The Garden of Burning Sand (10 page)

It was noon by the time Zoe returned to her flat. She called Joseph and left a voicemail: “We were right about the client connection. But there’s more to it. Darious raped Doris’s daughter two years ago. It’s also possible he has AIDS. I don’t know if you’re up to it, but you might find a girl at Alpha Bar who would talk about him. I want to know how sick he is.”

Hanging up, she fixed herself a sandwich and ate it in the dining room. Afterward, she changed into her swimsuit and walked to the pool, carrying her backpack and Bella’s journal.

The garden was resplendent in the sunlight, festooned with the colors of spring—spade-tongued coleus, sprawling blue plumbago bushes, clusters of fern-like cycads, and bulb-rich rose bushes. She saw her neighbor, Kelly Summers, reading a novel on a lounge chair. The child of white Zimbabwean farmers, Kelly was married to Patrick Summers, a British-born World Bank consultant. Zoe spread out her towel beside Kelly and took a seat.

“Another pristine day,” she said, beginning to apply sunblock to her fair skin.

“Couldn’t be lovelier,” Kelly agreed, setting down her book.

Patrick emerged from the water and gave his wife a dripping kiss. “Hi, Zoe.”

“Many thanks, love,” Kelly replied, pushing him away. She smiled at Zoe. “We were thinking of having a braai at our place tonight. Save you the trouble, hey?”

The invitation took Zoe by surprise. She blinked behind her sunglasses, astonished that she had forgotten her own tradition. “You don’t need to do that,” she said, disguising her relief.

“Our pleasure,” Kelly said, as Patrick dived into the pool again. “We’ve noticed you’ve been busy. A new case? Or a boyfriend, perhaps?”

“A new case,” she replied.

“That’s a shame. A boyfriend would have been fun.” Kelly pointed at Bella’s journal. “What’s that?”

Zoe looked down at the notebook. “Something from work. It’s a long story.”

“And confidential, no doubt.” Kelly smiled. “Listen, there’s a new analyst at the World Bank office. His name is Clay Whitaker. He’s very smart—a Yale graduate, like you—and he’s been all over southern Africa. He’s going to be at the braai tonight.”

At that moment, Zoe found herself grateful for the veil afforded by her sunglasses. “That’s kind of you,” she said, forcing herself to smile, “but I’m not looking.”

She stared at the moving water, feeling suddenly nauseous.
It’s only a name, a random string of four letters. Get over it
. But she couldn’t. Over and over the name played in her mind, like a record stuck on a discordant note.
Clay … Clay … Clay
. At once she felt the sun on every inch of exposed flesh. She steeled her mind against the memories: a picnic at East Beach in late summer; the Vineyard air heated to a blaze; the calls of the gulls competing with the pounding of the surf; the boy whose mouth carried the taste of sea stones; the lines of verse he read; the rhapsody of infatuation, desire tempered by nerves; the line she
drew, the “no” she spoke, and the moment he overpowered her and his love became a lie.

She felt the weight of Bella’s journal in her hands and focused all her mental energy on the present. But it wasn’t enough. Abandoning the chair, she broke the surface of the pool with a dive and went limp, allowing herself to hang in suspension, buoyed by the air in her lungs. The raw shock of cold on her hot skin cleansed her mind, leaving behind only the immediacy of the moment. She floated through the haze until she could no longer hold her breath. She found her footing and stood, blinking away the reflected light.

“Everything all right?” Patrick asked, treading water. “You were under a long time.”

“I’m fine,” Zoe said.

She returned to her chair and dried off, feeling more composed. Opening Bella’s journal, she worked out a strategy. If Bella had a relationship with Darious after she met Doris, then it was likely she had mentioned him in the first half of the journal. The problem was she had concealed his name in code. The clues Doris offered were threadbare: they went out to the bars and he gave her gifts. But Zoe understood the power of gestalt—the truth spoken by the whole, not simply by the particulars.

