White Bone (9 page)

H
ello there, Koigi.”

The ranger stopped, one hand on the grip, ready to pull himself up into the vehicle. The woman’s voice, coming from behind him, was familiar. His men climbed into the vehicle. He spoke without turning around.

“Inspector Alkinyi. What brings you to Kibera?”

“My question exactly. In,” she said, opening the rear passenger-side door and pushing the others aside so she could take the seat behind Koigi. She was small and frail, not cop material. She wore her hair in a headscarf, street clothes belonging to a graduate student, and black running shoes. She carried no purse, only attitude.

The car doors closed and, for a moment, only the idling engine could be heard.

“Talk to me,” she said. “Don’t make me guess. I’m police. We don’t like to work hard.”

“Guuleed,” Koigi said. His men reacted like schoolgirls. He dared to tell a cop the truth?

“Here, in Kibera? Why?”

“It’s of no interest to me why.” Koigi looked straight ahead. All his men were in a full sweat from the activity of the past fifteen minutes. The car smelled foul.

The policewoman reached over the seat and put her hands on both his shoulders. “Who told you? How could you know he would be found here?”

“We explore even rumor when it comes to Guuleed.”

“You bring this fight here? My city? These people?”

“I will not pass up such an opportunity.”

“Why would Guuleed agree to a meeting in Nairobi? I don’t believe that. His face is known to every policeman. There’s a shoot-to-kill on him. We’d have done your work for you.”

“And did you?”

She frowned.

“Tell me again, Kanika. Why does an inspector respond in such a timely manner to some gunfire in Kibera?”

She didn’t answer.

“We all have our sources, yes?”

“It’s not like that,” she said. “I picked up the call on the radio.”

“Sure you did. And my men and I were just buying Kibera souvenirs.”

The two rangers sitting next to the woman smiled.

“There’s a man arrived from—”

“John Knox,” Koigi said, interrupting.

“Jesus!”

“Is Guuleed in Nairobi for him, the American?”

“I told you,” she said, “his reasons for being in Kibera don’t
concern me. Only that he
is
here—was here. You didn’t kill him, did you? If you had, you’d be smiling.”

“You will get out now, please,” Koigi said. “We must be leaving. There are police in the area.”

She laughed nervously.

“He went to ground,” Koigi said, throwing her a bone. “There’s a tunnel system off Trumpeter’s Lane. You might want to collapse it.”

“Thank you,” she said, tugging the door handle and pushing the door open. “You could be shot if you’re recognized. I’d keep my head down. Head south. Come around the city to the east. The gunfire has pulled our cars from those areas.”

If she’d been hoping for a thank-you, she left disappointed.

B
ishoppe led Knox on a fifteen-minute walk through the slum, which was still reeling from the stampede. People were already at work to restore walls, gather goods and look after the injured. To Knox it looked like a refugee camp recovering from a bombing.

They arrived at a gleaming red
tuk-tuk
, a three-wheeled vehicle with an enclosed cab. Knox and the boy took the backseat.

“The Sarova Stanley,” Knox said, imagining how the parking valets would greet such a vehicle.

“It is a little more money than a
matatu
,” Bishoppe said, “but much better in traffic. And the police pay them no attention.”

Knox grinned. Entrusting a fourteen-year-old street kid to look after his security? It was idiotic. And yet, it felt right.

They drove. Knox quickly broke out in a sweat. The interior of the fiberglass cab was boiling, despite the windows and the open front; its progress through the heavy traffic slow.

“Let me see your phone.”

“Why?”

“Your phone, please!” Knox demanded.

“No. I come out to Kibera to help you, and you don’t trust me?”

“You followed me out,” Knox said. “Why?”

Bishoppe indignantly handed his phone over to Knox. It was a primitive flip model with basic texting. Knox stumbled through the menu navigation. His thumb was the size of three of its keys. All the texts were in Arabic.

“These are to my friends,” Bishoppe said. “Do you read Arabic? I think not. I am Muslim. My friends are mostly Muslim. I speak and write three languages. How many do you? Why do you insult me like this?”

The driver glanced back at them. Knox waved him on.

“I’ve given you enough money by now that you do not need to work for the next few days. Weeks, months, maybe. Do you have friends, maybe family outside of Nairobi? Some place away from here?”

