The commander nodded, glanced at the tarpaulin-covered equipment. “Give everything a last inspection… I want to be doubly certain the tanks and helicopters are well secured for the trip. The tarps as well. Everything. It’s best we take precautions now to avoid delays than have to proceed in fits and starts.”
Mabuir gave a brisk military salute. Nusairi gave no outward display of satisfaction, but for him it was yet another affirmative sign that the ragtag band of fighters he’d pieced together had been tightened into a legitimate armed force. He returned his lieutenant’s gesture and then reached into his field jacket for his satellite phone.
“Hello?” On the first ring.
Nusairi gave a thin smile. The leader of the so-called Darfur People’s Army was another of those in for a surprise. There would soon be no more room for his breed of minor insurgents; they would fall into step or else. But that was still something for the future.
“Ishmael,” he said. “I take it you have been waiting for my call.”
“Yes,” Mirghani said. “How could it be otherwise?”
“And the American?”
“He has retired to my guest room. Whether he sleeps or not is another story. But I confess to envying how he manages to be calm under most circumstances…or act as if he is, at any rate.”
“Well, he has substantial cause to relax,” Nusairi said.
“The shipment came as arranged?”
“Precisely.” Nusairi was gazing at the assembly of transport vehicles. “It is already aboard our trucks and set to move west over the border.”
“This is the most encouraging word I could have gotten tonight, my friend,” Mirghani said, breathing an audible sigh of relief. “After the news from Cameroon several days ago…”
“Put it out of your mind,” Nusairi said. “It was of trifling consequence in the broader scheme of things.” He paused in thought. “I would recommend that you knock on the American’s door and pass on your recovered optimism. It’s my expectation that he will in turn want to convey it to his puppeteer in the United States.”
Mirghani’s chuckle was slightly uncomfortable. “I don’t believe he would appreciate your characterization of him…or the one to whom he answers.”
“It makes no difference,” Nusairi said. “For all his bluster, he is a hand puppet to be waggled on his master’s fingers. A pawn who does as he is told. Let him reassure the one who makes him twitch and jerk that we are on course.”
“I will update him immediately,” Mirghani said. “ Allah ma’ak, may God be with you on your journey.”
Nusairi pocketed the phone without a word of farewell. Mirghani was a fool. Another narrow-minded separatist warlord, one of dozens used to firing potshots at Omar Bashir and one another while crouched out of sight behind rocks or inside burrows. If the opportunity arose, he would resort to licking the soles of Western boots in exchange for a fiefdom through which he could parade at will, lording over his flatterers and subjects, strutting about like a peacock with his tail feathers outspread for their admiration.
Grunting to himself, Nusairi walked toward the convoy, gave it a quick once-over, then climbed into the passenger seat of the second truck and radioed the order to move.
A minute later its oversized wheels began to roll.
Playing with her sat phone to kill time aboard the cramped, grimy train from the railway junction at Atbara to Port Sudan, Abby Liu had found a Google search result that read, “The Road from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum.” When she’d clicked on the link, she’d come upon a color photograph of a young man standing thigh-deep in an infinite vista of powdery gray sand, a set of barely distinguishable tire treads running between him and the camera lens. Besides the blue screen of sky overhead, and those old, faded tracks, nothing disturbed the barrenness of the near or far horizons.
She’d smiled thinly at the online snapshot, then nudged Kealey in the seat next to her, holding the phone out to show him the image, thinking whoever had posted it had a caustic sense of humor…and that it might help break the silence in which he’d sat staring out the window for hours.
He had glanced down at it expressionlessly, shrugged her off, then turned back toward the dust-filmed window.
“My apologies, Ryan,” she said. “I won’t do it again.”
He looked at her. “What?”
“Interrupt the grinding monotony of this ride,” she said. “I mistakenly thought you might appreciate it.”
Kealey said nothing for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “We need to get to where we’re going,” he said. “This is like, I don’t know…”
“Being stuck in sand?”
He studied her face. And this time a smile ghosted at his lips. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose that’s as good a way of putting it as any.”
She nodded, a gleam in her slanted brown eyes.
“Something else you find amusing?” Kealey asked.
It was her turn to shrug. “We can only do what we can do,” Abby said quietly. “That doesn’t include shrinking the desert or laying highways across it-so where’s the use in brooding over our situation?” She took her voice down another notch so the local travelers packing the aisles couldn’t hear it. “I count us damned fortunate to have gotten this far without any snags.”
He grunted. In fact, she was right. Ferran’s arrangements had gone beyond holding the ferry’s departure for them; Gamal, his fixer at the Aswan pier, had gotten them past the Egyptian customs and immigration officers and onto the boat without a single one of them so much as glancing at their documents. Gamal had assured Kealey there likewise would be no hitch at all when they reached Wadi Halfa the next day, and true to his word, things had gone smoothly, the blue-uniformed Sudanese customs men moving them from the ferry onto the waiting train with alacrity. In that sense, the two thousand dollars Kealey had used to grease Ferran’s palm had seemed an absolute bargain.
The problem was that he had not considered that the railway trip to Khartoum aboard the antiquated, slow- moving Sudanese train would take over two days. It had been an oversight that had little bearing on things, since there had been no faster means of transport available to them. The only remedy, using the word loosely, had been to alter their planned route and switch to the Port Sudan line at the Atbara junction. In the port city, they would have the option of hopping a plane to Khartoum or motoring down a paved road-and after a phone call to Seth Holland, the Agency man at the embassy, it had been determined that he would dispatch one of his staff there to meet and drive them down into the capital, once again staying away from the unwanted scrutiny of air security personnel. Which was all well and good. But still…
“I have to remind you about Cullen White,” Kealey said, looking at Abby. “The man is calculating, and quick on his feet. Once he hears about Saduq being in custody, he’s going to put two and two together.”
“He can’t possibly know you’re involved.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Kealey said. “All he does have to do is get a whiff that something about the raid on Saduq’s yacht-or his being held out of sight-deviated from what’s SOP with Interpol or the EU task force. I think that’s already happened, and I’m pretty sure the same thought must have crossed John Harper’s mind more than once. I guarantee White won’t be waiting around for the sky to fall on his head. Whatever he’s been working on, we can expect he’ll very quickly start looking at contingencies. And that means ways to shift into high gear.” He shook his head. “This holdup is about the last thing we needed. Doesn’t matter if we were stuck with it from the get-go…I wish I’d at least seen it coming.”
Her features serious, Abby sat beside Kealey in private thought as the train clanked along over obsolete wooden railroad ties, the blackness outside its windows no more uniform than the sandy landscape visible by day. Around her, passengers rustled in their sleep amid heaps of shabby-looking baggage and loosely packed cartons.
“We’re in far from an ideal spot. I won’t quibble with you there,” she said at length. And then hesitated, still looking contemplative. “Ryan, this probably doesn’t need stating, but we’re very different. I don’t work like you. I’m used to careful planning, gathering of evidence, adherence to rules and process…”
“And you’re wondering what happens when we do reach Khartoum,” Kealey said.
She simply looked at him, and he all at once recognized something in her expression that he had not seen there before, a kind of vulnerability that caught him off guard.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said, whispering now. “But I won’t lie, Abby. I have no idea beyond what I said in
