Sudan: A Novel (43 page)

He paused and looked around the table before he continued, in a quiet, measured voice.

“Next week, I will stand up against an evil I thought our forefathers had dispatched to the bowels of hell over a hundred years ago. I only ask: who will stand with me?”

“Who will stand with him, your brother?” Faoud sneered. “Perhaps no one, when they see how much it costs. I will send your brother a message. Actually, you will send your brother a message.”

Faoud took a final drag off the tube, but the bong was empty. “You see, I am going to make a video of you and your Arab friend. And I will get those who know how to do such things to put it on the Internet for the world to see. For your brother to see. I would like very much to appear with you, but I must remain anonymous. The SPLA cannot know who I am, or I am a dead man.”

He stopped, and crooned in mock sympathy. “So, I do apologize, Mr. Wolfson, but I am afraid you will have to tell this story all by yourself.”

The feigned sympathy vanished from his voice.

“The video will show your brother, your government and the world the price to be paid when Americans interfere where they do not belong.”

He smiled. He had waited a long time for this, to watch the American’s face.

“In the video, you will speak a few words to your brother, whatever you want to say, I do not care... Good-bye, perhaps.”

He leaned forward and spoke the next words softly, like the hiss of a viper. “And then Mr. Wolfson, I will chop your head off.”

He smiled broadly when Ron’s face went totally white. “That’s right, my American friend. For the first time ever, the whole world will witness the execution prescribed by the Qur’an for infidels. You will be beheaded!”

I
t was the hottest part of the afternoon by the time Leo and Joak drove into the camp of Sulleyman al Hadallah. The campsite of Hadim Raja Shad had been deserted; he had already left for his home in the north. If the girl was not here, the search would come up snake-eyes and they would have an hour and a half drive back to Kosti with nothing to report to Faoud but failure.

Pasha spotted the two men in the jeep before the dust had settled from their arrival. Sulleyman and the other men were out of the camp; she was in charge.

The headmistress in her black turban strode out to meet the visitors. What was their business here, she demanded to know, and make it quick. She had better things to do than stand in the sun and talk to strangers.

Leo put on his best imitation of a submissive smile and explained that they had been dispatched on behalf of Faoud al Bashara, who did business from time to time with her master.

“Faoud sold a group slaves to your master not too long ago,” Leo said. “And we would like to ask those slaves some questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

The mercenary had killed men who spoke to him in that tone of voice, but he swallowed his anger and replied as pleasantly as possible.

“Actually, I need to know their names first,” Leo said. “We’re looking for a particular slave, so if you could just tell us..."

“My master’s slaves have names if he gives them names,” Pasha retorted. “I do not know the names they had when they got here.”

The stone maiden in a black turban didn’t give an inch. He realized too late that he’d allowed himself to get sucked into an argument, when there didn’t need to be any discussion at all. So Leo took the gloves off.

“If you will not allow us to talk to the slaves, we will wait until your master gets back and speak to him personally,” Leo told her coldly. “And I will tell him you refused to cooperate with the representatives of his business associate.”

Pasha flinched; Leo had her!

She left the two of them out in the sun, stalked off to the cook tent and returned a few minutes later with Mbarka and Omina in tow. Joak spoke to them in Dinka, and their faces lit up. They had not heard their own language in months.

Akin sat in the shelter with her fly swatter and added victims to her ever-growing pile. She had seen the two men arrive in a jeep and had watched them speak to Pasha. She paid closer attention after Mbarka and Omina were summoned from the cooking tent. When Mbarka pointed in her direction, Pasha and the men turned and looked her way. Then they headed up the hill to the spot where she sat, squeezed into the tiny slice of shade left in her shelter. Leo wrinkled his nose at the overpowering stench of the nearby latrines as they approached.

“Good day,” Joak said to Akin in Dinka, his tone friendly. Like Mbarka and Omina, Akin was surprised and delighted to hear her own language. Her smile planted twin dimples in her cheeks.

“Hello,” she said tentatively, afraid to say more.

Life as a slave had changed her bubbly, outgoing personality. She was cautious with people now, wary, careful. Punishment for a mistake, even if you didn’t know it was a mistake, was swift and painful.

“I wonder if you can help me,” Joak said. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?” Akin looked at the odd, toothless man, confused.

“A little girl named Akin Apot.”

Akin’s jaw dropped. “I am Akin Apot!” she gasped in stunned surprise. “Do you know my family? My father is Idris. My mother is Aleuth. Have you seen them?”

Leo and Joak exchanged huge smiles. The excited little girl continued to pepper them with questions, but they ignored her. They had found out what they wanted to know; she didn’t matter anymore.

Pasha did not understand Dinka, so she had no idea what the men or the slave said. And she really didn’t care. She just wanted the men to leave so she could return to her work. There was much to be done before their departure in the morning.

Leo turned to Pasha, “My master would like to borrow this slave for a little...”

Pasha didn’t let him finish. Her master’s property would stay right where it was, she informed him sternly. She would not lend him any slave—and certainly not this one, not today.

“This slave is a virgin and has just become a woman,” she told them. “She has been made ready and tonight my master will take her.”

