Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

He tailed off and neither of them spoke for a moment.

Russell, she realized, wasn’t quite as quick as he thought. If he’d really absorbed that there might have been something between Richard and Ndekei, he would have realized she was telling him that the threat to himself was much diminished, and he should never have been made to leave the gorge. But, since he was so belligerent, and so wrapped up in himself, Natalie was not going to help him work out what he couldn’t work out for himself.

“Russell … why did you come back? … Was it only for the press conference? And how did you know about it … how did you know all those details?”

Russell sipped his drink. He had reverted to vodka by the look of it.

“Richard Sutton Senior paid for me. He has a contact in the American embassy here, who keeps him informed. We suspected the Deacons would pull some kind of stunt and so it proved—”

“Russell! It wasn’t a stunt.”

“Oh no?” He looked at her and shook his head. “Natalie, had I not intervened today, tomorrow’s papers would have been full of anthropological and paleontological details with no mention of Richard—or at least of Richard’s murder.”

“There’ll be more than enough time for that, at the trial.”

He shook his head again. “But by then, if the Deacons had had their way—unimpeded you might say—the gorge would have been established as a national treasure, one of the wonders of the world, Richard’s death would have been minimized, or sidelined altogether, an inconvenience, no more. And you didn’t give a straight answer today, either. She did try to get you to change your testimony, change your evidence, more than once.”

“I have never wavered.” She said it firmly, blushing slightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“That’s not what I said, or meant. She tried to get you to change your evidence. I can’t forgive that.”

An appalling thought struck her. “Are you …? Would you like to see the gorge destroyed? If I give evidence, and say what I saw, and Ndekei is hanged, and the Maasai do what they are threatening to do, will that please you, give you satisfaction? Because you can’t work in the gorge anymore, do you want it spoiled for the rest of us? Is that what this is all about, Russell?”

He didn’t say anything, but snatched at his drink.

“I’m right, aren’t I? Richard’s father, poor man, is devastated by his son’s death and he wants Ndekei prosecuted and found guilty for entirely normal reasons—he wants justice for his son. But you … you want revenge, don’t you? If you can’t play in the gorge, you don’t want anyone else to—that’s it, isn’t it?”

A long silence followed before Russell said, “I can’t deny it would give me some satisfaction to see the Deacons humbled. There would be a measure of justice in it, yes.”

Another long silence.

“Are you staying until the trial?”

“It was a condition of Richard Sutton Senior paying for me to come. He will be here himself, of course, nearer the time.”

“How are you going to fill in your hours? There’s more than a month to go.”

“You’d be surprised. For one thing, I’d like to talk to Marongo.”

“What? He’s as likely to kill you as talk to you.”

Russell took some ice from his glass and cracked it between his teeth. “You accuse me of being a fossil, of not appreciating how the world has changed, of being marooned in Hollywood. Don’t underestimate me.” He pointed.

She followed with her eyes. Two large black men stood just outside the entrance to the bar.

“Bodyguards?”

He nodded.

“Have I seen them before?”

He nodded.

“In Lamu? Paid for by Richard Sutton Senior?”

He nodded again. “So I know about you and Jack Deacon.”

“There’s not a lot to know.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t really care. What I care about is us.”

She ignored that. “Why would you want to see Marongo?”

He smiled. “Say Ndekei is convicted, say he’s hanged. Marongo has political ambitions, as perhaps you know, and will make political capital whichever way the verdict goes. But I haven’t been a complete fossil, Natalie. There is an alternative to destroying the gorge … let a new team take over. Run by me. I’ve been offered a full professorship at Yale. I’ll be an even bigger fish next year.”

She stared at him. “But how on earth could that work? You’re the one … you and Richard were the ones who set this whole thing in motion.”

He cracked more ice with his teeth. “You’d be surprised how money talks, money and imagination. Sutton and I have been conferring. Maybe our interests coincide. If Ndekei is convicted and sentenced to hang, there will almost certainly be trouble, political violence, on a small scale maybe but newsworthy. And there’ll be an appeal. That will provide a focus for further trouble. Richard Sutton Senior will then intervene and say that, justice having been done with a guilty verdict, he will campaign for the commutation of the death sentence and that, as a mark of respect for his son, who committed a blunder—but no more—he wants to help the tribe. He will donate several millions to whatever causes the Maasai hold dear but only so long as they spare the gorge, which from now on will be excavated by Americans chosen by Richard Sutton Senior.”

“You’d do all that? Will it work?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that Marongo is a political animal and that Richard Sutton Senior has funded politicians and political campaigns in the past, in New York City and in Washington. He is not, shall we say, without experience, hardly wet behind the ears. I remember saying in one of my letters—one of my letters that you didn’t reply to, by the way—that Sutton was a man who makes things happen, and to beware. I was right and you were warned.”

Across the bar some of the British journalists were gathering, men who had been at the press conference. One or two looked in Natalie’s direction but she did her best to ignore them.

“Russell, when Richard Sutton Senior came to the camp, with his wife, he said some very unpleasant things—”

“Yes, he’s not the choirmaster type, is he?”

“That’s unfair and unkind and it’s not what I meant. He threatened me, he threatened me, he actually boasted about some of the … unorthodox things he has done in the past, corners he has cut, toes he has trodden on, and he guaranteed to make my life a misery if I didn’t give evidence. He had me followed to Lamu, as you well know, because, presumably, he thought I might abscond, something that never crossed my mind.” She paused. “Are you sure … are you certain you want to be mixed up with that sort of person, that sort of … roughneck?”

“Hmm,” growled Russell dismissively. “All he wants from you is that you testify. Since you are going to do that there’s no problem—”

“No problem? You’ve seen the lengths he’ll go to, to ensure I do testify. This is a man … a man who isn’t shy of taking the law into his own hands.”

“Which, as I seem to recall, is exactly what Ndekei did.” He snorted again. “So we are all square there. But—” he went on as she tried to protest, “I agree that Sutton Senior is the type who knows how to—well, cut corners, shall we say, when it’s needed. But where his son is concerned there’s a difference. If he can’t have his son alive, then he wants his memory up there in lights—respectable, academic, professional lights, and my plan has tickled his imagination and sense of power. He doesn’t like Eleanor Deacon any more than I do, or her view that the gorge is more important than his son.” Russell wiped his lips with a paper napkin. “So get used to the idea that, over the next few weeks, this whole can of worms is going to slither and slide and writhe out of control, with one of only two possible results, assuming you give evidence. One, the Maasai will destroy and reoccupy the gorge; or … two, I will take over and you lot will be out in the cold—on your way, dare I say it, to becoming fossils.”