by Layton Green
“I don’t give a good god-damn what it’s called. We can’t bring this fairy tale to the Ambassador. I’m not going to tell him that his best friend was trapped inside a circle of air and then carried off by some invisible monster.”
Harris sighed. “Look, kid. I actually like you. You’ve got real skills, you’re a smartass, and you don’t take any shit. I can respect that. But it’s no secret around here you’re not Mister 401K. Do this one right for me, and I’ll try to do something about your insubordinations over the past few years. I’m not trying to be a dick—well, not entirely—but let me spell it out for you, just to be sure. Your job hangs in the balance.”
“Addison’s life hangs in the balance,” Grey murmured.
20
Grey stepped out of the Embassy, rolled up his sleeves in the afternoon heat, and took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself.
Clouds began to gather for an afternoon thundershower, casting the buildings into a shadowy bas-relief that replaced the city’s sun-drenched, tactile skyline. After the first few gigantic drops spattered his forehead, Grey ducked into a café rich with the smell of roasting coffee.
He took a seat by the window and watched as the heavens opened. The rain built in a slow crescendo, nature’s perfect symphony, until the din couldn’t possibly get any louder—and then it grew louder still. Grey saw a new city, a concrete rain forest encased in molten silver that, for the moment, was as pure and unadulterated as anywhere on the planet.
The café reminded him of other cafés. Grey loved them all: the froth of a cappuccino in a nameless bus station, the anonymity of a darkened corner, the curious self-affirming loneliness of solitary travel, the homesickness that would quietly revert to restlessness once home was found. Grey, like most real travelers, strode towards a lost horizon.
A blond woman with close-cropped hair and hoop earrings sat at the table next to him, tanned arms and legs glistening with moisture. She glanced at him, extending her look for that scintilla of time which said it all, then returned to toweling off the rain with napkins.
She ordered a cappuccino from a waiter she called by name, then chatted on her cell with three different people. Grey sipped his coffee and watched her with hooded eyes, a wave of envy passing over him. Envy at the ease of spirit that derives from a lifetime of taking one’s place in the world for granted.
Through a childhood of army bases, through all those years of wandering after he’d run away from home at sixteen, through those brief, dilettantish stops for curiosity or financial necessity or simple weariness, through the peregrinations intrinsic to his career, Grey had always hoped for one simple thing: he hoped that one day he would step off the plane, the train, or the boat and know that finally, at last, he had arrived. He lived to travel, but he also longed for a place he could claim as his own.
Grey didn’t pity himself, or feel misunderstood. He was simply more aware than most of the terrifying reality of the individuality of the soul.
The woman flicked her eyes at the watery darts still splattering the window. “It’s like a guest that won’t leave, ya?”
She startled him; he hadn’t expected her to initiate conversation. He chuckled lamely.
She said, “American?”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t be a tourist.”
“I work at the Embassy.”
“Ya, really? One of my mates is there. Donald Walker. D’you know him?”
“I think I’ve heard the name.”
She extended a hand. “I’m Anna.”
“Grey.”
“I’ll tell Donald I ran into you.” She inclined her head towards the street. “Are you enjoying our sham of a country?”
“I enjoy the people. I can’t say the same for what’s going on here.”
“It’s a bloody catastrophe is what it is. Half my fam’s in South Africa now, lost their farms. I might join them soon. This is my home, you know, but I won’t last much longer. None of us will.”
“I can see why it’s a hard place to leave. It’s a beautiful country.”
“Ya, well. They want this country for themselves? I say let them have it and see how long before they’re begging us back.”
A bedraggled boy burst into the café, water dripping onto bare feet. He walked to Grey’s table, his right palm upturned and thrusting forward. He couldn’t have been more than six.
“Voetsake,” she muttered. “Go away you dirty little Kaffir. Go on, out.”
Grey’s mouth dropped. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Don’t encourage the little buggers.”
Grey sprang out of his chair. “He’s a child, for Christ’s sake!” Grey took the boy, who was watching the scene with dull eyes, by the hand. “Let’s go outside. Neither of us is welcome here.”
He walked the boy to the door. Anna shouted after him. “You think you know this country? You go on and feel sorry for them, hey? You know what they did to my uncle when they took his farm? They strung him up in his own barn! You don’t know anything, you stupid American—”
Grey slammed the door to the café, slipped a few dollars into the boy’s palm, and watched him scamper into the rain.
• • •
The rain stopped soon after Grey left the café. The sun had almost set, and he walked back to his apartment through a thick, misty soup.
Damn Harris, damn that racist woman, and damn this world for letting young children beg on city streets.
Grey felt himself shaking, both from outrage and from the violence inside him waiting to spill forth. His terrible temper was there in his earliest memories, when he first tried to cope with the violence in his home. Grey knew he had some of his father’s demons.
But he was different, he told himself through the years. He was also his mother. He’d use his anger for good, and for good alone.
Then came the day Grey had known would come. He’d just turned sixteen, his mother had been gone a year. Grey’s father came home smelling like he’d soaked in a bathtub of Jack Daniels.
C’mon son. Get on over here. I’ve been neglecting my duties.
