I'm fine. While you were showering I texted Susan, told her we had to head back to Kampala because you were malarial, and I turned on that base station again. Let me just finish these and we'll go see if they've opened. Their hours say they opened half an hour ago, but, you know, Africa."
"Where's Rukungu?"
Jacob shrugs. "Up in his room, I guess."
The Travellers' Inn is under construction, half the building is blocked off by sheets of canvas hanging on two-by-fours, they were only able to annex two rooms when they checked in. It was somehow wordlessly understood by all of them that Veronica and Jacob would take one and Rukungu the other. The reasonably comfortable rooms cost ten dollars a night and boast balconies that look onto the cloud-capped Ruwenzori. The bathrooms are a little primitive, but to Veronica's joy, soap was provided and the hot water seems everlasting.
"He said he was one of Athanase's men," Veronica says. Jacob nods. "Do you think that means he was … "
"I don't know. But he's old enough. And it would explain why he's so good at killing people. Does it matter?"
Veronica doesn't answer. She owes the man upstairs her life. But she can't shake the awful suspicion that Rukungu is interahamwe, that he participated in the Rwandan genocide, massacred helpless innocents, women and children, just for belonging to the wrong tribe. Surely that has to matter.
"Rukungu's the least of our problems," Jacob says. "He's the only person other than Prester we know for sure is on our side."
"How do we know that?"
"Because if he wasn't we'd be dead right now, wouldn't we?" Jacob finishes his coffee, drops five thousand shillings on the table, and picks up his Coke bottle. "Let's go."
* * *
The Internet cafe is small but clean. Its six monitors are hidden beneath a big glass table, tilted up towards the user. Jacob ignores the monitors and drops to his knees next to the nearest computer. The nursing mother who runs the cafe watches him curiously as he peers at its carapace. To his relief there is a USB port. These machines are old but not antiques.
Veronica sits down at the next computer over.
"Don't log into your email," Jacob cautions her. "Strick might be looking for us, they could conceivably track your Internet use to Fort Portal. And keep your phone off, don't make any calls. I'm pretty sure Mango is safe, I monitor who accesses that system, but no sense pushing our luck. And calls to anyone else would definitely be trouble."
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the memory card rescued from his camera, and folds it in half, revealing a USB connector. He plugs the card into the computer and sits at the computer.
"How much trouble do you think we're in?" Veronica asks uneasily.
"I don't know. Maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe we're actually on the run. Whoever those guys were last night, they have high-level connections, and it won't take too much asking around the camp to find out who came to visit and then suddenly disappeared. Strick probably already knows what happened."
"Shit."
"Well, maybe it was worth it. Let's see what we've got."
The first few pictures are fuzzy and useless, blobs of orange light outlining vaguely human shapes and the white blur of the matatu, and Jacob fears the worst. Then they began to resolve into much better, in-focus shots. He grunts with relief as he scrolls through the pictures. About thirty are usable.
"Go back through them," Veronica says when he is done. "There's one in the middle. Back a couple. There!"
Jacob nods. "Good eye." This is the only in-focus shot where the short but immensely muscular man is turned towards the camera with his face lit. He taps at Photo Viewer's magnifying-glass icon, zooming in, pans up to the face.
"That's him," Jacob says dully. "That's the guy who killed Derek."
"Yes."
"Fucker took his dishdash off for this job. Wonder why. There was one shot after this -"
He scrolls a few pictures forward, to a moment when the metal boxes are in the Humvee, but the doors have not yet been closed, and a flashlight is being shined on their coffin-sized shapes. Jacob taps the magnifying glass again, three times, to maximum zoom, and pans right over to the boxes. The writing on them is too blurry to read, and Veronica groans - but when Jacob zooms out one step, the four largest figures suddenly condense into something readable, if mysterious:
И ГЛА
"Looks like Greek," Veronica says, perplexed.
"Or