Solomon's Throne (29 page)

Jakisa, or Jack, Magara, met them in his Toyota Land Cruiser, and brought them to his gated house in Garden City. Traffic was bumper to bumper and side to side, and here also there appeared to be no one following traffic rules. Although Cape Town was pretty large, Kampala was the most crowded African city they’d been in, and they were dumbfounded at the amount of people and traffic and chaos on the road.

“Traffic’s pretty light now,” Jack said as he narrowly missed a
boda boda
, a motorbike taxi. “Tomorrow you will get to see the real thing. But where I live, it is not so bad. And we have power most of the time, so we are happy.”

Jack was a tall, thin Ugandan with very close cropped hair and a lilting accent. He was nicely dressed in slacks and a starched white shirt, and the vehicle was immaculate.

“Are you from Kampala?” Rei asked, still staring out the window at the endless stream of people walking down the sides of the road.

“Oh no, I am from Jinja. It is east, towards Kenya. I went to the States to university, and became a pilot at a flight school in Texas. Now I live in Kampala because Kololo is on our company’s maintenance route, and I can jump off from here to anywhere in East Africa when I am on duty.”

They weren’t able to drive fast, so it didn’t seem that they traveled far in the hour it took them to get from the airport to Jack’s house. Once they turned into the district which was called Garden City, they could see that it was much more upscale than most of the city through which they’d driven. There was a large mall that had a New York Pizza Restaurant; Nakumat, a Kenyan store which Jack said was like a twenty-four hour Wal-Mart; and small, elegant boutiques. Nearby was a small but high-end hotel called Emin Pasha. The roads were paved and virtually pothole free. When they turned off the street and into Jack’s drive, they were met by a large, solid metal gate. Jack honked once, and the gate was opened by a young Ugandan, who waved as they drove in.

The house was stone, two story, with a corrugated tin roof. The landscaping was lush. There were lights on in the downstairs windows. They parked next to another Toyota Land Cruiser.

“My wife’s car.” Jack said. “She is a lawyer. She is away in London, visiting her sister.”

He led the way inside, and Captain McMillan started up the stairs. “Same room, Jack?”

“Yes, and the one next to it for the Quinns. They are all prepared.” He smiled at Gideon and Rei. “Can I get you tea? Something to eat?”

Even though they hadn’t had dinner, they weren’t hungry, and were happy to be shown to their room. Rei saw a real toilet and a sink with running water, and grinned.

“Hallelujah!”

Jack smiled back. “We have a cistern, and even though it is the dry season, it is full now from the water trucks. The water heats from the sun, however, so you might wish to take a shower tomorrow, or it will be cold. Let me know if you need anything. Mac is next door to you, and he has been our guest often. Good night!”

He left them in their comfortable room. Rei sat down on the large bed while Gideon untied the mosquito netting. There was a knock, and the captain brought in their luggage.

“Here ya go! Thought you might be happy to have some clean clothes. If you leave the dirty ones outside your door, they’ll get washed tomorrow. ‘Night!” And he left.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
he following morning, Rei woke
to the sound of birds in the lush trees outside the window, a rooster crowing somewhere nearby, and traffic sounds. The traffic wasn’t terribly close, but the rumble and honking in the distance was ever present. She got out of bed without waking Gideon and washed her face. She desperately needed a shower, but thought she could wait for some warm water if she put her hair up in a bun. She looked at herself in the mirror and grimaced. She had bags the size of her carry on under her eyes, her hair was two days past dirty, and there were lines of grime caked in the creases of her neck.
Beauty queen,
she thought, giving up thinking about it until she could shower. She quietly left the room and found her way downstairs and to the kitchen.

A young Ugandan woman was standing at the granite topped island rolling out
chapatti
. She smiled shyly and nodded when Rei came in.

“Is there any coffee?” Rei asked. “And I’m Rei.”

“I will put on the kettle, mum,” the young woman said, checking the water level in an electric kettle, filling it from the tap, and plugging it.

“Thanks,” Rei said, and leaned against the counter, looking out into the walled in back garden. It was full of bougainvillea, which cascaded over the walls, as well as trees she’d called powder puff trees when she had visited Gideon’s family in Florida.

The kettle began to whistle, and the cook poured it into a coffee press into which she had spooned ground Ugandan coffee. “Hot milk or sugar, mum?” She asked.

“Hot milk would be lovely, thanks! What’s your name?”

Getting a glass jug of milk out of the fridge, the woman said, “Jenneth,” and smiled again, covering her mouth with her hand.
They all do that!
thought Rei.

Jenneth put the milk in a small pot and lit a gas burner with a match. When the milk was hot, she gave Rei a mug, the coffee press, and the hot milk in a small pitcher. Rei made her coffee, and drank it gratefully.

“Delicious!” she said. “Is anyone else up?”

Shaking her head, Jenneth went back to making the
chapatti.
“Would you like breakfast, mum?

“I’ll wait for everyone else. Thanks though!” She left the kitchen through the garden door and found a seat under a shade tree.

Gideon found her there, his own black coffee in hand. He kissed the top of her head and then sat next to her. “So you ready to read the next letter from Father Eduardo? I’m pretty sure Mac said that there was some kind of internet here, and I would guess that hotel we passed, the Emin Pasha, has it, if not.”

