‘Too much for you?’
‘It seems kind of abstract.’
‘Everything is, until the BDO gets here.’
‘Walk with me, Shepard.’
He took her hand. No one had done that since she was eighteen. They bred them old-fashioned in the plains states. They walked along the water line, away from the fire and the people ground it and the lights of the hotel standing over the water.
‘Shepard, were you avoiding me at the press conference?’
‘Of course not, what makes you think that?’
She studied his face by the moonlight.
‘I wouldn’t like to think that I was an embarrassment to you, professional or otherwise. I wouldn’t like to think that you had some reason to be ashamed of me, or regret something you might have done for me. I wouldn’t like that at all.’
‘I’m not ashamed of you. I’m not embarrassed by you.’
‘So when the shit starts to fly, you’ll stand by me? Because it will; this is a dangerous liaison.’
She waded into the water, enjoying the heavy lap of it up her thighs, between her legs. She drew Shepard deeper: waist deep, chest deep.
‘Of course I will.’
She pressed herself to him, undid the fastenings of his shorts.
Her hands slipped inside his underwear, caressed his balls. He came up instantly hard. She wrapped her arms around his neck, hopped up and twined legs around his waist. ‘I’m very glad to hear that. You see, I would hate to share a refrigerator, a microwave, a music system, a shower and a bed with someone I couldn’t trust.’
‘You’re…’
‘Bags are back at reception.’
‘I love you, Gaby McAslan.’
‘I love you, Dr M-for-Mystery Shepard. Oh!’ Like blind deep-sea hunters, his fingers had found their way past the hem of her bleached cut-offs, under the elastic of her panties, and on to the tip of her clitoris. He smelled agreeably of sun block and beer, but she pushed herself as far away from him as her arms would allow because there was one thing to ask him and if she let him have sex with her now she would forget. ‘Shepard.’
‘Mm?’
He had his shorts down.
‘Ooh. You bastard. That diary.’
‘Mm?’
‘Do you know what happened to it? There are bits missing. Someone has been through it with a very sharp knife and cut whole pages out.’
‘I gave it you like I got it from Ol Tukai. If anything happened to it, it was probably there.’
‘But why bother, Shepard? If the missing pages refer to something UNECTA doesn’t want known, why not just lose the diary? Incinerate it, shred it?’
‘Don’t you ever stop being the Investigative Journalist?’
‘Seems not, Captain UNECTA,’ Gaby said, as she came down on top of him in the moonlit, shark-haunted water.
33
The first time she woke because of the strange bed.
The second time she woke because of the strange room the strange bed was in.
The third time she woke because of the strange dream the strange room made her have in the strange bed.
The fourth time she woke because the videophone was cheeping at four forty-seven in the morning. She could see him in the living room, talking to the handset with his back to her. Gaby had never realized how much hair he had on his ass. She sat up in the double bed and pulled around her the tapestry of stars she had spread as a quilt. He was talking in a low voice. All she could hear were his responses to the inaudible voice of the pixelated blur on the screen.
‘Fallen Angel? Where? What’s the ETI? What kind of response time? Hold it. I’ll be there. Say ten minutes. And the units are already mobile to the site? It actually works. Good. The Tupolev?’ She could tell by the way his shoulders moved he was smiling. ‘No problem.’ He folded the screen and came into the bedroom.
‘Gab?’
‘I’m awake. What’s going on?’
He put on a bedside light. It had a leather shade perforated with patterns of African animals. Antelopes and giraffes of light cantered across the walls.
‘Something’s come up. I have to go.’
He was dressing rapidly. He pulled his ready bag from under the bed. Gaby drew the tapestry tighter around her, feeling uncomfortably vulnerable, abandoned naked in an unfamiliar apartment.
‘Go where?’
She heard him sigh as he pulled his shirt over his head.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can’t tell me.’
‘It’s a security issue.’
‘I though you trusted me. That’s what you told me that night on the beach at Addu Atoll.’
‘I trust you. Please don’t ask me about it, I can’t answer. This thing, it’s not just you, it’s everyone.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
He pulled on bush boots, dashed to the bathroom to get those extra toiletries you always forget to put in your ready bag.
‘A couple of days. Maybe a week, depending.’
‘Depending?’
‘You won’t catch me out that way.’
‘Fair game for me to try to find out?’
He was patting his pockets, looking distracted, trying to remember what he might have forgotten. He glanced at his watch.
‘Christ. The car’ll be here any minute. You do whatever you like, Gab.’ He swept up his bag up and headed for the front door. Gaby followed, swathed in needlepoint zodiac.
‘Shepard, haven’t you forgotten something?’
He stopped dead.
‘Jesus H. Christ! Yes!’ When he turned round, he did not kiss her, which was what she had meant. He had the look of a man about to ask a vast favour. ‘Are you still officially on the leave T.P. gave you for Foa Mulaku?’
‘What do you want me to do with it, Shepard?’
He took a deep breath.
‘I totally forgot. Totally forgot. I need you to go down to Kenyatta Airport day after tomorrow and meet my kids off the flight from LAX.’
‘Jesus, Shepard!’
‘They always come out this time of year. There’s a banda down on the coast, just north of Mombasa, at Kikambala. Take them there; you can get the key from my office. You can do this, Gaby, it’ll only be for a couple of days.’
‘A couple of days?’
‘A week at most.’
