White Bone

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox watched Bertram Radcliffe struggle from his chair to shake hands. Boyish at forty-five, the man wore a sharp blue blazer that strained around his gut, an open-necked dress shirt and khakis. His rheumy eyes were unwilling to ignore the gin and tonic on the table.

  For downtown Nairobi, the pub was bizarrely British. Dark wood and leather. Tinted gel blinds pulled down over the windows. Soccer memorabilia hung side-by-side with photos of Winston Churchill.

  Radcliffe carefully measured his drink and took a swig. Knox ordered a Guinness from a gorgeous African waitress, who, like all educated Kenyans, spoke English with a colonial accent. Knox thanked her. Radcliffe did not.

  “You met with Grace Chu,” Knox said.

  “I did. Twice. Charming.”

  “Mr. Winston is eager to hear from her. She’s gone off the radar. She was staying at the Sarova Stanley?”

  “When not traveling. She traveled a great deal. She went off my radar as well.” The reporter spoke with an air of superiority. “To be honest with you, I was somewhat put off by the whole thing.”

  “Because?”

  “She stood me up. A dinner.”

  “This was?”

  “Three nights ago? Four, I think. The seventeenth it was.”

  He might as well have punched Knox in the chest.

  “Not what you wanted to hear.”

  “No.”

  “To be honest with you, I’m rather relieved I’m not the only one she’s stood up.”

  “Let’s say it wasn’t voluntary on her part.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Where would you start looking for her?”

  “Don’t be too concerned. People change plans, eh? Nothing untoward will happen to a Chinese woman in Kenya. For one thing, they are too important to the government; for another, you fuck with the Chinese here, they fuck you back. The Chinese have carried out enormous construction projects in exchange for mineral rights. They import their own workers. Many are lowlifes who go from the construction jobs to black-market work. They are tough blokes, the Chinese. Kenyans know this. It’s hands off, believe me.”

  Knox nodded. He appreciated the absence of small talk. “You met with her twice. What was the context?”

  “She’s a lovely woman, that one.” The gin was talking now. “Kind eyes. I love Asian eyes, don’t you?”

  Knox flexed his fist beneath the table. “You discussed?”

  “A bright girl, too. You’d better hope she’s not in Mathari. You’d rather she be dead than in there.”

  “Mathari?”

  “Psychiatric hospital. Squalid. Horrifying, really. Mental health issues are often thought to be witchcraft here, which will give you some idea of what goes on there. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  “And why would she be there?”

  “This Kikuyu government, horrid people.” Radcliffe leaned in over his precious drink, gripping the glass with white knuckles. “Deeply corrupt, in power far too long. They will go to any lengths, my friend, to shut up the truth. Any lengths.” His voice grew strained. “Grace is investigating a crime, something involving a bad bit of vaccine. I have made a career of investigating such crimes. One must tiptoe. There could be so many involved in something like this, and all blood-related to the next—it’s so damn tribal here, so incestuous. To cross it, to question it, to challenge it, is . . . believe me . . . if her disappearance is a carjacking, a ransom, then maybe you stand a chance. If she unearthed what she shouldn’t have, you won’t find her.”

  “But I will find her.”

  “You damn Americans.” Radcliffe chuckled into his glass. “Don’t push me. I’m meeting with you as a favor to Graham, just as I did with Grace. You are a guest, my friend. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. In this case, Lord Graham Winston.”

  Knox sized up Radcliffe. The man wasn’t as drunk as he played. Knox saw a clear-eyed appraiser of men, a veteran journalist who lulled his prey into believing him incompetent and dulled by booze. Find the cracks in others and pry. He felt like Radcliffe was about to pick his pocket.

  “Listen carefully. You may want to take notes,” Radcliffe continued.

  “You’re going to lecture me?”

  “I’m interesting. You’ll enjoy it. As I told Grace, the prevailing wisdom on the vaccine’s horrible side effects is a lack of refrigeration. Nothing sinister. When the clinic closed, it was assumed the government had shut it down. But the second time I saw Grace, she thought she might have found something. She asked me about a shipping company called Asian Container Consolidated. ACC all but controls the Mombasa port. Crooks, every one of them.

