City of Saints & Thieves(36)

“It’s not my place to tell you,” he says.

“So I have to wait until I’m dead to ask her?”

He winces. “It doesn’t matter how she knew. She just did.”

I can see a twitch in the corner of his mouth, like something wants to come out. I wait. And just as I’m about to give up, he rubs a hand over his face and says, “She should never have agreed to help me.”

It’s not the answer to my question, but still, it’s something. I lean forward. “Because Greyhill found out and almost killed you?”

He’s told me about that day back in Kasisi, right before we left. Mama was supposed to meet him at his hotel and take him to the place in the jungle where the gold-for-guns deals were made. He was going to hide and take photographs. When the knock on his door came that night, he opened it, thinking it was her. Instead, it was a couple of guys with sharpened pangas, big long knives used for hacking through brush. Or flesh. Donatien’s told me multiple times how many pints of blood they had to pump into him (two) and how many stitches it took to close him up (forty-three). How he never heard from my mother again until she reached out to him the day before she was murdered, five years later.

Meanwhile, Mama and I were having our own problems.

But I don’t want to think about that right now. I want to know more about Mr. Greyhill. “Why would he wait all that time to finish her off, Donatien? And why would she come here to him at all if his militia friends were the ones who chased her out of Congo?”

He studies me.

“Come on, Donatien. I’m not a kid anymore! I can handle it, whatever it is you don’t want to tell me!” I lower my voice. “You can tell me, or I can go and ask him. I’m tired of being in the dark. Don’t think I won’t.”

I can tell he’s running a thousand different things through his head, but in the end all he says is, “It might not have been him who ran her out.”

I wait for more. But he’s silent. “I don’t understand. Who else would have . . .”

“Other people were involved in the deals. Greyhill didn’t make the exchanges himself.”

“What? But you said—”

“I said your mother had seen the exchanges, and that’s how she knew that gold was being traded for money and weapons. But when I asked her if it was a white American guy making the buys, she said no. I’m the one who told her I thought Roland Greyhill was the mastermind behind it all.”

Donatien won’t look at me. Why is he being so cagey about this part? “So she never met him in Congo? Who exactly was making the exchanges?”

Donatien’s mouth pinches into a flat line. “She didn’t say. Just that the main one was a Kenyan guy.”

“Did you find out who he was later?”

“No,” Donatien says, and leans back. He looks past me, toward the water. “You know all this. I dropped the investigation. I didn’t pick it back up until after she was murdered.”

I’m suddenly overwhelmed with just how much I don’t know. I mean, who was my mother, really? A nurse. That’s all she told me. That’s all I can tell Michael when he asks. But how did she find out so much about blood gold? How did she know when and where the exchanges were happening? They were done in some secret place, way back in the jungle, according to Donatien. My mind is churning. I can’t make all the pieces fit into some solid, clear picture of her. How can I know so little about who she was and what happened back there in Congo? A question buzzes in my head like a mosquito. I bite my lip. “She wasn’t in on it, was she? The gold deals?”

Donatien’s attention snaps back to me. “No, nothing like that.”

“How do you know?”

“She just wouldn’t have been.”

“But how do you know?” I demand, thumping my fist on the table. “You barely knew her! I barely knew her!” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

He starts to reach for my arm, but then seems to think better of it. “Look, Tina, I admit it. I had the same thought. When she called me, right before she was murdered, I didn’t want to talk to her. I hadn’t heard from her since that day I almost got killed.” He looks up at me guiltily. “I thought it was her who sent those guys to my hotel.”

I don’t move. “You suspected her?”

He nods and goes on, “And so when she got in touch, I asked her about it, and she . . . convinced me. Don’t . . .” He puts up a hand to stop me. “Just trust me. She wasn’t able to meet me and it wasn’t her fault. What happened to me wasn’t her fault. Men came for her that night, just like they came for me. You told me as much yourself.”

It’s true. In the back of my brain I see a lick of fire as high as the trees. I press my knuckles into my eyes, trying to make the image go away. I can’t think about that right now. I come back to the same question. “So why would she then come here to Greyhill, if he sent the men after you and her?”

“How or why your mother eventually ended up working for Mr. Greyhill—that I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. But I’m sure whatever she did was for a good reason. She must have felt like she had to, and that it would be the best way to keep you safe. Your mother was . . . well, she was like you. Tough, but good.” The corners of Donatien’s eyes pinch. “Why so many questions today, Tina? Is something going on? You seem out of sorts.”