she can.
" I doubt whoever it is knew their smuggler friends were in bed with Al-Qaeda until after we were taken. And now they'll be extra desperate to cover their tracks. Maybe it's just one of them. Maybe neither and Prester was telling the truth, it's somebody at the embassy." Jacob pauses. "Derek thought your ex-husband was involved. There might be something there."
"Like what?"
"I don't know," he admits.
"Did Derek tell you about Danton?"
"No. All he told me was what phone numbers he wanted information for. He wouldn't give me details, he said it wasn't safe." Jacob spits out the last few words angrily. "If he'd told me, maybe I would have seen it coming. Or at least now I'd know what he knew."
"Or whoever set him up would have found out you knew too much too," Veronica points out. "And you would have been number two on the chopping block."
Jacob pauses. She's right. Derek's secrecy may have kept him alive.
"So what are you planning to do?" Veronica asks.
"What we need is evidence," he says. Veronica raises her eyebrows skeptically at the we. "Once we've got hard actual evidence of who it was, then we can go to the embassy, take it straight to the ambassador, make it public."
"You really think you'll get hard evidence out of this?" She points to the computer screen. "Tracking a bunch of phone calls?"
"I think we're finding lots of stuff out already."
"Stuff that doesn't make any sense."
"It will eventually," he says confidently. "We just have to be methodical. Gather data, make a hypothesis, test it against the evidence, repeat until understanding is attained. The scientific method. It's cracked problems a lot harder than this one."
Veronica shakes her head, unconvinced. "Jacob, you want to know what I think, you should just go home. Maybe both of us should."
Jacob pauses. He can't help but wonder if she's right. Living in danger, investigating mysterious conspiracies – that was Derek's line of work, not his, he's just a techie, of unusual ability to be sure, but he's no swashbuckling superspy. It's true he came to Uganda to help Derek, and it was exciting knowing he was really working for the CIA, it felt like a big, wonderful adventure, like being in a movie, a supporting character to Derek's starring role. But Jacob never dreamed he might find himself in real danger. Until Bwindi. Until it turned into a horror movie.
The safe thing to do is to stop investigating and hope the authorities can find Derek's killer. But he can't turn his back on the murder of his best friend. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be honourable. Jacob has always thought of himself as someone who would do the right thing, in extremis. He supposes most people do. But most people never actually have to find out. He does, and right now. His whole life, quiet and ordinary until now, has in a way just been a prelude to this. What he chooses to do now is the measure of who he is. And if he fails, if he gives up and goes home, he will feel that shadow hanging over him for the rest of his life. He has to at least try.
Jacob tries to think of some way to convince Veronica to stay and help. He can trust her. He doesn't want to have to deal with this alone. And if Derek was right, Veronica's ex-husband is somehow involved in all this. But no brilliant insight or debating tactic that might convince her comes to mind.
Veronica's gaze drifts back to Jacob's computer, to the Google Map full of markers that indicate where Derek placed and received his phone calls.
"Wait a minute," she says, sitting up straight, suddenly alarmed.
He blinks. "What?"
"That terrorist phone Susan picked up. By the satellite dish. Remember what Prester said? It had two hundred phone numbers for Westerners in Congo and west Uganda."
Jacob nods. "And?"
"So they could track those phones like you tracked Derek's calls, right?
He hesitates. "If they had access to the databases, yes. But like I said, the higher the geographical precision, the denser the population. You can't locate specific individuals, they inevitably get lost in the crowd."
"Not in Africa. Not if they're white and the rest of the crowd is black."
Jacob opens his mouth but says nothing at first. She's right. The industry truism that cell phones can't be use to track down their owners is in this case false. White people stand out in Africa, especially rural Africa, like pink