Night of Knives

by Jon Evans

  The soldier nods and leads Veronica and Jacob between two of the permanent buildings to a large shade structure made of metal struts and a green plastic ceiling. Several dozen desks are arranged underneath it, adorned by lights and laptop computers connected to a central generator via an interwoven tangle of power cords clumped on the dirt floor like old spaghetti. It is like some kind of surreal parody of an open-concept office plan. Susan sits at a desk crowded with papers near the edge of the tent. When she sees Veronica and Jacob her mouth literally drops open with astonishment.

  "Surprise!" Veronica says, trying for enthusiasm.

  "Bloody hell," Susan manages. "What are you two doing here?"

  "It's a long story," Jacob says. He wishes they had gone to Susan earlier, before she left Kampala. He'd intended to, but then events overtook them, he'd forgotten all about her and the Semiliki refugee camp until he saw where the tracker was going. "You have a moment?"

  Susan shakes her head, still amazed. "I suppose I must, for you two."

  Veronica says, seriously, "In private."

  Susan opens her mouth and then closes it again. "I see. Yes." She stands up. "In that case, let's take a walk."

  * * *

  Susan leads them out into the camp, onto a road leading away from the gate. The long fingers of clouds above are reddening with sunset. Refugees cluster and watch as if Veronica, Jacob and Susan are A-list celebrities. It occurs to Veronica that just a month ago she would have been far too intimidated by this camp and its densely packed tragedies to go out and walk among the refugees like this.

  A cloud of children surround and follow them, crying out for largesse: "One pen!" "Donnes-moi d'argent!" "Un bic, monsieur, madam, un bic!" "Give me money!" "What is your name?" "Quel est son pays?" Despite the children's entreaties, Susan and Jacob act like they are on a stroll through an empty field. Veronica tries to do the same, but it isn't easy.

  "How are you?" Jacob asks.

  "I'm well enough, I suppose," Susan says. "It's good to be back here. It's the right place for me. I don't think I'll leave anytime soon. Why are you here?"

  "We were abducted because somebody wanted Derek dead. We're trying to find out who."

  Susan comes to a halt and turns to stare at Jacob. "That's mad."

  "No, it's not," Veronica says. "We've found out a lot of things."

  "But what are you doing here?"

  "Somebody brought something to this camp last night," Jacob says.

  "What?"

  "We don't know. But there's a tracker on it, we can find it, we don't need you for that. We need to know, have you seen anything? Anything that might imply there's some kind of smuggling going on between this camp and the Congo?"

  Susan considers. "I couldn't tell you. It's not like this place is tightly policed. Look around, it can't be. There are tribal gangs in the camp. Some mornings we find bodies. Not from natural causes. But nobody ever saw anything. Nobody ever dares bear witness. People disappear all the time. Some run away to find a job. Some never existed in the first place. False identities to get extra rations. Some go back to the Congo, yes. That's where most of these people are from, you know. They ran away from the civil war, and now there's nothing left to go back to. But a smuggling ring? It's possible. I don't know."

  "Derek invited you to Bwindi for a reason," Jacob says.

  She twitches with surprise. "What reason?"

  "There's someone else in this camp that he's been in touch with. Derek even came here, a month ago. Did you see him then?"

  Susan looks astonished. "No."

  "Did he talk to you about that at all?"

  "No. I thought, he met me in Kampala, he invited me, I knew he knew I worked here, but he never asked me anything."

  "Me neither," Veronica says. "I guess he never got the chance."

  "Have you seen any American visitors here lately?" Jacob asks. "Have you heard anything about General Gorokwe? Do Zanzibar Sams or Igloos mean anything to you?"

  Susan shakes her head three times, increasingly perplexed.

  "All right. Shit. Well, never mind." Jacob looks at his hiptop. "We're not far from that tracker. Let's take a look before it gets dark."

  Susan looks nervous. "Maybe we should wait. I should ask some other people."

  Jacob shakes his head. "It's less than a thousand feet away. In fact," he says, turning back towards the center of the camp, following the directions on the hiptop's screen, "it's right back in the middle there."

