Chaga

‘I’m getting out here.’

‘What do I do?’ Gaby asked plaintively.

‘What you do,’ T.P. Costello said, ‘is you take this thing home, you go to bed, you sleep for eighteen hours and tomorrow when you are fresh and sharp and bright you put on your most professional clothes and you come here and you report to Jake Aarons and you ask him if there are any assignments for SkyNet Satellite News’s new East Africa correspondent. And, because you’ll need it, you keep the car. What do you do?’

As T.P. spoke, she had lowered her head until it touched the edge of the dashboard. Tears stained the thighs of the borrowed jeans.

‘You asshole,’ she whispered. ‘You fucking diseased asshole. I thought I was out of here.’

‘You almost were. You know why you are here and not at the check-in desk at Kenyatta being asked if you want smoking or non-smoking? Because it worked. That’s the only reason. Because at this very moment sub-rights are in the middle of the biggest bidding war since the Kilimanjaro Event as casters broad and narrow throw dollars and Deuschmarks at you. Because at this moment our dear friend Dr Dan is on his feet in the House demanding an enquiry into the allegations your report raised while the UN sends in its damage limitation boys to, in their words, “rotate the third Baku company out of active service”, which in our parlance is the first Ilyushin out of here. Because it’s trebles and clean consciences all round at the Thorn Tree. You took the risk. It worked. This time. You see, if you ever, ever do anything like that again without clearing with me, I will bounce you back to the bonnie Belfast so quick you’ll have friction burns on your beautiful ass. What’ll you have?’

‘Friction burns. On my ass,’ Gaby said, still not able to look up.

‘That’s correct,’ T.P. said, stepping out of the car. ‘Oh. I almost forgot. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Your friend Dr Shepard called while you were in flight. I think you should get whatever contacts you have working on this ASAP. Your stool-pigeon William. Seems he’s been moved from Tsavo West to Kajiado centre for further tests. They’re holding him in a special isolation section. Unit 12.’

She had it. She had it all. She had been faithful to her guiding star and it had honoured her with more than she had asked of it. It had put her in front of the camera, but it had also given her a glimpse into its hidden heart that few humans had ever seen, and maybe, if she didn’t get stupid and try to play it too cool and wreck things, it had given her the man she wanted. The city, the land, surged with possibility. Something tapped on her window. She looked up. Standing on the Landcruiser’s running-board was a shaven-headed boy of nine or ten, tapping a forefinger on the glass and holding up for her to buy a model of Space Station Unity he had made out of wire coat-hangers and sliced up Heineken cans. Gaby laughed and sobbed simultaneously and remembered that she had forgotten to tell T.P. about the Moon diary.

26

From glory to glory.

T.P. had begun the great Irish football war chant Ole, Ole Ole Ole five minutes before the final whistle. The team were still singing it as they headed for the showers.

‘One nil, one million nil,’ T.P. said as he collected his winnings from his UNECTA counterpart.

It had been a memorable victory. Gaby looked forward to post-morteming the goal over much beer when the Manga Twins finished editing the video. Seventy fifth minute. Victor Luthu from accounts lofts it over UNECTA’s dreaded Nigerian mid-fielder Kojo Laing. It falls at Gaby McAslan’s feet and the left wing opens up before her like the gates of heaven. Into the box and the best cross of her life over two defenders and Tembo’s head is there, rising, to smack it into the back of the net. She jumped onto Faraway, gaudy as a macaw in his woman-impressing goalkeeper’s outfit, wrapped him in freckled arms and legs.

‘Hey Kenya! I love this man! I used to think he was a wanker, now I think he is Jesus. They throw everything at him, Faraway stops the lot.’

‘Want to swap shirts, Gaby?’ Faraway said, recovering cool.

Oksana Telyanina ran over and hugged them both. She had been seconded on to Team SkyNet. The Siberians had never enough people in the same place to field a team of their own. In her cut-offs over cycle shorts, borrowed boots and tattoos she was an intimidating left back.

‘I near peed my pants!’ she shouted. Over her shoulder, beside the corner flag, Gaby glimpsed another person.

Shepard.

‘You!’ she shrieked, throwing herself on him.

‘You look like a horse with that long hair and those tight lycra shorts,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I would dearly love to pull them down right now and bend you over the substitute’s bench.’

‘Been thinking about me while I was away?’

‘Nothing but.’

‘So what are you doing up here?’

‘Whisking you off on a date. You’ve got a change of clothes with you?’

‘Yes, casual and work. I not only look like a horse, I smell like a horse.’

‘You’ll smell worse where I’m taking you.’

She stepped back to give him the sideways quizzical look from under her hair she knew no man could resist.

‘You always this insistent?’

‘Always.’

She went to the changing rooms to pick up her bag. Oksana Telyanina was unlacing her boots.

‘You, him, yes?’ she asked, making a fiki-fiki gesture with her left forefinger penetrating circled right thumb and forefinger.

‘I haven’t even got to kiss him yet,’ Gaby said, changing her footwear.

‘He is very cute. Man like this, many woman want to baboon. You want to keep him, remember: Serbski Jeb.’ Oksana mimed pulling a knot tight around a compliant limb. Gaby threw her empty water bottle at her, went out and slung her sports bag into the back of the UNECTA Mahindra in which Shepard was waiting. Shepard placed his palm on her thigh and drove off.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, not recognizing the trend of the streets.

‘Like I said, on a date,’ Shepard kept his hand firmly on her thigh all the way out of Nairobi, through Keekorok and Olorgesaile and the towns to the west.

‘This is some date,’ Gaby said as the metalled road gave way to red earth.

‘Something to celebrate,’ Shepard said.

‘You got the job.’

He punched a fist into the air.

‘Up, up and away with UNECTA-man! Permanent jet-lag. Permanent Montezuma’s Revenge. Can quote by heart any inflight magazine in the world. I’ll have to buy another suit. There’s a Indian tailor down by the City Market can make you anything in twenty-four hours. He might even run to all-enclosing blue suits.’

‘You’d know about that, speed-skater.’

‘Gaby, I can’t wait. I cannot wait for them to ask me to go somewhere and solve something. Sometimes you actually do get what you want in this life.’

‘I know,’ Gaby said. ‘Sometimes, karma takes a holiday and everyone gets what they want rather than what they deserve. The new East Africa Correspondent for SkyNet Satellite News greets the new UNECTAfrique Peripatetic Executive Director.’

They drove on into the huge west.

‘We’re going to the Mara,’ Gaby said.

‘There’re things I want you to see before they’re gone forever,’ Shepard said.

The red earth road became two tyre tracks on a green, watered plain speckled with many trees. The great wildebeest migration had come in the shadow of the rains to this land. They were like a brown river, meandering, breaking into tributaries and backwaters and loops so wide and lazy the migration seemed to stagnate into a swamp of grazing individuals. But they could not stop, any more than a river could refuse the gravity that drew it to