Sudan: A Novel (34 page)

Bergstrom was stunned. Dr. Greinschaft had hinted that what Ron had was explosive, but the aide worker hadn’t been prepared for an atomic bomb. His mouth didn’t drop open, but Ron definitely had his attention.

He also had the attention of two men leaning against the wall of a nearby building. When Ron held up the film canister, the one in the flowered shirt broke out in a wide, toothless smile.

“So tell me,” Ron continued, “why I ought to trust you with information that will expose the greatest evil of this century?”

Bergstrom swallowed hard. “You are not the only person fighting against slavery, Mr. Wolfson. There are
many
other people, people you have never heard of.” He pushed his glasses back up on his nose and looked intently at Ron. “With only a handful of relief agencies allowed to work in Sudan, we’ve been asked before, by others like you, to be a conduit of information in and out of the country. We have always said no. The work we do is too important to endanger it. If we are thrown out of Sudan, thousands of people will starve.”

Bergstrom glanced at Maruta, and their silent communication spoke volumes. His glasses started to march down his nose again, and he reached up, took them off and dropped them into his shirt pocket.

“But you have a chance to make a real difference, Mr. Wolfson. With your political connections in the U.S. and your access to the world press, we believe you are a...good horse to put the bet on. So to speak.”

This time Ron was the one who chuckled.

“I’ve never been called a horse before. A horse’s ass, yes. A horse, no.”

“You would be less than a horse’s buttocks if the Sudanese soldiers catch you with that film. You would be dead.” Bergstrom paused, then continued softly but with intensity. “And so would we.”

He stared unblinking into Ron’s eyes. “It is a risk you have been willing to take, and now it is a risk we are willing to take also.”

Ron studied Bergstrom’s earnest face. There was no guile in the man. He was an associate of Dr. Greinschaft’s—a Christian too, like the missionary doctor—and Ron had never met anybody more trustworthy than the old man who looked like Santa Claus.

If Bergstrom was prepared to risk his life to get Ron’s information safely to Cairo, then Ron would take a chance on him. There was no story yet, but that was probably best too. It made sense to wait to write the piece until he was safely outside Sudan so he didn’t have to try to sneak it out of the country. And there was the final piece of the puzzle, the slave owner piece. When he had that, he could write the whole thing at once.

Ron nodded. “OK, you’ve got a deal.”

He and Masapha stood and the men shook hands all around. Then Ron unloaded the precious rolls of film he’d hidden in the bags, along with his notes for the stories. He gave it all to Bergstrom, then handed him the audio and video chips. The Swiss aide worker slid them carefully into his shirt pocket and buttoned the pocket closed.

“When you are finished with your investigation, come to our feeding center in Chumwe. We will send out the rest of your information, too. Then you can fly out of Khartoum and not worry about what a security guard might find in your luggage.”

Ron thought about mentioning, oh by the way, that he’d be leaving a certain Lokuta tribal boy at the center when he left the country. But there was plenty of time later to drop that little bombshell. Instead, he just reached out his hand to his new Swiss friend. “Thank you,” he said.

“God be with you,” Bergstrom said.

Ron laughed. “God, the United Nations, the House, the Senate, and the
New York
Times
.”

Leo and Joak watched the relief workers get back into their jeep and drive away, then they turned and quickly blended into the crowd flowing down the street. Masapha called out to Koto, who dropped his rock ammunition and joined the Arab and the American. Leo and his limping friend were half a block away before the Oreo-cookie trio--Ron in the middle, the dark Arab and African on the outsides—strolled off toward the marketplace.

“You said the American had not written this story of his about slave trading—is that right?” Leo asked Joak as the crippled man struggled to keep pace with Leo as they walked together down the dirt street.

“The Arab asked him, and he said he had not written even one word yet.”

Leo smiled. “So maybe Faoud would like to meet this journalist. He might be able to talk the American out of ever writing anything at all.”

A
s the sun sank below the horizon, leaving the world briefly gray before darkness stretched out to claim it, Ron began to look for somewhere for the three of them to spend the night. Cities in Sudan were not safe places after dark.

There were only a handful of overnight accommodations in all of Kosti. One of them was the al Jubari Lodge. The lodge sat beneath a red sign with white Arabic lettering that stood high up on tall posts. It was actually freshly painted and a lion glared down from beneath the letters, its mouth open in a silent roar.

Unfortunately, the excellence of the establishment ended with the sign. The lodge itself was a pit.

All the single and double rooms were full. That left only the 24 beds in the travel room—a shoe-box-shaped dormitory for one-night travelers that jutted off the side of the building. The wooden slat bunk beds there were lined up 12 to a side down the walls of the narrow room. Three feet of center aisle space separated the rows of beds; lumpy, canvas-covered straw mattresses lay bare on each bunk.

In the “lobby” of the inn, a tired old man sat at a desk and collected room fees and the one-pound-each charge per bed for one-night travelers.

Ron paid the three pounds for their beds, opened the creaking door into the travel room, then stopped and began to gag. “What the... ?”

Masapha walked in past him.

“Unwashed bodies and sweat make a large odor,” he said casually. “I don’t imagine the mattresses have been cleaned for all the years they have been here. Maybe your senses can’t handle?”

