Jungle Of Steel And Stone

anthropology. If any outsider could truly understand what the Nal-toon means to that tribe, you'd think it would be me. Wrong. I thought I did, but it wasn't until the Nal-toon was stolen and the entire social fabric of the tribe began to unravel that I fully began to sense the real depths of that meaning. To say that an idol is God to a people is one thing; to understand it in one's heart and mind is another. The Nal-toon isn't a symbol to the K'ung. The Nal-toon, the wood itself, is God, the only God, and He is their personal guest. God lives with them, watches over them, and He has given them the desert and everything in it.

'The Nal-toon is—was—their peace and happiness, and their reason for living. They couldn't understand how God could be stolen; before the Nal-toon was taken, the K'ung had no concept of thievery. Now they're robbing each other blind—food, water, weapons, women. There's no longer any reason not to. After all, how could God allow Himself to be stolen? To the K'ung, God had abandoned them. The foundation of their daily lives had been blown away, and so they fell into a bottomless hole of hopelessness and meaninglessness—and they're still falling; they'll keep falling until finally the tribe destroys itself or the Nal-toon is returned to them. It's as if, in this country, God had been officially pronounced dead on the same day that all laws were repealed and all the police went home. Anarchy.'

'I may not appreciate the full impact of their loss,' Veil replied quietly, 'but I think I understand something about hopelessness and suffering. The tribe's pain was made very clear in Berg's series of articles.'

'God bless Alan Berg,' Reyna said with feeling. 'To think that a Jew would go to all that trouble for a tribe of primitive bushmen . . .'

Veil smiled wryly. 'Why is that any more surprising than the fact that a bunch of conservative Christian missionaries would traipse around the desert for more than twenty years with the same group of absolutely recalcitrant idol-worshipers? Isn't compassion what religion—any religion—should be all about?'

Reyna raised her head from the window, turned, and looked at him. 'Of course,' she said tightly. 'That was a stupid thing for me to say. Forgive me.'

Veil shrugged as he exited from the FDR and turned right onto Houston Street. Here there was heavy Friday night traffic, and he purposely slowed. He was afraid that Reyna would stop talking once they reached the missionary college, and he wanted to hear what else she had to say about the warrior-prince who was— apparently—holed up somewhere in Central Park.

'Berg's a very good man,' Veil said in a low monotone intended not to disturb the anthropologist's distant,

thoughtful mood. 'He's also a great reporter—and incredibly lucky. He picked up the missionaries' pleas over the shortwave at The Times's bureau in Johannesburg. He must have smelled a good story, because he hired a helicopter and went out into the desert himself to look into it. What he found was a special kind of horror—what had once been a proud tribe of hunter-gatherers had been reduced to squatting around in their own filth, stealing from each other, and subsisting entirely on emergency helicopter drops of food and medical supplies from South Africa and Botswana.

'Then Berg went to work. He hit every trading center on the perimeter of the Kalahari; the Nal-toon is a pretty distinctive piece of sculpture, so he reasoned that anyone who'd seen it would remember. Somebody did. He found a white hunter in Molepolole who'd bought it from a Bantu for the equivalent of a few dollars. The hunter, in turn, had sold it to a wholesaler who specialized in supplying primitive art for the markets in Europe and the United States.

'Then the trail disappeared when the wholesaler absolutely refused to say who he'd sold the statue to. But Berg kept digging and asking questions, and he picked up the trail again; it led straight underground into a smuggling pipeline used by organized crime. Nobody knows how, or why, the Nal-toon got into that pipeline, but once it did, its uniqueness made it relatively easy for Berg to track. And he tracked it right into Victor's gallery; Victor had bought it for three thousand dollars at a wholesalers' auction, and it came complete with a legal import certificate. Then Berg began writing his articles. He'd done an astonishing piece of investigative reporting, and he's bound to win a Pulitzer for it.'

'While the K'ung starve and die,' Reyna responded bitterly. 'And they'll keep dying, one by one, unless they get their god back.'

'I haven't forgotten that,' Veil said evenly as he approached one of the two entrance gates leading onto the campus of Wesley Missionary College, a peaceful enclave comprised of several wooden buildings and well- manicured lawns spread out over a small, fenced-in area just south of Washington Square. 'I'm sorry if I sounded insensitive.'

The guard at the gate recognized Reyna and waved Veil through. Following Reyna's directions, he drove slowly through a network of narrow streets that were brightly illuminated by mercury-vapor lamps. He pulled over to the curb in front of a dormitory-style building, turned off the engine, and handed the car keys to Reyna.

'I should drive you home,' Reyna said softly. She made no move to get out of the car.

'Not necessary. I told you that I only live a few blocks from here, down on Grand. With this traffic I'll probably get there faster if I walk.'

'Thank you again.'

'You're welcome.' Veil opened the door on his side and started to get out. When he felt the woman's soft touch on his arm, he slid back in and closed the door.

'Toby was sent here as a goofy publicity stunt,' Reyna said with a sigh. She hesitated, shook her head. 'No! It's just not fair to say that. Floyd and Wilbur were desperate, and they thought they were doing the right thing.'

'I take it that Floyd and Wilbur are the fools you mentioned.'

Reyna nodded. 'Floyd Rogers and Wilbur Mead. They're not fools, Mr. Kendry, but they are old—and they're senile. They also happen to be homosexual; that's neither here nor there, except to the Missionary Society, of course, but it does explain why the Missionary Society chose to leave two old men whose judgment is faltering buried in the desert for twelve years. They were an embarrassment.

'Anyway, while we were reading about the plight of the K'ung, Floyd and Wilbur were living it. When the Nal- toon became a political football in the United Nations and was tied up legally because of the organized-crime connection, Floyd and Wilbur panicked. They came up with a scheme for arousing public outrage and bringing pressure to bear for the return of the idol; they would send a spokesman from the tribe to make a kind of personal appeal. They knew that the Missionary Society would never approve, so they never bothered to ask for approval; and they never bothered to tell anyone over here. As I understand it, they went to Alan Berg and got his cooperation. It was Berg who arranged to get travel documents for Toby. Together they took this twenty-five-year- old man who had never been out of the Kalahari to Molepolole, outfitted him in a suit of clothes, got a flight attendant to agree to keep an eye on him until they landed at Kennedy Airport, and put him on the plane. Then they called me at the college.'

'You wouldn't have approved, either?'

'Are you kidding?'

'Maybe if there'd been more time to arrange—'

'No way. But I was an absolutely essential part of their plan because I know Toby, and I'm the only one around who speaks K'ung. Floyd and Wilbur knew I'd hide out on a mountaintop in Alaska before I'd ever agree to this insanity, assuming I was given a choice. So they made sure I wasn't given a choice. Once Toby was in the air, the plan had become a fait accompli. They knew I wouldn't abandon him.'

'Why didn't you take someone with you to the airport?'

'Who?' Reyna asked with a sharp, bitter laugh. 'I knew that Toby was going to be spooked enough without having to deal with a stranger. Also, I was very pressed for time. The overseas trunk lines were jammed, and I only got the call barely an hour before Toby's plane was due to land. I figured that the best way to handle the situation was to pick up Toby alone, reassure him that everything was going to be fine, put him up at the college overnight, then pack him off on the first Africa-bound plane leaving in the morning.'

'Forgive me for asking, Miss Alexander—'

'My name's Reyna.'

'And I'm Veil. Reyna, why did you take him to the gallery? You must have known it would be dangerous.'

'I knew,' Reyna replied, bowing her head slightly. 'I felt I had no choice. The moment Toby got off the plane, I could see that he was full of shilluk.'