NORTH DARFUR
The Beechcraft A36 Bonanza wasn’t much of a plane, even by North Africa’s lax aeronautical standards. Certainly, it would never have passed an FAA inspection. The exterior was painted eggshell white with a brown stripe running the length of the fuselage, a dated color scheme betraying the aircraft’s twenty-nine years of service. Fresh paint on the port wing hinted at recent damage to the wing’s leading edge, a defect that would have grounded any pilot with an ounce of concern for the lives of his passengers. But for all its faults, the single-prop plane was ideal for the ninety-minute flight from Khartoum to Nyala Airport. They were now less than twenty minutes out, having departed the Sudanese capital just after eight that evening, and both passengers were eager to get on the ground, though only one showed any sign of his inner turmoil. Ismael Mirghani was sweating profusely, despite the frigid air inside the cabin, and his hands were in constant motion, searching for some way to fill the time.
The second passenger was oblivious to Mirghani’s fidgeting. His interest was fixed on the reading material he’d picked up at Khartoum International. Al-Rayaam was by far the largest and oldest newspaper in Sudan. It could trace its roots back to the 1940s, but as he read through the headlines, Cullen White was disappointed to see that its reputation for honest, straightforward reporting was completely undeserved. As far as he could tell, Al-Rayaam was nothing but another mouthpiece for the Sudanese president. The paper neglected to mention the demonstrations that had taken place the day before in Zalingei, Tulus, and Al-Fashir. Even the massive protest in Khartoum-a demonstration that had cost White more than three hundred thousand dollars in bribes and “donations” to organize-had been largely ignored.
That in particular bothered him more than he cared to admit.
The article he was looking for was buried in the back of the political section, a bad sign right from the start. Anything that showed Bashir in a positive light would have appeared on the front page, but the fact that they’d printed the story at all meant they had skewed the facts to their liking. When White finally managed to find the passage, he read through it quickly: Approximately three hundred students gathered in Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace Tuesday to protest the ongoing violence in West Darfur, despite clear indications that the army has been working hand in hand with local leaders to ease the SLA’s stranglehold on the region. According to Deputy Police Commander Mohammed Najib al-Tayeb, the incident outside the palace could have been easily avoided. “These young men were clearly misguided,” al-Tayeb said in a written statement to the press. “For this reason alone, it is difficult to hold them accountable. In many ways they are victims themselves. Victims of Zionist propaganda and colonial lies, and I sincerely hope that they use this opportunity to examine their choices. If they hope one day to have a country of their own, they must learn to stand as one, united against the imperialists.” The deputy commander was pleased to announce that the dispersal of the crowd resulted in no serious injuries, though he noted that additional police units had been dispatched around the square to prevent another such incident.
White lowered the paper and shook his head in disgust. He had watched the demonstration gather outside the palace from the safety of a nearby rooftop and had seen what had actually transpired. Needless to say, it was nothing like what the paper reported. More than 4,000 people had been in attendance that day, and they had not run at the first sign of trouble, holding their ground against the rapid response of the state police and the brutal tactics they’d employed to put down the revolt. By the time the crowd eventually broke up, White had lost track of how many ambulances had come and gone. And though he didn’t have access to any hard numbers, he guessed that at least 100 protesters had been taken into custody before the square was finally cleared of people. The brutal efficiency of the state police made him grateful he had not tried to recruit their deputy commander, an act that would have surely resulted in his immediate arrest.
It was disheartening to see that his work was being so thoroughly dismissed by Sudan’s major news agencies, but with just five weeks in-country, he was already making some serious inroads, and he knew it was just a matter of time before the truth came out. To a certain extent, the regime could control what was printed, but many of Sudan’s most popular publications had flourished regardless, including the Tribune and the Mirror, two of the more successful independents. It was no coincidence that the former was based in Paris and the latter in Kenya. For Sudanese nationals, freedom of the press was something that could be found only online or outside the country, but it could be found. Sudan was not immune to external influence.
White couldn’t help but smile at the thought; he was proving as much with each passing day.
