White Bone

by Ridley Pearson

  He withdrew her letter from its zippered pocket and read from where he’d last left off.

  As you know, I am not given to the outward expression of my emotions. This, I fear, is a product of my culture and my upbringing. I struggle with such things. So perhaps here, in a letter, not a phone call, I have that opportunity. I can write to you as a man, not as a professional partner.

  Our friendship has seen many tests and trials that most never would. We have come to rely upon each other in ways few know or will ever understand. These experiences make us different. They form us.

  What I can—need—to tell you is that when I was on my solo, I found myself thinking of you. I promised myself I would write to you. These kinds of things do not happen to me, John. Not ever. I am not given to sentimentality, and yet I am emotional writing this.

  I have tried to listen to my heart and to be honest. I am deeply fond of you, your humor, your gallantry, your kindness. I miss you when we are apart. I believe that under the surface of John Knox lies a person rarely glimpsed. This is the John Knox I want to know better, the John Knox I have come to treasure.

  I do not expect an outpouring of love from you, John. But I would hope for no jokes either.

  I am thinking of you, often, and will continue to do so until such time as you tell me to stop.

  Yours,

  G

  Knox smiled ruefully, tucked the letter away again, set up Maya Vladistok’s laptop and pulled out the paperwork provided by Bishoppe’s hacker. He plugged in the thumb drive and accessed it. The screen presented a question with an empty box to the right. He understood immediately why it had been addressed to him. Had Dulwich retrieved it, Knox would have received a phone call.

  Amsterdam Brothel:

  Knox typed: Natuurhonig

  Had to enter it twice, the second time with two “u”s. It translated “natural honey”—a phrase that had proven difficult to forget. His only time having seen Grace without her clothes—also difficult to forget.

  The screen refreshed. He’d been admitted through her firewall’s first test.

  Shanghai B&B:

  He answered: Quintet

  Another refresh. Another layer in.

  Played nurse in what hospital?:

  Knox entered: Florence Night— but the box wiggled and cleared his entry—too many characters.

  He typed: Nightingale

  Another refresh.

  You constantly criticize my:

  Knox’s fingers hovered. Did she actually take as criticism what he meant as teasing? He felt a pang of disconnect, of miscommunication, of regret.

  He typed: smile

  She covered hers far too often and he complained unmercifully about it.

  The screen displayed a directory listing containing twelve files, including one .txt file marked “READ FIRST.” He was in.

  Knox read.

  The files herein present solid evidence of what I would term “a convincing case” that a corporation DBA Asian Container Consolidated likely influenced or actively managed a fraud involving the shipment of vaccine arriving to the port of Mombasa.

  Asian Container Consolidated was on contract to the Oloitokitok Health Services Clinic and Field Hospital. Trucking manifests confirm regular shipments of refrigerated medicines, medical supplies and medical equipment. An anomaly is present that suggests malfeasance: on an intermittent basis—every six to twelve weeks—fuel costs for return trips, Oloitokitok to Mombasa, listed on the bill of lading as empty are three times that of other empty legs, suggesting an unaccounted-for heavy cargo and therefore the trafficking of contraband. Contraband weighing a ton or more with the highest probability of shipment from the port of Mombasa is rare minerals or ivory.

  The movement of Asian Container Consolidated funds indicates a sophisticated network of financing and the use of a series of shell corporations, wire transfers and cash management to effectively obscure the trail of certain funds. I was able to access many, though not all, of those records.

  My interpretation of the funds is as follows:

  However and whenever the original shipment was intercepted, it likely involved an ACC ship sailing on a Panamanian registry: Pristine.

  A substitute vaccine (source currently unknown) took the place of the measles vaccine, which was shipped overland to the DR Congo. Cash withdrawals suggest a cost of 8,000 USD for the refrigerated transportation of the authentic vaccine.

