Admittedly, the Exile had not been their first choice. A few of the other candidates had less controversial backgrounds, more palatable politics, and fewer skeletons in the closet, which automatically pushed them to the top of the list. But in the end, the Exile was determined to be the person with the necessary connections-the man with the grassroots support that would be needed to uproot the current regime. For these reasons, he had made the final cut.
White shot a glance at his watch as the engines reduced power, the pilot preparing for the final descent into Nyala Airport. The question had been bandied about by a dozen analysts from three different agencies, but its answer had come down to a lone, gutsy decision. It always did.
Joel Stralen had placed his wager on the Exile. In a very short time White would find out if the general’s bet had paid off.
Wearing beige linen trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a traditional kufi over his tightly curled black hair, Hassan al-Saduq was relaxing in the courtyard of his residence in Quaila when the cell phone trilled on the table beside his rattan chair.
“Yes?” he answered.
“Hassan. Kayf hallak, ” said the caller. He quickly shifted from the Arabic greeting to English. “I thought I would let you know we’ve landed.”
“And the car I sent?”
“It met us at once. We’re already on the road out.”
“Good, good,” Saduq said. “Edgard is my best driver. He knows more shortcuts from the city than my wives know ways to charm expensive gifts from me.”
Mirghani ignored his minor jest.
Saduq thought he’d detected a slight nervous edge in his voice. “How was your flight, my cousin?” he asked.
“ Ilhamdu lilla ’asalaama…I survived,” Mirghani said. “To tell you I’m in one piece would be to ignore the rattling inside me.”
Saduq chuckled. “And your fellow passenger?”
Mirghani hesitated at the other end. Then his voice lowered a notch. “I suspect nothing rattles him, inside or out,” he said in a heavy tone, back to speaking Arabic.
Saduq thought for a moment. Mirghani and their visitor would not take long to reach him from the dusty airport 100 kilometers to the south, and he saw no cause to be anything but relaxed when dealing with the foreigner. Like himself, Cullen White was a facilitator, which gave them much in common. The difference was that White would believe the men they represented each had at least as much to gain as to lose-that, if anything, the Americans held some greater leverage.
Saduq, however, understood better. He knew the true endgame, after all. If White even caught a hint of what he had been helping to set in motion-a mere hint — he would call their bargain off and go racing back to his Washington puppet master in a heartbeat.
“Does something beyond the crudeness of your transport trouble you?” Saduq said.
“Why do you ask?”
“I know you well enough to hear it in your voice.” Saduq shrugged to himself. “If you can’t discuss it now, though, we’ll talk when no outsiders are present to overhear us…recognizing Mr. White’s linguistic fluencies.”
There was another brief pause before Mirghani replied, “It’s all right. I’m simply a bit anxious.”
Saduq believed he understood. Ishmael had no shortage of courage; his problem, rather, was a lack of audacity and vision. It had been like that since they were children-Ishmael willing to be bloodied in fights, but always in reaction. It had left Saduq the clever student to engineer the bully’s fall, as it now left Saduq the trader to give the fighter encouragement. “We’ve gone far along a precarious course. And now the goal is in sight.”
“Yes.”
“Again, cousin, we can speak of things later. In the meantime my advice is to keep your eyes on the short step. Look too far beyond and you’ll stumble. It’s a lack of attention to the small things that trips us up.” Saduq reached for his glass of mixed fruit juice, gulped what was left in it, and produced an audible sigh of pleasure. “I’ll expect you within the hour. Tell our guest I extend my welcome and goodwill.”
Saduq ended the call and gazed out at the field behind his house, the curved stucco walls of its U-shaped court shading him on two sides from the sun, his loafers off so his bare feet rested on the warm granite tiles underneath them. He had built the home near the waterfall above the village, close enough to the Jebel Marra for its rugged volcanic slopes to be easily seen from his bedroom window. Farther back across the dry grass, beyond a meandering stand of flat-crowned acacias, he could see the favorite among his horses ambling tranquilly in its expansive corral.
He had named the white barb Jaleid, after the Arabic word for snow. With its powerful brow, flowing mane, long, straight back, and proud posture, the creature was of rare pedigree, bought from Bamileke horsemen whose stock had a lineage traceable to the nineteenth century. One of the oldest known African breeds, it was loyal, intelligent, and a swift, supple runner for its size, famed for its ability to negotiate the ravines and slopes of its native environment. The ancient horse people of the northern steppes had rendered the steeds in the cave paintings of Hoggar and Tassili. Hannibal’s troops had mounted them in battle against the Romans. Brought to Europe along with other African plunder after the sack of Carthage, they would become warhorses in Julius Caesar’s cavalry a millennium later. Centuries after Rome itself fell to conquest, the Berbers, from whom the breed inherited its name, had stormed into the Iberian peninsula atop their backs. In the First World War German occupation forces would saddle them to patrol Macedonia’s rugged terrain, while decades later Rommel boasted that his soldiers were prepared to ride them through the streets of a vanquished Moscow in a symbolic show of power and triumph.
It was, Saduq mused, one of the few instances in history when the hooves of the ancient warhorse had threatened, and then failed, to drive their pounding thunder into the minds and hearts of an enemy.
Whether or not Rommel had taken a lesson from that unkept promise, it was eminently apparent to Saduq. However confident one was of one’s plans, it was a mistake to declare them in advance. Victory held its own moment for the warrior. Trumpeting its glorious noise before the strike was an error born of pride and arrogance.
Now Saduq reclined in his chair. In a few hours it would become uncomfortably hot and he would have the stallion returned to its stable. For the present, though, both would enjoy soaking in the late morning warmth.
He closed his eyes, relaxed. When his maidservant came out to stir him with the gentlest of touches, he was surprised to realize he must have fallen into a light sleep.
“Yes, Ange?”
“Sayyid, Mirghani has arrived. With another.”
Saduq yawned, checked his wristwatch, sat up. Incredibly, he had dozed for almost an hour.
“Give me a minute and then show them out here,” he said. “We’ll need cold drinks. And something for them to eat.”
Ange bowed her head and turned toward the house. Saduq watched her retreat, then meshed his fingers, stretched his sinewy arms out in front of him, and slipped his feet back into his shoes.
A moment later he rose to meet his company.
“Mr. White…Ishmael. Please make yourselves comfortable,” Saduq said and gestured them toward chairs facing the one from which he’d stood. “We’ll have some refreshments in just a bit.”
White shook Saduq’s hand, looking around the courtyard. The split-level home through which he had passed was relatively simple in design, but spacious and well appointed. The art on the walls was expensive, and its furnishings and fixtures modern, as were the appliances he’d glimpsed while following the young female servant who had met them at the door. Even in the States, it would have been considered upscale; here in Darfur it was lavish beyond most people’s dreams.
Skirting the village along the ungraded dirt road that brought him from the airport, White had seen plenty of its more typical dwellings-family compounds made up of crude, rounded huts with conical thatch roofs and mud foundations grouped together within irregular wooden fences. Each hut held anywhere from eight to ten family members, with some having zarebas, or animal pens, outside for their shared livestock-a few cows, goats, and pigs, a smattering of chickens, some bowed pack mules, and the lean, mangy dogs meant to guard them against poachers. Other flat-roofed earthen structures within the compound were used primarily for the storage of millet, onions, and dried tomatoes, or contained basic farming tools, or held fire-wood, used to provide heat and fuel the cooking pits for the extended family’s common meals. There was, of course, no electricity, with the only available water carried in buckets from the haftir, earthen reservoir tanks built near the beds of the wadis before the winter dry season approached and the streams ceased to flow for long months on end.