The last performance was coming to a conclusion by then, and Al-Fulani’s customers were busy choosing which performers they wanted to take upstairs, when the assassin surreptitiously stabbed Bedo in the arm. The American produced a startled yelp, started to say something, then slumped forward as the sedative kicked in.
Staff members rushed to help-but 47 was quick to shoo them away.
“Don’t worry,” he assured them. “It happens all the time. I’ll take Mr. Bedo back to his hotel and put him to bed. He’ll be as good as new in the morning.”
Having no reason to doubt the man in the red fez, and being understandably happy to rid themselves of what could have been a problem, the orphanage’s staff hurried to escort the duo out through security, and load the unconscious Bedo into the van. It was dark by then, but Agent 47 discovered that traffic was a little bit lighter than before, as he drove the American back to the Oasis Hotel.
The question—and a rather important one—was whether Mr. Ghomara had been discovered, or was still lying in the locked linen room. Having circled the hotel twice without detecting any sort of police presence, Agent 47 concluded that no alarm had been raised. And since neither Ghomara nor Bedo had seen him without the Kufa disguise, it didn’t matter what they told the police the following morning.
Not that Bedo was likely to be all that forthcoming, given his visits to the orphanage or his true reason for visiting Fez.
The assassin entered the garage without incident, chose one of the more remote parking spots, and shut the engine down. Thanks to the power lift it was possible to unload the wheelchair, move Bedo into an elevator, and return the American to his room without any assistance. Then, having removed the Silverballers from the chair’s cargo pocket, he returned both weapons to their holsters.
Bedo’s head came up at that point. The mask had fallen off.
“Where am I?” the American demanded groggily, as he blinked his eyes. “What happened?”
Agent 47 thought about his plan to kill Bedo and replace him with a heavily sedated Al-Fulani. The American had no idea how lucky he was. “You’re in your hotel room,” the man in the red fez answered evenly. “Which is all you need to know.” And with that, the assassin was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
The acacia tree stood like a lonely sentinel on the vast windswept savannah, its large umbrella-shaped canopy of gnarled branches, small leaves, and needle-sharp thorns throwing a pool of welcome shade onto the bone-dry ground where a group of one hundred and twenty-three Dinka refugees had stopped to rest.
They had dark black skin, almond-shaped eyes, finely wrought features, and wore brightly patterned robes of red, blue, and gold. Many had traditional tribal scars on their foreheads. Some had children, who were so malnourished that they simply sat on their mother’s laps, too tired to brush the flies off their eyelids. The group had a small flock of goats that hadn’t been eaten because of the milk they gave. But except for the treadle-powered sewing machine that one elderly gentleman and his family had brought along, the group had very few possessions.
The Dinkas were just a few of the thousands of black Africans who had been forced to flee southwestern Sudan by the bloodthirsty Janjaweed militia. Though naturally tall and slim, many members of the group were emaciated due to a lack of nutrition and the intestinal diseases that eternally plagued them. Hope, such as it was, lay across the border in Chad, where the refugees might be able to find shelter in a European-run camp.
But first the Dinkas would have to reach Chad before the ruthless, camel-riding militia members could catch up with them. If that happened, the men would be murdered, the women would be raped, and the children would be killed or left to die. Which was why Joseph Garang, the group’s unofficial leader, was squinting into the rising sun. If trouble found the group, it would arrive from the east, where the Arab-dominated government held sway.
Garang was a slender man, with richly black skin and intelligent brown eyes. Though only twenty-seven years of age, he looked older, and was considered to be an elder because so many of the real elders had been killed. Many of the Dinkas were Christians, and had just begun to sing one of their favorite hymns when Garang spotted a momentary flash of light low on the eastern horizon.
He stood, stared across the flat savannah, and wished he had a pair of binoculars. Had the momentary glint been produced by sunlight reflecting off a shard of broken glass? Or something more sinister? There was no way to be certain, but this was North Africa, where all who lived fell into two broad categories: The hunters and the hunted. Which meant that anything-even a wink of reflected light-could signal a predator’s presence.
So he made his decision.
“Up!” Garang commanded sternly, striding through the group. “Get up and walk. For he who walks, strives, and he who strives shall be rewarded. So saith the Lord.”
There was no such passage in the tattered Bible that Garang carried with him, but only ten members of the group could read, and even they took comfort from the possibility that something good would come of their efforts.
Slowly, like reanimated skeletons, the Dinkas stood. And then, without giving the matter any conscious thought, they followed Garang out onto the savannah in exactly the same order as they had arrived. None of the refugees bothered to look back because there was nothing to look back at, except a painful past and the solitary acacia tree.
And the tree, like all of its kind, was content to remain where it was and worship the sun.
Mahamat Dagash lowered the powerful 10©42 HG L DCF Nikon binoculars, and brushed a fly off the bridge of his nose, the only part of his face not concealed by the ten-foot-long strip of white cloth that was wrapped around his head.
The refugees were a long way off, but his eyes were good, and the glasses made them better. So Dagash had seen everything he needed to see, and that knowledge brought a smile to his thin lips. Because there were many wonders of the world, including Toyota Land Cruisers, AK-47 assault rifles, and the fact that even the poorest people have something worth stealing: themselves. Flesh, muscle, and bone that could be put to work, or in the case of the younger ones, sold, sometimes for a great deal of money.
Satisfied that the Dinkas were on the move, and that he would be able to circle around and intercept them before they could reach the border, Dagash was careful to replace the lens caps on the expensive binoculars before pushing himself back off the ridge where he lay. Then, comfortable in the certainty that he wouldn’t be seen, the Tuareg made his way down the reverse side of the dune using a series of well-timed leaps.
Two battered 4X4s and six robed men waited below. All were heavily armed, and with good reason. Even though the refugees lived at the very bottom of the North African food chain, Dagash and his slavers were only a few rungs higher up, and vulnerable to the government-supported Janjaweed, a group that was not only extremely jealous of their God-given right to kill, torture, and rape the peoples of the south, but could call upon helicopters and planes to attack anyone foolish enough to compete with them.
Which meant that as the Toyotas roared back to life and the sun continued to arc across the sky, there was no peace, or prospect of peace, except for that which was granted to the dead.
It had been a long hard day, but Garang and the refugees had covered nearly ten miles of barren ground since leaving the acacia tree’s shade, and taken refuge at the foot of a rocky outcropping that promised to shelter them from the wind. There was a dry riverbed nearby, where by dint of considerable digging, the men had been able to coax a puddle of muddy water out of the reluctant ground. Small as it was, that was a blessing, as were the tiny fires the women had built and the vast wealth of stars that lay like grains of sand on the night sky.
Dinner consisted of lentil soup followed by cups of cinnamon tea, neither of which had much substance, but served to quell the worst of the hunger pangs and quiet the children. The little ones would fall asleep soon, the adults would talk for a while, and then they, too, would go to sleep.
Such were Garang’s thoughts as he sat on a rock and stared up into the night sky. The moment of peace was shattered as engines roared, powerful headlights swept across the rocky ground, and the shooting began.
Judging from their targets, the slavers were only interested in children over the age of four and under the age of fifteen. For them, it was easier to shoot the rest rather than take them prisoner and be forced to feed them.