Acts of faith (113 page)

Could Douglas be runing guns for the money?
he thought, hailing a taxi for Jomo Kenyatta Airport.
For the money alone and all that business about providing for the Nubans’ defense so much claptrap?

The taxi dropped him off at the Department of Civil Aviation, where he paid a call on his old friend, the director. This was his day to walk paper trails. He requested copies of recent flight plans filed from Wilson Field. He gave her a range of dates. Pleased to accommodate him, the source of her favorite American cookies, she made a phone call, said yes, they were available, and sent him to another office, where a clerk gave him the plans in a manila envelope. Fitzhugh took out the flimsies and read the information various pilots had scrawled in the boxes and blanks, at the dated stamps and signatures on the bottom of the forms.

Aircraft identification: 5Z203. Type of aircraft: G1C. Departure aerodrome: Wilson. Destination aerodrome: JKIA, for Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Total EET: HR. 08. Min. 00. Pilot in command: Braithwaite, D. Filed by: Pilot or representative—and there Fitzhugh saw a signature almost as familiar as his own. The date stamp in the lower right-hand corner indicated that the flight had been made on the seventh of the previous month. He looked at a calendar—the seventh had been a Saturday. The crashes occurred the following Monday.

He made a copy of the flight plan, one more small fact, which contained one big falsehood. He felt no satisfaction, only a sickness of the heart.

H
ASSAN
A
DID
’
S SECRETARY
said he was full up with appointments for the day but would be pleased to meet Fitzhugh for dinner.

It was at the Tamarind, Adid’s favorite restaurant. Fitzhugh arrived early to calm himself with a double scotch, neat. Adid came in a little late, swinging an attaché case, his stylish jacket and trousers testifying that their wearer was no ordinary urban African in an ill-fitting knockoff but a man of the world.

He apologized for his tardiness—a last-minute phone call. After the preliminary chitchat, the fussy business of asking the waiter for recommendations, he asked what was on Fitzhugh’s mind.

“The meeting you and Douglas had last month,” he replied. It was the only lead-in he could think of. “I was wondering, what were your fresh ideas?”

“Fresh ideas? Ideas about what?”

“Our—our problem.”

The first course came: salad for Fitzhugh, lobster bisque for Adid. A none-too-observant Muslim, he paused to sniff and taste the Fumé Blanc, then signal his approval with a flick of his brows.

“What problem are you referring to?”

Of course he would play dumb. What else could Fitzhugh expect? What, for that matter, did he expect to come out of this get-together? A confession? “The story that reporter was working on,” he said.

“Ah, that,” Adid said, perfectly composed. “It was nothing, so I told Douglas to do nothing. If you want to call that a fresh idea, you may do so.”

“Nothing?”

“It wasn’t the problem he seemed to think it was. In any event, it is not any kind of problem now.”

“It certainly isn’t.”

Adid cocked his elegant head aside. “It’s a moot point.”

“Mute,” Fitzhugh said. “I prefer mute.”

“It’s too bad what happened. A dangerous business, flying in Sudan.”

“I’m curious. Why did you think the story wasn’t a problem?”

“To say that Knight is profiting off a war? That’s been said before. And what is the difference if we are? One goes into business to make a profit.”

Shrimp in a cream and brandy sauce was set before him. “That’s what Douglas said? That we were going to be painted as war profiteers?”

Adid accepted his grilled Malindi snapper. “I don’t know why he flew all the way to Nairobi to discuss that. Was there something he did not mention?”

Even Adid could not lie this well, Fitzhugh thought. This is too cute and coy to be anything but honest. Too confused to answer, he said, “So your meeting was cordial? Douglas told me it was an ugly scene.”

“Hardly ugly. I was annoyed with him for taking up my time with a small problem he could have easily handled himself.”

“Maybe he did,” Fitzhugh said. “I’m not sure how easy it was.”

“And I would have been annoyed with you if you had taken up my time during business hours with this conversation.” He snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and sneezed. “But I’m pleased to have dinner with the once-famous Ambler of the Harambe Stars. My son has kept the autograph you gave me when we met the first time.”

“Yes, I recall,” Fitzhugh said, experiencing a moment of deflated expectation. Here was a man who had once smuggled contraband ivory, a man who with his father had been a suspect in the sabotaging of Richard Leakey’s airplane. Fitzhugh had been geared up for a confrontation with the author of six murders but got instead a banal villain who faked bankruptcies and schemed to crush competitors and wasn’t even a coconspirator, much less a criminal mastermind. It was oddly disappointing; it was as if Adid had let him down.

“Speaking of that first meeting, a private word with you?” Adid asked.

“Yes?”

“What is your opinion of Douglas? How does it go, working for him?”

“My opinion? Why do you ask, if I may ask?”

“You recall what he told us at that first meeting? That he had been a fighter pilot in the Persian Gulf War for the American Air Force? He also said his father had been a successful land developer who died of heart failure. I make it a point to know as much as I can about my managers, and when I took over Knight, I looked into Douglas’s background. It took a little time. He was in the American Air Force, but never in the war and never as a fighter pilot. A common soldier. His father was a successful man, but he didn’t die of heart failure. He was murdered.”

To this revelation, Fitzhugh had nothing to say.

“It was a famous case in the city he comes from. Tucson in Arizona. It was in all the newspapers. It seems his father’s business became a laundry for Mexican drug money, he was going to testify against them, and they blew him up in his automobile. You never had a hint of this?”

“No, never.”

“It disturbs me, his telling stories like that. I don’t care who a man lies to as long as it is not to me.”

Adid sneezed again.

“Could you use this?” Fitzhugh took the nasal spray from out of his pocket.

