The Constant Gardener

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Woodrow sat at a carved desk of rainforest teak priced at five thousand U.S. dollars. He was hunched sideways, one elbow on a silver-framed blotter, which cost less. The glow of a single candle glistened on his sweated, sullen face. From the ceiling above him mirrored stalactites reflected the same candle flame to infinity. Justin stood across the room from him in the darkness, leaning against the door, much as Woodrow had leaned against Justin's door on the day he brought him the news of Tessa's death. His hands were squeezed behind his back. Presumably he wanted no trouble from them. Woodrow was studying the shadows thrown onto the walls by the candlelight. He could make out elephants, giraffes, gazelles, rhinos rampant and rhinos couchant. The shadows on the wall opposite were all birds. Roosting birds, waterbirds with long necks, birds of prey with smaller birds in their talons, giant singing birds perched on tree trunks with musical boxes inside them, price on application. The house was in a wooded side street. Nobody drove past it. Nobody tapped on the window to find out why a half-drunk white man in a dinner jacket with his tie untied was talking to a candle in Mr. Ahmad Khan's African and Oriental Art Emporium, on a leafy hillside five minutes' drive from Muthaiga at half past midnight.

"Khan a friend of yours?" Woodrow asked.

No answer.

"Where did you get the key from then? Friend of Ghita's, is he?"

No answer.

"Friend of the family, probably. Ghita's, I mean." He took a silk handkerchief from the top pocket of his dinner jacket and surreptitiously wiped a couple of tears from his cheeks. He had no sooner done so than a fresh crop appeared, so he had to wipe them away too. "What do I tell them when I get back? If I ever do?"

"You'll think of something."

"I usually do," Woodrow admitted, into his handkerchief.

"I'm sure you do," said Justin.

Frightened, Woodrow swung his head round to look at him, but Justin was still standing against the door, his hands safely wedged behind his back.

"Who told you to suppress it, Sandy?" Justin asked.

"Pellegrin, who d'you think? "Burn it, Sandy. Burn all copies." Order from the throne. I'd only kept one. So I burned it. Didn't take long." He sniffed, resisting the urge to weep again. "Good boy, you see. Security conscious. Didn't trust the janitors. Took it down to the boiler room with my own fair hands. Bunged it in the furnace. Well trained. Go to the top of the class."

"Did Porter know you'd done that?"

"Sort of. Half. Didn't like it. Doesn't care for Bernard. Open warfare between them. Open by Office standards, anyway. Porter has a running joke about it. Pellegrin and bear it. Seemed funny enough at the time."

It seemed funny enough now, apparently, for he attempted a harsh laugh, which only ended in more tears.

"Did Pellegrin say why you had to suppress it — burn it? Burn all copies?"

"Christ," Woodrow whispered.

Long silence in which Woodrow appeared to hypnotize himself with the candle.

"What's the matter?" Justin asked.

"Your voice, old boy, that's all. It's grown up." Woodrow passed his hand across his mouth, then studied his fingertips for traces. "You were supposed to have reached your ceiling."

Justin asked the question again, rephrasing it as one might for a foreigner or child. "Did you think to ask Pellegrin why the document had to be destroyed?"

"Two-pronged, according to Bernard. British interests at stake, for openers. Got to protect our own."

"Did you believe him?" Justin asked, and again had to wait while Woodrow stemmed another wave of tears.

"I believed about ThreeBees. 'Course I did. Spearhead of British enterprise in Africa. Jewel in the crown. Curtiss the darling of African leaders, doling out bribes left, right and center, chap's a major national asset. Plus he's in bed with half the British Cabinet, which doesn't do him any harm."

"What was the other prong?"

"KVH. The boys in Basel had been putting out mating signals about opening some vast chemical plant in South Wales. Second one in Cornwall in three years' time. A third in Northern Ireland. Bringing wealth and prosperity to our depressed areas. But if we jumped the gun on Dypraxa, they wouldn't."

"Jumped the gun?"

