The moment ... it would come soon.
It had to. He had lived his life for it
Harmon stretched out in his cramped space, felt her before him, like a sack of cold oatmeal stitched up in silk.
It was smothering here, and the dark satin sky above him grazed his cheek, soaked in his sweat. But he had worked in more confined conditions, more wretched conditions.
He put the camera to his eye ... and waited.
All was darkness circled by darkness.
But he could wait ... oh, yes.
He could wait for it ... the moment....
He could wait with the best of them.
Donald Harmon stepped off the private jet and onto the dull gray tarmac of the metropolitan airport.
One word, grim and dead in his brain, lay just as lifeless on his tongue.
Home.
Harmon was not a large man; a fact that had lent itself well to his chosen profession and had saved his life on innumerable occasions.
Still, he carried with him an undeniable air of power, of self-assuredness; not aggression nor belligerence, but rather self-containment, as if no opinion or judgment could pierce the shell of his carefully constructed personality.
His features were dark and wrinkled, the product of his years beneath the naked sun of the older earth; the sun that carried itself over the plains of Africa, the sterile Outback of Australia and the frigid polar regions of the North. His body had been tanned and chapped and molded by this life, just as his mind had.
Harmon carried with him everything he owned--two trunks of camera equipment, a few mementos from his travels, a ridiculously few articles of clothing stuffed into two duffel bags.
And in one of those bags was an envelope; cream-colored and slightly textured, a gold embossed rectangle near the return address, his name carefully typed on its front.
Within that envelope was the reason Harmon was here; in the city he'd left, for good he thought back then, more than 30 years ago.
Dear Mr. Harmon,
Although the investigation into the unfortunate incident in Kisumu has proven, thus far, inconclusive, we regret the necessity to cancel your current project and its funding. We have enclosed a check that should cover your expenses to-date. Our contacts in the Kenyan government have told us that they wish you out of their country immediately--before they change their minds.
Please accept this with the best possible wishes. We will contact you when another suitable project arises.
Yours truly, etc., etc., etc.
An over-large check and a plane ticket on a chartered jet rounded out the envelope's contents.
He found out quickly how empty the words in that letter were.
Clutching those bags, staring into the hot orb of the sun as it tried to melt the asphalt and metal, he wanted to tear that letter and the check up into tiny pieces.
But this was a passing desire; this sun, a weak counterpart to its African companion.
)