It had been ten days since he’d visited Walter Reynolds at the embassy in Khartoum, and he’d accomplished a great deal in the interim. He’d met quietly with public figures in and around Khartoum and the capital cities of the three federal states in Darfur: Al-Fashir, Al-Geneina, and Nyala, his current destination. Prior to the meeting with the ambassador, he’d spent several days in Juba, the regional capital of Southern Sudan, where he’d worked with the local SLA commander to stage a large demonstration in Buluk Square. That event had cost the U.S. taxpayers a hundred thousand dollars, but it had been a major success. A huge mass of people had shown up to protest the government’s nationwide expulsion of aid workers from the International Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. Most of those workers had been based in the south, where they had been in the midst of a campaign to eradicate the polio virus, which had popped up six months earlier, after seven years in remission. More than 400 children had been infected in Juba alone, and with the aid workers out of the picture, it seemed likely the virus would continue to spread. The epidemic had almost been enough to incite a revolt on its own, and with the support of the SLA, which carried a great deal of sway in the area, White had convinced the locals to stand together for much less than he’d initially anticipated. Most of the funds he’d dispersed in Juba had gone to families affected by the polio outbreak, and that was money he didn’t mind spending.
He put the paper aside and stared out the window, letting his mind drift. Technically, there was nothing surprising about the way things had progressed. He was, after all, adhering to the timeline they’d developed during those endless meetings at State, but he’d never really expected things to go according to plan. Even before his plane touched down in Khartoum, he’d come to terms with the fact that something would happen to throw him off track. Something to delay his forward progress. But much to his surprise it had never happened, and now he was about to finalize the arrangements they had made back in April. The importance of the meeting he was about to attend could not be overstated. As it stood, the work he’d accomplished over the past five weeks could all be undone with a single call, but that was about to change. The window for retreat was rapidly closing, and in less than two hours there would be no turning back.
White smiled to himself as he gazed into the pitch-black night. Everything was coming together as planned, and he had accomplished most of it all by himself, circumventing Bashir’s regime at every turn. As Harold Traylor, he had entered Sudan on a false passport without incident, a remarkable feat given the countrywide security clampdown that was put into effect after the massacre at Camp Hadith. As James Landis, he had bought politicians, recruited senior rebel leaders with the SLA and the JEM, and engineered mass demonstrations in five major cities in the largest country in North Africa. As Cullen White…
The smile faded, and he saw his reflection change in the port-side window. As Cullen White, he had made mistakes. That was the cold, hard truth, and though he had tried to run from his past, he had never been able to leave it behind. Over the years he had tried to console himself with the fact that he had been young, that there was no way he could have seen what was coming. But he had never really been able to convince himself. Nor had he been able to convince his immediate supervisors. As far as they were concerned, his age was no excuse for what he had done, or rather, for what he had failed to prevent, and they had reacted accordingly. He’d been with the Operations Directorate for less than a year when Jonathan Harper, the DDO at the time, had brought him back to Langley to ask for his resignation in person. That was in ’96, a few months after the incident that marked the end of his career with the Central Intelligence Agency.
The ensuing years had seen him drift from one meaningless government job to the next. After his embarrassing departure from the DO, he was shuttled over to State, where he worked as a passport specialist at the Washington Passport Agency, a consular officer in Gabon, and a cultural attache in Dubai. Those were just a few of the figurehead titles they had seen fit to saddle him with. Middle-management roles in thankless posts, the career path to nowhere-to becoming another Reynolds. White knew they would have loved to cut him loose completely, but it was a risk they couldn’t afford to take.
He never asked why they had kept him close, mainly because he didn’t need to. Despite his short-lived association with the Agency, he had seen and heard a great deal-much more than he should have, given his age and rank. It would be just as dangerous for them as it would be for him if the truth came out. But they had learned from their earlier mistakes. He was never again placed in a position of authority or given any real responsibility. Nor was there any chance of his security clearance being reinstated, and while his promotions arrived on schedule, his workload did not reflect his seniority. Nor did his staff. In his thirteen years with the State Department, he had never had more than three people working under him. At least to his way of thinking, that spoke volumes about the contempt his superiors felt for him.