"The drug was still at the trial stage. Still is, theoretically. If it poisons a few people who were going to die anyway, what's the big deal? Drug wasn't licensed in the U.K. so it wasn't an issue, was it?" His truculence had returned. He was appealing to a fellow professional. "I mean, Christ, Justin. Drugs have got to be tried on somebody, haven't they? I mean, who do you choose, for Christ's sake? Harvard Business School?" Puzzled not to have Justin's endorsement of his neat debating point, he ventured another. "I mean, Jesus. Foreign Office isn't in the business of passing judgment on the safety of nonindigenous drugs, is it? Supposed to be greasing the wheels of British industry, not going round telling everybody that a British company in Africa is poisoning its customers. You know the game. We're not paid to be bleeding hearts. We're not killing people who wouldn't otherwise die. I mean, Christ, look at the death rate in this place. Not that anybody's counting."

Justin took a moment to dwell on these fine arguments. "But you were a bleeding heart, Sandy," he objected finally. "You loved her. Remember? How could you chuck her report into the furnace when you loved her?" His voice seemed unable to prevent itself from gathering power. "How could you lie to her when she trusted you?"

"Bernard said she had to be stopped," Woodrow muttered, after another sliding glance into the shadows to confirm that Justin was still safely at his post before the door.

"Oh, she was stopped all right!"

"For Christ's sake, Quayle," Woodrow whispered. "Not like that. Different people entirely. Not my world. Not yours."

Justin must have alarmed himself with his outburst, for when he spoke again it was in the civilized tone of a disappointed colleague.

"How could you stop her, as you call it, when you adored her so, Sandy? The way you wrote to her, she was your salvation from all this — " He must have forgotten where he was for a moment, for the widespread gesture of his arms embraced not the dismal trappings of Woodrow's imprisonment, but herd upon herd of carved animals, dressed by the right in the darkness of their glass shelves. "She was your escape from everything, your path to happiness and freedom, or so you told her. Why didn't you support her cause?"

"I'm sorry," Woodrow whispered, and lowered his eyes as Justin chose a different question.

"So what were you burning, exactly? Why was the document such a threat to you and Bernard Pellegrin?"

"It was an ultimatum."

"Who to?"

"The British government."

"Tessa was presenting an ultimatum to the British government? Our government?"

"To act or else. She felt bound to us. To you. By loyalty. She was a British diplomatic wife and she was determined to do things the British diplomatic way. "The easy way is, bypass the system and go public. The hard way is make the system work. I prefer the hard way." She said that. She clung to a pathetic notion that the Brits had more integrity — virtue in government — than any other nation. Something her father drummed into her, apparently. She said Bluhm had agreed the Brits could handle it, provided they played fair. If the Brits had such a big stake in it, let them take the word to ThreeBees and KVH. Nothing confrontational. Nothing dire. Just persuade them to withdraw the drug from the market until it was ready. And if they didn't — "

"Did she set a time limit?"

"She accepted that it would be different from zone to zone. South America, Middle East, Russia, India. But her first concern was Africa. She wanted evidence within three months that the drug was being disappeared. After that the shit would hit the fan. Not her words, but nearly."

"And that's what you sent to London?"

"Yes."

"What did London do?"

"Pellegrin did it."

"Did what?"

"Said it was a load of naive bullshit. Said he was buggered if Foreign Office policy was going to be dictated to him by some born-again British wife and her black lover. Then he flew to Basel. Had lunch with the KVH boys. Asked them whether they might consider hoisting a temporary red flag. They replied to the effect that the flag wasn't red enough and there was no soft way to withdraw a drug. Shareholders wouldn't countenance it. Not that the shareholders were being asked, but if they were asked, they wouldn't. Ergo, nor would the board. Drugs aren't cookbook recipes. Can't just fish one bit out, an atom or whatever, add another bit, try again. Only thing you can do is fiddle the dosage, reformulate, not redesign. Want to change it, you've got to go back to square one, they told him, and nobody does that at this stage. Then they rattled their sabers about curtailing their investment in Britain, adding to the Queen's jobless."

"What about ThreeBees?"

