Their next stop was a veritable arms supermarket, situated at an abandoned railroad station on the north side of the city. No wares were displayed there. The dealers, about a half a dozen middle-aged men, sat at small folding tables, waiting for customers and playing dice. While a demonstration could always be arranged, no merchandise was displayed, and browsers were very much frowned on. The dealers assumed the people who came in knew what they wanted and were prepared to buy. No one would try and steal a customer from another. If a dealer a customer had worked with before was out, the others would tell him he had to return the next day. New customers were assigned according to a rotation worked out among the men themselves. If the first man in the rotation did not have what the buyer was looking for, he would be referred to the next in line, and so on until satisfied.
The last time he had been here, Nuri bought a few rifles from a man who gave his name as Amin. Amin—his true name was Mohammad al-Amin Junqai—sat in the furthest corner of the building, next to a coal stove that had probably never been used since being shipped from Italy in the late 1930s.
“I need a dozen MP5s,” said Nuri when Amin looked up. He wanted top of the line submachine guns. “Ammunition for them. Not too much ammunition.”
“Will you pay in euros?” asked Amin. “Or American dollars?”
“THEY DON’T SEE THEMSELVES AS EVIL,” NURI TOLD DANNY as they continued outfitting themselves. “They’re shopkeepers and salesmen, fulfilling a need.”
“They’re selling guns and stolen merchandise.”
“It may have been stolen, but not by them,” said Nuri. “All they know is that they got them for a good price. Wal-Mart doesn’t ask you how you’re going to use a rifle when you buy it.”
“That’s different,” said Danny. “It’s for hunting.”
“If you’re having moral qualms—”
“I’m not having moral qualms,” said Danny. “I’m just trying to understand how they think. Why don’t these people sell over the border?”
“You mean, why don’t they sell to the rebels? They would, if the rebels would come here and pay these prices. We’re paying at least triple what they would. On the bullets? Ten times as much. And they have trouble coming over the border. The IDs are checked, their vehicles searched. Going into Sudan’s easy,” added Nuri. “The Ethiopians wouldn’t care if you brought a missile over, as long as it’s leaving the country. But for the rebels, just getting into Ethiopia can be a serious problem.”
“So we bring them the guns.”
“No. We stop short of that. We just get in close and see what happens. If Jasmine is still around, they get back in the picture. If not, we find out who’s bankrolling these guys. That leads us to the aluminum tubes.”
“Getting close may mean selling guns,” said Danny.
“I can play the arms dealer,” said Nuri.
“Uncle Dpap has already met you.”
“They probably think that story was bull.” Nuri had made such switches before, but he realized that going from a milquetoast professor to an arms dealer presented a believability problem.
He could have Hera do it. She came off like a she-devil.
“I can handle it,” said Danny.
“Well, put on your glasses and look threatening,” said Nuri, rounding the hill. “We’re just about at the meat market.”
WHAT NURI CALLED A MEAT MARKET WAS ACTUALLY AN OLD convent about three miles out of town. It was now under the control of Herman Hienckel, a German expatriate. Hienckel did not own the property, which was still on the rolls of the church that once sponsored the sisters who’d lived there. But he was clearly in control of it, as he had been for the decade.
Hienckel was not a man to have moral qualms. At seventeen he had joined the East German army; by nineteen he was a sergeant, one of the youngest if not the youngest. After washing out of special operations training for a “lack of discipline”—he’d gotten into a fight with a fellow soldier—he left the army. He was lost in civilian life, living on the dole, everything complicated by the reunification of the two halves of his country. Out of desperation he took a job as a military trainer in Iraq before the first American Gulf war.
It was an extreme mistake, one that he could easily have paid for with his life, as the unit he helped train was among the first to occupy Kuwait. But in what would prove to be a career-defining stroke of luck, Hienckel managed to hook up with a British MI6 agent two days before the allied invasion began. He supplied the man with a few tidbits of intelligence and helped keep him from being detected by the Iraqis. When the invasion started, Hienckel tried to escape to the allied side. After being captured—or surrendering, depending on one’s point of view—Hienckel played his intelligence connection to the hilt and was eventually released.
He ended the war by helping an American Marine unit interrogate prisoners. His language skills were not particularly good, but they were far better than the Marines’, and Hienckel was easily able to gloss over anything he didn’t understand. From there he became a useful facilitator for different forces in Kuwait and the wider Gulf, occasionally doing business with the CIA as well as British intelligence, until his list of enemies grew so long that he found it prudent to move on.
A brief stint in Somalia cost him the hearing in this left ear and left him with a permanent limp, but it also gave him a bankable reputation as a soldier of fortune, and a tidy sum locked in a Swiss bank account. He moved to Ethiopia and began providing services there to whatever force could afford them.
While some members of the Ethiopian government had accused him of forming a private army, his business model was much more modest. Hienckel was more like an employment counselor: He trained men interested in getting work as security guards and mercenaries—there was no meaningful difference in Ethiopia—then pocketed a portion of their salary after arranging jobs for them. Adjusted for inflation and the exchange rate, the amount he earned was barely greater than the dole wages he’d made back in Germany. In Gambella however, they made him a rich man.
Nuri’s appearance troubled him. He did not know for certain that the American worked for the CIA—it was too easy for poseurs to suggest that they did—but he had all the earmarks, especially a studied disregard for the difficulties an entrepreneur like Hienckel faced, and an almost whining determination to try and talk his price down. One could not afford to refuse to do business with the Western intelligence services. Angering them would not only cut down on referrals, but could prove extremely hazardous if word got around that you were no longer one of their friends. A known CIA connection was considered safer than a bulletproof vest.
“My friend, you are coming up in the world,” Hienckel said to Nuri and Danny when his men escorted them into his office. It had been the chapel of the convent. “You are driving Land Cruisers now.”
“Not as nice as your Ratel,” said Nuri, referring to the South African armored personnel Hienckel had parked in the yard.
“Very poor gas mileage,” said Hienckel. “And who is your friend?”
“I’d rather not say. He needs to hire some escorts for a few days, perhaps two weeks. Men who ask no questions.”
Hienckel glanced at Danny. Dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a long African shirt, he exuded an air of quiet control. His eyes held Hienckel’s without emotion. He was clearly not Ethiopian, but Hienckel couldn’t tell if he was American, like Nuri, or a European returning to his homeland.
Did he trust him?
Of course not. But so long as he paid, there was no need for trust.
“I specialize in men who ask no questions,” he said. “Let us make the arrangements.”
18
Jabal Dugu, Sudan