Sudan: A Novel (30 page)

Dan nodded. He knew all about Human Rights Watch and he could probably have named the Christian mission organizations, too.

“And I know what happened to the delegation of clergyman and NAACP members who went over there a few months ago,” Washington continued. “I know they were wined and dined and given the scenic tour.”

“I hear the feeding centers, the refugee camps and the slave auctions aren’t very popular tour bus destinations,” Dan said.

“But I don’t know how much of that kind of information has made it into the hands of my fellow black legislators.” Dan started to protest, and Washington waved him off.

“OK, I know the information has made it into their hands; I just don’t know how much of it has made it into their heads or their hearts.”

Washington paused for effect. “And I do know that the gum arabic and soft drink lobbies have turned up the heat hot enough to fry pork rinds.”

Dan picked up the orange-headed lizard and turned it slowly around in his hand. “It would be hard to miss them galloping up and down these hallways. They make more noise than a herd of caribou.” He dropped the bantering tone. “They’ve put a lot of money into a lot of political war chests, and they carry a big club with jobs in a lot of districts.” He paused and set the statue back on the table. “And this is an election year.”

“Look, I’m just a junior congressman from the tundra in the great frozen northland, and I still have trouble finding the executive washrooms around here.” Washington was being humble. In fact, he was a rising star, acknowledged as a man with a bright future in Congress. “But I do bring one thing to the party. I’m your best connection to the Black Caucus.”

Dan sat up in his seat. Backing by the Black Caucus on any issue, but particularly on one involving black slavery, would be huge.

“You’re proposing?”

“I’m in good with Walters and a couple of the others, but that inner circle, whew, that’s a tough nut to crack. There are a handful of men, you know who they are, who call all the shots. Most of the others are hesitant to vote against them for fear of looking like a traitor to the race.”

Dan slapped his hand down on the arm rest, “Alonzo! We’re talking about
helping
blacks!”

“I know that. Just hear me out.” Washington crossed the room and sat down again on the couch across from Dan. “My big ace in the hole is that Avery Thompson is one of the big three, and he’s been sort of my mentor ever since I got here.”

Dan was impressed. Washington’s star must, indeed, be rising if he’d caught the eye of one of the most powerful men—black or white—in the House.

Washington leaned toward Dan and spoke slowly and deliberately. "I’ve thought about this long and hard, and there is only one way I can do you any good right now. And that’s to arrange a meeting for you with Thompson and the others.”

Dan felt like he had just been handed the pole position at the Indianapolis 500.

“You come in and do your dog-and-pony show, answer questions, that kind of thing...”

“That’s all I’ve ever asked, Alonzo, a chance to give people the facts. Simple reality here is so compelling it doesn’t need ribbons or wrapping paper.”

“But I want to be straight with you about one thing up front.” Washington’s tone held none of Dan’s exuberance.

“I always like to know what to expect.”

“I can’t afford to go down with you if this ship sinks, Dan. I’m telling you right now that whichever way the wind blows, I go. I’ll introduce you, set you up. You’d better have all your ducks beak to tail feathers before you get there because once we’re in that paneled room, you’re on your own. If they support you, I’ll support you. If they don’t, I don’t.”

There was a long pause before Washington asked, “You in?”

Dan put out his hand and gave Alonzo’s a firm shake. “I’m in.”

Ron had wrapped the last roll of film in a pair of socks and was about to hide it deep in his knapsack when Dr. Greinschaft walked into the room.

“The radio message I sent out on the high frequency the other day got to Chumwe OK,” he said.

Greinschaft’s mission organization operated a feeding center in Chumwe, and he had offered to get in touch with associates there and ask them to help Ron and Masapha.

“I told them who you are and hinted at vhat you are doing in Sudan. They vill figure it out; they are smart people. I know they will serve you in any vay they can. For sure, they will send zumbody to meet you at the dock in Kosti. And they will pass a message on to your BBC contact in Cairo, too.”

“Now you’re talking, Doc!” Ron was delighted.

“But ve’ve got a problem.”

Ron stuffed the film into the bottom of his sack. “How so?” 

“Come with me and see for yourself.”

Masapha and Koto were sitting on the steps outside the clinic when Ron and Greinschaft approached.

“What’s up, Masapha?” Ron asked.

Masapha pointed to the boy. “He says he is going with us.”

When he saw Ron’s response, he hurried on. “I have told him we go to the north to do another thing that is not about him, but he is certain anyway that we are going to help him.”

“You need to tell him that wishin’ don’t make it so. That boat’s actually going to be here today, and you and I have a lot of lost ground to cover!”

Ron was approaching an urgency-anxiety meltdown. The decision to wait at the clinic for the steamer had cost them almost a month. The first steamer had been 10 days late, then blew a boiler the morning they were set to depart. The second steamer never showed up at all. Dr. Greinschaft had confirmed by radio that the third would be at the dock in Lusong within the hour.

“We’ve been sitting on our thumbs here for way too long, and I’m not wasting any more time.” Ron knew as soon as he said it that “thumbs” was not going to compute. “Look, just tell him no. Plain and simple. No.”

Ron had taken only a couple of steps toward his stack of equipment when Masapha spoke. “Ron... ”

Ron’s shoulders slumped.

“Masapha, we can’t go on a hunting expedition for this kid’s brothers.” He turned back to face the two small people—one Arab, one black—sitting on the porch. “I know you want to help him, and we did. Shoot, we saved his life! But we have a job to do now, and we’ve got to keep the main thing the main thing.”

“You know what he will do if we do not take him with us,” Masapha said. “He will do what you or I would do. He will go alone to find his brothers.”