"That was a different lunch. Caviar and Krug on Kenny K's Gulfstream. Bernard and Kenny agreed there'd be mayhem in Africa if the story got out that ThreeBees were poisoning people. Only thing to do, stonewall while KVH'S scientists put the polish on the formula and fine-tune the dose. Bernard's only got a couple of years to go. Fancies his chances on the ThreeBees board. On the KVH board too, if they'll have him. Why settle for one directorship when two will do?"

"What was the evidence KVH disputed?"

The question appeared to send a shiver of pain through Woodrow's entire body. He lifted himself upward, seized his head with both hands and rubbed his scalp vigorously with his fingertips. He flopped forward, his head still in his hands, and whispered, "Jesus."

"Try water," Justin suggested, and led him along the corridor to a hand basin, and stood over him, much as he had stood over him in the mortuary when he was vomiting. Woodrow held his hands under the tap and sluiced water into his face.

"The evidence was bloody massive," Woodrow muttered, back in his chair. "Bluhm and Tessa had gone from village to clinic, talking to patients, parents, relatives. Curtiss had got wind of them and launched a cover-up. Had his man Crick organize it. But Tessa and Bluhm kept a log of the cover-up too. Went back and looked for the people they'd spoken to. Couldn't find them. Put it all in their report, how ThreeBees wasn't just poisoning people but destroying the evidence afterward. "This witness has since vanished. This witness has since been charged with criminal acts. This village has been cleared of its inhabitants." Made a bloody good job of it. You should be proud of her."

"Did the woman Wanza feature in the report?"

"Oh, the woman Wanza was a star. But they put the muzzle on that brother of hers all right."

"How?"

"Arrested him. Extracted a voluntary confession. He came up before the beak last week. Ten years for mugging a white tourist in Tsavo National Park. The white tourist never gave evidence, but a lot of very frightened Africans saw the boy do it so it was all right. The judge threw in hard labor and twenty strokes of the cane for good measure."

Justin closed his eyes. He saw the crumpled face of Kioko squatting on the floor beside his sister. He felt Kioko's crumpled hand as it thrust into his own at Tessa's graveside.

"And you still didn't feel any need — when you first read that report — and knew more or less it was true, I suppose — to say anything to the Kenyans?" he suggested.

The truculence again. "For God's sake, Quayle. When did you ever put on your best suit, trolley round to the Blue Boys' headquarters, and accuse them of mounting an orchestrated cover-up and taking Kenny K's shilling for their trouble? That's no way to make friends and influence people in sunny Nairobi."

Justin took a step away from the door, checked himself and resumed his self-imposed distance. "There was clinical evidence too, presumably."

"There was what?"

"I am asking you about the clinical evidence contained in the memorandum written by Arnold Bluhm and Tessa Quayle and destroyed at Bernard Pellegrin's request by YOU! A copy of which was nonetheless submitted by Bernard Pellegrin to KVH who trashed it over lunch!"

The echo of this blast resounded in the glass shelves. Woodrow waited for it to subside.

"The clinical evidence was Bluhm's department. It was in the annex. She'd put it in a separate annex. Took a leaf from your book. You're an annex man. were once. So was she."

"Clinical evidence saying what?"

"Case histories. Thirty-seven of them. Chapter and verse. Names, addresses, treatment, place and date of burial. Same symptoms every time. Sleepiness, blindness, bleeding, liver collapse, bingo."

"Bingo meaning death?"

"In a way. Put like that. I suppose so. Yes."

"And KVH disputed this evidence?"

"Unscientific, inductive, biased, tendentious… emotionalized. That was one I hadn't heard before. Emotionalized. Means you care too much to be trusted, I suppose. I'm the other way round. De-emotionalized. Un-emotionalized. Emotioned out. Less you feel, louder you yell. Bigger the vacuum you've got to fill. Not you. Me."

"Who's Lorbeer?"

"Her bete noire."

"Why?"

"Driving force behind the drug. Its champion. Talked KVH into developing it, took the gospel to ThreeBees. Megashit, in her book."

"Does she say Lorbeer betrayed her?"

