Free Jungle Of Steel And Stone by George C. Chesbro

to the East Side after the idol turned up in the gallery; the families hoped that merely being in his jurisdiction would deter petty thieves. The fact is that Nagle has been skating on thin ice for some time, and so he's under particular pressure to see that the capos get the idol."
    "Why has he been skating on thin ice?"
    "Detective Nagle has always had a difficult time keeping his pecker in his pants. It seems he has a penchant for raping and sodomizing young women unfortunate enough to fall into his orbit—hookers, junkies, sometimes teenage runaways."
    "Oh, Jesus."
    "Yes—oh, Jesus. Anyway, even his outside employers have been finding Nagle a bit difficult to stomach lately. As you know, it's not easy to survive the disapproval of these people. Nagle knows that. He won't be raping any kids for a while, but he knows that he needs to get the idol for the capos in order to get back into their good graces. He's under pressure, which means that his low flash point is going to be even lower while he hunts for the bushman and the idol. Since you appear to be involving yourself in this matter, I wanted you to know the nature of one of your enemies. Carl Nagle is perhaps the cruelest and most dangerous man you've ever met."
    "Well, those are two titles he'll have to earn," Veil said as he embraced the priest. "Thank you again, Father. You've been a great help."
    "Go with God, Veil."

    * * *

    Twenty years before, in jungle ooze and rot, Veil had learned from the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao how to wait. And so he waited; for almost two weeks he waited, but there was no word of the missing K'ung warrior-prince or of the idol he carried. It was, Veil thought, as if Toby's god had somehow moved them both through time and space and returned them to the Kalahari. Which, of course, Veil knew had not happened.
    He began to have the odd but persistent feeling that he knew something important, but he could not determine what it was.
    In his quest to do what he could to save the K'ung's life and see the idol returned to its rightful owners, Veil viewed himself as a kind of lone guerrilla, without any natural constituency. To Toby, should Veil find him, he would be nothing but a hostile ghost, something to run a spear through. Also, he was certain that Reyna Alexander did not trust him completely. He did not return to Central Park, reasoning that if Reyna could not find Toby, he could not, either—and would not know what to do with the K'ung if he did.
    The feeling that he knew something important persisted.
    During the first week he'd called Reyna frequently but had found her gone at odd hours; when finally he had reached her, she had sounded sleepy—as though she were catching up on sleep whenever she could. Twice he had waited outside the missionary college, then tried to follow her when she had come out. Each time he had lost her; as good as he was at trailing and tracking, Reyna was better. Obviously wary, she started off each time in a different direction; then, in what had seemed a wink of an eye, she had vanished—into a crowd or store or around a corner. It had occurred to Veil that Reyna had found Toby and was hiding and ministering to him—but he had rejected the idea. If she had found the K'ung, Veil reasoned, she eventually would have convinced him to allow her to take him to a hospital, a police station, or perhaps even a foreign consulate to ask for asylum.
    Veil concluded that Reyna was still searching for Toby— in Central Park, perhaps, but also beyond. She knew something.
    They both knew the same thing, Veil thought. The crucial difference was that Reyna realized exactly what it was she knew.
    The attention of the media had begun to flag in the second week, and there was only an occasional news update—using file footage—on the tribe itself, which was being kept informed of events by the two Wesley missionaries and had paused in its self-inflicted moral and physical genocide to await the outcome of Toby's strange