  “Frankly, I was surprised to hear a newcomer talk about ACC. It doesn’t pop up when you Google ‘corrupt shipping companies in Kenya,’ though it should.” He squinted at Knox, thinking himself amusing. Reached for the drink, but merely spun the glass on the table. “Look, I advised her not to cross swords with ACC. It has this government’s blessing. She asked about any connection, alleged or otherwise, between the health clinic and terrorism. I might have laughed aloud at that. I honestly don’t recall. Expats and visitors are so eager to see terrorism in everything. It’s hard for them to imagine a country formed solely around everyone-for-himself and the rest be damned. I’ll tell you what I told her: Corruption rules here. Profit. Money. Greed. That’s all. I’ve been writing about it forever. It’s poison, sometimes fast-acting, sometimes slow. Is terrorism an increasing problem? Absolutely. It seeks to destabilize, and without a strong government working to defeat it—impossible with such rampant corruption—it will out. But in terms of hard evidence, there is little suggesting internal funding of terrorism.”

  “Her response?”

  “She asked if the clinic had ever been tied to poaching.”

  Ever Grace, ever efficient. She’d run the list of Winston’s “gets.”

  “And?”

  “If I had a dollar for every rumor in this place. But none of them ever proves out.”

  “The third time, she stood you up,” Knox said in a leading tone. “Did she call back to apologize?” He knew Grace.

  “No. I haven’t heard from her, I’m afraid.”

  “Did you try her?”

  “Left a message at the Sarova Stanley. Was told there was no guest by that name. Perhaps I’m not memorable enough. Perhaps I slipped her mind.”

  Knox puzzled over Grace’s possible actions. A trip she wanted kept private? Abduction? Illness?

  “What one has to ask oneself,” Radcliffe said, “was how a virtual stranger to this country came to inquire about ACC. That kind of specificity is extraordinary. ACC is in the middle of everything, yet it took me six months or more before I began to see the threads leading there. How did your Grace identify the company so quickly?”

  Something in Knox bristled at his word choice—the idea of Grace being “his.” “There’s a long answer to that, but neither of us has the time. And she’s not mine. You met her; she’s as independent as they get.”

  “How sweet,” said Radcliffe. “You care. I can see it all over your face.”

  “Your contempt for the government. Did you share that with her?”

  “Let me tell you about this place, this government.” Again he played with his glass, though did not drink of it. “There are over forty tribes in Kenya. Five of those tribes make up over sixty percent of the population. They have warred intermittently, mostly over arable land, for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years. The Kikuyu hit a bit of good fortune over other tribes when we Brits arrived to colonize. Their tribe, the largest on the east coast of Africa, was physically the closest in proximity to Nairobi when we Brits stuck our flag in the soil. That meant they got the language first, the favors first, the relationships first. Ahead of all other tribes—and to much resentment. It also meant the Kikuyu were first to tire of the relationship, the fi
rst to stage uprisings, the first to run Kenya once the Brits were driven out. It didn’t run well. When the wheels finally came off, an international coalition put together the present government, and we all know how such arrangements work out. Take a look at the Middle East.”

  “You want them out of power,” Knox stated.

  “Think of me as the Gandhi of the printed word.”

  “And modest.”

  “I have no time for false modesty. I, and a few others, are this country’s last good hope.”

  Knox put some shillings on the table. Before he left, he carefully wrote down the phone number of his new prepaid SIM on a bar napkin. Folded the napkin and placed it alongside Radcliffe’s gin, where the man couldn’t miss it.

  11

  Kenyan night: as dark as a throat. The few stars couldn’t lift the sky from opaqueness.

  Grace recalled the day, of touring the former Oloitokitok health clinic and interviewing Travis Brantingham. She remembered their discussion, her ruse to gain Ethernet access to their network, the last-minute substitution for her driver.

  Tucked under a fever tree that had been overtaken by an aggressive vine, she shook from fear and the evening chill, squatting on her haunches in an attempt to keep the ants off her bottom. She fought against sleep, afraid she’d awaken to jaws tearing flesh from her bones. She hid well, but it wasn’t being seen that worried her. They would smell her. They would come for her as food.

