Sunrise Song (Paperback)

Chapter One

"And I suppose she'd classify my little visit as an intrusion?"

"More than likely."

Rogan McCullough slid back his starched white cuff and studied his watch. Three separate dials indicated time zones around the world. Here in Kenya, it was ten o'clock in the morning.

His flight from London had been delayed twice, putting him four hours late into Nairobi. After sending his suitcases ahead to his hotel with the limousine, he had boarded one of the two sleek and well-equipped Catalina PBY 5As owned by Air-Tours Safaris. During this short flight over central Kenya in clear weather, Rogan wondered at his chances of selling a cranky, eccentric scientist on his newest brainstorm.

He gave the watch an absentminded tap as he stared out the side window. Far beneath the plane rolled verdant hills covered in a tangle of vines, eucalyptus, and Nandi flame trees. Small villages occupied clearings, their thatched huts dark against the bright red-orange soil. Then, as though a confectioner had neatly sliced away the middle of a green-iced sheet cake, the fertile high-lands stopped. The land fell sharply, and a great barren yellow plain stretched far in the distance until it reached the rise of the distant escarpment.

"The Great Rift Valley," Clive explained, as if sensing his boss's interest in the abrupt change. "It runs from the Mediterranean Sea most of the way along the east coast of Africa. Strangest thing you'll ever see. It's a fault-as though the continent tried to split in two a few million years back. The whole Rift Valley is full of unusual land formations."

Rogan nodded, well aware of the unusual configuration. Despite his preoccupation with business, he had always had a keen interest in natural sciences. As a small boy, he had collected rocks and fallen birds' nests. At his boarding school, his room had been littered with pieces of driftwood, feathers, and pressed leaves. Even as an adult, he'd chosen to include climbing and caving among his pastimes. He kept a record of the mountains he wanted to scale. Through the years, he had checked them off one by one.

Now, seeing this land he'd always dreamed about, Rogan felt something uncomfortable stir inside his chest. He recognized it immediately, though he had never put a name to it. Nature, the magnificence of the earth's wonders, always brought up this prickling curl of awareness. It was a touch, a voice, a sense of something ... someone ... higher and greater and more intelligent than himself.

God, he thought, and just as quickly he pushed away the certainty of a creator. He didn't doubt the existence of a higher power, but he felt sure that such a being could not be interested in the minutia of human existence. Rogan's own life was abundant proof of that.

Unwilling to continue in this train of thought, he shifted his attention to the British pilot, whose skimpy blond mustache wandered across his upper lip like an uncertain centipede. "You mentioned formations," he said. "Volcanoes?"

"Quite right," the pilot confirmed. "Some of them are still active. And there are lakes full of pink flamingos. Caves lined with thousands of bats. Craggy black lava flows. Soda-rimmed marshes. Snowcapped mountains. And escarpments."

He let the plane drop and glide along the sheer edge of the valley.

"Can anything live down there?" Rogan asked as his gaze traced the razor-sharp cliffs and the wide plain between.

"The place is a regular Garden of Eden, sir. Zebra. Gazelle. Antelope. Cheetah. Elephant."

"People?"

"Unsociable sorts. The Maasai have the run of the place. They're a fierce, primitive lot who still carry spears and don't think too highly of modern civilization. And, of course, there's Dr. Fiona Thornton."

"Ah, yes," Rogan said. "Dr. Thornton." He conjured up the image he'd formed of the woman who ran the Rift Valley Elephant Project. He pictured her as a mixture of his high school English teacher and his great-aunt Rose.

In the weeks spent planning his trip, he'd come to imagine Dr. Thornton as a short, buxom woman with steel gray hair and a thunderous voice. She would wear a khaki dress left over from some World War II women's corps, thick support stockings in a pale shade that skin had never considered turning, and heavy black lace-up boots. Her stern face would wither him from the shade of a pith helmet as her pinched lips formed the answer she would snap at his request. Absolutely not.

Unable to suppress a grin, he shook his head. Sorry, Dr. Thornton, he thought, but I'm afraid you've met your match.

