Rare Earth Page 12

  As he talked and Charles translated, two of the elders lit up misshapen cigars, like lengths of knotted rope. The smell reminded Marc of the flavors drifting through the chopper’s doorway, a heady draught of tobacco and earth. He described the factory farms, the hostile reception, the threats, and their visit to the highway juncture.

  When he was done, the Kikuyu said, “We have heard of these farms. We have also faced this mystery. We all say our land is the finest in our regions.”

  “There is more at work here than experimental farms. My superiors in Washington agree.”

  “Then what?”

  “That is the question we need to focus on,” Marc replied. “We must seek a single factor that links all the villages together.” Marc let them talk among themselves for a while, then asked, “Could you tell me what led up to the day you were expelled? I’m looking for anything out of the ordinary. Because I’ve got to tell you, I’m stumped. This is not adding up.”

  The elders discussed this for a long time. Marc did not mind the wait, his thoughts drifting to Kitra. He wondered what might have created her internal conflict. He did not believe it was due to his assignment with Lodestone. Something else was behind this, of that he was increasingly certain.

  Eventually Charles drew him back by translating a summary of the elders’ discussions. They spoke of the drought and failed crops. They recalled a sudden rainfall. The birth of a lame calf. Clearly they thought Marc had asked about signs. Marc did not correct them. He had sifted through disconnected fragments before and been rewarded with the unexpected diamond.

  When they finally went silent, Marc asked them to repeat their description of the government man’s arrival. They showed no irritation over his request, and once more described the bureaucrat’s sudden appearance, his smiling face, his official forms, his lies. Soon, they all said, the chorus turning their expressions bitter. They had come to loathe that word soon.

  Marc asked, “Tell me again about the yellow men who came with the government official.”

  Marc listened to the elders describe the small slender men in suits and how they grubbed at the earth. “Did they carry any electronic apparatus? It could have been something as small as a cellphone.”

  “No, just the shovels. They dig tiny holes. They move like beetles, like ants when the nest is disturbed. They go here, there, they say nothing, they see no one. Just the earth. When they are gone, they leave tiny holes, like where night creatures have searched for grubs. After the first wind, the holes are gone.”

  “Tell me about their shovels.”

  “Very small. The size of your hand. Smaller. Shaped like a spear with the edges beaten so they curve.”

  When Marc started to rise, the Luo chief spoke. Charles’s forehead creased with evident surprise. He motioned Marc to remain where he was. “They wish to tell you a secret.”

  The senior Kikuyu spoke, and he was followed by others. As though all wanted to participate in this revelation. Charles’s concern radiated through his translation, “After the miracle of Jesus worked in our hearts, and this gathering began, we came together and chose twenty of our best young people. We sent them to the university. You understand?”

  “Their fees are being paid by the collective.”

  Philip’s uncle elaborated, “Not by one tribe. By all our tribes.”

  The Kikuyu added, “These young men and women carry a great responsibility. In earlier days, they would have been trained as warriors and healers and leaders, all in the tribal manner. Now we arm them with the ways of this modern land, the same knowledge used by others to force us from our home.”

  “I am amazed,” Marc said, “by your wisdom.”

  Oyango went on, “We sent two who study the law out to see if they could learn something of value about these displaced villages, and why we have not been given new lands.”

  “What did they discover?”

  There followed another deep chorus, splinters of each sentence supplied by one and then another. Charles translated, “They returned with a man. He was not Kenyan.”

  “He was white?”

  “Black. Perhaps Angolan, or Ghanaian, but not of any tribe you see here. He spoke Swahili with difficulty. He was . . .”

  Marc read the word imprinted on the elders’ faces. “Dangerous.”

  “He does not care for life. You understand?”

  “A hired killer.”

  “He tells us, we have two choices. We can continue to ask questions through these two we have sent. And if they do, people will die. Starting with these two students. Then their families. Then their friends. Anyone who has even spoken with these two, even shaken their hands, they too will leave this earth.”

  Marc felt a taut electric chill; then a thrill ran through him. The prey was glimpsed for the very first time. “Describe everything about this man.”

  “Very tall. Not like the Masaii are tall. Like a warrior who has feasted on the cattle of his enemies. The nose of a hawk. And eyes with no bottom.”

  “I know these eyes,” Marc assured them. “Any tribal scars, tattoos, anything that might help me identify him?”

  Charles listened, then touched his earlobe. “He is missing the bottom of one ear.”

  “Right or left?”

  There was a discussion, then, “The right one.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  Two of the elders smiled at this, but there was no humor. Only grim recollection. Charles translated, “There are visitors to our land. Singers of the Western music who incite the young ones to hate and fight and lust after bad women. And the famous players of sport. They come dressed like this. The man’s shirt was of silk and open to his chest. Gold chains about his neck. A gun on his waist. Another under his pant leg bound to his ankle. A watch that was too big, so that it rattled like a woman’s bracelet on his wrist. He was driven here in a very large black vehicle, as big as a truck, with black windows.”

  Marc asked, “Has he returned?”

  “We have given him no reason to come back,” Oyango replied. “We ordered our treasured young ones to stop their questions.”

