‘What do you mean? I know he’s hiding from the media.’
‘Is that what they have told you? Peter Werther did not disappear. He was disappeared.’
Guests pushed past to the bar, inspired by Dr Dan’s mint julep. Gaby recognised Der Spiegel’s On-line editor. She nodded curtly to him.
‘Disappeared by whom?’
Dr Dan smiled, shrugged.
‘UNECTA?’
‘Remember where you are, Ms McAslan.’
‘The Americans? The Ambassador knows about this?’ The Ambassador was talking by the balustrade with an animated staffer from the French embassy. Mr Ambassador was a small, impeccably dressed black man; from Georgia, Gaby recalled, which incongruously reinforced the Gone With the Wind imagery. His children were running around in their best clothes looking for excuses to set the fireworks off early. His wife stood some paces from him with an expression of diplomatic boredom. She was dressed African-style and tended more to the Maya Angelou than the Diana Ross.
‘UNECTA, Americans, what’s the difference?’ Dr Dan asked.
‘What happened?’ Gaby wished there had been room in her ludicrous little clutch bag for a PDU, or even an old-fashioned dictation machine.
‘They came at night. Helicopters, with night-imaging cameras. They were following in military spy-satellite thermal photographs. Your video footage helped them as well, but you must not blame yourself, please. It is not your fault, you did not finger him – I believe that is the expression? He made himself a target by coming out of the Chaga, for anything that comes out of the Chaga is theirs.’
‘UN troops?’
‘A joint US-Canadian force.’
‘Jesus. And Peter?’
‘I do not know. I am trying to find out. If I do not, I shall ask for an enquiry in the National Assembly. Despite the United Nations, this is still our country.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘I have always believed that the wise politician cultivates friendships in unlikely places. I count you my friend, Ms McAslan, likewise, I count many in the Traveller community. They could not go to the press directly, for they had been threatened that to do so would result in their residency permits being revoked and them being deported from Kenya.’
Gaby saw the upward glance of his eyes an instant before the hand fell heavily on her shoulder. She squawked, imagining US-Canadian air cavalry abseiling down from helicopters to take out the Irish woman with the big mouth. Her bottle smashed on the patio. The Ambassador looked across, irritated, but the serving staff were already moving to sweep up the debris.
It was worse than US-Canadian air cavalry.
It was T.P. Costello.
‘Sorry to butt in on your conversation, Dr Oloitip, but I need to have a small creative conference with my junior On-line reporter. What do I need?’
‘A small creative conference,’ Gaby said. ‘With your junior On-liner.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘We will talk!’ Dr Dan called as T.P. marched her toward the rhododendrons.
‘T.P., T.P., listen, I’ve got something very very hot; listen, T.P., they’ve vanished Peter Werther.’
‘Frankly, my dear,’ T.P. Costello said, ‘I don’t give a damn.’
The design of the gardens provided many private places for those whose party quirks precluded spectators. A fat man in a too-small tuxedo came crashing from the shrubs, fumbling at his pants. A woman Gaby knew as a senior editor at ITN fled in the opposite direction, unaware that the back of her skirt had got hitched into the waistband of her panties. T.P. dragged her into the alcove they had so hastily vacated.
‘What the hell are you doing here? I cannot turn my back for five minutes but you’re hatching some fuckwit scheme or another. What is it with you, woman? What gives? I cannot do a thing with you.’ T.P. shook her hard by the shoulders. Gaby slapped his hands away from her.
‘You do not touch me like that, Thomas Pronsias Costello.’
He looked at the ground, shamed.
‘What is the problem here, T.P.? I’m only doing what any journalist with an ounce of nous would have done, making contacts, getting stories, T.P. I’ve only gatecrashed a party -Jesus, in ancient Baghdad they had entire guilds of licensed gatecrashers – it’s not like I raped the Ambassador’s brown-eyed boy.’
T.P. Costello did an unthinkable thing. He sat down on the grass with his head in his hands. All the confidence and competence and ability drained from him like water into a dry river bed. He seemed on the verge of tears. He patted the ground for Gaby to sit beside him and gallantly swept a handkerchief from his breast pocket and spread it out to protect her lovely dress.
‘Ah God,’ he sighed. His voice shuddered. ‘Why did you have to come here?’
‘I told you, T.P.’
‘This country. This Chaga-thing.’
A new act had taken the stage. A minimal spattering of applause greeted it. Gaby had listened to enough Voice of Kenya radio to recognize one of the most promising new praise singers.
‘You’re so like her. Not to look at; she was dark; dark hair, dark skin, but like you, she couldn’t be said no to. She had to enquire, she had to push it just that little bit too far. She was ambitious, like you. She was writing a book. Oh, it was going to be the first and last word on the Chaga and the people who study it. She never finished it. I’ve got the material at home. Reams and reams of notes, photocopies, faxes, typescripts. She told me her name once, but I’ve forgotten it. Everyone called her Moon. Langrishe gave her the name. Dr Peter Langrishe. He was an exobiologist, down at Ol Tukai, before UNECTA went mobile. He was as mad as she was. You know where they met? A place like this. The Irish Embassy St Paddy’s Day ceilidh. They were insane, both of them. Jesus, Gaby, I met her off the night flight, just like you, I went through the same bloody catechism, just like you. Do you know where she lived?’
‘I can guess. The Episcopalian guesthouse. T.P., I’m not her.’
‘I know. But you do the things she did. You go to the places she went. You say the things she said.’
Gaby McAslan said nothing, but sat with her knees pulled up to her chin and her arms folded around them.
‘You loved her, didn’t you?’
‘That was the thing. No one loved the right way round. I loved her, but she loved him and he loved the obscene great thing down there. If only everyone had been able to turn around and see the thing that loved them.’ He grimaced. ‘She couldn’t hold him. I could have told her that – should have told her that. She was down on the coast putting a draft together and word came that he’d gone down in a microlyte crash over Amboseli. But she wouldn’t believe he was dead – she had me convinced she would have known if he were: mystical union or crap like that. So she decided to go after him. Last I saw of her was the microlyte I gave her taking off from the Namanga road. I should have taken an axe to the thing. But you never saw what she was like without him. You never saw her depressions, the violent rages, the hours she would spend in her hotel room, staring at the lizards on the wall. I gave her a diary the day she left to search for Langrishe. I made her promise she would get it back to me, somehow. Odds are it’s rotting with her in that green hell; but it could have made it back to shore.’
‘I could find out. At least you would know for certain, T.P.’
‘And Gaby McAslan would have the story of the decade. Gone With the Wind bangs Out of Africa. These are real lives, Gaby; real hurts, real histories, real wounds. Tread carefully around them.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a good woman, McAslan. It’s just you’re so like her. Who are you like?’