White Bone

by Ridley Pearson

  That time arrived on the third day of her hospital stay, by which point Knox looked to be the one in need of medical care.

  Through various discussions separated by naps, first for her, then for him, Knox caught her up on what he thought he knew of her investigation. Speaking was not easy for Grace. Her voice was raspy and hoarse; when she did talk, it was more of a whisper.

  “I got your thumb drives,” he told her. “Clever of you.”

  “David?”

  “Sarge and I missed a rendezvous. He’s here now in Nairobi, working with the police and the U.S. and Chinese embassies. I have a few charges to get around. Winston has stepped up. It’s all good. Kamat says hello. You’ve given tech services a field day.

  “No, it’s the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company paperwork that’s stumped me and the geeks,” he said. “The second thumb drive. The one you left in Solio.”

  “I was counting on you,” she said. “Do not tell me you let me down.” She smiled, but he could tell it hurt.

  “In Solio you were after a connection to the stolen vaccine.”

  “Yes.”

  “To make the connection between the man Faaruq and the clinic.”

  “Yes. Good!”

  “Was Samuelson trying to make that same connection?” he asked. “Is that why they killed him?”

  She shook her head. “No. He was interested in corruption. He was after the government minister or ministers that had allowed the vault of ivory to be robbed. Only in the way they killed Samuelson did I connect the theft of the vaccine to the poachers and the clinic.”

  “Brantingham said you tricked him. What was that about?”

  “The key, John, was the ISP, the Internet service provider. Brantingham told me that Larger Than Life had kept the same high-speed line used by the clinic. If service had been disconnected and reestablished, I would not have been successful. But it was indeed the same service. LTL simply took over the contract. I suppose I did trick Mr. Brantingham into giving me an Ethernet line. I needed access to the router. Once I was in, it became interesting.”

  “You went there the second time to pull Faaruq’s records.”

  “Nothing is ever lost once on the Internet, John, as you know. One must simply know where to look. When the clinic closed so quickly, they believed they had erased or destroyed all their data. But I recovered most of their records, all of their e-mails. If you looked at the contents of that thumb drive . . . there was far too much data. I opened up some doors, you might call them, so tech services could access the same material.”

  Knox walked her through his relationship with the boy, Bishoppe. “In the end, he betrayed me through an intermediary to Guuleed, the man Koigi left to die.”

  “I know of Guuleed.”

  “That had to cement Guuleed’s belief that either you were still alive, or I was heading after proof in Oloitokitok of who was responsible for your death. All things even, I’m not sure the betrayal hurt me. But at the time I was only too happy to get onto the plane with Brantingham and out of the village.”

  Grace lifted up on her elbows. “I am strong enough. No more bed.”

  But Knox intercepted her and eased her back down. She swore in Mandarin. He told her to cool it.

  “Do you understand now, the paperwork on the Solio thumb drive? Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company?”

  “Only that Samuelson was killed alongside one of their employees. I assumed you were trying to figure out the other guy’s role.”

  “Correct. A reporter of Samuelson’s stature with a common water master. They had been moved, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “No autopsy. They were cremated.”

  “Yeah. Look, maybe you should rest. You’re getting all worked up.”

  “There were KGA rangers on the scene. Read what I gave you! Does anyone read anymore?” She strained at the IV tube, clearly irritated. “One ranger did; he knew to read rigor, lividity. At least twenty-four to thirty-six hours’ difference in the times of death. The water master was beaten. Likely tortured. He was killed first. He could have been killed anywhere, even here in Nairobi. They tortured him because Samuelson thought him important. Samuelson, who had written about the stolen ivory.”

  “Maybe you should rest.”

  “Maybe you should listen.”

  “You’re feeling better,” he said.

  “Listen to me, John. Samuelson writes articles about corruption. He learns of and exposes the huge losses from the government’s ivory vaults over the years, one quite recently. Now, as to my supposition, it goes like this. He is being watched, this reporter. He meets with an unimportant water master, perhaps more than once. Whoever is watching him takes an interest in the water master. They abduct and torture the man; there is little doubt of this. Let us presume this man is stronger than they expect, or, more to the point, the person behind the torture—”

  “Faaruq—”

  “—is not so professional. He goes too far and kills the water master.”

  “Before the man tells them anything.”

  “Precisely, John! So next—”

  “They abduct Samuelson.”

  “A riskier venture. An expat. A white. We can fairly rule out the government at this point. Someone else.”

  “They say everyone in Kenya is after this ivory. Faaruq had ties to Guuleed, so it was Guuleed.”

  “Samuelson does not talk, does not explain his connection to the water master. Maybe he dies of a heart attack, maybe again they go too far. How is one to know? In the end, he too is killed—a white man—and now they must cover it up, so they stage it as a poaching.”

  “They could have just buried them. They staged it to send a message. They wanted the next person they took to talk.”

  “Perhaps. I do not understand the precise threat I posed to them. It was Guuleed who put me in the bush, though I may never prove it.”