“Ah, a fellow sufferer.”

“Oh, no. I happened to find this in a rather odd place. At an airstrip in the Nuba mountains.”

“Why odd? I do not suppose those people are immune to allergies.”

“Have you ever been to Sudan, Hassan?”

“To Khartoum several times on business,” he answered.

“I meant to southern Sudan. Or to the Nuba.”

He gave a look of distaste. “Why would I ever want to go there?”

Fitzhugh left the spray bottle on the table, one small fact discarded in exchange for others.

T
URKANA BOYS WERE
playing bau under a tree—the quick movements of young black hands, the click of white stones. Smoking an Embassy, Fitzhugh stood in the shade and pretended to watch the game’s progress. He felt an imperative to act but wasn’t sure what action to take. To call his evidence circumstantial would be generous; to even call it evidence was a stretch. Nevertheless, he was sure he was in possession of a large true fact, monstrously large, and he deeply wished he’d never acquired it.

An old Turkana passed by on spindly legs, his staff with wooden headrest on his shoulder. A PanAfrik Hercules took off, and shortly another plane came in from the west, a Gulfstream Two. 5Z203. Fitzhugh started back to the office, forcing himself not to think. Think too much, you won’t do anything.

Cap thrown back, Douglas breezed in, tossed his logbook onto his desk, then sat down and filled it out from notes taken in flight. Fitzhugh, erasing the board, feigned absorption in tomorrow’s schedule. Finished with his log, Douglas went to the coffee urn.

“Where’s Rachel?”

“I gave her the afternoon off.”

“We’re out of coffee. She’s supposed to keep it full. The crews like a jolt when they get back.” Then in a jocular tone: “I like a jolt, and I’m the boss.”

“Well, I gave her the afternoon off.”

“Is that a new fringe benefit?” He poured water into the urn and scooped coffee into the basket. “So how was Nairobi?”

“Nairobi was Nairobi.”

“Thought you might have patched things up with Diana while you were there.”

“I don’t use company time for personal business. I had dinner with Hassan. We discussed the meeting you had with him last month. On the sixth, wasn’t it?”

Douglas stood with his shoulder to the wall, legs crossed at the ankles, thumb hooked into the handle of his mug.

“I would like to hear why you lied to me,” Fitzhugh said. “I believe I am owed an explanation.”

Nimble as ever, Douglas replied, “All right, I did what you thought I’d do. Chickened out. I told him we were going to get smeared as war profiteers on CNN. Man, I’m sorry.” Fitzhugh shrank away as Douglas reached out to touch him. “You never let me down, but I let you down. Didn’t have the balls. But—I don’t mean to sound callous—it doesn’t make any difference now.”

“A moot point.”

“Yeah.”

Fitzhugh reached under his desk for the water jug. “Would you recognize this, Douglas?”

“Are you going flaky on me? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You were the one with the fresh idea,” Fitzhugh said, with a confidence produced by his anger. “Or perhaps you would call it a cool idea. The thing that surprises me is that you thought of it all on your own and carried it out all on your own, with considerable help from Tony. I was sure Adid was behind it.”

The red light on the urn winked. Douglas pressed the spigot and stood blowing across his mug. “Man, you are in a state.”

“Tony had a reason to sabotage Dare’s plane—he hated them both. He had the opportunity—it was just a matter of sneaking in there when it was dark with dirty water and a few plastic bags. He would know what do to—a trained flight mechanic.”

“Whoa!” Douglas said with a wild laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Whoa, whoa,
whoa
! What did you smoke when you were in Nairobi?”

“Only a few cigarettes. When I was at the bank. I suppose I could talk to you about embezzling company funds, but that’s rather a misdemeanor compared with this.”

“Get the fuck out of here before I—”

“Before you what? You’re going to listen to this. Tony could have found out that Wesley was flying Phyllis on Monday from only five people. Three had no reason to tell him. The fourth, me, never spoke to him. Which leaves you. You had a discussion with him
before
you went to see Hassan. Yes, you told him to cancel the arms flights, but you had some other things to say. When was the last time you were at Jomo Kenyatta?”

“You can’t talk to me like we’re in a police interrogation room.”

“When was the last time you were at Jomo?”

A smile broke across the clean American face, that guileless, beguiling smile. “Five years ago, when I landed in this country.”

“Thank you. Thank you, for once, for the truth. And here is the lie that proves the truth.”

Fitzhugh stepped across the room to hand him the flight plan. He felt, in the still, elongated seconds it took Douglas to read it, like a cuckold presenting his wife with proof of her infidelity. Douglas raised his eyes, the gray irises steady and concentrated.

“I know what a false flight plan looks like,” Fitzhugh said. “It doesn’t take eight hours to fly from Wilson to Jomo and back.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“You too, a busy beaver. In case Tony’s midnight mechanics didn’t work, or if they did, in case a pilot like Dare overcame the problems and lived through it—and he damned near did—you flew yourself to the Nuba mountains with a backup plan. You had a talk with the Archangel. I can guess what you said to him—
If this story gets out, I’m screwed and so are you. Your troops will be back to throwing spears at gunships.
You convinced him that under no circumstances must that plane be allowed to complete its journey.
So just in case Dare shows up, Lieutenant Colonel Goraende, shoot down the Hawker and blame it on the Sudanese army.
You hadn’t counted on a last-minute change of planes and pilots, and I don’t suppose the thugs Michael sent to do the dirty work knew a Cessna from a Hawker. All they knew was to shoot down a plane coming in on Monday morning. I guess we can say Tara was collateral damage. Convenient, though, that she’s out of the way.”