Night of Knives

by Jon Evans

  The cage in which they now sit is inset into a small room with cinderblock walls, a brick floor and a barred window. The ceiling is so low that Jacob has to stoop. The air is painfully stuffy and smells almost as bad as the jail. A number of disturbing stains smeared across the cage's rusting walls make Jacob suspect that Ugandan interrogation techniques have not advanced much, ethically speaking, since the days of Idi Amin; but at least they have the room to themselves, and are being treated with distant courtesy. He doesn't want to imagine what their fate would be if they were black and Ugandan.

  "At least they gave us something to wear." Jacob looks down at his T-shirt, which says FOR AN AIDS-FREE GENERATION, obviously a bulk donation from some Western aid organization. It actually fits him fairly well, but Veronica's is several sizes too large. He searches for any other silver lining, something cheerful to say. "Nice driving back there, by the way."

  "Thanks."

  "You think Prester will make it?"

  She takes a deep breath and visible forces herself to think. "I think he's got a good chance. The ambulance people actually seemed pretty on the ball." By the time the police drove them away from the scrapyard Prester had been carried into an ambulance.

  "They're a private service, they contract out to the police for emergency calls." Jacob's first job for Telecom Uganda Uganda was the prioritization of ambulance cell-phone service on the Mango network.

  "They'll have to fly him out. He needs a real hospital."

  "Will they? I don't know if he's even an American citizen."

  Veronica blinks. "But - but he works for the CIA."

  Jacob shrugs. "So did Derek, and he was Canadian. Deniable front, that's what Prester said, remember? They hire non-Americans as a cover. They might just cut him loose."

  "Shit. What about us?"

  "I don't know." He considers saying something comforting, but decides to go with the truth. "But I think we might be staying here for a while."

  Veronica's face tightens. Jacob wishes he could help her somehow but doesn't know how. He supposes holding her close is exactly the wrong thing to do.

  A minute later the door opens, and the big policeman comes back in, leading a lean, gray-haired white man with a scarred face.

  "All right," Strick says. He sounds disgusted. "Let's get you two out of here."

  Chapter 22

  Entering the American embassy is like teleporting back into the First World, into an office complex occupied by some moderately successful business. Everything is clean, new, imported from the USA.

  It takes five minutes to get past the security gauntlet of razor wire, concrete barriers and guard posts. Strick parks, leads Jacob and Veronica into a side door, up a staircase and into a meeting room dominated by an elliptical wooden table surrounded by big office chairs. One wall is a large whiteboard. The other three are lined with folding plastic chairs, maybe thirty in all. A sleekly designed conference phone sits in the middle of the table. Strick reaches over, pushes a button on that phone, sits down, and motions for them to do the same.

  Once they are all seated Strick says, his voice controlled, "This is the part where you tell me everything. And don't you dare fucking leave anything out."

  Jacob thinks back to what Prester said: Strick is a prick, but he is not dirty. That's one thing I am fucking certain of. He begins to tell the whole story. Veronica chimes in from time to time. Strick listens without asking questions. Jacob thinks his expression softens slightly as they tell their tale.

  "I hope you still have those airline tickets," is all he says when they are finished.

  They nod.

  "Being full-fare first-class tickets, they're good for a year after purchase. I can't actually make you use them tomorrow. But I very strongly suggest it."

  "And then what happens?" Jacob asks.

  "And then we take care of things. It's a matter of priorities. There are a lot of innocent lives at risk. The first thing we do is take care of Al-Qaeda in the Congo. We can put our own house in order later."

  "What if they're planning something?" Veronica asks. "What if they're blackmailing whoever set up Derek to help them?"

  "We're well aware of that possibility and we're taking measures to ensure that doesn't happen."

  "What measures?" Jacob demands.

  Strick fixes him with a cold stares. "Classified measures."