“Yeah. I was just enjoying not being chased or having to run anywhere! And I didn’t want to wake you up. But I guess we need to figure out what it says so we know where we’re going next. If we’re really following the spice route, the last stop is probably Goa, India. So this clue might lead us there… but that’s still pretty far. My guess is another stop or two first.”

“Great. Well, we can only hope we’ve shaken our Catholic friends, anyway.” Gideon put his arm around her.

“Probably. But they’ll know we’re going to end up in Goa, I’m afraid. It’s in the journal they have. We might be ok until we get there… but I expect they’ll wait there for us, now that they’ve botched stealing the letters outright.”

“So we need a plan by then. At least we have some time.” He squeezed her to him and kissed her neck. “You hungry? I’m suddenly starved, and I just realized we didn’t ever eat dinner.” He got up and looked at her.

“Can you just call me when it’s ready? I’m so relaxed!” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.

After breakfast, Jenneth told them that Captain McMillan and Jack had gone down to Kololo. McMillan needed to check on the maintenance of the jet, and Jack had a trip tomorrow so he was going to check on his plane as well. They wouldn’t be back until the afternoon.

“If you want to go to a store, I can call a boda for you. Or you can have lunch at the nice hotel… It is very good.” She smiled shyly, not showing any teeth.

“We would need to exchange some money, I think.” Gideon said. He didn’t want to use a credit card if he could avoid it.

Jenneth nodded. “Stephen can go for you. He can get take the money and get shillings. Good rate. I will tell him.” She pulled out a cell phone and typed out a text message lightning fast, which made Rei laugh. Very soon the phone beeped, and Jenneth read the response. “He can go soon, when he goes for some service for the car. He will be back before lunch.”

They thanked her, and went up to their room. Taking out the by now filthy backpack, Rei dug out the metal tube holding their next letter. The leather strip holding the top on was still intact, and the tube, aside from a few small dents, was none the worse for wear. She opened it and began the familiar routine of getting out her notebook and a pen, and propping herself up against the headboard to translate.

Gideon said, “I don’t even have a converter to charge the phones… I’m gonna go ask Jenneth. Let me know when you’re done!” He left with both of their phones and their iPhone charger in hand.

Rei was accustomed by now to Father Eduardo’s way of writing, and translating was becoming easier. She was, once again, stumped about the location, but felt sure that the answers would be at her fingertips once she was connected to the internet. She got her laptop and charger out of the bag and took it, with the notebook, downstairs, leaving the letter in the drawer of the dresser.

She found Gideon talking to the young man who had let them in the gate the night before, whom she assumed was Stephen. Gideon handed him British pounds, and the man carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. He left, and Gideon turned to her.

“That was Stephen. Apparently kind of the general dogs body, handyman, security guy. He’s going to exchange the money, and be back in time for us to go to Emin Pasha for lunch. You got it translated?”

“Yep. Clear as mud again, though. Let’s see if we’ve got internet.” She looked at the outlets, which didn’t match her American plug. “Crap, forgot about that. The hotels all had adapter strips. Let’s see if we can find one.”

They hunted around the house and couldn’t find another converter besides the one charging their completely dead phones, so they went back to the kitchen. Jenneth was frying up
chapatti,
and the smell was delicious.

“Jenneth, is there another power converter somewhere? I’d like to plug in my computer,” Gideon asked.

Jenneth flipped the
chapatti
in the cast iron pan and pointed to a drawer at the end of the counter with the spatula. “I think there is one in there.”

Gideon opened the drawer, found the converter, and they went back to the sitting room where Rei had left her stuff.

“OK, so I’ve never heard of the place where Father Eduardo left the next letter…” She started powering up her laptop.

“What else is new. Is it another “land of the good people” thing? I hope it’s not the “land of the bad people.””

“Funny.” She made a face at him. “Nope. It’s a place called Ctesiphon. I don’t even know what country that’s in, but it’s between here and India.”

“That narrows it down.” Rei sat back in the comfortable chair and rested his head on the back, closing his eyes.

Rei’s Mac purred to life, and went through the start up. Once her screen saver and programs were up, she clicked on the wifi icon. No networks showed. Thinking maybe she hadn’t let the computer load all its information, she let it sit another minute, and tried again. No networks.

“Damn. Back to Jenneth.” Rei put the laptop on a side table and went back to the kitchen.

Jenneth told them that there was internet service and a router, but that the connection was not always reliable. There were many days, apparently, without Internet access, although when they did have it was reasonably fast. Having nothing to do but wait for Stephen to return with their money, and hopefully give them a ride to the hotel, they tried to relax, wander the grounds, and enjoy the quiet. But with the letter to try to decipher, they found it impossible. They walked to the big metal gate.

“There’s a door in it. We could go out…” Rei said.

“We might get locked out, though. Let me go ask Jenneth if we can walk to the hotel. She can text Stephen to just meet us there.” He left for few minutes, then returned. “Yep, we can. It’s about a ten minute walk. She texted Stephen—I still can’t get used to that!—and he will meet us there in about a half hour. He is on his way back now.”