The Devil's Horn (16 page)

“Let’s get him covered up, okay?”

They returned to work. LB lowered his night goggles to find larger stones off the paths, while Promise collected armfuls of smaller rocks. Together, they did not drop their loads on Wophule but placed the stones one at a time, assembling the mound with an unspoken, shared care.

The captain stood well away, near the drone. He circled the wreck, describing what he saw into the phone at his ear. When he finished his conversation, he came to Promise and LB, adding his hands to the job of covering Wophule.

Quickly, the boy faded beneath a lattice of stones. The rocks were of many sizes, weights, shapes and were shot through with quartz, spotted or solid, as if Wophule had been laid under a collection of his days. Promise stood aside to let the Americans close the last gaps. Finally, with their helmets, the two scooped dirt to pour over the stones, enclosing Wophule’s life and the smell of his death.

When they were done, the soldiers stepped back, leaving Promise closest to Wophule. Both men mopped their brows. LB gestured to the mound.

“Go ahead.”

Promise did not speak to God or Wophule, but to the Americans.

“He cannot be left here. Wophule is Xhosa. He cannot be away from his village. His ancestors.”

The captain replied.

“It’s just until we get this sorted out.”

“How long will that be?”

The man opened and closed his mouth. Promise answered for him.

“You cannot tell me. I know.”

The Americans crossed their hands at their waists, waiting for Promise to conclude. She thought of words but could say none of them, they were all admissions. Wophule’s killing was one blade of her grief, but she had many stabbing her. She could drop to her knees and confess all to his spirit, but Wophule would become restless, he would grieve her, not go into the afterlife. And the Americans would hear. She had no muti to give to help him rest. So Promise danced.

She lifted her knees and arms, waved her wrists at the stars. She asked the dark sky to call Wophule’s ancestors here to the heart of the Kruger so they might comfort him until he could come home. She promised to kill a beast for them later, an ox or whatever she could afford. She danced to lessen the evil of Wophule’s murder, to give him light feet to travel onward, and mostly to make him go away from this life and not haunt her.

Promise lost sight of Wophule, the Americans, and the Kruger. She fixed her eyes upward, pleading into the darkness. She skipped circles around the rock mound, twisting her own spirit into the dance. She rounded Wophule many times, until sweat fell in her eyes. But she sensed nothing from the sky and night. Wophule had died unnaturally, wrongfully. His ancestors would not answer her call; she was responsible for his murder. They waited and wanted more from Promise than secrets and a dance. She was left in life with Wophule, and he with her.

Promise stumbled against the stones. Her knees buckled, and she tumbled to the ground where she belonged.

Before she could collapse, the sergeant caught her by the arm.

“Whoa, okay. Come on, girl.”

Promise made herself limp to crumble the rest of the way, but LB held her up. His strength was remarkable.

“Hey, that’s enough. Here we go, take a seat.”

Somehow the sergeant seemed on all sides of her, like the night. She let him ease her away from Wophule. He sat her down with her back to the mound of stones.

Chapter 14

One scotch glass held two ice cubes. The other, neat, Allyn handed over.

Leaning against the headboard, the whore sipped and closed her eyes to make a show over the quality of the liquor.

She surveyed the big bedroom. Oddly, as her eyes flitted about, she clucked her tongue as though tasting the sculptures, oil paintings, fabrics, appreciating more than their beauty—perhaps their cost. This made Allyn think he’d insist on a better class of prostitute if he did this again.

He sank into his leather reading chair; the cushions cooled his bare bottom, feeling wrong. In all the years he’d lived here, he’d never once sat in this chair naked. Allyn turned on the gooseneck lamp for the whore to see better, but the light shined on his nakedness and age, so he snapped it off. She paid no notice.

“You got a beautiful house.”

“Thank you.”

“How long ago did your wife pass?”

“Weeks.”

“So sorry.”

“Of course.”

“You don’t mind. May I look around?”

Allyn had arrived home with the whore at dusk, and had done nothing to lighten the gloom of the large house. The master bedroom, lit by a small china lamp Eva had bought at a flea market in Rome, was the only glowing spot in the mansion. The woman would have to turn on lights. He had no qualm about that, and rather liked the notion of the place warming up for the whore to wander. Many rooms he’d not entered in years and could not now picture in his mind’s eye. Just the kitchen, the den and dining room, his office, and the bedroom. He could not conjure his son’s old room or the guest rooms, his wife’s sewing room, the servants’ quarters; he barely knew the yard beyond the deck umbrellas and chaises. This had been Eva’s home far more than his, what Allyn had given his wife and child in the bargain.

“Go ahead.”

The whore scooted off the bed, careful not to spill the scotch. She began to pull up the sheets.

“That’s alright. Leave it.”

She flipped a casual hand to say,
Whatever
. She reached for her dress and underthings lapped over the back of an upholstered wing chair bought in Hong Kong.