  He continued to find her occasional naïveté endearing. For one so brilliant, she could sound so childish. “But they came back for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Guuleed ordered that you be brought back.”

  “Leebo,” she said, shivering. “That is why he returned.”

  “Because you made the connection,” he said. “You connected Samuelson and this water master to the stolen ivory, and you intended to get Winston his money back with the reward.”

  “I do not know why David always makes fun of your intelligence, John. He really should be hearing this.” She smiled.

  “That’s the first smile I’ve seen,” Knox said. “And you didn’t try to cover it up.”

  Her eyes softened. “Thank you.”

  He wasn’t sure how to take that.

  “For noticing,” she said. Then she was back to business. “The problem such people as these have, John, is that they don’t read the newspaper. If they had, it would all be so apparent. For me, it required archival work, Internet searches of back issues. Everything needed to locate the missing ivory was right there.”

  “Now you’re sounding arrogant. You must be feeling better.”

  She didn’t comment. Remained silent for a long time. Knox nearly apologized, but then she started up again. “There is an article—it is on the second thumb drive—reporting that Nairobi City Water and Sewerage, a private company contracted to take over the city’s supply of potable water, was observing water shortages in the Kibera slum. That was it: a tiny reference on a page deep inside a single day’s issue. Clean water to the slum was among the first of NCWS’s projects. The article reported a drop by half of the usual volume. But who pays attention to the problems of a slum? The water master quoted in the piece was—”

  “Samuelson’s man.”

  “The same. You see, John? Samuelson obviously read his own paper cover to cover each day.
He was a true journalist.”

  “So he interviewed the water master responsible for Kibera. You hacked their water company’s records to cross-reference the date of the water loss to the theft of the ivory from the government vault. The Kibera problem occurred after the theft.”

  “Again! Where is David! You like to pretend you are not so smart, John. This is something you will need to work on.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Oh, yes.” She reached over and squeezed his hand, reminding him of the airplane.

  84

  The operation went down on the first cool day in the two weeks since the bush. Knox and Grace, both guests of the British Embassy and living on its grounds, had differing status. Grace was allowed to leave and move about Nairobi. Knox was not, the warrant for his arrest still outstanding, and still being negotiated. Slowly.

  The raid was led by the Nairobi police, observed by representatives of the British and American embassies. The key bargaining chip offered by Knox’s attorneys had been his knowledge of a hacker connected to both police and criminals.

  Working off a location and information provided by Knox, a Nairobi SWAT team raided the backroom office of Bishoppe’s hacker. They seized two computers, three mobile phones, optical disks and three external hard drives. It was over in ten minutes. The store was back in business fifteen minutes later.

  85

  Grace made only a veiled attempt to contain her contempt for the woman driving her. Her mother considered jealousy a sign of true affection; for Grace, it was more a true affliction. John had spoken highly of Inspector Kanika Alkinyi. He brought her up often. That was enough.

  The early going was solemn, two women together in the front seat of an unmarked police car, one making assumptions the other had no awareness of.

  “A Chinese woman and a Kenyan cop,” Kanika said. She smiled. “The people who see us will think we’re buying an apartment building or starting a business.”

  They rode in silence for several kilometers. Grace thought they could have been driving through the industrial sprawl of Shanghai or Guangzhou. The world was not so very different. She had less desire to see more of it since her time in the bush. She wanted to be in one place, for a long time. She wanted space. Air to breathe.

  “We’ll probably have to wait,” Kanika said. “These municipal guys live by their own clocks.”

  “There are others? You have other workers available if we should need them?”

  “I’ve done as you asked. They’re all reliable. Most are even trustworthy. You will make me famous, you know, if you are right.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Rich, if I were that type of policewoman. Do you ever regret what you are not? Or are you able to live with what you are?”

  “I think maybe we Chinese do not think in such terms.”

  “Count yourself lucky.” Kanika grew pensive. “Sometimes I wish I’d been born male. Then I see what idiots they are.”

  Grace paused, then spoke more openly. “In the bush I came to think of things as far more simple, yet far more complicated. I think it will be a long time, perhaps a lifetime, before I am able to . . . compile that, as we would say in computers. To understand.”

  “I’m amazed at what you went through. I’m a Kenyan and I still can’t imagine how you were able to survive.”

  “I didn’t try to survive. I tried to exist. I think there is a difference. I believe that is what saved me.”

  “I’m not sure I understand that. But clearly your time was not up. That’s what we say to each other. Police. When it gets close.”

  Grace nodded. “My time was not up.”

  The worker met them surprisingly close to on time. He was grumpy and unhappy about helping two women in any manner; he showed no respect for Kanika’s badge and was openly disdainful of Grace’s racial heritage.

  Sighing, lips twisted in a sneer, he unlocked a padlock on a heavy steel plate that covered the first six feet of a ten-meter steel rebar ladder fixed to the side of the water tower. The plating prevented anyone without a key from climbing up.