At first, he had tried to make the best of it. He had sought in vain for some way to redeem himself, but nothing he did seemed to make a difference. As the years rolled past, his bitterness had gradually seeped to the surface. Much of his rage was focused on the people who’d sold him down the river, his former employers at Langley-and for good reason. After all, there was no question that they were the ones at fault.
He’d been twenty-three at the time, just six months out of the Career Training Program at Camp Peary. Twenty-three years old. Even now White had to shake his head at the sheer stupidity of it. There was no way he should have been given the responsibility they’d thrust upon him. But they’d done it regardless, and in retrospect, it was easy to see what a bad decision that had been. Even he could admit as much, though it pained him to do so…
Catching himself, he grimaced and shifted his eyes away from the window. He did not want to dwell on the past. It had no bearing on what he was doing now, and besides, he was not the same man he had been back then. He had been immature and ill equipped for the work he was tasked with, but those days were over. Ironically, his work with the State Department-which was meant to be more of a punishment than anything else-had provided him with many of the skills he’d lacked as a young operations officer with the CIA.
The three years he’d spent in Jordan had given him rudimentary Arabic, which he later improved on, and an endless stream of embassy functions in half a dozen countries throughout Africa and the Middle East had taught him about the dark side of diplomacy. He’d learned how to spot the intelligence officers posing as minor functionaries, and an interview with a stunning female reporter from Khoa Ditore — a supposedly independent newspaper in Kosovo-had shown him just how far the host government was sometimes willing to go to recruit a source, even someone as lowly placed as himself. He could still picture the reporter’s silky black hair, blood-red lips and full, perfectly formed breasts. He remembered the way she had leaned forward to give him a glimpse of her cleavage, the smell of her perfume as she whispered her proposition an inch from his ear.
White had possessed photographic recall since he was a child, and even now, eight years later, the memory was still enough to bring about a physical reaction. And that was the memory alone; confronted with the real thing, he had not been able to resist the temptation. He had told her what she wanted to know, and she had rewarded him with the best sex of his life, right there on the ratty couch in his small corner office.
The memory brought a smile to his face. White still wondered how she might have reacted when she learned that he’d made it all up, but he didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt. She had tried to manipulate him, and he had simply reversed the process. That was the name of the game. It was also the most important thing he’d learned during his time overseas-namely, how to manipulate people. He’d learned how to determine what they wanted, which told him in turn how to get what he wanted. The trick, he’d discovered, was simply listening. Listening to their problems, hopes, fears, and desires. It was amazing what people would say when given the chance, even at an embassy function, where they were surrounded by their countrymen and more than a few of their own intelligence officers, many of whom would gladly kill the loose-lipped official for speaking out of turn.
Cullen White had quickly seen the value of his ability to draw people in and secure their trust, even if he didn’t understand where it came from, and he’d done his best to use it to his advantage. At first, he had passed everything on to the CIA, mainly because he didn’t see any alternative. That was back when he still believed in the possibility of redemption. Later, when he realized they would never take him back, he still took notes and retained what he knew, but he no longer shared his insider knowledge…at least not until his posting to Liberia.
That was when he had first met Joel Stralen, the man who had vowed to help resurrect White’s moribund career. He was one of the few men with the power not only to make that kind of promise but to actually follow through on it. And in the years that followed, he proved true to his word.
Although it had been a decade since their first encounter, White could remember that meeting in its entirety. At the time, Stralen was a brigadier general in the DIA and the commander of the Directorate for Human Intelligence. As such, he was the primary liaison between the DIA and the CIA, as well as the head of the Defense Attache System, the DOD program that provides military and civilian attaches to hundreds of offices around the world. White had been getting ready to leave for the day when he turned to find the general standing in the doorway to his tiny office. Stralen quietly asked him for a few minutes of his time, and White, assuming he’d done something wrong, reluctantly agreed. Five minutes later, over stale coffee in the ground-floor cafeteria, he learned the real reason for Stralen’s visit.
