The Fall of Saints (24 page)

“Let’s climb back up,” whispered Wainaina, and I nodded in agreement. He added, “I will help you up first, but I need a chair.”

Then, almost simultaneously, we saw a door. Maybe that was a better way out. Wainaina gently pushed it open, peeked through, and then walked in. I followed suit. We tiptoed along the corridor till we came to a very small room with a huge sink on the right and scrubs hanging on the wall on either side. Straight ahead was a swinging door. It seemed like a house of rooms within rooms; it reminded me of a Russian doll I once bought for Kobi. We pushed right through, and the door gave way to a huge tiled room. The big overhead lights were similar to the ones at the Supa Duka Clinic.

The windowless room appeared spotlessly clean. Three big clocks showing three different time zones, New York, London, and Tokyo, hung on the wall. They looked incongruous, creepy, an impression strengthened by the other items. A stainless-steel table dominated the middle of the room, a small table filled with surgical tools and a cart with huge cylinders right next to it. Below the table were trash bins lined with plastic paper. It was a clinic, yes, the same high quality as the Supa Duka, except that it looked less like a birthing place than a cross between a morgue and an operating theater.

On my left was yet another door. I tried the handle; it was locked. Walking away from it, I tripped over an empty carton and stumbled a little before finding my footing. Then I saw Wainaina standing still, his hand over his mouth. I quickly ran to him. He was staring at what resembled a cooler with small connecting tubes jutting out, a see-through cover, and a thermometer by the side. I bent to take a closer look at some plastic bags.

Staring back at me were what appeared to be human body parts. I picked one bag and peered into it. Baby kidneys, arms, body parts.

I felt an intense mixture of pain, anger, nausea, fear, and repugnance, followed by shooting pains in my stomach. I felt like throwing up. I thought of all the women, Betty, Grace, and Philomena: the mothers.

I must not throw up. We have to leave, I told myself.

We heard the shuffling of feet coming from somewhere behind us. I saw another door to my left. Without thinking, I pulled Wainaina by the hand and made a quick run for it, pulling the door closed behind us. Except for a strip of light under the door, we were in total darkness. The light under the door went off. We heard nothing. I assumed that the man had left it on by mistake and come back to rectify his error. Now the room was completely dark. We waited for a while. The silence was deafening. Wainaina felt about on the wall for a switch, I guessed. Sure enough, light flooded the room.

I saw a short flight of spiral stairs and went for it. At the last step leading to a door, I came to a small window and saw Jane’s car parked in the yard. I realized abruptly that the church stood on the body parts laboratory. The door was locked. Break the window, or yank it open like we had done with the first? I looked behind me to ask Wainaina.

“Wainaina?” I whispered, but he didn’t answer. I walked back down. “Hey, Wainaina?”

I felt a sharp pain in my head. Dizzy, I turned around and saw a male figure looming over me. I knew too late that my gun was still in my bag, hanging from my shoulder. I kicked hard, aiming at his balls, and heard him grunt. Then silence and darkness.

I must have blacked out, for when I awoke, I was alone in a room. I tried to move but found that my hands were tied. My head was throbbing with a pain that shot to my temples every time I tried to move. I looked to the side and saw Wainaina slumped down and tied to a chair. A thin trickle of blood from his mouth dripped on the floor. I could hear his faint breath, so I knew he was alive. I tried to move my legs, and they felt numb; I realized they were tied, too. “Wainaina, Wainaina!” I hissed, but he didn’t respond.

I heard footsteps and a mumble of voices. The footsteps became louder. Enter a slightly limping Wakitabu, and with him a no longer pregnant Betty, strapped to a wheelchair. Was the crying baby in the nursery warehouse Betty’s? I wondered. She had a lost look on her face, like someone who had been drugged. I felt so powerless, I hated myself. How could I have forgotten to take the gun from the shoulder bag? I made as if to move toward her.

A slap across the face sent me on the floor with the chair. I attempted to get up, but I couldn’t. Lying on my side, I saw Wakitabu move over to Wainaina and shake him into consciousness. Then he came back to me and lifted me, still tied to the chair, from the floor.

