The Constant Gardener

"With two, man! That woman had no faith in one alone!" With an inward smile, Justin acknowledges Tessa's legal acumen. "I abased myself totally before them. I gave them the naked truth before the Lord. There was no way out. I was the last link in the chain of their investigations."

"Did they say what they intended to do with the information you had given them?"

Lorbeer's eyes opened very wide but his lips remained closed and his body so motionless that for a second Justin wondered whether he had died a merciful death, but it seemed he was only remembering. Suddenly he was speaking very loudly, his words mounting to a scream as he fought to get them out.

"They would present it to the one man in Kenya they trusted. They would take the whole story to Leakey. Everything they had collected. Kenya should solve Kenya's problem, she said. Leakey was the man to do it. That was their conviction. They warned me. She did. "Markus, you better hide yourself, man. This place is not safe for you anymore. You got to find yourself a deeper hole, or they will kill you to pieces for betraying them to us.""

It is hard for Justin to recreate Tessa's actual words from Lorbeer's strangled voice, but he does his best. And certainly he has no problem with the general drift of what she must have said, since Tessa's first concern would always have been for Lorbeer rather than herself. And "kill you to pieces" was undoubtedly one of her expressions.

"What did Bluhm have to say to you?"

"He was right down to earth, man. Told me I was a charlatan and a traitor to my trust."

"And that of course helped you to betray him," Justin suggests kindly, but his kindness is in vain, for Lorbeer's weeping is even worse than Woodrow's — howling, alienating, infuriating tears as he pleads for himself in mitigation. He loves that drug, man! It does not deserve to be publicly condemned! A few more years and it will take its place among the great medical discoveries of the age! All we've got to do, we've got to check the peak levels of toxicity, control the rate at which we admit it to the body! They're already working on that, man! By the time they hit the United States market, all those bugs will have disappeared, no problem! Lorbeer loves Africa, man, he loves all mankind, he is a good man, not born to bear such guilt! Yet even while he pleads and moans and rages, he contrives to raise himself mysteriously from defeat. He sits up straight. He draws back his shoulders and a smirk of superiority replaces his penitent's grief.

"Plus look at their relationship, man," he protests, with ponderous insinuation. "Look at their ethical behavior. Whose sins are we speaking of here, precisely? I ask myself."

"I don't think I quite follow you," says Justin mildly, as a mental safety screen between himself and Lorbeer begins to form inside his head.

"Read the newspapers, man. Listen to the radio. Make up your own mind independently and tell me, please. What is this pretty married white woman doing traveling about with this handsome black doctor as her constant companion? Why does she call herself by her maiden name and not by the name of her rightful husband? Why does she parade herself at her lover's side in this very tent, man, brazenly, an adulteress and hypocrite, interrogating Markus Lorbeer about his personal morality?"

But the safety screen must have slipped somehow, for Lorbeer is staring at Justin as if he has seen death's very angel come to summon him to the judgment he so dreads.

"God Christ, man. You're him. Her husband. Quayle."

* * *

The last food drop of the day has emptied the stockade of its workers. Leaving Lorbeer to weep alone in his tent, Justin sits himself on the hummock beside the air-raid shelter to enjoy the evening show. First, the pitch-black herons, swooping and circling as they announce the sunset. Then the lightning, driving away the dusk in long, trembling salvos, then the day's moisture rising in a white veil. And finally the stars, close enough to touch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Out of the finely steered gossip of Whitehall and Westminster; out of parroted television sound bites and misleading images; out of the otiose minds of journalists whose duty to inquire extended no further than the nearest deadline and the nearest free lunch, a chapter of events was added to the sum of minor human history.

The formal elevation en poste — contrary to established practice — of Mr. Alexander Woodrow to the estate of British High Commissioner, Nairobi, sent ripples of quiet satisfaction through white Nairobi, and was welcomed by the indigenous African press. "A Quiet Force for Understanding" ran the sub-headline on page three of the Nairobi Standard, and Gloria was "a breath of fresh air who would blow away the last cobwebs of British colonialism."