It was the fall of 2000, and the UN Security Council was a body divided. Three of the permanent members-the Americans, the French, and the British-were in favor of imposing limited sanctions on the Republic of Liberia, while the other two-the Chinese and the Russians-were opposed. A similar measure had already been passed with respect to Sierra Leone. Security Council Resolution 1806 had placed an eighteen-month restriction on the export of so-called “blood diamonds” from the West African nation, the site of a decade-long civil war between the sitting government and the Revolutionary United Front. The RUF was a powerful dissident group funded primarily through the sale of black-market diamonds in Western Europe. Those sales were worth an
incalculable fortune each year, proceeds that were naturally used to purchase small arms for the estimated 25,000 members of the RUF.
The Security Council had seen evidence linking Liberian president Charles Taylor to key members of the RUF, and it was believed that Taylor was taking a cut of the profits in exchange for funneling the diamonds safely through Liberia to the waiting markets in London, Antwerp, and Prague. Before the Security Council was willing to move, though, it wanted hard evidence in the form of an eyewitness. Preferably someone in the Liberian government, a politician of note who could conclusively tie Taylor to the RUF. Stralen believed that the man they were looking for was the Liberian finance minister, Thomas R. Craven. In his opinion, Craven was the weakest link in the chain, and he wanted White to offer the minister immunity, asylum in the United States, and one million dollars in exchange for his testimony before the Security Council.
White had not felt the need to point out the gross illegality of Stralen’s proposal, as it was plain enough to both of them. If the terms of the offer ever came to light, the U.S. government would soon find itself embroiled in a scandal of unprecedented scale. The dangers involved were very real and hard to ignore. At the same time, purchasing testimony from a foreign diplomat was not something easily done, and despite his misgivings, White was secretly flattered that the general had seen fit to entrust him with such a delicate task. More importantly, he sensed that Stralen was sizing him up for something more, and that was enough to seal his decision. He agreed to help, and one week later he attended a function at the presidential palace in Monrovia. Thomas Craven was also in attendance, and White, having already met and talked to the man on several prior occasions, managed to corner him long enough to relay the offer.
Incredibly, Craven had agreed on the spot. Later White learned that the minister had been on the verge of dismissal, anyway, and was only too happy to have the opportunity to turn the tables on Charles Taylor.
As it turned out, he never got the chance. The UN decided to move forward without Craven’s testimony, and Stralen’s offer was quietly rescinded. It was easily done; there was nothing on paper, and Craven could hardly go public, as that would have exposed his own treachery to Taylor, who was still in power. But the fact that White had succeeded in his task was not in dispute, and Joel Stralen-never one to forget a favor-showed his appreciation by offering him a unique, secret position in the DIA.
A week after the UN announced its decision to proceed with the sanctions in Liberia, they discussed the terms over lunch in a Monrovia hotel, with two of the general’s men standing guard outside the door. Stralen envisioned him as a troubleshooter of sorts, as opposed to a full-time civilian employee, and White felt the same way. The offer came with just one caveat. Owing to his previous position with the CIA, which even then Stralen regarded as a rival agency, White would not be permitted to publicly acknowledge his new role with the Department of Defense.
White was not dissuaded by this minor catch and quickly agreed to the general’s proposal. In the years that followed, he performed a number of tasks for Stralen while maintaining his pedestrian status with the State Department. The difference between his dual roles could hardly be greater. As a low-level staffer at State, he had spent years shuffling paper, filing reports, and placating angry Americans stuck in foreign locales. As a contract operative with the Defense Intelligence Agency, he had recruited agents, purchased classified material from foreign diplomats, and paid off assets on a sliding scale of importance, ranging from a custodian in the Jordanian parliament to a brigadier general in the Iranian army. Over the course of ten quiet years with the DIA, he had risked life and limb on any number of occasions…but never to this latest degree. He supposed everything that had come before was a precursor at best, a practice run for the main event.
