Acts of Faith

Man of All Races

A LOUD RUSTLING in the trees woke Fitzhugh well before dawn. He rose from bed slowly, to avoid waking Diana, and felt his way through the banda’s black interior, opened the front flap, and stepped out to the veranda to investigate. As the noise could have been made only by a large animal, he wasn’t sure if this was a smart thing to do. At first, he saw only the inky, indistinct trees and saltbush masking the near side of the river, a fragment of the river itself, silvered by the quarter moon in the west, and the escarpment rising almost sheer on the far side. A few seconds later he detected movement in the vegetation, then made out the silhouette of an elephant, tearing off leaves and small branches with its trunk. It was probably the safari camp’s mascot, a well-mannered bull that treated the guests with benign indifference. He watched the elephant pruning the trees and heard in the distance the long, resonant moan of a lion. From behind him came the sound of Diana undoing the zipper.

“Fitz?”

“Yes.”

She came out in her nightgown, the satin clinging to her, and leaned over the back of the chair and clasped him around the chest. “What are you doing out here at four in the morning?”

“Our big friend woke me,” he said, pointing.”Did you hear the lion?”

“That’s what woke me.”

“The lions of Tsavo,” he said. “Man-eaters.”

“That’s right. Women aren’t the menu. He’ll go for you.” She moved to the railing and stood with her hands on it, looking toward the river and the escarpment beyond, its top faintly illuminated by the waning moon. “I’m rather glad we came here. I love Tsavo, the last really wild place left in Kenya. My father hunted here, my grandfather as well. He hunted with Finch-Hatton.”

“Ah yes, the mighty sahibs,” Fitzhugh remarked. He never could understand the white man’s fascination with wildlife, whether he shot it for sport or photographed it. For the African, wild animals were a nuisance or a menace.

Diana turned her head, gazing at him over her bare shoulder. “There’s another thing I’m glad of. That we both broke down.”

He would not have broken if she hadn’t first. She had sent him a letter a little more than a week ago, declaring an end to the “intermission” she’d imposed. She couldn’t bear another day without him, she didn’t care what happened in the future, she needed him now. He answered immediately, writing that the separation was unbearable for him as well and that he had to see her as soon as possible. The exchange coincided with Douglas’s decision to give the Knight Air staff a holiday—a long weekend on the coast, at company expense. He’d arranged a bird-watching safari in Tsavo for himself and invited Fitzhugh to join him to talk over some business matters. Fitzhugh accepted, provided Diana could come along.

“I’m glad, too,” he said.

“You sound a little ambivalent.”

“But I’m not,” he protested, though in fact he was. It seemed to him that the only thing in charge of their relationship was her mood of the moment. If she felt that they should be together, then they would be; if not, then they wouldn’t. He criticized himself for not taking command and holding her to her demand for a breathing spell till he could resolve the question of whether he was capable of committing to her, whatever the cost to himself. They were reunited, but they were adrift again, to wherever the currents of love and need might carry them.

“Don’t tell me you’re glad,” Diana demanded. “Show me.”

In the moonlight, she had the cool beauty of a statue, her pale hair flipped over a pale shoulder, her cream-colored nightgown almost indistinguishable from her skin. He came up behind her and, circling her waist, kissed her throat.

“We’ll just have to have faith that this will sort itself out, since we can’t,” she said, as if guessing his thoughts.

Her tummy bulged softly under his hands. He adored this mature, preserved body of hers, held between ripeness and decay, toughness and vulnerability. Yet the thought that there was something a little unnatural in this attraction, as if it manifested Oedipal longings, brought a modesty to his embrace. He held her loosely and with a discreet space between himself and her.

“I feel shameless,” she said, seized his wrists, and drew him to her, lewdly rubbing her hips against him as she tilted her head back and brushed her lips across the underside of his chin. “Utterly, completely shameless.” She pulled his hands below her waist, and he caressed her there, through the satin, arousing himself as much as he did her. “Oh yes, here, now, like this,” she whispered, turning to slide down his body, tugging his undershorts to his ankles as she fell in a mimic of a dancer’s swoon, drawing him to the veranda’s floor with her.

A river breeze slithered through the trees, carrying the smell of the gallery forest, a jungle smell, rank and sweet at the same time. Branches shook as the elephant foraged. They heard the lion again—the drawn-out, belly-deep moan, followed by a series of grunts. Fitzhugh lay under her, to spare her from the rough planks. Straddling him, she lifted her gown up over her waist and gave a low gasp as he penetrated her; and in the quaking instant that he poured himself into her, all things were resolved—but only for that instant.

She flung herself over his chest and kissed him. “I have lost all my self-respect, and I’m perfectly, perfectly happy.”

The lion groaned.

“He sounds closer,” Fitzhugh said. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“Oh, a lion won’t come in with a bull elephant in camp,” she said. “Do you think he heard us?”

“That depends on how well lions hear.”

“I meant next door. Doug.”

“He’s a sound sleeper,” Fitzhugh said. “He’s probably dreaming of birds.”

“Perhaps we could talk now? On the plane, you said you’d had some thoughts.”

He went inside for his cigarettes and sat down in the deck chair, she next to him. “I wonder if you’ve had the same thought. We could adopt.”

“It was the first thing I thought of, but I can’t imagine who would want to give a child to someone my age.”

“With all the orphans in this country, they can’t be particular. And there’s . . .” He hesitated, drawing on the cigarette. “This is awkward. There is your—your situation.”

“I’m rich,” she said.

“I would think they would be delighted to place a child in such comfortable circumstances.”

“And how would you feel?”

“I must face facts. You would be the one putting bread on the table.”

“I meant, how would you feel about raising a child who isn’t yours?”

“I believe I could do it.” He put an arm around her and stared toward the river, almost invisible, now the moon had set. “It could be a solution. We could be happy together, you, me, and a brood of adopted children.”

He wished he could have sounded more certain, had used know instead of believe, will instead of the more hypothetical could.

“A lovely picture,” she said. “It terrifies me.”

“That’s a strange reaction to a lovely picture.”

“I’m terrified of happiness.”

He sat up straighter, disturbed by the comment. “Just minutes ago you said you are perfectly happy. Does that mean you are also perfectly terrified?”

“Happiness terrifies me because it’s so easily lost.”

