Acts of faith (98 page)

“And I’ll have to trust that you will?”

“Trust is a wonderful thing,” Wes drawled.

The next day, as she spoke to Ken Eismont in what had been the Pathways compound but was now under new management, she recalled Michael’s rule: In Sudan the choice is never between the right thing and the wrong thing but between what is necessary and what isn’t. She made a slight revision—in Sudan, the necessary thing
is
the right thing—which eased the twitches of conscience she experienced, despite her conviction that her plan had divine approval. She wasn’t deceiving Ken and the WorldWide Christian Union to enrich herself or anyone else, but saving lives, aiding in the defense of her people. Who could fault her for using all and any means at her disposal?

When she’d approached him after breakfast, Ken was less than cordial but also less hostile than the last time they’d seen each other. At any rate, he was open to talking to her. They went into the recreation hut and sat behind the billiard table. To evoke his sympathies and improve his opinion of her, she explained the reason for Negev’s presence and related the horrors that the Nuba had recently suffered. Having softened him up, she came to the point: A slave retriever was coming to New Tourom with more than four hundred Nuban captives.

“Four hundred?”

Nodding, she told him, with all the sincerity at her command, that her husband had sent her to Loki to find out if her former employers could arrange a redemption mission. “I was going to see Santino to contact you in Switzerland. I didn’t know you were here already till I ran into Tara yesterday.”

Ken removed his glasses, blew on the lenses, and wiped them with a handkerchief.

“When?”

“In a few days.”

He asked if she knew what were the retriever’s terms. The standard, she replied. Fifty dollars a head. “But he wants payment in U.S., not Sudanese,” she added, a dryness in her mouth.

He flicked his eyebrows and glanced at the blank satellite TV, on a platform hung from the ceiling. “That’s not the way we usually do things.”

“I told him that. I think this is his way of rewarding himself for the chances he took. It’s really dangerous up there. Maybe you could make an exception in this case?”

“Do you know this guy?”

“He’s not an Arab,” she answered. “A Nuban Muslim.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “We were planning to leave this afternoon. I’ll need to find out if the team can extend their stay, then go to Nairobi to put the money together. And I’d like to see if I can bring some media along. Four hundred—we’ve never done that many at one time.”

Feeling both appalled and excited by how easily he’d been taken in, she asked him to call her on the radio a day in advance of his arrival. The captives could be assembled near the airstrip, sparing the team a long trek.

With the first hurdle behind her, she went to Knight Air and begged from Fitz space for herself and Negev on the next relief flight to New Tourom. One was scheduled for that afternoon, but it was fully loaded. To make room for them, cargo would have to be taken off. Then do it! she commanded. It was critical that she get back immediately.

Michael was furious with her for disobeying his orders. Her safety, her very life depended on her doing as she was told. He wasn’t mollified by her explanation for her hasty return. He thought her scheme outlandish and didn’t see how she could bring it off. She begged him to trust her. She knew what needed to be done and how to do it, but she had precious little time and would need his full cooperation. It took a while, but she brought him around.

Accompanied by her phalanx of guards and by interpreters fluent in the various Nuban tongues, Quinette spent the next three days scouring the refugee camp for people who looked the part—the most underfed and ill-clothed. Michael had loaned her a couple of men to help select the cast. Working six to seven hours a day, she mustered four hundred and ten, then assembled them and told them what she wanted them to do. It was very important that they listen carefully and follow her instructions. Through three different interpreters—a very imperfect medium—she tried to explain the connection between the roles they were to play and the delivery of the rockets, guns, and bullets that could be their salvation. Her company appeared bewildered, but the promise of payment, in the form of extra food and clothing, to be drawn from the stores of relief supplies, got them into the spirit of the thing. They enjoyed the novelty, the respite from the monotony of their existence.

She held auditions, choosing a dozen men and women who would give testimony about their enslavement. Drawing on her past experiences, she created a story for each of them, then coached them and the interpreters on what to say. From town, she picked a bright young Muslim to act as the retriever, guaranteeing him a modest cash payment.

