Jungle Of Steel And Stone vk-2

by George C. Chesbro

  Veil waited a few minutes. He eased right in order to exit on Houston Street, then gently pressed the woman. "What was this Toby doing here? And why the secrecy? After all the publicity about the Nal-toon and the plight of the tribe it was stolen from, I would have thought that the arrival of a K'ung prince in New York City would have rated headlines. I never heard or read anything about him coming here."

  Reyna made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Toby's only been here two hours, and I only found out he was coming a little over three hours ago. I'm afraid I didn't have much time to call a press conference."

  Again, sensing that the woman badly wanted to talk but could not be pressed further, Veil drove in silence. Finally Reyna sighed, leaned back in the passenger's seat, and rested her head against the window. When she spoke, her voice, muffled by the glass, was so faint that Veil had to strain to hear her over the hum of the engine.

  "Obviously you've been following the story."

  "Yes. Also, Victor Raskolnikov is a friend. I don't have to tell you how much trouble that idol has caused for him, which means that I took a rather personal interest."

  "Still . . . Are you religious, Mr. Kendry?"

  "No, but I think I appreciate the importance of religion in a lot of people's lives."

  Reyna shook her head. "This is different. No matter how much you've read, and no matter how sensitive you may be, there's just no way you can appreciate how important the Nal-toon is to the K'ung. I spent years with that tribe—my parents were the first missionaries to make contact with that particular group, which is probably the most reclusive, isolated tribe in the Kalahari. Then I went back later as a missionary student working for my degree in anthropology. If any outsider could truly understand what the Nal-toon means to that tribe, you'd think it would be me. Wrong. I thought I did, but it wasn't until the Nal-toon was stolen and the entire social fabric of the tribe began to unravel that I fully began to sense the real depths of that meaning. To say that an idol is God to a people is one thing; to understand it in one's heart and mind is another. The Nal-toon isn't a symbol to the K'ung. The Nal-toon, the wood itself, is God, the only God, and He is their personal guest. God lives with them, watches over them, and He has given them the desert and everything in it.

  "The Nal-toon is—was—their peace and happiness, and their reason for living. They couldn't understand how God could be stolen; before the Nal-toon was taken, the K'ung had no concept of thievery. Now they're robbing each other blind—food, water, weapons, women. There's no longer any reason not to. After all, how could God allow Himself to be stolen? To the K'ung, God had abandoned them. The foundation of their daily lives had been blown away, and so they fell into a bottomless hole of hopelessness and meaninglessness—and they're still falling; they'll keep falling until finally the tribe destroys itself or the Nal-toon is returned to them. It's as if, in this country, God had been officially pronounced dead on the same day that all laws were repealed and all the police went home. Anarchy."

  "I may not appreciate the full impact of their loss," Veil replied quietly, "but I think I understand something about hopelessness and suffering. The tribe's pain was made very clear in Berg's series of articles."

  "God bless Alan Berg," Reyna said with feeling. "To think that a Jew would go to all that trouble for a tribe of primitive bushmen . . ."

  Veil smiled wryly. "Why is that any more surprising than the fact that a bunch of conservative Christian missionaries would traipse around the desert for more than twenty years with the same group of absolutely recalcitrant idol-worshipers? Isn't compassion what religion—any religion—should be all about?"

  Reyna raised her head from the window, turned, and looked at him. "Of course," she said tightly. "That was a stupid thing for me to say. Forgive me."

  Veil shrugged as he exited from the FDR and turned right onto Houston Street. Here there was heavy Friday night traffic, and he purposely slowed. He was afraid that Reyna would stop talking once they reached the missionary college, and he wanted to hear what else she had to say about the warrior-prince who was—apparently—holed up somewhere in Central Park.

  "Berg's a very good man," Veil said in a low monotone intended not to disturb the anthropologist's distant,

  thoughtful mood. "He's also a great reporter—and incredibly lucky. He picked up the missionaries' pleas over the shortwave at The Times's bureau in Johannesburg. He must have smelled a good story, because he hired a helicopter and went out into the desert himself to look into it. What he found was a special kind of horror—what had once been a proud tribe of hunter-gatherers had been reduced to squatting around in their own filth, stealing from each other, and subsisting entirely on emergency helicopter drops of food and medical supplies from South Africa and Botswana.