  Her mind wandered, a product of the heat, dehydration or a subconscious effort to avoid the present threat by reliving the past. The plan to dispose of her had not occurred spontaneously, she thought. Her hacking had been detected.

  When the conversation with Brantingham had ended, she’d climbed into a Jeep with a stranger. She’d been told her guide from the lodge had gone off on errands and would be delayed. One of the locals, a younger guy, Leebo, bone-thin with hollow eyes, had stepped in to drive her back across the savanna to Chyulu Hills and the Ol Donyo Lodge. Together, they had set off from Larger Than Life for the ninety-minute trip down a rutted dirt track back to the lodge. How quickly they’d left any sign of the village behind.

  Grace remembered that drive more clearly now. She’d ridden in the open-air Toyota, marveling yet again at the lack of fences in the wide-open plain. In the distance, she saw the majesty of Kilimanjaro rising so high that its ice-topped summit looked like clouds. With the onset of evening, the rich blue sky had slowly gone pewter, silhouetting a few small hills to the west. The air blew in her face, warm and fragrant, and she’d closed her eyes for a while, savoring the solitude and the sense of timelessness. The rhythm of the rough road made her eyes heavy. As they fell, she’d had no inkling of what was to come.

  When her driver, Leebo, called out, she startled awake.

  “Lions! You wish to see them?” He was shouting, pointing.

  “Yes, please!” Grace called—and off they went cross-country. He drove hard and fast, but the vehicle handled well. She squinted, trying to see. “Where?” she asked. He pointed. Grace still didn’t see, but that was nothing new: the Maasai could spot game, could track so brilliantly, that they were nearly as entertaining as the wildlife. She held firmly to a safety handle. The vehicle rose and fell. The driver weaved through the vegetation, slower now, his head aimed down at the ground. Tracking.

  “Two!” he said. “Young. One year perhaps.” Grace continued scanning the open expanse of buffalo grass, cacti, sagebrush and fever trees. No sign of movement. The craggy ravines were lined with outcroppings of rock. Thick shrubs and lines of cottonwood and willows clung to the soil, fatigued by hard sun and the endless wind.

  “Where?” she shouted. The driver lifted his hand only briefly from the wheel, pointed across the hood and slightly to the right. Grace still saw nothing. She looked behind. No road in sight. She’d lost track of time. Had lost all landmarks but Kilimanjaro and the buttes. “It is getting dark,” she called.

  “I know where they go. The lions. There is a wash. A bone wash.” He pointed again. Out. Off. Away.

  Several more minutes passed, and with them a great deal of ground. “What is a bone wash?” Grace asked. He didn’t answer.

  A hood of clouds had been pulled over the savanna. With it, a false dusk. Distance to the fever trees could no longer be easily judged. Kilimanjaro melted into the horizon. The truck slowed and stopped. “Here! We go here! I will bring the glasses.” He hoisted a pair of binoculars as he climbed down from behind the wheel. Grace stood and looked down. Her foot found the rail. She lowered herself out.

  Something sharp pricked her—a needle.

  Time passed. The truck took off, the driver back behind the wheel. “Hey!” she called, feeling woozy. Why would he need to move the vehicle? “Leebo!” She tried his name. She sounded drunk. He wasn’t moving the Toyota; he was leaving. “Hey! Come back!” she shouted. Laughing; knowing it wasn’t funny. Her astonishment and disbelief were overpowered by whatever he’d injected into her. Elephant tranquilizer? Ketamine?

  Later, when she awoke, she remembered hardly anything. Brantingham. The clinic. A black void of drugs in her system. The wind. Insects. She clasped her arms across her chest.

  If this was an attempt to kill her through exposure, to make her death look like an accident, she believed her attackers would have left a vehicle somewhere in her vicinity. The gas tank would be ruptured, a tire or two flat, the keys missing. She knew the tricks. Scuffs in the dirt leading away.

