“Seriously, Carmen: what happened?”
And so she told him about how she and Reggie and Felix had managed to overwhelm their two captors—she told them how she had used her scarf to strangle one—but they’d crashed the Land Rover in the process, and Felix had been shot dead in the struggle for one of the rifles. She explained that her injuries were from the accident and she and Reggie had walked—limped, in Reggie’s case—to their current location, trying to stay ahead of their kidnappers, and how they had fought off hyenas last night and the publicist had died in the morning from his wounds.
“Did he have a family?” asked the ranger with the manifest.
She told him he didn’t, at least not a wife or any children. But then she added, a reflex of sorts, “We were his family. His actors and actresses. He would have done anything for us. And, in my case, he did.”
The taller of the rangers nodded at the body beneath the acacia. “Let’s go get him,” he said, and the pilot and the second ranger trudged across the savanna to the tree.
“I thought you were probably dead,” Carmen told Charlie. “I hoped you were with one of the other groups. But I feared they’d killed you when they came to the camp. The Russians.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered her one, but she passed. “Is there any food in the plane?” she asked.
“Some biscuits.”
“I’d rather have that than a cigarette,” she told him, and the two of them started toward the aircraft. He lit a cigarette for himself.
“Seriously, Charlie, how did you get away? What happened?” she asked.
They weren’t looking at each other as they walked. They stared straight ahead at the red and white plane and the hills that rolled like waves in the distance. When Charlie began to speak, she wondered if he would have said something else if he’d had to look her in the eye. She guessed it would have been at least a slightly different story.
“I saw Viktor Procenko right away,” he began, and he told her about their history together. “I’d heard a rumor he was working with the Simbas, and so I knew that whatever was about to happen…it would be nasty. I tried to get to my tent for my gun.”
She didn’t completely believe him: she had a feeling he’d run. But she walked and nodded and remained silent.
“But the shooting started, and someone was already in my tent. Or going into my tent. And so I laid low in the grass, watching and waiting for the right moment.”
The right moment to flee, she thought. But thank God he had fled. She’d likely be dead before sunrise tomorrow if, in the end, Charlie Patton hadn’t been a coward with a code of honor as brittle as carbon paper. So, she sure as hell wasn’t going to call him out. “Thank God, you found that right moment,” she said.
“I saw them taking you all away. It was heartbreaking. I knew Procenko could be very charming on the surface, but it was all part of his training. I mean, the man had a post for a while in Washington, D.C. He’s a colonel. But he is merciless and despicable, and I’m going to guess KGB. So, I feared this wouldn’t end well if I didn’t get help.”
“He didn’t look for you? This Russian colonel?” The question had been instinctive, and she wished she hadn’t said a word the moment she’d spoken.
“He did. They did…”
“And they didn’t find you?”
They were at the plane now. “Let me help you in,” he said. “It will be a toaster inside, but at least there will be some shade.”
She took his hand and climbed the three steps, and then ducked through the snug door. There were six seats, including the pilot’s, and she beelined to the side with the shade. She supposed one of the rangers would sit next to the remains of Reggie Stout. Charlie sat in one of the two front seats, both of which had a yoke. She wasn’t going to repeat her question—And they didn’t find you?—because she’d decided it was best to let it go. But he surprised her. He handed her a metal tin of biscuits with the logo of a roaring lion on the front and said, “They thought they did. They saw a leopard dragging away the remains of Peter Merrick. We were dressed alike.”
“But—”
“But his head was gone. Mostly. They thought Merrick was already in one of the Land Rovers.”
“My God, Peter. A leopard?”
“Yes.”
The biscuits were animal crackers. Of course. She swallowed a lion, and suddenly her eyes were welling up again. Felix. Reggie. Now Peter.