Her voice was soft but intense. "Oh my God."
"Crazy, huh?"
Ellen breathed nervously into the phone. She looked out of her office door, then stood up quickly and shut it, nearly pulling the phone off her desk while doing so. "What… Who are you… What are you going… Why are you calling me?"
There was no response at first. She could hear the pounding of her own heart.
"Do you want him?"
"What?"
"Abboud. He's yours if you want him."
"Me?"
"Yes. And just so you know, I didn't kill any Chinese. That's on the news these days, I hear."
"Yes, it is."
"That wasn't me. I kidnapped Abboud, but now I don't really know what to do with him."
Ellen's voice was still barely a whisper. "Didn't you… think about that beforehand?"
"Yeah… plans change. Deals fall through. You know how it is."
"Right." She had no idea what he was talking about.
"Look. He has information about Russia and China. He says the two are going to start a proxy war over Sudan unless he does something to stop it."
"Yes, there have been rumors."
"What do you think?"
"Well… I'm not an expert in that; I am more involved in the armaments-"
"I'm pretty sure you are the most expert person I can get on the phone for a chat at the moment. I'm asking you what you think."
"I think President Abboud is absolutely correct."
Court filled her in on what he'd learned. She admitted to knowing part of the story, but she was fascinated that Six's information came directly from the president of the Sudan himself.
"He says a deal was in the works for him to turn himself in to the ICC."
She cleared her throat and spoke in a normal register. "Above my pay grade, Six."
"Well, how 'bout this? How 'bout you go tell the big shots at your organization that if they can find a way to pick me and Abboud up from the Red Sea coast, then they can have him. That ought to bump up your pay grade a bit."
Ellen bristled. "I'm not here for the money."
"Okay, donate it to charity; I don't give a shit. I just want to stop the situation here from getting any worse."
"That's your only motivation?"
"Yes."
"How can I believe that?"
"I've been ordered to kill the fucker. I would love to kill the fucker. I think you, of all people, can believe that. But I'm not going to, because I think he can actually save lives."
Gentry imagined Ellen still more or less in shock over what happened in Darfur. He knew she probably didn't trust him, and this phone conversation was surely another surreal event that her brain was having trouble processing, so he was not surprised that she hesitated for a long time. Finally she cleared her throat. "I'll go upstairs right now, talk to the prosecutor himself. We'll find a way to come and get Abboud."
"Excellent."
"Will you be coming to The Hague with him?"
Court sniffed. "And deprive the International Criminal Court of another fruitless manhunt?"
She chuckled. She had a nice laugh, throaty and unguarded. Court was pretty sure he'd never heard it before. She answered finally, "I have not begun the process of preparing an indictment against you."
"'Yet,' you mean?"
Another pause. Gentry could tell by the breaks between her words that she had been wrestling with this very issue. "There's a good man in you, Six. I can see him through the cracks in your hard shell."
"You're a shrink now?"
"Bad news. It doesn't take a shrink to see the cracks in you."
"You don't know me."
She changed gears. "I know you are not CIA. I made some calls. My sources say they don't have anyone in Darfur."
"Like I told you."
"But if you are not CIA, then who are you?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It absolutely does, Six. The ICC will not help you if they don't know who they are dealing with."
"I am privately contracted."
"A private party has hired you to kidnap the president and hand him over to the ICC?"
"Yeah."
"Then they told you to kill him."
"Right again."
She paused a long time, disbelieving, perhaps. Finally, "Who is this private party?"
"Can't tell you."
"You have to."
Court knew it would come to this. He tried to sell it with a straight face, though he was speaking on his satellite phone. "Okay. I've been contracted by private U.S. citizens. People in the arts and entertainment industry, mainly." Oryx himself had given him this idea.
"In the arts and… So… are you saying movie stars are paying you to do this?"
"Well. Yeah. I guess I am."
"That is your story?"
He smiled. She was a smart woman. Too smart to believe him, but also too smart to not turn away the president handed over to her organization on a silver platter. She'd play along. "And I'm sticking to it," he replied.
"Okay." It was said with a worried tone, like she wasn't sure she'd be able to sell this fantasy to her superiors any better than Six had to her. "I'll call you back. Are you safe for now?"
Court exhaled. "Oh yeah, snug as a bug, Ellen."
"I'll hurry."
FORTY-SEVEN
Dawn rose over the still waters of the Red Sea as Court drove the Skoda north on the coastal highway that led from Port Sudan to the Egyptian border. Out the driver-side window he could just see the Red Sea Hills, and out the passenger side, past Oryx's bruised and impassive face, he looked out over the water as the blackness of dark warmed into the softness of the predawn.
An hour earlier he'd skirted to the west of Port Sudan under cover of darkness, and now the Skoda had the flat road to itself. Court had worried about military checkpoints, but there were none. He'd seen several police cars hours earlier, but in his dark car he never once felt exposed.
The coastal road turned inland for a few miles, towards the hills but not that far to the east, and then it cranked back to the north. At seven a.m. he turned off the highway and followed a sand and dirt and coral path that headed back towards the water. He passed small towns on both sides of the road. They were higher than the road on rocky plateaus that continued on to the sea.
It had taken a full day for the ICC to put a plan together to take possession of Oryx, and Court was not privy to many of the details. All he knew was that he was to drive himself and his captive to a Dutch-run seaside scuba diving resort just twenty miles from the Egyptian border and wait for a pickup by a team of ICC investigators who were on their way from Greece. Ellen Walsh would not be with them, and Court found this unfortunate, though he did not want her exposed to danger.
Gentry himself had no intention of leaving with the ICC team. No, he would put Oryx in the speedboat, or the helicopter, or the SUV, or however the president was to be extracted, and then Court would go in the other direction. He figured he could get a small dive boat from the resort and head north towards Egypt. He'd run out of gas before the border, but then maybe he could land and hitchhike farther north, make the border crossing in the desert in the night with some friendly Bedouins.
He'd have to do this all with a raging infection in his back and no antibiotics or pain meds. He'd poured the last of his antiseptic on his wound before he and Oryx set out from their second hide the evening before, and he'd dumped the narcotics in a ditch fifteen minutes later, so great was his desire to consume them. He'd have to do without a respite from the agony, and he told himself that this would make him tougher, sharper, more ready for what was to come around the next corner.
But mostly it just made him even more miserable.
He still had the receiver that broadcast the GPS coordinates of the Hannah. He'd taken the time to disassemble the device with his multi-tool to ensure there was no tracking transmitter hidden inside that would have sent his own position back to Hightower and the Hannah. The receiver told him the CIA boat was still to the southeast, in international waters. Hightower had not called him in a day and a half, and Court was worried by the long silence. Zack could be anywhere, either on the Hannah, back in the States, or standing in the road just up ahead with an anti-tank launcher.