  A party in DR Congo, through multiple wire transfers and laundering techniques, returned a payment of between 200,000–250,000 USD to ACC expensed as shipping services. Laundering services would appear to have been approximately 25 percent, consistent with current global practices.

  75,000 USD of the laundered cash was redistributed by ACC within ten business days—difficult to prove but easily inferred. This is obviously a payoff of some sort. I thought it would be to a minister able to influence safe passage for the vaccine out of the port city of Mombasa.

  I uncovered the approximate equivalent of 75,000 USD deposited—as cash—into six accounts that share only one overlapping signatory: Achebe (Archie) Nadali, Minister of Public Works in Nairobri.

  I detected an attempted breach on my system at 00:35 5/17; access was denied. No data loss. A second breach was detected 02:17 5/19, using the same cloaking technique as the first. I have no choice but to consider both attempts intentional and the work of the same individual. Note: not government or law enforcement. Of this I am certain.

  I have, thus far, been unable to compromise the clinic’s computerized records, including their finances. I am in pursuit of a hardware solution that seems promising.

  I have followed procedure, including the disuse of all wireless communication, including mobile. A wired connection I can trust may be unavailable for twenty-four hours. John or David: If I have failed to make regular contact twenty-four hours past the last expected contact, consider me blown and in harm’s way.

  Grace

  Knox reread it a half-dozen times, thinking it so clinical compared with the letter he’d zipped away. This was the other Grace, the Grace of Rutherford Risk.

  Then he opened some of the accompanying files. Though able to read them, he could make little sense of how she’d come to her conclusions. Nothing personal had been written, and there was no indication of a planned itinerary.

  Something stood out: the misspelling of Nairobi. The extra “r” didn’t sit well with him. Grace, a perfectionist, a computer expert, would not have missed the error unless in an enormous hurry. He cross-referenced the times on the files and that of the text he’d received from her. The spreadsheets had all been copied to the thumb drive, their file times hours or days prior to the text she’d sent him. Only the letter implied a chronology. She’d backed up her files, had texted Knox she’d been blown and had written the explanatory letter—in that order. Her writing could have been rushed; she’d saved the letter for last.

  Knox was in the process of convincing himself that the misspelling was a rare Grace mistake when he isolated the word a final time.

  Nairobri

  He stared at it long and hard. Letter combinations jumped out at him.

  Nairobri

  Robbery?

  Nairobri

  Air? Flight?

  Nairobri

  Railroad?

  Nairobri

  Initials? NA AI RO OB BR RI

  His mouth hung open. BR.

  The cook emerged from the darkness, the skinny gatekeeper at his heels. The fire was prodded. Food was placed before Knox. A beer. His caretakers, all smiles, retreated inside the guesthouse to await the completion of his meal.

  Nairobi, but with “br” added. Bertram Radcliffe. It made all the more sense to Knox, given that this line of information had to do with a Kenyan government official, one based in the city—where Radcliffe was also based
. Grace was talking to him from the other side of a Knox-only firewall, leaving a flyspeck of a clue to direct him to her source. Radcliffe had ranted about government corruption. It fit. It was all Knox needed.

  He pushed the plate of food aside without taking a bite and raked open the door to the guesthouse.

  “Can you drive?” he asked the spindly man.

  The man nodded.

  “Can you drive me?”

  The gate guard shook his head, no.

  “I can arrange, sir,” said the cook. “Please, you will eat something. The car is perhaps ten minutes.”

  “Please tell the driver to hurry.”

  He half bowed. “Please.” He motioned to the patio.

  Knox didn’t know how to tell him he’d lost his appetite.

  26

  The drive to the Nairobi suburb of Karen was short. This was a place of grand homes, of sprawling estates dating back to the colonial era. Radcliffe arrived at the door, looking like a man who’d fallen asleep on the couch and didn’t appreciate the visit.

  “Come in,” he spoke gruffly.