Ron could feel himself getting sucked into an argument that wasn’t going anywhere. Why were they even talking about this? They couldn’t possibly help this kid find two slaves among hundreds of thousands.

“How in the world do you expect us to... ?”

Masapha interrupted him; he had it all figured out.

“I would like to proposition you.” Ron let it pass. “Your plan is that you are to go to Khartoum while I stay behind and ask more information, right?”

Ron nodded.

“We can help the boy only this much—we can take him with us to Kosti. I will stay there with Koto while you make the journey to Khartoum. When you return, you and I will take the boy to the place of the doctor’s friend in Chumwe. He can stay there safe with the workers at the feeding center, and we can be away to do our job!”

Masapha’s plan had more holes in it than a wino’s raincoat! That boy would not stay “safe” in Chumwe. If he was determined to find his brothers, nobody could stop him from looking. Besides, what the boy did or did not do was none of their business; he wasn’t their problem anymore.

Ron was about to point all that out to Masapha when it suddenly hit him what was really going on. None of this made any sense because it didn’t have to make any sense, at least not to Masapha. The truth still in the husk was simple: Masapha wasn’t ready to give this kid up. Maybe he never would be—which opened up another huge can of worms!—but he certainly wasn’t ready now. All the rest of it was smoke and mirrors.

Ron threw in the towel. “OK,” he said.

“OK he can come with us?”

“Yes, OK he can come with us.” Before Masapha had a chance to respond, Ron continued firmly. “But we need to have an understanding here. When I get back from Khartoum, you and I go bye-bye and the boy stays in Chumwe. Are we on the same page about that?”

“Our pages are the same.” Masapha beamed.

He turned to translate the verdict for Koto, but the boy had read their faces and said something to Masapha in Lokuta.

“Koto said to tell you that on your outside you are a white man, but”--he tapped his chest--“on your inside, you are a Lokuta warrior.”

“Swell. That’ll be a real conversation-stopper around the operating table if I ever have my appendix out.”

Masapha didn’t understand and Ron didn’t expect him to.

The steamer actually pulled in at the Lusong dock only three hours late. Ron picked up his assorted gear and the sack of food—including homemade bread!—that Helena Greinschaft had prepared for their trip.

“Doc, I don’t know how to thank--”

“You tell your story, that will be tanks enough.” The old man took Ron’s hand and shook it firmly. “Helena and I vill pray every day that God keeps you safe.”

“You do that!” Ron said.

And he meant it.

T
he meeting room door was open. Inside, an assortment of House members and Senators milled around, talked and enjoyed their after-lunch coffee, served on a table by the window.

When Alonzo Washington spotted Dan, he smiled and crossed the room to greet him.

“Glad you could make it.” He reached out and shook Dan’s hand, then held on a beat after the handshake. “I look forward to what you have to say.”

Dan’s arrival served as a signal, and the legislators began to take their seats around the long conference table in the center of the room. Dan’s assistant, Chad Mattingly, went to the window and closed the heavy drapes, then quietly hooked his laptop to cables that came out of the wall.

At Representative Washington’s cue, Dan set down his briefcase and joined him behind a small lectern at the head of the conference table.

“I want to thank all of you for coming to this special meeting,” Alonzo began. “I know we’re all busy, so we’ll get started.”

He turned and nodded toward Dan. “We’ve all read Congressman Wolfson’s statements in the congressional newsletter and the newspapers, so we don’t need to talk about why we’re here. Our colleague is the sponsor of PL 99-057, the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act. You all have copies of it. In brief, the act is an effort to force the government of Sudan to stop human rights violations or face steadily stiffer sanctions from the United States. The representative from Indiana has requested a private, confidential meeting with the leaders of the Black Caucus. And that’s what you have agreed to—nothing beyond that. We’re here to listen to what he has to say.”

Alonzo glanced at Dan and smiled. “I would like to remind each of you that in the past, Dan has strongly supported initiatives dear to our hearts.”

Two light claps of applause sounded at the end of the table, and Washington relaxed a little at the show of support.

“He has been a friend to the state of Michigan, and I am honored to present him to you...even if he is a Boilermaker.”

A few chuckles around the table lightened the atmosphere. Alonzo moved over to give Dan the space behind the lectern.

As Washington made his way to his seat, Dan surveyed the room. He had worked with some of the men and women seated there on key legislation; others he had strongly opposed on issues. They all sat expressionless; there was no way to read them. The only thing clear right now was that they wouldn’t give an inch. If he wanted two points, he would have to dribble the ball all the way down the court and dunk it by himself.

“Thank you for allowing me to speak to you today,” Dan said, his normally booming orator’s voice subdued for the smaller room. He nodded to Chad, who pushed a button, and a screen slowly descended from the ceiling on the wall to Dan’s right while he spoke.

“I care deeply about Sudan, and I passionately believe that we will have to answer to our consciences, to history and to God, if we sit idly by and allow the carnage there to continue unchallenged.”

He nodded again, and Chad started the PowerPoint presentation. A brightly colored map of Sudan flashed on the screen. The young man stepped to the wall switch, and the paneled room was plunged into semidarkness, except for the glow from the screen that lit up Dan’s face.

“This is simplistic, but in general terms, the northern part of Sudan is populated by Muslim Arabs, and the southern part is a conglomeration of more than 500 different tribal groups who are predominantly Christian, though there are a good many animists there, too.”

Dan gave a succinct history of the origin of the turmoil in the region, as Chad deftly coordinated his words with bullet points on the screen.

“After Sudan split off from Egypt in 1953, Khartoum allowed a separate regional government to administer the affairs of the south. But when Lieutenant General Omar Hassan al Bashir and the Sudanese People’s Armed Forces took power in 1989, the south’s democratically elected government was dissolved.”