White Bone (5 page)

Knox paid the kid five dollars out on the sidewalk, believing it a small fortune to the boy, and thanked him.

“What time tomorrow?” Bishoppe asked.

“There is no tomorrow. We’re all done here.”

“There is always tomorrow,” the boy said. He shook Knox’s hand heartily. Despite the childlike look of the boy’s frayed shorts and broken flip-flops, Bishoppe’s composure struck Knox as businesslike and solicitous.

“You need pharmacy? Liquor? Woman? Phone card?” the boy called over his shoulder.

“Jack of all trades,” Knox said, smiling. A fourteen-year-old pimp.

“You like to gamble?” the kid said, misunderstanding.

“SIM card.” Knox showed him his mobile. “At least two hundred megs of data.”

“Twenty, U.S.”

Knox gave him ten. “I’ll wait in the lobby. Make it fast.” The boy took off like Usain Bolt.

“Was this boy bothering you, sir?” the bellman asked.

“No, no. I’m fine. He’s fine. You know him? See him around?”

The man gave Knox an insulted look. Knox didn’t push it.

The luxury hotel shut the ragtag world out. Knox might have been in any city. The lobby exuded an old-world pretense; the
service was overdone. At the front desk, Knox withheld any questions about Grace’s stay. Night shift; they wouldn’t know.

He ate dinner at the bar amid lingering business suits and low-cut dresses. Bishoppe returned with his SIM card and no change. Knox said goodbye; Bishoppe, “See you later.”

K
nox slept for five hours and awoke to a smudge of pink dawn in a charcoal sky. Using the new phone chip, he sent a text of an airplane emoji to Dulwich. That would give Dulwich his private number.

While he awaited a thermos of coffee, he used the television to go online, accessing his own company’s catalogue and account information. At 3
A.M.
, Dulwich’s alias had ordered a Jade Buddha. At 3:05
A.M.,
the order had been canceled.

A bubble—of what? Fear? Anxiety?—lodged in Knox’s throat: Grace had failed to make contact for the second night in a row. He spent thirty minutes doing sit-ups and stretches in front of BBC News and then took a long, very hot shower. He had Winston’s prioritized list of trusted contacts. He also had a sinking feeling in his gut.

He left messages—with a journalist; an activist; several environmental NGOs; the British embassy—referring to himself as a
small-business owner who was friends with Graham Winston. Then he waited for his phone to ring.

A journalist named Bertram Radcliffe invited him to lunch at the Jockey Pub at the Hilton. Knox loaded up on shillings from a lobby ATM and used the hotel’s back street doors. As he turned toward the Hilton Tower, the sound of light-footed flip-flops approached at high speed. Knox stepped aside at the last minute and grabbed the boy by the arm.

“Bishoppe,” he said, swinging the boy before getting a look at him, “I thought we had an agreement.” He set him down to his right and continued walking. The boy caught his breath and tugged up his shorts. A motorcycle’s roar cut the air.

“You would like a tour. Safari, maybe? I can get you a driver very cheap.”

“Go back to the airport. Find another tourist. I work alone.”

The boy struggled to match him stride for stride. Looking back at him, Knox saw his brother, Tommy, laboring to keep up in the early days of their brotherhood, long before Knox fully understood Tommy’s challenges. Carefree kids. No yesterday. No tomorrow.

A pang of want surged through Knox, a reflexive anger at the unfair and random nature of disease. Normalcy had escaped his brother and him at an early age. Tommy defined his life now.

Bishoppe still hadn’t left. In spite of himself, Knox exploded. “Scoot! Go! I’m not buying!”

“I am not selling.” The boy stopped, allowing Knox to walk on without him. “Those men at the airport,” he called out, paying no attention to the passersby around them. “One was special police for certain. The other, he meets only the British arrivals.”

Knox stopped. A steady procession of Kenyans spilled around him, some taking mind, some oblivious. A flag, mounted at a rising angle from a building across the street, snapped in the wind. Down
on the sidewalk, there was no breeze whatsoever. Knox took in the sharp human scents; mixed in with them was the stench of burning charcoal. Everywhere he looked, he kept seeing Grace’s face.

He eyed the boy, wondering what he was playing at. The two of them, staring, their gaze broken by passing pedestrians. The boy approached in fitful glimpses, postures and poses.

“He follows them out. Never greets them himself. He speaks to his phone a lot.”

“Them?”

“He works with a British High Commission driver. This man, he meets them. Never a taxi, these people, always a Land Rover. Black Land Rover or Range Rover. The special tags.”

“Diplomatic tags.”

“Yes. Exactly this. Sometimes more than one car. Also, sometimes security. But always this man in the terminal. The same man that followed you.”

Knox regarded the child.

“I know the airport and everyone in it.”

