
originate from here, just in case she’s already talked. Route me through Frankfurt. A puddle jumper to Berlin. Berlin to Nairobi. All separate tickets, no code sharing. Paid for on my company card. I go in on business. Same as always: I’m on a buying trip.”

Dulwich nodded. He spoke to Winston. “As you know, John’s business is . . . world arts and crafts. Import/export. It gives him good cover in situations like this.”

Sarge was coming around to Knox’s way of thinking. Knox kept the smile off his face.

“If and when I track her down, I will stay away from her and whatever she’s chasing. I get a visual and I’m back on the plane. She’ll never know I was there. To everyone else, I’ll be my usual annoying self, a two-bit hack looking for some Maasai necklaces. If they run a background check, I’ll pass with flying colors.”

Dulwich glanced at Winston, who nodded. “I’m counting on her making contact tonight, but I don’t disagree with you.”

Another double negative,
Knox thought.

“I’ll make every effort to enter from the west,” Dulwich said. “We’ll set up a web code.”

“Every name you gave her, and in the same order,” Knox said, repeating himself. “All I’ve got is her footsteps.”

T
he smells hit her first. Dust. Sticks. Dry grass. A bitter taste, staining her mouth.

It took her some time to come to grips with what had happened, to realize the taste was left over from whatever drug he’d stabbed into her. She was sore, but didn’t bother checking for a bruise. Instead, she focused on an undulating reddish brown line a foot in front of where her cheek lay on the powdery dirt.

Safari ants. The column of workers was an inch wide, protected on the outside by an interwoven network of sentries a half-inch thick.

Grace sat up slowly, overcome with aches and pains. She must have been thrown from the vehicle. She wiped mascara from under her eyes and searched for the Jeep. But she saw only endless savanna.

Why was she waking up at all? If someone wanted to kill her, why not just do it? Why dump her instead?

She took in the sameness of the savanna, which stretched before
her, an endless plain of auburn grasses, stunted trees and coiling shrubs. In the distance, smooth gray hills rose slowly to join verdant mountains. The expanse left her feeling inconsequential and meaningless.

Her few safari rides had instilled in her a respect for the scope of the African bush. Open, unfenced space to the horizon. Wild animals, elegant and bold. But that had been from the cushy backseat of a Land Cruiser, a thermos of tea within easy reach. She recognized immediately that there might not be any kind of structure for a hundred kilometers in any direction. Somewhere in the distant mountains stood Ol Donyo Lodge, where she was currently a registered guest. But where exactly? How many days on foot would it take to reach those hills?

There had to be an explanation for her current situation. Was she a victim of an accident? Had the truck hit a ditch? An animal? Had she hit her head in the collision and wandered off into the bush? Her short-term memory was fleeting and confused.

She would sort out the cause later. An aboriginal instinct was spreading from her belly through her chest and into her extremities.

Two days earlier, while being guided in the Solio reserve in the north, she’d found herself uninterested in the big game, but fascinated by her guide and driver, a Maasai in full tribal costume. He’d been willing to indulge her.

“On one’s own,” Olé, the guide, had told her, “a stranger to the bush won’t last a single night.”

“But the Maasai,” she’d countered. “You have lasted thousands of years.”

“It is true. We have lived here, hunted here, survived here, for thousands—tens of thousands—of years. We have learned from our forefathers. We can survive for weeks, months.”

“Teach me.”

“Excuse me, Miss Grace?”

“Olé, we see a rhino and he runs away. Giraffe, busy with eating. We spend forty minutes driving dusty trails searching for a lion that I honestly, sincerely, do not want to disturb. I feel in the way here. I’m intruding. Please, tell me about your life, the lives of your tribesmen. Help me understand the humans in this place.”

He’d started with the obvious: what to eat—roots, mostly. But not all! Particular berries for particular purposes; how to find water; methods to prevent bug bites and to treat those that bite anyway. Set snares. Take shelter. Avoid being stalked and hunted by jackals and cats. Some of the information was new; some similar to lessons given by her grandmother while tending their family farm in central China.