  Death by exposure. She could imagine the stories now. A tourist strays from the vehicle and expires in the bush. Not the first time. Olé, her guide back when she’d been staying at Solio Lodge, had told her that every few years, a safari guest wandered out of camp, usually drunk, and didn’t last the night. Between the lions, hyenas, snakes and jackals, a night in the bush was a death sentence.

  The sun had just set. A vehicle, she thought. Out there somewhere.

  She set a goal. She had a mission.

  12

  Rambu’s bulk barely fit behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser. His eyes may have been on the potholed road in front of them, but Guuleed felt that the man was hyperaware of his boss’s presence. Guuleed’s temper was as fast and unpredictable as his scrawny limbs, and his men knew it.

  The vehicle, outfitted for nine including the driver, had a canvas top and fold-down windshield. Rambu had smeared mud over the line of five bullet holes in the passenger side and had otherwise cleaned the vehicle to help them blend into city traffic.

  Several kilometers from Nairobi’s city center, Guuleed watched the thick line of pedestrians on either side of the road. There were more people than cars. Blue exhaust rose in waves. Marketing flags on PVC poles flapped with wind from the traffic: VW, Windows 10, a supermarket. The Land Cruiser passed a fortressed shopping mall crowded with hyperclean high-end SUVs. Private drivers. A secure entrance with more uniforms than the airport. Little kids were collected in bunches beyond the eight-foot walls, their bare shoulders glistening, their laughter rising above the groan of traffic.

  Guuleed’s anger flashed into his chest, a slow and steady burn. Xin Ha was threatening to kill his wife and children.

  “You okay, colonel?”

  “Just drive.” Rambu was trying to loosen him up with the “colonel” reference. He wasn’t colonel of anything.

  Guuleed rubbed the stump of the missing joint on his finger. Eight days until his family was to be executed. Today he had to face the Chinese bastard behind the threat. He’d been summoned like a common peasant. He wanted to shove his hand down the man’s throat and squeeze his heart to stopping. “After you drop me, you’ll go to the sergeant. Give him the envelope. Tell him the American’s an Eastland Safari guest. It has to be handled professionally. The more legitimate, the better. A passport problem, something out of anyone’s control. You will book a flight out before you leave the sergeant. Tell him to get our friend on that fl
ight.”

  This was the third time he’d given Rambu the same instructions. “Yes. It’s not a problem. I understand.” He slowed for traffic. “I hate what this city has become,” Rambu said abruptly.

  Guuleed didn’t speak, but he agreed. Nairobi made him long for Somalia and his family. They were involved now. The thought made him ache. He’d seen whole bloodlines wiped out before.

  “Our men are inferior,” Guuleed said abruptly. “We need new men. And Faaruq! He started this all!”

  “Yes, colonel.”

  “Don’t call me that, for fuck’s sake!”

  Rambu was smart enough not to mention that Guuleed had been the one to shoot Faaruq in the back of the head, not one of his men; that it had been Guuleed who’d come up with the idea to stage the man’s death as a poacher, shot by KGA rangers.

  “This Chinese prick dares to threaten my family?”

  Rambu twitched. The Land Cruiser nearly sideswiped a matatu.

  “You get us in an accident, and I eat your liver. With bacon and onions if I can find them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sweat burst out on Rambu’s face, running in the grooves of his acne scars. Good, Guuleed thought.

  Red dust rose from the pedestrians teeming on both sides of the road. “Look at them,” Guuleed said, taking in the people. “What kind of fucking life is that? They look like safari ants.”

  “Ants or not, my prick goes stiff just looking at some of those women.”

  “Yes, that’s for certain.” They laughed not as comrades but as men, no rank between them. Guuleed said, “You will resupply before the shops close. I have the list.” He pitched it into the ashtray. “Handle the sergeant first, then the shopping. If I’m still alive, pick me up when I say so.”

  Rambu hesitated, ventured, “He will no doubt be pleased when you tell him about the Chinese woman.”

  “If I’m given the chance. He’s a terror, this one. All throttle; no brakes. But you’re right. It’s good thinking, Rambu.” He slapped the man on the shoulder, his flat hand hard as stone. He could see Rambu flinch, and it gave him satisfaction. People were constantly misjudging his strength. “Tell me when we’re ten minutes out.”