“Leave them, too.”

Facing him, she swirled the scotch glass, elbow tucked into her bare waist, and shifted her weight to one leg. The woman was shapely, ample in the bottom, with spectacular golden eyes that were likely contact lenses.

“You want me to go around your house like this?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.”

The whore left the bedroom with the highball in hand. Allyn didn’t care where she went in the house or what she saw, and if she was naked, what could she steal? But that wasn’t why the notion had come to him to send her off that way. He couldn’t be sure why he’d told her to leave her clothes behind. The idea of a naked hooker flowing through the house, admiring and touching Eva’s things, seemed somehow cleansing. There was a benefit to that, but he couldn’t wrap his thoughts around what that would be. Like a mine, the value lay at the end, in the rock, dark as the woman.

Allyn sat alone, with her in the veins of the house. An hour ago he’d forgotten her name when she told it to him, it sounded as fake as her eyes, so he’d let it slide off him with his pants and shirt. The house was too large to listen out for her; he’d need to stand outside the bedroom and look over the rail, down into the gallery, to get any sense of where she was. She didn’t rattle about but, barefoot, glided through the place. Naked in the leather chair, Allyn turned on the gooseneck lamp again. He examined his small hands, their creased palms and spotted backs.

The whore’s laugh came from somewhere on the first floor. Her voice was surprised. She’d come upon something expensive and marveled aloud, feeling free to do so in the great expanses of the house. Perhaps she’d intended for Allyn to hear, meant her outburst as flattery. But she came off as vulgar, and Allyn realized why he’d brought her home, and why he’d let her loose.

The whore fouled what she touched, stained what she saw. All of it was Eva’s. The whore was helping to bury the last of his wife, helping Allyn say good-bye. The whore was a shame, like Juma and the money he made. Eva, in her lifetime, did nothing shameful. She would not approve, so Allyn was taking away her voice.

He stared at the bedroom’s open door for the whore to return. He was not impatient. He waited while she toured, blank of mind the way a man stands a long time in a hot shower, under a good scouring.

When his cell phone lit up, it showed Juma calling. Allyn drew a sharp breath, awakened. He didn’t answer Juma but gathered the whore’s clothes and shoes, carried them out to the landing, and dumped everything over the rail. At the clatter on the oriental carpet below, she emerged from the recesses of the house. Her breasts jiggled while she collected her things.

“Why did you do that?”

“Take something and go. Something small.”

High above her, bare and dangling like the whore, Allyn indicated a table beside a sofa. He pointed at a marble carving of a leaping dolphin, from Florida.

“That.”

The whore shook her head up at him, confounded but keeping her mouth shut. She did as instructed. Allyn watched her step into her panties, wiggle into her dress. He felt no distaste or drive for her, only finished. She snatched the statue off the table and flounced out the front door.

Allyn dressed. Downstairs, he turned off all the lights the whore had left burning. Eva had made a bright home, she liked candles and music fluting throughout. She’d not been an overly smart woman but had a full heart, a filling way, even as a girl. Eva gave gift baskets and visited sick friends, threw theme parties, hugged everyone hello and good-bye. Over the decades, as Allyn got rich, she didn’t change, not a whit. Maybe this was because she’d been born wealthy, and he had not. The struggle for money claimed him, hardened him more than Eva could soften him. But he’d done much of it for her, to protect her and their son. He’d won that contest. Eva’s life was a cushioned thing, so was the boy’s. She was gone now, and the boy was on his own. Allyn had been abandoned to be the wealthy man he’d become.

He followed the whore and Eva around the first floor. One room and light switch at a time, he sank the empty house into dimness. When the only glow was again from the upstairs bedroom, Allyn took the phone outside.

The black lake made an upside-down reflected world. Stars glittered beneath the windows of the lit-up homes on the opposite shore. Doors and porches were flipped. One neighbor came home and walked in on his ceiling. Allyn wished for a pebble to throw into the lake to break the surface and the quiet, separate world on it. He had nothing on hand but the cell phone. He considered throwing it, but the man who could do that, who could not call Juma back, was long gone, if he’d ever existed.

Juma answered on the first ring. He’d been waiting.

“Hello, shamwari.”

“Juma. What is it?”

“Are you alright? You sound tired.”

“It’s difficult sometimes. That’s all.”

“I understand. I’ve lost, too. Many times over. It’s a sad thing. Not the loss of the loved one alone but the hardening, the killing of your own heart to get through it. A sensitive man like you can’t survive if you don’t die a little.”

This was always Juma. In the mines, in the early days, it was, “This is how you swing a shovel, young Allyn. Turn at the hips, spare your back. Push the tram with short strides, spare your knees. Fuses, drills, the boss’s daughter . . . Here is how you survive, young Allyn.”