  He leads them at a quick walk back towards the brick buildings, almost bowling over two children surprised by his sudden direction shift. Veronica follows closely. Susan trails behind. Jacob rounds the corner of one of the brick buildings and comes to a sudden halt so fast Veronica nearly bumps into him.

  The black pickup from last night is there, parked in another row of vehicles, most of them white four-wheel-drives. Its cargo bed is empty. Jacob rushes over to it, drops to his knees, reaches beneath it, and detaches the GPS tracking device that has clung magnetically to the underside of the pickup.

  "Where did this come from?" Jacob demands, indicating the black vehicle, as Susan arrives.

  "Oh, the pickup," Susan says, as if everything suddenly makes sense. "Let's go back to my desk. I'll find someone who knows."

  * * *

  "The bureaucrats in New York don't believe what I'm doing is particularly valuable, so I don't qualify for a wall," Susan says, leading them back to her desk inside the shade structure. "They think perpetuating what you see here is more important than building a way out. Mail, bus services, mobile phones, the Internet, connections to the rest of the world, we can't have those, can we? Because then they might use them, and stop needing UNHCR, and we certainly can't have that. You soon find that the first priority of almost every aid organization in Africa is to perpetuate their own necessity, actually helping people is decidedly secondary. And the Ugandan government doesn't want these dirty Congolese refugees anywhere near the rest of the country either. So I got pushed out here. Not that I mind having a view, but in the rainy season, when the wind blows, we all have to huddle in the middle or we get soaked. I'm sorry. You don't care. Do you want some food? A cup of tea? We've even got a few solar showers."

  "I just want to know where that pickup came from," Jacob says.

  "Yes, of course. Lewis!" she calls out.

  The same guard who escorted them to Susan walks over. He looks about nineteen. "Yes, Miss Sloan?"

  "That black pickup. Did it arrive last night?"

  "No, Miss Sloan. This morning. I was at the gate myself."

  "What was in it?" Jacob asks eagerly.

  Lewis looks at him, surprised. "Nothing. It's a new vehicle for the camp motor pool. We did not requisition any supplies."

  "You're sure? There weren't any big metal boxes in the back?"

  "I am quite certain."

  "Shit," Veronica says. "Too late. They're gone."

  She and Jacob exchange dejected looks.

  "I suppose you're spending the night," Susan says. "I'll rustle you up a tent and a couple bedrolls. Oh, and a flashlight. Remind me to show you where the latrines are. And you must be hungry. The canteen will be serving for another hour or so. Pocho, I'm afraid."

  "Pocho," Jacob says dourly. "Can't wait."

  * * *

  The tent is perched on the thin strip of no-man's-land between the administrative buildings and the refugee camp proper. It is small and bedraggled, and the sleeping bags are motheaten, but Veronica supposes she can't complain, not when she is literally surrounded by tens of thousands of refugees sleeping in even more uncomfortable shelters. She doesn't feel hungry or tired yet, she's too keyed up from the day, but she knows she will after half an hour of inaction.

  "Are you going to be okay in there?" Jacob asks, worried.

  She looks at him without comprehension for a moment, then realizes he's referring to her dislike of tight spaces. "Oh. Yeah, no problem. Tents are fine. Don't ask me why."

  "Oh."
He looks baffled. "Well, I guess it's irrational by definition, right?"

  A little annoyed by that, Veronica stoops and tosses her day pack into the tent, then stands, looks up at him and says, "We should go eat."

  "Not yet."

  He disappears into the tent without another word, taking the flashlight with him. It takes his gangly body a moment to negotiate the doorflaps. Veronica looks around. She is dimly lit by the electric lights of the central buildings and the open flames that dot the refugee camp. Mosquitoes are buzzing everywhere, she's glad she brought insect repellent, and the background hum of conversation in the distance is ever-present, like static. Veronica doubts she has ever been in a more densely populated patch of real estate that didn't involve skyscrapers.

  She follows Jacob inside. Being in a tent, lit by flashlight, feels like being back in summer camp, when she was a teenager, when the world seemed bright and full of promise. Jacob has unpacked and turned on his breadbox-sized spectrum analyzer, has both it and his hiptop out, and is examining the readouts on their respective screens.