Leo and Joak exchanged a glance. It was clear they wouldn’t be able to persuade this woman or her master to give up the little girl. But in truth, they didn’t actually need to take the slave back with them. Now that they’d seen her and could identify her, they could make Idris think they had her. He would tell them anything they wanted to know to keep his sweet, dimpled child from harm.

“We understand completely,” Leo told Pasha. “Thank you. You have been very helpful. Very helpful indeed.”

With that, he and Joak went back to their jeep and drove away. Pasha shielded her eyes with her hand to make sure they actually left and then returned to work.

Akin sat in her shelter alone, totally baffled by what had happened to her since she woke up. The bread, the bath, the clean clothes and now this man who knew her name. None of it made sense. The only certainty in all the confusion was that for some reason today was a special day.
Something important is going to happen to me today.
She was realistic enough to concede that it wouldn’t likely be a good thing, and that scared her down to her core. Still, she couldn’t shake the certain conviction that this would be a day she’d never forget.

Ron had returned to the jail cell from his interview with Faoud a different man, quiet and withdrawn. Beyond a brief summary of the events, Masapha couldn’t get him to talk about what had happened. The only time there was any spark at all in Ron’s eyes was when he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a film cassette, then described how he’d managed to swipe it out of the camera.

Masapha was glad to see a genuine smile cross Ron’s face, but he didn’t really get it.

“It a good thing any time you can put over one on the ugly, rat-eyed man,” Masapha said. “But I do not understand the point. Why did you do it?”

“Because I
could!”

Faoud called all the shots in his world, got whatever he wanted. No one crossed him. What Ron had done wasn’t much, but he had reclaimed his dignity in some small way by his act of defiance.

“He won’t be hanging
my
pictures on his wall to commemorate his depravity.”

Then Ron lowered his head and told Masapha that he’d found Koto’s little brothers. In a cold, dead voice, he said that Faoud had them, they were his personal slaves and he’d castrated them both. The information made Masapha nauseous.

The rescue of his little brothers was to be Koto’s lion, but the young tribal was not prepared to fight a dragon. The hopelessness of the situation suddenly settled over Masapha like a choking fog. Those little boys were lost—
lost!
They’d been gobbled up by an evil of such monumental proportions it defied understanding, just like his blood brother’s son had been gobbled up all those years ago.

It was a long time before Masapha noticed that Ron had fallen uncharacteristically silent. When he asked the American what was wrong, Ron had a plausible explanation.

“Faoud said the vote on Dan’s bill will be Tuesday, in four days. The pictures we took, the video and the stories would have made a difference in that vote. I really believe that. Now, it’s too late. Not a thing we did matters; it was all for nothing.”

It wasn’t like Ron to be so negative, and after that, Masapha couldn’t get another word out of him. Something had happened to Ron during his encounter with the slave trader, but what it might have been, Masapha couldn’t guess.

When Idris came to after his beating, he told Masapha—who translated his Dinka for Ron—his story. He described the raid on his village, the death of his son and how his precious little girl was kidnapped.

“I buried my son and then went to find my daughter and bring her home,” he said simply.

Ron and Masapha exchanged a look; this man was certainly not your average Dinka tribal!

Idris told them about being swindled by Leo, and how his village had financed his second try. He wouldn’t tell them anything beyond that, but it seemed clear that he’d hired somebody else to look for his daughter, and that “somebody else” had brought him to Kosti. It was equally self-evident that the tribal would give his life to protect the identity of the “somebody else” he believed still could save his little girl.

When they heard the sound of a jeep outside late that afternoon, and the voices of Leo and Joak, Ron and Masapha knew what was coming. The duo had returned to ask the tribal more questions, and the tribal would die rather than answer them.

There was a wide grin on Leo’s face when the jailer let him and his partner into the jail cell. It was an evil grin.

“Tell him we have just come from a long conversation with a pretty little girl,” Leo told Joak.

When the words were translated into Dinka, Idris lifted his head off the floor where he lay in pain, a look of surprise and wonder on his face.

“Tell him the child had great big eyes—and
dimples
.”

When the word “dimples” was spoken in his language, a look of joy spread across Idris’s face that erased every hint of pain and suffering, and he whispered a single word, “Akin!”

“Yes, Akin,” Leo said. Idris ignored the agony in his back, sat up and looked at the two men who stood in front of him with shock, then joy, then fear.

“Ask him if he would like to see his daughter,” Leo told Joak.

A knot formed in the pit of Ron’s stomach. This was about to get ugly.

Idris, of course, responded, “Yes, yes! Please, take me to Akin.”

“You have something we want, and we have something you want,” Leo said. “We propose a trade. You tell us who brought you to Kosti, and we will take you to your daughter.”

Masapha started to say something to Idris, to warn him, but Ron shook his head no.

Idris was confused and stunned. This man had actually seen Akin! And he’d take Idris to her if...then reality settled in. He had known Leo was a bad man the first time he saw him. He had had no such intuitive response to Omar. Omar was dangerous; Leo was evil. There was no honor, there could be no truth, in this evil man.

Leo and Joak watched the emotions wash over the tribal’s face, watched his jaw set firmly and his gaze turn to steel. He said nothing.