Mission Liberty (14 page)

“I guard people with my life,” Sykes said. “Suitcases, I need a little more information. What’s in it?”

She hesitated.

“I suppose I have to trust you, don’t I?” she said, biting her lip. “The case contains the scripts for
Star Wars VII, VIII,
and
IX.
The cover pages are bogus, but the scripts are real.”

“I thought there weren’t going to be any more,” Sykes said.

“That’s what you’re supposed to think,” Gabby said. “I play Han Solo and Princess Leia’s daughter. If those scripts get stolen
and/or leaked onto the Internet, the whole thing falls apart. I also want you to make arrangements for me to meet this man.”

She handed him a piece of paper with the name
Hubert Nketia
written on it, along with an address.

“This is in Kumari,” Sykes said. “The last I heard, you’re going to need more than thirty troops to get to Kumari. LPLF roadblocks
start just north of Baku.”

“Hubert helped me when I adopted Jonathan,” she said. “He knows everybody in Kumari. He’s told me he’ll arrange for rebel
troops to meet us halfway and escort us. You just get us there. Have you heard of a man named John Dari?”

“I have,” Sykes said.

“I’m going to be meeting with him after I meet Hubert,” Duquette said.

“Why are you meeting with Nketia?” Sykes asked.

“That would be my business, wouldn’t it?” the woman said.

MacKenzie awoke to the sound of men shouting. When she stuck her head out of her tent, she saw three girls running in the
opposite direction, their bare feet pounding the dust. At the same time, a girl in a green jumper, resembling something like
a Girl Scout, approached her out of breath and said something in a language Mack didn’t understand.

“I speak English,” MacKenzie said.

“Dr. Chaline,” the girl said. “I have to find Dr. Chaline.”

“I don’t know where he is,” MacKenzie said. “I just woke up.”

The girl ran off.

Mack quickly dressed and ran to the scene of the shouting. Nine men carrying machetes had entered the camp and were having
a violent discussion with Evelyn Warner and an older African male who was trying to translate for her. Corporal Okempo, holding
his rifle at an angle across his chest, stood at her side. Mack thought he looked frightened out of his mind. The leader of
the men with machetes was wearing a bright green shirt. He was bald, about forty, and spoke with his machete raised in the
air to accent his speech. He shouted, pointing toward the refugees, and at his compatriots, who seemed equally angry and equally
dangerous.

Mack found Cela hanging back from the center of the dispute.

“What’s going on?” she asked Cela. “What do they want?”

“I’m trying to understand,” Cela said. “They are looking for a girl named Sara Ochora. They think she is here.”

“Is she?” Mack asked.

Cela nodded.

“What do they want with her?”

“The man in the green shirt is explaining,” Cela says. “Sara Ochora was promised to his brother, but now he is dead. The brother
is dead, who she was betrothed to. So the man in the green shirt is claiming her as his right.”

“What did Sara have to say about the betrothal?”

“This happened before she was born,” Cela said. “The man in the green shirt is saying she has shed blood in an unclean way
and now his ancestors have taken high offense, and the gods have, too. This is why these calamities have been happening to
him and to his family and his village.”

“I don’t understand,” Mack said.

“Shh,” Cela said, listening a moment longer. “He says she had sex with four men before her nubility rites. She was not purified
and so she has committed
kyiribra.
This is a moral depravity. Her cousin reported her to these men and told them where they could find her. The cousin was obligated
to do this. And so misery will come and befall them until she has been taken back and removed from her abominable state.”

Evelyn Warner spoke with an equal vehemence, the man at her side doing his best to keep up with the translations.

“Tell him she was raped,” Warner said. “Tell him it’s the men who did this to her who have upset his ancestors and not Sara.”

The man in the green shirt screamed again.

“He says that it was voluntary,” Cela said.

“No!” Warner shouted. “No, not with four men! They told her if she didn’t go with them, that they would kill her family.”

“They kill them anyway!” the man in the green shirt shouted in English before returning to his native tongue. His grip on
his machete appeared to tighten.

“He says she should have let them kill her rather than submit to them,” Cela translated. “He says they will take her with
them—oh, my God!”

The man in the green shirt knocked the old man down, then pushed Evelyn Warner aside as she tried to stand her ground. A second
man grabbed Warner, holding her by the arm. When Corporal Okempo tried to intercede, three men knocked him down. Mack stepped
forward.

