The Taste of Fear (4 page)

While she wandered up and down the aisles, merchants tried to lure her to their stalls with shouts of
“Karibu!”
and “Hello friend!”

Scarlett waved, flashed the smile she usually reserved for the paparazzi, and felt irrationally guilty for not stopping at each.

Once she did a big loop and was returning to the main entrance, she paused at a display selling beads, woodcarvings, and jewelry on which the outline of the African continent had been painted. She pantomimed a ring around her finger. “Rings?” she said, to clarify.

The old woman behind the counter—she must have been sixty-five or seventy, well above the life expectancy in the country—nodded eagerly. She plucked from her wares not a ring but an ugly steel pendant with a black string attached to it. She cracked the thing in half and dropped it in Scarlett’s cupped hands. Scarlett was surprised to find it housed a tiny compass. She turned left, then right. The needle spun accordingly. The woman punched 3000 into a calculator, obviously Tanzanian shillings.

“Do you take American money?” Scarlett pulled a ten from her wallet.

The woman snatched the bill and tucked it away inside her clothing. She smiled at Scarlett, revealing a mouthful of crooked and broken teeth. Scarlett smiled back. Several seconds passed before it became apparent to Scarlett no change was forthcoming. She had never been very good at bartering, but that exchange felt more like highway robbery. Still, the old woman was happy—which she should be: ten dollars was likely ten days of wages for her.

Scarlett left the market and found Sal back at the clock tower. A zippered sports bag was at his feet. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the bag.

“The supplies,” he said.

“They don’t use plastic bags here?”

“Guess not. I had to buy the damn thing.” He nodded toward a small café across the street. “Why don’t we eat there? Then we’ll be able to see the guide when he returns.”

They got a table on the patio in the shade of the awning and ordered eggs, coffee, and a platter of fruit. The coffees came first. While Scarlett was sipping hers—milk, no sugar—she saw a woman pass in front of the café, carrying two plastic bags stuffed with groceries. She chuckled to herself.

“You mind sharing?” Sal said, looking at her curiously. When he saw what had amused her, his face darkened and he stood.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To get my money back.”

“Please, Sal. You’re going to go all the way back to the supermarket to argue over a two-dollar bag you bought, or however much it cost?”

“It’s the principal behind it.”

“If you do, I’ll mention it during my next interview. They’ll love it—billionaire scrooge.”

Sal hesitated but sat back down. Scarlett studied him. What was on his mind? He’d been gung-ho about this safari, this stage for reconciliation, when they had discussed it at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. But ever since—back home, where he’d slept in one of the guest bedrooms, in the car, on the plane—he’d been quiet, detached even. Was he second-guessing coming on this getaway with her? Having doubts about the whole process of working things out? Or did his surly mood have more to do with his work? Perhaps he was more concerned with the Prince Tower opening than he was letting on. After all, the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression wasn’t the best time to be launching a $1.5-billion hotel with rooms that ranged from $800 to $30,000 a night.

She was about to ask him this when he leaned back in his chair and said, “You know, I don’t understand why Western imperialism has gotten such a bad rap.” He stared past her to the dirty street, the paint-peeled buildings. “How can advancing law and order, reforming health and education, implementing a modern economy be a bad thing?”

“Because it wasn’t ours to change,” she said. “How would you feel, Sal, if some hotshot came in and instigated major changes in your company?”

“That would be impossible since I’m both CEO and chairman,
cara mia.
”

Scarlett smiled despite herself. His playful arrogance was one of the things she’d missed most about him during their separation.

“We literally flattened Japan,” Sal went on. “But look at them sixty years later. They’re the world’s second largest economy. Look at this place after sixty years of self-rule. They’ve gone backward. Barely one in ten Tanzanians has electricity or a flushing toilet. Look beyond this relatively affluent city to the wars and famine, genocide, disease, human rights abuses, and military dictatorships that plague nearly every corner of this resource-rich continent. Did you see the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda? It’s right down the street. We passed it coming in.”

The waiter returned with their breakfast. Scarlett tried the eggs, which were greasy but good. She sucked on a piece of pineapple.