White smiled as he considered the irony. In a way, he had proven his supervisors at the Bureau of Consular Affairs correct. They had told him he would never rise above the level of GS-12, and as it turned out, they had been right all along. He would never reach the top of the General Schedule, the government’s internal pay scale. At least not at the State Department. He didn’t care in the least. His work there was a thing of the past-all that mattered now was the task at hand. What he was doing in Sudan was easily his most dangerous and ambitious operation to date, and it could end only in one of two ways: with complete success and a triumphant return to the States, or with utter failure and a prolonged, agonizing death at the hands of Bashir’s secret police. Given the stakes, he could not afford the slightest distraction.
White was reassured by the fact that he wasn’t alone. He was supported not only by Stralen but also by Secretary Fitzgerald, Jeremy Thayer, and-if Stralen was to be believed-the president himself. His support on the ground was even stronger, and to White’s way of thinking, far more important. Ishmael Mirghani, the man sitting across from him, was his most trusted lieutenant. He also happened to be the first person White had met in-country-it was Mirghani’s back garden in which he had burned Harold Traylor’s passport less than an hour after landing in Khartoum.
But for all his skills, Mirghani was just one man. Standing behind him was the network White had helped establish over the past five weeks. These were the people he relied on the most, as they quite literally held his life in their hands. His survival depended on their silence, as well as their loyalty. He believed he could count on both. The network reached from Al-Geneina in the west to Sannar in the east, from Ad D mir in the north to Juba in the south. It consisted of seasoned fighters with the SLA and the JEM, men who would endure days of torture before breaking their word. Men who would die for the opportunity to bring down the Black Crow, the name they had given Omar al-Bashir in the secret training camps of the Nuba Mountains and the Jebel Marra, the volcanic peaks of central Darfur. It was an opportunity White fully intended to give them, and perhaps sooner than they might have imagined.
Perhaps most importantly, he was supported by the gifts he had brought to this impoverished region. White had seen the poverty with his own eyes, but he still found it hard to believe. In Sudan the average person earned less than twenty-three hundred dollars a year, though most survived on a fraction of that. The contents of the black duffel bag tucked between his feet could have fed 11,000 refugees for three months, were he to use it that way. But that would be a short-term solution at best, and it wasn’t part of the plan. The money wasn’t destined for the IDP camps of North Darfur, or for the SLA fighters scattered throughout the region. At least not directly. Instead, it was meant for one man, and one man alone.
During the endless round of meetings and briefings at State, they had referred to him as “the Exile.” Although the title seemed dramatic, that wasn’t the intention. Each of the six candidates had been assigned a code name, all of which were drawn from their respective personal histories. Those histories, in turn, had been compressed into a series of dossiers. The dossiers consisted of each man’s political and religious affiliation, criminal record, sexual orientation, and financial status, as well as a dozen other parameters by which they were secretly judged. Considering the stakes, it was a lot to take into account, and the heated debate had gone on for weeks.
Admittedly, the Exile had not been their first choice. A few of the other candidates had less controversial backgrounds, more palatable politics, and fewer skeletons in the closet, which automatically pushed them to the top of the list. But in the end, the Exile was determined to be the person with the necessary connections-the man with the grassroots support that would be needed to uproot the current regime. For these reasons, he had made the final cut.
White shot a glance at his watch as the engines reduced power, the pilot preparing for the final descent into Nyala Airport. The question had been bandied about by a dozen analysts from three different agencies, but its answer had come down to a lone, gutsy decision. It always did.
Joel Stralen had placed his wager on the Exile. In a very short time White would find out if the general’s bet had paid off.
Wearing beige linen trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a traditional kufi over his tightly curled black hair, Hassan al-Saduq was relaxing in the courtyard of his residence in Quaila when the cell phone trilled on the table beside his rattan chair.
“Yes?” he answered.
“Hassan. Kayf hallak, ” said the caller. He quickly shifted from the Arabic greeting to English. “I thought I would let you know we’ve landed.”
“And the car I sent?”
“It met us at once. We’re already on the road out.”
“Good, good,” Saduq said. “Edgard is my best driver. He knows more shortcuts from the city than my wives know ways to charm expensive gifts from me.”
Mirghani ignored his minor jest.
Saduq thought he’d detected a slight nervous edge in his voice. “How was your flight, my cousin?” he asked.
