White Bone (32 page)

K
oigi advised Guuleed to stand down, that to reach for his sidearm would get him killed. Guuleed was bleeding from his head and his legs.

And now that Koigi had the opportunity to study him, he realized that this man, this murderer he’d sought for nearly two years, wouldn’t be reaching for his gun. Formerly infamous for the missing finger he’d lost in pirating a tanker at sea, Guuleed now had only a fleshy stump where his right hand should have been. The rolling vehicle had crushed it.

“Have you ever seen such a thing as that?” Koigi asked.

“Never so close,” replied Guuleed. “Cheeky bastard, that one.”

“He saw you coming.”

“Yes. You may be right there.”

“It pains my heart that we have a witness in the trees,” Koigi said. “Without him, I would kill you here, cousin, without a second thought.”

“And I would thank you for it.” Guuleed fell to his knees, unable to stand any longer. He cried out as his wounded leg hit the earth. “My blood is in the soil, as it should be,” he said, his head hung down. “I wonder, cousin, if I can manage to turn my back, would you allow me to reach across for my weapon?”

“No, cousin, I would not,” Koigi said, moving closer now. Suicide was too good for this bastard. “I’ll take the other leg and your balls first. Your decision.”

A knife hung on the man’s belt as well, but again, his hand was of no use to him. Koigi adopted the slow walk of a pallbearer. He’d imagined this moment a hundred times. Never like this. He’d wanted the challenge.

Justice did not exist in Kenya. He said as much to Guuleed.

“There is justice here, cousin. In the soil. The sunlight.” Guuleed squinted, looking up. “You’ll never win, you know? They will be hunted until they’re gone. The rhino, also. Easy money, that’s all they are.”

He was intentionally provoking Koigi and both men knew it.

From ten feet away, Koigi put a bullet into the man’s groin and two more into his abdomen. Guuleed collapsed to the side. Koigi rid him of his weapons and, with the man bleeding out, looked down into his eyes long and hard, his cold gaze expressing his sudden indifference. Then he walked toward the woods and the plane that was cocked down onto one wing.

He left Guuleed alive—but just barely. The lions and jackals were certain to follow in the hours to come.

Even that fate was too good for him.

K
nox never left her side. He sat her on a chair in the shower at Larger Than Life’s headquarters and sponged her clean, never a moment of embarrassment between them. They’d been through Amsterdam together. So many secrets lay behind them now.

Grace showered for forty-five minutes. Washed her hair three times. He tended to her cuts and bites, abrasions and rashes. She kept down the fresh fruit. Didn’t want anything more than that, just water and sports drinks.

Brantingham’s gunshot wound required a flight to Nairobi. Knox and Grace joined him, leaving behind the only four of Guuleed’s men to have survived. They would be turned over to the Kenyan Game Agency.

En route, the medics administered a variety of shots and put Grace on an IV drip. She slept. In Nairobi’s Karen Hospital, she went through two days of tests and examinations and was treated for
dehydration, malnutrition, a sprained ankle, an infected snakebite, numerous contusions and lacerations. Knox heard a Swahili word repeated by the nurses and was finally able to get a translation: “miracle.”

In private moments while she lay sleeping, breathing softly, he would take her hand. It was during one such tender moment that he realized he’d allowed her in.

No one, he thought, would understand the significance of this inclusion. But for a man who’d blocked out the world—save only his brother—behind multiple layers of sarcasm and bravado, pseudo-independence and aloofness, it was a watershed moment for Knox. He felt connected to Grace, and more important, he wanted and welcomed that connection.

He had not a single strand of temptation to sever the emotional ties that had formed. Indeed, he thought, he would work tirelessly to maintain and strengthen them if given the chance.

Several times over the next two days, she came awake to see him leaning over the side of the bed. “Hello, there,” she said on the first of these occasions.

“They’re calling you a miracle. No surprise there.”

No smile.

She nodded and slipped back into sleep. And so it went, each conversation a little longer, a little more in depth. She wanted to know the fate of the elephant with the broken tusk, was horribly worried she’d wounded him. She had, in fact, inflicted a surface wound that neither Brantingham nor Knox had seen. The LTL rangers were monitoring Snaggle Tooth and planned to tranquilize him, dress the wound and reattach a working transmitter.

Grace started talking business practically before eating her first meal, but for once Knox wouldn’t play along. He pushed away such talk for a future time.

That time arrived on the third day of her hospital stay, by which point Knox looked to be the one in need of medical care.

Through various discussions separated by naps, first for her, then for him, Knox caught her up on what he thought he knew of her investigation. Speaking was not easy for Grace. Her voice was raspy and hoarse; when she did talk, it was more of a whisper.

“I got your thumb drives,” he told her. “Clever of you.”

“David?”

“Sarge and I missed a rendezvous. He’s here now in Nairobi, working with the police and the U.S. and Chinese embassies. I have a few charges to get around. Winston has stepped up. It’s all good. Kamat says hello. You’ve given tech services a field day.

“No, it’s the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company paperwork that’s stumped me and the geeks,” he said. “The second thumb drive. The one you left in Solio.”

“I was counting on you,” she said. “Do not tell me you let me down.” She smiled, but he could tell it hurt.

“In Solio you were after a connection to the stolen vaccine.”

“Yes.”

“To make the connection between the man Faaruq and the clinic.”

“Yes. Good!”

“Was Samuelson trying to make that same connection?” he asked. “Is that why they killed him?”

She shook her head. “No. He was interested in corruption. He was after the government minister or ministers that had allowed the vault of ivory to be robbed. Only in the way they killed Samuelson did I connect the theft of the vaccine to the poachers and the clinic.”

