The Clouds Beneath the Sun (47 page)

Russell was still on his feet. “So this conference has nothing to do with the upcoming trial of Mutevu Ndekei, who used to be the camp cook at Kihara and who virtually beheaded one of your team, Professor Richard Sutton? It has nothing to do with the fact that Dr. Natalie Nelson, sitting there on your left, will be the main witness against Ndekei, in a trial that will pit a white witness against a black defendant, and is due to take place in the very week that the independence conference will begin in London? It has nothing to do with the fact that the Maasai tribe, who claim ownership of the gorge, have threatened to reoccupy it and destroy it if Ndekei is convicted and sentenced to hang? Are we to take it that the timing of this conference is pure coincidence?”

“Those are all—” Eleanor began, but Russell was in full stampede mode, his face redder than Natalie had ever seen it.

“Is it not true that, despite the united front you display here, today, this morning, in this lecture hall, that in fact your team is bitterly divided?” He pointed directly at Natalie. “Is it not true that Dr. Nelson here fully intends to give evidence against Ndekei, despite the threats posed by the Maasai, but that you, Dr. Deacon, have repeatedly tried to get her to change her testimony, so that the proceedings against Ndekei will be dropped, a maneuver that will preserve your precious gorge at any cost? Is it not true that you, Dr. Deacon, are willing to sweep the murder of a noted professor under the carpet so as to maintain your research opportunities? Isn’t the whole
point
of this press conference to bolster your achievements in the gorge and to head off the Maasai? Isn’t
that
why you are not following normal scientific protocol—you are trying to salvage your reputation in the face of impending disaster, that the tribal customs of Kenya will stop scientific progress in its tracks, only you can’t say so for fear of being thought racist or colonialist?”

Eleanor stood up in an attempt to stem the flood, but Russell wouldn’t be stemmed.

“A white man, a talented white man, a world-class scientist, was brutally murdered in a camp run by you, sliced up by a black man with a machete, a mere camp cook from the Maasai tribe, who ran off. A white woman, Dr. Natalie Nelson, was a witness. Now the murderer claims he was acting according to Maasai tradition. Where do you stand, Dr. Deacon? Should Ndekei be tried and, if convicted, hanged? Or do you think that the defense he is going to run is sufficient and relevant in today’s new Kenya?”

He sat down. The stampede was over.

Natalie was sweating. There was no question but that the journalists had listened to Russell in a way different from how they had listened to Eleanor.

Natalie stared at Russell. At first he wouldn’t meet her gaze, but when he did he looked at her hard, rigid, unblinking, defiant.

Eleanor was deep in conversation with Daniel and with Jack, who had left his seat in the auditorium and mounted the stage. A buzz of conversation had broken out in the audience.

Finally, Eleanor stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said and paused, to give everyone a chance to quieten down.

Jack went back to his seat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to know that I still stand by all the comments—each and every one—that I made earlier, about the nature and importance and implications of our discoveries in Kihara Gorge. They are in my view—in
our
view—” and she motioned to the others on the stage with her, “quite independent of other, tragic events that have taken place during the digging season. Those events have very little, if anything, to do with science, and more to do with human folly, greed, and ambition. However, since Professor North has raised the matter—entirely unexpectedly and gratuitously, I might add, since he was not invited to this press conference in the first place, though we would have had no wish to keep him away—I will now satisfy the curiosity his remarks will inevitably have aroused among you.”

And Eleanor went on to describe the murder of Richard Sutton, the reasons for it, what Natalie had witnessed, what defense Ndekei was expected to run, and why she had forced Russell North to leave the camp. And she had no choice but to speak about the Maasai threat to the gorge.

When she finished the questions came thick and fast.

“When
is
this trial?”

“Is it a jury trial?”

“Who is the judge? Is he black or white?”

“What is the penalty for murder in Kenya?”

“Have tribal defenses been used before in Kenya?”

“Is Ndekei in jail now? Which one?”

“Will you defend the gorge if the Maasai attack it, or occupy it? How?”

