Acts of faith (103 page)

“Cut bait,” Mary answered without hesitation. “It’s an urban legend.”

Phyllis said, “I’m all for female solidarity, sister, but he’s the captain. So what about it, Captain Dare? Urban legend or no?”

Dare lit a cigarette. He couldn’t remember if it exceeded his five-a-day ration. “Deep background, that’s what you said?”

She nodded.

Dug-lass Negarra! Wes-lee Negarra!
The shouts of Michael’s troops on that day the gunship was downed reverberated in his brain. Negarra—blood brother. A man should be prepared to lay down his life for his negarra. It was another word for loyalty, for a solemn contract between two men, and Douglas had broken it. “Here’s the deal—y’all don’t use anything I tell you before we’re out of here.”

“Wes!”

He turned to Mary: “Lyndon Johnson had a sayin’—Don’t get mad, get even. I got mad, now I’m gonna get even.” And then to Phyllis: “Soon as the airplane gets sold and we’re out. Could be a week, could be two. You don’t use it till then.”

The reporter paused for a beat, then said, “Fair enough. I’ll need a couple of weeks to put it together anyway.”

“And if y’all fuck me on that, I won’t fuck you back—I’ll make you sorry you ever drew a breath. I know some folks who would be happy to run your skinny butt over on a Nairobi street just as a favor to me.”

“Fair enough again. I never did look both ways, and I don’t intend to start.”

“I’ve got records—bank transfer records, flight schedules, dates. I’ve got photographs and videos of some of the runs we made.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Wes—”

“Save the lectures for later, darlin’,” he said to Mary.

Phyllis sat up straight. “Photos?
Videos?
”

“All in livin’ color,” he said.

A
WET
-
SEASON
sunrise, today’s was a spectacle prolonged by the clouds walling the horizon—a glow like the gold in a refiner’s fire shading off to orange and pink, and then the empyrean gold again, gilding the edges of the cumulus, billowing below cirrus that resembled paint brushes dipped in pastels. An altogether glorious symphony of light and changing color. Fitzhugh’s spirits rose with the sun after a night of agitated dreams and spells of wakefulness, postmidnight arguments with himself as to where his duty lay and to whom. He’d come to a resolution, finally, and the beauty of the dawn somehow confirmed it. The red African mud clung like glue to his boot as he walked to the compound’s mess, but he felt light-footed and relieved, as though the thing he had determined to do were already done.

He ate a hearty breakfast of bangers and eggs with fried tomatoes, then, over a leisurely cup of coffee and a cigarette, rehearsed what he was going to say, anticipating Douglas’s responses, thinking of arguments to counter them. Alexei and his crew came in, closely followed by Phyllis Rappaport and hers. The cameraman and soundman were lugging their equipment in banded aluminum cases; the reporter had a valise slung over her shoulder and carried a cardboard box by the twine tied around it. She blew out her cheeks when she put it down on the bench at one of the tables. While she sat beside it, the soundman got her breakfast for her. This could have been a normal courtesy—taking care of the boss—but Fitzhugh assumed differently: She did not want to let the box out of her sight for so much as a minute. As she turned her head, facing him from across the patio, he waved. She returned the wave. He got up, topped off his coffee mug, filled another, and went to her table.

“Good morning, Phyllis,” he said, remaining on his feet. “You are catching the eight o’clock to Nairobi, yes?”

“We are.”

“So did you find someone to take you in next week?”

She hesitated before answering that she had; but she didn’t volunteer the pilot’s identity. Not a pleasant woman, but one to be trusted, Fitzhugh thought. She was keeping her word to Wesley.

“When does your story air?” he asked offhandedly. “We get CNN here on satellite.”

“I’ve got some work to do on it yet. When it airs is up to the editors. Stay tuned.”

“We will,” Fitzhugh said, and left.

In a tattered terry-cloth robe, one side of his face lathered in shaving cream, Douglas answered his knock.

“Well, there’s service,” he said as Fitzhugh handed him the coffee. “What’s up?”

“I’ll wait till you are done.”