“Brantingham said you tricked him. What was that about?”

“The key, John, was the ISP, the Internet service provider. Brantingham told me that Larger Than Life had kept the same high-speed line used by the clinic. If service had been disconnected and
reestablished, I would not have been successful. But it was indeed the same service. LTL simply took over the contract. I suppose I did trick Mr. Brantingham into giving me an Ethernet line. I needed access to the router. Once I was in, it became interesting.”

“You went there the second time to pull Faaruq’s records.”

“Nothing is ever lost once on the Internet, John, as you know. One must simply know where to look. When the clinic closed so quickly, they believed they had erased or destroyed all their data. But I recovered most of their records, all of their e-mails. If you looked at the contents of that thumb drive . . . there was far too much data. I opened up some doors, you might call them, so tech services could access the same material.”

Knox walked her through his relationship with the boy, Bishoppe. “In the end, he betrayed me through an intermediary to Guuleed, the man Koigi left to die.”

“I know of Guuleed.”

“That had to cement Guuleed’s belief that either you were still alive, or I was heading after proof in Oloitokitok of who was responsible for your death. All things even, I’m not sure the betrayal hurt me. But at the time I was only too happy to get onto the plane with Brantingham and out of the village.”

Grace lifted up on her elbows. “I am strong enough. No more bed.”

But Knox intercepted her and eased her back down. She swore in Mandarin. He told her to cool it.

“Do you understand now, the paperwork on the Solio thumb drive? Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company?”

“Only that Samuelson was killed alongside one of their employees. I assumed you were trying to figure out the other guy’s role.”

“Correct. A reporter of Samuelson’s stature with a common water master. They had been moved, you know.”

“Yes.”

“No autopsy. They were cremated.”

“Yeah. Look, maybe you should rest. You’re getting all worked up.”

“There were KGA rangers on the scene. Read what I gave you! Does anyone read anymore?” She strained at the IV tube, clearly irritated. “One ranger did; he knew to read rigor, lividity. At least twenty-four to thirty-six hours’ difference in the times of death. The water master was beaten. Likely tortured. He was killed first. He could have been killed anywhere, even here in Nairobi. They tortured him because Samuelson thought him important. Samuelson, who had written about the stolen ivory.”

“Maybe you should rest.”

“Maybe you should listen.”

“You’re feeling better,” he said.

“Listen to me, John. Samuelson writes articles about corruption. He learns of and exposes the huge losses from the government’s ivory vaults over the years, one quite recently. Now, as to my supposition, it goes like this. He is being watched, this reporter. He meets with an unimportant water master, perhaps more than once. Whoever is watching him takes an interest in the water master. They abduct and torture the man; there is little doubt of this. Let us presume this man is stronger than they expect, or, more to the point, the person behind the torture—”

“Faaruq—”

“—is not so professional. He goes too far and kills the water master.”

“Before the man tells them anything.”

“Precisely, John! So next—”

“They abduct Samuelson.”

“A riskier venture. An expat. A white. We can fairly rule out the government at this point. Someone else.”

“They say everyone in Kenya is after this ivory. Faaruq had ties to Guuleed, so it was Guuleed.”

“Samuelson does not talk, does not explain his connection to the water master. Maybe he dies of a heart attack, maybe again they go too far. How is one to know? In the end, he too is killed—a white man—and now they must cover it up, so they stage it as a poaching.”

“They could have just buried them. They staged it to send a message. They wanted the next person they took to talk.”

“Perhaps. I do not understand the precise threat I posed to them. It was Guuleed who put me in the bush, though I may never prove it.”

He continued to find her occasional naïveté endearing. For one so brilliant, she could sound so childish. “But they came back for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Guuleed ordered that you be brought back.”

“Leebo,” she said, shivering. “That is why he returned.”

“Because you made the connection,” he said. “You connected Samuelson and this water master to the stolen ivory, and you intended to get Winston his money back with the reward.”

“I do not know why David always makes fun of your intelligence, John. He really should be hearing this.” She smiled.

“That’s the first smile I’ve seen,” Knox said. “And you didn’t try to cover it up.”

Her eyes softened. “Thank you.”

He wasn’t sure how to take that.

“For noticing,” she said. Then she was back to business. “The problem such people as these have, John, is that they don’t read the newspaper. If they had, it would all be so apparent. For me, it required archival work, Internet searches of back issues. Everything needed to locate the missing ivory was right there.”

“Now you’re sounding arrogant. You must be feeling better.”

She didn’t comment. Remained silent for a long time. Knox nearly apologized, but then she started up again. “There is an article—it is
on the second thumb drive—reporting that Nairobi City Water and Sewerage, a private company contracted to take over the city’s supply of potable water, was observing water shortages in the Kibera slum. That was it: a tiny reference on a page deep inside a single day’s issue. Clean water to the slum was among the first of NCWS’s projects. The article reported a drop by half of the usual volume. But who pays attention to the problems of a slum? The water master quoted in the piece was—”

“Samuelson’s man.”

“The same. You see, John? Samuelson obviously read his own paper cover to cover each day. He was a true journalist.”

“So he interviewed the water master responsible for Kibera. You hacked their water company’s records to cross-reference the date of the water loss to the theft of the ivory from the government vault. The Kibera problem occurred after the theft.”

“Again! Where is David! You like to pretend you are not so smart, John. This is something you will need to work on.”

“Is it really?”

“Oh, yes.” She reached over and squeezed his hand, reminding him of the airplane.