picking up her hat and scarf. “But it wouldn’t have done the least bit of good.”
He gave her a questioning look.
“An elephant doesn’t kill with its tusks. It leans its forehead on you and squashes you like you would squash a bug under your thumb.” She spoke with scientific detachment. “So you see, she would have crushed us both to death.”
He reflected on this information and said he would have done the same thing regardless.
“I know,” she said, squeezing his arm. “And I love you for it.”
Douglas had gone into the clearing to retrieve his gear. The elephant had knocked the tripod over, splintering it into several pieces. He tossed them aside and picked up his camera, still attached to the mount, from which a foot of a tripod leg protruded like fractured bone. They watched him raise the camera to his eye, turning to point it at them.
“It’s good to go, not a dent!” he shouted triumphantly.
“You might want to thank him,” said Diana, jerking her thumb sideways at the Turkana.
“Hey, yeah.” He took the ranger’s photo. “Asante sana, rafiki! I sure would’ve hated to lose those pictures!”
There is something wrong with him, Fitzhugh thought as he regarded Douglas, standing out there alone and exposed to the unforgiving African light. Something is missing in him, I don’t know what.
After lunch, during which Douglas had nattered on about his narrow escape, as if no one else had been in danger, he reminded Fitzhugh that this was a working holiday and asked him to take an hour to discuss business. They met in his banda where, shirtless and barefoot in the afternoon heat, he lounged in a camp chair, a file folder in his lap. He led off by stating that his reservations about Knight Air’s new marketing director had proved unfounded. He removed copies of the past month’s invoices from the folder. The names of several agencies belonging to the UN consortium had been highlighted—World Vision, CARE, the Catholic Relief Agency, among others.
“Timmerman wooed every one of them from Pathways to us, and the best part is, he did it without paying a dime in commissions.”
“Kickbacks, you mean,” Fitzhugh said.
“Hey, whatever. Timmerman just used his friendship with the agency logisticians. The man is a rainmaker.” Douglas sat back with an indolent stretch of his long legs, their dark blond hair sparkling in the light. “We’re doing great, better than I expected, but the flying nun is starting to make noise.”
“Noise? What sort of noise?” asked Fitzhugh, preoccupied by his perception that Douglas possessed some fatal deficiency.
“She’s told some people that she thinks we’re engaging in unfair business practices, hiring Timmerman away from the UN and then using his connections to take clients from her. Corrupt is the word I’ve heard she’s been using. Not surprised. Tara isn’t used to real competition, and now that she’s getting a taste of it, she doesn’t know how to handle it.”
Fitzhugh opined that this wasn’t a fair characterization.
“Don’t let yourself be taken in by that woman. The word I’ve got is that she intends to do more than call us names.”
“Intends what?”
“There’s the problem. I don’t know. All I’ve heard is that she’s said, in so many words, that since we’ve made things tough for her, she’s going to make them tough for us. Nothing more solid than that. Could be the usual Loki gossip.”
“I imagine it is.”
“Well, I—we—we can’t count on that. We’re vulnerable. Got to ask you something. Yellowbird—you never mentioned any of that to Diana, right? She and Tara being friends and all.”
“Not even to her,” Fitzhugh replied, stiffening. “I’ve kept my word.”
Withdrawing his outstretched legs, Douglas leaned forward and rested his palms on Fitzhugh’s knees, his direct and intimate gaze on Fitzhugh’s face. “There’s another thing I’ve got to ask, and it isn’t easy.” He winced to show how deeply the question distressed him. “Do you think Diana, considering her feelings for you . . . if you asked her to, would she be willing to find out if Tara is planning to cause us problems and how she means to go about it?”
Fitzhugh had no reply to this stunning request.
“I can understand why you’d be reluctant, “ Douglas said, “but forewarned is forearmed, right?”
“If you really understood my reluctance, you never would have made such a proposal,” Fitzhugh said. “You are asking me to ask the woman I love to betray her friend and become a corporate spy for you.”
“My man”—lips arched into their beguiling smile—“it’s not just me.