“ Ilhamdu lilla ’asalaama…I survived,” Mirghani said. “To tell you I’m in one piece would be to ignore the rattling inside me.”
Saduq chuckled. “And your fellow passenger?”
Mirghani hesitated at the other end. Then his voice lowered a notch. “I suspect nothing rattles him, inside or out,” he said in a heavy tone, back to speaking Arabic.
Saduq thought for a moment. Mirghani and their visitor would not take long to reach him from the dusty airport 100 kilometers to the south, and he saw no cause to be anything but relaxed when dealing with the foreigner. Like himself, Cullen White was a facilitator, which gave them much in common. The difference was that White would believe the men they represented each had at least as much to gain as to lose-that, if anything, the Americans held some greater leverage.
Saduq, however, understood better. He knew the true endgame, after all. If White even caught a hint of what he had been helping to set in motion-a mere hint — he would call their bargain off and go racing back to his Washington puppet master in a heartbeat.
“Does something beyond the crudeness of your transport trouble you?” Saduq said.
“Why do you ask?”
“I know you well enough to hear it in your voice.” Saduq shrugged to himself. “If you can’t discuss it now, though, we’ll talk when no outsiders are present to overhear us…recognizing Mr. White’s linguistic fluencies.”
There was another brief pause before Mirghani replied, “It’s all right. I’m simply a bit anxious.”
Saduq believed he understood. Ishmael had no shortage of courage; his problem, rather, was a lack of audacity and vision. It had been like that since they were children-Ishmael willing to be bloodied in fights, but always in reaction. It had left Saduq the clever student to engineer the bully’s fall, as it now left Saduq the trader to give the fighter encouragement. “We’ve gone far along a precarious course. And now the goal is in sight.”
“Yes.”
“Again, cousin, we can speak of things later. In the meantime my advice is to keep your eyes on the short step. Look too far beyond and you’ll stumble. It’s a lack of attention to the small things that trips us up.” Saduq reached for his glass of mixed fruit juice, gulped what was left in it, and produced an audible sigh of pleasure. “I’ll expect you within the hour. Tell our guest I extend my welcome and goodwill.”
Saduq ended the call and gazed out at the field behind his house, the curved stucco walls of its U-shaped court shading him on two sides from the sun, his loafers off so his bare feet rested on the warm granite tiles underneath them. He had built the home near the waterfall above the village, close enough to the Jebel Marra for its rugged volcanic slopes to be easily seen from his bedroom window. Farther back across the dry grass, beyond a meandering stand of flat-crowned acacias, he could see the favorite among his horses ambling tranquilly in its expansive corral.
He had named the white barb Jaleid, after the Arabic word for snow. With its powerful brow, flowing mane, long, straight back, and proud posture, the creature was of rare pedigree, bought from Bamileke horsemen whose stock had a lineage traceable to the nineteenth century. One of the oldest known African breeds, it was loyal, intelligent, and a swift, supple runner for its size, famed for its ability to negotiate the ravines and slopes of its native environment. The ancient horse people of the northern steppes had rendered the steeds in the cave paintings of Hoggar and Tassili. Hannibal’s troops had mounted them in battle against the Romans. Brought to Europe along with other African plunder after the sack of Carthage, they would become warhorses in Julius Caesar’s cavalry a millennium later. Centuries after Rome itself fell to conquest, the Berbers, from whom the breed inherited its name, had stormed into the Iberian peninsula atop their backs. In the First World War German occupation forces would saddle them to patrol Macedonia’s rugged terrain, while decades later Rommel boasted that his soldiers were prepared to ride them through the streets of a vanquished Moscow in a symbolic show of power and triumph.
It was, Saduq mused, one of the few instances in history when the hooves of the ancient warhorse had threatened, and then failed, to drive their pounding thunder into the minds and hearts of an enemy.
Whether or not Rommel had taken a lesson from that unkept promise, it was eminently apparent to Saduq. However confident one was of one’s plans, it was a mistake to declare them in advance. Victory held its own moment for the warrior. Trumpeting its glorious noise before the strike was an error born of pride and arrogance.