“Stop!” MacKenzie ordered, standing in front of him and holding her hand up. “Let her go. United Nations—if you have a complaint,
you can bring it to me.”

The would-be husband regarded her for a split second, scowled, knocked her hand aside, and brushed past her.

Mack drew her service Beretta and pointed it at the man, ordering him to stop.

Green Shirt froze.

She moved in front of them, holding the sidearm with both hands, then pointed it at the man who was restraining Evelyn Warner.

“Let her go!” Mack commanded. “Everyone lay down your weapons. Now!” The raiding party paused but kept their weapons. She
raised the pistol, aiming it squarely between Green Shirt’s eyes. He tipped his head back, smirking, defiant, so she stepped
closer, lowering the weapon until it was pointed at his balls.

He dropped the weapon. His clan members dropped theirs as well.

“Everyone lie down,” she commanded. “On your stomachs. Corporal, bring those two over here. Everybody down, now! Cela—help
me out here. Tell them what I want.”

Corporal Okempo regained his authority and came to her assistance, covering the men with a fierce expression on his face,
shouting at them in a tongue Mack couldn’t identify. She’d grabbed a handful of flex cuffs from her bag and used them, quickly
moving from prisoner to prisoner until she’d bound each man’s hands behind his back, looping the cuff through their belts
whenever possible. She looped a heavy orange extension cord through their arms and around a mango tree before tying it off
with a reef knot to deter them from fleeing, and when she was done, she told Okempo to come back with enough men to control
the situation. She finally commanded Cela to take some girls with strong arms and throw the machetes into the river, as far
out as they could throw them.

Evelyn Warner had been tending to the old man, picking him up and dusting him off. He seemed to be all right. She sent him
away, then approached MacKenzie.

“Are you all right?” Mack asked her.

“Thank you, Mary, I’m all right,” Warner said. “You?”

“I’m well,” MacKenzie said. “What’ll we do with these fellows, though?”

“I’ve sent for the queen mother,” Evelyn said. “The matriarch of their clan. She happens to be here, too.” Warner leaned in
and whispered. “I don’t know who you are, or what your real name is, but you’re not with the United Nations Women’s Health
Initiative—that much is certain.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” MacKenzie said. “I grew up with six brothers, that’s all. A girl learns quickly how to handle
herself under such circumstances.”

Warner held her arms out in front if her, her forearms touching hand to elbow, made horns with her top hand and waggled the
fingers on her bottom hand, which MacKenzie recognized as American Sign Language slang for “bullshit.”

When the queen mother arrived, an older woman who walked with a cane, accompanied by two attendants, Warner and Cela explained
to her what had happened. The old woman listened, then went to the man in the green shirt. She spoke scoldingly at first,
then listened to him for fifteen minutes as he pled his case to her. When he was done, the old woman stood and walked around
in contemplation for a few minutes before returning to him to explain her decision to him. Cela translated for Warner and
MacKenzie.

“She says to him she will perform
anoka
to reverse the
kyiribra,
” Cela explained. “And pour libations to
Onyankopen, Aasse Yaa, nananom abosompem
and
nananom nsamamfoe.
To God, the earth, the thousand gods of the ancestors, and to the spirits of the dead. She will cover Sara Ochora’s genitals
with the blood of a sheep and break an egg over her head. Then Sara must agree to never return to her village. This will lift
the curse and bring peace to his tribe.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” MacKenzie said.

Mack was in her tent, going over what had happened in her head and wondering if there might have been a better way to handle
the situation, when Warner entered and sat on the cot opposite hers. Mack smiled weakly. Warner took a tape recorder out of
her pocket, took the microcassette out of the recorder, and laid the two pieces on the cot.

“This is off the record,” Warner said. “I’m going to need to know who you are. I can’t force you to tell me, but what I can
do is tell Dr. Chaline my suspicions, and he’ll have you removed. I suspect you have good reasons to be here, but I’m not
going to let you stay here and jeopardize the lives of all these women—don’t interrupt me.”

Mack opened her mouth, then closed it.

“It’s just too fragile here to have to factor in an unknown element,” Warner said. “You may not have noticed it, but we’re
having our little tea party here on the top of the proverbial powder keg. We’re about three minutes away from utter chaos
at all times, so if you don’t talk to me, I’m going to have to take you out of the equation. I like you and I’m grateful to
you for what you did, and I dare say a little impressed, but enough.”

