White Bone

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox’s throat went dry. “Did you?” Grace would react more viscerally to the poaching than terrorism or corruption. She was made a child by the sight of a stray dog or cat.

  Maya looked into and somehow through Knox. Not a dead stare, not a flirtatious stare. More like some of Tommy’s looks. X-ray. Probing. “I met with her when she first arrived. We discussed many issues. My work with corporate security and Internet issues, as well as the recent failure of a major vaccination program.” Her face remained unreadable. An attorney, indeed. “As she explained it, that program was privately funded.”

  Knox had no interest in politics, humanitarian aid or theatrics. “Have you spoken to her in the past two days?”

  “I have not.”

  Wrapping his phone in the aluminum foil struck him as overly paranoid. Who was it she feared? Only the most sophisticated agency possessed the capability to listen in on digital phones.

  “You were in contact often?” Knox asked.

  Her eyes darted more quickly. “Three times, I believe. She sat where you are sitting.”

  Knox felt a little sick. “Okay.”

  “The clinic at Oloitokitok interested her.”

  “Tell me about the Internet protocol.”

  “She wanted to know the sophistication of spyware employed by the state, the military, outside agencies. I warned her to be careful. Many prying eyes.”

  Knox’s throat remained overly dry. “I’ll bet,” he croaked.

  Vladistok spoke more softly. “A kilo of rhino horn is worth two hundred dollars fresh off the kill, as I said. Ten times that to a Somali broker. A quarter million U.S. by the time it reaches Vietnam.”

  “Grace wasn’t investigating poaching.”

  “She was investigating corruption. In Kenya, the two are never far apart.”

  “The clinic has ties to poaching?”

  “This was her concern as well. But the clinic is closed now. It no longer matters.”

  Knox swallowed, clearing his throat. “If she has been kidnapped?”

  “Why say such a thing?”

  “We’re approaching two days of silence.”

  Vladistok answered carefully. “In Central and West Africa, the paramilitaries will kidnap for political gain. Here, it’s for money or show. If she has been abducted, it could be to send a message, to pressure others not to investigate as she did. It could be for money.” She grimaced. “How can I help?”

  “You can give me specifics,” he said.

  “Grace implied—she did not state, I must emphasize this!—that she had reason to suspect a connection between the failed vaccine and a company based here in Nairobi.”

  “Asian Container Consolidated,” Knox said.

  Shocked, possibly impressed, Vladistok took measure of him before speaking. “She did not name the company as you just have. It is an interesting choice.”

  “Why?”

  “Asian Container Consolidated is run by a Chinese man named Xin Ha. He’s powerful. He has privileged access at all levels of government. No one’s going to touch him. He imports containers of Chinese goods, and more than likely either exports ivory and rhino horn or looks away when others do. His men are butchers. Allegedly, he has ties to the Somalis, and therefore the al-Shabaab terrorists. There’s no way the government doesn’t suspect this, yet they never act. He conducts business with impunity.”

  Knox nodded, trying to swallow spit to moisten his throat.

  “If Xin Ha was behind the vaccine switch, if he discovered Grace was investigating this fraud . . . But that’s entirely too much speculation. If Grace is in trouble, she needs you to stay away from Xin Ha, John, believe me.”

  “What do you know of Bertram Radcliffe?”

  Her face tightened. “He was a remarkable reporter in his time. That time has passed. Have you met him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know he drinks excessively.”

  “Professionally. Yes.”

  “He lost his wife under questionable circumstances. This followed several columns he wrote excoriating the current government. After, Radcliffe outright blamed the government. His paper distanced itself. Things with him became all the worse recently: a colleague of his was shot up north. They said he was a poacher—as unlikely a truth as there’s ever been. He’s very near a broken man, John. I would be wary.”

  “His articles are online? The ones that got his wife killed?”

  “You and Grace are not so very different.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Knox saw her eyes track something or someone behind him. He turned abruptly in defense. No one.

  “We must go. Both of us. Now!” she whispered. “There’s going to be trouble.” Taking him by the hand, she unwrapped his phone and slipped it to him. Then she unbarred the screen door and led Knox out to a muddy lane no wider than his shoulders, through an adjacent dwelling, and out into a different lane.

  “We part company here,” she said, pointing Knox deeper into the settlement. “Take your first right. Cross three lanes like this. You will find your group there.”

  “What’s going on?” Knox asked. “What kind of trouble? I don’t need my group.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said, her eyes frightened. She’d been spooked by something Knox had missed.

  “What is it? You saw someone.”

  “Your group will provide you with cover. The police will ignore you if you are with them.”

  “The police? Here?”

  “They will be soon enough. We must go, now! There is going to be bloodshed.”

  Vladistok headed off in the opposite direction, deep into the squalor.

  14

  Loose tarps serving as stop-gap roofs snapped in the breeze like flags. They rattled Koigi. A bushman through and through, he had an aversion to all things urban. He viewed Nairobi as a blight, the slums of Kibera as an infestation.

