Jason was back in the water, sloshing toward the pinasse. “All the more pity if we don’t. Must have been a thousand or more people saw us leave Bamako. You think any one of them would have qualms about selling that information?”
“Sell?”
“To bandits, to anyone who might be suspicious as to who we really are, curious enough to wait upriver for a better look.”
Viktor was splashing right behind him. “In Russia we say, ‘If you are afraid of wolves, stay out of the forest.’ ”
“Yeah, well in the United States we say, ‘Better safe than sorry.’ I’d just as soon avoid the wolves altogether.”
Once the slender craft was unloaded, Jason peeled off bills from a roll of dollars and handed them to the smiling captain. He would sail the rest of the trip to Kabara, the port closest to Timbuktu, in case curious eyes were monitoring the vessel’s progress. By that time, Jason would have either completed his mission or failed.
Either way, he would be long gone.
Or dead.
Before shifting the pinasse’s cargo to the truck’s bed, each man rummaged through several packages, removing personal arms. Three men waited patiently for the few minutes it took Emphani to complete his afternoon prayers, roll his prayer rug, and join in the task. Pistols and knives went under sweat-soaked shirts. Unidentifiable packages and cases were placed in the truck’s bed before Jason climbed into the driver’s seat with Emphani beside him. Andrews and Viktor chose to ride in the open truck bed, a decision dictated by the vehicle’s lack of front-seat space and air-conditioning. Having two men in the open was not a bad defensive measure, either, should it become necessary.
The Toyota slogged its way through mud that reached the middle of the wheels before reaching what Jason assumed was the road. Parallel tire tracks faded into a surface resembling a washboard more than a highway. As the truck jounced along, conversation was possible only through clinched teeth. Sixty kilometers per hour seemed to be the maximum speed at which the Toyota could proceed without vibrating apart or leaving the undercarriage in the road.
In the truck’s bed, Andrews and Viktor were forced to hold on to the sides or risk being bounced onto the ground below. Using one hand, Andrews dumped a bag, from which came a hose-like apparatus that ended in what, to the Russian, looked like a gas pump’s nozzle complete with trigger.
Viktor raised his voice above the rattle as the truck tried to shake itself apart. “We will not need that. We will pour petrol directly from the cans.”
“We may not need it,” Andrews replied, “but if we do, I want make sure it works. It’s not your average gas pump hose.”
By now, the sun was little more than a golden memory in the west. To the north, Sirius, the sky’s brightest star and central to the mythology of the Dogon people of Mali, was clearly visible. Waves of shadows had become a tide of darkness, obliterating the road. There was barely enough light to limn the trees against a deepening purple backdrop: the fullness of a baobab, the slender kapok, the massive mahogany. The Toyota’s headlights were two converging scars across the breast of the fading twilight. From all directions and no direction at all came the howls, barks, and grunts of the local fauna, enough to make each man silently thankful for the steel between him and the African night.
The truck came to such an abrupt stop Viktor and Andrews nearly flipped over the cab. Andrews got to his knees to peer over the cab’s roof. Squarely across the road were a pair of battered small Mitsubishi trucks. Behind them a half dozen men stared into the truck’s headlights. Though black, they were dressed not in the colorful native garb, but like Bedouins. And though the dress had not changed for centuries, there was nothing traditional about the AK-47s each man held.
43
The window seemed to filter all life from the pale winter afternoon sunlight that was barely strong enough to cast shadows on the carpet of the Oval Office. Behind the Resolute desk, the president of the United States leaned back in his padded wooden-and-leather swivel chair, his fingers interlocked across his chest. Only a few inches of cigar butt were left, visible in the right corner of his mouth.
No matter what the decision on the trip, Chief of Staff Henry Hodges was thankful his boss wasn’t babysitting today. The twins, Ches and Wes, were one of a number of reasons Hodges was thankful he had successfully eluded marriage.
Henry guessed the president’s mind was made up, down, and locked. Henry could only sit on one of two wheat-colored sofas perpendicular to the desk, leftovers from the previous occupant. The chief of staff was convinced the former president had them placed so that no one could look at the desk without turning his head, a subtle means of discouraging arguments.
And arguments there had been aplenty as the past chief executive had not so subtly tried to overcome the constitutional restraints that had seriously hampered his plans for the country, plans the recent election had demonstrated were less than popular.
None of that, though, was why Henry was here today. His duty, as he saw it, was to do the near impossible: Change the president’s mind. As the president’s campaign manager, he had had to develop certain persuasive skills varying from diplomacy to the political equivalent of breaking legs.
The president, whose boyish good looks and a penetrating gaze that screamed sincerity had earned him comparisons to a young John F. Kennedy, shook his head. “Forget about it, Henry, I’m going.”
“I’m not suggesting you cancel, Mr. President. I’m urging you, though, to reschedule.” Hodges twisted on the sofa to put his body as close to face-to-face as the furniture arrangement permitted, a less than comfortable contortion and finally stood. “Give us a chance to verify this thing’s location and destroy it.”
The president unlocked his fingers and leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “I’m not going to postpone my meeting with the first democratically elected president of Egypt. I can’t risk offending him or the rest of the Moslem world. Extending the hand of friendship to Egypt and all of Islam is the only solution to the conflict between the Middle East and the West.”
More like extending the hand of friendship to an angry rattlesnake, Henry thought. But he said, “You won’t achieve a hell of a lot if you’re dead.”
“Life is not without risk, Henry. Audaces fortuna iuvat.”
The president was fond of Latin aphorisms, a habit his class-warfare-mongering opponents characterized as elitist. To their surprise, the electorate decided to restore a modicum of culture and learning to the White House.
“That may be so, Mr. President, but we have credible evidence Al Qaeda or their allies intend to shoot down Air Force One just like they did the Air France flight.” Hodges stood and took a stroll around the sofa. “If nothing else, think of Suzanne. She’s far too young to be a widow, and the twins need their father.”
The president shook his head. “I can’t be seen as cowering away from some sort of Star Wars weapon that we don’t really even know exists. Can you imagine what the Post and Times et al would do with that? Hell, I can even see a Saturday Night Live skit.”
Hodges was well aware the president was not the darling of the majority of the media. His promise to balance the budget in his first term had resulted in austerity programs that had already reduced the deficit while enraging those no longer subsidized by the government.
“I don’t understand how this thing is supposed to work… if it works at all.”