“Oh, I can handle, I can handle.” Ron waved him off, but continued to gag at the thick, musky smell. “I just hope my death certificate doesn’t read: ‘Cause of death: BO.’”

Masapha’s gleaming, gap-toothed smile reflected the light generated by the candles that flickered on the wall. Americans were so pampered.

The canvas-covered truck that Faoud al Bashara and his men normally used to transport slaves now transported them. Faoud sat in the front seat beside the driver. He was quiet, brooding. Seething. He replayed in his mind what the witless mercenary had told him.

Leo Danheir could not be trusted; he would slit his own mother’s throat if the price was right. But what the man had said tonight had the ring of truth to it. For one thing, the mercenary was not creative enough to make up such a tale. And to what end? He might be stupid, but he was certainly smart enough to know that Faoud would kill him if his story did not pan out.

And a vague memory had surfaced as the fat man bounced along in the truck. There had been an incident at a slave auction in the oil fields. One of his hired raiders had stumbled upon a white man—a blond—behind a hill overlooking the site. The soldier had said the man was feeding birds, which made absolutely no sense at all! The soldiers fired on the man, but he got away. Could it have been the American? Perhaps he had a camera the soldier didn’t see. How many blond white men could there be in that part of Sudan?

It was dark when the truck rolled into Kosti.

“What are the places in Kosti where a white man and an Arab could stay for the night?” Faoud asked the driver of the truck.

“There are only a few,” the man replied.

“We will search them all!”

Faoud’s face darkened with growing rage. How dare some imperialist pig from the Great Satan set foot in his world. If he found such a man, Faoud would make him very, very sorry he’d interfered in the affairs of Faoud al Bashara.

Clouds of dust followed the truck up and down the dark, sandy streets as it traveled from one lodging place to the next. They had searched for almost two hours when they turned down a narrow, hard-packed dirt road and the headlights of the truck lit up a lion on a red sign. The whitewashed walls of the al Jubari Lodge glowed as the lights swept across them when Faoud and his men pulled up out front.

Ron had slept only fitfully. It was not so much the smell. He’d almost grown accustomed to that. But as soon as he began to drift off, advance scouts for the regiment of chiggers inside the straw mattress performed a search-and-destroy mission on his neck. Once they’d planted their flag, they sounded the chigger claxon, and the rest of the teeming hordes charged out of the mattress and mounted a full frontal assault on his back and arms. He decided that if he didn’t win the battle with them in another five minutes, he would head outside and take his chances with the mosquitoes. On the edge of sleep, he heard a loud motor, probably a truck. It sputtered for a few seconds and then shut down.

He didn’t hear the front door of the lodge open when two men with guns went inside to talk to the proprietor. But he did hear the door of the sleeping room squeak open and then bang shut a few minutes later and had time to think,
Hey pal, don’t you know people are trying to sleep in...
before hands grabbed his arms, picked him up off the bed and set him on his feet on the floor beside it. Men on both sides of him dragged him down the narrow center aisle between the rows of beds and out the front door into the night.

Masapha heard scuffling sounds beside Ron’s bed. When he rolled over and opened his eyes, the barrel of an automatic rifle was inches from his nose. A gruff voice ordered him in Arabic, “Get up!” Masapha got up.

Koto was asleep in the bed next to Masapha. Awakened by the commotion, he opened his eyes and instantly identified the dress and guns of the raiders. He froze in terror.

One of the gunmen ordered Masapha to gather his possessions and Ron’s, and Masapha stooped and pulled the packs out from under the bed. The other gunman grabbed them out of his hands and shoved him down the center aisle between the beds to the door.

Masapha followed the gunman’s instructions and never looked back, never cast so much as a glance in Koto’s direction. None of the patrons in the other beds made a sound or stirred. They were awake, but had no desire to get involved with men carrying automatic weapons.

The elderly Muslim lodgekeeper moved out of the way as Masapha and his captors stepped through the door into the night. He tucked the Sudanese pounds he’d been given into his shirt, went back into his cubicle office and closed the door behind him.

Koto wanted to get up and look out the door to see what was happening, but he was too scared. He just lay in the bed trembling.

Faoud leaned against the front grille of the truck between the headlights on high beam. The two men who’d been shoved in front of him squinted into the bright lights.

He let the pair stand there for a few moments, struggling to see, before he posed a question to Ron in Arabic.

The answer came back from Masapha who understood it. “He is Ron Wolfson, an American; my name is Masapha Kamal Mbake. I am from Khartoum.”

The slave trader fired out another question.

Masapha’s answer was steady and sure. “We are compiling pictures for a travel magazine in the U.S.”

Another question came from the still faceless man who stood between the bright lights.

“We wanted to get an accurate picture of Sudan and Egypt, so we had to go around Sudan shooting scenes in different places all over the country...even here, in Kosti.”

“You speak Arabic and English? How do you know both?”

“I taught at the university. I speak several tribal languages as well.”

The soldiers rummaged through Ron’s backpack and equipment bag while Masapha answered questions. Any other time, Ron would have been angered by their disrespect for his property, but at that moment he was so scared he didn’t care if they stole everything he owned. When they came upon Ron’s Nikon, they gave it to Faoud. The slave trader took the camera and began to roll the film forward until it was completely fed into its housing. He opened the back of the camera, removed the film canister and placed it into a pocket in the folds of his robe.