Rare Earth Read online

  He said, “Tell me how I can help.”

  The words were enough to lift Kitra from her crouched position over her knees. Her hands came away as wet as her cheeks. “Last night I dreamed that Serge spoke to me from beyond the grave.”

  Marc reached over and settled his hand on her shoulder, as he had seen the local women do. Only later did he realize it was the first time he had touched her.

  Kitra went on, “When I woke up, I felt as though he had come to me for a purpose. Ever since I’ve worried that I haven’t done something. Or missed something. Or . . .”

  Marc waited until he was certain she would not speak again, then said, “My wife died four and a half years ago. I used to have these long conversations with her, sometimes in church, but mostly in dreams.”

  She wiped her face with shaky hands. “What did she say?”

  Marc recalled vividly the burden he had carried for over a year, that she wanted him to move on. But this was not the time to say such things to Kitra. “Usually I didn’t hear the words. More like, the vacuum of her not being there had to be filled somehow.”

  Kitra’s voice broke as she asked, “Is Serge dead?”

  Marc tried to reply as gently as possible, but he did not mask the truth. “Uhuru, the UN administrator, doesn’t give your brother much of a chance of survival.”

  She shuddered her way through the news. Marc waited with her. Finally she asked, “Should I leave here? Go back to Israel?”

  Marc let his hand slip away. “I can’t tell you that. Do you have family there?”

  “My parents.”

  “Do they know?”

  “It was the hardest call I have ever made.”

  “I’m sorry you had to endure that, Kitra. But I think it was important they heard the news from you.”

  She swallowed again. “I keep thinking Serge would want to find me here if he returns.”

  Marc recalled how he had himself been anchored by the home he had once shared with his wife, how he had spent four years clutching frantically at fading memories. He said simply, “I will pray for you both.”

  That was enough to calm her. “I am asking. What do you think I should do?”

  “I spoke with Lodestar headquarters last night. They want me to return to Nairobi. I think you should come. The answers we seek aren’t here.”

  She was silent a moment. “All right, Marc.”

  He started to rise, then, “There’s something you said yesterday. I agree with the question Serge asked. Why should the administrators make a land grab here? I mean, after the volcano erupted. The village is blanketed with ash. The land is worthless.”

  “Who knows what they were after?”

  Again Marc had the distinct impression she was holding back. He pressed as gently as he could. “Did Serge have any idea what might be behind this?”

  The question lifted her from the bench. “This was once some of the richest agricultural land in all of Kenya. One day the rains will return and all this ash will be washed away.”

  Marc rejected that with an impatient shake of his head. Stolen farmland in Africa, no matter how valuable, was not going to interest the people who had sent him to Kenya. “There has to be something bigger. A diamond mine. Or gold.”

  She wiped her face with both hands. “Serge thought of that. The nearest known deposits of either are hundreds of miles away.”

  “Then what . . .?” Marc stopped at the sound of approaching footsteps. He turned to find Charles coming down the chapel’s central aisle.

  The pastor told them, “The elders wish to have a word.”

  Despite his solid Kenyan roots, Charles knew he would never sound like a born-and-bred Nairobi native. He had spent seven vital years in America, from his last year in high school through seminary. Upon his return to Kenya, he had found a great deal of hostility toward America, directed especially at rich black Americans who swaggered down the Nairobi streets and bought whatever they wanted and took pride in referring to themselves as African Americans. These strangers had no idea what the word meant, and made no attempt to learn. Charles shared the locals’ disdain and did his best to distance himself from them.

  Sometimes, when he was tired or stressed, the American mode of speech slipped back into his brain. Or when he was spooked. Like now. Because Philip seriously spooked him. There was an edge to the young chief, a deep brooding core of African blood . . . and something else.

  Philip was two years younger than Charles. Yet there was a timeless dignity to the man and his demeanor. Charles knew the chief spoke fluent English. But in the presence of Marc Royce, Philip insisted on holding to Swahili. Why, Charles had no idea.

