Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“Jack!” More tears fell down her cheeks. “No! No,” she breathed.

A long silence, as Natalie struggled to take in this news. She drifted off to sleep.

Hours later she wakened. Jack was still there.

So was the cold, empty space that was now her father.

“Where’s Christopher?”

“I don’t know. He’s disappeared.”

“He’s devastated at what he did.”

“Maybe. He tried something similar before. Remember? That boat engine failure on Lake Naivasha.”

“You think this was deliberate?” The word died on her lips as she ran short of breath.

“It’s crossed my mind. It should have been you and me on that plane.”

“Why? Why would he do such a thing?”

“The same reason as before, Mgina’s termite in timber: jealousy. Because he thinks … because of our trip to Lamu, me bringing you your dinners when you were ill … he thinks … he’s fallen in love with you like I have. He admitted as much to me the night we had a drink in the hotel, the night before you gave evidence, after I left your room, after we had … he decided that if he couldn’t have you, no one could.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Jealousy wouldn’t do that to someone.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist, Natalie, just a miserable paleontologist with a brand-new Ph.D., but I think he’s done it to me twice now. Look what jealousy did to Russell.”

He got up and prowled the room. She could see that now, today, he looked wrecked. “My mother, your father, and Max were never meant to be on the plane. Only you and I were. The last discussion Christopher was a party to, during the lunch break in the trial, after your appearance in the witness box, before he went off for a flying lesson, was when you and I were planning to fly to the gorge, and everyone else was staying on. Only later was there a change of plan—two changes of plan, in fact, with me staying over in Nairobi, because of the committee meeting, and with Max flying everyone else back to the gorge. Christopher didn’t know that.”

Natalie shook her head again, weakly. “No, no,” she breathed, “you’re wrong. It was an accident, I’m sure of it.” She coughed. Even that hurt. “As we were taking off, I saw Christopher come running out of the departures building and waving. I waved back.” She looked up at Jack. “He wasn’t waving! He had realized his mistake and was trying to stop us.”

“Hmm.” Jack, by the window, shrugged. “He tried to stop you only after he realized who was on the plane.”

“Don’t say that! Don’t say that! ” She thought back to Christopher’s late-night visit to her room in the hotel, when he had asked her to marry him and she had raised the subject of the boating accident on Lake Naivasha. Reminding him of that surely had nothing to do with Christopher’s behavior?

She refused to believe that either.

“You must look for him, Jack. He mustn’t do a Kees. He’s done a dreadful thing and in some ways it will be worse for him if it was an accident.” She coughed again. “You were always parking near the jets, near the jet fuel—can you honestly say you are free of all blame?”

A long silence.

Natalie tried hard to remember the look on Christopher’s face as he had gestured at the Comanche as Max raced the aircraft down the big runway at Nairobi International. But she’d been through too much. Those memories, nearer the crash, just wouldn’t behave.

Jack prowled around the room. He’d lost his mother, poor man, but she was too weak to offer him any support. She’d make it up to him. Oh, how she’d make it up to him.

Her father was dead.

She cried herself to sleep again.

The next morning when she awakened, Jack was still there. He hadn’t shaved and he hadn’t changed his clothes. It didn’t matter: he was there. She ate some fruit and drank some water. The ring of pain around her middle hadn’t gone away. In a weak voice she said, “We haven’t talked about Ndekei, Marongo, Richard Sutton Senior, Russell North. What’s happened—anything?”

“More than you could know.” He prowled the room again as he talked. “The first thing to say is … did you, by any chance, notice that Peter Jeavons was in court? He’s the man who—”

“Yes, yes, of course, that’s who it was. The British minister of science, but a lawyer by training. Who came to visit us in the camp and whose constituency is near where … where my father lived. I did notice someone whose face I couldn’t put a name to. I remember thinking it was curious.”

“Curious—yes, but good for us.” Jack leaned against the windowsill. “It seems he was very taken with what he saw in the gorge and what we are achieving and trying to achieve. At the same time he was distressed by your dilemma.” Jack parted the slats of the Venetian blinds and looked out of the window again. “You may remember that when he was in the gorge, having dinner, it was around the time my mother had received that letter from the honors committee, proposing to give her a title, make her a dame, and she had refused. Remember that he tried to persuade my mother to accept the gong?”

“Yes, yes I do. But what does that have to do—?”

“I’m coming to that. The conversation at dinner gave Jeavons an idea—he’s obviously a born politician. He went back to Britain and did a little research on John Tudor’s family—that’s right, the judge. It appears that Tudor has two brothers back in London. One is a barrister and has been knighted, the other works as a private secretary in Buckingham Palace and almost certainly will be knighted when he retires—it goes with the job. Jeavons came back here with a message from the honors committee, which, with preparations for the independence conference in full swing, was mindful of what sort of result was to be preferred in the Ndekei trial.”

“You mean—?”

“I don’t know what you are thinking but Jeavons, who is a lawyer after all, went through the evidence with Tudor, before the trial. That’s probably what they were discussing at the Karibu Club on Christmas Eve, when Christopher saw them. And they found an acceptable way out, one that let you give your evidence but after which Ndekei was released. In return, Tudor is to be made Lord Tudor of Kilimai—that’s the suburb of Nairobi where he lives—and he will retire and return to Britain grander than either of his brothers.”

She shifted her frame in bed. The pain around her middle was easier if she moved every so often. “But that’s … that’s—”

“A fix, yes, and very possibly criminal.” Jack came away from the window and sat on the bed. He kissed her forehead. “But you weren’t party to the plan, you didn’t know what deal the politicians were cooking, so your hands are clean. I don’t expect you to like it, Dr. Nelson, but Jeavons got you off the hook with Richard Sutton, it’s all tidied up and hasn’t put a cloud over the independence talks. So I suggest you grin and bear it.”

“I’ll bet Sutton’s not grinning.”

“That’s the other piece of good news. Marongo made quite a song and dance when Ndekei was acquitted—politicians always look for quick political capital—and it got quite up Sutton’s nose. He saw you give evidence, he saw how you didn’t wilt under cross-examination, how you insisted on your viewpoint. He liked it that you were respectful about his son, in public.”

Jack lifted her hand to his cheek and rubbed his rough stubble over her skin, smiling. Get used to it, he was saying. This is the state of my beard every morning, when you wake up.

“But he didn’t like the judge’s decision and he most certainly didn’t like Marongo’s crowing. Sutton came to Nairobi to be magnanimous and get the credit for it. In the end he had nothing to be magnanimous about. Their deal is off and he’s returned to New York and won’t be coming back.”