Catacombs (6 page)

The road became a narrow track into the foothills beneath Meru, a region of pale-green ghost forests.

The windless air held the scents of wild orange and pepper trees, then pesticide–a tank truck operated by the Mosquito Control had just finished spraying.

In a clearing between hills the lights of the Chanvai estate blazed. There was a stout gate and more soldiers, about half of them (Kumenyere said) Somali and Asian mercenaries. A big sixteen-passenger Sikorsky helicopter in Tanzania's colors sat on a landing pad.

Well behind the main house there were a dozen modern bungalows, like the cottage colony of a luxury hotel, each secluded by plantings: bougainvillea, flame trees, and frangipani. All of the paths were well lighted. At the bungalow assigned to Morgan three Sikh houseboys were waiting. So was a curious mongoose, taking time off from viper patrol. The animal chittered ecstatically when Len spoke to it in Swahili. They heard music in the main house, exuberant calypso rhythms, and laughter. It was now too cool for shirt sleeves.

While Morgan and Len were changing clothes, Ron Burgess glided up to the bungalow in an electric cart. He'd brought a handsomely bound program for the evening, and a guest list.

"Any press on hand?" Morgan asked.

"No, Jumbe's secretary was adamant about that. Here's a plan of the property Laki gave me. The Russians are billeted in this bungalow, the largest one, behind the north wing of the house. There's a lot of loud talk and some arguing going on."

"They must not know any more than we do."

"We have a radio link with the communications room at the embassy. The radio's in my quarters, and one of the embassy staffers is monitoring for me. Speaking of communications–" Ron laughed. "Laki told me that telephone in Kumenyere's Mercedes isn't hooked up to anything. He was just chatting to himself, putting on a show for us."

"Are we going to get anything to eat?" Len said with a sigh.

"Dinner's promptly at nine, East African-Indian cuisine. It'll be followed by various entertainments, including a trip to a hide in the park for a look at leopards feeding."

"Leopards! Can I go, Dad?"

"Sure. We'll all go."

Ron shook his head. "Sorry, sir. Jumbe's scheduled a colloquium at eleven for the VIPs."

"Attendance required, I assume. Well, it's his party."

"Most of the men have their wives with them. Laki says they've been here a week. They appear to be having a terrific time. But Jumbe's made himself scarce. There's one peculiar thing: No one from the Tanzanian parliament is here. And Jumbe didn't invite representatives from other African governments. But these days he's not getting along with many of them."

Ron went over the list with Morgan; he had already made copious notations in the margins.

"Damon Paul. He's the Fifth Avenue jeweler, and one of the world's authorities on gemstones. Lukas Zollner. Swiss mathematician and Nobel prize winner. Maurizio Ambetti, Italian physicist and Nobel Prize winner. There are three other mathematicians, almost as eminent as Zollner, on the list. Dr. Saul Markey is a crystallographer. Alex Kachurdian is an epigrapher and etymologist–"

"What?" Len said, laughing.

"Epigraphy is the study of ancient inscriptions; I don't know what the other means, but it may have something to do with dead languages." Ron made a circle on the list, isolating a name. "I'm really curious about this man's presence. Henry Landreth, British theoretical physicist."

"I seem to be in fast company," Morgan said. "Does he have a Nobel too?"

"He should own one by now. But he's lucky he doesn't have a prison record instead."

"How's that?"

"I checked him out with the press officer at the British Embassy. Landreth was Britain's top nuclear theoretician after World War Two. He worked at Harwell on some top-secret research involving neutron beams. He was a protégé of Klaus Fuchs and Dr. Bruno Pontecorvo, both of whom were spies. They gave the Russians secrets that put them in the nuclear club years before they would have made it on their own. Fuchs went to prison; Pontecorvo defected to Moscow. Landreth was in his mid-thirties then, approaching the height of his powers. He was accused of helping Fuchs feed information to the NKVD officer who was running Fuchs. Landreth claimed he was unaware that he was being used as a go-between, or that he was handing over vital information to a foreign national. Fuchs backed his story and there wasn't enough evidence to convict. But Landreth had a muddled history of Communist sympathies during his post-grad career at London University in the thirties. The U.K. press tarred him with the Commie brush.