  Knox sat in a sturdy chair with zebra cushions. Radcliffe indicated the couch he occupied. “I lost my wife. Can’t seem to bring myself to use the bedroom anymore. Cowardly, I know, but a man is who he is.”

  “It’s not. I’m sorry.”

  “Traffic accident.” Knox had lost him; perhaps Radcliffe was still half asleep. “But it was I who got her killed. That accident was meant for me, or at the very least as a warning to me and the columns I was writing at the time. This is how they do things here, John. This is why it must be changed.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”

  “I know that look. You think I’m a drunk. Don’t equate sorrow, regret and guilt with alcoholism. I’m not that bad off, believe me.”

  “I should have called.”

  “You should have left the country. Cop killing is frowned upon here. But you haven’t, have you? That tells me you’re either in love or so well paid it’s worth the risk. Either way, you’re a threat to yourself and to people like me who are obliged to report you.”

  “I can’t leave.”

  “Whatever it is you want, make it quick.”

  “Achebe Nadali,” Knox said, leveling his gaze at the man. Radcliffe blinked rapidly and appeared to wake up some. If there had once been kindness in his eyes, Knox didn’t see it. “Public Works minister.”

  Radcliffe returned a long, pensive look. With an effort, he forced strained humor onto his face. “You’ll find he’s gone missing. With government ministers that means either early retirement because of a kickback so enormous one can’t hide it, or misfortune that typically involves torture and a permanent loss of assets.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “Your best and only bet, John, is to get the hell out of Kenya. No amount of money is worth it. Ah! It isn’t money, is it? You poor sod.”

  “She hasn’t been heard from for—” Knox checked his watch, nearly overcome by what he saw. “Forty-seven hours.” God, he thought, we’ve lost her.

  “You must leave. Have Graham send someone else. This government is a virus. They will seek you out. It’s in the wind, man. You can’t quarantine them one at a time. You have to round them all up at once.”

  The man advocated a revolution. “You’re an anarchist.”

  “I’m a pragmatist.”

  “You don’t hold back information when a person’s life’s at stake!”

  “You don’t lecture a man from whom you want information. Sit tight. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “I’ll take mine black,” Knox said.

  Knox sought out a bathroom and discovered Radcliffe’s home office on the way back. Radcliffe had earned a degree in journalism from City University London. Had won the David Astor Journalism Award, another from CNN and one from the Media Council of Kenya. There were photos of a younger man with a woman Knox took to be his wife, white politicians, black tribesmen.

  Coffees in hand, Knox stood, while Radcliffe perched on a stool at the counter beside him.

  “How could you possibly know about Archie Nadali?”

  “Grace left me a present.”

  “How could she—”

  “—know?” Knox interrupted. “Because that’s who she is, Radcliffe. You just come to accept it with her.”

  The man wouldn’t make eye contact with Knox. “I hate women like that.”

  “Not me.”

  “Different generation.”

  “Not really. We’re both breathing. You, barely.”

  Radcliffe raised his coffee as a toast. He’d have needed a Red Bull to feel a pulse, Knox thought. Radcliffe swallowed and grimaced. He straightened his back, settled his shoulders.

  “The rumor,” Radcliffe said, pushing back his disheveled hair, trying to make his point, “from one of my helpers,” he stressed the word, “was that Archie Nadali was acting like a man who’d come into money. These government ministers, this bloody government is all about who can grab the most the quickest, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve already heard this part,” Knox said. “Let’s get past it.”

  Radcliffe wasn’t to be bullied. “A minister’s salary is less than mine. Far less. But still they’re driving a Mercedes AMG, wearing Zegna and golfing the Windsor. When Archie moves up a rung, it’s my job to see who built the ladder.

  “The problem, you see, is that the better one performs at one’s respective occupation, the more one’s colleagues enjoy knocking him down a peg. Hmm? After my wife, what was there to lose? I got too close to the quick in a few of my columns. Next thing I know, I’m unpublishable. My own paper fears this government. When one door opens . . . am I right? So I passed the mantle to Daniel.”

