minutes ago. Six more vehicles and fifteen officers, for a total of fifteen and eighty-damned if I know whether they’re friends or foes. Otherwise, there’s nothing to report.”
“Okay, just sit tight. The jury’s coming out now. Make sure everyone is ready to move. Out.”
“Copy that, out.”
Whysall immediately relayed the information to the rest of the team, then returned his attention to the crowd milling around him. Approximately five minutes later he heard a rumble of activity on the other side of the courtroom doors. Whysall knew the sound could only mean Zuma had finished testifying in the main chamber.
Around him, beneath the building’s gilded ceiling, dozens of reporters immediately began fighting for position, thrusting their microphones and cameras at arm’s length over the rope line. Behind the assembled media, the crowd of onlookers and protesters pushed forward, so that the narrow aisle leading from the main chamber to the courthouse entrance seemed to grow narrower with each passing second.
Whysall studied the chaotic scene with a sense of rising dread. He didn’t understand why the general public had been granted access. It made for a security nightmare despite the manned checkpoint and the magnetometer positioned inside the main entrance. As bad as it was inside the building, though, it was ten times worse outside. The Johannesburg police had set up blocks on either end of Von Brandis and Kerk, the two intersecting streets in front of the courthouse, but their focus had been limited to vehicular traffic. They had done virtually nothing to prevent the unruly mob from congregating in front of the building, and Whysall suspected that the police would not be inclined to wrestle with those people when the time came for them to leave, especially after what had just transpired inside the main chamber.
Jacob Zuma had just testified against the head of the SAPS. With some of Joubert’s supporters having managed to find their way onto Zuma’s security detail, it seemed possible-even likely-that many of the police officers guarding the building were privately supporting the crowd elements hostile to the Zulu president. That the police might not be eager to facilitate Zuma’s safe departure was something Whysall hadn’t considered until this moment, avoiding it in his reluctance to let his mind stray into the intricacies of South Africa’s affairs. But this was one instance when a client’s standing with an internal arm of his own government might well have a direct bearing on his safety.
Whysall knew what it could mean if he was right, and he decided to pass his concerns up the ladder. Just as he was about to speak, though, his earpiece crackled to life.
“All lobby personnel, tighten up on the rope line. We’re on the way out.”
Whysall immediately acknowledged the transmission, then listened as the rest of the team followed suit. Thirty seconds later he was in position, and he watched as the heavyset police officer standing in front of the courtroom doors lifted a radio to his lips. The man mumbled a few words, then stepped to one side of the massive oak doors. The doors were pushed open from the other side, and two plainclothes police officers quickly locked them into place against the walls. Then the crowd erupted as Zuma and his entourage swept out of the main chamber and into the lobby.
CHAPTER 5
KHARTOUM, SUDAN
Walter Reynolds, the U.S. chief of mission in the Republic of Sudan, stood at the small, barred window of his corner office and sipped from a cup of steaming black coffee, his twelfth of the day. As he took in the sweeping view of downtown Khartoum-the chaotic jumble of dun-colored buildings, olive green trees, and domed mosques that formed the city center, all of it backed by the towering flats of Barlaman Avenue and divided by the twin routes of the Nile-he was suffused by a sense of burning resentment, the same bitter anger he felt each time he stopped to consider the prospect of another two years in the sweltering pit of North Africa.
Reynolds had assumed the post of charge d’affaires just ten months earlier, shortly after leaving his previous post in Cote d’Ivoire, but he was already sick of the place. In fact, he had been ready to leave the day he arrived, and it wasn’t just because of the heat.
In his thirty years with the Foreign Service, Reynolds had come to understand just how vast the cultural gap between the United States and the rest of the world actually was. Nevertheless, he had always made an effort to appreciate the cultural practices of the countries to which he was assigned, even when he found them personally distasteful. He’d also learned that what counted as “acceptable” social behavior could vary greatly from country to country. He had done his best to take this in stride, and for the most part, he’d succeeded. After all, that was part of being a diplomat. Some level of feigned interest-or acceptance-was occasionally called for, and Reynolds could disguise his inner disgust with the best of them. During his time in Sudan, he’d found it necessary to do just that, and with far more frequency than usual.
At least, that was how it had been prior to the disastrous events of April 4. Since the barbaric attack on Camp Hadith, everything had changed, and Reynolds no longer felt the urge-or the need-to mask how he truly felt. Over the last two months diplomatic relations between the United States and Sudan had essentially ceased to exist, and up until the previous afternoon Reynolds had been expecting the inevitable call from the State Department that would bring him, his wife, and the rest of the embassy staff home. Privately, he’d been wondering why the evacuation was so long in coming. Now he was starting to suspect it might not happen at all.
Walter Reynolds was one of the few people who had known about Lily Durant’s presence in West Darfur-as well as her closely guarded relationship to the president-right from the start. He had met her just once, on the day she had first arrived. That had been several months earlier. They had kept the meeting short for the sake of discretion, but despite the brevity of that encounter, he’d found her to be an exceptionally charming, if somewhat naive young woman. The fact that she had volunteered for such thankless work was more than enough to earn his genuine admiration, as he had visited the camps of West Darfur, and he knew just how terrible the conditions actually were. Not just for the refugees, but for the aid workers themselves.
The knowledge that someone would actually choose to live in such squalor in order to help others had done much to restore his faith in humanity, which had been sorely lacking since he had arrived in Khartoum. The only thing that worried him was Durant’s blatant lack of concern regarding her personal security. She had politely but firmly brushed off his warnings, despite what had happened to John Granville, a senior USAID official who had been killed in Khartoum some years back, along with his driver, a Sudanese national. Reynolds had painted a colorful picture with that story, trying to impress upon her the danger of working in such an unstable environment. But she would not be dissuaded, and he could not help but admire her tenacity even as he privately feared for her personal safety.
He deeply regretted that he had been right all along, and although he had tried, he couldn’t seem to erase that terrible day from his memory. He could still remember every word of the frantic call he’d taken from Gregory Beckett, the doctor stationed at the camp in West Darfur. Beckett was the primary eyewitness to the entire event, as well as the first person to report what had happened. As he’d listened to the doctor describe what he’d seen, Reynolds had tried to tell himself that it wasn’t true-that Beckett had either made a terrible mistake or was playing some kind of sick joke. But the lingering fear and shock in the younger man’s voice had made it impossible for Reynolds to doubt what he was saying, and he didn’t have to wait long to discover that his first instincts had been correct. The doctor might have been a coward who had fled at the first sign of danger, but he was telling the truth.
Beckett’s call had come in at 6:00 a.m. local time, and by noon they had had all the proof they needed. Although his aides had strongly advised him not to, Reynolds had personally flown to West Darfur to identify Durant’s body. He had not had a decent night’s sleep since. Even with just a couple of months to reflect, he knew that the things he had seen in the charred ruins of Camp Hadith would haunt him for the rest of his life. If he had despised the central figures in the Sudanese government before he’d walked into that hellish scene, by the time his plane had touched back down in Khartoum, he’d hated them all with a passion…every single minister, general, and district governor who’d ever seen fit to support the monstrous regime of Omar al-Bashir.
And that was before he had seen the tape.
It had been released two days after the attack; presumably, it had taken that long for the copies to reach their final destinations, as none were later determined to have been hand-delivered. Al-Jazeera, the controversial Qatar-based Arab news network, was the first station to air it, followed soon thereafter by Syria Satellite, Tunisia
