Forcing her breathing even, Tesla crouched by the door, waiting. When all had been motionless for a full minute, she crept to the table, reached down for one of the soda bottles and flung it at Schmidt’s head. On impact it smashed into glittering shards, but Schmidt didn’t move.
Slowly, she rose. She made her way to where Schmidt lay in the settling dust. His blood trickled into the dry soil amid the shards of a once-beautiful pot. There, you see, Leonora? This time you were on the side of the dust. And the predator always wins.
Her first steps back inside took her to the plastic water bucket in her makeshift sink. She scooped with her hands, splashed water over her face and head as though here, at the edge of the Namib, water was hers to waste.
Then she made her way swiftly about the room, collecting the few things she would take. When her canvas bag was packed she used a knife to slit the seam she’d sewed on the thin mattress as she had on each mattress in each hut she’d stayed in. She extracted the envelope of American dollars and the small, battered portfolio she’d had with her since The Hague. She slipped them both into the side pocket with the iPod, zipped and she was done.
Getting Schmidt into the Jeep was harder. She was strong but he was tall, and leverage was a problem. Eventually, his head wrapped in a towel to keep bloodstains from the seat, she’d maneuvered him into the back, fished the keys from his pocket and started the engine. Driving along the dust track the way Schmidt had come, she saw ahead the spot she’d been thinking of, where the edge of the road fell off steeply toward the wadi. She passed it and turned around so the Jeep was headed toward her hut. Then, on the curve, she yanked the wheel sharply, opened the door and jumped.
Anywhere in the wadi would have worked, but her luck was better than she’d had the nerve to hope, and the Jeep smacked head-on into an acacia tree. When she reached it-limping slightly, she’d banged her knee-cracks spider-webbed the windshield. Excellent. Then came more sweat, strain and maneuvering, and finally Schmidt was half-in, half-out of the driver’s seat. Though the crack in his skull was clearly not from this crash, he was unlikely to be found for a while-except by the hyenas that skulked along this dry streambed. Once they were through, no one would doubt what had killed Gunter Schmidt.
Or whoever he was. And wherever he’d come from.
She walked back to the hut, hoping she could walk out the ache in her knee. Once there, she stripped and washed in the little water she’d left herself. She changed clothes, took what she’d been wearing and the bloody towel in a pillowcase. Slinging it and her bag into her own Jeep, Tesla paused. Though she’d lived in and left too many places to make a habit of goodbyes, she took a moment to stare at the hut, and then turned to salute the wide brown land. She’d thought this might be home, but now she doubted she’d be back.
The drive to Windhoek Airport took a little more than three hours. Once there, she used all four of her credit cards to withdraw as much cash as she could. With what she’d taken from the mattress, she’d be all right for a while. On one of the cards she bought a ticket on the connecting flight through Munich to Washington, D.C. Then she exited the terminal and boarded the long-distance bus to Cape Town.
She didn’t know if her credit cards were being monitored, but she had to take the possibility into account. In Cape Town, she’d buy a ticket in cash.
To New York.
Where you could catch a train to Washington, Harold had told her, a dozen times a day.
Hugging her bag to her, feeling the portfolio’s stiffness through the canvas, Leonora stared out the window at the dry land, the lonesome trees.
A dozen trains a day.
That ought to be enough.
5
Charlotte Middleton-Perez cracked open her eyes, disoriented. Not home. Not the dining room at the Ritz.
Bright, antiseptic white. Shiny surfaces, stiff sheets. She hurt. Ached everywhere, especially her lower back.
The squeak and rattle of a cart broke the silence. Muffled voices followed. She shifted her gaze. Her husband Jack by the bed, head in hands. The picture of grief.
With a shattering sense of loss, she remembered: standing up. Seeing the blood. Crying out, then gasping as pain knifed through her belly.
She brought a hand to her abdomen, vision blurring with tears. She’d had a life growing inside her. A baby boy. She and Jack had begun picking out names.
Had. Past tense. Now, no life inside her. No little boy with Jack’s blue eyes and her dark hair.
Her tears spilled over, rolling down her cheeks, hot and bitter.
He lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying.
“Charley,” he said.
The one word conveyed a world of emotion-despair and regret, love and need. For comfort. To understand- how could this have happened?
They’d reached the second trimester. Safe, they’d thought. Out of the woods. Common wisdom validated their belief.
Her fault? Working too hard? Not enough rest?
As if reading her thoughts, Perez stretched out a hand. She took it and he curled his fingers protectively around hers. “Not your fault, Charley. The doctor said these things… happen.”
She shook her head. “That’s not good enough. I need to know why.”
He cleared his throat. “They’re going to run some tests. On us. On our… The miscarriage. He suggested an ultrasound of your uterus, an x-ray, too.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as he tightened his fingers on hers. “This is a setback. It really hurts, but we’ll have-”
“No.”
“-other childre-”
“Don’t. Please.” Her voice cracked. “I wanted this baby… I-I already loved him.”
“I understand,” he said with apparent sympathy.
And he always seemed to. She didn’t know what she had done to deserve his love. They’d met at Tulane University in New Orleans. She had been stunned when he asked her out, when he pursued her. She wasn’t an extraordinary beauty. Just pleasant looking-average face, average figure. And Jack was off the charts handsome. Smart. Educated. From an influential Louisiana family. His falling for her had been as much a mystery as a miracle.
“Have you heard from Harry?” she asked. She’d stopped calling her father Dad on her thirteenth birthday. She was Charley, he was Harry and her mother was perpetually horrified by the both of them.
“Not yet.”
“You left a message-”
“At the restaurant. And just a bit ago on his cell phone. It went automatically to voicemail.”
He was delayed, still in transit. “You didn’t tell him-”
He squeezed her fingers again. “Just that we were here. To call on my cell. I left my number.”
She swallowed past the sudden rush of tears. “Mother?” she managed.
“No answer, home or cell.”
“Ms. Middleton?”
They turned. Two men stood in the doorway, expressions solemn. Both men, dressed in dark suits, were pin neat and pressed, despite the hour. She wasn’t surprised when they introduced themselves as federal officers. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