  "Then Berg went to work. He hit every trading center on the perimeter of the Kalahari; the Nal-toon is a pretty distinctive piece of sculpture, so he reasoned that anyone who'd seen it would remember. Somebody did. He found a white hunter in Molepolole who'd bought it from a Bantu for the equivalent of a few dollars. The hunter, in turn, had sold it to a wholesaler who specialized in supplying primitive art for the markets in Europe and the United States.

  "Then the trail disappeared when the wholesaler absolutely refused to say who he'd sold the statue to. But Berg kept digging and asking questions, and he picked up the trail again; it led straight underground into a smuggling pipeline used by organized crime. Nobody knows how, or why, the Nal-toon got into that pipeline, but once it did, its uniqueness made it relatively easy for Berg to track. And he tracked it right into Victor's gallery; Victor had bought it for three thousand dollars at a wholesalers' auction, and it came complete with a legal import certificate. Then Berg began writing his articles. He'd done an astonishing piece of investigative reporting, and he's bound to win a Pulitzer for it."

  "While the K'ung starve and die," Reyna responded bitterly. "And they'll keep dying, one by one, unless they get their god back."

  "I haven't forgotten that," Veil said evenly as he approached one of the two entrance gates leading onto the campus of Wesley Missionary College, a peaceful enclave comprised of several wooden buildings and well-manicured lawns spread out over a small, fenced-in area just south of Washington Square. "I'm sorry if I sounded insensitive."

  The guard at the gate recognized Reyna and waved Veil through. Following Reyna's directions, he drove slowly through a network of narrow streets that were brightly illuminated by mercury-vapor lamps. He pulled over to the curb in front of a dormitory-style building, turned off the engine, and handed the car keys to Reyna.

  "I should drive you home," Reyna said softly. She made no move to get out of the car.

  "Not necessary. I told you that I only live a few blocks from here, down on Grand. With this traffic I'll probably get there faster if I walk."

  "Thank you again."

  "You're welcome." Veil opened the door on his side and started to get out. When he felt the woman's soft touch on his arm, he slid back in and closed the door.

  "Toby was sent here as a goofy publicity stunt," Reyna said with a sigh. She hesitated, shook her head. "No! It's just not fair to say that. Floyd and Wilbur were desperate, and they thought they were doing the right thing."

  "I take it that Floyd and Wilbur are the fools you mentioned."

  Reyna nodded. "Floyd Rogers and Wilbur Mead. They're not fools, Mr. Kendry, but they are old—and they're senile. They also happen to be homosexual; that's neither here nor there, except to the Missionary Society, of course, but it does explain why the Missionary Society chose to leave two old men whose judgment is faltering buried in the desert for twelve years. They were an embarrassment.

  "Anyway, while we were reading about the plight of the K'ung, Floyd and Wilbur were living it. When the Nal-toon became a political football in the United Nations and was tied up legally because of the organized-crime connection, Floyd and Wilbur panicked. They came up with a scheme for arousing public outrage
and bringing pressure to bear for the return of the idol; they would send a spokesman from the tribe to make a kind of personal appeal. They knew that the Missionary Society would never approve, so they never bothered to ask for approval; and they never bothered to tell anyone over here. As I understand it, they went to Alan Berg and got his cooperation. It was Berg who arranged to get travel documents for Toby. Together they took this twenty-five-year-old man who had never been out of the Kalahari to Molepolole, outfitted him in a suit of clothes, got a flight attendant to agree to keep an eye on him until they landed at Kennedy Airport, and put him on the plane. Then they called me at the college."