He knew she was inviting him to declare that her terror was unfounded, that he would make her happy the rest of her life, but his own terror of uttering a vow he might not be able to keep restrained him.

“You’ll know when you’re sure,” she said, again reading his thoughts. “And not a word from you till you are.”

After breakfast, with nothing more concluded between them, he and Diana (smashing in a straw hat, tan bush jacket, and leopard-print scarf) set off with Douglas, a camp driver, and two armed park rangers on a quest for the carmine bee-eater. Douglas’s aim was to photograph the bird and add it to something called a “life-list.”

“What is that?” Fitzhugh asked as they left camp, bumping down a dirt-track road alongside a watercourse.

A life-list, Douglas explained, was the record of every bird a bird-watcher observed in its natural habitat.

“But I thought you had already seen a carmine bee-eater.”

“Nope,” said Douglas, riding in the front seat, binoculars around his neck, and in his lap a camera with a lens almost as long as an arm. “Where’d you get the idea I did?”

“From you. The first conversation we had with Tara. You told her that you’d been to Tsavo with your mother and that you’d photographed a carmine bee-eater.”

“I couldn’t have said that,” Douglas insisted, turning around to face him with a disarming grin. “I’ve never been to Tsavo, and neither has my mother. You must be remembering wrong.”

“I have a memory like a computer, and I distinctly recall your saying that you’d gotten pictures of this bird. Here in Tsavo, with your mother. I remember that because I thought at the time your family must have money to burn if your mother could come all the way to Africa to look at birds.”

“Your computer has a glitch,” Douglas replied casually, then boosted himself through the overhead hatch to ride on the roof.

“There is no glitch, my friend,” Fitzhugh called up in an unpleasant voice. “That is exactly what you said. Own up to it.”

Douglas said nothing.

“Is there some reason you won’t own up to it?”

Diana laid a hand on his arm and said, “Darling, why are you making an issue out of nothing?”

Of course it was nothing. He was feeling irritable, frustrated by his inability to give her what she wanted, and in this state of mind, Douglas’s lie and flip dismissal of the accuracy of his memory had struck him as an insult. He knew Douglas had a tendency to fib when it suited some larger purpose of his, but Fitzhugh couldn’t fathom what purpose there could have been in denying he’d said what he’d said to Tara, as if it were an incriminating statement.

They drove on, passing near a big herd of Cape buffalo that Diana wanted to photograph. Douglas vetoed her request to stop. There would be no stopping until he’d seen his bird.

“Single-minded, isn’t he?” Diana said in an undertone.

“Yes,” Fitzhugh said. “It’s a flaw of the virtue.”

His single-mindedness was much on display as they continued down the road. The watercourse was a virtual aviary of herons, ibis, eagles, rollers, shrikes, and storks, but those species were already on Douglas’s life-list, and he bypassed them all. When the road turned to skirt a saltbush forest, he thumped the roof and called out, “Simama!”

The driver braked just as Fitzhugh spotted a blaze of scarlet, flitting into the dark green saltbush. Douglas leaped to the ground, flung the rear door open, and with eagerness written all over his face, pulled out his tripod. The driver cautioned that he ought not to be out of the vehicle—a man on foot might be seen as prey or a threat by a lion, buffalo, or elephant.

“That’s why we hired these boys,” he said, motioning at the rangers. “C’mon, let’s go. There’s two of them, both males.”

The rangers piled out. One, a giant Turkana with a semiautomatic rifle, took the lead, Douglas behind him. Fitzhugh and Diana followed, with the second ranger bringing up the rear. The saltbush, growing in dense thickets twenty feet high, was mazed with trails trodden by elephant, whose spoor was everywhere—piles of dung, circular prints as big around as wastebaskets. Glancing over his shoulder, Fitzhugh could no longer see the Land Rover; nor could he tell which way to get back to it. A hornbill lofted from a branch, making a mournful cry. Otherwise there wasn’t a sound. The Turkana advanced cautiously, looking right to left. The ranger’s switched-on watchfulness did not reassure Fitzhugh; a whole pride of lions could be hiding in the thick undergrowth, and no one would know it till they sprang. Douglas raised his binoculars.

“There one is,” he whispered, and passed the binoculars to Fitzhugh while pointing at a shrub ahead. The bird was perched atop it, its body feathered flame red, its head a luminescent blue. It flew off, bobbing against the cloudless sky.

“Damn it!” Douglas shouldered tripod and camera and charged forward, the Turkana running after him, calling to him to be careful. Fitzhugh, Diana, and the other ranger caught up with them at the edge of a broad clearing, across which both bee-eaters clung to a low tree in perfect profile. Douglas spread the tripod’s legs and, signaling for everyone to remain still, crouched and adjusted the focus. The shutter made several rapid clicks that sounded as loud as pencils falling to a tile floor.

“Outstanding, got ’em both,” he said softly. “I’m going to try for a few more, closer up.”

Lifting his rig, he stalked into the clearing, halted, and took another series of shots. As he was moving to one side for a different angle, a shrill scream sent the two birds into sudden flight. The bushes across the clearing trembled and produced two elephants, a cow and a calf, their hides reddened by Tsavo dust to make the pair resemble pieces of rusty sculpture. The cow stood facing the intruders and scuffed the ground with a forefoot, her ears flared, her great head swaying to and fro—body language that required no translation. The Turkana told Douglas to back away slowly, but he could not resist the chance to take a picture of the angry elephant. He was oblivious to the danger, the kind of man, Fitzhugh thought, who believed that no harm could befall him because none ever had. His refusal to give ground provoked the cow beyond tolerance. She trumpeted and charged at a stiff-legged run. Abandoning his tripod and camera, Douglas fled, the beast rapidly closing on him as he sprinted straight toward Fitzhugh and Diana, drawing them into the elephant’s path. She came on, ears pinned back, head lowered, tusks gleaming in the sunlight—three tons of living battering ram, a four-legged bulldozer.

Fitzhugh swooped Diana into his arms and dove into a clump of saltbush, falling face-down atop her, prepared to shield her from the elephant’s tusks with his body if it came to that. He heard what sounded like three door knocks in quick succession. Rifle shots. Cautiously, he got to his feet and saw the Turkana, rifle crooked in his arm, and the elephant trotting away, the calf behind her. He had fired over her head, stopping her charge and scaring her off. He wheeled and announced that it was safe to come out of hiding.

