failures: not exactly the stuff of thrilling espionage stories.
"I looked up Derek's calls from his secret phone," Jacob says. "The ones to Tanzania were actually to Zanzibar. It's like a province of Tanzania, but it's all Muslim. His notes talk about Zanzibar Sam, and Zanzibar as a gateway to the Islamic world. I figure this Zanzibar Sam is the link between the interahamwe and Al-Qaeda."
"Makes sense."
"Yeah. Almost everything makes sense. Almost."
"What doesn't?"
Jacob says, "Zimbabwe."
Veronica looks at him, confused. "Zimbabwe? What do you mean?"
"It just keeps popping up. Derek's calls to and from Zimbabwe. Those were the only calls he received on that phone. Those soldiers that rescued us, and their general. Susan used to work in Zimbabwe. And Danton's mother was born there, right?"
"Sort of. It was called Rhodesia back then."
Veronica tries to remember what she knows about Zimbabwe. Until a decade ago it was wealthy and prosperous nation, by African standards. Then its president, Robert Mugabe, went crazy and threw out almost all its white landowners, their farms were ruined and disused, the violence stopped tourists from coming, and Zimbabwe's economy nosedived. Now it has the lowest life expectancy in all of Africa.
"Maybe it's just coincidence. But it's kind of weird. I was thinking of calling that number there, seeing who answered."
"You think that's a good idea? What are you going to say to them?"
"I don't know. Now that Prester's back I figure we should wait on him. He's our best bet for a breakthrough."
A long silence falls.
"I went to the Speke Hotel for a beer last night," Jacob says. "Start wondering about what this place was like when Amin was in charge. I read about him before I came here. He ran the whole country into the ground. You couldn't even get candles or light bulbs, so almost everything was dark at night. And in the day they didn't have air conditioning, so they kept all the windows open in the government buildings. They'd torture people to death every day there, and the windows were open, they had to be, otherwise it was too hot to torture. People sitting in the fancy hotels across the street, diplomats and mining executives and journalists and so on, they'd hear the screaming, and they'd just keep on eating their lunch. Crazy, eh?"
Veronica grimaces.
"The more I know about this continent, the crazier it gets. Have you actually gotten to know any Africans? I mean, personally?"
She thinks a moment. "No. Not really. Lots of expats and NGO workers. I live in a bubble. We all do. There are lots of Africans at work, they're big on local hires, but I don't really talk to them."
"Did you notice Henry has a furball dangling from his rearview mirror? Like fuzzy dice. He says it's muti, magic, a fetish, keeps the car safe. And he's a Jehovah's Witness. I figure, OK, basically no formal education, ignorant cultural superstition, right? But these African guys at work, they're Western-educated, university degrees, super-smart. I started talking to them about it, and they got all weird. Like scared. Changed the subject, walked away."
"Athanase had a little fur pouch around his neck," Veronica remembers.
"Derek said it was a big deal around here. Black magic and witch doctors. No one talks about it to Westerners, but it's a huge, huge influence. And tribes too, tribal politics, their tribe matters to them a lot more than their country. Why shouldn't it, it was Europeans who mapped out their borders, right? Derek said a lot of the things that apparently don't make sense in Africa, at least to our eyes, are actually down to black magic and tribal politics."
"Yeah, well, he's dead now, isn't he?"
Eric stares at her.
"Sorry. I don't want to talk about Derek. I know you were his best friend. I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
"I hardly knew him, right? I shouldn't care." Veronica sighs, decides to confess. "I had this monster crush on him. I didn't even want to admit it, not even to myself, but, like, the morning after I met him, I woke up with part of my mind imagining our future together. That kind of crush. You know what I mean?" Jacob nods. "Like he was the man I should have married. It was crazy. I'm sure it was just, I don't know, rebound, psychological reaction to divorce, whatever. But it felt like he was all I ever should have wanted in the first place."
Jacob shrugs. "Well. If it's any consolation, he was a great guy, but I never thought he