“I’ll take it.” And then, “Hello?”
“Three days are up. I thought you would have caught me by now.”
“Where are you?”
Instead of an answer to her question, he said, “We need to talk.”
“This . . . situation, going on in Sudan right now. There is not much information . . . I know there has been a battle. The president is missing. It happened right when you said something would happen, so at first I assumed that you somehow had something to do—”
“I have Abboud. I have him right here with me.”
Her voice was soft but intense. “Oh my God.”
“Crazy, huh?”
Ellen breathed nervously into the phone. She looked out of her office door, then stood up quickly and shut it, nearly pulling the phone off her desk while doing so. “What . . . Who are you . . . What are you going . . . Why are you calling me?”
There was no response at first. She could hear the pounding of her own heart.
“Do you want him?”
“What?”
“Abboud. He’s yours if you want him.”
“Me?”
“Yes. And just so you know, I didn’t kill any Chinese. That’s on the news these days, I hear.”
“Yes, it is.”
“That wasn’t me. I kidnapped Abboud, but now I don’t really know what to do with him.”
Ellen’s voice was still barely a whisper. “Didn’t you . . . think about that beforehand?”
“Yeah . . . plans change. Deals fall through. You know how it is.”
“Right.” She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Look. He has information about Russia and China. He says the two are going to start a proxy war over Sudan unless he does something to stop it.”
“Yes, there have been rumors.”
“What do you think?”
“Well . . . I’m not an expert in that; I am more involved in the armaments—”
“I’m pretty sure you are the most expert person I can get on the phone for a chat at the moment. I’m asking you what you think.”
“I think President Abboud is absolutely correct.”
Court filled her in on what he’d learned. She admitted to knowing part of the story, but she was fascinated that Six’s information came directly from the president of the Sudan himself.
“He says a deal was in the works for him to turn himself in to the ICC.”
She cleared her throat and spoke in a normal register. “Above my pay grade, Six.”
“Well, how ’bout this? How ’bout you go tell the big shots at your organization that if they can find a way to pick me and Abboud up from the Red Sea coast, then they can have him. That ought to bump up your pay grade a bit.”
Ellen bristled. “I’m not here for the money.”
“Okay, donate it to charity; I don’t give a shit. I just want to stop the situation here from getting any worse.”
“That’s your only motivation?”
“Yes.”
“How can I believe that?”
“I’ve been ordered to kill the fucker. I would
Gentry imagined Ellen still more or less in shock over what happened in Darfur. He knew she probably didn’t trust him, and this phone conversation was surely another surreal event that her brain was having trouble processing, so he was not surprised that she hesitated for a long time. Finally she cleared her throat. “I’ll go upstairs right now, talk to the prosecutor himself. We’ll find a way to come and get Abboud.”
“Excellent.”
“Will you be coming to The Hague with him?”
Court sniffed. “And deprive the International Criminal Court of another fruitless manhunt?”
She chuckled. She had a nice laugh, throaty and unguarded. Court was pretty sure he’d never heard it before. She answered finally, “I have not begun the process of preparing an indictment against you.”
“‘Yet,’ you mean?”
Another pause. Gentry could tell by the breaks between her words that she had been wrestling with this very issue. “There’s a good man in you, Six. I can see him through the cracks in your hard shell.”
“You’re a shrink now?”
“Bad news. It doesn’t take a shrink to see the cracks in you.”
“You don’t know me.”
She changed gears. “I know you are not CIA. I made some calls. My sources say they don’t have anyone in Darfur.”
“Like I told you.”
“But if you are not CIA, then who
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It absolutely does, Six. The ICC will not help you if they don’t know who they are dealing with.”
“I am privately contracted.”
“A private party has hired you to kidnap the president and hand him over to the ICC?”
“Yeah.”
“Then they told you to kill him.”
“Right again.”
She paused a long time, disbelieving, perhaps. Finally, “Who is this private party?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“You
Court knew it would come to this. He tried to sell it with a straight face, though he was speaking on his satellite phone. “Okay. I’ve been contracted by private U.S. citizens. People in the arts and entertainment industry, mainly.” Oryx himself had given him this idea.
“In the arts and . . . So . . . are you saying
“Well. Yeah. I guess I am.”
“
He smiled. She was a smart woman. Too smart to believe him, but also too smart to not turn away the president handed over to her organization on a silver platter. She’d play along. “And I’m sticking to it,” he replied.
“Okay.” It was said with a worried tone, like she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sell this fantasy to her superiors any better than Six had to her. “I’ll call you back. Are you safe for now?”
Court exhaled. “Oh yeah, snug as a bug, Ellen.”
“I’ll hurry.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Dawn rose over the still waters of the Red Sea as Court drove the Skoda north on the coastal highway that led from Port Sudan to the Egyptian border. Out the driver-side window he could just see the Red Sea Hills, and out the passenger side, past Oryx’s bruised and impassive face, he looked out over the water as the blackness of dark warmed into the softness of the predawn.
An hour earlier he’d skirted to the west of Port Sudan under cover of darkness, and now the Skoda had the
