The Taste of Fear (7 page)

“I’ve seen him on TV. He had his own show.”

It clicked. “He was more Sean Connery than Benny Hill.”

Never one for pillow talk, Sal didn’t say anything more, and soon he was breathing the regular rhythm of sleep. She closed her eyes.

Sometime later Scarlett was shaken awake. She sat up. It took her a moment before she remembered she wasn’t in her bed in LA.

“Someone’s outside,” Sal said quietly.

The words cut through her sleepiness like a knife.

“What?”

“I heard a noise.”

“Where?”

“Shhh.”

Scarlett listened. All was perfectly quiet. “I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.

“Listen.”

Then she heard something on the other side of the wall, right behind the headboard. It sounded like leaf litter crunching under a heavy weight. “That’s an animal,” she said. “What else could it be?” She clamped her mouth shut.

The Prince Tower. The fire.

Had someone followed Sal all the way to Africa?

Her fear surged. Had she locked the door? God, did the door even have a lock?

“Do something,” she hissed.

Sal shifted off the bed. He crossed the room, pulled back the curtains, and opened the balcony door. A cool lavender-scented breeze swept into the room. He stepped outside. Looked left and right. Went left. Three steps later he was beyond the glass and out of sight.

The seconds slugged by. Scarlett heard nothing more. No shouts of alarm. No scuffle. Nothing. Which, she realized with dread, was the sound an assassin made. Paranoia swelled inside her as she imagined Sal lying in the bushes, his throat slit. She called out, not caring who heard her.

“Come here,” Sal replied.

She exhaled the breath she’d been holding, got out of bed, went to the balcony. She crossed the threshold to the wooden veranda. The cold wind played around her wrists and ankles and slipped down the throat of her pajama top, causing her nipples to harden and gooseflesh to break out on her skin. She followed the veranda left and found Sal leaning up against the railing, his elbows on the header, his arms crossed in front of him, like he was watching a Sunday afternoon baseball game in the park. She scanned the darkness below.

Two jackals were sitting on their haunches in a patch of bracken, licking their fur.

Sal barked. The jackals looked up. Their yellow eyes shone in the dark, indifferent yet somehow malevolent, like they belonged to a stranger who might stab you in the back if you gave him the opportunity.

“Sal, stop it,” she whispered.

“They’re just dogs.”

“They’re dangerous dogs.”

“They can’t get up here.”

“What if they wait around until the next time you’re crossing the grounds to the main lodge?”

“They’re brainless animals. And brainless animals don’t hold grudges.”

Back inside, Scarlett slapped Sal on the rump, hard.
He
was a brainless animal. She slid the balcony door closed and flicked the lock. She left the blinds open, welcoming what little light the moon and stars provided. They returned to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. She had thought there had been somebody out there. Another arsonist or a hit man or whatever you called someone who came to kill you during the night. No—she was letting her imagination get the better of her. She and Sal had already discussed this. He was safe. Nobody knew he was here. What were the chances that somebody would fly all the way to Africa and follow him to the summit of a collapsed volcano? It was ridiculous, something out of Hollywood. The noise had just been a couple wild animals.

Sometime later, Scarlett slept.

At two thirty that morning Fitzgerald opened his eyes. He had been sleeping but not really sleeping, a skill he’d learned long ago in the British Army. He opened the door to the Land Cruiser and stepped into the night. The moon was nearly full, the sky awash with icy stars, and he could see well enough. A nightjar made a musical churring sound that rose and fell with a ventriloquist-like quality. He heard little else, although he knew the surrounding forest was alive with life. He started down the dirt road toward the lodge where Salvador Brazza and Scarlett Cox were staying, whistling “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” so he wouldn’t come upon any wild animals by surprise. The animals would usually run away, but sometimes they would panic and attack, especially if they were injured or with their young. He was carrying the driveshaft he’d purchased earlier, but a driveshaft wouldn’t stop a Cape buffalo, or a leopard.

Five hundred meters later he arrived at the car park in the clearing behind Tree Camp where six SUVs were parked in a line, side by side. They were all Land Rovers. Three were Land Rover Discoverys. Only one was the latest model, a Series III. It was the second from the right. It was the one he wanted.

He lowered himself onto his back and stuck a penlight between his teeth. Then he inched his way beneath the high chassis and studied the underside of the vehicle. He took a small wrench from his pocket and undid the six bolts securing the coupling. The first five came off easily enough. The sixth was a bitch, taking him nearly the same time to get it off as the first five combined. He slid the driveshaft forward to disengage it from the transfer case, slid it backward to free it from the differential, gave it a jog, and tugged it loose. The lubricated O ring inside the drive tube fell onto his chest. He left it there while he examined the driveshaft. The splines were not very badly worn, nor had he thought they would be. He set the good driveshaft aside, replaced the O ring, and inserted the nearly bald driveshaft he’d brought with him. He refastened the six bolts, the sixth going back on a lot easier than it had come off. There was a metaphor about life somewhere in there, but this was not the time to consider it. He extracted himself from beneath the vehicle.

With one solid tug, Fitzgerald tore the CB antenna from where it was mounted on the Land Rover’s rear tire carrier. He retraced his steps back to the Toyota Land Cruiser, reclined the seat, and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would come quickly. He would be waking with the sun in a few hours.

