Carmichael was scared, nervous about having one of his men on a rogue mission. Court could hear it in his voice.
"I'm sorry, sir. Killing Oryx at this point will create a disaster I am not prepared to be a part of."
"I understand how you feel. I was one of the architects of Nocturne Sapphire. All along, we knew that if we could take him alive, he could be very useful to us and to his country. But unfortunately we cannot leave any trace that the CIA or any U.S. operator was in Suakin yesterday. If evidence comes out, then we will have a massive international superpower crisis, which is, frankly, a hell of a lot more important than civil war in a third-world nation."
"So you agree there will be war. A civil war with the backing of the Chinese and Russians?"
"Civil war, yes, in the short term it is likely. But we do not see the superpowers playing an active role."
"Maybe you don't have the assets in place to see it happening."
"I can assure you, we have close contact with officials very high in the Sudanese government."
"How close is your contact?"
"Extremely close."
"How high are the officials?"
"Extremely high."
"Well, I have the fucking president sitting in the backseat of my car, so when you can get a source higher and closer than that, maybe you'll impress me."
There was a long pause. "There is an important trade deal in the works."
Gentry couldn't care less. "Yeah, so maybe we take it on the chin from the Chinese. That sucks. But we'll get over it."
"That's not for you to decide."
"Actually, it is. I've got the president. I intend to get him to the ICC alive. I am going to do the right thing here. There are a lot of people in this country who are depending on it. You guys had the right idea; Nocturne Sapphire was the right op. Yeah, it was hopelessly fucked-up because Sudan Station doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground, but we were damn close to pulling it off. I'm going to finish this. You guys at Langley need to realize that what I am doing here is the right thing, and you need to rethink your-"
Denny's calm but annoyed countenance of all their earlier conversations morphed in an instant to screaming, shouting vitriol. "I don't have time to listen to a sermon from a pissant like you! Let me explain something. The past four years have been a cakewalk for you. There are people up here who have a soft spot for Court Gentry. You did good work for a long time for precious little thanks, and that earned you a great deal of respect in the SAD. When the shoot-on-sight went out on you, there were some in the bureaucracy here who were borderline insubordinate in their conviction to the cause, and the operation to eliminate you suffered for it.
"But now, Mr. Gentry, now there is not a man left in the agency who's on your side. Not only will I reinstate the SOS, but I will bump it up to the top of the priority list. It won't be some half-assed Echelon tracking, intradepartmental memoranda and Interpol watch request. It will be coordinated teams of tier-one hunter-killers, SAD/SOG Paramilitary Operations officers, Combat Applications Group, proxy teams of bounty hunters. I will personally arrange that every available SAD asset will be brought to bear against you.
"There won't be a rock big enough for you to crawl under, a handler foolish enough to sponsor you, a country brazen enough to allow you inside its borders.
"Zack is going to hunt you down. He will stop you, and he will kill you. You may still have a pulse for a bit, Mr. Gentry, but as of this very moment… your life is ended!"
Carmichael did not say anything else. Neither did Court. He liked getting the last word… but at this moment it seemed as if the last words on the subject had been spoken. No clever quip could blunt the impact of Carmichael's rant. This man was not threatening anything that he did not have the power to put into motion.
After an extremely long pause, the man from Langley spoke quietly. It sounded to Court as if he were hanging up the phone as he did so.
"That is all."
FORTY-SIX
Tuesday was Ellen Walsh's first day back in her tiny office in The Hague since leaving for the Sudan five weeks earlier. Her supervisors in the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court had offered a week for her to tend to herself upon her return from Africa, but the thirty-five-year-old Canadian had only taken a day to go to a local dermatologist to look at her sunburned face, and a GP to give her a prescription for migraines she'd been having since the truck explosion on the road to Dirra.
When she appeared through the elevator doors to her office, her coworkers were shocked to see her. Snippets of her adventure had made it out. The international media had covered the attack of the Speranza Internazionale convoy and the murder by the Janjaweed militia of world-famous Mario Bianchi and two of his local staff. There was no mention in the reports that other Westerners had been in the convoy, but Ellen herself had spoken to the administrative heads in the Office of the Prosecutor, and the story had filtered its way downstairs like water poured through cracks in the flooring. From there, administrative assistants of the top brass told friends and friends of friends who worked throughout the building. Her brutal sunburn and a sad and distant look in her eyes lent credence to the rumors, and Ellen knew it would not be long before she would be forced to send out an e-mail thanking everyone for their concern, and simultaneously asking everyone to please respect her privacy and understand that she just wasn't quite yet up to talking about what she had witnessed in Darfur.
On her computer in front of her were two reports, neither finished. One was an incident report upon which she was to put in writing as much as she could remember about her discovery of the Russian Rosoboronexport aircraft in Darfur and the men on board, along with any names, corroborating witnesses, et cetera, et cetera. She had only opened the template and put in information regarding her initial plan to enter Darfur with false credentials. Even this part of the document was difficult for her to write. So much had happened since her time in Khartoum, skulking around other NGO offices looking for her way into Darfur, that it seemed to be relegated to the portion of her brain reserved for distant memory.
The other was her report about the murder of two wounded and defenseless gunmen by an American John Doe who had flown into Al Fashir with the Russian aircraft. She'd all but finished this report. She could not get it out of her mind, but she was not sure if she was writing it in an attempt to purge her thoughts of the atrocity, or if she would, indeed, file the report and open an investigation into this man. She was torn by her official obligation and her feelings towards this stranger. He had helped her and convinced her he was not evil, but she was concerned that he was an individual teetering on the edge, a man who needed to be stopped before more atrocities were committed.
And what to make of the news that the president of the Sudan had been kidnapped during a massive battle with rebels on the east coast of the country? Could Six have had some involvement with that? The timing was right, but Six did not seem like a man who could control a force of Sudanese rebels.
He could barely control himself.
Her desk phone rang. "Ellen, there is someone calling himself 'Six' on the phone for you."
"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."