“What about self-determination?” she said. She knew she couldn’t win this argument. One of Sal’s causes was Africa, just as hers was ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Self-determination?” He smiled thinly. “What good is self-determination when your leaders are corrupt despots? At least when the British sent money to the Colonial Civil Service, the Englishmen in charge spent it according to design. Contrary to that, the majority of foreign aid poured into sub-Sahara Africa since the fifties has leaked back West as capital flight—mainly to the Swiss bank accounts of the ruling elite.”

“It’s not as simple as that—”

“No, it’s not,” he quipped. “What is simple is to blame all of Africa’s problems on colonialism, apartheid, globalization, and multi-nationalism.”

He finally turned his attention to his plate. He cut a slice of egg white and set it atop a piece of dry brown toast. He cut the toast, speared it with his fork, and stuck the bite-sized piece in his mouth. “All I’m saying,” he concluded with uncharacteristic snappishness, “is things have gone to hell here. The people of Africa were better off under the British and the French, the Germans and the Portuguese.”

Scarlett set down her fork and knife, convinced there was something weighing heavily on his mind, something that had nothing to do with their marriage. “If you need to get back to the office, Sal, I understand. We can postpone this safari. I’ll fly back to LA in the morning—”

“I’m not going back to the office, and we’re not postponing anything.” He dabbed his lips with a paper napkin and stood. “Take your time eating. I’m going to stretch my legs. It’s a three-hour drive to Ngorongoro Crater.”

Scarlett watched Sal walk down the sidewalk until he disappeared from view. She pushed her plate away from her, leaned back in her chair, and sipped her coffee thoughtfully.

Damien Fitzgerald spotted the sign for the travel company, a red-and-yellow thing that filled the entire second-floor window of a brick building on Mikocheni Coca Cola Road. He didn’t know why someone would name a road after Coca Cola. Maybe the city’s first Coke bottling shop used to be on this street. Or maybe the guy whose job it was to name streets was drinking a Coke when he got to this one. Fitzgerald didn’t care one way or another. All that mattered was he’d finally found the office for Magic Africa Safari.

After landing in Julius Nyerere International Airport, he’d browsed the Internet for all the safari companies in Dar es Salaam that serviced Tanzania’s northern safari circuit. There had been several dozen. The addition of the keyword “luxury” narrowed the search significantly. He wrote down the telephone numbers and addresses of the ten most expensive companies. He didn’t think Salvador Brazza would settle for anything less. It turned out he was right. He hit the money on the third outfit he called. Yes, Salvador Brazza and Scarlett Cox had booked a safari with them, the woman on the phone had said. But no, she could not provide any details. It was prohibited by management.

Bollocks to management,
Fitzgerald thought once more. What was the big deal with giving out some information? It was just an itinerary he wanted. Was it because Brazza’s wife was a celebrity? Did she receive special treatment?

Probably. Bloody actors.

So instead of getting the information he wanted neat and tidy over the phone, he’d been forced to drive around Dar for the past forty-five minutes, searching for the travel company. Dar was a big city with a lot of one-way streets and mindless pedestrians. Needless to say, he was no longer in a very good mood.

He swung the rented Toyota Land Cruiser to the curb and parked behind an idling meat truck. He got out, the heat hitting him like a blast from an open oven. It was the middle of the summer below the equator. He crossed the street and entered a brick office building. The lobby was small but well-maintained with polished floor tiles, a potted plant, and an imitation leather sofa. The number between the “Up” and “Down” buttons on the bronze elevator plate read 4. He pressed “Up” and waited. The stainless steel doors had a bright annealed finish in which he could see his reflection. At sixty-one, Fitzgerald was as tall and lean as he’d been at thirty, if slightly softer around the waist. His graying hair had receded into a well-defined widow’s peak while white stubble textured his sharp jaw line. Seeing himself now, he thought he looked absurdly how someone in his line of work was supposed to look. That, of course, was because he knew what his line of work was. To a stranger on the street, he could just as easily have passed as a fit university professor, or a lawyer.

A chime announced the cab’s arrival. He took it up to the second floor. The doors opened directly into the travel company. A long counter lined with neat piles of magazines and flyers separated the customer area from the employee area. A WWF poster on one wall showed a sea turtle swimming in marine-blue water. The caption read: “Warning: It is illegal to kill turtles in Fiji.” Fitzgerald wondered how many East Africans were flying ten thousand miles away to Fiji to kill turtles.