Now Saduq reclined in his chair. In a few hours it would become uncomfortably hot and he would have the stallion returned to its stable. For the present, though, both would enjoy soaking in the late morning warmth.
He closed his eyes, relaxed. When his maidservant came out to stir him with the gentlest of touches, he was surprised to realize he must have fallen into a light sleep.
“Yes, Ange?”
“Sayyid, Mirghani has arrived. With another.”
Saduq yawned, checked his wristwatch, sat up. Incredibly, he had dozed for almost an hour.
“Give me a minute and then show them out here,” he said. “We’ll need cold drinks. And something for them to eat.”
Ange bowed her head and turned toward the house. Saduq watched her retreat, then meshed his fingers, stretched his sinewy arms out in front of him, and slipped his feet back into his shoes.
A moment later he rose to meet his company.
“Mr. White…Ishmael. Please make yourselves comfortable,” Saduq said and gestured them toward chairs facing the one from which he’d stood. “We’ll have some refreshments in just a bit.”
White shook Saduq’s hand, looking around the courtyard. The split-level home through which he had passed was relatively simple in design, but spacious and well appointed. The art on the walls was expensive, and its furnishings and fixtures modern, as were the appliances he’d glimpsed while following the young female servant who had met them at the door. Even in the States, it would have been considered upscale; here in Darfur it was lavish beyond most people’s dreams.
Skirting the village along the ungraded dirt road that brought him from the airport, White had seen plenty of its more typical dwellings-family compounds made up of crude, rounded huts with conical thatch roofs and mud foundations grouped together within irregular wooden fences. Each hut held anywhere from eight to ten family members, with some having zarebas, or animal pens, outside for their shared livestock-a few cows, goats, and pigs, a smattering of chickens, some bowed pack mules, and the lean, mangy dogs meant to guard them against poachers. Other flat-roofed earthen structures within the compound were used primarily for the storage of millet, onions, and dried tomatoes, or contained basic farming tools, or held fire-wood, used to provide heat and fuel the cooking pits for the extended family’s common meals. There was, of course, no electricity, with the only available water carried in buckets from the haftir, earthen reservoir tanks built near the beds of the wadis before the winter dry season approached and the streams ceased to flow for long months on end.
Once, when he had known a great deal less about life, White might have been compelled to reflect on the juxtaposition of those impoverished living clusters and Hassan al-Saduq’s very ample surroundings. Might have spent a few silent minutes comparing the thoroughbred horses in their corrals out back of the courtyard-especially the majestic white specimen in the nearest enclosure-to the bowed, underfed mules he had first seen outside the villagers’ huts, and then again on the road, bearing whatever extra eggs, milk, and cheese they produced down to the market for sale or barter. He might have pondered, too, how Saduq managed to exhibit his personal extravagance without engendering hostility among those who owned next to nothing. While it would have been easy to appreciate why they would fear him, their protective allegiance might have been a source of curiosity.
Now Cullen White took it all in matter-of-factly, recognizing the symbiosis that existed between the powerful and the deprived in the world’s most godforsaken corners. It was like the relationship between the shark and the pilot fish. Men like Saduq kept dangerous predators at a distance with their own ferociousness, while allowing their weaker followers to stay close and protected, and feeding them enough to appease their hunger. In return, they would always stay close, attaching themselves to his sides when it benefited him. But he would see they never slept with their bellies full or were left without their critical dependency.
He sat, dropping his pack between his legs as he waited for the other two men to lower themselves into their chairs.
“So,” Saduq said. “How are things in Khartoum?”
“Tense,” White said. He recalled to his frustration reading the newspaper stories on the plane. “I would think you’d have good sources of information about what goes on there.”
Saduq grinned. “One can never have too many,” he said. “I take it this unrest is because of the economic sanctions?”
“There seems to be a lot going on.” White was looking at him. “From what I can tell, it isn’t easy to find somebody in the city who isn’t upset about something or other.”
Saduq grunted. “A pity. Like Ishmael, I was born in the capital. And spent my childhood there.”