Knox understood well how small a place could and did become, how familiar one could be with a large group. He’d worked in Tiger Stadium the summer of his senior year in high school. Within weeks he’d known many of the crew by sight and dozens by name. The team remained at large, but the stadium’s cleanup crew, food service, the managers, even security and a few police—Knox had considered them friends by the time school started. He didn’t doubt a bored boy’s ability to see things others did not, even in the chaos of Nairobi.

“The other man. Follows them for how long?”

“Sometimes a car meets him at the curb. Sometimes not.”

“What kind of car?”

“Mercedes? Toyota? Shit car. Old car.”

“Drives himself?”

“Not always.” The boy looked hurt. “You don’t believe me? I try to help you and you don’t believe?”

“You’re playing me. Why?”

“What does this mean, ‘playing’?”

Knox tried to penetrate the consuming black of the boy’s eyes but found it impossible. He’d dealt with extortionists and kidnappers more easily read. He recalled the boy negotiating with him in the backseat of the taxi.

“Did this man follow me last night?”

Knox had looked for a tail, but it had been nighttime on unlit roads.

“I will help you if you want me to help. That is your choice.”

Knox reached for his pocket.

“No money. Americans, it’s always money. What have I done? Nothing. Look, I am not done helping you. Where is it you are going? I can watch for other men.”

“No, thank you.” Knox offered him twenty shillings and the boy took it.

“As you wish,” Bishoppe said.

Knox thanked him and continued toward the distant hotel, all the while reading the shadows and determining the boy was still following ten yards back. Knox fought to keep from smiling. Grace would like this kid.

The Hilton, standing like a forty-story toilet paper tube atop a five-story cube of concrete, declared itself at the end of the street. A perimeter of trees was fronted by a row of parked cars. He saw a dry, scrubby-looking park to the east, the trees in need of a water truck. Knox allowed contact with a pedestrian, turned just enough to steal a look behind. The boy had made him paranoid.

He looked for anyone following. Saw nothing obvious. Ahead,
more cars, and more cars still in the distance. Knox tasted the dry mouth of fatigue. He hoped like hell his gut was wrong about Grace. Tried to convince himself again that she’d had to lose the phone for self-preservation. She was smart and cunning. She had a plan. They would laugh about it all by the end of the week.

He was lying to himself.

He hated that.

K
nox watched Bertram Radcliffe struggle from his chair to shake hands. Boyish at forty-five, the man wore a sharp blue blazer that strained around his gut, an open-necked dress shirt and khakis. His rheumy eyes were unwilling to ignore the gin and tonic on the table.

For downtown Nairobi, the pub was bizarrely British. Dark wood and leather. Tinted gel blinds pulled down over the windows. Soccer memorabilia hung side-by-side with photos of Winston Churchill.

Radcliffe carefully measured his drink and took a swig. Knox ordered a Guinness from a gorgeous African waitress, who, like all educated Kenyans, spoke English with a colonial accent. Knox thanked her. Radcliffe did not.

“You met with Grace Chu,” Knox said.

“I did. Twice. Charming.”

“Mr. Winston is eager to hear from her. She’s gone off the radar. She was staying at the Sarova Stanley?”

“When not traveling. She traveled a great deal. She went off my radar as well.” The reporter spoke with an air of superiority. “To be honest with you, I was somewhat put off by the whole thing.”

“Because?”

“She stood me up. A dinner.”

“This was?”

“Three nights ago? Four, I think. The seventeenth it was.”

He might as well have punched Knox in the chest.

“Not what you wanted to hear.”

“No.”

“To be honest with you, I’m rather relieved I’m not the only one she’s stood up.”

“Let’s say it wasn’t voluntary on her part.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Where would you start looking for her?”

“Don’t be too concerned. People change plans, eh? Nothing untoward will happen to a Chinese woman in Kenya. For one thing, they are too important to the government; for another, you fuck with the Chinese here, they fuck you back. The Chinese have carried out enormous construction projects in exchange for mineral rights. They import their own workers. Many are lowlifes who go from the construction jobs to black-market work. They are tough blokes, the Chinese. Kenyans know this. It’s hands off, believe me.”

Knox nodded. He appreciated the absence of small talk. “You met with her twice. What was the context?”

“She’s a lovely woman, that one.” The gin was talking now. “Kind eyes. I love Asian eyes, don’t you?”

Knox flexed his fist beneath the table. “You discussed?”

“A bright girl, too. You’d better hope she’s not in Mathari. You’d rather she be dead than in there.”

“Mathari?”

“Psychiatric hospital. Squalid. Horrifying, really. Mental health issues are often thought to be witchcraft here, which will give you some idea of what goes on there. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

“And why would she be there?”