In the employee area two black men clicked away at their computers while a white woman was wading through a sheaf of papers with a fluorescent yellow highlighter. The woman saw Fitzgerald, smiled, and approached the counter. She was dressed in maroon slacks and a cream blouse. A colorful silk scarf was knotted around her neck. It was just like the one around Fitzgerald’s own neck, only his was mud brown, and he didn’t think she was wearing hers to conceal a six-inch-long scar.

“Can I help you?” she asked him in the same South African voice he’d heard over the phone.

He took off his sunglasses and hooked them on the V-neck of his black T-shirt. “I called earlier,” he said, the words coming out raspy, like a man who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. He barely noticed. He’d been speaking like that for the better part of thirty years, ever since he’d been garroted and left for dead in the hills of Northern Ireland. “I asked for Salvador Brazza’s itinerary.”

Her smile faltered. “I told you. We cannot give out that information.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, we can’t.”

Fitzgerald withdrew the Glock 17 from the holster beneath his jacket. The barrel was outfitted with a Gemtech threaded suppressor. He pointed the pistol at her face. “Yes, you can,” he repeated.

She froze. The two men at the computers jumped to their feet.

“Stay still,” Fitzgerald warned them without taking his eyes off the woman. She was young, early twenties, just a girl really, somewhat pretty. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, her heart probably racing. The funny thing about fear was that it produced the exact same symptoms as excitement, the only difference being willingness. “I would like Salvador Brazza’s itinerary.”

She didn’t move.

He nodded to her computer. “Go on, lass. Go print it off.”

Still didn’t move.

He slapped the counter. “Go on!”

That broke her paralysis. She hurried to her desk and fiddled with the mouse. Her hand shook badly.

The older of the two men said, “You don’t need a gun, man. Put away the gun. We’ll give you whatever you want. Just take it easy, hey?”

There was always a hero. Fitzgerald pointed the Glock at the hero and squeezed the trigger. The term “silencer” was a bit of a misnomer because you could never truly silence the report of a gunshot. But you could suppress it. Now the suppressed shot made only a soft pop. A purple dot appeared in the man’s forehead, leaking a line of blood. He toppled backward.

The woman screamed.

The second man bolted for the back door. Fitzgerald fired three rounds into his back. The impact threw him forward onto his chest.

“Shut up,” he said, returning his attention to the girl.

She stopped screaming, though her mouth was quivering, as if she was keeping it closed by force of will alone.

“Did you print the itinerary?”

She hunkered down over the keyboard and hit a few keys. Made a frustrated noise, like she’d screwed something up. Her hands were shaking worse than ever. Then the freestanding laser printer in the corner clicked and hummed and spat out a sheet of paper into the tray.

“Go get it,” Fitzgerald said.

She went to the printer, retrieved the single piece of paper, and brought it back. The flush had drained from her cheeks, leaving her face an alabaster white. Her mouth was still quivering, and she was making small, pathetic noises. She was no longer very attractive.

Fitzgerald snatched the paper from her hand and gave it a quick scan. It was what he wanted. “If you had given me this information over the phone,” he told her, “none of this would have happened.”

“Please don’t kill me.”

“Why didn’t you give me the fecking information over the phone?”

“Man-management prohibits it.”

“Management’s dead, lass.”

“Please don’t shoot me.”

“Was it because Scarlett Cox is a celebrity? Is that the reason?”

“What?”

“Is that why you wouldn’t give me the itinerary?”

“No. I don’t understand. What?”

He shot her twice in the chest. She collapsed to the floor, dead.

It was her own bloody fault.

Fitzgerald slid across the counter and searched the men for their wallets, collecting a combined grand total of twenty-five-thousand shillings—or about ten quid. The girl had what looked like a real half-carat diamond on her engagement finger, which he took. He didn’t see her handbag, but he didn’t bother searching for it. He cleared out the register to complete the robbery-gone-wrong scenario then went to the back door, discovering a gray-painted stairwell. He holstered the Glock beneath his jacket, slipped on his sunglasses, and skipped down the stairs to street level, whistling an old Irish tune as he went.