Night Of Knives

Chapter 39

"She's awake," a woman says.

"Ms. Kelly?" a man's voice asks.

She opens her dazed eyes to a well-kept hospital room. Everything is clean and white. She is connected to an IV and a vital-signs monitor, one she recognizes, an old DRE model she used to work with in San Francisco General. There are two black women in nurse's uniforms standing attentively near the bed, and a tall, handsome, white-haired white man in a sharp suit.

Veronica struggles for some memory to connect her to this scene and fails. "Where am I?"

"Johannesburg," the man says. "Milpark Hospital. You were medevac'd here last night from Mutare. You probably don't remember that, I'm told you were under sedation for the better part of three days."

"What - what happened?"

He gives the nurses a look. They reluctantly depart.

Veronica lifts her head, almost all she can manage right now, and looks around. "Wait. Where's Lovemore? What happened to Lovemore?"

"He's next door." The man grimaces. "They threw him in as a kind of sweetener, I suppose. It took no end of negotiation to get the two of you out of there. At first they were going to hang you."

"Hang me? For - for what?"

"Attempted assassination. But then, luckily for you, a series of rather embarrassing files began to turn up at BBC and CNN and Al-Jazeera, it's been the lead story for a good two days now and shows no signs of stopping. You can see it for yourself after I leave. Although I suppose you already know the whole story, don't you?"

She starts to shake her head and quickly thinks better of it. "Not all of it."

"We're still amazed ourselves. After that, I guess Mugabe decided you didn't quite fit into all the international outrage, and it was in his best interests to jump on that bandwagon rather than keep pointing the finger at you. Or maybe he's just grateful you saved his life. It still wasn't easy to get you out of there. Back-channel negotiations and briefcases full of money, not that you ever heard me say that, because of course we don't negotiate with fascist dictators."

Veronica tries to remember what happened. She remembers shooting Danton, that actually happened, it wasn't a dream. She remembers waiting by the side of the road with Lovemore, both of them shivering in the warm sun, barely conscious. She remembers the pickup truck that appeared on the road, full of sturdy labourers with picks and shovels, and the way they lifted her so gently into the back of the truck, as if she might break. After that, nothing. They must have taken her to hospital in Mutare. She hopes they took Danton's wallet from her, there were hundreds of US dollars within.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"Stanton. Deputy chief of mission at the embassy here."

"Okay. What's going to - what happens next?"

"Nothing, until they're ready to discharge you. Doctors say that won't be for a few days yet. You don't need to make any decisions until then."

* * *

"Veronica," Lovemore says.

His voice is weak but clear. His torso is swaddled in bandages but otherwise he looks fine. Veronica still feels weak and dizzy when she walks, and she's still recovering from exhaustion, the concussive blow to her head, and the multitudinous little wounds she suffered during their escape from the mine, but she can feel herself regaining strength with every passing hour.

"Lovemore. Good to see you. How are you?"

"The doctors here are excellent."

"They should be. Johannesburg, world capital of gun violence, they must have plenty of practice. Maybe I should try to get a job here. I've gotten some good gunshot experience in the last -" she calculates, and is amazed by how little time has passed since that day in Bwindi - "few weeks."

Lovemore doesn't answer.

"What are you going to do when you get out?" she asks.

"I have no passport. I expect they will send me back to Zimbabwe."

"Do you want to go back?"

His face clouds. "No. I would stay in South Africa if I could. There is hope here."

"Is that so. How about Uganda?"

"Uganda?"

"I'm going to go back to Uganda." Veronica was not certain of this until this moment. "I'm going back to Kampala. I'm going to start a school. A nursing college. I bet I could work something out where you could come with me."

"I don't know anything about Uganda."

"It's a good place. Or it can be. There's hope there, anyways, definitely. And I'm sure I can scare up enough money to start up a school. I bet the US government will be willing to help. And anyways a certain notoriety never hurt any fundraising. Heck, I can sell my story to the British tabloids. Whatever. It won't be easy, I'll need help, but after this last month, you know what, I bet it'll seem like a piece of cake."

After a moment Lovemore says thoughtfully, "Pygmies."

Veronica blinks, caught off guard. "What?"

"That's what I know of Uganda. There are pygmies there. I've heard they know the jungle as the San know the desert."

"Yes, I guess so."

He says, "I would like to see them."

She smiles. "Well. I think that can be arranged. Is it a deal?"

"Yes."

They shake hands very seriously.

"You don't want to go back to America?" Lovemore asks. "In Zimbabwe there is nothing for me. There is no hope. But I thought there was everything in America."

Veronica hesitates. She imagines going back home, back to a world of shopping malls, freeway traffic, Internet dating, air conditioning, office jobs, mortgage payments and parking meters. The idea repulses her. If she goes back the rest of her life will seem hollow and plastic, a vacant shadow.

How ironic that Africa is called the dark continent. Even the sun here is so much brighter.

"Not for me," Veronica says thoughtfully. "Not any more. I think what I want is here."