  “Who have you told of this?”

  “I have spoken of this to my nephew and now to you. No one else.”

  The Kikuyu said through Charles, “He offered jobs. If we behaved, he said we could send our young ones to work on these new farms. But we do not seek their money. We want our land, our earth.”

  Oyango began a deep rocking motion with his body. His words were a chant of mourning and loss. “We have watered their earth with our blood. Our ancestors lie beneath the blades of their tractors. We beseech you, Marc Royce. Give us back our earth.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Marc returned to the Lodestone HQ and struggled to focus on all the paper work generated by his newfound success—updated lists of approved suppliers, procurement documents, payment schedules, and delivery modules. Finally at midafternoon he phoned the French refugee camp. The new camp director was mildly irritated over being drawn from a crisis meeting, but remained polite just the same. Marc was, after all, slated to deliver them crucial supplies and do so under the UN budget. The director told Marc to wait, then walked the satellite phone across the compound. The silence was filled by an electric crackling, the signal passing from Marc’s sweaty palm up to an unseen satellite, then back to the verge of a smoldering volcano.

  Then he heard her voice. “Hello?”

  “Kitra, it’s me.”

  “Marc?”

  “You left, and—”

  “Wait a moment.”

  He could picture her footsteps, passing by beds where children whimpered. A door creaked and slammed shut. Then, “Why are you calling me like this?”

  “I missed saying good-bye.”

  “Oh, Marc.”

  “Did I do something to upset you?”

  “No, Marc. You were . . . just right.”

  He could no longer remain in his seat. He sprang from the chair and moved catlike about the
office, pacing out his territory. “Why didn’t you say something, Kitra?”

  “I am complicated.” Each word was a struggle for her to form. “My life is complicated. You should not . . . It isn’t wise . . .”

  “Kitra, I haven’t needed anyone for so long, I thought it was never going to happen again. Now . . .”

  He wondered if she would shoot him down, hang up on him and extinguish his hopes, his heart. But she came back with a small, “Yes? Now . . . ?”

  “I just wish you’d give us a chance.”

  “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s not much of a reason.”

  “I need to focus on one thing right now. You understand?”

  “No, Kitra, I don’t. I am here for you and for Serge. The two do not negate each other.”

  “You are here to do a job.”

  “That’s right. And you are part of it. Soon enough the job will be over. And I want us to begin.” He had no idea whether he was making any sense at all. But the words had to be spoken. Marc didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  “I have to go. The director is waving for his phone.” She hesitated, then added, “I’ll try and call you later. If I can. If I—”

  The line went dead.

  Marc entered the mess hall to find Dirk, the giant who had assaulted Kitra, standing at the lunch counter. The satellite phone Marc carried in his hand suddenly felt wrong, as though he had no business bringing this connection to someone who had just given him a tiny measure of hope into this man’s presence.

  “Marc, hey, I was just coming up to see you.” Karl Rigby, the colonel’s aide, pitched his voice so it would carry. “Grab a place. I’ll be right with you.”

  The other men who had returned from in-country with Dirk gave Marc the blank stare of combatants taking aim. But no one made a move toward him or spoke a single word. Even so, Marc felt the laser targets on his back throughout ordering his meal and finding a table.

  If Karl noticed the hostility, he gave no sign. Instead, he settled onto the bench beside Marc and spread out a map on the table. “The colonel called in a couple of favors before he left with the next in-country contingent. Our tame techies did some checking. There is no geological formation that connects the dots.”

  All the villages Marc had heard about from the elders were marked with bright red points. The map was far newer than the one the elders had given Marc. The lost villages were scattered like blemishes around the border of Lake Victoria. Marc pointed to the northern shoreline and said, “This is where Serge was taken. About twenty-five klicks from the French camp. Maybe six from the Red Cross camp’s main gates.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all.” Rigby planted his elbows on the table and frowned over the map. “I thought, you know, they were after gold or oil or diamonds.”

  “So did I.”

  “The hunt for minerals fuels more than half of Africa’s civil wars. But the techies tell me nobody could go in and scrape up a little dirt and learn anything.”

  “The elders were definite,” Marc confirmed. “The yellow men scrape up surface samples and disappear.”

  “Yellow men,” Rigby repeated.

  “Small and precise and totally silent,” Marc said.

  “There was this thing last year,” Rigby spoke to the map on the table. “The largest company in Korea leased one third of all the arable land in Mauritius. They were going to set up the world’s largest factory farm, ship the produce back home. They were set to evacuate almost half the population living outside the capital city. But two church groups operating in the region took legal action and had it stopped.”

  “I’ve been through this with the colonel,” Marc said. “Factory farming requires huge stretches of land. Why take one village and leave the ones to either side in place? Plus . . .”

  Ribgy’s attention was drawn up from the map by Marc’s hesitation. The colonel’s aide held him with a steady gaze.

  Marc nodded slowly. Either he trusted these men totally or it was all a waste of time. “My superiors in Washington would have no interest in land grabs for factory farms. It wouldn’t register on their radar.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “You ready to tell us who they are?”

  Marc took a breath. “I’m ready to ask them for permission. Yes.”

