The Lioness(75)

“One of your doctors?” He was incredulous.

“Yes.”

“And she believed that?”

“She did.”

“And why are you telling me the…the truth.”

“Because your actor friend over there saw me shoot him.”

“Terrance looks—”

“Terrance Dutton managed to get a gun. We got it back.”

“But David? You killed David.”

“And, if you keep talking, we will kill you.”

The Russian stood up and put his hands on his knees. “When things are really bad—and things are really bad, Billy Stepanov, for all of you and for all of us—you start lying to yourself. You’re some kind of head doctor, right? You know that. So, don’t worry about your sister: she thinks her husband is alive. And it is in your interest to make sure that she continues to believe that fairy tale, too.”

He was still crying. Not sobbing, at least. But he was still snuffling back snot and wiping away tears. He had managed to still his shoulders. But these people. How many had they killed? There were the rangers and Juma back at the camp, and now David and the kid. Yes, the kid was their fault, too: Margie would not have had the miscarriage were it not for this kidnapping. And he had no idea where Reggie and Carmen and Felix and Peter were. For all he knew, this Russian bastard was lying to him, and his wife was—

And that was the moment when he began to doubt that Margie was still alive, too. Maybe believing that it was only a miscarriage—only a miscarriage—was denial on his part.

“Cooper?”

The Russian who’d been talking to him turned around and waited. The fellow who’d spoken was the captor who was guarding Terrance and Katie.

“What?”

“On the radio. We picked up some conversation. It’s not good. Some rangers found Shepard’s Land Rover. Shepard was dead—eaten—and the Americans have disappeared. And—”

The fellow in charge cut him off and walked the guard a few feet away. They continued their conversation in Russian, but Billy, despite his despair at the death of the kid and David, despite his anguish that Margie was gone and might very well be dead, too, had not missed the three salient facts that had just been shared: the Land Rover that once held Reggie Stout, Felix Demeter, and Carmen Tedesco had been abandoned; someone named Shepard—likely one of their abductors—had been devoured by wild animals; and the other Americans had vanished.

He wasn’t sure if their absence gave him hope or left him further wrecked.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


    Carmen Tedesco





“I’m a fighter. I don’t necessarily play fighters. But I know who I am and I know what it took to get where I am,” Carmen told us. “So, every day I put on my big girl pants and I put on my big girl lipstick and I do what it takes. I do the work. When that camera’s red light goes on, I’m ready.”

—The Hollywood Reporter, July 1963



It had been hours now since the sky had grown from orange to blue, and they sat on the ground in the shade of the dead baobab. It was almost eleven in the morning, and, mostly, the vultures were keeping their distance. A half dozen were riding the currents of wind above them in a fashion that suggested they were having fun—they were gliding, their wings only occasionally flapping—but Carmen knew was more likely work. The birds were watching them, appraising them, waiting it out; they were waiting for one or both of the humans to die. Two of the vultures, however, were more brazen: they landed about fifty yards away, and Carmen imagined them as a human couple back home, passive-aggressively cooling their heels while the wait staff set their table at Musso and Frank.

“The Swahili word for lion is simba,” Reggie was saying. She looked over at him. His eyes were hooded now against the sun and the pain. Against the exhaustion. His voice was soft. “What’s lioness?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Then, afraid she had sounded curt, she added, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s just that your knowledge of things always surprises me.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because, Carmen, you’re a lioness.”

“I’m not. Katie—”

“No. You are. I say that with reverence and awe.”

She smiled at him. At the compliment. She didn’t think she deserved it and, when she felt her eyes welling up, looked away. The heat rising up from the dust made the great herd of zebras and wildebeest in the distance glisten; they grazed, the landscape slightly out of focus, the zebras’ striping rippling in the incandescent air. A cinematographer or DP would either fix that or use that.

“What do you think? Are they Egyptian or lappet? The vultures?” he asked.

“I don’t know that either.”

“I think there are binoculars in the knapsack.”

She didn’t give a damn what the hell kind of vultures they were, but she didn’t want to be contrary. Reggie was kind and courageous, and now he was curious. And so she went to the pack and retrieved them.

“I think they’re Ruppell’s,” she told him, though she was only seeing them with her one good eye. “Ruppell’s vulture.”