She returned to her chair and dried off, feeling more composed. Opening Bella’s journal, she worked out a strategy. If Bella had a relationship with Darious after she met Doris, then it was likely she had mentioned him in the first half of the journal. The problem was she had concealed his name in code. The clues Doris offered were threadbare: they went out to the bars and he gave her gifts. But Zoe understood the power of gestalt—the truth spoken by the whole, not simply by the particulars.
She read for two hours, pausing only to reapply sunblock. She found a number of repeat clients in the pages. One Bella called “Levi’s man,” but he met her on the street and never spent the night with her. Another she called “Mr. Niceguy.” In addition to sex, he took her dancing at the bars. A third she called “Godzilla.” He paid double her rate but often left her with bruises. Finally, there was “Siluwe.” He was complex, educated, a conversationalist. But she didn’t seem to trust him. Indeed, her descriptions suggested that she had feared him.
Zoe ruled out the Levi’s man and Godzilla and weighed Mr. Niceguy against Siluwe. According to Doris, Darious had given Bella gifts. Mr. Niceguy always paid with cash. Siluwe, by contrast, was a regular Santa Claus. Siluwe is Darious Nyambo, she decided.
They had met at Alpha Bar. He had bought her drinks and lavished her with such affection that she had forgotten to charge him the next morning. He reappeared in four subsequent letters. Each time Bella described his gifts—an expensive meal, a mobile phone—but her sentiments were guarded. Then without warning he disappeared from the journal.
She heard her iPhone chirp in her bag, and saw a text message from Joseph: “Good idea about Alpha. Are you hosting a braai tonight?”
She typed back: “Friends next door are cooking. Let Sarge and Niza know.”
A few seconds later she received his response: “Will do. I’ll be there around 1800.”
Then Zoe had a thought. “Does the name Siluwe mean anything to you?”
He replied: “Siluwe means leopard in Tonga. Why?”
Zoe felt a chill. “I’ll tell you over dinner.”
That evening, Zoe put on her favorite jeans and a black top and walked across the parking lot to the house rented by Patrick and Kelly Summers. She tossed a greeting to Patrick at the grill and went looking for Kelly. She found her in the kitchen assembling a cheese tray with the help of a thirty-something blond man in khakis and a button-down shirt.
“You must be Zoe,” the man said, smiling at her in an easy way. “I’m—”
“Clay,” she said. “The expat community is like a fraternity. New pledges make waves.” She leaned against the countertop. “So what’s your angle? Are you coming to the Bank as a supporter or critic of the development program?”
“Both, I suppose,” he said. “But I’ve been with the Bank for seven years.”
“Then you can’t be too much of a critic.”
He shrugged. “I’m only critical of projects that don’t work.”
“Ah. So here’s a project guaranteed to succeed. Build a DNA lab in Lusaka. Show the world that reforming the African justice system is as important as infrastructure and investment.”
He scratched his chin. “An intriguing proposition. But I work in the energy sector.”
“Right. Not your problem.” She looked at Kelly. “What can I do to help?”
Her friend handed her a chopping knife and pointed to a cluster of vegetables. “Slice and dice,” she replied, watching Clay carry the cheese tray out to the porch. “And try to be nice.”
At six fifteen, the guests arrived in a rush. They were a diverse bunch—development types and foreign servants, along with a British academic and a Peace Corps volunteer leader in from the hinterlands. With unconscious precision, they sorted into gender-defined cliques—the men by the grill, sipping beers and swapping war stories, and the women on the porch, chatting over glasses of wine. Only Clay broke the barrier. All of the ladies seemed taken by him except Zoe who found herself looking toward the gate, watching for Joseph.
When at last he arrived, Patrick was dishing out burgers and chicken. “Just in time,” she quipped, handing him a paper plate.
He smiled at her. “Nice to see you, too.”
“Are the others coming?”
“Sarge had family obligations, and Niza wasn’t in the mood.”
After filling their plates, the guests ate together on the lamp-lit porch; the few who couldn’t find chairs sat on the ground. In between bites of hamburger, Zoe filled Joseph in on her conversation with Doris and her discovery of Siluwe, the leopard, in Bella’s journal.
“Do you think you can convince Doris to testify?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. She hates him, but she’s also afraid of him.”
“Siluwe. It’s a fascinating name. The leopard hunts in the dark.”
Zoe was about to respond when the voice of Clay Whitaker interrupted her thoughts.
“The power station at Batoka Gorge might actually get off the ground,” he was saying to a doe-eyed girl from USAID. “It’s an extraordinary thing, really, for a private company to guarantee the debt of a sovereign.”
“Isn’t that what the Bank and the IMF do all the time?” Zoe said, joining in. “They loan money to governments.”
“True.” Clay replied. “But the funds come from nation states, not private investors.”
“Who’s the investor in the Batoka project?”