Night Of Knives

Chapter 12

"Where are we?" Veronica asks, when the ravenous void in her gut has been sated, for the moment.

Jacob points northwards. "Pretty sure it's Goma, from the lake and those volcanoes."

Veronica looks and sees jagged mountains rising into the sky above a ramshackle city, the same mountains they saw from the helicopter, a few days ago. She remembers looking at the Michelin map of East Africa as they drove from Kampala to Bwindi, less than a week ago; remembers Derek pointing out the Congolese city of Goma, right on the Rwandan border, a hundred miles south of the Impenetrable Forest, nestled between vast Lake Kivu and the towering Virunga volcanos. It feels like a memory from long ago, from her childhood.

"Makes sense," Jacob says. "Goma's the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission. Probably the safest city in the whole Congo. Not that that's saying much."

"No." Veronica looks at the armed guards at the hotel gate. "I think we're pretty safe here though."

"Yeah. They can't let us get abducted twice. Just imagine the headlines."

"Have you seen any of the others?"

"No. I think they'll be in bed another day or two. They're older. Except Susan, and she… " His voice trails off.

Veronica nods. "Did they offer you a trauma counsellor too?"

He nods. "I told them no."

"Me too. I don't know."

"I read a study once they did of World Trade Center survivors. Those who went to analysis and counselling and joined survivors' groups and made cathartic art and so on were still totally screwed up three years later. The ones who just sealed it off and didn't talk about it and moved on were fine."

Veronica nods. "Yeah. It'd be like picking at a cut before it's even scabbed over."

"Right."

They sit in silence for a while.

Then Jacob says, "I'm going to find them. Whoever did it, whoever set him up. I'm going to find them."

Veronica looks at him. She doesn't know what to say. She would dismiss it as bluster, but Jacob doesn't seem like a blusterer, and he sounds serious. She settles on asking, "How?"

"There are ways."

She doubts it. But he has reminded her of one nagging question. "Did Derek ever tell you why he invited me along?"

"No. Why?"

"I don't know exactly. But -" She hesitates. Maybe she shouldn't tell Jacob, shouldn't add fuel to his already burning desire for vengeance.

"But what?"

Veronica decides she owes him the truth. He's a reasonable, logical man. Once he recovers from this period of shock he'll surely come to his senses, do the reasonable thing and go back to Canada. "On the helicopter, right after he saw Athanase - did Strick and Prester come to you too?"

"Yeah. They debriefed me. I knew Prester already, he was Derek's partner, I met him in Kampala. What happened on the helicopter?"

"Derek got all… weird… and asked me if it was me who set him up."

"If it was you?" Jacob asks incredulously.

"Yeah. And when I said it wasn't, he asked about my ex-husband. He said his name. Danton DeWitt. I'd never told him or any of you about Danton, not by name."

Jacob stares at her.

Veronica continues, "He must have known before he ever invited me to Bwindi. Probably before he ever met me. I think, I think maybe that's why he met me. We were at a party, he seemed to, like, single me out." She grimaces. "I thought he liked me. Now I think it was because he knew I was Danton's ex-wife."