Fitzhugh turned and gave Diana his hand. She pulled herself up. Everything had happened too quickly for them to be conscious of fear, though Fitzhugh assumed he’d felt it—his heart was beating at twice its normal rate.

“That was awfully brave of you,” she said, picking up her hat and scarf. “But it wouldn’t have done the least bit of good.”

He gave her a questioning look.

“An elephant doesn’t kill with its tusks. It leans its forehead on you and squashes you like you would squash a bug under your thumb.” She spoke with scientific detachment. “So you see, she would have crushed us both to death.”

He reflected on this information and said he would have done the same thing regardless.

“I know,” she said, squeezing his arm. “And I love you for it.”

Douglas had gone into the clearing to retrieve his gear. The elephant had knocked the tripod over, splintering it into several pieces. He tossed them aside and picked up his camera, still attached to the mount, from which a foot of a tripod leg protruded like fractured bone. They watched him raise the camera to his eye, turning to point it at them.

“It’s good to go, not a dent!” he shouted triumphantly.

“You might want to thank him,” said Diana, jerking her thumb sideways at the Turkana.

“Hey, yeah.” He took the ranger’s photo. “Asante sana, rafiki! I sure would’ve hated to lose those pictures!”

There is something wrong with him, Fitzhugh thought as he regarded Douglas, standing out there alone and exposed to the unforgiving African light. Something is missing in him, I don’t know what.

After lunch, during which Douglas had nattered on about his narrow escape, as if no one else had been in danger, he reminded Fitzhugh that this was a working holiday and asked him to take an hour to discuss business. They met in his banda where, shirtless and barefoot in the afternoon heat, he lounged in a camp chair, a file folder in his lap. He led off by stating that his reservations about Knight Air’s new marketing director had proved unfounded. He removed copies of the past month’s invoices from the folder. The names of several agencies belonging to the UN consortium had been highlighted—World Vision, CARE, the Catholic Relief Agency, among others.

“Timmerman wooed every one of them from Pathways to us, and the best part is, he did it without paying a dime in commissions.”

“Kickbacks, you mean,” Fitzhugh said.

“Hey, whatever. Timmerman just used his friendship with the agency logisticians. The man is a rainmaker.” Douglas sat back with an indolent stretch of his long legs, their dark blond hair sparkling in the light. “We’re doing great, better than I expected, but the flying nun is starting to make noise.”

“Noise? What sort of noise?” asked Fitzhugh, preoccupied by his perception that Douglas possessed some fatal deficiency.

“She’s told some people that she thinks we’re engaging in unfair business practices, hiring Timmerman away from the UN and then using his connections to take clients from her. Corrupt is the word I’ve heard she’s been using. Not surprised. Tara isn’t used to real competition, and now that she’s getting a taste of it, she doesn’t know how to handle it.”

Fitzhugh opined that this wasn’t a fair characterization.

“Don’t let yourself be taken in by that woman. The word I’ve got is that she intends to do more than call us names.”

“Intends what?”

“There’s the problem. I don’t know. All I’ve heard is that she’s said, in so many words, that since we’ve made things tough for her, she’s going to make them tough for us. Nothing more solid than that. Could be the usual Loki gossip.”

“I imagine it is.”

“Well, I—we—we can’t count on that. We’re vulnerable. Got to ask you something. Yellowbird—you never mentioned any of that to Diana, right? She and Tara being friends and all.”

“Not even to her,” Fitzhugh replied, stiffening. “I’ve kept my word.”

Withdrawing his outstretched legs, Douglas leaned forward and rested his palms on Fitzhugh’s knees, his direct and intimate gaze on Fitzhugh’s face. “There’s another thing I’ve got to ask, and it isn’t easy.” He winced to show how deeply the question distressed him. “Do you think Diana, considering her feelings for you . . . if you asked her to, would she be willing to find out if Tara is planning to cause us problems and how she means to go about it?”

Fitzhugh had no reply to this stunning request.

“I can understand why you’d be reluctant, “ Douglas said, “but forewarned is forearmed, right?”

“If you really understood my reluctance, you never would have made such a proposal,” Fitzhugh said. “You are asking me to ask the woman I love to betray her friend and become a corporate spy for you.”

“My man”—lips arched into their beguiling smile—“it’s not just me. It’s us, the whole company, everything we’ve built together.”

“I am not going to do it.” He was both surprised and pleased by his firmness. He was Douglas’s man all right, and in that subservience lay the power to refuse him for the first time.

The American shrugged, a long, slow shrug signaling disappointment and resignation. Having the upper hand—an unusual state of affairs for Fitzhugh in his relations with Douglas—prompted him to give in a little.

“There must be a way to find out what she’s up to, if she’s up to anything,” he said. “Leave it to me, in my own way.”

He left the banda with the vague feeling that he ought not to have made that offer, but he was curious himself about Tara’s intentions, assuming she had them; curious and apprehensive, for the company’s clandestine operations were not its only vulnerable point. Nearly half its aircrews were flying without proper documentation from the Department of Civil Aviation; Knight Air had expanded so fast, and its flight schedules were so crowded, that no one had bothered with the bureaucratic niceties. Also, some of its planes were not up to snuff, taking to the air with timed-out engines and expired airworthiness certificates. Tara had to be aware of these deficiencies—they were common knowledge in Loki. Were she to bring them to DCA’s attention, an inspection would result in grounded planes and grounded pilots. To get them flying again would require some hefty bribes at the least. He made a mental note to begin setting things to rights as soon as he got back to work.

Engrossed in these thoughts, he entered his and Diana’s banda and found her sleeping soundly, her deep, measured breaths like the sigh of a calm sea on a shore. He sat on the opposite bed and looked at her, screened by the white mosquito net. Soon the sound of her breathing in, breathing out, drew the agitation from his brain and into a feeling of utter peace. In that tranquil state, he recalled what he’d done, shielding her from the elephant charge, and he knew with mathematical certainty that there was no one else for whom he would have done the same. Only minutes ago he had protected her in another way, and there was no one else for whom he would have done that either. He went to her bedside, knelt on both knees, and lifting the net over his head, kissed her cheek, her throat, ears, and lips.

She stirred and said in a voice thick with sleep, “What are you doing?”

“Kissing you. You are Diana, the huntress, and you’ve snared me.”