  Before they ascended, Grace pulled out and unfolded a photocopy of a blueprint belonging to the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company. Had the worker thought through the process, he might have wondered what a Chinese woman was doing with such a blueprint. Instead, he told them both he was in a hurry to get home to his family—it was his wife’s mother’s birthday. He would catch hell if he was so much as five minutes late.

  Grace clarified that the tower above them supplied a specific portion of Kibera with its fresh water supply. The man nodded.

  “That much is true,” he said.

  Kanika offered to lock up behind them.

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “It’s not a problem,” Kanika said. “If you would like to take down my badge num—”

  “No need for that. You going to steal some water?” He laughed at his own joke and handed her the padlock without thanking her. Then he trudged off, quickly joining the thick procession of Nairobi walkers heading home.

  “He must walk five kilometers or more,” Kanika explained to Grace. “We got lucky.”

  “Not too lucky,” Grace said. “I am not keen on heights.”

  “I was hoping you were. I am terrified.”

  “I will go,” Grace said.

  “Not alone, you won’t.”

  The two women climbed slowly and carefully. Grace did not look down. She gripped the rough metal until the color left her good hand, her snakebitten wrist throbbing with the effort.

  At last they pulled their bottoms onto a catwalk surrounding a third of the tank’s circumference. Another ladder was attached here, running high to the lip of the open tank.

  “Do you swim?” Grace asked.

  “I never learned.”

  “Then it must be me.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It is not the water I mind, I am afraid I will not like the darkness. Since my time in the bush I find myself needing to sleep with the light on. I am like a child.”

  “It must have been horrid.”

  “It was beautiful. Truly beautiful. At the time I was at peace with it. Now it is different. I do not understand.”

  “The water will be dark.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you obviously think it will be necessary to swim?”

  “I do.”

  Grace had left her purse in the car, but she handed Kanika her cell phone, a hair clip and her shoes. She faced the ladder.

  “How can you be so convinced you’re right about this?” Kanika inquired.

  “It is the only explanation,” Grace said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, I see.”

  Misunderstanding the sarcasm, Grace said, “Yes. Good.” She put one tentative foot on the first rung. Climbing without shoes was going to be painful.

  “Because? It is the only explanation because?”

  Holding the sides of the metal ladder, Grace turned. “The water supply to this portion of Kibera was cut in half. Cut suddenly, in a system that was quite new. Certainly a water master was dispatched to check the tank, as we are doing now. What he saw was a tank filled with water. Dark, I am sure.

  “Daniel Samuelson read of this in his own paper. Curious by nature, and by occupation, he conspired with the water master to gain access to this tank—the logical tank to check first. It supplies the area in question, the area with the sudden drop in water volume. You see?

  “But his plan went awry. Before he was shown to the tank, the water master disappeared. Then it was Samuelson who vanished. His theory died with him.” Grace’s throat tightened, choking her words. “You see the scratches there?” she said. “I’m guessing ivory tusks.”

  “So many . . .” Kanika whispered. “My God. All slaughtered.”

&nbs
p; “A corrupt minister like Achebe Nadali . . . If you crossed a man like Xin Ha after he had paid you for services, where would you hide several tons of ivory? Everyone, including Xin Ha, would think to look in shipping containers or warehouses. It is a great deal of weight.”

  “The kind of weight a water tower is built to hold.”

  The tremendous number of scratches in the paint stayed with Grace. Each, a tusk. Every two tusks, an elephant. “It’s a mass grave,” she moaned. “I suppose some of the ivory must have blocked the drain, causing the water shortage. It is the best—perhaps the only—explanation.”

  “I agree! But in that case—let’s just wait. I can call the others, the men I have on standby. There are a few other police we can trust to protect us. You don’t need to swim.”

  “But I must. I must face my fear. There is no personal growth without facing one’s fears.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “I think you are joking.”

  Grace climbed. In five minutes she was staring down at black water and an internal ladder leading into its depths.

  Taking a deep breath, she descended, rung by rung. As she climbed down, she saw the jackals tearing apart Leebo. The cook’s veins rising from his arms. She felt the warm milk spilling down her chin.

  She let go and sank into the cold darkness.

  86

  Another six days of languishing negotiations for Knox’s freedom. This batch included demands for a U.S. presidential visit to Kenya to show support for the Kikuyu government. A sense of desperation began swirling around the embassy, something Knox was not supposed to sense.

  The following day, Kanika Alkinyi sent Knox a note via Grace. She’d arranged a seaman’s berth for him on a Greek-flagged container ship out of Kiunga in the Lamu East District, sailing to Egypt.

  David Dulwich agreed Knox should take the out.

  “Unfinished business,” Knox said. He, Grace and Dulwich were alone in a small library in the guest residence. Chintz drapes were strapped to either side of the oversized double-hung windows. Oil portraits and battle scenes filled the spaces the bookshelves allowed. The room smelled of rose and leather and binding gum. Knox had made his home here recently, reading through the works of Rudyard Kipling, which he hadn’t touched since his teens.