“Dr. Deacon, did you really try to get Dr. Nelson to change her testimony?”

“Maybe Dr. Nelson should answer that,” said another journalist.

Eleanor turned in her seat. “Natalie?”

All eyes were on her. A photographer’s light flashed somewhere.

“No,” said Natalie, in as deliberately flat a voice as she could muster. “Dr. Deacon was born and bred in Kenya, I’m new here. She’s been digging in the gorge for decades but she tells me this is the best season, in terms of discoveries, that there has ever been. It’s natural to try to preserve something as important as Kihara. I share her enthusiasm but I saw what I saw and will say so at the trial. I have never varied in my view and all my colleagues—not just Dr. Deacon but everyone else—know that.”

Natalie wanted the morning to be over as quickly as possible and the less she said the sooner it would be.

“Tom Jellinek again. I have a question for Dr. North—have I got the name right?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Dr. North, you were sent away from the camp because of your part in this … raid on the cemetery. In the circumstances, in view of the dreadful fate that occurred to Professor Sutton, do you accept that Dr. Deacon acted responsibly, that—in effect—she saved your life?”

Russell stood up. “Ndekei had already been captured and arrested by the time I was made to leave, so no, I don’t accept that reasoning. I don’t believe anyone else would have come looking for me—an eye for an eye, so to speak, had already been achieved. I accepted because I had no choice, Dr. Deacon’s authority on her digs is absolute. But I left reluctantly.”

“And is your intervention this morning motivated by revenge?” Jellinek was as dogged as Russell had been earlier.

Russell passed a large hand over his chin. “My intervention was motivated by the gaps in the story you were told. A man was murdered during this season’s digging and, had it been left to Dr. Deacon, none of you journalists would have been any the wiser. You should ask Dr. Deacon if she is for or against Ndekei’s prosecution.”

“Well, Dr. Deacon? What’s the answer?”

“What I say doesn’t matter. The law will take its course. What Professors Sutton and North did was in my view, stupid, crass, wrong, and—yes—criminal. I am white, a graduate of a British university, but I have lived and worked all my life in Kenya. I am familiar with and sometimes—sometimes, not always—sympathic to tribal ways. Anglo-Saxon law is not the only way of organizing human affairs.”

“Does that mean you are for or against the prosecution of this cook?” Jellinek was still on his feet.

“I have said all that I want to say. But I point out that Dr. Nelson is on this platform with me today.”

There were no more questions.

Natalie’s heart was racing. She noticed that Russell was sweating copiously.

“I think we have gone as far as we can for now,” said Eleanor, getting to her feet. “Remember to pick up your photographs as you leave.”

•   •   •

Russell got up from his seat at the hotel bar and came towards Natalie. “You look angry but you still look wonderful. You are more tanned than I remember you.” He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek but she held back. “Hmm,” he grunted.

“I came because I promised but after your performance this morning, I can’t say I’m here with any enthusiasm. Why did you say all those things?”

He showed her to a seat. “They needed saying, the whole picture is important, relevant. If the press conference had been reported without mention of Richard, it would have been incomplete, wrong. Scotch?”

“Not yet, thank you. Is that why you did it? I think that reporter was right—what you did struck me as an act of spite, an attempt to sabotage what’s been achieved this season.”

“Too right. That too, yes. Fights always exist on several levels, and this one is no different. I told you, the evening before I was made to leave the gorge, that I wasn’t rolling over. Now you know I keep to my word.”

“How long are you going to be wounded, Russell? Will you ever get over this?”

“I’ll get over it a damned sight quicker if you’ll come over to my side, if you’ll—”

“Russell, stop! Because I agreed to have dinner with you, doesn’t mean we can just pick up where—”

“Doesn’t it mean anything that I still feel about you the way that I do?”

She shook her head. She was more certain than ever now that Russell and she could never have … the way his skin flushed, those blue eyes that seemed to have a life of their own, independent of the rest of his face …“You’re acting … you’re behaving like … like a fossil, Russell, a fossil who has occupied the same position for years and years and has turned to stone.”