He sat beside the bed while Douglas shaved. The tukul was luxurious, neat and homey compared with the quarters of most aid pilots and aid workers. The chairs, the nightstand, bedstead, and bureau, shipped up from Nairobi, were of carved hardwood and lent an atmosphere of permanence. Clothes hung from a bar under a shelf, shirts facing in the same direction. There were photographs on the bureau, one showing a middle-aged couple, a buxom woman and a tall man. In another the same man, years younger, looking almost like the present Douglas’s twin, was in field clothes with a gun crooked over one arm. Beside him stood a teenage boy, also carrying a gun. A dog posed in front of them. Many dead birds were spread on the ground. Mountains in the background. Recalling a comment Wesley had made some time ago, Fitzhugh found it interesting that there were no pictures of Douglas in his U.S. Air Force uniform, or of the plane he flew in the Persian Gulf War. Pilots always had photos of their planes.

“This picture,” he called into the bathroom. “With the dog. You and your father?”

“Yeah. That was taken, it must be twenty years ago.” Douglas came out, toweling his face. “My dad loved bird hunting and my mother loved bird watching. She was always arguing with him to stop shooting them. Helluva wing-shot. The man never missed, I mean,
never
missed.” He smoothed his tousled hair with a palm and took a chair, extending his legs with the movement that always reminded Fitzhugh of a cat, stretching. “So what’s with the crack-of-dawn visit, the coffee?”

“I went to have that talk with Wesley last night.”

“Good. I put the muzzle on Tony. What did Wes say?”

“To me, nothing. To Phyllis, everything.”

Douglas popped his lips two or three times and gestured to him to continue.

“She got to him first. I was near his tent when I heard voices inside. Phyllis’s is as distinctive as Wesley’s. I hung outside for as long as I could stand it in the rain. They were still talking when I left, but I’d heard enough.”

“Which was what?”

“I couldn’t hear every word, of course. Wesley is going to fly her to the Nuba on Monday. Just before I left, they were discussing the thirty-six thousand that Barrett paid to Yellowbird. She sounded very interested in that. I can see why. How sexy if she can prove that an aid agency’s funds went directly to pay for arms deliveries.”

“Damn it! Goddamn it! You should have talked to him earlier. Right after we talked.”

This was one of the responses Fitzhugh had anticipated. “You are not going to tell me what I should have done. It would not have made any difference anyway. You made this mess because of the things you should
not
have done, and you know what they are.”

Douglas said nothing, looking at the mat beside his bed. He stood, picked up a clot of mud that Fitzhugh had tracked in, and crossing the room, dropped it in the wastebasket.

“So that cunt wants to drag Barrett into this, but how does she prove it? All she’s got is Wesley’s word.”

“Considerably more, I’m afraid,” Fitzhugh said, watching him stoop to pick up more chunks of dirt. “I heard Wesley say he would tell her everything and
show
her everything. He had his records—the bank transfers, the flight schedules, the dates. And also photographs and videos.”

Douglas stopped housecleaning and faced Fitzhugh, hands in the pockets of his robe. “Photos and videos of what?”

“Of Yellowbird missions. He said he would give them to Phyllis, and I believe he has already. I saw her this morning at breakfast. She was carrying a box about this big”—he indicated its size—“and wouldn’t let it out of her sight. The videocassettes, photos, the records—that all must have been inside.”

“Wes took pictures? He made videos? I made a few runs when Mary was on leave, and I never saw any cameras.”

“Mary was the artist,” Fitzhugh said in a droll voice. “You’ve seen her. She takes pictures of everything. They probably were going to be souvenirs. Now they will be put to another use.”

“Oh, yeah. A real prize for a TV reporter. The next best thing to being an eyewitness. Wes had to be crazy to let Mary do that. Videos!” Douglas flung an arm, knocking the coffee cup off the arm of his chair. “Son of a bitch!” He wiped up the spill, then took off his robe and boxer shorts, baring his flat, cream-colored ass, opened a bureau drawer, almost pulling it out entirely, and got into fresh underwear. “Lives, our pilots’ lives. Wes doesn’t give a shit about them, he’ll risk them just to get back at me. She doesn’t give a shit—it’s only a story to her. A cunt and an asshole. Two cunts and an asshole.” He went to the bar from which his clothes hung, started to put on a shirt, and then threw the hanger against a wall. “Videos, for fuck sake!”