Safari guests were constantly cautioned to never leave the vehicle without instruction to do so. When allowed, Grace had always been accompanied by a guide. Cape buffalo were the animals most feared. Not rhino or jackal or hyena. Not elephant. Cape buffalo were known to charge without provocation. The safari vehicles were reinforced and fitted with roll bars and all manner of defense, but out of the vehicle? That was another story. She was one woman, one small woman, alone in the bush and with no form of self-defense.

Grace’s thoughts circled back, unable to let go of the need to understand what had gotten her here. It had been nearly four weeks since she’d arrived to investigate Winston’s bad vaccine. During that time she’d felt little if any personal threat. Her most recent visit had been to an NGO called Larger Than Life, not the type of people to dump you in the bush.

Her only reasonable concern had been the discovery, days earlier, of someone attempting to breach her computer. Though a virtually impossible task, it had been enough to scare her, to put her on the move.

She reviewed the past few weeks, looking for a misstep. She’d begun with interviews of the activist, the old reporter. She’d moved on to some early success behind her computer—she’d breached a shipping company’s servers. Various pieces of the investigation had begun to fit together. She’d covered her digital tracks well, had taken extra precautions—but had sent John a red flag when someone tried to hack her. She thought if there was to be trouble, it would be in Nairobi, not a tiny village on the Tanzanian border.

An animal cried in the distance, mournful and discomforting. It sounded both lonely and hungry. Grace worked to calm herself. Listening to Olé’s lessons in survival was one thing; living them quite another. Surely the staff at the Ol Donyo Lodge would come looking for her when she failed to make dinner. The couple who managed the place would be worried by now. Help was on its way.

Unless . . .

Someone had obviously planned this for her. She flushed with heat. She did remember now—leaving the clinic with a new driver, one not from the lodge!

So, had they crashed? Broken down? Or had she been left here to wait for her driver’s return, or dumped, left to die of exposure? Why couldn’t she remember? Had her abductor intentionally left a broken-down vehicle out there somewhere to complete the fiction of her getting lost and isolated? She glanced at her phone; no service.

Grace squatted and pulled herself into a ball, arms clasped around her shins, shivering despite the heat. Her breathing was shallow, her limbs shaking, ears ringing. She pushed to calm herself. She’d gone into shock. She needed water; there was none. She closed her eyes, steadied her breathing. She reminded herself she’d been raised in the rice fields of central China. She’d faced her share of exposure to the elements. Snakes. Wild dogs. Equally wild neighbors. She’d been through boot camp with the People’s Liberation Army; had
eaten grubs and worms. During her service in Army Intelligence, she’d been trained to survive and escape captivity. She’d scored higher than any woman before her. She was no U.S. Navy SEAL, but she was no Shanghai shopper, either.

No time for hysterics. Think, plan, act.

As the sun tracked, she would know east from west, north from south. Nighttime presented the greatest risks. Her bodily odors would betray her. Olé had been clear about that: her prey would smell her first.

If not an accident, she’d been dumped with the intention of killing her. Whoever was responsible wanted it to look accidental. Attacked and eaten. Stung. Bitten. Exposure. She couldn’t believe that her return trip to the conservation group, Larger Than Life, had caused her situation. Someone had caught up to her there, or had gotten ahead of her and had been waiting. The thought sent a chill through her.

Her real hope remained with John. How long until he acted on that text she’d sent? How effective would the crumbs she’d been leaving since the start of the trouble prove to be? Crumbs too complex for a stranger to decipher, and no piece of cake for Knox, but solid nonetheless.

Another unexplainable chill swept through Grace. Another slow, controlled breath helped her overcome it. None of it mattered. She had only herself to save her. No daydreaming. No false hope. No reliance on the abstract. One hour at a time.

Think. Plan. Act.