"Why should she? We all betrayed her." He was weeping uncontrollably. "How about you, sitting on your arse and growing flowers while she was out there being a saint?"

"Where's Lorbeer now?"

"Not the faintest. Nobody has. Saw which way the wind was blowing and did a duck dive. ThreeBees looked for him for a while, then got bored. Tessa and Bluhm took up the hunt. Get Lorbeer for chief witness. Find Lorbeer."

"Emrich?"

"One of the drug's inventors. She came out here once. Tried to blow the whistle on KVH. They headed her off at the pass."

"Kovacs?"

"Third member of the gang. Wholly owned asset of KVH. Tart, apparently. Never met her. I saw Lorbeer once, I think. Big fat Boer. Bubbly eyed. Red hair."

He leaped round in terror. Justin was standing at his shoulder. He had laid a piece of paper on the blotter and was offering Woodrow a ballpoint pen, the cap toward him, the way polite people pass things to each other.

"It's a travel authorization," Justin explained. "One of yours." He read the text aloud for Woodrow's benefit. ""Traveler is a British subject acting under the auspices of the U.K. High Commission Nairobi." Sign it."

Woodrow squinted at it, holding it to the candle. "Peter Paul Atkinson. Who the hell's he?"

"What the form says. A British journalist. Writes for the Telegraph. If anyone calls the High Commission to check on him, he's a bona fide journalist in good standing. Will you remember that?"

"What the hell's he want to go to Loki for? Arsehole of the world. Ghita went up there. Supposed to have a photo on it, isn't it?"

"It will have." Woodrow signed it, Justin folded it, put it in his pocket and returned stiffly to the door. A row of Taiwanese cuckoo clocks announced that it was one o'clock in the morning.

* * *

Mustafa was waiting at the curbside with his torch as Justin drew up in Ghita's little car. He must have been listening for its engine. Woodrow, unaware that he had been returned to his own house, sat staring through the windscreen with his hands clasped on his lap while Justin leaned across him and spoke to Mustafa through the open passenger window. He spoke English, laced with the few words of kitchen kiSwahili that he knew.

"Mr. Woodrow is not well, Mustafa. You brought him into the fresh air to be sick. He should go to his bedroom, please, and lie down until Mrs. Woodrow can look after him. Kindly tell Miss Ghita that I'm about to leave."

Woodrow started to climb out, then turned to Justin. "You won't be bubbling this stuff to Gloria, old boy, will you? Nothing to be gained, now you've heard it all. She hasn't got our sophistication, you see. Old colleagues and so on. Will you?"

Like a man moving a bundle of something that disgusted him though he was trying not to show it, Mustafa plucked Woodrow from the car and escorted him to his front door. Justin had put on his woolen hat and anorak again. Beams of colored spotlight were escaping from the marquee. The band was playing relentless rap. Still seated in the car Justin glanced to his left and thought he saw the shadow of a tall man standing in front of the rhododendron bushes at the curbside, but when he looked closely, it was gone. He kept staring nonetheless, first at the bushes, then at the parked cars to either side of them. Hearing a footfall, he turned to see a figure hastening toward him, and it was Ghita with a shawl across her shoulders, dancing shoes in one hand and a pocket torch in the other. She slipped into the passenger seat as Justin started the car.

"They're wondering where he is," she said.

"Was Donohue in there?"

"I don't think so. I'm not sure. I didn't see him."

She started to ask him something and decided better not.

He was driving slowly, peering into parked cars, glancing repeatedly at his wing mirrors. He passed his own house but gave it hardly a look. A yellow dog rushed at the car, snapping at its wheels. He swerved, keeping his eyes on the mirrors while he softly rebuked it. Craters came at them like black lakes in the headlights. Ghita peered out of the rear window. The road was pitch dark.

"Keep your eyes front," he commanded her. "I'm in danger of losing the way. Give me some lefts and rights."

He was driving faster now, swinging between craters, bouncing over tar bumps, veering to the center of the road whenever he distrusted the sides. Ghita was murmuring: left here, left again, big pothole coming up. Abruptly he slowed down and a car overtook them, followed by a second.