  As a matter of pride, he refused to shed his ranger uniform in favor of civilian clothing when he was in the city. Given that he was wanted for questioning by police and the KGA, it was a bold and premeditated statement. Today, the KGA could shoot poachers and ask questions later. But Koigi had started out in another era, another epoch. Back then, he’d been tagged for murder for his slaughter of five poachers caught in the act of attempting to hack an elephant’s tusks from its head with machetes as it lay—alive—paralyzed by a poacher’s dart. Six months later: two more poachers. A year after that, a band of eight in a pickup truck with automatic weapons.

  Today, a tip had overcome his reservations and brought him to Kibera. He led three of his best men. Like him, they wore protective vests. This was what the city did to you: You left your tribe and your village for the promise of money and material goods, only to find it an empty promise. The work was infrequent, the housing absent. You joined a million souls squatting in the dirt only kilometers from Range Rovers, exotic fountains and excess.

  Koigi knew this all too well; knew Kibera as a place of boredom, disease, childhood and work. God, how he resented its existence. He had been raised here, by an aunt who sewed scraps of tarps into grain bags and an uncle who’d had a corner on the recycling market. He knew the lanes, could navigate their wandering inconsistencies blindfolded. Knew the place he would find Guuleed if the tip was accurate.

  He and his men moved quickly, assuming the police would soon arrive. Those in the lanes moved aside. Uniforms of any kind meant trouble, even the wrinkled and soiled khaki ones worn by this quartet of determined fighters. To them, the leader, the one with his arm in a sling, looked as mean as a water buffalo. He could see the fear in their eyes. Reveled in it. The weapons slung across their necks but held in hand were well used. Children dodged out of the way, then turned and followed at a distance. Women pulled their handiwork back into their stalls. Grown men scattered.

  Koi
gi hand-signaled one of his men down a lane to the right. Moments later, another to his left. Behind him, another spun fully around every ten paces and walked briefly backward, taking responsibility for defending their backs. The same man tried to discourage the children from following, but failed. In Kibera, a raid was considered entertainment.

  A moment earlier, Koigi had spotted a familiar face through a parted plastic sheet. Maya Vladistok was important to the cause. An ally. Her presence confused matters. He wondered if she’d been behind the tip. Perhaps that explained the white man he’d seen her speaking with.

  The string of shanties stretched in every direction. Masses of people. Koigi identified the dwelling in question not by the flaking marine-blue corrugated tin that formed its outside wall, but by the bootprints in the mud heading inside. It was sandals, bare feet and trainers in Kibera, not bush boots.

  He allowed time for his two unseen men to gain position. Held his finger to his lips and motioned civilians away. He tightened the vest, more a nervous tick than a necessity. Then he eased forward, and gently tried the door. Blocked from the inside. Motioning his man behind him down to his knees to reduce his profile, Koigi kneeled as well. He hoped they would shoot high.

  He had nothing to live for but the elephants. No family. His childhood sweetheart long dead. Take the fear of dying out of a soldier, he thought, and you have a monster.

  From somewhere behind them, a person whistled. A lookout. Their cover blown, Koigi kicked open the door, his weapon at the ready. The clean pop! pop! came at a distance. Gunfire, one lane over. His man there returned fire.

  Koigi and his backup stormed the empty shanty, moving room to room. He felt the claustrophobia of the tiny space. He nearly fired on two women, huddled on a soiled mattress. In an instant, he exited into a lane. His man lay in the mud to his left. His backup turned toward the injured; Koigi headed to the right, running now, his weapon raised. People scattered.

  He saw three men twenty yards ahead. One was Guuleed, he felt certain. The Somali had poisoned villages, recruiting young men who would have never poached elephants and rhinos without him. Koigi raised his weapon.

  “Down!” He shouted, and watched two dozen human beings collapse like marionettes with their strings cut. The three men remained standing. He fired. The man to the right spun in a cloud of pink mist and fell. The remaining two darted left into a dwelling.

  One down . . .

  Koigi took no precautions as he charged into the structure. No pause-and-clear, no police procedure. He would shoot anyone standing. He spotted and avoided a woman and her two children lying on the floor, hands over their heads. He kicked aside a piece of tin, cut through and into the back of a conjoined shack. A mosquito net hung in the corner. He saw the weapon a fraction of a second too late. Took a slug in his vest. Pushed back and off balance, screaming in pain, Koigi fired twice. The second shot found its mark.

  Two down . . .

  Crashing into crates, tumbling into a tangle of pots and pans, Koigi worked hard to breathe. On top of his painful shoulder, he’d cracked some ribs. Up on his knees, to his feet, he pushed out into yet another lane. Guuleed was running back in the direction they’d come from. Koigi lifted his weapon, but couldn’t get it to eye height. He couldn’t manage to shout out a warning to those in his line of sight.

  He limped ahead. By the time he discovered a tunnel dug into the black dirt floor of a shack fifty meters down the lane, Guuleed was long gone. Koigi’s man, also protected by his vest, was helped to his feet, made to walk as the sirens drew closer. The team hurried toward where they’d left the vehicle. It was a footrace now.