Laughing, she cradled his head in her hands. “So business is over, and now it’s pleasure?”

“No, not that. You said I would know when I was sure and not a word from me till then. So now I am speaking the words.”

She released him and propped herself on her elbows, an attentive look on her face. “What has made you so sure all of a sudden? Just this morning you—”

“Never mind what I thought this morning, or an hour ago. I know it now. You are the most precious thing in the world to me. I could never be happy without you, and I want nothing more than to make you happy and not to be terrified of happiness.”

His fervor appeared to frighten her nonetheless, her blue irises darting side to side.

“Really, Diana, you will have no reason to be terrified. Look at me, on my knees. Isn’t that traditional? Will you marry me?”

She stared at him silently.

“You must answer!”

She clasped the back of his neck and tugged. “Get off your knees and into this bed and I will.”

He’d never been made love to as he was that afternoon. Parting with her in Nairobi two days later, he felt that the whole wide earth could be between them and they would still be together. They set a date three months from now but did not tell Douglas—Diana wanted it kept secret till she’d made arrangements, picked out a suitable dress, and had formal announcements printed up. She planned on a small, discreet wedding in her Karen garden, with a few friends, Fitzhugh’s family, and her only living relatives, a younger sister and a brother-in-law who lived in the UK.

After his return to Loki, everyone remarked on his demeanor, which went beyond his normal good humor, and asked what accounted for it. He was eager to tell them, to share his happiness but also to test their reactions, for one concern clouded his joy. There were moments when, picturing himself standing beside her in her garden, he would imagine people whispering that he had insinuated himself into her heart for reasons other than love.

In the meantime, he was occupied with the two tasks he’d set for himself: improving aircraft maintenance so the planes could pass any inspection, and bringing pilot documentation up to date. He told VanRensberg, the chief mechanic, to work overtime to take care of the former. With the latter, Wesley’s loadmaster, Nimrod, proved invaluable. The little Kikuyu knew everyone at DCA, including the director herself, with whom he arranged a meeting at her office at Jomo Kenyatta. She was a hefty, formidable woman aware that she was in the man’s world of Kenyan officialdom and determined to prove she belonged there. She stated that she was pleased to see the two representatives from Knight Air; she had recently received reports of certain irregularities in its operations. Fitzhugh didn’t need to ask the source of that information and credited himself for his percipience in guessing the action Tara would take.

“We’re aware of our problems,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. To correct them.”

The director offered him and Nimrod a sympathetic expression. What a pity they had not come sooner! Only this morning she had dispatched two inspectors to inform the airline that its pilots who lacked current Kenyan certification would be prohibited from flying until properly documented. “You must have passed each other in midair,” she said with a laugh that shook her considerable bosom. In an earlier time she would have been a great African mama, Fitzhugh thought, a village dispenser of cures, a conjure-woman tossing bones for a fee.

“We can’t afford to have several aircrews grounded,” he said. “Isn’t there some way you can stop this process?”

She shook her head, declaring that the wheels were in motion. Withdrawing from his briefcase copies of the licenses of the pilots in question, along with other records, Fitzhugh expressed the hope that presenting these documents now, rather than waiting for her department to request them, would expedite the process. Most certainly it will save time, she said; nevertheless, it could take a month. She sat back, hands folded in her lap, her posture and her silence telling them that the next move was theirs. Nimrod made it, producing a cookie box from the briefcase.

“I remembered how much you like these,” he said. “They are made in America.”

“Oh yes, peanut butter.” The director’ s face brightened. “I love them.”

Nimrod placed the box on her desk.

She took the lagniappe, opened the top, and bowing her head, sniffed the contents. “They smell delicious. And how many cookies in this box? It doesn’t say.”

“There are enough for you and to share with your friends.”

“Excellent.” The woman raised her ponderous frame from the chair and extended her hand. “These matters will be cleared up very quickly. I can promise your pilots will have Kenya licenses within the week. It’s only a matter of finishing paperwork.”

They were back in Loki by nightfall. Fitzhugh reported to Douglas that the expedition had been successful. He was in a foul mood. The inspectors, unaware of the transaction that had taken place in Nairobi, had grounded six pilots and two aircraft that VanRensberg had not been able to attend to.

“I’ve got about fifty grand in lost revenue,” he said, waving a sheaf of contracts.

“We can absorb it,” Fitzhugh assured him. “It will all be back to normal in a week.”

“We’ll see. The director could screw us yet. Tara must have given her some cookies, too, so now we wait to find out which brand she likes best.”

“Tara doesn’t do business that way. She probably did nothing more than call the director’s attention to our problems and ask her to look into them, as a favor. But when it comes to doing a favor for nothing and another for something, you know which way she’ll go.”

“Jesus Christ!” Douglas tossed the papers aside. “Do you still think Tara is Mother Teresa with a pilot’s license? Of course she paid the director off to find as much wrong with us as she could. This means war.”

“War?”

“That bitch is out to ruin us. If we don’t act first, we’ll be toast.”

Fitzhugh, who’d been standing the whole time, sat at his desk and remarked that Douglas was creating a conflict where none existed, imputing to Tara motives he was sure she did not possess. She wasn’t out to ruin Knight Air . . . He stopped pursuing this argument, and what stopped him was a shred of wisdom he’d picked up from Malachy long ago, in one of their bull sessions: If someone deeply wishes for something to be so, his imagination will mold reality to conform to what is wished for. Douglas wanted a war with Tara, and he meant to have it. All he’d needed was a pretext, and now she had unwittingly given him one.

“I am going to ask you to do nothing,” Fitzhugh said. “You’ll only make a bad situation worse. Do nothing for one week. If the director isn’t as good as her word, then fight your war, but if she comes through for us, continue to do nothing. Agreed?”

Douglas made some vague gesture.

“What does that mean?”

“Okay,” he said.

The director responded favorably to her gift. Just six days later Knight Air’s two grounded planes were given clean bills of health, and its pilots were issued their documents. In the meantime, Douglas had flown to Nairobi for a meeting with Hassan Adid. He did not disclose, to Fitzhugh or to anyone, the purpose of this get-together.

A few days after it took place, Tara stormed into the office, as angry as Fitzhugh had ever seen her, and demanded to see Douglas immediately. Fitzhugh told her that he’d taken a flight to Bahr el Ghazal and wasn’t expected back till the afternoon. She hesitated, her eyes throwing off sparks, rocketing around the room until they settled back on him. Stepping forward, she pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and slammed it on the desk.