Outside the villa, Silly was standing next to the Land Rover dressed in his neatly pressed safari uniform and bush hat. Scarlett snapped a picture of him with the Nikon camera hanging around her neck, then they were off, traveling west along the crater rim. Early morning dew coated the long grass and shrubs while a thousand birds chirped and whistled and sang in the branches overhead. At the gate to the crater, a green sign announced the caldera was a conservation area, a world heritage site, a biosphere reserve, yadda yadda. Scarlett told Sal to go stand in front of it so she could snap a photo. He was having none of it. He might be many things, but a picture guy he was not.

Seneto Descent Road was the official name of the road that switch-backed down the interior wall of the crater. Silly, however, referred to it as the Elephant Pass, which Scarlett found to be more fitting. It wasn’t so much a road but a narrow, winding, and very steep dirt track.

As they progressed, the morning mist thickened, creating a primordial, Jurassic atmosphere, as if they were not only descending into a collapsed volcano but back in time as well. At one point the track tiptoed along the edge of a sheer cliff face that plunged away hundreds of feet to the crater floor below. A signpost with the words “POLE POLE”—which Silly translated to mean “Slowly Slowly”—drifted past in the curdling fog. Scarlett looked away from the window. The memories of Laurel Canyon were still raw. And if she went over the edge here, she wouldn’t be waking up in a hospital; she wouldn’t be waking up anywhere ever again.

Her anxiety, however, turned out to be for naught. Thirty minutes later bright sunlight pierced the thinning fog, and by the time they reached the bottom—thank God—the weather was postcard perfect. The view was just as spectacular as it had been from the lodge. The soda lake shimmered pink with thousands of flamingos. The savanna, which was dotted with yellow fever trees and gently undulating hills, stretched away like spun gold. And in every direction the rocky walls of the caldera towered high, a forbidding barrier to keep the outside world out.

“Look!” Silly said, slowing to a halt and pointing to a patch of tussock three hundred feet to the left of them.

Scarlett poked her head out the Land Rover’s modified roof and peered through the binoculars. She zeroed in on a cheetah that was stretched out on its side, its long, thick tail curled behind it. She passed the binoculars to Sal, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. Damn hot. And it was barely eight in the morning.

Silly snatched the CB microphone from the radio unit attached to the dash, depressed the transmit switch, and said something in Swahili. His small face melted into a frown. He fiddled with a few knobs, flicked between channels, and spoke again.

“What’s wrong?” Scarlett asked him.

“The radio isn’t transmitting.”

“Who do you need to speak to?”

“I was going to call in the cheetah sighting so the next group down the Elephant Pass will spot it.” He shook his head in frustration. “It works both ways. Now we will not hear when any of the Big Five are spotted.”

“Maybe the antenna’s broken?” Sal suggested.

Silly went around to the back of the Land Rover and examined the tire carrier. He returned to the front seat and said, “It’s gone, the entire antenna, gone. It must have snapped off in the bush. Or maybe an animal snagged it during the night.” He looked devastated. “I’m sorry. This is my fault. I should have checked the vehicle before we left.”

“Cheer up, boss,” Sal told him. “We’re only passing through the crater. It will be more of an adventure this way.”

Scarlett squeezed his thigh, grateful for his understanding.

As they progressed west across the crater floor, they saw more gazelles and zebras and buffalo than Scarlett could count. She glassed the grasslands through the binoculars for a bottleneck of Land Rovers, hoping it would indicate a predator sighting. It was a strategy that paid off. The first gathering led them to a chilled-out leopard lounging in the crotch of an acacia tree, the second to a pack of spotted hyenas making whooping-giggling noises while tearing apart the ribcage of an antelope with their bone-crushing jaws.

When Silly mentioned they were coming up to a picnic spot, Sal told him to pull over so he could use the restroom. Scarlett realized they still had a long trip ahead of them and decided a visit to the ladies’ room might be prudent. She went to the single-person cinderblock lavatory and waited outside for Sal to finish. She was watching a secretary bird wading through the tall sere grass, stomping about on its long legs, when she heard Sal talking on his cell phone. She went a little closer but only caught one or two words before he hung up. He exited moments later and gave her a curious look.

“I need to go too,” she said.

“Be my guest.”

Scarlett did her business, then went to the sink to wash her hands, all the while wondering who Sal had been speaking to. And why in the restroom? Why not in front of her?

She glanced in the mirror on the wall, tracing her fingers around her eyes, as if she could magically erase the small wrinkles forming there.

“You’re thirty now, Scarlett,” she said to herself. “Happy birthday. These are your stripes. You’ve earned them—and you only get more.”

Her thoughts turned to Marie Dragomiroff, the thirty-six-year-old, dark-haired, dark-skinned heir to a French shipping conglomerate. The woman could speak six languages, had her own successful clothing line, and her exotic beauty upstaged anyone in the room with her, whether it be a prince, rock star, or Scarlett herself. Their first and only meeting had been at a Washington fundraiser the year before. Scarlett remembered the day perfectly. Marie had been dressed in something elegant and of her own creation, looking ten years younger than she was, working the room effortlessly, a fluttering butterfly, a natural socialite, the faces of the lawmakers and powerful business types smiling when she approached, their eyes following when she moved on.