  "You wouldn't have approved, either?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "Maybe if there'd been more time to arrange—"

  "No way. But I was an absolutely essential part of their plan because I know Toby, and I'm the only one around who speaks K'ung. Floyd and Wilbur knew I'd hide out on a mountaintop in Alaska before I'd ever agree to this insanity, assuming I was given a choice. So they made sure I wasn't given a choice. Once Toby was in the air, the plan had become a fait accompli. They knew I wouldn't abandon him."

  "Why didn't you take someone with you to the airport?"

  "Who?" Reyna asked with a sharp, bitter laugh. "I knew that Toby was going to be spooked enough without having to deal with a stranger. Also, I was very pressed for time. The overseas trunk lines were jammed, and I only got the call barely an hour before Toby's plane was due to land. I figured that the best way to handle the situation was to pick up Toby alone, reassure him that everything was going to be fine, put him up at the college overnight, then pack him off on the first Africa-bound plane leaving in the morning."

  "Forgive me for asking, Miss Alexander—"

  "My name's Reyna."

  "And I'm Veil. Reyna, why did you take him to the gallery? You must have known it would be dangerous."

  "I knew," Reyna replied, bowing her head slightly. "I felt I had no choice. The moment Toby got off the plane, I could see that he was full of shilluk."

  "Shilluk?"

  "It's a kind of combination narcotic-hallucinogenic drug. The K'ung make it by boiling down the sap of a certain cactus. Anyway, Toby had dosed himself to the eyeballs, which was going to make him even harder to handle. We no sooner got in the car than he demanded to see the Nal-toon. With all of the thousands of sights, sounds, and smells that he was experiencing for the first time, the only thing that interested him was seeing his god—immediately. And he wouldn't be put off until the morning. He wanted to see it at once, and when I said that we couldn't, he opened the car door and started to get out. We were on the Van Wyck Expressway, going fifty-five, at the time. The only way I could control him was to agree to take him to see the Nal-toon."

  "Did you explain to him that the Nal-toon had to stay where it was?"

  "Of course. I even lied to him—something I'd never done—and told him that we might be able to get the Nal-toon the next day. I was in a no-win situation, and I decided that the only way to keep him from hurting himself, or someone else, was to take him to the gallery so he could see for himself that his god was safe. It was a terrible mistake, obviously, and one I'll pay for, for the rest of my life. Because of me, a man is dead."

  "No, not because of you. A properly trained guard never . would have fired his gun in that situation. It seems clear that all your friend wanted was the idol; he threw the spear only after he was attacked."

  "Still . . ."

  "It's not difficult to understand why you felt you had to do what you did. I can also understand Toby's feelings, if not his behavior. Doped-up or not, he must have had some realization of how futile it would be to try to steal the statue and run away like he did. He got incredibly lucky twice; he wasn't squashed on Fifth Avenue, and Central

  Park happened to be across the street. What on earth did he think he was going to accomplish?"

  Reyna was silent for some time. When she did speak, it was not to respond to Veil's question. "There are no villains in this, only victims."

  "Reyna, I know that you're physically and emotionally exhausted. I don't want to butt into your business, but I'd think that you'd want to be around when they bring your friend out of the park. I know the police would certainly appreciate it. Toby will be terrified and terribly alone without you; you, at least, can talk to him. Indeed, you're the only person in the city who can talk to him."

  "There's no need, Veil," Reyna said distantly. "Not tonight."

  "I don't understand."

  Reyna put the keys in the ignition and turned it on. Then she turned on the radio. It took a few minutes for the news sequence about the stolen idol to be repeated, but when it was, there was nothing new to report: The K'ung warrior-prince had not yet been captured.

  "Nobody goes to ground like a K'ung," Reyna said simply as she turned off the radio, removed the keys from the ignition, and put them in her purse. Then she got out of the car.

  Veil got out, walked around the car, and started up the sidewalk after the woman. Reyna turned and waited for him. She was trembling slightly, but her voice was steady.

  "Thank you again, Veil—for the ride, and for your understanding."

  "Are you sure you're all right?"

  Reyna nodded, then dropped her gaze and suddenly began to tremble. "Veil, there's something I have to say to you."