  Philip told him, “Say to Marc Royce, I know he is leaving for the city.”

  Charles felt goose bumps as he translated.

  Marc Royce jerked slightly in surprise, then asked, “How does he know this?”

  When the question was translated, Philip replied, “The angels came to me in my dreams. They said this.”

  Marc nodded slowly, giving Philip’s words the time they deserved. This American surprised Charles. He was extremely tough—Charles had seen this firsthand in the forest. And yet Marc also showed a genuine concern for people and their needs. Even strangers in a strange land, mired in poverty, trapped in a refugee camp. Marc Royce cared deeply. Of this Charles was certain.

  Marc Royce asked, “God speaks to you in dreams?”

  “Sometimes I am not certain whether I am asleep or awake,” Philip replied, once Charles had translated. “Only that God’s messengers have come. My task is not to understand, but to listen well.”

  “To listen,” Marc added, “and then to act in accordance to the divine will.”

  Philip smiled. Charles felt a faint twinge of astonishment. Philip almost never smiled, and yet in the presence of this newcomer it had happened twice.

  The chief said, “I see the word around camp is correct, that the faith is more than merely words for this one.”

  Marc asked, “How is it that you’re so much younger than the camp’s other elders?”

  Charles told him, “I mentioned how his parents had passed on.”

  “I’d appreciate hearing it from him. Sometimes I learn more from how the answer is shaped than what the words actually say.”

  The elders on the other stools shifted as Charles translated. The senior Kikuyu said to Philip, “Perhaps I was wrong when I spoke the other day. About him not being the one.”

  Philip continued to speak through Charles, “All we have is dignity. The other reasons for our authority, the land and the village and the heritage, all this has been taken from us. I treat the elders with the same dignity that I seek from them. Charles has told you that my father was a chief before me, and his father, back twelve generations. So long has our village existed. I was twenty-three when I lost my parents to the automobile accident. The village elders voted and placed my father’s staff in my hand and moved his cattle into my kraal. That is the way of my people. And then the regional governor saw what we were doing, with new agricultural techniques, training our brightest in the universities, and seeking peace with all our neighbors, and I was appointed district chief as well. That was the year the drought struck.”

  “What can you tell me about your tribe?”

  “We are the Luo. We once were river people, following the ebb and flow of the great river you call the Nile. Nineteen generations ago, my people were driven south by Arab invaders flying the flag of a new religion called Islam. We followed the Rift south. There in the valley we met a tribe we had never heard of before. They called themselves the Masaii, and to our astonishment, we shared the same tongue. We took this as a sign and searched out land of our own. The Masaii claimed the Rift, but the land above the great valley, it was empty and unclaimed. And so we came to be here. Centuries before the English arrived, with their papers and their stamps and their writing. And now, Marc Royce, pay careful attention, for I am about to tell you a great thing.” He waited fo
r Charles’s translation, then went on, “Now there are people who claim the land of our village is not ours and never has been.”

  So it was with many of the wise ones in this land, Charles reflected as he translated. They took whatever question or comment was made and redirected it so that the matter they wanted to discuss became its heart, the central theme, the reason why they spoke at all.

  Marc turned to Kitra and asked, “This was the village where your brother was taken?”

  Kitra hesitated long enough for Charles to translate. It was Philip who spoke. “I will answer that, Marc Royce. Serge Korban was taken not from my village but from another within my district. So I consider his abduction a matter of personal importance. As well as a concern for these two friends, one who is missing and one who weeps for her brother in the night.”

  Kitra’s swallow was audible. Charles saw Marc glance over, and saw too the emotions this strong man held in check. Marc then asked, “What does it mean, district chief ?”