“Look at that,” she said, her voice quavering. “Look at it and tell me what it is.”

Fitzhugh glanced at it. Nonplussed, he said nothing.

“Well, what is it?”

“Just what it says it is,” he answered with a nervous laugh. “It’s tomorrow’s schedule of UN-authorized flights. The one that’s faxed to Khartoum every morning.”

“No, it isn’t. It is corruption! Complete corruption!”

“I really don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“I think you do. Read it more carefully. Oh, I’ll read it for you.” She snatched the paper and read aloud, “ ‘Operator—Knight Air, UN call sign Charley Five, destination Mapel, agency CARE. Operator—Knight Air, UN call sign Charley Six, destination Gogrial, agency Doctors Without Borders. Operator—Knight Air, UN call sign Charley Two Zero, destination Malualkon, agency Adventist Development.’ It goes on, but nowhere do you see a Pathways flight on this schedule, and that’s because I was notified yesterday morning that my UN call sign has been revoked.”

Now the cause of her fury had become clearer. Without a call sign, her air service could not deliver UN cargoes, and those accounted for most of her business. She was facing disaster.

“And how did all this come about?” she went on, lips trembling. “Your man Timmerman, your so-called marketing manager, when all he is, is a bloody fixer, that’s how. He pulled strings at the UN and had it done. That’s not a guess. I know he did. And I’m quite sure he didn’t do it on his own initiative. It wasn’t enough that you people used him to steal clients from me. You had to make it impossible for me to fly for any of them. That isn’t marketing, that’s crooked monopoly. And you have the gall to tell me you don’t understand what I’m getting at?”

“All I can say is that this is the first I’ve heard about this.”

“Rubbish!” she shrieked. “I shall be bankrupt within a month, and that is what you people want, isn’t it?” Without waiting for an answer, she placed her knuckles on the desk and leaned toward him, literally in his face. “You people have gone too f*cking far, but I am not without resources, and we will see who goes farther.”

She turned and walked out, leaving him to wonder if her threat was an idle one, made in anger, or if it was a vow. If the latter, did she have a plan of action, and what was it? So Douglas had lied to him with one word—“Okay.” He and Adid had decided they had an opportunity that could not be passed up. Whose idea was it to employ Timmerman to have Tara’s call sign revoked? It had Adid’s stamp. Fitzhugh could almost hear him, assuring Douglas that with this single stroke they would eliminate the competition and grab one hundred percent of “market share.” Neither man would have seen it as wrong, for success in business, or at any rate in the cutthroat business of aid aviation, seemed to require a fundamental amorality. And yet Douglas had shown himself to be a moral man, a man of compassion who had risked a great deal, even his life, to bring succor to the starving, the sick, the defenseless. The contradiction between the idealist and the relentless entrepreneur was too great for Fitzhugh to resolve. He wondered how Douglas himself resolved it. His aphorism “We do what we have to do so we can do what we came here to do” wasn’t adequate as a resolution, for what had been done to Tara hadn’t needed to be done.

Faith in an idea, a theory, or a god is not easily surrendered when confronted by facts that embarrass it; and the greater one’s investment in it, the more difficult the surrender. The same is true of faith in a man. Having invested three years of his life in Douglas Braithwaite and Knight Air, Fitzhugh was unable to accept the notion that the American was unworthy of his loyalty or that his belief in him had been misplaced, despite evidence that he was self-centered, a liar, and ruthless. He persuaded himself that in this instance his friend had been manipulated by Adid. The cunning Somali had jerked the wires of Douglas’s passions and ambitions to bring out the worst in him. What was needed now was a countervailing influence to bring him around to the better side of his nature. Fitzhugh would be that influence and show him that the blow to Tara was, if not wrong, then misguided and likely to reap unforeseen and unpleasant consequences.

After Douglas returned from Bahr el Ghazal, Fitzhugh said he had to speak to him and invited him to take a walk, to ensure privacy. They took a road where the only ears were those of passing Turkana. Douglas, head bowed meditatively, hands in his back pockets, listened without any visible reaction to a summary of Tara’s visit.

“Well, she’s only being human,” he commented with a disengaged air.

“Because she’s so very angry? Wouldn’t you be if you were in her shoes?”

“I meant that when things go wrong, seriously wrong, it’s only human to blame circumstances or bad luck or someone else instead of yourself.”

“You astonish me,” Fitzhugh said. “You’re saying that because she called DCA on us, this is her fault? That she should have expected retaliation?”

Douglas replied that he wasn’t saying that at all. There had been no retaliation. The UN had done what it did for its own reasons. Tara had added two and two and come up with five, inventing an intrigue to explain her misfortune.

Fitzhugh had anticipated a denial like that; it dismayed him nonetheless. A UN Land Rover cruised by, throwing up a rooster-tail of fine dust.

“Douglas, please. Tara is a deliberate woman, she’s not the kind to jump to conclusions or make wild allegations. She said she wasn’t guessing, that she knew.”

“And you believe her?”

“I have a hard time thinking that it was coincidence.”

“Look, we’ve got bigger, faster planes that deliver more quicker and for less. My guess is that UN big shots figured there was no point any longer in her having a call sign. We’re the future, she’s the past. Nobody at Knight Air, including me, had anything to do with what’s happened to her, okay? It’s important to me that you believe me. We’ve come a long way together, from next to nothing to eight million last year, and we’re looking at ten for this year. Couldn’t have done it without you, my man.”

Fitzhugh had to actively resist the tingle this encomium sent through him: the narcotic of Douglas’s approbation. “For the same reason, I would like to believe you.”

“But, right? You would like to believe me, but,” Douglas said, now with an edge to his words. “Okay, here’s a but for you. It’s important to you to believe me, because I can’t have my operations manager thinking I’m some kind of crook. And I don’t think you’d be happy working for a guy like that.”

The remark wasn’t quite a warning, more a clarification of what was at stake for Fitzhugh. He didn’t think Douglas would have the nerve to sack him—he knew too much—but if he believed Tara, then he would be morally bound to quit, which he couldn’t afford, not with his wedding just ten weeks away. Believe Tara or believe Douglas—he resolved the dilemma by finding a sliver of gray in this black and white choice.