“I want you and you,” he said, pointing the gun at Betty and Wainaina, “to see what I’ll do to this woman.” He pointed the gun at me. “I will teach you to hit a man’s balls. I will teach you not to interfere in matters that don’t concern you. Fake Amina. You played with my mind, ruined my otherwise spotless record at Kambera. I will break your legs, your hands, one by one, a slow death.” Though he was shouting, he was grimacing with pain. There was not a hint of mercy on his brutal face. We were all going to die.

From somewhere inside, I gathered whatever strength I had and expressed my contempt. “Do you also eat the babies you help slaughter? The women you help murder?”

“You . . . You . . .” he said, fuming with anger, pointing his gun at my left leg, while Wainaina and Betty begged, “Don’t.”

He took his time, trying to exert maximum terror. I closed my eyes. I heard a familiar voice.

“Go easy on her.”

I opened my eyes only to see Wakitabu hop to the side meekly. My savior stood at the door. I was torn between hurrah and horror.

It was Zack with a gun in his hand.

26

Z
ack led me to an adjoining room and pushed me into a chair. The place was bare, but it could have functioned as an office. My bag dangled from my neck. I did not want to draw undue attention to it, but I hoped my gun was in there.

“You betrayed me to the gunman? You were together, weren’t you? Maybe you were always together from the beginning. I should have let Wakitabu finish you off. With that journalist. Arranging an interview . . .”

They were not the words I had expected to come out of his mouth first. His narrow escape from death at the hands of the man who had hunted him across countries and continents had left him more bitter than grateful. He stood behind the desk, gun in hand, piercing me with his steely gaze. My disgust and contempt for him would not let me dignify his allegations with silence.

“I was not with him. He thought I knew where you were. He must have followed me. I would not get any satisfaction from your death by hands other than mine. I would like to strangle you and squeeze every ounce of breath from you.”

Zack burst out laughing. Even I saw the ridiculous side to my wish. My tiny hands squeezing that neck?

“Is that so? Now let’s talk serious business between man and wife. How would you like this to end?”

I had no illusions. He would not let us go free. We knew too much. Our only ally was time. I had to keep Zack talking, give us a chance to find a way to the gun or for fate to intervene.

“So all those years were a lie?” I asked, surprisingly calm, more of a loud thought than a question.

“I have never lied to you. And no, I didn’t marry you because of this business, although it didn’t hurt that my wife was Kenyan. It was destiny, you know, when I bumped into you at O&O. When you bent down to pick the flying pages and then raised your head . . . Well, what can I say? You were beautiful. But I saw something else: You acted as if you were more to blame than I was for the bump. I needed that self-effacement in my life. Then you grew on me. My heart felt calmer, just knowing I was coming home to you.”

“After stealing babies, Zack? Really?”

He started pacing. Keep calm, I told myself, thinking about my gun. Keep him busy with questions. Make him talk, talk, talk. He loves stories about himself.

“Those kids are living in the best homes all over the world.” He paused. “As for the women, I rent their wombs.”

“You rob them, enslave them, their body, their souls, and you call it rent?”

His laughter sounded evil. I wondered how I ever could have found it attractive.

“I didn’t touch their souls,” he said as he moved to the other side of the table and slumped into a chair. “I left their bodies intact. I paid good money.”

“And got paid even better? You’re killing babies? Why, Zack, why?”

He stood and walked a step or two away from the table, then turned to me. “Don’t you see that we save lives? Stem cell research. Hundreds have been saved; thousands more will be. These kids have already saved presidents, prime ministers, Hollywood stars, priests.”

“What? But their lives. Do they matter to you?”

“Restoring. Incarnation, if you don’t like restoration.”

“Just how many babies, Zack?”

“Not even close to those who die of starvation, disease, and the endless ethnic wars on this godforsaken continent. Your politicians, your government, they kill far more, and then play victim and kill more. I help these women. In exchange, they donate a little tissue to help save lives.”

“Poor people’s babies are mere tissue?”

He rose and sat down again. “You remind me of my father, who, unable to face reality, retreated into the
bottle field.
But my grandfather accepted that the weak feed the strong; the lower feed the higher. Wealth thrives on poverty. I didn’t make up that part. It’s the way the world works. Your Africa has been donating tissue to the West for centuries. Your politicians get a cut, that’s all. I am not doing anything different. I am just a middleman.”