  “Clock’s running,” Knox said. He thought it cruel what had happened to Radcliffe, admired him for what he’d once been. But he worried the man’s depression was unshakable. “Let’s try again: Grace coded your initials into a message about Achebe Nadali. A Public Works minister of all things. Why?”

  “No need to be rude.”

  “If you’re Grace, there’s every need.”

  “The answer is: Daniel Samuelson. I passed the Archie Nadali lead to my colleague and friend. A fine reporter was Daniel.” Was, Knox noted. “My protégé. A most excellent young man who understood old-school journalism. Roll up your sleeves, yes? Screw Google. Put some shoe leather into it. A month later, he’s shot dead as a poacher in Mount Kenya National Park. He and another man, a common laborer, a Kenyan from here in Nairobi. Both killed. What’s that, you say? How does a top-notch journalist end up two hundred kilometers from home, facedown in a game reserve, shot in the back of the head by wildlife rangers employed by the same bloody government that’s been on the take here for twenty bloody years? Well, I wonder, man.”

  Now red in the face, Radcliffe looked fragile and suddenly old. Knox poured him more coffee.

  “A touch of the king’s water wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Do any Brits actually serve themselves?” Knox fired.

  “Not those of us who fled to Africa. Not if we can help it.”

  Knox spiked the coffee with Scotch. Radcliffe nodded; took a swig. The man wasn’t drunk or hung over. He was sad.

  “You told Grace about Daniel Samuelson?” Knox said, thinking aloud. “You told Grace that Samuelson’s investigation into Nadali got him killed.”

  “It got Daniel killed and Nadali to vanish.”

  “Presumably Samuelson’s investigation was aimed at uncovering Nadali’s accepting cash from Asian Container Consolidated. She’s trying to follow the money from the bad-vaccine mess. Seventy-five thousand dollars of that scam’s profit reached Minister Nadali. The two investigations intersect.”

  “She might have first considered where it got poor Daniel.”
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  “He was shot on Mount Kenya?” Knox stood, his legs twitching. The coffee was strong.

  “Doubtful. The bodies were found there. You’re wasting your time. The game agency investigated the deaths. But who do you think’s behind most of the poaching? The exports? Nothing on that scale can happen without the ministers’ blessing. They bribe a few KGA rangers over to the dark side and who’s to stop any of it?”

  “Let’s stay on topic. Nadali accepts a bribe from Asian Consolidated. Daniel Samuelson goes after the story.”

  “Ivory is the topic, John. It’s the poor elephants in the middle of everything.”

  “Okay. I’ll play.”

  “It started with charcoal, believe it or not. The Somalis controlled the charcoal export market. True story. Funded their pirating with it, among other exploits. The international community, in a rage over the pirating, shut them down, eventually took the charcoal exports away from them. So they turned to a more lucrative export.”

  “Ivory.”

  “And rhino horn. You see what happens when international committees decide things? Remember this, John: there’s never been a monument to a committee.”

  “Noted.” He’d felt the lecture coming. Radcliffe had too much time on his hands.

  “Days before he died, Daniel paid a visit, thanking me for the lead. He let slip that he thought Archie and this money he’d been paid was tied somehow to the missing ivory.”

  “What missing ivory?” Knox stressed.

  “More coffee, please. Let’s skip the Scotch.” He hoisted the empty mug. Knox obliged him. “It was execution-style, you know? Single shot, back of the head. Both men, Daniel and this other chap. I showed Grace the crime scene photos. For the record, you don’t shoot poachers on their knees in the back of the head. More like a long rifle at sixty meters. But there it is, Bob’s your uncle. Got the photos from a reliable source. I promise you these were not the crime scenes shown to superiors.

  “Of course, you shoot a chap in the back of the head, there’s no face. Takes longer to identify. Gives everyone more time to effect the cover-up.