“This Kikuyu government, horrid people.” Radcliffe leaned in over his precious drink, gripping the glass with white knuckles. “Deeply corrupt, in power far too long. They will go to any lengths, my friend, to shut up the truth. Any lengths.” His voice grew strained. “Grace is investigating a crime, something involving a bad bit of vaccine. I have made a career of investigating such crimes. One must tiptoe. There could be so many involved in something like this, and all blood-related to the next—it’s so damn tribal here, so incestuous. To cross it, to question it, to challenge it, is . . . believe me . . . if her disappearance is a carjacking, a ransom, then maybe you stand a chance. If she unearthed what she shouldn’t have, you
won’t
find her.”

“But I will find her.”

“You damn Americans.” Radcliffe chuckled into his glass. “Don’t push me. I’m meeting with you as a favor to Graham, just as I did with Grace. You are a guest, my friend. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. In this case, Lord Graham Winston.”

Knox sized up Radcliffe. The man wasn’t as drunk as he played. Knox saw a clear-eyed appraiser of men, a veteran journalist who lulled his prey into believing him incompetent and dulled by booze. Find the cracks in others and pry. He felt like Radcliffe was about to pick his pocket.

“Listen carefully. You may want to take notes,” Radcliffe continued.

“You’re going to lecture me?”

“I’m interesting. You’ll enjoy it. As I told Grace, the prevailing wisdom on the vaccine’s horrible side effects is a lack of refrigeration.
Nothing sinister. When the clinic closed, it was assumed the government had shut it down. But the second time I saw Grace, she thought she might have found something. She asked me about a shipping company called Asian Container Consolidated. ACC all but controls the Mombasa port. Crooks, every one of them.

“Frankly, I was surprised to hear a newcomer talk about ACC. It doesn’t pop up when you Google ‘corrupt shipping companies in Kenya,’ though it should.” He squinted at Knox, thinking himself amusing. Reached for the drink, but merely spun the glass on the table. “Look, I advised her not to cross swords with ACC. It has this government’s blessing. She asked about any connection, alleged or otherwise, between the health clinic and terrorism. I might have laughed aloud at that. I honestly don’t recall. Expats and visitors are so eager to see terrorism in everything. It’s hard for them to imagine a country formed solely around everyone-for-himself and the rest be damned. I’ll tell you what I told her: Corruption rules here. Profit. Money. Greed. That’s all. I’ve been writing about it forever. It’s poison, sometimes fast-acting, sometimes slow. Is terrorism an increasing problem? Absolutely. It seeks to destabilize, and without a strong government working to defeat it—impossible with such rampant corruption—it will out. But in terms of hard evidence, there is little suggesting internal funding of terrorism.”

“Her response?”

“She asked if the clinic had ever been tied to poaching.”

Ever Grace, ever efficient. She’d run the list of Winston’s “gets.”

“And?”

“If I had a dollar for every rumor in this place. But none of them ever proves out.”

“The third time, she stood you up,” Knox said in a leading tone. “Did she call back to apologize?” He knew Grace.

“No. I haven’t heard from her, I’m afraid.”

“Did you try her?”

“Left a message at the Sarova Stanley. Was told there was no guest by that name. Perhaps I’m not memorable enough. Perhaps I slipped her mind.”

Knox puzzled over Grace’s possible actions. A trip she wanted kept private? Abduction? Illness?

“What one has to ask oneself,” Radcliffe said, “was how a virtual stranger to this country came to inquire about ACC. That kind of specificity is extraordinary. ACC is in the middle of everything, yet it took me six months or more before I began to see the threads leading there. How did your Grace identify the company so quickly?”

Something in Knox bristled at his word choice—the idea of Grace being “his.” “There’s a long answer to that, but neither of us has the time. And she’s not mine. You met her; she’s as independent as they get.”

“How sweet,” said Radcliffe. “You care. I can see it all over your face.”

“Your contempt for the government. Did you share that with her?”

“Let me tell you about this place, this government.” Again he played with his glass, though did not drink of it. “There are over forty tribes in Kenya. Five of those tribes make up over sixty percent of the population. They have warred intermittently, mostly over arable land, for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years. The Kikuyu hit a bit of good fortune over other tribes when we Brits arrived to colonize. Their tribe, the largest on the east coast of Africa, was physically the closest in proximity to Nairobi when we Brits stuck our flag in the soil. That meant they got the language first, the favors first, the relationships first. Ahead of all other tribes—and to much resentment. It also meant the Kikuyu were first to tire of the relationship, the first to stage uprisings, the first
to run Kenya once the Brits were driven out. It didn’t run well. When the wheels finally came off, an international coalition put together the present government, and we all know how such arrangements work out. Take a look at the Middle East.”

“You want them out of power,” Knox stated.

“Think of me as the Gandhi of the printed word.”

“And modest.”

“I have no time for false modesty. I, and a few others, are this country’s last good hope.”

Knox put some shillings on the table. Before he left, he carefully wrote down the phone number of his new prepaid SIM on a bar napkin. Folded the napkin and placed it alongside Radcliffe’s gin, where the man couldn’t miss it.