“What’s really important isn’t that I believe you, for your sake or mine,” he said. “The important thing is that Tara believes that you had nothing to do with it.”

“All right, counselor, how do I do that? Send her flowers?”

“You could ask Timmerman to do the opposite of what she says he’s done. Have him talk to his UN cronies and see what he can do about reinstating her call sign. Even if it didn’t work, the gesture alone would—”

Douglas stopped short and swatted the air. “The competition gets into a jam, and I’m supposed to help them out of it? To prove that I’m innocent? I have got to hear why.”

“Two reasons. Tara made a very clear threat. I have no idea what she has in mind, but if she has an inkling about—”

“Thought we agreed that she couldn’t know a damned thing about that,” Douglas interrupted.

“An inkling, I said. Things have a way of getting around. She wouldn’t need to make an airtight case, just dig up enough to raise suspicions in the wrong places. Is it worth the risk? You don’t have to do what I suggested, only do something to convince her.”

“So what’s the second reason?”

Fitzhugh paused, gazing toward the golden rim of the Mogilla range. “Diana and I are going to be married.”

Douglas regarded him with a neutral expression.

“She is seeing to the arrangements. Of course she’ll invite Tara, and I will invite you. I would like the wedding to take place in a—in a what? A tranquil atmosphere, not with some war between Tara and you.”

“You’ve thought this through?” Douglas asked, squinting at him.

“Thought it to death,” Fitzhugh answered, happy to be off the previous topic, however briefly. “We decided on the trip to Tsavo. You’re the first to know.”

Douglas pumped his hand and slapped him on the shoulder. “Then I’ll be the first to congratulate you. All right, I don’t want to spoil your wedding. I’ll talk to Timmerman, but I can’t make any promises beyond that.”

How sincere was he? Fitzhugh couldn’t judge.

If Timmerman did speak to his former UN colleagues, his effort wasn’t successful. Thirty-four days later Pathways Limited went under, and not entirely, Fitzhugh was forced to admit, because Tara had lost her UN contracts. Her skills as a pilot weren’t matched by her skills as a businesswoman. The company, which to all outward appearances was built on rock, turned out to rest on the unstable sands of borrowed money. Its marginal profits, after paying off staff salaries, leases, and monthly charges on bank loans, had gone into building and maintaining the plush Pathways camp, which didn’t earn enough to sustain itself. With more prudent management and substantial financial reserves, she could have weathered the blow. She had to cancel her leases and return the planes to their owners. Those registered to Pathways were sold. Over the next month company pilots, with Jepps aviation maps tucked under their arms, took off to deliver the aircraft to their buyers in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere in Africa. Douglas, who at times was tone deaf in personal relations, offered to buy one of her Cessnas for full market value. He considered this a generous, if not a chivalrous, gesture and was shocked when she told him he was lucky she didn’t slap his face and that she wouldn’t sell him the plane for twice its worth.

The Pathways terminal, that pocket of order and cleanliness amid Loki’s dirt and disarray, was closed down. A Kenyan businessman bought the compound for a song but allowed Tara to remain in her bungalow for a modest rent. She was left with one employee, her assistant, Pamela Smyth, and one Cessna Caravan that she owned outright and flew on short hops for the independent agencies. In one month and four days, after a decade of hard effort and risk, she had been thrown back to where she’d begun—one woman and one small airplane.

She had been ruined but not defeated and bore up under her ordeal with stoical grace. She maintained her erect, purposeful carriage; she took care of her appearance, protecting the asset of her beauty from the demands of its creditor; and she vowed to start over, though at fifty-eight it was doubtful she could.

By this time her version of events had become accepted by almost everyone in Loki—she was the victim of a dirty trick. Douglas continued to assert, to anyone who would listen, that he hadn’t engineered her downfall. Its swiftness proved that Pathways had been badly run and would have gone under eventually without a push from him. Fitzhugh urged him to keep his mouth shut. His commentaries on Tara’s mismanagement came off as gloating, while his repeated protests of innocence suggested guilt. For his part, suffering from a bad conscience, Fitzhugh could not face Tara. He dreaded the chance that he would round a corner one day and there she would be before him, unavoidable, her very presence a reproach.

But soon another matter commanded his and Douglas’s attention. The SPLA had failed to pay Yellowbird for two arms deliveries to the Nuba mountains. SPLA representatives in Nairobi and Kampala, from where the weapons shipments originated, promised to come up with the money, but after a full week passed without its appearance, Wesley declared that he was not going to fly another mission until he saw it. He and Mary were on strike. Douglas, whose zeal for the Nuban crusade had not diminished, appealed to him to call off his work stoppage. Michael Goraende was about to launch his dry-season offensive and needed every rifle and bullet he could get. A great deal was at stake, and that was more important than Wesley’s share of the unpaid charter fees, a mere eighteen thousand dollars. Wesley was unmoved. He wasn’t about to risk his and Mary’s necks for nothing. The disagreement degenerated into an argument, the argument into a scene, with Fitzhugh acting, unsuccessfully, as referee. He might as well have tried to mediate a fight between a long-married couple who hated each other. There in the cramped hotbox of the office, the two men said things best left unsaid. They never had been compatible, but the harshness of their words hinted at a deeper difference: a fundamental antagonism that they had repressed for the sake of the company and that now erupted.

It almost came to a fistfight when Douglas stated that the older man had lost his nerve and was using the nonpayment as a convenient excuse to put himself out of harm’s way. Thrusting out his chest, Wesley bulled him into a corner of the room. “I was taking ground fire when you were still shittin’ your britches,” he said, and with a sneer, tugged at the bill of Douglas’s cap. “You’re one to talk about nerve. I got the lowdown on your air force record a while back. Ran into a guy named Mendoza. Ring a bell?”

Douglas was silent.

“Yeah, it does. Ding dong. You’re worse than a fool and a hypocrite, you’re a goddamned fraud.” He gave Douglas’s cheek a contemptuous pat and left.

“What was he talking about, your air force record?” Fitzhugh asked.

Douglas stood rooted in the corner, looking at the door as if he could still see Wesley’s back passing through it. “No idea,” he replied.

The humiliated expression on his face said otherwise, but Fitzhugh did not press the issue.

Douglas sat down. “If I could fire that son of a bitch, I would.”