He stared at her.

“You could, if you wished, agree to be part of a team—for publication purposes anyway—a team that’s made the most momentous discoveries this season, you being involved in the very first, which not only discovered the knee joint but pointed us to the area where the other discoveries would be made. That would bring us closer together, you and me. Yet you remain stuck in your anger, your vindictiveness—”

He went to interrupt but she waved him down.

“You haven’t been paying attention, all those miles away in Hollywood. The Maasai are threatening to occupy the gorge and destroy it. You know that but you overlook the fact that that means they are
still
on the warpath, so to speak. I have thought about it a lot and Eleanor was right to insist you leave—”

Again he went to interrupt, again she talked over him.

“Your career is the most important thing to you but she was thinking of your
life—
”

“Huh!
And
the gorge—”

“No! Sending you away always risked a scene like today’s—she knew that. It was more important to save your life—”

“You mean the dig couldn’t afford two deaths.”

She let a short pause elapse. “As it happens, there
have
been two deaths.” She explained about Kees.

Russell shook his head and gave a low whistle. “Poor man. Suicide. What a way to do it.” He looked up. “But it confirms that Eleanor Deacon is losing it.”

“Russell! Kees told me … that he thought Richard was homosexual. Was he? You knew him over several years, several digs. Did you know anything about that?”

Russell hesitated. “I registered that he never had girlfriends. But no, I can’t say I thought about it more than that. Very few women come on digs in Africa, then he would go back to New York, and me to Berkeley.”

“I once caught Richard and Mutevu standing very close together. Do you think … could there have been anything between them?”

He stared at her. “No! I mean, I don’t know. Are you saying …?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. But you never saw anything that made you think …?”

He shook his head, firmly. “Nothing like that ever crossed my mind. And I’m not sure I like the suggestion …”

He tailed off and neither of them spoke for a moment.

Russell, she realized, wasn’t quite as quick as he thought. If he’d really absorbed that there might have been something between Richard and Ndekei, he would have realized she was telling him that the threat to himself was much diminished, and he should never have been made to leave the gorge. But, since he was so belligerent, and so wrapped up in himself, Natalie was not going to help him work out what he couldn’t work out for himself.

“Russell … why did you come back? … Was it only for the press conference? And how did you know about it … how did you know all those details?”

Russell sipped his drink. He had reverted to vodka by the look of it.

“Richard Sutton Senior paid for me. He has a contact in the American embassy here, who keeps him informed. We suspected the Deacons would pull some kind of stunt and so it proved—”

“Russell! It wasn’t a stunt.”

“Oh no?” He looked at her and shook his head. “Natalie, had I not intervened today, tomorrow’s papers would have been full of anthropological and paleontological details with no mention of Richard—or at least of Richard’s murder.”

“There’ll be more than enough time for that, at the trial.”

He shook his head again. “But by then, if the Deacons had had their way—unimpeded you might say—the gorge would have been established as a national treasure, one of the wonders of the world, Richard’s death would have been minimized, or sidelined altogether, an inconvenience, no more. And you didn’t give a straight answer today, either. She
did
try to get you to change your testimony, change your evidence, more than once.”

“I have never wavered.” She said it firmly, blushing slightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“That’s not what I said, or meant.
She
tried to get you to change your evidence. I can’t forgive that.”

An appalling thought struck her. “Are you …? Would you like to see the gorge destroyed? If I give evidence, and say what I saw, and Ndekei is hanged, and the Maasai do what they are threatening to do, will that please you, give you satisfaction? Because
you
can’t work in the gorge anymore, do you want it spoiled for the rest of us? Is that what this is all about, Russell?”

He didn’t say anything, but snatched at his drink.

“I’m right, aren’t I? Richard’s father, poor man, is devastated by his son’s death and he wants Ndekei prosecuted and found guilty for entirely normal reasons—he wants justice for his son. But you … you want revenge, don’t you? If you can’t play in the gorge, you don’t want anyone else to—that’s it, isn’t it?”