Grey didn’t move.
Gonna fight back tonight? That’s good, boy. It’s been a while. You used to have more fight.
Grey had known for a while he could have fought back and won. Grey virtually lived at the school, and Jujitsu was a devastating skill. His father’s experience and seventy pounds might have evened the fight except that, as now, he was usually dead drunk when it happened.
Yet Grey had controlled himself. Part of him wanted to end it, part of him didn’t. Because when he ended it, he’d have to leave. Because this man was still his father, and he was still just a boy who wanted his father to change.
But since his mother had died, Grey’s willingness to stay had lessened every day.
You got too much of your mother in you, boy. He hit Grey across the mouth. You got that smell of pussy on you. Always have. Another blow, to the stomach.
Grey started to shake. He couldn’t take the talk about mom.
A knee to the ribs. You look like her, you talk like her, you got her weaknesses crawling all over you. You’re supposed to be a man.
Grey tried to push it away. Don’t do it dad, he said. Don’t make me do this.
His father kicked him to the floor. Grey lay on his stomach and hoped his father would stumble away. Instead he picked up a bicycle chain he kept in a cabinet, and lashed Grey across the back.
Grey winced as the links bit into his flesh, but he was long past caring about the physical pain.
You’re a goddamned mistake, a skinny little girl, and your mother was a goddamned mistake, a whore mistake, a bitch who didn’t know her place -
Grey snapped.
He loved that man as every boy loves his father, no matter how monstrous. But love does not exclude hate. And that night he took out sixteen years of hatred on his father, sixteen years of physical and mental abuse and, more importantly, a lifetime of watching him
abuse Grey’s mother.
When it was finished, he stood over his father, now a slobbering drunken mess of blood and pain crumpled on the floor. Grey grabbed a few things, heard his father curse him as he walked out the door, and never looked back.
Since he was a boy, Grey had questioned his own goodness. After that day, after he’d given in and punished his own father with violence instead of just running away, Grey no longer wondered if there were demons inside himself.
He shrank from them.
• • •
By the time he approached his building one thought sustained him. He might have demons, but there was something else in there. An innate desire to help others that had lived within him for as long as he could remember.
He’d never been sure he believed in the authenticity of this desire. Maybe it wasn’t genuine, maybe it was all just masked selfishness as the philosophers say, maybe it was another excuse to search out violence.
But whether or not he believed in it, he could follow it. He could do good with it. He could do it right now.
He would find William Addison, if there was anything left to be found. Not for his job, not for the Ambassador, and certainly not for Harris. He would find him because Addison needed help.
And that was enough.
His cell rang, and he checked the caller. Nya.
“There’re a few things you need to be aware of,” she said. “Immediately.”
“What?”
“Someone’s gotten to Taps. She’s okay, but terrified.”
“Dammit.”
“I had the photos of the tire treads developed and examined by forensics. The treads are from a Mercedes Benz ML400 CDI. This year’s model.”
“Not too many of those in Zim—usually only government stooges,” he said. “No offense.”
“Guess who else owns one?”
“Who?”
“Lucky.”
Grey considered the information. “Tires can be switched.”
“Of course they can. I don’t plan on presenting this to the solicitor. But do you believe this is a coincidence?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Grey—we know we were noticed at the ceremony, and Lucky’s seen you at his club. Someone’s already sent you one message. Perhaps you should check into a hotel. I can arrange for one.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Won’t you even consider it?”
“No.”
A pause. “That’s your choice. But I thought you should know about Lucky as soon as possible.”
“Thanks. I mean it.”
“There’s one more thing. There’s been another disappearance.”
21
The next morning they were on the road again. The disappearance had taken place near a village outside Great Zimbabwe, the ruins of one of the oldest religious structures in Africa.
They took the Masvingo Road out of town. When they passed the airport Grey remembered his arrival in Zimbabwe. He had expected the usual from a third-world airport: claustrophobic low ceilings, omnipresent vendors, zombie-like transit passengers.
White and open and airy, tasteful and modern, lavished with exquisite Shona sculptures and beautiful mosaic floors, Harare’s airport sparkled. But except for a few bewildered Chinese tourists with him on his commuter plane from Nairobi, he’d found it disconcertingly empty. Baggage carousels sat devoid of luggage, no groups of family members and taxi drivers clamored at the exit gate. It was as if the place had been built for the personal use of the man whose stern portrait gazed down upon the airport from every angle.
A man Grey would love to have a little chat with. Maybe a nice friendly game of see-how-it-feels-to-be-oppressed.
They sped down the highway under a galaxy-sized blue sky. The landscape had a breezy, tropical languor. Rich countryside surrounded them, full of verdant hills and multi-tiered acacias. Palms dotted the roadside, shading women in colorful fabrics resting their burdens.
Even in the car, Grey felt the landscape. The African landscape was vast and visceral in a way not understood by those who haven’t experienced it. The wide-open spaces contributed to the aura, but it was the wildness that defined it, the thrill and danger of unbridled nature. The odors of the bush floated to Grey’s nostrils, the scent of animal and husky earth, and he invited them in. Sometimes he wondered if Africa hadn’t been cursed for having too much beauty.