"He was banned forever from working at sensitive installations, which effectively ended his career. He's living in Tanzania now, but he doesn't teach. He has some connection with the government, a minor post in the Department of Antiquities."

"Okay," Morgan said. "Let's go mingle."

The main house consisted of two one-story wings with a large kitchen in the rear and a screened verandah with the best view of the seven lakes. Most of the guests, wearing tropical resort clothes and light sweaters, were on the verandah. The Russians hadn't shown up yet. The furnishings ran to bamboo and floral prints, sisal mats on the concrete floors. There were vivid paintings by East African artists, some Makonde sculptures, but there was not much of Jumbe in evidence, except for a small carved wood bust.

Dr. Kumenyere was acting as host in Jumbe's absence. He had two women with him, a tawny Eurasian bombshell named Nicola, who licked her plump lips as if she were masturbating, and a satin-finish Masai country girl who wore an exquisite shuka and heavy gold plugs in her enlarged earlobes. She was so ill at ease she seemed brittle; her remote eyes were on a level above everyone else's.

Morgan was introduced. The few Americans there looked delighted, as if the party, pleasant enough before, had become a major event in their lives. The European scientists looked him over carefully, and not without suspicion. He was a warlord, overseer of the Pentagon billions, the arms machine they roundly condemned. The Italian Nobel laureate jumped on Morgan right away about some matter of U.S. foreign policy that had offended him.

Morgan easily outmaneuvered Signor Ambetti and took a reading on the mood of the guests, something he had become very good at during his three years in Washington, where the ambience of the "better" parties accurately reflected what was happening in government circles: crisis, scandal, a major policy as yet unannounced, choice backstairs gossip. Someone always knew a secret but was free only to drop hints; inevitably there was more suppressed excitement than in children the night before Christmas.

And this was the tone of Jumbe's party. They were all waiting for the best Christmas ever. But if anyone talked about what he knew, even to another initiate, Santa Claus would pop back up the chimney in a twinkling.

Morgan accepted a gin and tonic from a houseboy and tried to find out why certain guests were enjoying Jumbe's hospitality.

Damon Paul was a dapper man with crisped blond hair and a high color from his week of exposure to the African sun. He was a guest, he said, of Tanzania's Gemstone Council. The country was a consistent but not high-volume producer of diamonds. It was all a matter of Kimberlite formations, or pipes, he explained. These fossil volcanoes were the principal source of natural diamonds. South Africa was particularly well endowed with large and economically important pipes. Was Jumbe interested in gemstones? Damon Paul's color deepened, as if from a sudden pleasurable surge of blood pressure. His eyes grew softly introspective. He smiled and shook his head. Jumbe, he said, knew a great deal about geology, but he had very little interest in personal ornamentation.

Henry Landreth, physicist and traitor, occupied a basket chair with a young and lovely black girl in a flowered kanga. From time to time she stroked the back of his wrist with an insinuating finger. Landreth appeared to be in his mid-sixties. He drank pink gin, like an old colonialist. He had no commerce with his fellow scientists; no one dropped by his corner to talk shop. His was a deadpan face with eyes like drops of tar, too much hair growing wild in the wrong places: above his eyes, in the ears. He smoked a cigarette fiercely, eyes narrowing to slits, as if this pleasure had been forbidden and he was making the most of his defiance.

He talked to Morgan with reluctance. He had not done any work in his field for many years. Retired. Yes, he had kept up with developments. But he was rather more interested in archaeology nowadays.

Were there any significant ruins in Tanzania?

"Well, if you're fascinated by digs, you must pop over to Engaruka for the day. Nyshuri, dear girl, would you mind terribly freshening my gin for me? There's a love."

And still Jumbe was missing.

Dinner was served, buffet style, at which point Marshal Victor Kirillovich Nikolaiev and his party arrived en masse, creating the kind of circusy stir all Russians take delight in. Kumenyere's relief at seeing them was evident.