“Please calm yourself, my friend,” Fitzhugh said.

“Calm myself? Everything we’ve built up—a twenty-minute segment on a newsmagazine show. Know what twenty minutes is on TV? A goddamned eternity. They get CNN in Khartoum, the whole fucking planet gets CNN. We’re talking big-time here. The papers will pick it up, and we’ll be . . .” He grabbed the shirt he’d thrown onto the bed and tossed it to the floor. “Khartoum couldn’t order better propaganda. That’s what she is, a propagandist for those bastards. Everything we’ve built up, and you’re telling me to calm myself? We’ll lose our UN contracts, the UN will boot us out of Loki, and we’ll be lucky if Kenya doesn’t revoke our license.”

Fitzhugh raised his palms. “I know what is at stake. You need not go on about it.”

Douglas put his trousers on, picked up the shirt, and buttoned it crookedly, shirttails hanging out as he paced, disheveled and distracted. Fitzhugh had never seen him like this. Facing the possible ruin of his world, he had none of Tara’s dignity when she faced the certain ruin of hers. He was almost comical.

“I have thought what you should do,” Fitzhugh said. “What you must do.”

Douglas noticed that he was in disarray. He fixed his buttons, tucked in the shirt, and in the process, collected himself. Falling back into the chair, long legs going out with a languid movement, he said, “Yeah, stop that story from getting on the air, that’s what.”

“No.”

“We have to get hold of that stuff. Without it, what does she have? Dare telling stories. Then all we have to do is deny everything and point out that Dare’s on a personal vendetta. It’ll blow over in a couple of days.”

“And how will you do that?” Fitzhugh asked. “Break into CNN’s office in Nairobi?”

“Yes.”

“And of course you know people with the required skills.”

“No, but Hassan does. Thugs in Special Branch or the Criminal Investigation Division who moonlight.”

Fitzhugh realized that he preferred the addled Douglas to this one—icy, calculating. “Which would require letting Hassan in on our little trade secret. Or would you expect him to arrange this burglary without asking the reason for it?”

Douglas said nothing.

“My thought does involve letting Hassan in on the secret, but no melodramas about break-ins, yes? You are willing to listen?”

“I’ll listen to any good idea.”

“The first thing you must do is end the gun-running operations, and you can do that right now, with one word to Tony. Then you go to Hassan, straight away, and inform him of the story Phyllis is working on. You tell all, but you assure him that Knight is no longer involved in these activities. I will go with you if you wish. And we both offer to resign.”

Douglas jerked his head forward. “Come again?”

“We offer to resign for the good of the company. Knight Relief Services should be safe from any actions from the UN or the Kenya government, because all this took place under Knight Air Services. But of course it will be noticed that the management people are the same, so we remove ourselves before the story breaks. We retain our interests in the company but not our positions. I think Hassan would want us out regardless. Possibly we can persuade him to put us on suspension and rehire us at a later date, but the offer of resignation must be made. We have some time—Phyllis hasn’t finished yet, and she herself doesn’t know when the story will be broadcast, I asked her this morning. When it is, Khartoum will react as we anticipate—call on the UN and Kenya to do something. But Hassan will be able to say that he discovered the illicit operations and put a stop to them and took action against those involved. Accepted their resignations, suspended them, whatever. Now it is possible that Kenya, to placate its neighbor, may wish to go further. It may ask you to leave the country, it may take some legal action against me. But Hassan knows everybody who is anybody in this country’s government, and I’m sure he can persuade them to go easy. It will cost him some money—this is Africa—but he can do it if anyone can.”

Douglas’s reaction was difficult to read—he looked on impassively. “You must have been up all night.”

“Most of it.”

“And what do we do with ourselves after we resign? Thought that out?”