Mark of the Lion (39 page)

“We saw the underside of the car, Roger,” called Harry as he turned slowly. “We know what you’ve resorted to.”

Roger spun about. A flash of loathing crossed his young face. Then he squelched it and adopted a look of bewilderment. “I … I don’t understand,” he stammered.

“Mr. Forster, give it up,” said Jade. “I don’t know what the penalty is for running drugs here, but we’ll bury the damn stuff and never say a word if you’ll quit. We need to stick together here.”

“We can’t leave anyway,” advised Avery. “Not without Memba Sasa.”

“He still hasn’t shown up yet?” asked Harry. Jade shook her head, and Ruta shrugged. “Roger?” he asked.

Roger blinked several times as though confused, glanced once at the ascending trail, then surveyed the surrounding grasslands. “I’ll go look for him,” he said softly.

“Take Ruta with you,” said Harry.

“I don’t need you or your damned gun bearer to help me,” yelled Roger over his shoulder. “I can find my own tracker.”

They watched him stomp off down the ridge and into the grassy plains. “Mr. Hascombe, aren’t you going to stop him?” begged Madeline. “He could get killed. Please, let’s just go home.”

“We can’t leave a man, Mrs. Thompson. Besides, Roger’s perfectly capable of handling himself alone,” added Harry by way of reassurance. “I think the better plan is for Ruta and me to do a search of our own.” He looked around him. “We can eliminate the lava flows or this ridge of hills. Roger’s got the right idea. If Memba Sasa went to scout game, he went into the grasslands. But it’s a big area to search.”

He loaded his rifle and handed a second one to Ruta. After a brief conversation in Maasai with the tall, laconic gun bearer, Harry turned to Jade and Avery. “You two are the best shots. But you might want to go up into the cave anyway to be safer.”

“We’ll build a fire near the mouth,” suggested Jade.

“Good idea. There’s canned meat in the Dodge, and plenty of water in the springs around here. But be careful. Other animals like the springs, too.”

The two men walked down into the grasslands, while Jade and Avery retrieved bedrolls for all, some food, the remaining weapons and ammunition, and toted it in several trips up the rocky path to the cave. Beverly, Madeline, and Pili worked to gather a store of firewood.

“What I don’t understand,” said Beverly as she dropped a load of sticks by the cave’s entrance, “is why Memba Sasa had to wander off to look for game. I’m no tracker, but even I can stand up here and see every herd for the next fifty miles.”

“What was all that business about drugs, Jade?” asked Madeline.

Jade shook her head. “You might as well know. There was a packet of heroin hidden under the car. I found it when I dismantled the carburetor.”

“Heroin!” gasped Madeline.

“That explains Cissy Estes, doesn’t it?” said Beverly. “Roger must be her supply line.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Jade. “It’s certainly incriminating enough, but maybe Roger’s just the dupe in all this. Someone brought those cars up from Mombasa and sold them to him. Perhaps they intended to get the heroin after the cars made it to Nairobi. I assume Roger planned to put them on the train and take them back there.”

“Here’s a nasty thought,” added Avery. “What if
Harry
is the drug runner? After all,” he explained, “he hired Roger for this job. He might have suggested that Roger bring up these cars.”

“Oh no,” protested Madeline. “Not Harry.”

Jade smiled.
Poor thing, she’s so desperate for Harry and me to get together, she’d hate anyone to think ill of him.
“Harry said the cars were Roger’s idea,” she offered, “and Roger’s claims of innocence were pretty weak.”

“Could Harry be taking advantage of it?” asked Bev. “Maybe Roger’s angry because Harry’s accusing him.”

“I don’t know who’s to blame for the heroin,” said Jade. “Maybe both of them. But you may be right. Harry may try to blackmail Roger into selling his land to him.” Jade looked across the river to Poacher’s Lookout. “Harry knew about this place. I think he recognized the etchings the first time he saw the ring.”

“Do you think he suspected or knew that Roger was Gil’s son?” asked Madeline. “Is Roger in danger now like Gil was?”

Jade shook her head. “I have no idea.” Then she remembered the snippets of conversation between Harry and Roger that she had heard when the first car overheated. “So far no one’s tried to kill Roger.” She squatted down beside the cave’s mouth and arranged the wood for a fire by putting smaller kindling under a tepee of twigs and thin sticks. “We need to get a fire going here and stay behind it.”

Pili reached into a metal box and handed a match to Jade. She swiped it across a rock and set it against the grass kindling. As the fire grew, she added a few larger sticks to feed it.

“Thank you, Pili,” she said. She eyed his scratches. “You were lucky that lion didn’t drag you out of that crevice.”

“He tried, Mistress Jade, but remember? You protected me with the old sorcerer’s paste. The witch lion could not stay close for very long.”

“So you believe this lion belonged to a witch, Pili?” asked Avery. He leaned forward, eyes alert.

Pili nodded. “Yes. It carried the mark of a witch, too. The bone bead.”

“Most interesting,” murmured Avery. “But supposing there are such things, why would the witch send an animal all the way out here?”

“And why would it attack Pili? Twice,” added Beverly. “Wasn’t the
laibon
supposed to be angry with
you
, Jade, for killing its familiar the first time?”

Jade nodded. “You’re both right. It makes no sense.” She sat down beside Lord Colridge’s personal servant, horse handler, and gun bearer. “Pili, what are your thoughts on this? Why would a witch send an animal all the way out here to come after you?”

Pili stared at the flames for a while as he pondered the question. Finally he spoke. “You ask two questions. One I do not know the answer to. I do not know why a witch would come after me. But you also ask why a witch would
send
an animal all this way out to the edges of Tsavo. I do not think that is the case.”