  "Classified my ass," Jacob says, his anger finally bubbling over. "You aren't well aware of shit, and you aren't the least bit interested who set up Derek, or you wouldn't be hearing about all this from us. This is insane. You're telling us to go away? You should be asking us for help. I've found out more sitting at my computer than you have with the whole American intelligence budget behind you. Derek was murdered by one of you. By someone he was working for. But you don't actually want to find out who it was, do you? All you want is to use your pet Zimbabwe general to clean up in the Congo, collect the hosannas, then make your own problem go away before it makes you all look bad for not having noticed, this whole fucking time, that one of your own guys was in league with terrorists and genocidists. Never mind that they might be planning something in the meantime. The important thing is to keep your dirty laundry private, isn't it? You're nothing but a useless bureaucrat."

  Strick recoils slightly, as if he has just been slapped. He looks at Jacob for a long moment. Then he says, in an oddly gentle voice, "I know he was your friend. But you have to let go."

  "No, actually, I don't."

  "Let me tell you a story."

  Jacob opens his mouth to say he doesn't want to hear it. Veronica kicks him in the shin. He looks at her and subsides.

  "I knew a woman once," Strick said. "A Kurdish woman. I was there on duty, this was between the gulf wars. We were going to be engaged. That is, we were engaged, but it was secret. We couldn't tell anyone. Then one day she disappeared. I didn't take it seriously for the first couple of days. I thought she'd come back. It wasn't the first time. She had a history. Fits of madness. I guess you're not supposed to call it that any more. Madness. She was younger than me. Sometimes it hits women in their twenties. Especially trauma survivors. Her family was all murdered in the eighties." He takes a deep breath. "But this time it wasn't madness. She told her cousin, he told her uncle, they took her away and killed her. Honor killing. So-called."

  Jacob and Veronica stare at Strick.

  "I could have gone after them," the gray-haired man says. "I could have had my revenge. I wanted to. But it would have ruined everything both of us had worked for. And what good would have come from it? What good would have come?"

  They have no answer.

  "So I let her go. You want to help. You want to know what happened to you and your friend. I respect that. But I'm sorry. You can't. Let it go. Leave it to the professionals. Don't interfere. No good will come of it. People like you, well-meaning amateurs, you can't do good here, not in Africa, the place isn't built for it. The harder you try, the more you fail. You almost died tonight, both of you. Please. Go home before it's too late."

  * * *

  Strick gives them a car and driver to take them home.

  "Maybe he's right," Veronica says to Jacob, as they sail through Kampala's empty streets. "It sounds like they've got the whole Al-Qaeda angle under control. Maybe we should just go."

  "Maybe we should. But I'm not going to."

  "Why not?" she asks, frustrated, and still a little angry at him for losing his temper at the embassy. "I mean, honestly, what do you hope to get out of it? You really think you're going to get enough evidence to put somebody in jail? Here? With all this complicated mess? Come on."

  "I'm going to find out who it was."

  "And then what?"

  "That is the what. I just want to know. Maybe I won't do anything, maybe that won't be possible. I understand that. But I want to know who and why. And I want them to know that I know."

  "That's crazy."

  "You think so? Then you better get on the plane tomorrow." />
  "Maybe I will."

  He looks at her with an opaque expression. "I hope you don't. I really, Veronica, I really hope you don't. But I have to see this through, you understand? He would have done it for me. And we're close. Can't you feel it? We're so close."

  "Close? What do you mean, close? We don't have anything."

  Jacob digs his hiptop out of his pocket.

  "I thought Prester took -" Veronica says, and falls silent when she sees the blood, Prester's blood, smeared on the device's plastic carapace and LCD screen.

  "He did. I found it next to him, he must have dropped it. I thought they'd take it from us in the jail, I suppose the cops here are more honest than I figured. Brutal but honest. Or maybe only with white people. Or maybe just incompetent. They didn't even take the Leatherman."

