He felt like the tall man in a carnival act. The streets were caked with dried mud, the block buildings suffering from leprosy, the women colorful and busy, and the men crouched, smoking, chewing khat and looking bored. Knox left the bike behind the red building, moving fast, well aware that the police might have already alerted the village to the reward for his capture. He identified what he hated at this moment—the loss of control. He ran his import/export business as a one-man show, with Tommy tangentially involved; his jobs for Rutherford Risk had struck a balance between him and Grace that he’d come to rely upon. Without her, with strangers like Benson and the quick-thinking Olé determining his fate, Knox was well out of his comfort zone. He hid himself between two head-high piles of trash and debris at the muddy end of a lane. Despite the stench, two wayward dogs and the sight of an animal carcass covered in maggots, he attracted a group of ten to twelve kids.