Rogan leaned against the headrest and closed his eyes. As a matter of fact, he was looking forward to the challenge of outwitting the old battle-ax with as much anticipation as he felt for a boardroom confrontation at McCullough Enterprises. His persuasive style and bull-headed stubbornness had built the company into a billion-dollar operation, after all. And he intended to reverse the sagging revenues of Air-Tours by applying the same determination.

"If you'll excuse my frankness, sir," Clive spoke up, "you look bushed. Jet lag will catch up with a man, no matter how strong he is. I'd suggest you get a little rest. When your father owned Air-Tours, he used to stretch out in the lounge back there and take a nap. We've got a well-stocked bar, a library of old maps and books, and a clean rest room. Your father always said the rumble of the engines did him more good than a hundred-dollar massage."

"I'm fine. Really."

The pilot smiled, showing a set of uneven teeth beneath the wispy mustache. "Your father learned the hard way too. But after he'd been coming to Kenya for a few years, he once told me that Africa was the only place where he could really rest. Africa was where he could let go. He said it was the only place he knew of where he was really himself-"

"If you don't mind," Rogan interrupted, "I'd rather not talk right now, Clive. I need to review some figures."

"Yes, sir." The pilot gave him a sideways glance and clamped his mouth shut.

Rogan flipped the gold clasps on his leather briefcase and extracted a file. Air-Tours. The company had shown a steep decline in the past five years. He intended to rectify that. In many ways, resolving financial difficulties was his specialty. Oh, he enjoyed the media operations of McCullough Enterprises, and he liked working with the journalists and ad men he employed. Their bright-eyed enthusiasm kept him pushing for innovation long after his own fiscal goals had been met.

But Rogan truly excelled in the revival of companies on the brink of financial extinction. This was how he'd gotten his start. And the prospect of bringing some of his father's smaller businesses back to life helped ease the sting of the pitiful legacy he'd inherited. Rogan was well aware that the collection of flagging industries and the small lump sum-a tiny percentage of John McCullough's vast estate-were little more than conscience money. They were his father's way of acknowledging to the world that once, among all his other accomplishments, he'd produced a son.

After the senior McCullough's recent death, the rest of the estate had been parceled out among ex-wives, educational institutions, and charities bearing his name. Rogan didn't really care that he'd been left the financially weak companies, he told himself. He looked on them as a challenge. Something to keep him going.

From his office in New York, he had examined the books and records of Air-Tours and the other companies. He had made calls. Set up contacts. Investigated and instigated programs. In just three months, the pizza chain was showing a spark of life, and the hotels were preparing for face-lifts. Now he had his sights set on the tiny flying safari company.

Rows of numbers swam before his eyes as Rogan stared at his father's signature scrawled across a balance sheet. John McCullough. The ink flourishes personified the man. They suggested extravagance. Wealth. Show. Pomp. Scandal. Clive Willetts's recounting of talks with the tycoon didn't fit the picture his son held of him. Rogan rubbed a finger across his temple.

He didn't want to think about his father. When the memories intruded, he felt six years old again. Six years old and hiding behind the stair rail watching his parents hurl accusations and Ming Dynasty vases at each other. Six years old and trembling as his mother screeched and wept and hung on to his father's coattails. Six years old and frozen inside as he stood at the iron gate of an ivy-covered boarding school and stared at the settling puff of dust from his father's Mercedes as it roared off.

Rogan slammed down the briefcase lid. Clive lifted one eyebrow.

"About Dr. Thornton," Rogan said irritably. "What's she most likely to respond to? Money? Publicity?"

Clive sniffed. "Well, Dr. Thornton isn't your average sort of person, if you know what I mean. She's more than a little eccentric. Not the kind of woman who'll give you the time of day ... unless you're an elephant."

"Surely she's in need of funding or new supplies. I've heard these research projects are always in the hole."

"Could be. I wouldn't doubt it."

"You told me she gives you tips on where the elephants are so you can fly tourists over them. You must know something about her. How does she operate? What drives her?"

