DeMarco looked at him.

“And ilmenites,” Scull said.

DeMarco continued to stare.

“Think what?” he said.

“Garnets. Ilmenites. Diamond hunters look for ’em when they analyze soil samples from termite mounds here in Africa,” Scull explained, as if the termite reference would surely make the pertinence of his declarations clear. “They aren’t worth much by themselves, but come from the same underground layers as diamonds. Termites carry tiny ones up from something like a hundred fifty feet underground, where their breeders live, and deposit them in their little hills. That’s how the Orapa mine in Botswana, richest in the world, got discovered.”

DeMarco remained clueless. As did the others.

“I have to confess, Vince,” he said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Nimec was thoughtful. The fact was, neither did he.

Scull frowned, put an arm around Nimec’s shoulders, turned a hundred eighty degrees to his right, and gestured at random toward a vender’s stall. Nimec squared around with him as though to study an item of mutual interest, gazed absently at a woman selling thick cuts of bush meat. They were laid out on a table in the open sunlight, under netting meant to repel clusters of large black flies. The handwritten signs on the table behind them read: MALLE DE ÉLÉPHANT, SERVEAU DE SINGE.

“Elephant trunks, monkey brains,” Scull said, translating aloud. “In case you’re interested in buying, the monkeys around here can carry ebola.”

“Thanks.”

“Any time.” Scull pursed his lips and spouted air up over his face to dry off some sweat, simultaneously fanning himself with one hand. “That problem you mentioned . . . it occurs to me the best idea might be we don’t do anything.”

Nimec looked at him in silence a moment. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Leave the termites alone?”

Scull squeezed his arm, his expression that of a teacher who had broken through to a slow but earnest student.

“There you go, Petey. We wait. Keep the lights off. Let those droops keep working away figuring they’re safe in the dark,” he said, using Scullian shorthand for “dirty rotten snoops.” “The stuff they leave behind’s worthless crap, ’long as we know it’s there.”

“But it tells us where to find the diamonds.”

“You got it. When we’re ready, we dig down into the nests where the breeders are crawling around and make sure to bring along our cans of Raid . . . you remember the slogan from those old TV ads?”

Nimec looked at him.

Kills bugs dead, he thought.

DeMarco had joined them in pretending to be interested in the meat seller, comprehension dawning across his features as he listened.

“What do you think?” Nimec asked him.

“If we run with Scull’s idea,” he said, “I’m guessing our execs and engineers would need to be informed.”