"See anyone you recognize?" he asked.

"No."

They entered a tree-lined avenue. A battered sign reading HELP VOLUNTEER barred their way. A line of emaciated boys with poles and a wheelbarrow with no wheel were gathered behind it.

"Are they always here?"

"Day and night," said Ghita. "They take the stones from one hole and put them in another. In this way their job is never done."

He pumped the foot brake. The car rolled to a halt just before the sign. The boys clustered round the car, slapping their palms on the roof. Justin lowered his window as a flashlight lit up the inside of the car, followed by the quick-eyed, smiling head of their spokesman. He was sixteen at most.

"Good evening, Bwana," he cried in a tone of high ceremony. "I am Mr. Simba."

"Good evening, Mr. Simba," said Justin.

"You wish to contribute to this fine road we're making, man?"

Justin passed a hundred-shilling note through the window. The boy danced triumphantly away, waving it above his head while the others clapped.

"What's the usual tariff?" Justin asked Ghita as he drove on.

"About a tenth of that."

Another car overtook them and Justin again peered intently at its occupants, but seemed not to see whatever he was looking for. They entered the town center. Shop lights, cafes, teeming pavements. Matutu buses racing by with music blasting. Out to their left, a smash of metal was followed by the blaring of horns and screams. Ghita was directing him again: right here, through these gates now. Justin drove up a ramp and into the crumbling forecourt of a square three-story building. By the perimeter lights he read the words COME UNTO JESUS NOW! daubed on the slab wall.

"Is this a church?"

"It was a Seventh Day Adventist dental clinic," Ghita replied. "Now it is converted into flats."

The car park was a piece of low ground surrounded by razor wire and if she had been alone she would never have driven into it, but he was already heading down the slipway with his hand out for the key. He parked and she watched him while he stared back up the slipway, listening.

"Who are you expecting?" she whispered.

He led her past grinning groups of kids to the entrance and up the steps to the lobby. A handwritten notice said LIFT SERVICE SUSPENDED. They crossed to a gray staircase lit by low-watt bulbs. Justin climbed beside her until they arrived at the top floor, which was in darkness. Producing his own pocket torch, Justin lit the way. Asian music and smells of Oriental food issued from closed doors. Handing her his torch, Justin returned to the stairwell while she unchained her iron grille and turned the three locks. As she stepped into the flat, she heard her phone ringing. She looked round for Justin, to find him standing beside her.

"Ghita, my dear, hullo," cried a charming male voice she couldn't immediately place. "How radiant you looked tonight. Tim Donohue here. Wondered whether I might pop up a minute, have a cup of coffee with the two of you underneath the stars."

* * *

Ghita's flat was small, three rooms only, and all looking at the same run-down warehouse and the same bustling street with broken neon signs and honking cars and intrepid beggars who stood in their path until the last moment. A barred window gave onto an outside iron staircase that was supposed to be a fire escape, though for reasons of self-preservation the tenants had sawn off the bottom flight. But the upper flights were still intact, and on warm evenings Ghita could climb up to the roof and settle herself against the wooden cladding of the water tank, and study for the Foreign Service examination that she was determined to sit next year, and listen to the clatter of her fellow Asians up and down the building, and share their music and their arguments and their children, and almost convince herself she was among her own people.

And if this illusion vanished as soon as she drove through the gates of the High Commission and put on her other skin, the rooftop with its cats and chicken coops and washing and aerials remained one of the few places where she felt at ease — which was why perhaps she was not unduly surprised when Donohue proposed that they enjoy their coffee underneath the stars. How he knew she had a rooftop was a mystery to her, since he had never, so far as she knew, set foot in her apartment. But he knew. With Justin warily looking on, Donohue stepped over the threshold and, holding a finger to his lips, threaded his angular body through the window and onto the platform of the iron staircase, then beckoned them to follow him. Justin went next and by the time Ghita joined them with the coffee tray, Donohue was perched on a packing case, knees level with his ears. But Justin could settle nowhere. One minute he was posed like an embattled sentinel against the neon strips across the street, the next squatting at her side, head bowed, like a man drawing with his finger in the sand.