  "Did that thing get anything useful from the scrapyard?" Veronica asks.

  Jacob, studying his hiptop, shakes his head. "A few phones. None Mango except the one I already knew about."

  "What are you doing?"

  "Checking the GPS record. They didn't go over the border. The pickup went offroad just before the turnoff to the camp, at about six this morning, stopped there for twenty minutes, then came back."

  "So they're gone," Veronica says.

  "Maybe not. I don't think they would have crossed the border by day. They would have waited until tonight. Probably the middle of the night, a few hours yet."

  "You want to go back out there now? I - no. No. Absolutely not. Jacob, we agreed, we wouldn't do anything crazy, and going out to where these things are hidden in the middle of the night all by ourselves is crazy."

  "That's not what I want to do right now. I want to find Derek's contact."

  "Who?" she asks.

  "The other phone signal from this refugee camp, remember? Whoever it was that Derek came to visit. Wasn't Susan. Somebody else. Somebody here. Maybe they know something."

  "I thought you said you couldn't track locations out here. Only one base station."

  "Right. That's why I brought this." Jacob taps the spectrum analyzer like he's petting a good dog. "It acts like a portable base station all by itself. It also boosts the signal from the existing station, which allows my hiptop to connect over GPRS to Kampala and the Internet, which is pretty amazing all by itself, if you think about just how deep in the middle of nowhere we are right now. I just checked the central database to see if Derek's contact's phone is here and active. Guess what? Yes it is. Somewhere in this camp, right now."

  "Great. How do we find it?"

  He pets the analyzer again. "We get this within a hundred metres of that phone, close enough to triangulate its location."

  "Oh."

  "So let's go take this puppy for a little walk."

  * * *

  Veronica leads the way with their flashlight. Jacob carries the heavy and cumbersome signal analyzer, and has strapped on his day pack as well, full of other equipment. They walk in a slow circle around the camp's administrative center. Nobody asks them what they are doing; nobody else is out and about. He isn't surprised. Outside of major cities, Africa lives on a dawn-to-dusk schedule.

  The spectrum analyzer picks up plenty of cell phones within its range, almost all of them Mango, but none are the phone that Derek called. Soon they are back at their tent and the analyzer is running low on power. Jacob wishes he had thought to charge it fully before leaving Kampala. He brought both a hand-crank recharger with him, but they don't really have time for either.

  "No good?" Veronica asks.

  Jacob shakes his head.

  "Maybe it's not in the camp. We didn't know exactly where that phone was, right? We just know it was six kilometres from the base station."

  "Right. But everything else six klicks out is just bush. It has to be here. Nothing else makes any sense. Let me make sure it's still alive." Jacob puts down the spectrum analyzer and logs on to the Kampala master database server with his hiptop, via that same base station. The GPRS connection is painfully slow, but he's only sending and receiving text; once connected it doesn't take long to establish that the phone in question was active and six kilometres from Semiliki base station as of fifteen seconds ago.

  Veronica turns to look at the overcrowded sea of refugees. Most of the fires are dying down now, the camp is mostly darkness.

  Jacob nods. He's thinking the same thing. "It's out there. Let's go find it."

  Veronica hesitates.

  "Nothing's going to happen to use. We're mzungu. We can shout for help. There are soldiers, they'll hear us. We'll be fine. Anybody asks, we're just going for a walk. Come on."

  She reluctantly accedes. They venture out into one of the roads that radiate out from the centre of the camp. Veronica keeps her flashlight aimed at the road, which is remarkably clean. Jacob supposes there's no such thing as debris out here. These people have so little that every rag and scrap is valuable.

  Occasionally he sees people sleeping out in the open beside of the road. Their eyes gleam in the light and they stare at him and Veronica but do not react. Some of them are children sleeping alone. They seem to Jacob like ghosts, somehow, insubstantial, so unrooted to the world that he can almost believe that after he walks past them they will actually cease to exist.