Warner waited.

Mack considered her options. She had none.

“Agent Colleen MacKenzie,” she said at last. “United States Army counterintelligence. I’d show you my badge and credentials
but we were advised to leave them behind. My boss, David DeLuca, told me not to blow my cover, but if I did, to give you his
regards.”

“David’s here?” Warner said, a smile spreading slowly across her face, warm and forgiving. MacKenzie nodded. “How is he? Last
I saw him, he was in hospital with a rather ghastly-looking halo of metal around his head with screws holding it in place.”

“Screwy as ever, but all right,” Mack said. “He told me I could trust you. I guess I don’t have any choice.”

“You don’t,” Warner said, “but you can. Why are you here?”

MacKenzie explained that their assignment was to gather intelligence on John Dari and his followers. She told Warner that
Stephen Ackroyd was currently arranging for her to meet with Imam Isfahan Dadullahjid, to see if he might be willing to help.
She said her government was concerned with curtailing the influence of the Islamic Pan-African Brotherhood in West Africa.

“And what are you going to do, exactly, with the intelligence you gather on John Dari?” Warner asked.

“We want to gather the facts,” Mack said softly. “The truth. What happens to the truth after it leaves our hands is out of
our control. I don’t personally think we know enough about him to make the call, right now, but I know people are worried
that he’s either a warlord like the ones we’ve been dealing with in Afghanistan, or he’s the African Osama bin Laden. We just
don’t know. We have satellite photographs of cannibal gangs doing things, committing atrocities—I’ve seen them with my own
eyes. He calls himself the ‘Ace of Spades’ like he can’t wait for us to make up our Ligerian deck of the fifty-two most wanted.
The satellite photographs I saw showed ace of spades playing cards. It’s our government’s position that what happened in Rwanda
in 1994 is not going to happen in Liger.”

Warner rolled her eyes.

“What?” Mack said.

“I’m sorry,” Warner said. “It just starts to sound a bit disingenuous after a while. I can say that—I’m English. We were the
world’s moral policemen for a hundred years, and look where it got us.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “And just between
us girls, I’m going to take a wild stab and say it has something to do with oil, too.”

She winked conspiratorially.

“I think if there’d been a drop of oil in Rwanda, Bill Clinton would have zipped up his pants and been on the job before anybody
could say, ‘Bob’s your uncle.’ And unless you have pictures of John Dari himself stirring the pot, don’t assume Dari’s involved,
just because somebody leaves a few aces of spades playing cards around a campsite. I’d be willing to bet the cards are a reference
to
Apocalypse Now
and not to Iraq. This place is steeped in American pop culture. That’s part of why the Muslims hate you, by the way. Your
pop culture is much stronger than theirs.”

“Maybe,” Mack said. “As our president might say, those who don’t repeat history are doomed to study it. I’m trying to stay
focused on John Dari.”

“Well, you can’t really separate him from African history,” Warner said. “He’s a product of it. I don’t think Dadullahjid
is going to help you. I have some rather hideous advice, but if you go, let Stephen do the talking. Dadullahjid hates women.
Veil and head scarf at the very least. You could ask me about Dari, if you don’t think I’m part of the elite liberal media
that can’t be trusted.”

“I’ll ask anybody,” Mack said. “We know people who knew Dari, but that trail goes cold when he returned to Africa.”

“Maybe I can pick it up for you,” Warner said. “He worked here. I’m not sure when he started. Hmm. Father Boateng would be
able to tell you when exactly.”

“Worked here doing what?”

“In the IDPs,” Warner said. “When you work in an internally displaced persons camp, you do just about everything from driving
a truck to performing surgery. Dr. L’Heureux, who worked at Camp Five and then here briefly before Dr. Chaline, was trying
to convince John to go to medical school because he was so good at helping out in the infirmary. I did a story on the famine,
long before the war started, in 1999. John Dari was my interpreter. The interpreter the Ligerian Press Office assigned me
wasn’t telling me what people were actually saying. I found that out when I interviewed Dari. When we were done, John looked
at me and said, in perfect English, ‘Miss Warner, I think you’re being taken advantage of.’”