The Lioness(78)

But this baobab was all fuel, if she could round up sufficient kindling.

She could. She would. She rose, and the vultures flew off. Not far. They never went far when she stood or moved suddenly. They landed about twenty yards away. She looked around and made a plan. She’d round up all the grass and brush she could rip from this arid soil, and then she and Reggie would move to the acacia in the distance and she would burn the baobab to the ground.

That assumed, of course, that Reggie could walk.

Or was even still alive.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


    Terrance Dutton





As many as three hundred Americans and Belgians are still held hostage at the Victoria Hotel in Stanleyville. The Simba leaders insist they are being treated well, but no one here has forgotten the cruelties inflicted on the nuns who were taken hostage only last month. Meanwhile, whites continue to flee the Eastern Congo, sometimes passing a gauntlet of Russian and even Cuban soldiers, who are aiding the rebels.

—Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1964



And now there are three of us, Terrance thought. Katie and Billy and me. David was dead and Margie was gone, likely dead too, and who the hell knew what had happened to everyone else. Billy had managed to share with him the news that the Russian captor calling himself Shepard was dead and the Americans in his care had disappeared. Rangers had found the Land Rover.

The fact that he had to withhold from Katie the reality that her husband was dead was easier than he had expected. It wasn’t because he was so bloody talented. It was simply because they weren’t supposed to speak—though they did occasionally whisper a word or two to each other, and their captors seemed willing to tolerate the occasional murmurs—and he was so beaten up that he wasn’t sure what words would even sound like if he opened his mouth and attempted to speak above a murmur. Also, his head hurt. His whole fucking body ached. And they all reeked. Their breath was toxic, and their clothing was wet with their sweat and, he supposed, some measure of urine and shit. He was seething.

They were back in the Land Rover and driving west. Southwest, he suspected. They were still in Maasai country, but he expected soon there would be signs of colonial civilization. They were on hard-packed dirt now: not pavement, but what was clearly a road that was used with some frequency. He knew roughly where in the Serengeti they were when they were abducted, and while the reserve was vast, it wasn’t endless. Eventually they would reach either the Congo or whatever the hell was that secessionist part of the Congo. It began with a K, but that’s all he could recall at the moment. In October, the rebels had taken a bunch of nuns hostage. He thought that had occurred in Stanleyville. But Stanleyville was impossibly far away: he knew that from the map that had hung behind glass in the lobby in the hotel in Nairobi. No, they weren’t going to Stanleyville. Perhaps they weren’t even going to the Congo. This was all conjecture.

He was in the third row, with the Russian who’d commandeered the name Glenn behind him. Billy and Katie were in the second row ahead of him. No one would tell them their destination, but he’d heard Katie whisper to her brother that she prayed it was the safe house with David and Margie. The idea that she could harbor such a hope broke his heart. The reality that they were siblings devastated him too, though he couldn’t quite articulate why in his mind. Was it because their mother might lose both of her children? Perhaps. He supposed even the likes of Glenda Stepanov cared for her young. But there was more to it than that. It was because both siblings were fundamentally good people, despite their upbringing; nature had kicked the shit out of nurture in the Stepanov household.

He looked out the window and saw a body of water in the distance, to the north. It looked substantial, and his first thought was that it was Lake Victoria. But he really had no idea. Before they left Nairobi, Charlie Patton had given them all crappy little black-and-white maps of the reserve, and the lake had been in the upper-left-hand corner. Still, the water could be anything. A wide river. A different lake. He noted there were neither buildings nor signs of mining operations.

Which was when the Land Rover bounced like a plane in an air pocket and he heard a pop and something metallic snapping, and the vehicle tilted and swerved. For a split second, he feared it was going to roll over. At first he thought it was a gunshot and, along with Katie and Billy, he ducked. But when the driver cursed and Glenn laughed at the panicked reaction of the three Americans, he realized it was something else. The vehicle slowed to a stop, half on and half off the hard-packed dirt track.

He looked up, and even though their abductors were speaking Russian, it was clear what had happened. They had a flat tire and something worse. He glanced out the back of the Land Rover at a deep fissure that ran across the road. The chasm had, he suspected, snapped the rear axle. Their driver got out and stood staring at the leaning vehicle with his hands on his hips.

Cooper, the one with the blue eyes who was in charge of this madness, was exasperated. He climbed from the front passenger seat and stood beside the driver. Then he said something to Glenn, and Glenn began to escort the Americans from the vehicle at gunpoint.



* * *



.?.?.

The five of them were drinking in the dusky light at the bar of the West Hollywood hotel where Eva Monley and Judy Caponigro were staying, the Chateau Marmont. Joining the two women, who had flown in from Nairobi only the day before, were Katie and David and Terrance. They were seated on stools around a high-top table with a red candle in a hurricane glass in the center, as well as an art deco ashtray with a naked water nymph that seemed to have mistaken the tray for a pond.