“You sound homesick.”
“It is always difficult when we must remain separated from our roots, Mr. White.”
White merely shrugged. That had never been among his problems.
The maid returned with a tray of cold juice, fruit and cheese hors d’oeuvres, set it on the table, and left. White reached for his juice and drank, appreciating its tangy sweetness. He realized he’d worked up quite a thirst during the trip.
“We should get right down to business,” he said. “Are you all set for the purchase?”
Saduq nodded. “I will be flying out tomorrow,” he said. “By the following night it should be complete.”
“A deal is done when it’s done,” White said, shaking his head. “For me that won’t be until the shipment is in-country. In the meantime a thousand different things could go wrong, and any one of them could spell serious trouble.”
“I understand your concern,” said Saduq. “But this transaction is not the first of its sort that I’ve brokered. Nor do I expect it will be the last. And my participation aside, it isn’t altogether without precedent.”
White met his gaze. He was remembering the RUF affair. And Iran-Contra, the ballsiness of which Stralen had always applauded, although he insisted the idea of negotiating with supposed Iranian moderates had been a foolish pipe dream. His objection to the former deal, and not the other, was all a matter of context-one fell within his system of moral and political values, and the other didn’t, and for Stralen that made things very simple. But his respect for the general aside, White hadn’t bought the comparisons. The ramifications simply weren’t proportional, not as matters stood, let alone at the scale they were quickly approaching.
“Precedent or otherwise, I need to know there won’t be any last-minute surprises,” he said after a long moment.
“If my personal guarantee is not sufficient, then I would hope my cousin’s would be, Mr. White.”
Mirghani hefted his vast bulk forward, took a wedge of cheese from the platter, and placed it on a slice of bread. “You should have no concerns,” he said, pushing the food into his mouth. “The merchants are reliable men.”
“They’re pirates,” said White.
“Yes.” Mirghani chewed, swallowed. “But it’s in their interest to deliver. They don’t want a reputation for reneging on bargains. While I have no doubt they’ll spend their skim in the bars and whore-houses of Eyl, it is worth remembering that President Ahmed’s Majeerteen clan controls Puntland, where they make their base. And that his transitional Somali government is in need of financial support.”
White turned his sweating glass in his hands. “May the circle be unbroken,” he said in an undertone.
“What was that?” Mirghani asked.
“American gospel.”
Saduq’s grin had reappeared, accompanied by a look of secret amusement. “Speaking of America, Mr. White, I believe your Revolutionary army had no qualms about buying thousands of weapons, and millions of pounds of gunpowder, from pirates. Without those supplies they could never have sustained their war against the British.”
White regarded him in silence, almost smiling himself now. He wondered what his former bosses in the Agency would have thought if they’d heard him elevated into the company of George Washington.
Finishing his drink, he lifted the rucksack from the ground and set it on the table. “Here you are,” he said finally. “With my thanks for the history lesson.”
Saduq took hold of the rucksack’s strap, pulled it across to his side. And that was that, White mused. There was no going back. For him, for Stralen, for anyone. And in an unexpected way, the finality of it took a weight off his shoulders.
He reached for a piece of fruit and reclined in his chair, admiring the barb in its corral across the field.
“A magnificent creature, is it not?” Saduq asked.
White looked at him, nodding. The broker didn’t miss much, a valuable trait in his line of work.
“The horse was bred by the Bamileke…an offshoot of the Bantu tribe that migrated into Cameroon hundreds of years ago,” Saduq said. “Driven from their home near the Niger basin by internal conflict, they overran the Pygmies in their new land. Exiles themselves, these tribesmen became conquerors by necessity.” A pause. “African history is different from yours, Mr. White. It is an ancient tapestry spun with many recurrent themes. Nothing here is new to us, and all that comes has been seen before.”
White continued to regard him. “Should I take that as another historical reminder?”
Saduq shrugged. “I would prefer you consider it a bit of perspective…volunteered without added cost.”
White considered that for a long moment, nodded. He again felt vaguely as if Saduq was toying with him.
“I’ll try not to forget it,” he said.