  15

  Gunfire sounded in the Kibera township. screams rang out. Knox heard the percussive slap of sandals and bare feet moments before the flowing horde of terrified, would-be victims reached him.

  The mass moved far more quickly than he’d estimated. It hit him and knocked him down. Knees and elbows pummeled him as he struggled to stay on his hands and knees. To succumb and lie flat was to drown. The gunfire continued. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people surged down the narrowest of paths between the shanties. Alongside him, a girl of fifteen went down hard into the packed dirt, her shirt torn off, an earring ripped from her right ear, which bled profusely. Knox moved toward her and took a series of knees in his side. Thought he felt a rib go. Rolled. Managed to get back to all fours, but now downstream of the girl.

  Swinging both arms powerfully, he stood, his height providing a view over the heads of the human stampede. He fought upstream, pivoted right and left by ferocious blows. He couldn’t locate the fallen girl. He fought and battled against the flow. His feet hit something. He bent to retrieve her. Gathered the girl into his arms, cradled her. He knew better than to go against the flow. Instead, he turned with it and, allowing himself to be driven ahead, shoved his way to the side, where the walls of several shanties had collapsed. Without pause, he moved into a connecting alley, saw up ahead the same insanity on a parallel lane. The gunfire was sporadic now, but the population didn’t slow for an instant.

  A woman who looked barely older than the girl he carried spotted Knox, broke from the stampede and fought her way into the same alley. She was limping; she burst into tears when she recognized the girl he carried. The girl was alive, her arm possibly broken, her eyes open in shock.

  The mother—it had to be her mother, not an older sister—accepted her, tears streaming, spouting a million thanks to God and Knox in no particular order. Knox helped to get them settled.

  When he looked down the lane a second time, there was the boy Bishoppe. He was smiling as he waved Knox to him.

  16

  At that moment, without fully understanding why, Knox felt Grace’s presence. The stampede was something they would have survived together. He guessed that was it. But there was more to it. She was alive. He knew this fundamentally. And she had not simply gone to ground; she was in trouble, the kind of unthinkable trouble one didn’t like to consider.

  John Knox didn’t believe in premonition, didn’t ascribe any particular significance to this feeling. At the same time, it was a feeling, not some flicker of his imagination.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” Knox asked, breathing hard.

  “Not hell, Mr. John. I was at the hotel when you joined the van. I came straightaway. Kibera is not a place for you. I can show you much better.”

  “Can you get us out of here?”

  “Please, Mr. John, you insult me with such questions. Five minutes. All will return to normal. I’ll take you to your driver.”

  “My driver.”

  “Correct.”

  17

  Hello there, Koigi.”

  The ranger stopped, one hand on the grip, ready to pull himself up into the vehicle. The woman’s voice, coming from behind him, was familiar. His men climbed into the vehicle. He spoke without turning around.

  “Inspector Alkinyi. What brings you to Kibera?”

  “My question exactly. In,” she said, opening the rear passenger-side door and pushing the others aside so she could take the seat behind Koigi. She was small and frail, not cop material. She wore her hair in a headscarf, street clothes belonging to a graduate student, and black running shoes. She carried no purse, only attitude.

  The car doors closed and, for a moment, only the idling engine could be heard.

  “Talk to me,” she said. “Don’t make me guess. I’m police. We don’t like to work hard.”

  “Guuleed,” Koigi said. His men reacted like schoolgirls. He dared to tell a cop the truth?

  “Here, in Kibera? Why?”

  “It’s of no interest to me why.” Koigi looked straight ahead. All his men were in a full sweat from the activity of the past fifteen minutes. The car smelled foul.

  The policewoman reached over the seat and put her hands on both his shoulders. “Who told you? How could you know he would be fo
und here?”

  “We explore even rumor when it comes to Guuleed.”

  “You bring this fight here? My city? These people?”

  “I will not pass up such an opportunity.”

  “Why would Guuleed agree to a meeting in Nairobi? I don’t believe that. His face is known to every policeman. There’s a shoot-to-kill on him. We’d have done your work for you.”

  “And did you?”

  She frowned.

  “Tell me again, Kanika. Why does an inspector respond in such a timely manner to some gunfire in Kibera?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “We all have our sources, yes?”

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “I picked up the call on the radio.”

  “Sure you did. And my men and I were just buying Kibera souvenirs.”

  The two rangers sitting next to the woman smiled.

  “There’s a man arrived from—”

  “John Knox,” Koigi said, interrupting.

  “Jesus!”

  “Is Guuleed in Nairobi for him, the American?”

  “I told you,” she said, “his reasons for being in Kibera don’t concern me. Only that he is here—was here. You didn’t kill him, did you? If you had, you’d be smiling.”

  “You will get out now, please,” Koigi said. “We must be leaving. There are police in the area.”

  She laughed nervously.

  “He went to ground,” Koigi said, throwing her a bone. “There’s a tunnel system off Trumpeter’s Lane. You might want to collapse it.”