the genocide. Veronica wonders how old he would have been at the time. Late teens, maybe. She wonders how many women he raped, how many children he murdered, both in Rwanda and afterwards, when the interahamwe were finally driven out into the Congo, where their campaign of murder and rape continued. Probably dozens. Maybe hundreds. Any reasonable person would call him a monster. But she owes him her life.
* * *
Jacob and Veronica wait in the same embassy meeting room where they talked to Strick. Veronica's eyelids feels like anvils, and she is not so much sitting as drooping on her chair. They drove all night across half of Uganda to get here, taking turns at the wheel, and then fought their way through Kampala's rush hour to drop Rukungu off at the Hotel Sun City. But they made it. If they're safe anywhere in Africa, it's here in the U.S. embassy.
Jacob reaches out and takes her hand, lifts it to his face and kisses it. She smiles back absently. Part of her is already wondering if this sudden relationship is going to make any sense when the extraordinary circumstances that threw them together are gone. She squelches that notion. She will worry about the future next week. This week she will pretend the future never existed, she will just enjoy being alive.
The door opens.
"My name is Julian," says the man who enters. He's in his thirties, with a square jaw and a crew cut. "I'm the assistant deputy head of mission."
Jacob says, "We need to speak to the ambassador."
Julian shakes his head. "The ambassador isn't in today, he's at a ceremony in Jinja, his schedule is fully booked for the whole week. I'm sorry, I know you said it's urgent, but I'm as good as you're going to get on such short notice."
"Does Strick work for you?" Veronica asks.
Julian looks sour. "Gordon Strick works at this embassy for the State Department. He does not report to me."
"What about Prester?"
Julian blinks. "Who?"
"He worked with our friend Derek," Jacob says. "For Strick, indirectly. He was shot the night before last."
"Is he an American citizen?"
"I don't think so."
"Then I wouldn't know anything about him. Please. We're wasting each other's time. Why are you here?"
Jacob and Veronica look at one another. She nods.
"All right." Jacob speaks in a clipped, factual, voice, an engineer reporting on the data. "We have proof, we have pictures of Russian surface-to-air missiles being smuggled into the Congo last night." He puts down a CD-ROM he burned at an Internet cafe before coming to the embassy. "We have physical evidence that Derek Summers believed a company run by Veronica's ex-husband Danton DeWitt was involved with this smuggling ring, there's a scan of his notes on that CD, you can check it against his handwriting. Derek said just before he was executed that he was set up, and he accused Danton being involved. We have telephone records, also on that CD, strongly implying that Mr. Strick and Athanase Ntingizawa were conspiring to smuggle goods from the Congo and Uganda, and photos showing that Strick has since kidnapped and tortured Prester."
Julian stares at Jacob.
"We also have beliefs and conclusions we've drawn, but I want to stress that what I've told you so far isn't just suspicion, there's evidence on that CD, hard evidence."
"Christ," Julian says, in a very different tone of voice than that in which he began the conversation.
"In particular, we believe that Al-Qaeda has been blackmailing Strick into giving them material assistance for an attack they are planning in the very near future."
"Wait," Julian says, holding his hands up as if a wall is about to fall on him. "Wait, slow down, please."
Jacob falls silent.
"I need to go get my boss," Julian says. "Stay right there. I'll be right back."
He all but scampers out of the room. Veronica and Jacob look at one another.
"Well," she says, "at least they're taking us seriously."
Less than a minute later the door re-opens and a thin man in his fifties enters the room. The white-haired man's skin seems unnaturally pale, and even his facial features are thin, seem slashed into taut skin. He is the same man they saw yesterday, in the picture taken from Prester's camera phone. His appearance is surreal, it's like he has stepped out of that picture into real life.
"I'm Dr. Murray," he says, "the chief of mission here. I understand -"
Then he recognizes them and suddenly falls silent. Veronica gapes at the white-haired man. For a heartbeat he