important isn’t that I believe you, for your sake or mine,” he said. “The important thing is that Tara believes that you had nothing to do with it.”
“All right, counselor, how do I do that? Send her flowers?”
“You could ask Timmerman to do the opposite of what she says he’s done. Have him talk to his UN cronies and see what he can do about reinstating her call sign. Even if it didn’t work, the gesture alone would—”
Douglas stopped short and swatted the air. “The competition gets into a jam, and I’m supposed to help them out of it? To prove that I’m innocent? I have got to hear why.”
“Two reasons. Tara made a very clear threat. I have no idea what she has in mind, but if she has an inkling about—”
“Thought we agreed that she couldn’t know a damned thing about that,” Douglas interrupted.
“An inkling, I said. Things have a way of getting around. She wouldn’t need to make an airtight case, just dig up enough to raise suspicions in the wrong places. Is it worth the risk? You don’t have to do what I suggested, only do something to convince her.”
“So what’s the second reason?”
Fitzhugh paused, gazing toward the golden rim of the Mogilla range. “Diana and I are going to be married.”
Douglas regarded him with a neutral expression.
“She is seeing to the arrangements. Of course she’ll invite Tara, and I will invite you. I would like the wedding to take place in a—in a what? A tranquil atmosphere, not with some war between Tara and you.”
“You’ve thought this through?” Douglas asked, squinting at him.
“Thought it to death,” Fitzhugh answered, happy to be off the previous topic, however briefly. “We decided on the trip to Tsavo. You’re the first to know.”
Douglas pumped his hand and slapped him on the shoulder. “Then I’ll be the first to congratulate you. All right, I don’t want to spoil your wedding. I’ll talk to Timmerman, but I can’t make any promises beyond that.”
How sincere was he? Fitzhugh couldn’t judge.
If Timmerman did speak to his former UN colleagues, his effort wasn’t successful. Thirty-four days later Pathways Limited went under, and not entirely, Fitzhugh was forced to admit, because Tara had lost her UN contracts. Her skills as a pilot weren’t matched by her skills as a businesswoman. The company, which to all outward appearances was built on rock, turned out to rest on the unstable sands of borrowed money. Its marginal profits, after paying off staff salaries, leases, and monthly charges on bank loans, had gone into building and maintaining the plush Pathways camp, which didn’t earn enough to sustain itself. With more prudent management and substantial financial reserves, she could have weathered the blow. She had to cancel her leases and return the planes to their owners. Those registered to Pathways were sold. Over the next month company pilots, with Jepps aviation maps tucked under their arms, took off to deliver the aircraft to their buyers in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere in Africa. Douglas, who at times was tone deaf in personal relations, offered to buy one of her Cessnas for full market value. He considered this a generous, if not a chivalrous, gesture and was shocked when she told him he was lucky she didn’t slap his face and that she wouldn’t sell him the plane for twice its worth.
The Pathways terminal, that pocket of order and cleanliness amid Loki’s dirt and disarray, was closed down. A Kenyan businessman bought the compound for a song but allowed Tara to remain in her bungalow for a modest rent. She was left with one employee, her assistant, Pamela Smyth, and one Cessna Caravan that she owned outright and flew on short hops for the independent agencies. In one month and four days, after a decade of hard effort and risk, she had been thrown back to where she’d begun—one woman and one small airplane.
She had been ruined but not defeated and bore up under her ordeal with stoical grace. She maintained her erect, purposeful carriage; she took care of her appearance, protecting the asset of her beauty from the demands of its creditor; and she vowed to start over, though at fifty-eight it was doubtful she could.
By this time her version of events had become accepted by almost everyone in Loki—she was the victim of a dirty trick. Douglas continued to assert, to anyone who would listen, that he hadn’t engineered her downfall. Its swiftness proved that Pathways had been badly run