The Lioness(36)

He recalled some of the movies his father had taken him to over the years. What would James Bond have done in Dr. No? In From Russia with Love? Or what would the British POWs have done in The Bridge on the River Kwai? He’d been thirteen years old when he’d seen that one, but he’d been old enough to be moved by the very specific heroism and selflessness of the prisoners.

But that was all make-believe. All of the movies were make-believe. Certainly, the Americans on this safari were incapable of saving themselves. They were all from Hollywood and he doubted any of them had ever done anything heroic, except maybe Reggie Stout. After all, they hadn’t ever had to, and they didn’t have to now. They were being kidnapped, and either someone would pay for their release or the government would swoop in and save them. Because unlike the men in the back of this truck who worked for Charlie Patton, rumbling now toward some spot where each and every one of them might be gifted with a bullet in the head, they had value. But men like Benjamin? He had none.

At least in the eyes of most of the world. His mother would disagree. So would his father.

These men who might kill him had ambushed the safari, but it was clear they were fundamentally pursuit predators. This was all part of a very-well-coordinated plan. They had stalked the safari, they had trailed it. And, finally, they had attacked it.

Benjamin, on the other hand, was in no position to be a pursuit predator, and so that meant he was, by definition, prey.

Or, just maybe, an ambush predator. Unfortunately, it was unlikely he had the time to lie in wait, because any moment they might arrive at their destination: the ravine or the river or the kopje where their captors might execute the whole bunch of them sitting now in the back of the truck. They’d march them one by one from the vehicle, line them up, and shoot them.

“Muema?” he murmured.

The guide looked into the distance but didn’t respond.

“You really believe they might kill us?” Benjamin pressed.

“I think it’s possible, yes. But I don’t know it for a fact. And neither do you. I may be mistaken. If they really wanted to execute us, they could have done it back at the camp. Just thrown our corpses into the lorry if they have some special place to bury us.”

“Then we’re just being kidnapped, too?” Just. What a concept. Merely kidnapped.

The guide glanced down at his bound wrists and then brought his fingers together as if in prayer. There was beauty in the gesture, but also fatalism. Benjamin recalled the Swahili word for freedom that was synonymous now with the liberation of the East African nations: uhuru. In some cases, that birth was bloody and violent, in others a transition that surprised everyone with its peacefulness. It was impossible to know what turns the upheaval would take: even the Americans on this safari had come from a nation born via a bloody cesarean, a revolution against one of the very same European nations that had demanded such fealty from East Africa.

Well, if they do decide to execute us, Benjamin decided, I am not going to die on my knees. Even a Thomson’s gazelle will fight to the end against a jackal; even a buffalo with half its insides obliterated by a Mauser will charge if it can walk.

“It’s time to attack the bastards,” he said quietly to Muema. “We swarm the two back here. Then we jump the driver when he stops—or we jump out the back if he doesn’t.”

“Your father took you to too many movies, Benjamin. Most of us would get killed.”

“We may all get killed if we don’t.”

“Have you ever seen a man fire a Soviet assault rifle? That one gun could wipe us all out in seconds.”

“I have,” he said. “I was there for the elephant massacre. The elephant slaughter. They all had Kalashnikovs. My father and I were both there.”

When the guide remained silent, Benjamin told him, his tone as urgent as it had ever been in his life, “Muema: I’d rather die charging like a rhino than bleating like a goat.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


    Felix Demeter





Doris Day and Audrey Meadows both cringed when asked about the beach scene in “Bermuda Shorts.” Although Felix Demeter—yes, progeny of director Rex Demeter—is only one of the four writers credited with the 93-minute disaster, insiders tell us that the grating sand-in-your-suit dialogue is all his.

—Movie Star Confidential, February 1962



There it was: a pocket knife. A Boy Scout knife. Reggie Stout had a fucking camping knife in the fingers of his left hand, his right hand shielding most of it. But for a brief moment, Felix had seen it. He’d had a knife just like it himself when he’d been a boy. And, it seemed, this PR man had one too. Still. At the age of forty or forty-one.

Its body was black, though the metal was supposed to look like tree bark, and it had, Felix believed, a flat-head screwdriver, a can opener, a bottle opener, and the knife blade. But the blade couldn’t have been more than three inches long when you flipped it open. Did Reggie really believe it was any match against a rifle—plus the gun their driver was packing?

But it seemed that Reggie was scheming. He leaned forward, adjusting one of his socks, and whispered something to Carmen.

“What?” Felix asked his wife, his lips barely moving. “What is he doing?”

She shook her head vaguely, ignoring him. Whatever Reggie was planning—whatever Reggie and Carmen were planning together—it did not involve him. They knew the depth of his cowardice. It was among his defining features: his eyes, his hair, his craven soul. He was useless.