"She's never said a word to me about herself, mind you. Just talks about elephants. She grew up in Kenya as I did. But we didn't know each other in those days. My father farmed near the coast, and we stayed fairly isolated. She was born in Nairobi to an American father and an English mother. There were four children in all-three girls and a boy. I've met them, of course, but they're all living in different places now. Tillie's an agroforester in Mali. Jessica owns an old house on Zanzibar Island. Grant is an anthropologist. He lives here in Kenya, but he stays out in the bush most of the time. Their father is a professor at the University of Nairobi-still teaching, I think. The mother was a painter, but she died a long time ago."

"How?"

Clive shrugged. "No idea. Anyway, after university, Fiona Thornton came back to Kenya and met a woman studying lions in the Amboseli Game Park. Dr. Howard sponsored her, saw that she got her doctorate, and helped her get research grants. Since then, Dr. Thornton has studied elephants. Elephants are her passion. It's like I've tried to tell you, sir; she doesn't have much interest in humans. When she does actually decide to say something, it might be only two or three words ... if you're lucky. Odd thing about Dr. Thornton, though. The Africans who work with her call her Matalai Shamsi. It means Princess Sunrise."

Rogan shook his head, declining to respond as the plane banked steeply and began its descent into the Great Rift Valley.

* * *

Fiona Thornton stared at the neat column of figures for a full minute. She lifted her head. "Three calves this month," she said.

Sentero eyed her, his face impassive.

She tapped her pen on the metal folding table. "I want to find the M family this afternoon. Moira was in estrus in-" she scanned the papers in her hand-"in April. During the long rains, I saw her in consort with the old bull James. At the time, he was definitely in musth. Moira's had the full twenty-two-month gestation, and I've noticed other signs of impending delivery."

"Yesterday she was restless." Sentero's voice was deep, his English enunciation clear.

"She seemed out of sync with the others, don't you think?"

The African nodded, then stiffened and lifted his focus, as if he could see through the tent's olive canvas roof.

"What is it?" Fiona had come to rely on her Maasai assistant's keen senses. He often heard and saw things much sooner than she did.

"Airplane."

"It won't land here. It's probably going to one of the Mara lodges."

Sentero shrugged. "It will come here."

At that moment Fiona heard the distinct rumble of the plane's engines. She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment, then brushed a hand across her forehead. Talking to a visitor ... a stranger ... was the last thing she wanted to do. Standing, she replaced her records in a metal file box and locked it.

"I didn't order any supplies from Nairobi. Did you?" she asked.

Sentero shook his head. Framed in the opening of the tent flap, his tall, sinewy body stood dark against the brilliant African sunshine. He was a sinister-looking man with a face chiseled by time into sharp angles and harsh planes. His eyes, small and almost black, glittered with a canny sparkle.

Sentero always wore traditional Maasai garb-draped layers of bloodred cloths, some plaid, some checked, all smelling of woodsmoke. Three bead necklaces circled his throat, one a choker with a central button of mother-of-pearl, the other two dangling down his bare chest. His ears, each lobe pierced and stretched to form a two-inch hole, sported beaded bands of red, yellow, white, and blue. Occasionally Sentero plugged the hole of one earlobe with an old black plastic film canister filled with tobacco. Chewing tobacco was his only vice.

"Start the Land Rover," Fiona said as the plane's engines roared over her camp. The tent trembled. Vervet monkeys shrieked in the acacia trees overhead. Her cat leapt down from his perch on the wardrobe and darted under the bed. She grabbed her jacket and camera. "I'll tell Mama Hannah to ward them off, whoever they are."

Sentero flashed his only smile of the morning, snatched his iron-tipped spear from beside the tent pole, and strode out. Fiona knelt at the foot of the small camp cot. Flicking on her flashlight, she swept its beam through the dust until she caught the cat's green eyes.

"Sukari, are you afraid?" With small kissing noises, she gently patted the tent's canvas floor. She snapped off the light. "Come on, sweet one. That was just an old airplane. I won't let it hurt you."

Sukari crept forward until he butted Fiona's cheek. She stroked beneath his chin, smiling at the deep, satisfied purr. The spotless white cat was nearly blind, the casualty of a close encounter with a spitting cobra. Fiona stroked between his ears and nestled her nose against his furry neck.

"Now, be a good boy," she whispered. "Sentero and I are going to see if Moira's had her calf. I'll zip you into the tent, so mind your manners and don't chew on my philodendron."

Continues...