Night Of Knives

Chapter 12

"Danton DeWitt," Jacob repeats. "Tell me about him."

"There isn't much to tell. He's not interesting. He's rich, he was born rich. He's a commodities trader. He is involved in a lot of African charities, his mother was born here. That's kind of why I'm here, I got involved in them, and then after the divorce I sort of talked one of them into bringing me over. I'm sure they ran it by him first. He probably okayed it because he didn't want me around. Too embarrassing."

"Did you tell Strick and Prester?"

"Of course. But they don't believe me. They think it was my head injury, my memory got messed up. But it wasn't. He said Danton's name, I'm sure of it. But listen, I promise you there's no way Danton is involved with terrorists. There's just no way. Derek must have made some kind of mistake."

Jacob says, "We'll see."

Footsteps click up the stairs that lead to the patio, and Irene appears, holding a big bundle of clothing.

"What's this? Flying the coop?" she scolds them gently. " I brought you clothes, but I'm not giving them to you until you're back in bed where you belong."

Feeling a bit like a high-school student caught cutting class, Veronica shuffles guiltily back to her room. Jacob is two doors over. Pain is beginning to gnaw at her from a dozen places. She lowers herself wearily back to bed, turns on CNN, and lets sleep wash over her again.

* * *

When she wakes up Veronica doesn't know how long she has slept, whether it has been hours or days. The light and TV clock tell her it is late afternoon. She hurts almost everywhere, inside and out, but she feels a little stronger too, the food helped. She decides to get dressed. When she strips off her hospital grown she sees her body has shrunk amazingly, she has lost at least ten pounds in only a week.

The clothes Irene brought are ill-fitting but better than nothing. She dons the slippers and shuffles back outside. No one is in sight on the walkway or the deck. Stairs lead downwards, and she descends them with the banister's help. At their base, a leopard-skin rug awaits, complete with head and jaws. Beyond is the small, clean hotel lobby. The sign on the desk indicates that this is the Hotel VIP. The young and well-dressed woman behind the desk watches her with undisguised curiosity. Jacob sits on the couch near the main entrance, reading a thin, cheaply printed French-language newspaper.

"Hey," Veronica says. "What's news?"

"Hard to say. This is two months old, and my French isn't great. From what I can tell it's mostly complaints about how the elections aren't worth the paper the ballots are printed on." He puts down the newspaper. "Prester's going to take me to an Internet café to check mail and make some phone calls. The lines here aren't working, some technical glitch. Want to come?"

She nods and sits next to him. They don't speak, but their silence is companionable. After what they have been through together she feels closer to Jacob than to any of the friends back in America she has known for many years.

She wonders who she should call. Her parents, she supposes. She hasn't spoken to them much for years now, since her marriage. Her aging ex-hippie parents hated Danton, took her wedding as a slap in their face. When the divorce hit she couldn't bring herself to go to them for support. It would have been too much like admitting they were right all along, and she had just crumpled up and flushed away the prime of her life. She tried to leave everything behind when she went to Africa, including her family, but they're still her parents, they must be deathly worried about her, and right now it feels like they're the only people in all the world who might care what happens to her.

Prester appears at the entrance, jangling keys in his hands. He doesn't look enthusiastic about Veronica's presence, but accedes to her company and leads them out into the parking lot. Two jeeps full of American soldiers are waiting for something, along with the two guards at the gate. Prester leads Jacob and Veronica to a green Mitsubishi Pajero. The American soldiers nod at Prester and swing open the hotel gate, and they advance into the streets of Goma. To Veronica's amazement, the two jeeps of soldiers roll out behind them. A military escort.