“How did you get Melinda into this?” I asked. “Your lover?”

He seemed amused by the question. He was enjoying his own performance.“She loved me. I didn’t love her. The more indifference I showed her, the more devoted she became. She would do anything for me. How do you think we got the reverend? When I met Susan in Estonia, I saw that her fantasies could be turned into profit. The Black Angel clinched the deal. It was easy. Melinda had the same savior fantasies. Where they saw salvation, I saw a way to save myself.”

My eyes felt like they were burning, but I couldn’t cry. I was shaky. I could have sworn the room was spinning; I wished Wainaina were near me to steady me. I have to handle this, I thought, even as I saw that I was standing still. I looked hard at Zack. I closed my eyes for a second or two, and when I opened them, it was still Zack standing in front of me. Who was this man, really?

“And their role? Susan and Melinda? Just fishers of poor women and children?” I was trying with difficulty to suppress my sarcasm.

“Melinda and Susan bring the women to have the babies and attend to them. The nursery. A full-time mother to feed them. Nurses to look after them.”

“You mean the babies in the warehouse?”

“Yes. Some go for adoptions through Susan and Melinda. The others—”

“You act as God, deciding who will live or die?” I interrupted, wondering how he could talk as if describing an everyday occurrence.

“You don’t understand. They all live. Some are adopted as part of a human family; others are adapted as part of a human body,” he said. He stood and started pacing.

The man was sick, his words sickening. I moved my hand slowly and felt my bag. The gun was there. Zack, self-absorbed, was looking away from me. I figured out how to quickly open the bag and reach for the gun. Neither he nor Wakitabu, who was guarding Wainaina and Betty, seemed to suspect I possessed one. Wakitabu had not bothered to search me. Buy time, I thought.

“Did Melinda and Susan know about what happens to the babies who are not adopted? Who are for what you call adaption to the body?”

“What do you think? In our kind of business, we survive by making sure that the left is left and the right is right and never the twain shall meet. Women are too sentimental; let them take care of milk. Men take care of blood.”

“By ‘men,’ you mean you, Joe . . .”

“Joe? Who in his right mind would involve a playboy like Joe in serious business? He’s always thinking of how he can get a woman to bed.”

Did I hear right? I had to make sure. “Why did he want to kill me?”

The question provoked prolonged maniacal laughter. “I don’t know. At first I laughed. Then I realized that the video I had Melinda hand-deliver to our place had worked in ways I had not imagined. You thought she had already left for Rio. She knew you were taking me to the airport. I thought the chase would temper your curiosity, but I guess I was wrong.”

I felt foolish and guilty about the risks I had taken that night, running away from a phantom of my own imagination. But what about Joe’s conversation about calming me? Who was he talking to? Mark, maybe? “But you were willing to place your ‘right mind’ in Mark’s service. Or you do you think that Melinda’s denial deceived me? Why would you work for Mark while sleeping with his wife?”

“Ex-wife,” he interrupted me. “Mark and his dreams of a global landscaping paradise, spiced with smuggling illegal immigrants? Too greedy. Too risky. Mark has never been in Africa. But he did help by keeping Melinda away from me, providing a cover, sort of, until their divorce.”

“What about Kobi? Doesn’t it bother you?”

“That he is my son?” he retorted.

“He is Wangeci’s,” I said.

“And mine,” he said.

“I met Wangeci before you killed her. She told me everything about her and Mark. Mark made you adopt his child: Melinda’s doing? Then he ordered you to murder children. You are nothing but Mark’s attack dog.”

At first he seemed confused, unable to get what I was talking about. Then he burst into laughter. “I see. I told you, you don’t know what you think you know. My Estonian Finnish connections. Markus, my birth name—which is also my father’s name—is a variation of the English Mark. You, as my wife, should have known that I use it for my other businesses. Call them aliases. For my work here, my alias is Mark, the English version of Markus. Wangeci knew me as Mark.”

My knees were weakening. I recalled Melinda observing how Kobi resembled Zack. On reflection, I could see it for myself. It was his triumph over me.