“Thank you. I’ll be fine. Why did you call? Did something go wrong in the park?”

Juma laughed, knowing what he would say but savoring it first, letting Allyn know this was going to be good.

“No. I have the rocket.”

“Intact?”

“Perfect. It’s American. A Hellfire. Very powerful. It will sell.”

“Good. What about the drone?”

“Wrecked. There’s something about it I wanted you to know. That is why I called.”

“Alright.”

“This may be outside my abilities, Allyn.”

Again, this was the man Allyn had known for so long. Big Juma did not go beyond his scope. He would never have been promoted to engineer in Rhodesia, no matter what he could do in the mines. Allyn had been the one to go onward. Juma never begrudged him that.

“What are you saying?”

“I brought a piece of it back with me, and I took pictures. I’ve identified it. It’s a Denel. South African.”

Allyn lowered the phone without intending to. His gaze locked on the spangled lake, a dark slate for him to figure out the stunning implications of what Juma had just told him.

A South African drone had been armed with an American missile.

How could this be?

When did the Americans and South Africans start collaborating on covert strikes? Had the two countries, old antagonists, new but cautious allies, made some secret pact? That would be an incredible event. Allyn had spent thirty years selling platinum, coal, and gems on global markets, he knew the relations and trade treaties of the entire developed world. The United States did not sell advanced tech missiles but to a handful of countries, only their closest cronies, and South Africa was not one of them, nor likely to be. America was the world’s most prolific remote control killer, and if South Africa was now involved in drone warfare alongside them, this was being done utterly out of the light of public scrutiny. It seemed inexplicable. Dodgy at best.

The Denel had flown off to do some nasty job somewhere out of sight, and for whatever reason—bad luck, most likely—one American rocket was still attached when it pranged into the Kruger.

Juma wasn’t just talking about the black market sale of a rocket that, as he’d said, had literally fallen into their hands in the bush. No. Their customer wasn’t going to be some shadowy nonstate actor with enough cash and bitterness to want this American-made weapon.

“Juma.”

“Yes, shamwari.”

“You’re talking about blackmail here. Aren’t you?”

“Perhaps. And.”

Allyn knew the next words but wanted Juma to say them. That way he could keep believing these were Juma’s schemes, not his own.

“And what?”

“A great deal of money.”

Without question. Governments spent untold millions making sure that what they meant to be hidden remained that way. A few million more would be nothing.

For that matter, so would a two-dollar bullet.

But there might be millions.

Should they do this? Could they?

Would it be blackmail to simply notify the South African government that their Yank missile and wrecked drone had been found in the middle of the Kruger and carried off for safekeeping? Why was this not a good thing, removing a dangerous item such as a live rocket lying about? Allyn assumed some violence had been done in the taking of the missile, but that could always be blamed on poachers, wild, untamable men. The rocket had been rescued from them and was in good hands; so was the secret. No need to stir up public mistrust over the incident, nothing to be gained from an international furor. A reward would be in order.

Allyn overlaid his thoughts on the dark, flat lake, assembling, machining, engineering the next moves.

He’d need lawyers, a fleet of them, to insulate him. Corporate shells and veils, maybe a high-priced former government official or retired general to play spokesman; he could buy either as required. His relationship with Juma might have to change, perhaps come to an end if enough scrutiny came their way. No problem there, with sufficient payment to ease the separation.

“This has to be handled very carefully. You know that.”

“Of course. That is why I called.”

“We’re going to kick a hornet’s nest.”

“Understood. What shall I do?”

“Nothing, Juma. Nothing. I will call you soon.”

“Alright, shamwari. Good-bye.”

Allyn opened his mouth to reply in kind. But the good-bye stuck on his tongue. He said instead, “Wait.”

Doubt checked him. Not over whether he could do this; he could, a hundred times over. He was canny enough, rich enough already. Allyn was a businessman, and this was, after all, a transaction, dicey and a bit treacherous but little else, and well worth the risk. No different than drilling a new shaft.

His hesitation rose from Juma’s question: What to do next? Who should Allyn call, hire, bribe? Who would he delegate? Who would handle this for him?

Juma held his end of the silence while Allyn measured and weighed. Allyn turned away from the quiet lake to carry the phone off the deck into his unlit house.

Standing in the vaulted great room, he lowered the phone to his side. Allyn felt the whore in his house more than Eva.

What would be his tools? Phones, cash, wariness.

As a young man, how well he could swing a pickax and a cricket bat had pleased him and made others proud. Those had been his tools then, and his tickets out. Those and Eva. From that young, marvelous time, he’d grown away from being an engineer into a corporate boss whom others would not even allow near the explosions in his own mines, explosions he’d set a thousand times. Over the decades—the years fell on a man so quickly, like a cave-in—he’d become ensconced, a boardroom miner. He’d embraced his work and held himself at arm’s length from his wife and child, who probably loved him.