  Veil reached out to grip Reyna's shoulders, but the woman shook her head and moved back a step.

  "What is it, Reyna?"

  "That . . . man . . ."

  "What man? The detective? Nagle?"

  Reyna nodded. "I don't know what you did to him, or how you did it. I've never seen anyone . . ."

  "You know this creep, don't you? What happened between you and him?"

  "He'll never forget what you did," Reyna said quickly, still refusing to meet Veil's gaze. "You have to watch out for him. He's more dangerous than you can ever know. He'll kill you if you get in his way, Veil; he may decide to kill you, anyway. You may not believe that a policeman would do that—or that he could do it and get away with it. Carl Nagle can. Nobody can stop him. I'm telling you this because I know you're a kind man, and I don't want that man to hurt you."

  "Reyna, I want you to tell me about Carl Nagle."

  But Reyna had already spun around and was running up the sidewalk toward the three-story, wood-framed dormitory. Veil waited until she was safely inside, then turned and walked back the way he had come. A light rain had begun to fall.

  * * *

  Veil found Victor Raskolnikov's black, chauffeured limousine outside the brick building where his loft was located. Veil opened the back door and slid into the luxurious, leather-scented interior.

  "You're wet." The Russian's voice was steady, but his face was still ashen.

  "Yeah."

  Raskolnikov used the ivory handle of his walking cane to press a button on the ceiling; a bar revolved out of the seat back. "Scotch, of course."

  "A big one, Victor. No ice. Thanks."

  The art dealer poured the drink, handed the tumbler to Veil. "How's the girl?"

  "Upset, of course, but she'll be all right."

  "Well, she's not the only one who's upset. How do you feel about the possibility of crossing that detective's path again?"

  "Why?"

  "I'd like you to do some work for me. Nobody in the city has the range of contacts and sources of information that you do. I've been slandered by the United Nations, jerked around by the courts and police, and generally hassled since the beginning of this damn idol business. Because the freedom to make my own decisions was taken away from me, I find I am responsible for a young man's death."

  "Victor—"

  "I'm sorry, Veil, but I do feel responsible. Now I am thinking that I want to do something about it, although I'm not sure what. I do know that I would like to be kept informed of what is happening."

  "You'll be able to read about it in the papers."

  "Not everything gets into
the papers. In any case, I have a strong feeling about this idol and the young man who stole it."

  "The idol was originally stolen from his tribe, Victor," Veil said quietly. "He was just trying to get it back."

  "You are right, of course, and that is why I have a strong feeling. I just want you to keep your ear to the ground. If you hear nothing special, so be it."

  "I was going to keep an eye on things, anyway, Victor, and I'll certainly keep you informed. I have a strong feeling too."

  "Well, now you'll be paid for your trouble."

  "Victor, I can never repay you for what you've done for me."

  "Nonsense. I make money off your talents. You are a fine artist and getting better. The Raskolnikov Galleries are not exactly a philanthropic organization. I have done very well with your dream-paintings, and I will do even better in the future as you become better known. In fact, I take great pride in the fact that I discovered you. Now I am asking you to use your, uh, darker skills on my behalf. Do you need money?"

  "No. I'm still living off what you got for me on my last two paintings."

  "Then I will at least pay you for the painting that was stolen. After all, it was stolen while you were trying to get back the idol."

  "No."

  "All right, my friend," Raskolnikov said resignedly, tapping his cane on the floor. "I know better than to argue with you. We will decide later what payment you will take. Cash or barter—either is fine with me."

  Veil drained his glass, then set it down on the mahogany bar shelf. "Thanks again for the drink, Victor," he said as he opened the door and got out.

  "You will be careful!"

  "Sure. I'll be in touch. Right now I'm going to get some sleep."

  "Veil! You watch out for this Nagle fellow, huh? I have a very strong feeling about him, too, and it's a bad one. I know that you'd eat him for breakfast one-on-one, but he's a cop and he has friends. They have guns."

  "Good night, Victor."

  Chapter Four

  Veil dreams.