“How far is it?” Grey asked. “I’m haven’t been to this part of Zimbabwe.”
“A few hours.”
“You’re sure we have enough fuel? I haven’t seen a gas station since Harare, and those were closed.”
“There’re two more barrels of fuel in the boot. Government rations,” she said drily.
Grey chuckled. “I was beginning to wonder if you had a sense of humor.”
“More assumptions, I see.”
“Sorry. Sometimes I think I missed out on the tact gene.”
“At least you say what you mean.”
“Yeah, well, it gets me in trouble. My social skills leave much to be desired.”
“Didn’t your mother teach you what you need to know?”
Grey quieted. “My mother’s dead.”
She looked at him. “Mine too.” She hesitated, then said, “Your social skills are fine, hey? Straightforward is refreshing.”
Honesty was indeed refreshing, and a trait Grey valued, but he didn’t think he was getting it from Nya. He admired Nya’s strength of character, her quiet self-confidence, but whatever it was she was hiding troubled him. He didn’t want to accuse her of anything until he was sure, but nor did he want to keep putting himself in dangerous situations without knowing what was going on in her mind.
At noon Nya pulled up to a plush hotel set on a low hill. “The man who reported the disappearance manages this hotel,” she said. “It was his niece that disappeared. She lives in a village nearby.”
They drove slowly onto the grounds. Conical stone cottages with sloped, thatched roofs surrounded a central building of similar design. Streams, pools, and gardens created an Eden-like feel. No one greeted them, and the place looked deserted.
Nya hit the horn a few times. “Strange,” she muttered. They walked around, still no sign of anyone. All the buildings were locked.
“You think there’d at least be some guests,” Grey said.
Nya gave a bitter laugh. “Not anymore.”
Before they drove away, Grey took a long look at the beautiful hotel stranded in the bush, barren as an empty womb.
• • •
Nya drove past an empty parking lot at the entrance to Great Zimbabwe, and stopped on a low hill just outside the massive sprawl of curvaceous, grey granite structures that formed the remains of the ancient city.
Grey had read about Great Zimbabwe: the largest prehistoric structure south of the Sahara, once the religious center of a vast trading empire mysteriously abandoned more than five hundred years ago.
Nya motioned for him to follow, and he walked to the edge of the hill. The ruins were a fantastic collection of corridors, steps, pillars, walls, and enclosures crafted entirely from stone. Nya pointed out the basic tripartite design. The palm-tree studded Valley Complex comprised the center of the ruins, filled with circular, roofless enclosures and pathways lined with stone walls. The gargantuan Great Enclosure, a much-larger version of the circular structures in the Valley Complex, squatted on the south side of the valley. The Hill Complex rose at the north edge, a steep mass of granite capped by a jumble of ruins.
The architecture, she said, was uniquely Shona: flowing curves of stone and beehive-shaped towers, at times concentric and at times irregular, swooping together with symphonic grace. The lack of right angles and straight walls lent the ruins an exotic aura. To Grey’s eyes, trained to look for the traditional stalwarts of Western architecture, the Great Zimbabwe ruins were unsettling, the remains of a lost and alien civilization.
The ruins lay silent and empty before them, ensh
rouded with the mystique of ancient knowledge. “Where is everyone?” Grey said. “These are world-class ruins.”
The look of pride on Nya’s face faded, and a surge of injustice coursed through him. “The foreign tourists avoid us now,” she said. “And no one from Zim can afford the entrance fee.”
Nya circumnavigated the ruins, then headed into the bush on a dirt road. Ten minutes later the road ended, and they entered a small village of brick and thatch. The village setting was beautiful: a crepuscular sky of burnt orange cradling a menagerie of low-lying mopana and flat-topped acacias, with a vista of the ruins in the distance.
Bored teenagers postured in doorways, children gawked at the Land Rover and the white face. Nya parked and they continued on foot through the village.
Grey thought the mood oddly somber, and the adults avoided their gaze and walked away if approached. Grey had been to other villages in Zimbabwe, and found them quite open. The mood, and a lingering morning mist, gave the village an ethereal feel.
Grey lowered his voice. “Do they know you’re government?”
“It’s more than that. These people are afraid.”
Nya led him to a conical thatched hut on the far side of the village. A shirtless middle-aged man sat on a wooden stool outside the hut. He wore a necklace of tiny interlocking shells. A teenage boy with a scarred mouth sat on the ground beside him.
Nya spoke to the man in Shona. He didn’t respond, or even acknowledge her presence. She tried the boy. The boy’s eyes flicked upwards, but he too was silent.
Nya kept pressing. The man brushed his hand at Nya and then returned to his shell. She snapped at him in Shona and led Grey away by the arm. “Come. He won’t help us.”
“Who was that?”
“I assume he’s the father. The uncle named that hut as the residence.”
“What?”
“We made this trip for nothing. These people are far more afraid of the N’anga than they are of threats from me.”
“Afraid enough not to help his own daughter?”
Nya eyed him as they walked, face grim. “Yes.”