She read for two hours, pausing only to reapply sunblock. She found a number of repeat clients in the pages. One Bella called “Levi’s man,” but he met her on the street and never spent the night with her. Another she called “Mr. Niceguy.” In addition to sex, he took her dancing at the bars. A third she called “Godzilla.” He paid double her rate but often left her with bruises. Finally, there was “Siluwe.” He was complex, educated, a conversationalist. But she didn’t seem to trust him. Indeed, her descriptions suggested that she had feared him.

Zoe ruled out the Levi’s man and Godzilla and weighed Mr. Niceguy
against Siluwe. According to Doris, Darious had given Bella gifts. Mr. Niceguy always paid with cash. Siluwe, by contrast, was a regular Santa Claus.
Siluwe is Darious Nyambo
, she decided.

They had met at Alpha Bar. He had bought her drinks and lavished her with such affection that she had forgotten to charge him the next morning. He reappeared in four subsequent letters. Each time Bella described his gifts—an expensive meal, a mobile phone—but her sentiments were guarded. Then without warning he disappeared from the journal.

She heard her iPhone chirp in her bag, and saw a text message from Joseph:
“Good idea about Alpha. Are you hosting a braai tonight?”

She typed back:
“Friends next door are cooking. Let Sarge and Niza know
.”

A few seconds later she received his response:
“Will do. I’ll be there around 1800.”

Then Zoe had a thought.
“Does the name Siluwe mean anything to you?”

He replied:
“Siluwe means leopard in Tonga. Why?”

Zoe felt a chill.
“I’ll tell you over dinner.”

That evening, Zoe put on her favorite jeans and a black top and walked across the parking lot to the house rented by Patrick and Kelly Summers. She tossed a greeting to Patrick at the grill and went looking for Kelly. She found her in the kitchen assembling a cheese tray with the help of a thirty-something blond man in khakis and a button-down shirt.

“You must be Zoe,” the man said, smiling at her in an easy way. “I’m—”

“Clay,” she said. “The expat community is like a fraternity. New pledges make waves.” She leaned against the countertop. “So what’s your angle? Are you coming to the Bank as a supporter or critic of the development program?”

“Both, I suppose,” he said. “But I’ve been with the Bank for seven years.”

“Then you can’t be too much of a critic.”

He shrugged. “I’m only critical of projects that don’t work.”

“Ah. So here’s a project guaranteed to succeed. Build a DNA lab in Lusaka. Show the world that reforming the African justice system is as important as infrastructure and investment.”

He scratched his chin. “An intriguing proposition. But I work in the energy sector.”

“Right. Not your problem.” She looked at Kelly. “What can I do to help?”

Her friend handed her a chopping knife and pointed to a cluster of vegetables. “Slice and dice,” she replied, watching Clay carry the cheese tray out to the porch. “And try to be nice.”

At six fifteen, the guests arrived in a rush. They were a diverse bunch—development types and foreign servants, along with a British academic and a Peace Corps volunteer leader in from the hinterlands. With unconscious precision, they sorted into gender-defined cliques—the men by the grill, sipping beers and swapping war stories, and the women on the porch, chatting over glasses of wine. Only Clay broke the barrier. All of the ladies seemed taken by him except Zoe who found herself looking toward the gate, watching for Joseph.

When at last he arrived, Patrick was dishing out burgers and chicken. “Just in time,” she quipped, handing him a paper plate.

He smiled at her. “Nice to see you, too.”

“Are the others coming?”

“Sarge had family obligations, and Niza wasn’t in the mood.”

After filling their plates, the guests ate together on the lamp-lit porch; the few who couldn’t find chairs sat on the ground. In between
bites of hamburger, Zoe filled Joseph in on her conversation with Doris and her discovery of Siluwe, the leopard, in Bella’s journal.

“Do you think you can convince Doris to testify?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. She hates him, but she’s also afraid of him.”

“Siluwe. It’s a fascinating name. The leopard hunts in the dark.”

Zoe was about to respond when the voice of Clay Whitaker interrupted her thoughts.