  “As Charles has told you, I am both chief to my village, and chief to my district. The village voted for me, the government in Nairobi appointed me. I was one of the first chiefs named by the newly elected government. Before, there was much corruption. Many district chiefs paid for their office with bribes they later collected from the regions. As a result, the Nairobi government is hated by the people of this great land. The new government promised to change that. New district chiefs are to come from the region they oversee. They are to be respected. They are to be trusted. My people trust me, Marc Royce. And this is how I repay them. By clinging to my dignity in a camp where we have lost everything.”

  “How can I help?”

  “To answer that, I must first know who you truly are. I must see to the heart of you. I must know whether you can be trusted with the future of my people.”

  The American then told them the most surprising tale. He described his background as an intelligence agent, the loss of his career through the illness and death of his wife. How he had been drawn back into service and sent to Iraq. Then his return to America, and the secret nighttime trip to the Washington hotel. He spoke of power beyond their imagination, of people connected to the White House, and questions for which Marc had no answer. Kitra’s eyes grew round, for clearly she had known none of this.

  When the American went silent, Philip flipped his father’s oxtail whisk. “I thank you for your reply and for your honesty, Marc Royce. You have given us much to discuss. Go in peace. Help us find a way home.”

  If the American felt any offense over being dismissed, he did not show it. He and Kitra rose and departed. The silence gathered.

  Philip looked around the circle, but none of the other elders chose to speak. He nodded, as though satisfied, and said to Charles, “You will go with them.”

  Charles objected, “My place is here.”

  “Your place is caring for the people of your church. This duty means you will accompany Marc Royce. And if he is to be trusted, you will share with him the secret.”

  Charles felt the thrill race up his spine. “You will allow this man to hold the future of your people?”

  “Only if he is the one of my dream.” The young-old man looked around the circle of elders, granting them the chance to object. But no one spoke. So he turned back and finished, “And only if he shows you a sign.”

  Once again the chief had managed to spook him. “What sign will that be?”

  Philip rose with him, a rare honor. “You will know when God tells you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Marc stood just outside the camp’s main gates, waiting for the chopper bringing Lodestone’s chief. He squinted into the heat waves rising off the dusty earth and the bleached forest beyond, and recalled his job interview at Lodestone’s Washington headquarters.

  The interview had been handled by a mid-level company executive. Marc figured the guy had been hired away from the federal government. In Marc’s previous line of work, they had called it the Washington side-straddle-hop. The interviewer wore an expensive jacket of some forgettable dark shade, flannel trousers, starched shirt, and crimson bow tie. He picked his way through Marc’s résumé at an infuriatingly slow pace. Throughout that entire period, a second man leaned against the office’s side wall and inspected Marc with a sniper’s intensity.

  The interviewer never introduced the second man, but from the security files Marc knew him to be Boyd Crowder. The colonel remained just beyond Marc’s field of vision, inspecting Marc in silence. Two hours into the process, the bureaucrat asked why Marc was giving up the safety of Baltimore and his steady job to head off to the depths of Africa. The man managed to turn the question into a blemish on Marc’s character. Marc replied that it was all there in his file.

  Boyd Crowder spoke for the first time. “Forget the file,” he said. “You didn’t just take aim at a job on the wild side. Something happened. I want to know what that was.”

  Marc swiveled around to face this extremely tough relic of a life on the firing line. Marc replied, “A woman. And restless boredom.”

  “The lady left you high and dry?”

  “That’s right. She did.”

  Crowder showed a grim humor, until the bureaucrat found the appropriate line in Marc’s file and asked, “You are recently widowed?”

  “That is correct.”

  Crowder’s mirth faded. “How long?”

  “Long enough for the empty life to gnaw at me.”

  Crowder’s gaze was not so much brown as copper, a hard glint that measured men with the same precision as he would a sniper’s rifle. “So you think you’ve got what it takes for adventure.”

  “Either that,” Marc replied, “or I don’t have anything left to lose.”

  Crowder said to the bureaucrat, “Dump him in the deep end, see if he can learn to swim against the currents.”