The effort was as exhausting as managing the relief operation. Her nerves felt like overstrung piano wires. When, five days after she’d left Loki, Ken called on the radio to say that he and the team would be arriving the next morning, the audaciousness of what she was doing nearly overwhelmed her. Was it really she engineering a hoax—no other word for it—of this magnitude? She collected herself and used the remainder of the day to conduct a kind of dress rehearsal. Then she marched her troupe to the airfield and had them camp out nearby. A night in the open would add to their haggard appearance, make them look more like captives who had come a long way on foot. Inflicting more suffering on people who had suffered so much brought pricks of guilt; but the purpose demanded it, the purpose justified it. She must keep the purpose uppermost in her mind, lest she falter.

Outwardly, she was composed; inwardly, no director or playwright on opening night experienced the anxiety Quinette did when Tara’s Caravan landed at about nine in the morning. Ken stepped out, wearing a soft, short-brimmed hat that looked like a codger’s beach hat. Jim Prewitt, heavier, older, blinking into the mean sunlight, followed him; then came Jean and Mike; then Santino holding the prize, an airline bag of cash; and the media contingent, two correspondents and a film crew.

She greeted each of them, her Nuban dress and hairstyle drawing curious looks from the reporters, then led the group to a grove of trees, beneath which the make-believe slaves were assembled. They looked the role indeed—Quinette herself would have taken them for the real thing—and they played it as instructed, maintaining a wary silence. After introducing him to the retriever, who likewise put in a good performance, she gave Ken a list of names, whispering that she’d done some preliminary work for him. “There’s a check mark by the ones who want to tell their stories,” she said, her heart fluttering with one rhythm, her stomach with another. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick.

Less than three hours later, she watched the Cessna take off and felt she could soar with it, such was her relief. A grain sack filled with twenty thousand five hundred dollars was at her feet. Two women giving testimony had gotten stage fright and forgotten their lines but remembered after some prompting from an interpreter. Otherwise, the thing had come off without a hitch. The sight of Ken typing fictions of captivity into his laptop brought a new prickling of conscience, which she salved with a prayer for forgiveness and this thought: Ken would benefit, too. The fresh publicity would garner for the WorldWide Christian Union contributions far exceeding twenty thousand.

She and Negev returned to Loki the next day. Wes said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” when he opened the sack and pulled out bricks of hundred-dollar bills. To make sure he kept his end of the bargain, she flew with him to the pickup point on the Uganda border and then on to New Tourom, the Hawker crammed with ammunition boxes, missiles, and launchers. Michael was waiting at the airfield. Observing the off-load, he held her and said, “You are a marvel.”

In all innocence and with perfect certitude, she pointed at the sky and said she’d had a lot of help.

Her life resumed its normal pace—teaching school, ministering, tending her garden. The war had gone into a lull and, deeming it safe to travel, Fancher and Handy departed on one of their evangelizing journeys to a distant town. Michael forbade her to go. Too dangerous, he said, even with half a dozen armed men to watch over her. By this point she thought the threat of assassination was overblown, but she complied without further protest—and was glad she did when, later, she observed Yamila flirting with Michael with her eyes. Yamila’s demeanor and expression underwent a dramatic change whenever he was near, the she-leopard domesticating herself instantly into a demure kitten. Illiterate peasant or no, this, Quinette thought, is a woman who knows how to lure a man.

The missionaries returned from their trip, having harvested several more souls to Christ. For the week following, they oversaw the final repairs to St. Andrew’s mission. The last chips in the church’s facade were patched, windows delivered by an aid plane were installed, and the brass bell and dedication plaque were polished. It looked splendid in the shimmering dust of late afternoon, the trees laying long shadows on mown grounds webbed with rock-lined footpaths leading to the school, to the tailor and carpentry shops, to the cottages where teachers would live when peace came, and to the bungalow that would shelter visiting clergy. The mission compound breathed an atmosphere of order and serenity, and Quinette and Michael gazed at it with pleasure and hope.

A rededication ceremony was held that Sunday, Fancher conducting a praise service. Quinette got chills, listening to familiar hymns made unfamiliar by African voices, African drums. Oh, they made a joyful noise! Fancher delivered a homily, promising better times, assuring the congregation that the will of God would never lead them to where the grace of God could not keep them. He concluded with a prayer for rain.