“The power station at Batoka Gorge might actually get off the ground,” he was saying to a doe-eyed girl from USAID. “It’s an extraordinary thing, really, for a private company to guarantee the debt of a sovereign.”

“Isn’t that what the Bank and the IMF do all the time?” Zoe said, joining in. “They loan money to governments.”

“True.” Clay replied. “But the funds come from nation states, not private investors.”

“Who’s the investor in the Batoka project?”

“Ever heard of Nyambo Energy?” he inquired.

She stared at him. “What’s Nyambo’s interest in the Batoka Gorge?”

“I don’t know the precise terms of the deal. But I have a theory.”

Zoe leaned forward intently. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

“You know the story of Batoka, I take it?” he began. “Zimbabwe and Zambia are in crisis mode; there isn’t enough electricity to power the grid. The Zambezi River is the obvious savior, but Zambia won’t invest in another hydroelectric project until Zimbabwe pays off its Rhodesia debt. Zimbabwe threatens to go forward alone, but nobody believes Mugabe has the money to make it happen. In comes Frederick Nyambo with an offer to cover the debt and start construction. Everyone thinks he’s crazy. Why invest in a floundering state like Zimbabwe?”

“Unless the floundering state offers you something you can’t refuse,” she said. “Like a kickback from the sale of power.”

Whitaker looked at her closely. “Or a stake in the power company itself. Zimbabwe is considering privatizing its public utility. If Nyambo were to acquire a majority stake—”

“Then he would be entitled to a large portion of the profits.”

“Exactly. It’s a gambit fifteen years in the making.”

Zoe narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Whitaker folded his hands. “Zimbabwe commissioned its first private power project in 1996. Nyambo Energy was the contractor. When the Batoka project ran into the debt roadblock and privatization stalled, Frederick Nyambo directed the commercialization of Zambia’s public utility as Minister of Energy. The way I see it, he’s been playing both sides of the fence, lobbying the Zambian and Zim governments to divest ownership of the utilities while positioning himself as the heir apparent.”

Zoe was astonished. Frederick Nyambo was either a financial daredevil or one of the shrewdest entrepreneurial visionaries in Africa—or both.

“Anyone need another drink?” Kelly asked, over the din of intersecting conversations.

Whitaker held up his glass. “I’ll take some more red.”

Zoe met Joseph’s eyes. “Will you walk with me?”

They left the yard by the front gate and took the path that led to the pool. The gardens were empty and the dark water still.

“Batoka is near Victoria Falls,” she said. “I wonder if there’s a connection to Bella.”

Joseph shook his head. “I’m sure it’s a coincidence. Frederick’s interest in building a hydro plant on the Zambezi has no relation to his son’s appetite for prostitutes.”

“Can I ask you a question? I want an honest answer.”

“Of course.”

“Will the courts give us a fair trial?”

He met her eyes. “Nyambo isn’t invincible. Every adversary has a weakness.”

She stared at him, wondering at the uncanny symmetry between his words and her father’s so long ago. “Someone once told me the same thing. He called it the Rule of Achilles.”

Joseph smiled. “Whoever he was, he was right.”

Lusaka, Zambia
July, 2004

The air in the bar was warmer than the night itself. So many bodies pressed together on the dance floor, it felt like a pocket of summer in the middle of winter. She was dancing near the center of the crowd, as she did when she was looking for clients. Everyone could see her here. She was wearing red—her favorite color. Her dress was a slinky thing, poorly suited to the cold but a magnet for attention. The song they were playing was new to her, but it had the sort of thumping beat that infused her with courage
.

Bella knew everyone at Alpha: the bartenders, the regular customers, and the girls. On Saturday nights, there was at least one girl for every man in the place. The competition was cutthroat, and Bella trusted no one but Doris. The price of a transaction was influenced by many factors: the duration of the encounter, the presence or absence of a condom, the need for a hotel room, and the visible means of the client. To Bella, the client mattered more than anything. She charged foreigners more than Zambians, coloreds more than blacks, Zambians with nice watches more than those without, and so on. The system worked because demand for her services was high. Even at twenty-seven, she was still one of the prettiest girls in the room
.