  Jacob cleans the hiptop with the lip of his shirt and begins tapping away at its tiny keyboard. Veronica wonders what it says about Jacob that he picked up the hiptop before she even got to Prester. Is it a credit to his presence of mind, that he remembered to do it between calling for help and tending to the victim? Or was it the first thing he did?

  Jacob spends the rest of the drive back to his apartment typing into and staring at the glowing hiptop. He grunts with surprise a couple of times. Veronica doesn't try to initiate conversation, she just stares out the window. It is past midnight and the main streets of Kampala are entirely deserted, as if some plague has wiped out every inhabitant but for them.

  "I'll call you tomorrow," Veronica says, when they reach Jacob's apartment complex.

  "No," Jacob says sharply. "Come in for a moment. I'll get Henry to drive you home."

  "No, Jacob, he's sleeping, he's a human being, you can't just treat him as -"

  "Come in."

  She looks at him. His face is pale and deadly serious. "Okay."

  The driver is content to let them go together. Jacob's sleepy askaris wave them through.

  "What is it?" she asks, as they walk up to his apartment door.

  "Let's go in." Jacob hesitates. There is a strange and wild look in his eyes. "No. Actually, on second thought, let's go sit on the lawn."

  "What? Jacob, it's midnight, this isn't -"

  He grabs her hand. "Follow me."

  She allows him to lead her into a dark corner of the groomed lawn that surrounds his apartment. He tugs her down to sit beside him on the grass, shifts over until their legs are actually touching, leans over to her and puts his head so close to hers his chin is on her shoulder. At first she doesn't know how to react. Then she realizes he isn't making a clumsy pass. This is something else.

  "They called Strick," Jacob whispers. She can feel his lips brush against her ears, but he is so quiet she can hardly hear him.

  "What?" she asks, not understanding but instinctively whispering back.

  "You remember I said there was a Mango phone in that building? One of theirs. A phone belonging to one of the men who shot at us. That phone called Strick's number before I called the ambulance."

  When Veronica understands the implication of that she starts as if shocked by a thousand volts.

  "It's Strick. He's on their side. He's the smuggler. He's the guy who set up Derek. He's the one working with Al-Qaeda."

  "Oh my God."

  "And there's something else. Good news. We're getting messages from one of those GPS trackers. Prester managed to tag one of their vehicles. That must have been when they shot him."

  "After," Veronica says softly, thinking of the exit wound in Prester's chest. "When he was getting away. He was shot from behind."

  "For all we know Strick was actually in the building."

  She shakes her head. "I saw all the men there. They were all black."

  "Well, he's involved somehow, he has to be."

  For a second Veronica wonders if Jacob is inventing all this just to keep her from leaving, or whether it's some sort of paranoid fantasy - but no, this isn't the sort of thing that men like Jacob lie about, it is falsifiable, at least in theory, he's talking about facts not interpretations, it would never cross his mind that she doesn't know enough about the technology to prove or disprove his claim no matter how many screens full of numbers he showed her and patiently explained. He isn't crazy, and he wouldn't lie. Not to her. She knows that. She trusts him.

  "Where is it going? The tracker?"

  "Shh. Quiet as you can. West. Towards Semiliki. The refugee camp."

  "You think they've bugged us?"

  "I think we can't be too careful. Especially when Strick finds out we didn't get on the airplane tomorrow."

  Veronica swallows. He is taking it as a given. And maybe he is right. She is starting to feel angry, a warm and soothing rage deep inside.

  "We should go to Semiliki first thing in the morning," he whispers.

  "No," she says.

  "But –"

  "Second thing. There's something else I have to do first."

  "What?"

  "Danton."

  Chapter 23

  Of course Danton is staying in the Sheraton. Kampala arguably has one or two finer hotels, but none more central, and Danton must always be at the center of things. The staff at the Sheraton recognize Veronica, she comes here for lunch at least weekly. She doesn't need to ask what room he's in. The presidential suite, the penthouse. Nothing less would be acceptable to her ex-husband.

