a tooth out of place. He is so not my type."
Eden rubbed prickling forearms: goose bumps. She had a brooding look.
"Bertie, fact is, I think Grayle knows who I am."
"You can't hide here forever."
"I'm not—hiding; I love Shungwaya. Just give me a little more time, all right? After Nashville I needed a straitjacket. But you and Tom have been so great to me."
"You're tougher than you think. You don't have to jump into bed with Linc, but he is an interesting guy. Speaks half a dozen languages. Very well read. Rich doesn't begin to describe him, but of course you'll be even richer soon. If he does recall having seen your face on TV or in the tabloids, he'll be discreet. Secrets are his business. Give him half a chance, you'll like him."
Uncle Norm climbed onto Eden's shoulder and when she covered her head with her hands so he couldn't run his fingers through her hair, he scolded her loudly. Eden kept her head down until the monkey jumped to an ebony railing of the veranda. Then she looked up, into Bertie's eyes.
"There's more to it than I've told you," Eden confessed.
Only a rim of sun left, clouds like jet trails but smoke-dark in a sky giving up its blue to a twilight radiance of wafer-thin gold. The monkey chittered at a Shungwaya dog, black and wet from a shoreline romp, that came up on the veranda and slumped down with his muzzle in Bertie's lap.
"I've dreamed about him, a couple of times," Eden said.
"Good or bad?"
"He was Mwanamke in my dreams," Eden shuddered. Her headache had worsened. "A woman. And I was afraid of her."
Chapter 6
AMBOSELI NATIONAL PARK
KENYA-TANZANIA BORDER
OCTOBER 140530 HOURS ZULU
A mboseli National Park, mostly in Kenya but with one .ttcorner overlapping the border of Tanzania, was 220 miles southeast of Lake Naivasha, an hour and a half by air in Tom Sherard's fast, roomy Agusta III helicopter. They left at a quarter to five in silver-tinted darkness, the nearly full moon resembling one of those crudely minted coins of vanished nation-states recovered from Aegean shipwrecks. They overflew Nairobi in a haze of light and followed the A120 south, altered course, and at three thousand feet crossed the perpetually dry bed of Lake Amboseli, meeting the sun as it flashed on the dark horizon, already as bright as midday, drowning leftover stars and striking Kilimanjaro's smooth ancient glacial skin. Another fifty kilometers southeast and almost twenty thousand feet high, Kilimanjaro stood massive and alone, a cloudless throne its dark gods seemingly had abandoned to the cruelty, greed, tribal animosities, and abysmal judgment of those attempting to run things on an earthly level. The political machinery that ground every good thing, like the human heart, to rubble and dust.
So went Eden's thoughts as they flew lower over a brightening landscape. She had never been a morning person.
She looked at Lincoln Grayle in the seat next to hers. He was wide awake and absorbed in the changing tones of the mountain. Hadn't shaved for a day or two. Black sandpaper of beard that humanized him, in Eden's eyes. So did the vivid nicks and larger scars: back of his neck, underside of chin, forearms. He regularly performed an illusion— no , he had corrected her at once, it was an escape routine, with a degree of difficulty Houdini perhaps would have envied—which first required him to be bound in barbed wire before being boiled alive. The wire was chrome-plated, for theatrical effect, but the barbs were sharp and real. So he assured her. She hadn't been impressed, wondering only why ?
Etan Culver, who was a moody fellow when he didn't have a camera in his hands, remote in his reverence for making film when he did, was alternately peering through a side window and doing lens and eyepiece adjustments. Pegeen napped beside him, face relaxed for once, a look of inward stealthy bliss. One of those people who are easily becalmed, on short or long trips.
Tom and Bertie had the controls of the
Eden rubbed prickling forearms: goose bumps. She had a brooding look.
"Bertie, fact is, I think Grayle knows who I am."
"You can't hide here forever."
"I'm not—hiding; I love Shungwaya. Just give me a little more time, all right? After Nashville I needed a straitjacket. But you and Tom have been so great to me."
"You're tougher than you think. You don't have to jump into bed with Linc, but he is an interesting guy. Speaks half a dozen languages. Very well read. Rich doesn't begin to describe him, but of course you'll be even richer soon. If he does recall having seen your face on TV or in the tabloids, he'll be discreet. Secrets are his business. Give him half a chance, you'll like him."
Uncle Norm climbed onto Eden's shoulder and when she covered her head with her hands so he couldn't run his fingers through her hair, he scolded her loudly. Eden kept her head down until the monkey jumped to an ebony railing of the veranda. Then she looked up, into Bertie's eyes.
"There's more to it than I've told you," Eden confessed.
Only a rim of sun left, clouds like jet trails but smoke-dark in a sky giving up its blue to a twilight radiance of wafer-thin gold. The monkey chittered at a Shungwaya dog, black and wet from a shoreline romp, that came up on the veranda and slumped down with his muzzle in Bertie's lap.
"I've dreamed about him, a couple of times," Eden said.
"Good or bad?"
"He was Mwanamke in my dreams," Eden shuddered. Her headache had worsened. "A woman. And I was afraid of her."
Chapter 6
AMBOSELI NATIONAL PARK
KENYA-TANZANIA BORDER
OCTOBER 140530 HOURS ZULU
A mboseli National Park, mostly in Kenya but with one .ttcorner overlapping the border of Tanzania, was 220 miles southeast of Lake Naivasha, an hour and a half by air in Tom Sherard's fast, roomy Agusta III helicopter. They left at a quarter to five in silver-tinted darkness, the nearly full moon resembling one of those crudely minted coins of vanished nation-states recovered from Aegean shipwrecks. They overflew Nairobi in a haze of light and followed the A120 south, altered course, and at three thousand feet crossed the perpetually dry bed of Lake Amboseli, meeting the sun as it flashed on the dark horizon, already as bright as midday, drowning leftover stars and striking Kilimanjaro's smooth ancient glacial skin. Another fifty kilometers southeast and almost twenty thousand feet high, Kilimanjaro stood massive and alone, a cloudless throne its dark gods seemingly had abandoned to the cruelty, greed, tribal animosities, and abysmal judgment of those attempting to run things on an earthly level. The political machinery that ground every good thing, like the human heart, to rubble and dust.
So went Eden's thoughts as they flew lower over a brightening landscape. She had never been a morning person.
She looked at Lincoln Grayle in the seat next to hers. He was wide awake and absorbed in the changing tones of the mountain. Hadn't shaved for a day or two. Black sandpaper of beard that humanized him, in Eden's eyes. So did the vivid nicks and larger scars: back of his neck, underside of chin, forearms. He regularly performed an illusion— no , he had corrected her at once, it was an escape routine, with a degree of difficulty Houdini perhaps would have envied—which first required him to be bound in barbed wire before being boiled alive. The wire was chrome-plated, for theatrical effect, but the barbs were sharp and real. So he assured her. She hadn't been impressed, wondering only why ?
Etan Culver, who was a moody fellow when he didn't have a camera in his hands, remote in his reverence for making film when he did, was alternately peering through a side window and doing lens and eyepiece adjustments. Pegeen napped beside him, face relaxed for once, a look of inward stealthy bliss. One of those people who are easily becalmed, on short or long trips.
Tom and Bertie had the controls of the
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