After the song ended, she slipped to the bar and took a bottle of Castle lager
from the bartender, purposely avoiding the eyes of the men on either side of her. She was an expert at the game. The men who had money wanted the illusion of conquest—a girlfriend experience. They wanted to believe that the attraction was a shared phenomenon. She put on her bored face and took a small swig of beer, waiting while another pulse-pounding song turned the dance floor into a hive of sweat and motion
.

It didn’t take long for a young man to approach her. He was dressed casually, but she could tell he had money from the cut of his leather jacket, the shine of his shoes, and the gold watch he wore on his wrist
.

“Hey, honey,” he said in Nyanja, “let me buy your beer.”

Bella had heard the line countless times over the years. When she was younger and still thought the world could change, she had despised it. She had loathed the bars and the men, the exchange of intimacy for kwacha. That part of her—the girl who believed in the future—had eventually died, leaving behind only numbness and need. The come-on meant nothing to her now. It was business, the job that kept Kuyeya and her alive
.

“That’s nice of you,” she replied, clearing a space for him
.

The man put some kwacha on the counter and leaned toward her, speaking over the music. “A girl as pretty as you, why haven’t we met before?”

She studied him carefully. She guessed he was in his early twenties and a young professional—a lawyer or a businessman. There was something vaguely familiar about his face, but she couldn’t place it
.

She gave him a flirty smile and ignored his question. “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” he asked
.

“Bella,” she answered, playing along
.

“I like that. Tell me, Bella, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” He swept his arm across the room. “These men have no refinement, no class.”

His contempt surprised her. Alpha was one of the hippest bars in Lusaka. She touched his arm. “If you don’t like it, we can go somewhere else.”

“But you just started your beer.” He signaled the bartender to bring him a
bottle of Mosi, then placed his hand on hers. “I knew another girl named Bella. She was from a village in Tuscany. Do you know where that is?”

“Italy,” she replied swiftly. She wasn’t a simpleton
.

He laughed. “How far did you go in school?”

“I got my diploma,” she said, the lie more alluring than the truth. “How about you?”

“I went to university in London.” He gestured with his hand. “Why don’t we sit down?”

She allowed him to take her arm and lead her to a table by the door. The air was colder here, and goose bumps quickly formed on her skin. He surprised her again by wrapping his jacket around her shoulders
.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” she said
.

He gave her a sly smile. “If it matters so much, why don’t you guess?”

“There are an infinite number of names in the world,” she objected
.

“Ah,” he said, “now I know you don’t belong here.”

She feigned a flattered laugh and searched his eyes, trying to figure out his agenda. She was not used to this, the client being in control. She waited until the silence became awkward and then took a guess. “Is it Richard?”

He shook his head. “But you’re close. It’s the name of a king.”

“George,” she guessed
.

“Not a mere monarch. A king of kings.”

“Alexander, I don’t know.”

His eyes glinted in the light. “Most girls bore me. It’s rare to find one who does not.”

She gave him a blank look, suddenly weary of the contest. If he didn’t want to tell her his name, she would give him one: Siluwe. He had the cunning of a cat
.

“I have a flat close by,” he said, touching her fingers with his. “I promise you’ll like it.”

She hesitated. As a rule, a girl never went home with a new client. Sex could
be had in a hotel, a bathroom, a car. In a private residence, the risk of violence was too great
.

“Name your price,” he said, sensing her reticence
.

She folded her hands and felt the absence of the ring. She had left it with Kuyeya as she always did when she went out. She looked toward the dance floor, doing a calculation in her mind. She had doctor bills to pay. Kuyeya needed medicine for her heart. There was danger in taking the man’s offer, but danger was nothing new. Any client could turn into a monster
.

“A million kwacha,” she said. “For an hour, no more.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and she had the thought again that he looked familiar. Something about his eyes, his self-assurance, what was it? She couldn’t figure it out
.

At last he gave her a lopsided smile. “Darious. My name is Darious.”