of this as a job interview. I'll give you five minutes. What happened in Uganda? What do you have for me?"
Jacob looks at Veronica.
She shrugs - what choice do they have? - and says, curtly, "General Gorokwe is going to assassinate Mugabe with surface to air missiles."
Lysander's stony face is wiped away for a moment by sheer amazement. Then it returns and he says, skeptically, "Really. And why would he do a silly thing like that? He wouldn't have a hope in hell of taking charge afterwards."
Jacob says, "He thinks he does. He has American support. This whole thing was an American plan from the start. Gorokwe is just their instrument."
"An American plan?" It takes a few seconds for Lysander to digest those words. He looks at Lovemore, who is listening intently. "That's - no. That's ridiculous. They wouldn't, nobody could be that stupid. That would be madness. Sheer bloody madness."
But this time he doesn't sound dismissive. He sounds worried.
"Maybe so," Veronica says, "but that's what they're doing."
"They who? The White House? You can't possibly expect me to believe -"
"No. A few diplomats and CIA agents who faked that Al-Qaeda scare in the Congo so that the US government would line up behind Gorokwe. Now that he's a friend of America, they'll back him to take over when Mugabe dies. I know it sounds crazy. But that's why Derek died, that's why Prester died, that's why we got kidnapped in the first place, that's why they're after us now. They're going to shoot down Mugabe first chance they get and try to install Gorokwe as president."
Jacob adds, "We have evidence."
Lysander looks from one of them to the other for what feels like a long time. Then he looks at Lovemore, who nods, slowly.
Lysander says, reluctantly, "I suppose you'd better show me."
Chapter 30
Entering the grounds of the Victoria Falls Hotel feels like walking into the nineteenth century. This elegant relic of colonialism boasts musty hallways, mahogany doors, faded paintings of great British explorers, ancient maps of BOAC air service to Africa, a smoking room walled with books, and high tea service. Even the furniture in Lysander's room looks like something from the set of a Jane Austen movie. His modern Toshiba laptop looks terribly out of place on a rolltop mahogany desk.
Jacob and Veronica wait tensely as Lysander and Lovemore go through the contents of Jacob's CD for the third time, watching the Toshiba's screen intently, as if there might be a hidden message within. Veronica realizes for the first time that actually they have very little evidence. Incomprehensible matrices of telephone and GPS records; some blurry, night-time photos from Jacob's camera; a few more from Prester's Razr phone, and their own testimony - all of which could easily have been faked.
Lysander turns from one of the night shots to Veronica. She braces herself for an interrogation: but instead he says, wonderingly, "He was the one who held you down. I saw it on YouTube."
Veronica blinks and looks more closely. It is the photo of Casimir, the musclebound interahamwe who murdered Derek. She remembers how he pulled her choking to the ground, and held her while the Arab put the machete to her throat. "Yes."
Jacob says, "He killed Derek."
Lysander frowns. "I never saw that. YouTube didn't host that, it was on more prurient sites. Easy enough to find if you wanted, and apparently millions did, but not I."
Veronica doesn't have anything to say to that.
"If what you're telling me is actually true, and please note I'm not saying I'm fully convinced yet, but if it is, then … " Lysander shakes his head, appalled. "Then this is one of the most horrifically stupid ideas in history. I want Mugabe gone as much as the next rational man, but Christ almighty, there's not a lot of happy precedent for shooting down airplanes carrying African presidents. The Rwandan genocide was sparked when President Habyarimana was shot down. That's a million dead. The president of Burundi was with him, and that civil war still hasn't ended. There's another quarter million. Mobutu was supposed to be dead dictator number three on that flight. God knows what would have happened if the paranoid bastard hadn't changed his plans, but we know the wars after he finally did buy the farm killed three million more, and counting. You've seen what happened to eastern Congo. Then there's Mozambique, Samora Machel shot down by the South Africans, deny it though they try. I don't know how many people died,