“My sister lives in Korogocho. You know it?”

“No, I don’t. You should go there.”

The boy laughed. “What have I done but help you? You don’t like me, Mr. John?”

“You can’t follow me around, Bishoppe. You could have been killed here today.”

“My sister is nineteen. She has sex with men.” Bishoppe’s words swam in the space of the claustrophobic cab. “The men pay her for it. Most. Some do not. They hit her and refuse to pay. I send her money when I can. That’s all I can do. You have money, so I follow you. You’re a good client. You understand?”

“I’m sorry.”

The boy shrugged. “It’s not her fault. Our uncle made her do it.
She gives him the money. I’d rather buy a pair of Air Jordans. Have you ever had a pair of Air Jordans?”

“No. Your parents?”

Bishoppe pursed his lips and frowned. “The water sickness. Many years ago.”

Knox leaned out the window for air. The street was loud with engines of all kinds.

“I’m telling you, Mr. John, you get me a pair of Air Jordans and I will help you find your friend.”

Knox had not mentioned Grace or her situation. He blinked. Realizing his mistake, Bishoppe flushed and said, “You spoke to the old reporter at the hotel. Your waitress is a cousin of mine.”

“You bribed her!”

“I run a business, Mr. John. Information is king.”

“You read that off a cereal box?”

The boy looked confused. Maybe not a big consumer of corn flakes.

“What are you? Twelve? Fourteen?”

“Air Jordans. Red. Do we have a deal?” Bishoppe offered his hand.

“No, we don’t have a deal. You’re playing me.”

“People talk, Mr. John.”

“What kind of people?” Knox asked.

“Red. The basketball shoes over the ankle.”

“They cost a fortune! Forget it.”

In the front seat, the driver—clearly eavesdropping—could barely keep his eyes on the road.

“I can get them black market. Not all that much.”

“I’ll decide
after
I hear what you have,” Knox said.

“I’ll trust you.” The boy sounded about five. Fourteen had been a stretch. “There was this woman at the Sarova Stanley. Her
reservation was also made by Eastland. Like yours. She also took the Kibera tour. Like you. You see? So many similarities.”

Knox worked to control his temper. “You don’t work for Eastland. And how could you possibly know if she did or didn’t visit Kibera? You’re fishing.”

“No.” Bishoppe shook his head vigorously. “I’m not. I told you, I hear things. My cousin. Maybe he works for the hotel, maybe not.”

As in China,
Knox thought,
everyone is everyone’s cousin.
Like the reference to the waitress, Knox took it to be meaningless. “Go on.”

“Maybe he’s good with computers. Maybe he has a way inside the Internet at the hotel.”

“He’s a hacker.”

“He’s a businessman, like me. Sometimes he asks me to make a pickup for him.”

“Blackmail. You’re a bagman.”

“Sometimes my cousin borrows credit card information.”

“Borrows! I like that.”

“There are many such businessmen in Nairobi.”

“I’ll bet there are. Tell me about the Eastland woman.”

“She . . . my cousin said she has the kind of firewall only a spy or a thief would have.” He paused. “Are you a spy? Jason Bourne?
Mission Impossible
? Like that?”

Again, the boy trying so hard struck Knox as so young.

“There’s no way he could have hacked her,” Knox said. Racing through Knox’s mind was an image, an emoji of a bomb, followed by a question mark. Had it been some punk kid who’d scared Grace off? Had he traveled halfway around the world because of some kid hacker?

“That’s the point. The police offer my cousin payment to learn about such foreigners.”

Knox had to let it register, worked to keep the incredulity from his voice. “The police pay local hackers to know who can’t be hacked.” Grace would have taken immediate action if she’d suspected someone had discovered her. But he wasn’t sure what those actions would have been, didn’t know what Kamat and the others at Rutherford Risk had taught her to do.

“My cousin says this woman was possibly with the ministry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The government ministry.”

“Why would he say that?” Knox asked.

“Look, I don’t understand computers. He said she might lead him to a prize . . . you see? So I get my prize, right?” Bishoppe stood up, grabbed the rail behind the driver and started shaking the
tuk-tuk
side to side. The driver reached back and slapped out for the boy. Bishoppe sat down again. “I love that,” he said. “Have you ever surfed, Mr. John?”