  When they were done and Marc was leaving, he heard the interviewer tell Crowder, “This is a terrible mistake.”

  “The supplier has basically ordered us to take this guy on,” Crowder said. “So we do as we’re told and let Africa grind him to dust. Problem solved.”

  The four Lodestone choppers landed between the pale forest and the camp’s main gates. Boyd Crowder was the first man to drop to the ground. His military fatigues were tailored tight to his triangular frame, the pant legs tucked into polished black jackboots. Three white scars snaked up his left arm, and another coiled around his neck like an albino tattoo. Karl Rigby, Crowder’s aide and a silent blade of a man, followed three steps back.

  Crowder handed Marc a plastic briefcase and said, “A man on the move in these parts needs to be reachable twenty-four-seven. Lodestone’s supplying you with a new sat phone. The number’s taped on the case.”

  The colonel made it sound like he was handing out medals, so Marc replied, “Thank you, sir.”

  Crowder’s grin was as hard as his voice. “We had a lottery going, how long it’d take Africa to eat you up. I lost. I don’t like losing.”

  Marc introduced Crowder to the new camp administrators. As they discussed the manifest Marc had prepared, listing the camp’s most urgent requirements, Kitra stepped through the gates. She lifted her voice in order to be heard above the thrumming rotors. “Charles wants to come with us,” she told Marc.

  Marc wondered why the pastor had approached her and not come to him directly, but merely nodded and said, “I’ll ask.”

  Crowder took in Kitra’s form in three seconds flat. When Marc introduced them, Crowder said, “Your name’s been flagged. Something about your brother, right?”

  “Serge. Yes. Have you heard something?”

  “Not a whisper. How long has he been gone?”

  “Ten days.”

  “No ransom demand?”

  Her lip trembled, but she held herself together. “Nothing.”

  Crowder dismissed his chances with a brusque shake of his head. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He turned to Marc and said, “Where’s your gear, so
ldier?”

  “By the camp gates.” Marc saw the look of bitter pain that Kitra gave the colonel before turning away. He found it difficult to keep his tone bland as he said, “The lady and the camp pastor need a lift to Nairobi.”

  Crowder seemed ready to argue, but he must have detected something in Marc’s gaze, for all he said was, “We lift off in five.”

  The four transport choppers were adapted from their military roots, great elephantine beasts with little grace and no beauty whatsoever. Their payloads were held in place by nylon netting. Boyd Crowder directed Marc into the second seat between the cockpit and the mountains of gear. Kitra and Charles joined Crowder’s aide and another soldier on fold-down seats by the bulkhead.

  Once they were airborne, the volcano glowered angry and perilous, the column of smoke towering above the southwestern reaches. Crowder pointed out the chopper’s front windows and said, “Kapenguria is the town at your six o’clock. Five klicks to the right is the Lenan Forest, the big rise there is the Cherangani Hills, and the Kiphunurr Forest is that stretch of green on the horizon.”

  Marc tried to implant the vista on the map he had studied. “What’s up farther north?”

  “Nothing but more Africa.” Crowder gathered up the entire continent in one sweep of his scarred arm. “The city of Maralai sits up there on the Lorogi Plateau. The African plains begin just past the Samburu Hills and stretch all the way to the Somali desert. Which is why all the refugees are streaming this way. And the government is letting them, on account of there’s only one road through the whole savannah. You know what the savannah is, Royce?”

  “Plains.”

  “Miles and miles of parched nothing. Drought has gripped that entire region for five years. The grass is eaten up, the rivers are dried up, and the animals are gone. From the Samburu all the way to the Suguta Valley. There’s a new desert growing; they call it the Nachorugwai.”

  The chopper tilted into a banked turn, revealing the main road and the swarm of refugees. Beyond that stretched an endless yellow vista. It beckoned to him, this land. Marc yearned to do more than fly over with an angry man making light of the secrets on display.