Afterward, perhaps concerned that the white minister’s petition would prove efficacious and diminish his already-diminished authority, the kujur employed gangs of young people to run through town, whirling sticks tied to long cords. They made a droning sound, like ceiling fans turned to high speed. The devices, part of the rainmaker’s traditional toolkit, were supposed to inspire the heavens to open.

At sundown, as she stood to stretch after weeding her vegetable patch, Quinette looked southward and saw a belt of black clouds, embroidered by lightning. It advanced with incredible speed, pulled by the high wind that drove before it, shaking the palms and baobabs, bending the tall, burnt grass in the meadows. She ran into the house just as a deluge slashed across the courtyard, accompanied by a crash of thunder. Watching the rain transform dust into mud, listening to it splatter against the makuti roof, she wondered if she had unconsciously absorbed the Nubans’ superstitions, if the mountains’ silences and spaces and shadowed crevasses had turned her imagination toward realms unperceived by the senses, her mind toward belief in spirits whose supernatural powers could be invoked through chants and magic; for she was inclined to give the kujur’s whirling sticks as much credit as Fancher’s prayer.

Michael dashed in, totally drenched, laughing. “It has broken!” he shouted, picking her up, spinning her around. “It has broken!”

He peeled off his uniform, kicked off his boots, and as the wind fell, went outside to stand naked in the rain, facing a sky twice darkened by night and cloud, his mouth open. Quinette pulled her dress over her head and joined him, drinking the rain, bathing in it. They laughed hysterically, choking as they laughed, eyes squeezed shut against the heavy wet darts that stung their faces. Then the arms of a former wrestler scooped her off her feet and carried her inside, and she knew, falling on the bed, that this would be the time. The spirits who had broken the drought on the land would break the one in her.

T
HE RAINS DID
not fall incessantly but swept over the mountains in tightly wound, localized storms. Avoiding them, government planes resumed bombing, the Antonovs flying at altitudes beyond the range of antiaircraft guns and missiles. The reports crackling over the radio from Michael’s subcommands made it clear that Khartoum was targeting the Nuba’s airstrips. Three were struck in as many days. The purpose was obvious, said Michael. The blockade had failed to stop aid from reaching the Nuba, so now the government intended to isolate it, making it impossible for relief planes to land.

A broadcast on the state-controlled radio, picked up on the shortwave, confirmed his speculations. He translated the Arabic: Sudan’s vice-president had made a formal protest to the United Nations Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, charging that the UN relief operation was being used to channel aid not to civilians but to the SPLA . . . Reliable information had it that some of this aid included weapons . . . In the Nuba mountains in particular, planes based in Kenya were known to have delivered shoulder-fired rockets, one of which was used to down a civilian aircraft carrying oil workers . . . The nation’s military forces had been ordered to strike back and were winning glorious victories on every front.

“So they are on to the game,” Michael said, switching the radio off. “I am amazed it took them so long.”

A fourth airfield was hit. Like the other three, the runway had been blasted end to end. Considering that the bombs were dumped, like cargo in an airdrop, from aircraft four miles up, this degree of precision was remarkable.

New Tourom’s was the fifth.

The air raid came shortly after school had started. Quinette was helping Moses with a spelling lesson when the ground quivered and there came a terrible, ragged roar, followed by another, dust and dirt shaking down from the grass roof. With panicked screams, the pupils fled the building before she or Moses could shepherd them to a shelter. At the same time her guards rushed in and swept her into the nearest one. Just before tumbling into the hole, she glimpsed a wall of smoke rising above the ridgeline three miles away. Antiaircraft fired ceaselessly, but neither they nor the rockets could touch the high-flying planes. The soldiers might as well have thrown spears, and Quinette reflected bitterly on the futility of her effort. She reflected also on the futility of what Michael had done, downing the oil company plane. Had she held on to these thoughts and carried them through, she might have reached some interesting conclusions about actions that arise from deep convictions; but they exited her mind within seconds.