“What is going on with you?” Fitzhugh slapped his palm on his desk. “Are you trying to see how many enemies you can make around here?”

“Nope. But it looks like I’m going to have to take the next load in.”

“You will do no such thing. It would take one mishap, one small mishap, to have a plane registered to Knight Air discovered with weapons aboard. What we need to do is to get the SPLA to pay up and Wesley flying again.”

“Any ideas?”

He suggested they enlist Barrett’s aid. Barrett had high-level contacts in the rebels’ political arm in Nairobi. Possibly a word from him would convince them to convince their military brethren to pay the debt.

Combative as ever, Barrett was delighted to assist in any way he could. When, however, his discussions with his contacts produced nothing more substantial than more promises, he decided to play a direct role, offering to pay the sum in arrears out of his agency’s funds. That suited Wesley. As long as it wasn’t counterfeit, he didn’t care where the money came from. Thirty-six thousand dollars was then transferred from International People’s Aid to Knight Air’s account. Wesley withdrew his half and the next morning took off for the Uganda border to pick up a shipment of antiaircraft and mortar ammunition.

Now Barrett had to account for the expenditure. He arrived in Loki one afternoon to work alongside Fitzhugh to make sure that his books and Knight Air’s agreed, in the event his were audited by his agency’s board in Canada. They invented humanitarian aid flights, fabricating dates, destinations, manifests, cargo weights, and fees until the full amount was covered, on paper. Fitzhugh, now party to embezzlement, had the uneasy feeling—it was almost premonitory—that with each strand he wove into the ever-expanding web of deception, he was trapping himself.

“Does this trouble you at all?” he asked Barrett, who replied that it did, a “wee bit,” and then rationalized: His role was to deliver aid to Sudan, and guns were merely another form of aid.

When they completed their creative work, they went to the Hotel California bar for a restorative. There Barrett revealed that the secret of Fitzhugh’s and Diana’s wedding was out—a week ago she’d asked him to perform the service.

“First Quinette and Michael, now you and Diana. I’m specializin’ in odd pairings.”

“Because you are oddly paired yourself.”

“I am, sure enough. Heard about Tara’s troubles, by the way. Bloody shame.”

A bloody shame, Fitzhugh agreed. The former priest of Rome stirred his whiskey and soda and looked off at two aid workers who, in sandals and ragged T-shirts, resembled itinerant hippies. “Diana’s quite upset about it. Spoke to her only yesterday. She invited Tara to the nuptials and she got a regrets, with a full explanation. It might be a good idea if you talked to her. Call that a bit of advice from your minister.”

“Advice?” asked Fitzhugh, with a buzz of apprehension.

Barrett’s glance moved back to him. “I’m fond of you both. Take a day or two off, have a talk with her.”

She was taking hurdles in the ring when he arrived, a sight that always moved him. Her poise, crouched over the horse’s neck, booted legs bent, the beauty of mount and rider flowing over a bar as one, and the danger of a balk or fall combined to arrest his breath in fear and admiration. Focused on what she was doing, she didn’t notice him, standing outside the rail, until she cantered toward the barrier nearest him, a wall of straw bales. She reined up sharply, the horse tossing its head as if confused by the sudden halt. She patted its neck and walked it to the rail, looked down at Fitzhugh with a cool, remote expression, and in a voice that matched, said she wasn’t expecting him.

“I thought to surprise you. I saw John up in Loki. He suggested we ought to talk about . . . well, I’m not sure what.”

“And you needed him to tell you that? What would you have done if you hadn’t seen him?”

His apprehensions were confirmed—this wasn’t going to be a pleasant visit. “He told me you were upset.”

“ I have to cool her down. I’ll see you in the garden in ten. Ask Faraj to make you some tea.”

She strode into the garden like a Prussian, boots clacking on the fieldstone walk, and without a touch or word, sat across the round table from him, creating a physical symbol for her emotional distance. She placed an envelope on the table, opened it, and removed a wedding announcement and a letter, filled out on both sides.

“Tara has sent her regrets.”

“John mentioned that.”

“She saw fit to tell me why.” She lifted the letter with two fingers, then dropped it.

“Yes, he mentioned that, too.”

“She didn’t have to go into so much detail. She was venting. We’ve been friends ten years, so she’s entitled. Tara seems to think you were a part of what was done to her. At the very least, she says, you knew about it beforehand and did nothing to stop it. I need to know if she’s right. I need to hear about it from you.”

Fitzhugh took a sip of tea. It was cold. He lit a cigarette. “She came into the office in quite a state, and that was the first I’d heard of it.”

“I hope and pray, darling, that you are not lying to me.”

“No need to hope or pray because I’m not.”

She gave him an appraising look. “What was done to her was absolutely rotten. And it’s not only her. It’s everyone who worked for her. They’re all out of a job. Did you people ever give a thought to them?”

“Don’t include me in that ‘you people,’ ” he said, piping to his adolescent squeal, embarrassing himself. He wanted to sound manly and offended that she would think he’d been involved.

“And what about your boss?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, my friend is. And Tara wouldn’t say a thing like that if she weren’t.”

“She seemed to have no problem accusing me when she wasn’t sure. I wish you’d stop talking to me like I’m a bad pupil and you’re a headmistress.”

“I’m sorry, but I feel I have to. You have your suspicions about him?”

He gave her an abridgment of his conversation with Douglas. When he was finished, she stared at him, her head wreathed by the hibiscus blossoms behind her. Her beauty was poignant because he knew he was losing her, if he hadn’t lost her already.

“What you’re telling me,” she said, “is that you know he did exactly what Tara says he did, but that you’ve chosen to believe otherwise. It’s easier that way, I suppose.”

“Pardon me?”

“I don’t understand why you haven’t quit him. We have all misjudged him, but I don’t see how you can go on associating yourself with an unscrupulous bastard who thinks nothing of ruining my friend and disrupting, oh, perhaps a hundred other lives at the same time.”

“Why, to eat, Diana, that’s why. I associate myself with him to eat.”

“I am quite sure you could find other work,” she said, as if Kenya were an Eden of job opportunities. “And if you couldn’t, I could help you. I know plenty of people. In the meantime—”

“In the meantime, you have plenty of money.”

She said nothing, and he took her silence as assent.

“There are enough people who think I’m a fortune hunter. I can just hear what they’d say if I were out of work.”