"How'd you make it through the lines, old boy?" Donohue inquired above the rumble of traffic, while he sipped his coffee. "Little bird told me you were in Saskatchewan couple of days ago."

"Safari package," said Justin.

"Via London?"

"Amsterdam."

"Big group?"

"Big as I could find."

"As Quayle?"

"More or less."

"When did you jump ship?"

"In Nairobi. Soon as we'd cleared Customs and Immigration."

"Smart lad. I misjudged you. Thought you'd use one of the land routes. Slip up from Tanzania or whatever."

"He wouldn't let me fetch him from the airport," Ghita put in protectively. "He came here by cab in the dark."

"What do you want?" Justin asked from another part of the darkness.

"A quiet life, if you don't mind, old boy. I've reached an age. No more scandal. No more lifting of stones. No more chaps sticking their necks out, looking for what isn't there anymore." His craggy silhouette turned to Ghita. "What did you go up to Loki for, dear?"

"She went for my sake," Justin's voice cut in, before she had thought of a reply.

"And so she should," Donohue said approvingly. "And for Tessa's sake too, I'm sure. Ghita's an admirable girl." And to Ghita again, more forcibly, "And you found what you were looking for, did you, dear? Mission accomplished? I'm sure it was."

Justin again, faster than before. "I asked her to check on Tessa's last days up there. To make sure they were doing what they said they were doing: attending the gender seminar. They were."

"And you agree with that version of events, do you, my dear?" Donohue inquired, back to Ghita.

"Yes."

"Well, good on you," Donohue remarked and took another sip of his coffee. "Shall we talk turkey?" he suggested to Justin.

"I thought we were doing that."

"About your plans."

"What plans?"

"Precisely. For example, if it were ever in your mind to have a quiet word with Kenny K. Curtiss, you'll be wasting your breath. I can tell you that for no fee."

"Why?"

"His bully boys are waiting for you, that's one reason. For another, he's out of the race, if he was ever completely in it. The banks have taken his toys away. ThreeBees' pharmaceutical interests will go back to where they came from: KVH."

No reaction.

"My point being, Justin, that there's not a lot of satisfaction to be had from firing bullets into somebody who's already dead. If it's satisfaction you're looking for. Is it?"

No answer.

"As to the murder of your wife, much as it pains me to have to tell you this, Kenny K was not, repeat not complicit, as we say in court. Neither was his sidekick Mr. Crick, though I've no doubt he'd have leaped at the opportunity if it had been offered to him. Crick was under standing instructions to report Arnold's and Tessa's movements to KVH, naturally. He made ample use of Kenny Knowledge's local assets, notably the Kenyan police, to keep an ear and an eye out for them. But Crick was no more complicit than Kenny K. A watching brief doesn't make him a murderer."

"Who did Crick report to?" Justin's voice asked.

"Crick reported to an answering machine in Luxembourg that has since been disconnected. From there, the fatal message was passed down the line by means that you and I are never likely to establish. Until it reached the ears of the sensitive gentlemen who killed your wife."

"Marsabit," Justin said, from nearby.

"Indeed. The celebrated Marsabit Two, in their green safari truck. They were joined en route by four Africans, bounty hunters like themselves. The purse for the job was a million dollars to be divided at the discretion of their leader, known as Colonel Elvis. All we can be sure of is that his name is not Elvis and he never rose to the dizzy rank of colonel."

"Did Crick report to Luxembourg that Tessa and Arnold were heading for Turkana?"

"That, dear boy, is a question too far."

"Why?"

"Because Crick won't answer it. He's afraid. As I could wish you were. He's afraid that if he is too liberal with his information, andwiththe information of certain friends of his, he'll get his tongue chopped out to make room for his testicles. He may be right."

"What do you want?" Justin repeated. He was crouched at Donohue's side, staring into his blackened eyes.

