The Lioness(31)

* * *



.?.?.

The packaging for the Fruit Stripe gum had colorful stripes: a psychedelic zebra, David had remarked one time back in Hollywood. He told Katie that he went through at least a pack a day before they met and even more when they started to date because she admitted to him that she liked the taste of it on his breath. He had brought gobs of it to the Serengeti, and they had joked about the striping the first few times they saw actual zebras.

Katie glanced at him now in the Land Rover, waiting. Wondering. Was her plan a pampered actress’s idiotic fantasy? Was she keeping her panic in check with the sort of delusions that screenwriters created for her and her peers who lived on soundstages and backlots?

Maybe.

But the driver looked a little woozy from the heat and from staring into the bright sun as he drove. His eyes were heavy, his gaze glassy and nebulous. Billy would not be able to take him in a real fight, but he didn’t have to: all he needed to do was distract him for a couple of seconds, because David and Terrance would do the rest. His pistol was under the seat, for God’s sake. Why was David not leaning forward to whisper into Billy’s ear? So few words were necessary: Terrance and I will get the guy behind us. You jump the driver. On three.

She elbowed David discreetly. She could see it all so well in her mind, the blocking clear and precise. She, too, would help. She would fall into the lap of the fellow behind her and press herself flat on the rifle. David would grab the guard’s wrist and point the handgun straight into the air, Terrance then prying it from their captor’s fingers. Meanwhile, Billy would ambush the driver. They could do this. They could. Stage combat, but real.

On three.

But David stared away from her out the window and the Land Rover bumped along, and her fear morphed into frustration.

“David?” she said softly but intensely.

He shook his head, a movement that was barely perceptible but still clear. She wanted him to meet her eyes, but he wouldn’t, and she began to suspect there was more to the way he was ignoring her than a simple refusal to take her seriously.

Billy turned around to look at them. He must have overheard her. When he did, the driver seemed to wake up. “Eyes forward,” he snapped.

Once more, Katie studied the driver’s face in the rearview mirror. She had supposed he had been staring ahead at the grass and the track as he fought somnolence. She was wrong: he was watching them carefully too, one eye on whatever passed for a road in this part of the Serengeti and one on the five Americans. She hoped this was why David was sitting there, unmoving, and not because he was afraid. But she honestly wasn’t sure.





CHAPTER TWELVE


    Billy Stepanov





Billy Stepanov, like all psychologists and psychiatrists, won’t speak of his clients. But rumor has it that many are the stars we see on the big screen who have the sorts of problems that are no different from the milkman’s: they just have the money to “talk” about them.

—Movie Star Confidential, December 1962



It was pavement. Shitty pavement, but still asphalt. A single lane. One minute they were in the reserve, and the next they weren’t. They were on a real road for the first time in days. Occasionally, they would continue to spot a few wild animals, largely impalas and gazelles, but most of the creatures they saw now, other than birds, were the great herds of Maasai cattle and goats. The shepherds usually were boys, but not always: he saw a couple of old men holding their long crooks sideways against the back of their necks. He saw women carrying water and children carrying water, sometimes using petrol cans and one little girl using a pair of metal buckets so rusty they looked like terra-cotta pots with handles. And all of them were walking in sun that cooked you, whether you were out in the open in the grass or inside the kiln of a Land Rover. If he survived this, he thought to himself, never again would he take tap water for granted. Never.

Both the driver and his partner in the back spoke English, but the one in the back seemed more fluent. Still, Billy knew that he shouldn’t assume anything: though the driver’s accent was Russian or Ukrainian or whatever, it was certainly possible he understood any and every word that they said. Earlier, Katie had been whispering something to David, but he hadn’t heard what and the fellow had ordered them all to quiet down. He decided enough time had passed that he would venture a question. He leaned forward and directed what he hoped sounded like a polite but confident inquiry at the driver.

“Can you tell us where we’re going?” he asked.

Margie nudged him. She was worried he was only going to get them into more trouble. But he was scared for her; he was scared for the baby inside her. The kid. He was worried about the gash across her stomach and the smaller lacerations she had from the broken glass. He had vowed as soon as his first wife was pregnant with their first child to always ask himself, what would my mother or father do in this situation? And then, more times than not, do the opposite.

When the driver ignored him, he went on, “Excuse me. My wife is pregnant and one of her cuts is still—”

With the back of his left hand, without taking his eyes off the road, the driver smacked him so hard in the nose that Billy fell back against the seat and felt whirling pinwheels of pain and saw white lights behind his eyes. He’d heard the bone against bone over the growl of the Land Rover’s engine, and then he heard Margie shriek once and felt the Land Rover speeding up. The guard in the back was laughing. He opened his eyes because his nose was running and there was something wet on his lips, and he understood it was blood.