  The camp doesn't actually end, it just bleeds into scarred plots of scraggly-looking farmland, and the number of visible goats and chickens slowly increases. Veronica and Jacob decide not to cut through the inhabited wedges; instead they return to the center and try another of the eight radial roads, moving quietly, whispering to one another, as if something terrible might awaken. He knows it's ridiculous but he can't shake the feeling.

  Midway down the third road Jacob's spectrum analyzer suddenly bleeps. Veronica starts as if at a gunshot. Jacob crouches over its screen excitedly. They've made contact. The cell phone in question is within range.

  Jacob goes forward twenty paces along the road, slowly rotates, goes back another twenty paces, and repeats, studying the analyzer the whole time. Radio is a weird and unpredictable medium and it isn't easy to work out where the signals are coming from, but they seem to get stronger to the south. He walks off the road and into the densely populated shelters, holding the analyzer ahead of him as if it's a gigantic compass. Veronica follows.

  The shelters are so tightly packed together that Jacob has to be careful where he steps so as not to tread on a person or a structural support. The refugees around them begin to come to life, a soft hum of surprise radiates out from Jacob and Veronica as they make their way through the settlement. People sit and kneel up and stare at the two white people they pick their way through the shelters, they have a murmuring audience of hundreds, maybe more. Jacob pretends not to notice, but he is breathing fast now, and the hairs on his neck are prickling, all this attention is eerie and maybe dangerous, they won't have time to yell for help if these refugees decide to jump them and take all their things, but they can't go back now. His arms are aching, and the analyzer's battery monitor is flashing red.

  Suddenly the signal strength begins to dwindle. Jacob stops and rotates until it regains its strength, then walks in the new direction until the signal diminishes again. They slowly spiral inwards until Veronica puts her hand on Jacob's shoulder to stop him and he looks up from the analyzer's screen.

  "That tent," she says.

  It is the only actual tent within fifty feet, made of ancient, much-repaired canvas, leaning drunkenly on sagging poles. Its door hangs open, the zippers are broken. Veronica stoops and aims the flashlight inside. Jacob crouches beside her. There is a man sleeping within, lying diagonally on the uncushioned floor, and a small pile of belongings beyond.

  "Excuse us," Veronica says tentatively, aiming the ligh
t at the man's head.

  His eyes open and he immediately sits straight up, shading his face with one hand, reaching instinctively into his small pile of possessions with the other. He is short, compact, and muscular, with a broad nose, low forehead, deep-set eyes, and very dark skin, almost like some bigoted caricature of an African. Jacob guesses his age at thirtyish.

  After a second he utters something curt, half-question, half-demand. His voice is gravelly, his eyes and face are flat, expressionless. Jacob doesn't understand his language.

  "Excuse me," Veronica says soothingly, and aims the flashlight at herself for a second, then at Jacob stooping next to her. "Can we talk to you for a moment?"

  The man says nothing.

  "Do you have a mobile phone in there?" Jacob asks, wondering if the man understands English at all.

  "No. No phone. Why do you come here?" His voice is hostile. His accent is French, which makes sense, most of these refugees are from the Congo.

  Veronica looks helplessly at Jacob. He hesitates, then realizes what he should have done some time ago: he puts the analyzer down on the dirt, pulls out his hiptop, opens it, and simply dials the number of the phone they seek. A second later the bundled clothes that serve as the man's pillow begin to vibrate, subtly but unmistakably.

  The man's expression hardens. He rises from his seated position into a crouch, ready for action. Jacob flinches and puts his hand on Veronica's shoulder, about to pull her away.

  "We're friends of Derek," Veronica says quickly. The man's expression flickers, he knows the name. "I'm Veronica, this is Jacob. What's your name?"

  He answers, eventually, "Rukungu."

  "Rukungu. Hi. It's nice to meet you. Can we come in and talk?"

  After another long, wary moment Rukungu says, "No. I will come out."

  * * *

  "Where is Derek?" Rukungu asks, when they get back on the road.

  He turns towards the perimeter of the camp. Veronica and Jacob follow. She tries to think of a way to break the news gently.