Sudan: A Novel (33 page)

“Then do not let a bus to run you over!” Masapha told Ron earnestly. “Without your words, the pictures and the video and the sound recordings have not any value anymore.”

“Aw, come on, Masapha. If something happened to me, you could write this series,” Ron teased. He nudged the little man and grinned. “You know as much about the slave trade in Sudan as I do.”

Joak slowly lowered the mango in his hand, replaced it on the fruit stack and backed away from the little alcove. When he was sure he had gone unnoticed, he disappeared into the crowd.

Ron squinted at the sun’s position in the sky. “I think it’s late enough. Let’s head over to the dock and find our friend from Chumwe. I should be easy for him to spot. I probably have the only white face in Kosti.”

Masapha gestured for Koto to gather up the food, and the three of them dove back into the sea of humanity and swam toward the river.

Leo spotted Joak as the garishly dressed man wormed and weaved his way through the crowd and limped toward him. His gimpy right leg was not the result of some battle injury. He’d had some disease as a kid that withered the limb.

Excitement animated Joak’s ugly face, and he grinned a wide, toothless smile. “I found something!”

Leo held out a piece of blackened fish. Joak took it, but was too wired to eat.

“I think it’s something important. Very important.”

Leo crunched down on his own piece of fish. His gaze told Joak to give him the rest of the information and not leave him hanging.

“You said you did not want to go empty-handed to Faoud, that you wanted to have some little present to put him in a good mood toward us.”

Leo nodded and kept eating.

“I saw a white man, an American.”

So? Leo had seen plenty of Caucasians from time to time, petroleum company representatives, cotton buyers, gum brokers, U.N. envoys.

“He’s with an Arab from the north. The American is a journalist. He has information and is going to write a story about...”
Joak couldn’t resist a pause for effect. “About the slave trade in Sudan!”

Then Joak played his ace. “And he has pictures and video and sound recordings to go with the story!” His grin broadened to reveal upper and lower dark-pink gums. “Would this not be a thing Faoud would want to know?”

Leo’s face did not return the smile, but Joak could tell he was interested. “Take me to them. I want to see for myself.”

“This way.” Joak pointed toward the north end of the market by the dock. Leo dropped his half-eaten fish into the dirt and followed.

Near an old block building ringed with empty oil drums by the river sat a jeep, a slightly newer model than the one stolen from Ron in Lusong. The man in the driver’s seat wore rounded glasses and had shaggy blond hair so sun-bleached it was almost white. He looked like a California surfer. A tall African dressed conventionally in pants and a shirt sat beside him.

Both men quickly climbed out of the vehicle as soon as they saw Ron emerge from the crowd.

The Swiss driver, about Ron’s age, reached out his hand with a smile as bright as polished crystal. “You must be Mr. Wolfson! Lars Bergstrom.”

“Agot Maruta,” the African said and shook hands all around too.

“Glad to meet you both,” Ron introduced Masapha and Koto.

“No, Mr. Wolfson, it is we who are glad to meet
you.
Dr. Greinschaft has told us all about you. If there is anything we can do to help—anything at all—you have only to ask.”

Ron was surprised and touched by Bergstrom’s earnest welcome. No, not really surprised. These people were Christian missionaries with the same organization as Dr. Greinschaft, and the good doctor had been the real deal.

“Actually, I
could
use your help on something.” Ron looked around and spotted a pile of rubble, probably the remains of a collapsed building, just down the road from the last market stall. There was one wall still standing, and it cast a shadow over the rest of the rocks. “Let’s have a seat over there out of the sun and talk.”

The group crossed the dirt road and settled themselves as comfortably as possible on the rocks.

“Anybody want a guava?” Ron asked.

Bergstrom nodded, and Ron pulled out a piece of fruit, pitched it to him and tossed a raisin cake to Maruta. Then he extracted a banana for himself and held it up as if it were a wine glass to clink with the other “glasses” in a toast.

“Here’s to...what are we celebrating? I don’t even know what day it is.”

“It is Wednesday, May 21,” Bergstrom told him.

“Well, then, here’s to...” Ron thought for a moment, did some mental arithmetic, and his face broke into a huge grin. “Here’s to Memorial Day!”

Blank stares all around.

“Memorial Day is next Monday, and it’s an important holiday in my country. It’s a day to remember the people who gave their lives for America—and it’s the official first day of summer vacation.”

But it was more than either of those things to Ron. It was Family Day. The holiday never fell on Sunday when his father was busy from morning services to evening worship. And since 75 percent of his father’s congregation left town on Memorial Day, it had become a tradition that the whole Wolfson family spent the day together—with
no
interruptions, that was the rule. Ron and Dan both liked it better than Christmas.

Bergstrom held up his guava.

“Here’s to Memorial Day!” He clinked his fruit with whatever the others held up.

Then he lowered his voice and spoke softly. “We know why you’re here in Sudan and what you’re doing. I think we can help you in several ways, but first you must tell us your needs.”

Ron peeled back the yellow skin, took a bite of the banana and began to tell Bergstrom his plan. He explained that Masapha and Koto would remain in Kosti nosing around while he traveled to Khartoum to hook up with a friend from the BBC. He would give his friend the film, video and sound recordings he’d already made—write the stories to go with them—and then return to Kosti for the final part of his investigation.

“I don’t know where Masapha and I may go from here.” Ron said nothing about leaving Koto at their feeding center when he and Masapha struck out on their own. He figured he’d sort of ease into that information later. “I’m not sure where we’ll have to go to find what we’re looking for.”