  The elevator opens onto a narrow hallway covered by leopard-patterned carpet, overseen by framed explorers' maps and sketches of nineteenth-century Africa, and by a pair of mounted elephant tusks. Two security guards stand on duty. Four mahogany doors lead out from the hallway. Veronica steps out, not allowing herself any hesitation, and demands, "Which door for Mr. DeWitt?"

  The guards look at her a moment. Her face is almost healed from her Congo ordeal, the scabs have flaked off, the bruises are fading back into healthy flesh, and she is a well-dressed white woman. They aren't about to challenge her.

  "This way, madam," one says, and opens the door for her. She enters the suite's antechamber, basically another hallway with a closet. Veronica closes the door behind her and opens the one ahead without knocking. Her hand is trembling slightly. Danton is sitting and reading the International Herald Tribune by a huge window with a magnificent southern view that extends all the way to the blue expanse of Lake Victoria. He is of average height but thick and wide, built like a pit bull, he lifts weights religiously. His pot belly has grown since she last saw him, his hair has thinned, and his face is grizzled and stubbly. He wears khaki slacks and a vest of many pockets as if he is about to go on safari, it makes him look ridiculously colonial, all he needs is a pith helmet. She recognizes his Ecco shoes.

  "Jesus," he says, amazed, he nearly drops the newspaper.

  "No. Just me."

  Veronica doesn't know what else to say. She tries to resurrect the rage she felt last night, but all she feels is horribly out of place, awkward, embarrassed. She shouldn't have come. This was a terrible mistake. He still has all the power.

  It only takes Danton a moment to readjust. "I heard what happened, of course. I'm glad you're okay. But Veronica, if there's something you want to see me about, you should call ahead. You should call Julia. I'm on a very busy schedule, I really don't have time to chat."

  His mention of Julia reawakens Veronica's rage. Julia is one of Danton's personal assistants. It was Julia who informed Veronica that Danton had decided to divorce her. He couldn't even be bothered to tell her himself.

  "I'm sure you're very busy," Veronica says. Her voice sounds shrill even to herself. "Is there trouble with Selous Holdings? Out at the Kisembe mine? Is Athanase giving you some kind of problem?"

  Danton's expression doesn't waver, and it is that which convinces her she's right. If he actually didn't know what she was talking about he would have reacted somehow. "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

  "Did you know I was in that group, in Bwindi? Did you know and go ahead and say it was okay anyways?"

  He blink
s with surprise at the accusation, and she realizes no, he hadn't known. But that doesn't mean he wasn't responsible. It's like Prester said. He didn't know because he didn't want to.

  "Veronica, I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't think you do either. It's time for you to go. You should go home. You've been through a traumatic experience and I think your mental health has suffered -"

  "You're fucking right I have. Being married to you."

  "Veronica, please. Don't make me call security. Don't make me humiliate you like that."

  "Oh, come off it. You can't wait to humiliate me. You never could. Seven years and you throw me out like a, like a used condom."

  "I'm not going to waste my time justifying myself to you. You know what I think?" Danton sounds angry now. "I think you knew all along you were infertile. You knew and married me anyways."

  The accusation is so outrageous Veronica can't find the right words to respond.

  "So don't you come to me talking about things you don't understand. You're not getting any more money from me. You've gotten more than enough already. Seven years of the high life is more than most women like you get. Plus alimony for life. You should count yourself lucky."

  "Lucky? Lucky? You piece of shit. You piece of shit." She can't believe she used to tell this man she loved him, that she slept beside his hairy, walruslike body most nights for seven years and told herself she didn't mind his snoring, didn't mind the carelessly indulgent way he treated her, as if she was more pet than wife, didn't mind the selfish, mechanical way he fucked her on the rare occasions he was roused to sex. She can't believe she once hoped to bear his child. She wants to walk over and smash his face, crush his testicles, gouge his eyes out.