Saduq hawked up a mat of blood and saliva and spit it onto the deck. “He was introduced to me as White,” he said. “Cullen White.”
Kealey nodded. He was sure his features had revealed none of his satisfaction-or curiosity.
“Okay,” he said. “I think we might be getting somewhere.”
When Kealey was finished with Saduq on the deck, he brought him back down below to a guest cabin and had him locked inside with the Yemaja ’s captain, posting Brun on guard out in the passage.
“How’s the arm?” he asked.
“Still attached,” Brun said with a wan smile.
“Give it to me straight,” Kealey said. He had thought the bullet had hit muscle and passed through cleanly, but wasn’t looking for bravado. “I need to know if you’ll be okay down here for a while.”
Brun looked at him. “I’m fine,” he said. “We packed the wound well enough… There isn’t much bleeding.”
Kealey nodded, went upstairs to the main cabin. Abby Liu was in the cockpit, monitoring the yacht’s basic positional data on its dashboard screens, and he squatted in the aisle beside her.
“How do we stand with the coast guard?” he asked.
She pointed to two numerically coded ship icons on the GPS tracker display. “Those are maritime patrol boats. They’re on standby in case we need them. Thanks to Dirk and Leo, who apparently had quite an adventure after we left.”
Kealey studied the display, grunted. “I got Saduq to open up,” he said.
“I saw,” she said coolly.
He looked at her. “Something wrong?”
“I told you,” she said, nodding her head at the cabin’s wraparound windows. “I saw how you obtained your information. What term shall we give to your interrogative tactics? Coercion? Intimidation? Or prisoner abuse? You see, Kealey, I’m trying to stay away from the word torture because that might be a little too strong.”
Kealey sat quietly for a moment, shrugged. “Use whatever definition you want,” he said. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“You threatened to kill Saduq. Would you really have done it?”
“Things never got to where it was something I needed to consider.”
“Which ignores my question.”
“No,” Kealey said. “It’s the most truthful answer I can give you. We don’t have time for proper bows and curtsies. I thought it was something you understood.”
“It was…and is,” she said. “But I don’t have to like watching you work, and don’t know that I’m too proud of my participation.” She stared into his face. “I’m also not sure I know what kind of man Harper sent me.”
More silence. Kealey raised his eyes to hers, held them. “The truth is that I’m not sure, either,” he said. “Let’s leave it alone, okay? Just leave it be and stick to discussing our little assignment.”
She frowned. Then after a second gave him a small, reluctant nod.
“Does the name Barre mean anything to you?” Kealey asked.
“Nicolas Barre?”
“That’s it.”
“He’s head of the Hangarihi…the Scorpion gang,” Abby said. “The Somali pirate organizations you hear about are the Marka Group, the Puntland Group, the Somali Marines, and the National Volunteer Coast Guard. But this is based on outdated intelligence. There are more than those four major bands. I’d estimate between seven and a dozen, some with active alliances, others in competition, and all affiliated with one or more warlords. Barre’s group is relatively new, but it’s one of the most sophisticated-a breakaway from the marines, who are known for their military-type chain of command and technology.”
“And their politics?”
“Money and greed,” she said.
Kealey grunted. “According to al-Saduq, he’s going to fulfill his end of their bargain. What’s your take?”
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t.”
“Why? Our bandit’s already made off with his cash. If you’re right, that would make him more trustworthy than Saduq.” Kealey massaged the back of his neck. “Think about it. He brokers the original arms deal between Russia and the Egyptian government, then turns around and arranges for it to be taken by Barre’s men.”
“Quite a spin on what you Americans call regifting, I know,” Abby said. “Still, Hassan al-Saduq has built up considerable international cachet-and deniability, since there’s no firm link between him and Barre’s capture of the shipment.”
“So you’re saying Barre realizes he can’t hide behind a reputation of legitimacy.”
“Or quasi legitimacy, I suppose. He’s an upstart on the scene.”
“And by that logic his goal is what? To prove there can be honor among thieves?”
She shrugged. “It’s good business. The success of this deal would mark Barre as a player on a large regional scale. Especially when word gets around that he could have easily taken his bundle and run.”
“And then resold… regifted…the shipment a third time,” Kealey said.
She nodded.
Kealey was thoughtful a moment. “Saduq insists the details of the arms delivery weren’t worked out. He says it was something they’d meant to discuss aboard the yacht before we rudely interrupted.”
“My turn to ask, then,” Abby said. “Do you believe him?”
Kealey tried to choose his words carefully. He did not want their conversation doubling back to where it had started out. “I think he realized it would be in his best interests to tell me the truth.”
She gave him a glance that said his bit of verbal finesse hadn’t made his methods any easier to tolerate. “Which means there’s going to be direct contact between Saduq and Mirghani.”
“There’ll have to be,” he said. “The delivery needs to happen soon.”
“Is this something else Saduq told you?”
“He didn’t need to,” Kealey said. “Back in Yaounde, you told me the merchandise was initially loaded aboard a Ukrainian ship bound for Egypt and was then meant to be transported into Sudan… Is that accurate?”
“That was our intelligence, yes.”
Kealey looked at her. “Think about the difficulty of it for a minute. Guns and artillery would be one thing-the Egyptians could have piled them aboard a C-One-thirty Hercules or two and airlifted them over the border. But you talked about thirty-odd tanks, a dozen attack birds… They’re too heavy to be flown in without a fleet of air transports bigger than anything Egypt could muster. Unless you’re talking about a whole lot of very conspicuous trips.”
“They would have been moved overland, then,” Abby said. “At least for part of the distance.”
Kealey was nodding in the affirmative. “I guess the easiest way would have been for the ship to pull into Port Sudan via the Red Sea, off-load its cargo, then rail it east to Khartoum. That entire route’s controlled by Omar al- Bashir, so his forces could’ve kept a tight lid on things. You figure from there the tanks and choppers might have been divvied into small groups, warehoused at stopover points, and then slowly integrated into Sudanese army units. The biggest hurdle would have been surveillance by Israeli patrol boats out of Eilat before the ships reached harbor.” He paused. “Israel wouldn’t inter-cede unless the consignment got it really edgy-but it would have damn well made sure intel satellites were keeping tabs on its composition and movement from the docks.”
Abby considered that. “The fact is, Kealey, all of this has become moot, hasn’t it? The shipment never made it to Egypt. And if it’s going to Mirghani’s opposition forces, there’s the double obstacle of needing to slip it past Bashir’s security. Even if the Scorpion band made a transfer along their water route and moved the materiel from the Ukrainian vessel to some rusty barge or barges, no amount of bribes could have gotten it past Bashir’s harbor agents in Port Sudan. They simply wouldn’t bring it that far north.”
“That’s right,” he said. “But any way you cut it, a haul of this magnitude would be tough to keep under wraps. It’s what I meant about the delivery needing to get done before too long. The seizure took place in the Gulf of Aden, down near Yemen. I think we need to be looking at the quickest and likeliest routes into Sudan from there.”
Abby reached for her sat phone and keyed up a map. “So what do you think? If the merchandise is coming in from the south, does it travel up by land from Ethiopia or Eritrea?”
“Eritrea would be my pick,” Kealey said. “It’s actually just right. The bribes are cheaper and tracking the shipment’s harder. You can barge the merch to Massawa, then probably rail or truck it west to the border on the old
