Night Of Knives

Chapter 18

The rest of the day passes slowly. Prester, or at least Prester's phone, does not leave his office. He has a few conversations on his Razr, most of which deal with a complicated contract for a pilot project to mine dissolved methane from Lake Kivu, a venture that doesn't appear to have anything to do with Derek or Al-Qaeda or interahamwe. From what Veronica can gather, officials in Kinshasa and Goma have raised many objections to the proposal, most of which are actually coded demands for bribes that must be paid before the project can proceed.

She and Jacob quickly grow bored. Veronica passes the time reading an oddly fascinating science-fiction book called Lord of Light. In the early evening she has Henry take her to New City, where she buys sandwiches and a bagful of snacks from the huge Game supermarket. She spends a good hour just wandering around Game, revelling in its towering, well-lit racks full of First World products. She never imagined when she came to Africa that an air-conditioned supermarket could ever seem so poignant.

Jacob spends the afternoon working on a way to make Prester's Razr take a picture with its onboard phone, and then upload it to Jacob's computer, without Prester ever noticing. He is utterly lost in his technical world, seems unaware of Veronica's presence. She has never seen anyone so engrossed. She has certainly never experienced anything like it herself; even when she worked as a nurse, it was more a question of doing the rounds, filling out forms, and responding to crises and demands, rather than embarking on projects of her own. She wonders what it would be like to be so absorbed by her work.

It is amazing what Jacob can do. Veronica wonders how many other people would be capable of these feats, tracking calls, reprogramming phones, using someone else's cell phone as a remote camera. Probably very few. No wonder Derek wanted Jacob on his side. She is in the presence of a kind of modern-day wizard.

The sun is setting, and Veronica is about to propose that they call it a day, when Jacob's computer bleeps a warning sound. He blinks, looks up from the online technical documentation he is studying, and switches windows to the Google Map of Prester's phone.

"He's on the move," Jacob reports.

Veronica looks outside. It will be dark soon. She hadn't really considered the possibility of following Prester at night. But they have a car, as long as they stay distant, they should be fine. "All right. Let's go find him."

Jacob nods and grabs his hiptop.

"You take that everywhere," she observes.

"Not to Bwindi. Figured a disposable phone would be fine there. But almost everywhere, yes. Don't leave home without it."

"I thought that was the Leatherman."

"I've got that on me too. Souvenir. And you never know, it might come in handy again."

Veronica frowns. "Let's hope not."

* * *

"No, wait, go back," Jacob orders, looking up for just a moment, then back to his hiptop's shining screen. He soon realizes it's almost useless; none of the real-world roads around him appear on the online map. Kampala wasn't planned or surveyed, it just grew. "The other way. Southwest."

"I have no compass, sir," Henry says. "You must give me roads for directions."

"I can't. According to this map, we're in the middle of empty wilderness."

"Go straight and then left," Veronica tells Henry.

"Thank you."

They turn off a paved boulevard onto a wide dirt road without electrical power; neither town nor shantytown, but a region between. The buildings here are low and lit by flickering candles. The Toyota's headlights briefly illuminate shadowy figures walking or standing along the road. The dirt thoroughfare is pitted and rutted, scattered with entropic debris and pools of stagnant water. A few piles of organic trash have been set by the road to burn. The last line of street lights dwindles behind them, and Jacob begins to feel uncomfortable. He is on the verge of suggesting they turn around when Veronica says, in a relieved voice, "That must be it."