"To dissuade you from doing whatever you intend to do, dear boy. To tell you that whatever it is you're looking for, you won't find it, but that won't prevent you from getting killed. There's a contract out on you as soon as you set foot in Africa and here you are in Africa with both feet. Every renegade mercenary and gang boss in the business dreams of getting you in his sights. Half a million to make you dead, a million to make it look like suicide, the preferred way. You can hire yourself all the protection you want, it won't do you a blind bit of good. You'll probably be hiring the very people who are hoping to kill you."

"Why does your Service care whether I live or die?"

"At the business level, it doesn't. At the personal level, I'd prefer not to see the wrong side win." He took a breath. "In which context, I'm sorry to tell you that Arnold Bluhm is as dead as a dodo and has been for weeks. So if you're here to save Arnold, I'm afraid that, once again, there's nothing to save."

"Prove it," Justin demanded roughly, while Ghita swung silently away from them and buried her face in her forearm.

"I'm old and dying and disenchanted and I'm telling you tales out of school that would get me shot at dawn by my employers. That's all the proof you can have. Bluhm was knocked senseless, shoved in the safari truck, driven into the empty desert. No water, no shade, no food. They tortured him for a couple of days in the hope of finding out whether he or Tessa had thought to make a second set of the disks they'd found in the four-track. I'm sorry, Ghita. Bluhm said no, they hadn't made a second set, but why should anybody take no for an answer? So they tortured him to death to be on the safe side and because they enjoyed it. Then they left him to the hyenas. And that, I am afraid, is the truth."

"Oh my dear God."

It was Ghita, whispering into her hands.

"So you can cross Bluhm off your list, Justin, together with Kenny K. Curtiss. Neither of them is worth the journey anymore." He rode on remorselessly. "Meanwhile, hear this. Porter Coleridge is fighting your corner in London for you. And that's not just top secret. That's eat before reading."

Justin had disappeared from Ghita's vision. She searched the darkness and discovered him close behind her.

"Porter is calling for Tessa's case to be reassigned to the original police officers, and for Gridley's head to be placed on a charger next to Pellegrin's. He wants the relationship between Curtiss, KVH and the British government to be the subject of a cross-party inquiry and he's chipping away at Sandy Woodrow's feet of clay while he's about it. He wants the drug to be assessed by a team of independent scientists, if there are any left in the world. He's discovered there's something called the Ethical Trials Committee of the World Health Organization that might serve. If you go home now, you might just be able to tip the balance. So that's why I came," he ended happily and, having drained the last of his coffee, stood up. "Getting people out of countries is one of the few things we still do well, Justin. So if you'd rather be smuggled out of Kenya in a warming pan than brave the hells of Kenyatta airport a second time, not to mention Moi's watchers and everybody else's, have Ghita give us the wink."

"You've been very kind," said Justin.

"That was what I was afraid you'd say. Good night."

* * *

Ghita lay on her bed with the door open. She was staring at the ceiling, not knowing whether to weep or pray. She had always assumed that Bluhm was dead, but the vileness of his death was worse than anything she had feared. She wished she could return to the simplicities of her convent school, and recover her belief that it was God's will that man should rise so high and stoop so low. On the other side of the wall, Justin was back at her desk, writing by pen because pen was what he liked although she had offered him her laptop. The plane to Loki was due to leave Wilson at seven, which meant he would be gone in an hour. She wished she could share the rest of his journey, but knew that no one could. She had offered to drive him to the airport but he preferred to take a taxi from the Serena Hotel.

"Ghita?"

He was knocking on her door. She called, "It's all right," and rose to her feet.

"I'd like you, please, to post this for me, Ghita," Justin said, handing her a fat envelope addressed to a woman in Milan. "She's not a girlfriend, in case you're curious. She's my lawyer's aunt" — a rare smile — "and here's a letter for Porter Coleridge at his club. Don't use the Field Post Office, if you don't mind. And no courier service or anything. The normal Kenyan mails are quite reliable enough. Thank you immeasurably for all your help."

At which she could restrain herself no longer, and threw her arms round him, and herself against him, and held him as if she were holding on to life itself until he prized himself free.