“What?” asked Jade. “But you said the lion belonged to a witch.”

“Mistress, the lion
is
the witch. The witch did not
send
the animal out to us. The witch himself is here among us.” He paused while the others exclaimed incredulously among themselves. Beverly huddled closer to Avery and clung to his arm.

Only Jade sat silently, her green eyes fixed on the handsome young Somali and his clear hazel eyes. The eyes, she noted, showed no trace of hysteria. Instead, they reflected a quick wit and a clear-thinking, intelligent mind. “Go on, Pili,” she said. “Who is it?”

Beverly gasped audibly. “What? It’s someone we know?”

Jade and Pili both nodded. “Who was not here when the lion attacked me either the first time or the second time?” asked Pili.

“And who,” added Jade, “led us to kill the wrong lion?”

“And who,” finished Madeline, “has not shown up since … Oh my lord,” she gasped.

“Memba Sasa?” breathed Beverly.

“The swine!” cursed Avery.

“What’s more,” added Jade, “I think our safari leaders know or at least suspect. Think about it,” she added when they looked at her with open mouths. “Was either of them thinking of Memba Sasa when it was time to leave? No. Harry just wanted to go, and Roger only had thoughts for the secret of those ring etchings. It was Avery who remembered him.”

“But they’re out there looking for him now,” protested Madeline.

“Naturally,” explained Jade. “Once we observed that he was missing, they could hardly just say the hell with him and go off. They at least need to make a show of it. And,” she added quickly to alleviate some of Madeline’s distress, “I may be wrong about one or both of them. Maybe they didn’t know.”

“So we should be safe now, shouldn’t we?” asked Beverly. “If that elephant really trampled the witch, then the danger is gone, isn’t it?” Her voice, Jade noted, betrayed more fear than Jade had ever heard from her friend during their entire time in the ambulance corps. But then, they never dealt with witches in the corps, just howitzers.

“I suppose so,” agreed her husband. He, too, didn’t sound certain.

Jade didn’t answer. She was busy trying to figure out why the witch would attack Pili. That it didn’t go after her again was no surprise. After all, she wore the protective paste and the witch knew it. The paste had succeeded before in keeping the big cat at bay when it came into her hut and again when she changed the tire. According to the Kikuyu, no witch could get too close to her when she wore … Her thoughts trailed off abruptly as a new and more awful one took its place. The lion was not the only creature that wouldn’t approach her when she wore her protective hat. Harry stayed away from her at those times, too. It was at Harry’s hut that the first lion stalked her, and Harry knew the Maasai and had a menagerie of animals. She and the Thompsons never saw what lived in the distant pens. They only had Harry’s word about the illtempered baboons.

She shook her head. No, it was too preposterous an idea. She tossed it, but another took its place in her mind. The hyena had borne a bead and carvings to mark the
laibon
’s control over it. This lion had a bead, too. Even if Memba Sasa could transform himself, did that bead mean he was under the control of a stronger
laibon
? The old Kikuyu said he saw two witches in his dream. His words came back to her.
The new witch is younger and very powerful.
Was it Ruta?

Pili’s voice brought her out of her macabre musings.

“I was very young when my mother died, and the fathers at the mission taught me many things about God.” He fingered his gold cross. “They also taught me to be wary of Satan. They said to be alert. Be on watch! Your enemy, the devil, roams around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

“Yes,” said Jade, “that’s from First Peter.” Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that Pili had done more than just attend school at the mission.

Pili turned his face to her and met her gaze with one equally serious. “Well, Mistress Jade, I believe that Satan is stalking us. And I do not think he is finished.”

THE SUN HAD DIPPED MORE THAN halfway below the horizon when Harry and Ruta returned to the cave and the welcoming fire. Beverly offered them each a cold sandwich of hard bread and tinned meat before anyone asked them about their search. After all, they had returned alone.

“We didn’t find him. Not so much as a trace.” Harry chewed a hunk of the stale bread and swallowed. He scanned the campsite. “Roger’s not back?” They shook their heads no, their mouths set in worried lines.

“Damn!” Harry looked up at the sky. Already, the first stars glowed weakly through a thin haze after the last gasps of sunlight played out. “It’s getting dark, and that veil overhead means rain later. Blasted fool,” he muttered. Jade didn’t know if he meant Roger, Memba Sasa, or perhaps himself for suggesting they come here. She didn’t ask.

“He should be able to spot the fire,” Madeline suggested as more of a question of hope than a statement of fact.

Harry agreed and plopped down near the cave’s wide entrance on top of a bedroll. “Everyone needs to get some sleep. Ruta will stand first watch. When the moon’s up, I’ll take second watch.” He passed on the instructions to the Maasai warrior.

Ruta took his place at the cave mouth by the fire, and Jade retrieved a burning
Commiphora
branch to use as a torch. She led the others a few yards inside and made certain that the area was still safe. Jade saw no fresh animal sign and stuck the thorny branch in a wall crevice for light. Everyone rolled out the thin bedrolls and made themselves as comfortable as possible on the hard volcanic rock.

“I say, Jade,” remarked Avery, “you wouldn’t happen to have more of that stinky ointment around, would you?”

“Sorry. I left it in the Ford. It was leaking into the camera bag.”

“Well, maybe you should sleep to the outside of us all. You know, be a sort of protective barrier,” Avery suggested in a weak attempt at levity. Jade snorted in derision.

“Obstinate gypsy,” he muttered.

“Be quiet,” snapped Harry. “Get some sleep.”

A heady, spicy perfume drifted across them, and Jade vaguely recalled that frankincense and myrrh were both extracted from some species of
Commiphora
. The fragrant scent lulled her into a drugged sleep where red eyes stalked her in the darkness.