Knox was in a brain freeze, unable to allow himself to see Grace’s work from the perspective of corrupt police, hotel hackers and desperate street urchins. “Call this cousin now. Right now! Pull over!” he shouted to the driver.

The
tuk-tuk
weaved artfully through the traffic, but there was nowhere to pull off the road. Mobs of pedestrians and bicycles formed an undulating wall on all sides. Knox struggled to tune out the noise and confusion.

This “cousin” of Bishoppe’s had clearly gotten close enough to Grace to panic her.
Think! What did it all mean?

Finally, the driver pulled off and stopped. Knox already had his phone out. He awoke Vinay Kamat, in Hong Kong, from a deep sleep. Knox allowed the sound of his voice to introduce him.

“Say Grace thought she’d been caught. She’s online, inside someplace she doesn’t belong. What’s her first response?”

“John?”

“Quickly. What’s the training?”

“Abort. Back up your assets. Physical drive, nothing online. Then zero the hard drive. Boot and nuke. Full wipe.”

“How long for that?”

“Depends on the amount of data. An hour. Two, to do it right.”

“What physical drive? An external? A thumb drive? What?”

“I told you: it depends on the amount of data. John, I was dead asleep. You can Google this.”

“Google didn’t teach Grace how to handle a breach.”

“No one breached Grace, John. Now, if she thought they were trying—that’s another story. She carries multiple thumb drives. There are some very cool SD chips out there that can hold two hundred gigs. Smaller profile, easy to hide. But the upload is slow. I might do one of each. One comes with me, one stays behind.”

“Hidden.”

“No, I’d leave it on the table with some arrows drawn to it. Yes, John: hidden.”

“What could a hacker know if he couldn’t actually breach Grace, which I’m assuming is basically impossible?”

“Basically? John, the CIA can’t breach us. Not without a week or two on a Cray. No one hacked Grace if she didn’t want it. The raider might get the router log, some metadata. But she’d be in stealth mode, John. Proxies. Ghosting. Someone skilled could determine the general area of her target, narrow it down to a neighborhood. Nothing past that.”

“An area within a city? Chinatown. Capitol Hill.” He was thinking: the Ministry?

“Sure. But only if this person is very, very good.”

“Does she leave a signature, something he can keep watch for?”

“Not Grace. Not on her end.”

“Meaning?”

“We’re talking Snowden shit here, John. Not some Detroit hacker. Okay? Think of it like this. You see a person on a bus. You follow the bus, but you never get a look at the face. So you take a chance. You drive to the neighborhood where you think the bus is headed. You get in front of it. Wait by the side of the road. Maybe you recognize the bus or the face, maybe you miss it. Depends on traffic.”

“Motherfucker.”

“John?”

“Thanks.” Knox hung up and reached toward Bishoppe, who backed away. “Your cousin. Right now. Give me your phone.”

The back of the
tuk-tuk
was no bigger than a can of tuna and still Knox couldn’t get his hands on the kid. Bishoppe moved like a wraith—under his arms, around his back. He was a cat in kid clothing. The driver never twitched.

“You’ll get the shoes!”

The boy stopped, out of breath.

“No texts, no calls,” Knox said, holding up the flip phone.

“You touch me, I’m gone. You never see me again.”

“You take me to him. No games. No false leads. Do it, or so help me, I will out you and your cousin to the police, national security, hotel security, airport security.”

The boy was clearly considering his options, including the door.

“
Now,
Bishoppe. We go straight there. Right now.”

The two connected in a long staring contest. The boy was tough to read. Knox blinked first. Time was of the essence.

“The shoes for you. Twenty thousand shillings to your friend if I’m pleased with the information.”

The driver sat up sharply, eyes straight ahead.

“Sixty,” Bishoppe said calmly.

The driver coughed.

“Twenty-five.”

“Fifty. This is a very great risk for me. He won’t like it.”

“Twenty-five is final.”

Bishoppe folded his arms across his chest. “You treat me like shit.”

“Don’t swear.”

“Fuck you.”

“The shoes, and twenty-five.”

Bishoppe tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Drive.”