You've only got two GPS trackers?"
"That's all I could manage."
Prester frowns. "Well, we'll make do. With luck whoever's smuggling these Zanzibar Sams won't have more than two vehicles. Strong magnets on these, right? All I have to do is put them somewhere on the chassis and they'll stay there, even on bumpy African roads?"
"Not a problem."
"They text their coordinates how often?"
"It's configurable. Right now every ten minutes."
"And if they don't have a cell signal?"
"They store their locations in local memory, timestamped, and send them all in one burst the next time they get into coverage."
"Good." Prester nods and turns to Veronica. "I need him with me, but you can sit at home."
She hesitates, then shakes her head. "No. I want to come with you."
"Sure?"
"Danton might be there."
"Not likely." Prester considers. "But not impossible. Seeing as how we have no idea what exactly these Zanzibar Sams are or why somebody seems to think they're so important."
"Are you sure you know where they're going to be?" Jacob asks.
"For the price I paid I better fucking not be led astray. But no, I'm not sure. People like this, you're never sure until the time comes." He looks at his watch. "Which is all too soon. Let's saddle up."
* * *
Prester navigates his Pajero through a huge market of rickety wooden stalls, colourful pyramids of vegetables, dangling carcasses of meat, bowls of spices, sacks of grains, and all the world's cheap clothing and plastic crap. They crawl slowly through the market's clogged streets, and then through ten minutes of grimy shantytown, as the sun hides itself behind the western hills.
"Shouldn't we wait until dark?" Jacob asks from the back seat.
Prester shakes his head. "We'll stand out more if we wait too late. Not much traffic in this area after sunset. Besides, I want to get the lay of the land."
Veronica is riding shotgun, which in this vehicle is the left-hand seat; Ugandans theoretically drive on the left, and this Pajero came from Japan. She looks around at the shantytown and winces when she sees a child with a large goiter bulging from her throat. All it would take to cure that girl's goiter is a little iodine.
Every day this ramshackle sea of desolation expands further into the green landscape around Kampala, swollen by unemployed bayaye, the Ugandan name for disaffected youths and families who stream in from poor rural villages to this city that offers them neither work nor shelter - but it doesn't seem as bad to her as it once did. Veronica understand now that most Africans, even in shantytowns, are not trapped in relentless disaster and tragedy. They build houses, raise families, hang out with their friends, visit the big city, work when they can, play music, drink, gossip, and basically live normal, recognizable lives. But what they lack, desperately, is health care and education. If Veronica could actually fund and build a school for nurses here, it would help, it would make a real difference.
They finally reach Kampala's small industrial belt of warehouses and repair yards. Here the foot traffic streams back towards the shantytown, tired men walking home after a hard day, and Prester has to nose the Pajero upstream through this human river like a salmon seeking spawning grounds, until he finally says, "Here."
There is a scrapyard the size of several football fields ahead and to their right. It looks like a muddy parking lot hit by a massive artillery shell and left to rust, littered with the rotting hulks of cars, motorcycles, and other unidentifiable machinery, surrounded by a chainlink fence topped by a single strand of barbed wire. In its center there stands a single wide, low building, basically a hollow concrete block. Clusters of rebar sprout like some kind of steel vegetation from its roof. The yard's only visible inhabitant is a bored-looking watchman sitting behind the main gate, which is locked with chains and padlocks.
Prester drives past the yard without slowing down, until they have gone over another small rise; then he stops the car in front of a motorcycle repair shop. Ditches full of plastic bags and rotting trash cut through the vacant lot of gouged mud across the street. The few Africans still on the road look at the Pajero curiously, then move on, hurrying back to the market and the shantytown houses beyond. It is apparent that this quasi-industrial zone is largely deserted come nightfall.
"Any phones around?" Prester asks.
Jacob examines the screen on the spectrum analyzer. "Just ours." Then he digs