“You’re imagining things. But whatever they think or don’t think, I think that in this instance you ought to swallow your pride and—”

“My pride?” he interrupted, half rising from his seat. “You think that’s all it is, my pride?” He looked around, taking in the rambling house, large enough for several African families, and the guest house, large enough for two or three more, and the garden and the stable and the grounds with acreage sufficient for a shamba yet supporting only grass and fruitless trees and inedible flowers, and his old resentment of wealth and privilege boiled up with a quickness and violence that told him it must have been simmering closer to the surface than he’d realized. “You have no idea what it’s like to be out of work, do you? No idea what it’s like to wonder how you shall manage for the next week, much less the rest of your life. How could you? You’ve been deprived of that experience, but you think I should quit based on a suspicion and live off you like a parasite?”

“I meant nothing of the kind.”

“I’m not surprised,” he went on, carried helplessly forward on the tide of his anger and hatred, yes, hatred of everything the house and the grounds and the useless trees and flowers represented. “This”—his arm swept out—“was built by parasites. And this whole town is a nest of parasites. Parasites on the skin of this country.”

She looked at him with wounded astonishment, mouthing the word parasite. Only then did he shake off the spell of rage and come back to himself. His mind clearing, he saw that his outburst had been fatal. He might as well have struck her. “Not you!” he said. “I didn’t mean you! I love you, and I am so sorry—”

“Please”—she raised a palm—“no need for apologies. Thanks for making your feelings ever so much clearer. I am a parasite among parasites. And thanks for making things ever so much easier for me, darling.” She uttered the term of endearment to make it sound like anything but, then said with a terrible resolve, “I can’t marry you.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” he pleaded. “Let’s calm ourselves and talk this through.”

“I am perfectly calm and know precisely what I’m saying. I can’t marry a man who thinks what you do of me. And I can’t marry a man who knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it, because—oh, Christ . . . you seemed so strong that day in Tsavo, but I misjudged you.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong. I want to keep my job. It is as simple and basic as that.”

“No, it isn’t. Your American is who you’re in love with, or with something he stands for or pretends he stands for even though he stands only for himself. But be warned. I’ve seen Douglas’s sort before. He’s f*cked Tara, and one day he’ll get around to f*cking you.”

Fitzhugh stood, feeling sorrow, regret, and bitterness all at once. For the moment, bitterness had the greater share. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “You had your mind made up before I came. A woman doesn’t call off a marriage because she doesn’t like who her man works for. It’s your terror of happiness. It got the better of you.”

“What nonsense, but if that idea helps you feel better, stick to it.” She put on her riding gloves and helmet. “Show yourself out. You know the way.”

 

HE CHECKED INTO a hotel that night and got spectacularly drunk. The next morning, as hung over as he’d ever been, he called her, not knowing what to say. The housekeeper asked him to wait. A minute later she told him the memsahib was out. He bashed the receiver on the nightstand and then wept. When his crying jag was over, he went to the lobby and called the office’s sat phone, telling Rachel that he had been held up in Nairobi and would not be returning for a couple of days. That night he got drunk again and picked up a skinny black girl in a disco, with whom he pretended that he was getting even with Diana. He woke up disgusted with himself and sent the girl on her way. Downstairs, he waited till the hotel bar was open and drank some more to numb his self-loathing and all other emotional aches. When he was half in the bag—a phrase he’d picked up from his Yankee associates—he made another call, informing the office that he was taking two weeks off. He didn’t wait for a reply, checked out, and flew to Mombasa, seeking the solace of home and the sea.

His mother and father gave him none. Now in their early sixties, they wanted grandchildren and rejoiced at the breakup of his engagement, assuring him that one day he would rejoice as well. What had he been thinking, to become so involved with a woman that age?

The sea would have to do double duty in the solace department, and he spent a lot of time swimming in it or just looking at it, the same sea whose monsoons, two centuries ago, had brought a Malay-Chinese trader to the shores of Africa, where he stayed and married a black woman and thus began the mixing of bloods that produced the man of all races.

Toward the end of his holiday—Fitzhugh thought of it as a convalescence—he picked up a newspaper in the hotel his father managed. A Reuters dispatch caught his attention: EIGHT FOREIGN OIL WORKERS DIE IN SUDAN REBEL ATTACK. He sat down in he lobby and read it. Killed, the story said, when a plane belonging to Amulet Energy was shot down by a missile during an SPLA assault on an oil facility near the Nuba mountains. . . . Five Canadians, including the pilot and copilot, and three Chinese petroleum engineers. . . . Rebel forces had also attacked two pumping stations and cut the pipeline in several places, as part of a general offensive. . . . Use of antiaircraft missiles unusual in the Sudanese civil war. . . . Khartoum government, in condemning the attack on what it termed “a civilian installation,” stated that guerrillas were being supplied with sophisticated weapons by neighboring Uganda. . . . An SPLA spokesman in Nairobi expressed regret for the deaths but pointed out that the facility’s airfield was used by the Sudan air force for air raids on civilian targets in the Nuba and southern Sudan. . . .

So Michael Goraende’s campaign had been a triumph, except for those unfortunate deaths, what military people called “collateral damage.” Fitzhugh set the newspaper down. It was impossible not to feel a remote complicity in the extinction of those innocent lives—if, that is, anyone was innocent anywhere. The oil the workers pumped made the money that bought the planes and the bombs that were dropped on schools and villages and mission churches. As to responsibility for their deaths, there was plenty to go around, from the munitions workers who had built the missile to the SPLA soldier who fired it, and everyone in between, a roster that included Fitzhugh Martin. In a war, every death was the result of a collaboration.

Sudanese died by thousands and barely rated a mention in the media, but eight dead foreigners were news. An instinct warned him that more was going to be heard about this incident, that someone somewhere was going to ask questions such as, If Uganda is supplying the SPLA with antiaircraft missiles, how do they get from Uganda to the landlocked Nuba mountains, a thousand kilometers away? He felt an overpowering, unhappy urge, like the one that pushes a deserter to rejoin his regiment regardless of the consequences, to return to Lokichokio. He packed his bag and was on a flight the next day. Diana was not forgotten—she never would be—but the hurt was not quite so acute, and he hoped it would soon diminish to the point that he could live with it, a chronic but manageable soreness of the heart.