Kealey gave him a long look, settling back into the booth. “And justice will have been served. Is that right?”
Harper’s smile was tinged with sadness.
“As much as it can be,” he said.
CHAPTER 13
NORTH DARFUR
The Beechcraft A36 Bonanza wasn’t much of a plane, even by North Africa’s lax aeronautical standards. Certainly, it would never have passed an FAA inspection. The exterior was painted eggshell white with a brown stripe running the length of the fuselage, a dated color scheme betraying the aircraft’s twenty-nine years of service. Fresh paint on the port wing hinted at recent damage to the wing’s leading edge, a defect that would have grounded any pilot with an ounce of concern for the lives of his passengers. But for all its faults, the single-prop plane was ideal for the ninety-minute flight from Khartoum to Nyala Airport. They were now less than twenty minutes out, having departed the Sudanese capital just after eight that evening, and both passengers were eager to get on the ground, though only one showed any sign of his inner turmoil. Ismael Mirghani was sweating profusely, despite the frigid air inside the cabin, and his hands were in constant motion, searching for some way to fill the time.
The second passenger was oblivious to Mirghani’s fidgeting. His interest was fixed on the reading material he’d picked up at Khartoum International. Al-Rayaam was by far the largest and oldest newspaper in Sudan. It could trace its roots back to the 1940s, but as he read through the headlines, Cullen White was disappointed to see that its reputation for honest, straightforward reporting was completely undeserved. As far as he could tell, Al-Rayaam was nothing but another mouthpiece for the Sudanese president. The paper neglected to mention the demonstrations that had taken place the day before in Zalingei, Tulus, and Al-Fashir. Even the massive protest in Khartoum-a demonstration that had cost White more than three hundred thousand dollars in bribes and “donations” to organize-had been largely ignored.
That in particular bothered him more than he cared to admit.
The article he was looking for was buried in the back of the political section, a bad sign right from the start. Anything that showed Bashir in a positive light would have appeared on the front page, but the fact that they’d printed the story at all meant they had skewed the facts to their liking. When White finally managed to find the passage, he read through it quickly: Approximately three hundred students gathered in Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace Tuesday to protest the ongoing violence in West Darfur, despite clear indications that the army has been working hand in hand with local leaders to ease the SLA’s stranglehold on the region. According to Deputy Police Commander Mohammed Najib al-Tayeb, the incident outside the palace could have been easily avoided. “These young men were clearly misguided,” al-Tayeb said in a written statement to the press. “For this reason alone, it is difficult to hold them accountable. In many ways they are victims themselves. Victims of Zionist propaganda and colonial lies, and I sincerely hope that they use this opportunity to examine their choices. If they hope one day to have a country of their own, they must learn to stand as one, united against the imperialists.” The deputy commander was pleased to announce that the dispersal of the crowd resulted in no serious injuries, though he noted that additional police units had been dispatched around the square to prevent another such incident.
White lowered the paper and shook his head in disgust. He had watched the demonstration gather outside the palace from the safety of a nearby rooftop and had seen what had actually transpired. Needless to say, it was nothing like what the paper reported. More than 4,000 people had been in attendance that day, and they had not run at the first sign of trouble, holding their ground against the rapid response of the state police and the brutal tactics they’d employed to put down the revolt. By the time the crowd eventually broke up, White had lost track of how many ambulances had come and gone. And though he didn’t have access to any hard numbers, he guessed that at least 100 protesters had been taken into custody before the square was finally cleared of people. The brutal efficiency of the state police made him grateful he had not tried to recruit their deputy commander, an act that would have surely resulted in his immediate arrest.
It was disheartening to see that his work was being so thoroughly dismissed by Sudan’s major news agencies, but with just five weeks in-country, he was already making some serious inroads, and he knew it was just a matter of time before the truth came out. To a certain extent, the regime could control what was printed, but many of Sudan’s most popular publications had flourished regardless, including the Tribune and the Mirror, two of the more successful independents. It was no coincidence that the former was based in Paris and the latter in Kenya. For Sudanese nationals, freedom of the press was something that could be found only online or outside the country, but it could be found. Sudan was not immune to external influence.
White couldn’t help but smile at the thought; he was proving as much with each passing day.
It had been ten days since he’d visited Walter Reynolds at the embassy in Khartoum, and he’d accomplished a great deal in the interim. He’d met quietly with public figures in and around Khartoum and the capital cities of the three federal states in Darfur: Al-Fashir, Al-Geneina, and Nyala, his current destination. Prior to the meeting with the ambassador, he’d spent several days in Juba, the regional capital of Southern Sudan, where he’d worked with the local SLA commander to stage a large demonstration in Buluk Square. That event had cost the U.S. taxpayers a hundred thousand dollars, but it had been a major success. A huge mass of people had shown up to protest the government’s nationwide expulsion of aid workers from the International Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. Most of those workers had been based in the south, where they had been in the midst of a campaign to eradicate the polio virus, which had popped up six months earlier, after seven years in remission. More than 400 children had been infected in Juba alone, and with the aid workers out of the picture, it seemed likely the virus would continue to spread. The epidemic had almost been enough to incite a revolt on its own, and with the support of the SLA, which carried a great deal of sway in the area, White had convinced the locals to stand together for much less than he’d initially anticipated. Most of the funds he’d dispersed in Juba had gone to families affected by the polio outbreak, and that was money he didn’t mind spending.
He put the paper aside and stared out the window, letting his mind drift. Technically, there was nothing surprising about the way things had progressed. He was, after all, adhering to the timeline they’d developed during those endless meetings at State, but he’d never really expected things to go according to plan. Even before his plane touched down in Khartoum, he’d come to terms with the fact that something would happen to throw him off track. Something to delay his forward progress. But much to his surprise it had never happened, and now he was about to finalize the arrangements they had made back in April. The importance of the meeting he was about to attend could not be overstated. As it stood, the work he’d accomplished over the past five weeks could all be undone with a single call, but that was about to change. The window for retreat was rapidly closing, and in less than two hours there would be no turning back.
White smiled to himself as he gazed into the pitch-black night. Everything was coming together as planned, and he had accomplished most of it all by himself, circumventing Bashir’s regime at every turn. As Harold Traylor, he had entered Sudan on a false passport without incident, a remarkable feat given the countrywide security clampdown that was put into effect after the massacre at Camp Hadith. As James Landis, he had bought politicians, recruited senior rebel leaders with the SLA and the JEM, and engineered mass demonstrations in five major cities in the largest country in North Africa. As Cullen White…