The Soviet Minister of Defense, who was wearing a business suit too heavy for the climate, surveyed the dining room and caught Morgan's eye. He seemed to care about no one else who might be there. He brushed Kumenyere aside, walked over to Morgan and, with a sudden happy smile, embraced him. He was a Georgian, short, but with a weight lifter's torso and strength. He had to reach up to get an arm around Morgan's shoulders.

"Mr. Secretary, no one is tell me about you until I'm here. What unexpected pleasure!"

Morgan replied in kind; they shook hands and embraced again. They had never met; but the dossiers, with photographs, which each man had on the other were detailed and up-to-date. They could have chatted for hours on a quasi-intimate basis. Morgan observed that Nikolaiev continued to dye his hair black. His health seemed generally good, although he was a heavy breather and had lost an eye to diabetes three years ago. He still drank and smoked Turkish cigarettes and was fond of startling strangers at private functions by suddenly shrieking with laughter and stubbing out a lighted cigarette on the surface of the glass eye. Aside from his social idiosyncrasies he was a shrewd, dangerous man, the highest-ranking Stalinist in a country where many people still yearned for a return to the good old days. He was known in some circles as the Dracula of Katyn, for certain infamous acts of butchery committed during World War Two.

Nikolaiev waved his interpreter away from them; he had learned his English, heavily laced with G.I. scatology, in Berlin in 'forty-five and 'forty-six, and he could cope with six other languages. The calypso music had stopped. From outside came the nerve-prickling squall of an animal. Morgan and the Russian exchanged looks of mutual perplexity. Nikolaiev seemed uneasy in this equatorial environment. He squeezed Morgan's arm and drew him closer, spoke confidentially.

'What do you think of that man?" he said, referring to Kumenyere.

"I hardly know him."

"But you're of the same color, like two coons."

Morgan cleared his throat. "We're black," he explained with a tactful smile. "That doesn't make us lodge brothers, like the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. To call someone of our race a 'coon' is a form of insult."

Nikolaiev nodded. "Okay. That's not coon, it's black. I want to remember that. But let's get serious. What's the reason you're doing here?"

"I came for reasons of friendship. Jumbe invited me for the weekend, and it's been a long time since I've seen him. How well do you know Jumbe?"

"So-so. Meeting him on a state visit to Moscow. Two, three years ago. That's all." He slipped his arm around Morgan's waist and walked him toward the buffet. "Okay, my friend," he said, loudly enough for all to hear. "This looks good chow from smelling it. But not for me. Special diet I'm eating, my own chef daily. We will see each others. Later. For very big and important talk." He chuckled at the absurdity of this impromptu summit. "I'm telling you all my bullshit and you're telling me yours."

There was a total silence. Out of the corner of his eye Morgan saw the expression of horror on the face of Nikolaiev's interpreter.

Morgan laughed. Everyone else laughed too. Nikolaiev roared the loudest, until tears ran from his good eye.

At a few minutes before eleven o'clock Morgan, Nikolaiev, his interpreter, whose name was Boris, and eight other men gathered in the conference room at Chanvai.

A stone hearth with a crackling fire took up one end of the room. There was an area like a conversation pit, ringed with metal patio chairs cushioned and draped with zebra skins. In the center of the ring stood a table, a six-foot oval of solid onyx with veins of orange and rust and white on a massive, beautifully gnarled mahogany stump polished and artificially petrified to resist the borer beetles. The louvered windows in one wall were open; the night droned and screeched outside. Rhinoceros beetles whacked against the screens. The flag of Tanzania was displayed on the wall opposite the windows, a yellow-edged black bar dividing diagonally a field of sea blue and light green.

Each chair had a name on it. Houseboys served drinks to those men who were still in the mood, or cups of the strong, locally grown coffee. The lights in the room had been dimmed to the approximate number of footcandles afforded by the firelight. After a full evening of social discourse none of the men were very talkative, and a few seemed edgy with nerves. They tried to get comfortable, listened to the bats stirring under the roof and glanced expectantly at the pair of doors to the room.