City of Saints & Thieves(64)

“Still no network,” Boyboy grumbles, and stuffs the phone back in his pocket.

It doesn’t help that the air in the forest we’ve been hiking through for almost an hour is warm and incredibly humid. We’re all dripping. A stream rushes through a gully to our left, muddy and high with last night’s rain, adding to the general feeling that we’re not walking so much as swimming through the jungle.

Our first stop this morning had been to see if we could catch a rumor of Mr. Greyhill being around, but without straight up asking people on the street, it was hard to tell. We figured a rich mzungu coming to town would cause a bit of a stir, but no stirring seemed to be happening. Michael wondered if maybe he was staying at one of Extracta’s mines in company housing. We had better luck finding out where Catherine worked. We were pointed to a bar. The cook we asked there said she wasn’t around, but—after a couple of sideways looks—told us we could hire his nephew to take us to her house. Or apparently within five minutes of it.

“Come on,” I cajole the kid.

The boy shakes his head adamantly. He is a good boy. Her home is a den of devils and he is going no farther.

Michael wipes sweat from his face. “It’s just up there, eh? You sure?”

The boy nods, drags his finger studiously in the mud. “Five minutes,” he repeats.

Five minutes can apparently mean anything from a minute of walking to an hour. His uncle had assured us that Catherine’s house was only five minutes away. More like five kilometers.

“Come on,” I say, taking Boyboy’s elbow. “We have to be nearly there. Don’t make that face. I told you not to wear those shoes.”

The kid waits until we’ve moved up the path and then shoots away, skinny limbs flailing. I’m as skeptical as anyone else that we’ll find Catherine’s house as promised, but sure enough, and to everyone’s relief, we soon crest a hill and come out of the forest to find a sunny field. Sheep and goats graze around a little mud-walled house in the sun.

For a second or two we just stand there, catching our breath.

“Are you sure this is it?” Boyboy whispers. “Doesn’t look like a den of devils.”

“I think this is the last home on the path.”

The mountains and jungle rise steeply beyond the grass. The house looks like any of a dozen we’ve passed. The red dirt around it is swept clean, and fuchsia flowers bloom from rusted cans on either side of the doorway, which is covered by a sheet blowing in the breeze. Tiny white butterflies hover over manure in a carefully constructed cow pen a hundred feet away. In the distance I can see a girl hanging laundry on bushes that are covered in pink and orange flowers. The name of the plant pops suddenly out of some dusty corner of my memory: lantana, devil in the bushes. The scene as a whole looks postcard perfect, and I can’t tell if it looks familiar, or if I just want it to.

“Hodi,” I call, announcing us from the edge of the yard. “Hello?” My nerves are zinging. This is it. I’m finally going to meet the mystery girl from the photo.

There’s no answer from the house, so I walk around toward the back, where I can smell wood smoke. Boyboy and Michael follow. Before we can turn the corner, though, we hear a bark, and an enormous tawny dog comes bounding around the side of the house, hackles raised. He barks furiously at us.

“Whoa!” I say, putting my hands up. I hear Boyboy squealing and scrambling backward behind me.

“Hello?” Michael yells. “Is anyone back there? A little help?”

A woman follows the dog, and our hopes for rescue are quickly dashed by the AK-47 slung over her shoulder. She doesn’t aim it at us, but she really doesn’t need to. We all back up.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asks. “Askari!”

At his name, the dog stops barking but hovers near his mistress, hackles still up.

I hold my breath. Her face looks familiar. She might be the girl from the photo but her expression is so different that I can’t be sure.

“Uh, hello,” Michael says, recovering first, but keeping his eye on the gun. “I’m Michael, and these are my friends Christina and Boyboy. We came up from town.”

“Yes, and?”

“We, ah, well, we were hoping to speak with you.”

The girl who was hanging laundry is now galloping over the grass toward us, another big dog at her side.

The woman looks at each of us in turn, suspicion furrowing her brow. “About?”

There’s no sense in beating around the bush. I step forward. “Are you Catherine?” When I get no response, I go on, “It’s about my mother, Anju. I think you knew her?”

The woman just stares at me as if I were speaking Chinese, but then her look changes, like I’ve thrown mud at her face. “Anju? Anju Yvette?”

The girl has reached us and stands hovering just outside of our circle, staring. She is all knees and elbows, maybe about Kiki’s age. The woman holds a hand up at her, telling her to stay back.

“Yes, that’s her,” I say, and take a hopeful step forward. “May we come—”

“No,” Catherine says, and her voice is low and dangerous. The gun at her hip comes up, and she uses it to motion us back in the direction from which we’ve come. “I never want to hear that woman’s name again as long as I live.”