  Ribgy did not actually smile. It was more a tightening of his features, a rearranging of the tension, a silent approval. “Well, all right.”

  “So what . . .” Marc stopped because his satellite phone started buzzing. He swiveled around, shielding himself and the woman whose voice he hoped to hear. “This is Marc.”

  A rich African voice boomed, “Frederick Uhuru, Mr. Royce. I’ve just arrived in Nairobi. We need to meet. Now. Immediately.”

  He turned back and gestured for a pen and paper. Rigby slipped both from his shirt pocket. Marc said, “Give me the address, sir.”

  “The New Stanley Hotel. Every taxi driver in Nairobi will know its location.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Your company will thank you for hurrying. Uhuru out.”

  Marc cut the connection, and sat there, cradling the phone with both hands. Thinking hard.

  Rigby asked, “What is it?”

  An idea gradually took form. “Do you have a camera with a telephoto lens?”

  “There’s one up in the office, sure. We use it to document hostile terrain from the air.”

  “Could you maybe shoot a photo for me without being seen?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “If you’re caught, it could mean serious trouble.”

  “No problem.” Rigby’s smile was tight. “Be like setting up a sniper shot, only without the cordite.”

  When Marc entered the hotel’s main courtyard, Frederick Uhuru rose from a table beneath the patio’s canopy. The UN official was in an expansive mood. “By Nairobi standards, Mr. Royce, you are almost on time.”

  “Sorry it took so long.” Marc settled into the chair, then spoke to a waiter in starched whites hovering at his elbow. “Just coffee, thanks.”

  “Oh, bring the man something to eat. The food here really is quite good. You can’t be so full as to decline an excellent meal.” Uhuru spoke to the waiter in Swahili, then turned back. “You have some documents for me to see?”

  “Yes, sir.” Marc had borrowed a briefcase from the compound, a cheap plastic Samsonite. He spun the dials and pulled out the new procurement agreements from beneath the satellite phone.

  Uhuru settled a pair of ridiculously small reading glasses on his nose. His massive hands flipped through the pages with a fluid ease. He did not look up until the waiter returned and deposited a steaming plate in front of Marc. “Lake trout, caught just this morning,” the large man said. “The fish of Lake Victoria are said to be the sweetest in the world. Tell me what you think.”

  Marc tasted a meal he did not want, and had to agree, “It’s fabulous.”

  Uhuru beamed as though the compliment was meant for him personally. He spent a few more minutes on the pages, then tossed them on the table. “You have performed well, Mr. Royce. But I do not see a notation for your own recompense.”

  “I receive my salary from Lodestone.”

  “Come, come, Mr. Royce. You are being taken on as a fixer. A fixer always receives a personal contribution from every transaction. I am not doing business with Lodestone. I am doing business with you.” Uhuru fished a cellphone from his pocket and set it on top of the documents. “Call your directors in Washington and see if I am not right in this matter.”

  “I’ll do that,” Marc promised. “Soon as—”

  His words were cut off by the sight of a tall man emerging from behind the patio’s furthest pillar. He wore a dark suit, tailored to fit his very broad shoulders and narrow waist. He was obsidian black, with a bald head that gleamed in the sunlight. But
what caught Marc’s attention was how the lower half of his right ear was missing. The man’s eyes, hidden behind wraparound shades, swept over the gathering, ever restless, a professional doing his job. Then he vanished back behind the pillar. Facing outward, toward a potential incoming threat.

  “Yes, Mr. Royce? You were saying?”

  Marc forced his attention back to Uhuru. “I’d prefer to call them from my office.”

  “Most unwise. You must assume everything you say indoors is heard by a multitude of others. Which is why I always carry two phones. An official one for all the conversations that need to be heard by the unseen listeners. And another that I change every week.” Uhuru beamed proudly at his own acumen. “And also why we are seated on the patio of this fine establishment. Do you know this place, Mr. Royce?”

  “My first visit.”

  “The New Stanley Hotel was once the epicenter of safari high life. The Thorn Tree Café received its name from a tree that has been cut down, just like so much of the former colonial culture. I hope you understand what pleasure it gives me to sit here and regale you with such facts.”

  “You are Kenyan?”

  “I am African, Mr. Royce. And I am happy to inform you that this is our time, and our land. You are most fortunate to be seated here at this juncture.”

  Marc supplied the response the man was clearly expecting. “And even more fortunate to have you as my sponsor.”

  Uhuru beamed. “You are indeed a fast learner. And here is one final tidbit for you to carry with you back to your office. Are you listening, Mr. Royce?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Every vestige of Uhuru’s good humor vanished, replaced by a brooding menace. “Do not waste your hours on the mutterings of old men inside a shantytown church. Their time is gone. Ours has arrived. Yours and mine. But only if you have the good sense to remember whose side you are on. Africa does not offer second chances, Mr. Royce. Only shallow graves await those who refuse to listen to the wisdom of their betters.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Marc and Karl Rigby returned to the Lodestone compound to find Boyd Crowder waiting for them. Soon as Marc detailed the meeting with Uhuru and described what he had in mind, the colonel insisted upon joining him.