The Hotel VIP is an island of luxury in a sea of poverty. They turn onto a boulevard divided by a wide grassy meridian strewn with trash and plastic bags, occupied by vendors selling airtime cards, cigarettes, and avocados big as grapefruits. They share the potholed road with trickling streams of ragged pedestrians, hordes of cheap motorcycles, battered cars, less-battered SUVs, and a few angelically white UN jeeps. The high walls of the estates on either side are topped by barbed wire and broken glass. Curiously, Veronica doesn't feel overwhelmed by the in-your-face poverty, the way she always did in Kampala. It doesn't seem so bad compared to what she's seen in the last week.

She sees a helicopter pass above, heading south, towards the lake. The sun has disappeared behind the high bluffs to the west. The boulevard ends at a large roundabout surrounded by big colonial-era buildings that claim to be banks, a post office, and the Hotel du Grands Lacs, but whose shambolic, half-collapsed appearance make Veronica doubt they function at all. The roundabout also boasts a brightly coloured Vodacom store with glossy new ads and posters advertising new SIM cards for two US dollars.

"Dollars?" Jacob asks, pointing out Vodacom as they pass. "Not francs?"

Prester says, "It's a dollar economy. You only use francs for small change."

As Veronica stares out the window she begins to realize Goma is not quite the wretched wasteland it first seemed. Its buildings are low battered concrete, mostly unfinished, but some of these drab shells contain flashy boutiques selling stuffed toys or designer clothes. The streets throng with pedestrians: gangs of skinny teenagers selling gasoline from yellow jerrycans, men in sharp suits, young women with basins full of goods on their heads and babies strapped to their backs, elegantly dressed women hiding from the sun beneath rainbow-coloured parasols. A man chatting on a brand-new Razr cell phone is surrounded by street urchins playing soccer with a ball made of rags. It is a surreal mélange of hypermodern and postapocalyptic, but it's not near as overwhelming as it would have been just a week ago. In fact the idea of going out and exploring this urban maelstrom would actually have some appeal, if she were stronger.

There is an Internet café next to the shuttered marble building that was once a post office, when the Congo was a nation-state in more than name. Shrivelled beggar women nursing malnourished infants hiss at Veronica, Jacob, and Prester as they enter. One jeepful of soldiers remains outside; the others enter and take up stations at the door. The other customers look up briefly, then go back to their work. Detachments of armed men are apparently not unusual here. The café's fifty computers are named after the US states, and CNN plays on TVs in the corners. Veronica is glad to see neither she or Jacob is onscreen.

The bored young woman at the counter wears Parasuco jeans, a Versace shirt, and diamond earrings. Her entire right eye is obscured by a milky cataract. Veronica writes down her parents' phone number and goes into a tiny phone booth. A minute later the phone rings, and when she picks it up, her mother is on the other end.

"Hello," Veronica says. "It's me. I'm fine, I'm safe."

"Veronica?" her mother gasps. "Oh, Veronica, oh thank God, oh thank God."

Their conversation is brief. Her mother's voice is difficult to decipher, partly because it is tinny and faraway, partly because she starts weeping almost immediately. When her father takes the phone he too is crying. Their voices are frail, and Veronica knows it isn't just the connection. Her parents have grown not just old but feeble, fragile. She hasn't talked to them much in the last seven years. Maybe it happened then and she didn't notice. Maybe it happened this week, and the catalyst was the very public kidnapping and presumed murder of their daughter. Veronica has to cut the conversation short, she can't bear it. She puts down the phone feeling like a miserable failure as a daughter and a human being.

When she emerges from the phone booth, Prester gives the one-eyed girl a five-dollar bill, and she returns four filthy hundred-franc notes. He offers to them to Veronica. "Keep 'em. Souvenir."

"Thanks."

They return to Jacob, who is sitting at the computer labelled IOWA.

"Have a seat, check your mail, but make it fast," Prester says quietly. "I want to be out of here in five minutes."

"What for? We just got here." Jacob looks upset.

"We need to talk. In private. Without them listening."

Veronica stares at Prester. "Them who?"

"Strick and his boys."

"Talk about what?"

"Five minutes," he repeats.