The Lioness(91)

He understood it was a rhetorical question. “You’re supposing someone knows we’re missing,” he replied.

She motioned with her head toward Cooper. “I know they put in their ransom demands.”

“How?”

“This morning he took that picture of me. The Polaroid. Someone’s driving it to…wherever. He said that whoever he was dealing with was…he said the negotiations were getting contentious.”

“Well, in that case, let’s find out who knows we’re out here.”

“Think he’ll tell us?”

“At this point? I don’t see why he wouldn’t.”

Together they walked back to him. He was seated in the shade of their shadows, and Billy felt unexpectedly powerful as they stood over him. It was the combination of his height and the fact they both had guns.

“Your name isn’t really Cooper,” he began. “Obviously.”

The fellow was sweating, and Billy couldn’t decide whether it was more from the sun or the pain. There had been some aspirin in the medical kit and Katie had given him a couple tablets, but Billy assumed it barely took the edge off the agony that accompanied getting a sizable part of your hand shot away. Nevertheless, Billy didn’t let down his guard: the guy was dangerous. How many stories had Charlie Patton told them about wounded animals charging well-armed humans the moment they relaxed?

“No,” he said, and he winced. “Obviously.”

“What is it really?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. Billy had spent countless hours with patients, fossicking through their facial expressions to try to understand the depth of their emotional pain. This was physical pain. The aspirin hadn’t done a damn thing. He considered not pressing, but then the fellow raised up his lids and there were those stunning blue eyes, and he said, “Colonel Viktor Procenko. But you’re wrong, it doesn’t matter. Either my boys get here first and they kill you. Or the rangers or soldiers get here first and they kill me.”

“The rangers won’t kill you. They’ll arrest—”

“If they get here first, I’ll make sure they kill me. Or you do. I’d rather die fast out here than rot in a jail in Dar es Salaam, waiting to be executed.”

There it was, the universal: die fast. Live long. But die fast.

“They’d let you die? The Soviet Union?”

“They would deny their involvement in…this.”

“Are you KGB and working with the Simbas?” Katie pressed. “Did you kidnap us for weapons?”

He nodded. “Money for weapons, to be precise. Though to most of the world, it just looked like an old-fashioned kidnapping where all that mattered was the money. A lot of money. Nine Americans from Hollywood, including the world’s biggest movie star and the son of a CIA officer who works in MK-ULTRA? You have no idea how much more valuable your lives are than most people’s. It’s…it’s shameful. But your value, Katie Stepanov? That was the point.”

“Who did you ask?” Katie asked.

“For the money? Your lawyer. Your studio. And a third block from the Kenyan government for their citizens. The money is—or was—going to be delivered to Albertville.”

“In the Congo?”

He nodded. “A cement factory. Where there was some fighting in August. And then the Simbas could buy what they needed from the right brokers. The right arms dealers.”

“If my husband has such value, why didn’t you ask the American government for the ransom?”

He rolled his eyes at her naivete. “Oh, we couldn’t allow the CIA to know what we know about your husband’s father. If they did? Overwhelming force, casualties be damned, to stop us from bringing your David Hill to Moscow. He would have been quite a prize. They would have killed him, if need be. Just like they killed Frank Olson.” He smirked. “The man who knew too much. Wasn’t that the name of a movie?” He asked the question playfully because he knew the answer. “Your father-in-law was there, you know—when they tossed Frank Olson out the window.”

Billy had no idea who that was, but he could see on Katie’s face that she did. He started to ask, but Katie had a question. “Did you read about my safari in the newspapers?” she asked. “Is that where you got this idea? Or did Charlie Patton tell you we were coming?”

Procenko grimaced again, but then offered the smallest of smiles. “Charlie Patton was an idiot. He had nothing to do with it.”

“Then whose idea was it?”

He looked down at the ball of gauze on his hand, then up into the sun. He seemed to be craving its warmth on his face.

“Whose idea was it?” she asked again, raising her voice for the first time. “Tell me.”

“It was my sister’s. But it was one of you greedy Americans with two faces who made it happen. One of your…guests. You all think you’re so much better than Russians. You’re not. Your corruption knows no bounds.”

Billy’s mind was making an inventory of the safari entourage as the guy spoke, and as if his mind were a roulette wheel with names instead of numbers, he knew instantly where the ball was going to land. If Procenko hadn’t that moment revealed the source aloud, Billy might have told him to shut up, to not say another word, but it was too late.