“And that is?” Bergstrom asked.

“A slave owner,” Ron replied. “I want to talk to somebody who owns slaves, somebody who holds another human being hostage. I want to hear their side of the story.”

Both men from the feeding center looked surprised.

“And exactly how to you intend to pull that off?” Maruta asked.

“I don’t have any idea,” Ron answered honestly. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

Bergstrom shook his head. “You Americans! Is there anything you won’t try?”

The glasses that magnified his pale-blue eyes repeatedly slid down the sheen of sweat on his nose. He pushed them back up so he could see.

“Well, if you’re looking for a slave owner, you do not have to travel all over Sudan to find one,” he said. “You don’t have to go any farther than right here in Kosti. Plenty of people in Kosti own slaves. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the slave traders didn’t live here, too.”

Ron and Masapha exchanged a grateful look. It would be nice to find what they were looking for right under their noses instead of having to arrange transportation—on a boat, a bus, a donkey cart, or yet another jeep—and traipse all over the country peering under rocks.

“Then while I’m in Khartoum, Masapha can shake some trees right here in Kosti and see what falls out.”

“About your trip to Khartoum,” Bergstrom began, “I have some thoughts about that, if you’d like to hear them.”

Ron reached into the sack and pulled out a rice cake. “Shoot, I’m listening,” he said.

“We’ve been in touch with your contact, Mr. Olford, at the BBC.”

Ron stopped in midbite. They’d reached Olford? Without the Crocodile Dundee code? That was impressive. The meticulous Brit was way into codes and passwords and secret handshakes. “We discussed with him the danger of trying to get any information out of Sudan through Khartoum. Three weeks ago, a bomb was discovered in the Khartoum airport—or so officials said. I don’t know if the story was true or if the government just wanted to make the SPLA look bad. But either way, the incident gave them an excuse to crack down on airport security. Now, they search everything—all your belongings—and every person, head to toe.”

Bergstrom leaned closer for emphasis. “One wrong step, Mr. Wolfson, and all you’ve worked so hard to gather up will be confiscated—and your friend, Mr. Olford, will be presented a one-way ticket to a Sudanese prison cell. He won’t need round-trip because most people who go in never come back out again.”

Ron had often considered the possibility that it might be difficult to get his series safely out of Sudan, but in Scarlet O’Hara fashion, he had determined to “think about that tomorrow.” He had begun to put serious worry time into it, however, as soon as he got pictures of the auction. They were so incriminating, so one of a kind, so important. The chips that Masapha described as “not so big as the nail on your thumb” from the audio and video recorders might slip through, but his rolls of film? He resolutely forced out of his mind the opening stanzas of Olford’s digital photography song.

Masapha reached out and took the sack of food from Ron’s hand and rummaged through it in search of something that suited his fancy. He had said nothing in the conversation, only listened. But he hadn’t missed a word of what was said.

Koto, on the other hand, hadn’t understood anything anybody had said all day. He wandered away from the group and amused himself by tossing rocks at a tin can on the other side of the road.

“And you have a better idea than Olford taking the tapes out with him when he flies back to Cairo?” Ron asked.

“Yes, I do,” Bergstrom said. He paused for a beat. “You could give the tapes to me.” He saw the knee-jerk alarm on Ron’s face, and hurried on. “We have supply planes that fly a regular route from an airstrip near the feeding center to food depots in Eritrea. We could send the material out on a plane this afternoon, and Mr. Olford could pick it up in Asmara this evening. No one in Eritrea would confiscate the tapes of a BBC reporter bound for Cairo.”

Ron said nothing when Bergstrom finished. He glanced at Masapha, who shrugged. Then he looked back at the bespectacled Swiss aid worker.

“Two things,” he said. “First off, you guys must have some clout with somebody somewhere to get my contact at the BBC to talk to you without using an Australian accent.” That blew right by them. “And secondly, you must think I’m either a fool or have a lot of faith in your organization to hand this footage over to you.”

Bergstrom laughed, and the sound boomed like an echo inside a grain elevator. “Faith is what makes us tick, Mr. Wolfson.”

He tossed the skin of his guava onto the rocks, then looked around in vain for somewhere to wipe his sticky hands, finally settling for the seat of his pants.

“Listen, this is a generous offer,” Ron said, feeling his way along. “But I gotta tell you, I have more reservations than the Washington Hilton.” A blank look. Another swing and a miss. “OK, let’s say I’m reticent to...”

He finally gave up his effort to put it well and just spit it out. “I have pictures here,” he reached into his bag and pulled out a sock, extracted one of the 10 film cartridges inside and held it up for Bergstrom to see, “of an actual slave auction—in progress!—of human beings on sale to the highest bidder.”

Ron dug around until he found his worn navy blue passport with the golden eagle on the front. He opened it to the center, carefully lifted the video chip nestled with the audio chip between the pages, held it up and continued. “I’ve got video that documents the whole thing, including footage of that young man”--he cocked his head toward Koto, who was on the other side of the road positioning his tin-can target--“getting shot as he escapes from the slave traders.”

Bergstrom glanced at Koto and noticed the bandage on the boy’s shoulder.

“I have all of it recorded as well.” He pointed to the audio chip in the passport. “And, as an extra added attraction, I have still shots of two dozen Nuba tribals who were crucified--nailed alive to trees!—likely for committing the heinous crime of being Christians.”