“I’m not sure just what arrangements have been made.” Fletch, in speaking to the man in the hotel’s cashier cage, hesitated. “The name is Fletcher.” The sound of his own name made him slightly sick. The pin on the cashier’s coat said his name was Lincoln. “We wish to check out this morning. We don’t know if we’re coming back to the Norfolk. We hope to.”

The cashier pulled a long card from a file box. “Yes, Mr. Fletcher.” He looked at the card. “Your expenses are being paid. By Walter Fletcher. No problem.”

“If we go and come back again will our expenses still be paid?”

“Unless Walter Fletcher directs otherwise, we’ll leave the bill open. You just sign for your expenses so far, and we’ll free the room.” He turned the card around and slid it under the grille to Fletch with a pen. “Going on safari?”

“Yes.” Fletch signed the bill, which was in shillingi. “We’re going on safari. We weren’t invited until just now. Also, there’ll be a breakfast charge coming in from the terrace.”

“Are you going to Masai Mara?”

“I’m not sure where we’re going. Someplace south. Near a river.”

“You should go, to Masai Mara,” the cashier said. “It’s nice there.”

Fletch slid the billing card and pen back under the grille. “And I want to thank the hotel for the new sneakers.”

The cashier smiled. “Nice time.”

“Good grief.” In their room, Barbara was stuffing ski suits, mittens, earmuffs, thermal underwear, and woolen socks into the big, framed knapsacks. “If you’d told me a week ago we’d be heading off today to search for a lost Roman city on the East African coast today, I wouldn’t think you were crazy, I’d know it!”

“I wouldn’t be so crazy as to predict such a thing.”

“Do you think there’s anything to it? Is there any chance of our finding such a place? I mean, my God, Carr’s best source of information seems to be a witch doctor!”

Fletch shrugged. “It’s Carr’s thing. It’s what he wants to do. He’s inviting us into his life. I appreciate it.”

“Daft,” Barbara said. “How could the Romans have built a city here in East Africa without its being a known, established, historical fact by now?”

“I don’t think very much of history is known,” Fletch said. “Percentage wise, I mean. Look how hard it is to find out the facts of my own, personal history.”

“Going into the African jungle to dig holes,” Barbara said. “Are we sure we want to do this?”

“I just got a look at our hotel bill,” Fletch said. “It’s in shillingi, of course, but many thousands of shillingi. Carr says my father is not rich. I don’t think we should stay here racking up such a bill, if we have a choice. Carr has given us a choice.”

“Your blue jeans and T-shirt are back from the laundry. They’re hanging in the closet.”

“Great. I can dress like a bum again, instead of a streetwalker.”

“Fletch, are you sure you and Carr aren’t related?”

Hanger in hand, Fletch was looking at his jeans. “You mean, is Carr my father?”

“At the pool last night, when you came back from Lake Turkana, I don’t know, watching you enter, the way you both walked, the way you sat, the way you both spoke …”

“We had both just been sandblasted, kept awake all night by a raging storm, deafened in the airplane … ‘course we moved and sounded alike.”

“He’s being awfully nice to us.”

“My jeans have been pressed. Look! My jeans have been pressed!”

“Oh, dear. That won’t do.” She took the jeans from him and started to rough them up in her hands.

“I’ve thought about this,” he said. “Want the hard evidence?”

“About what?”

“While we were out at Thika and Karen with Carr, someone came to the hotel, identified himself as Walter Fletcher, and inquired for us.”

“Couldn’t do that by phone?”

“The man at the reception desk said that someone came to the hotel. He said it was Walter Fletcher.” Barbara was kicking his jeans around the floor. “When we met Juma, he said he knows my father.”

“He sounded regretful about Walter Fletcher, too.”

“Juma identified Walter Fletcher as a pilot. Carr was with us. Juma knows Carr, and he knows a man here named Fletcher. When he came to the hotel this morning, before Carr, he knew Walter Fletcher is in jail.”

“My father-in-law the jailbird.”

“Please, Barbara.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Is hitting below the belt a characteristic of yours?”

“A man who starts a fight in a bar! And gets arrested for it! Mother will love that one. I married the son of a jailbird!”

“God damn it, Barbara!” Fletch snatched his jeans off the floor. “Is this what marriage to you is? You’re nice to me in public and vicious in private. Downstairs, on the terrace, you were full of Oh, dear! Poor Fletch! and up here you call me the son of a jailbird!”

“Well, I’ve had time to think.”

“I’m not in control of the facts, here, regarding my own life.” Fletch was falling over trying to get into his jeans. “Sorry. We just have to go along discovering what we can discover.”

“You said, ‘Maybe he got a flat tire.’ Really, Fletch. Yesterday, Carr said your father was delayed by some ‘legal difficulty.’ You call those facts?”

Fletch zipped his jeans. “I knew there’d been some unpleasantness in a café. I didn’t know he was in jail. Clearly, I didn’t know that.”

Barbara said, “I don’t want any of this to be true!”

“At least he turned himself in.”

“Why wouldn’t it have been natural for your father to meet us at the airport?”

“I don’t know.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“I guess he didn’t.”

Fletch was pulling on his T-shirt.

“You ‘guess’? What is this with you and the word guess? When you married me, you didn’t say I do, you said, I guess I do.”

“I guess I did.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, Fletch was pulling on his socks and sneakers.

“What do you mean, you guess your father wasn’t at the airport to meet us? You know damn right well he wasn’t.”

“Do I?” Fletch headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“That’s the point, Barbara. I don’t.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes.” He opened the door to the corridor.

“Where?”

“Out.”

“Carr’s waiting for us.”

“He said he’ll pick us up at noon.”

“You’re disappearing again because you’re mad at me.”

“I’m going out…” Hand still on the door handle, Fletch hesitated. “… to answer your question; to find out something for myself: maybe to find out too much.”

“Fletch …”

“If I’m not back by the time Carr gets here, you’ll just have to wait for me.”