Night Of Knives

Chapter 17

"L for Lydia?" Jacob suggests. "Maybe she knows more than she's saying?"

"I think she would have told us," Veronica says faintly. She feels dizzy.

"I guess there's a lot of Ls out there. Don't suppose you got Mister Strick's first name, back in Goma?"

She shakes her head. She feels warm fury beginning to burn inside her. Danton. This is all his fault. Their kidnapping, her week of horror, Derek's death, whatever the terrorists are plotting now – none of this would have happened if it wasn't for her ex-husband's squalid, criminal greed.

"Wish we knew when this was written," Jacob muses.

Veronica takes a deep breath and looks back at Derek's notes with new resolve. After a moment she says, "Does it really matter? Never mind all the complicated stuff. He was set up by whoever was making money off the smugglers. Look. First name on the sheet. First word. Prester."

Jacob inclines his head slowly. "Yeah. Yes, it all makes sense. Derek gets sent here to look for evidence that Al-Qaeda are working with interahamwe, smuggling stuff in from the Congo. Then he starts suspecting his new partner is working with the smugglers too. That explains why he sets up a secret office in the Sun City. He went out to that refugee camp because that's where the smuggling happens. He makes some international calls from the Sun City and finds out that your ex's company is taking the gold and coltan, pretending they mined it here legally, and exporting it. With the help of some high-up Ugandans, see that last line? 'Bought-off locals?' And remember how Prester said his other clients were mining companies?" He shakes his head angrily. "Fifty million a year. That's a lot of money. Plenty of profits for everyone. Except the Congolese slaves, and who gives a fuck about them, right? Derek gets too close, Prester finds out, and gets his interahamwe friends to grab us all in Bwindi. Maybe he knew they were best friends forever with Al-Qaeda, maybe not. Anyway they outsource it to their friends, Gabriel and Patrice and company. It all makes perfect sense. Prester. It was all Prester all along."

Veronica thinks of Prester in Goma, of the genuine grief in his voice when he talked about Derek. Suddenly she isn't so sure. It feels like they're forcing together two pieces that don't quite fit. "Except there's no evidence."

"It's all circumstantial," Jacob admits. "But it all points his way."

"Yes, but - I don't know. I don't think Prester is the type."

"The type? What do you know about the type?"

She smiles bitterly. "I was married to one, remember?"

Jacob doesn't say anything.

"Maybe we should go to Strick," she suggests.

"No. For all we know Strick is in on it too. Even if he isn't, like you said, we don't actually have any evidence yet. All we have is a hypothesis, now we have to test it. We need hard data before we can go to the authorities. Something inarguable. Like he says here. Hard evidence. Proof."

"Proof? How?"

He says, "Prester has a Mango phone."

* * *

"I can't believe you can do this," Veronica says.

Jacob shrugs. "A cell phone is just a two-way digital radio. The service provider controls the software. I have admin access to the service provider's systems. We can do pretty much anything we want."

"But even when it's not turned on?"

"Oh, it's on. It just looks off. From now on, when Prester pushes the off button, his screen goes dead but his phone stays active. It'll burn through juice faster than a phone that's really off, he'll have to recharge it more often, and the battery might stay warm. But the new Razr has good battery life and heat sinks, he probably won't even notice. His own fault for having a flashy new phone, really. I don't think I could do this to an old phone, their OS can't handle it."