Sudan: A Novel (35 page)

Then he turned toward the truck cab and obliterated one of the lights for a moment as he passed in front of it. That was Ron and Masapha’s first glimpse of Faoud, the slave trader. When the big man gave an order to his men, Masapha understood it. They were on their way to Faoud’s for questioning.

The goons prodded the two men toward the canvas-covered back of the truck and gestured for them to get in and sit on the benches that stretched across both sides, where other armed men had been stationed to keep them company. Ron and Masapha did as they were instructed, the most recent in a huge list of captives who had sat on those same benches on their way to bondage.

Ron looked back for his pack and saw a soldier give it to Faoud; Masapha looked back in the direction of the lodge where Koto lay in the darkness. The boy had managed to survive on courage and determination before; Masapha hoped he could do it again.

Koto heard doors slam, a diesel engine start and the rattle of a truck as it pulled out and drove away. The silence that followed throbbed in his ears and kept time with his heart as it hammered in his chest. Gradually, his heart and breathing returned to normal, but the emptiness inside him grew.

Ron and Masapha were gone. He was alone.

Rupert Olford pushed his glasses up on his head, leaned back in his leather chair and looked out the window at the lights of Cairo. The BBC reporter closed his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and middle finger, then opened them and blinked. It would be dawn soon, and he’d been up all night.

The image of Ron Wolfson’s face came suddenly into his mind, and Olford broke into a wide, toothy smile. Well done, Yank, he thought. Well done, indeed!

He’d watched the raw video footage all the way through three times already. Once the film editors worked their magic, it would be spellbinding. The slave traders shooting that boy—amazing! And his story!

Olford stood up, arched his back, stretched his tall, skinny body and sat down again. He’d heard Koto’s taped interview on one of the audio tracks and had decided to send the interview to Ron’s brother, Dan, in Washington. It was a compelling story; maybe the congressman could use it, with the vote on his bill set for the first part of next week.

It was a shame Ron didn’t know when the vote in the U.S. House of Representatives was scheduled, so this slavery series could run before the vote. But there was no way to get in touch with him. Ron was out there somewhere in the wilds of Sudan; he’d bagged the story of his life.

The converted army transport stopped in front of a stone building. One of the gunmen banged on a door on the side of it and shouted, “Ahkmad!”

The door creaked open on heavy hinges. Inside stood a rangy man in worn army fatigues, with a wide, thick scar on his face that extended from above his right eyebrow all the way down his cheek to his chin. He nodded, and the guards shoved Ron and Masapha out of the truck, into the building, and down a cool, dark hallway.

Ron was in front. He held his arms out as he stumbled along, hardly able to see. Behind him, the footsteps of the man who’d opened the door sounded like tympani drums exploding on the cold, stone floor. The man had a flashlight but could obviously negotiate the corridor without it. He turned it on, the splash of light chased the shadows into the corners for a few seconds, then he turned it off again. The first time he turned it on, all Ron saw was the floor in front of him and a large gray rat that quickly skittered off into the darkness. The second time, Ron could see a couple of unlit lamps on the walls and barred doors on both sides of the hallway. The cells were dark and silent.

A burst of the scarred man’s flashlight lit up the wall at the end of the hallway. There was a stone bench there and a cell door on the right. Ahkmad, the jailer, produced a large key and stuck it into the cast-iron lock, and like an ancient dungeon gateway, the door creaked open. Ron stumbled along the path of the jailers’ flashlight beam into the room and felt, rather than saw, Masapha come in after him.

Then the cell door clanged shut with a resounding bang and the key scraped in the lock to seal it. Ron and Masapha heard the sound of footsteps as they retreated down the hallway. Then there was silence. They were probably no more than three feet apart; in the total blackness, they couldn’t see each other. But they each could hear the other’s ragged breathing, and though neither of them could see it, there was obviously a window or an opening of some kind in the room because they also could hear Faoud outside shouting orders.

“What’s he saying?” Ron whispered.

“Just giving scar-man charge over us until he comes back tomorrow to ask information from us.”

Masapha’s reply was equally hushed, though neither of the men could have said who it was they were afraid would overhear them.

Then Masapha fired out the question that had clawed at his mind since their brief interrogation in front of the truck’s lights.

“What are the pictures on the roll of film the man took from your camera?”

“There aren’t any pictures on it,“ Ron told him. “It’s blank.”

“Blank?” The Arab let out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding.

“As soon as I finish a roll of film, it’s out of the camera and right into the zipper pocket of the camera case. I emptied that pocket into my sock at the doctor’s place, and I’m sure I gave all the rolls in it to Bergstrom.”

Ron felt his way around in the dark, his hands reaching out for something solid.

“I always load a fresh roll in the camera as soon as I take the spent roll out—that’s what our charming, fat friend has confiscated.”

Masapha put his hands up in front of him and stepped forward to locate a wall.

“So he cannot know you are not taking traveling photos...” Masapha thought out loud.

“...
unless we tell him,”
Ron finished for him.

He didn’t have to draw Masapha a picture. Both men had figured out that the fat man was probably a slave trader who had gotten wind somehow of a photographer on his turf and had come to check him out.

If the slave trader found out that Ron had captured a slave auction on film, he’d kill them both in a heartbeat. Their lives depended upon telling a convincing story when the man came back to “ask information” from them in the morning. They’d just keep it simple—Ron was taking pictures for a travel magazine. That’s all. It was a plausible story, and it was the only one they had.

Ron’s hand touched cold stone, and he felt his way down it to the floor and sat down in what felt like straw.

“Hey...maybe the beds here don’t have chiggers.” He tried to sound cheerful, and he might have pulled it off if he could have kept the shakiness out of his voice. But as the reality of their situation sank in, fear had clutched his belly and squeezed so tight he couldn’t stop the tremor.

The inky blackness began to give way slightly as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and he imagined he could almost make out the classic lines of Masapha’s movie-star face. It was no use looking for his friend’s shiny white teeth, though; Masapha didn’t have any more to smile about than he did.

T
he squawk-squawk of a testy secretary bird awoke Masapha. He looked up and saw a barred window far above his head that directed shafts of dusty sunlight into the cell. Ron sat with his back propped against the jail wall, his forearms on his knees.

“Good morning,” Ron said when he saw that Masapha was awake.

“Is it?”

“I’m sure it’s a good morning somewhere on the planet.”

Masapha no longer had a prayer rug; it had been taken the previous night, along with everything else he owned. So he merely knelt on the dirty cell floor and prayed. When he finished, he moved to the wall opposite Ron and leaned against the stone. The rock was cool, and he figured it was probably several feet thick. The jail was like a cave; at least it wouldn’t turn into an oven during the midday heat.

The two sat in silence for a time.

“So, what do you think?” Ron finally asked.

“I think we are in big trouble.” Masapha hoped his voice didn’t sound as shaky as he felt. “I would not think in all our lives up to this point, either of us ever has been in so much trouble as we are now in.” Masapha paused. “It’s bad.”

“How bad?”

“All the bad.”

When Idris and Omar stepped off the barge onto the dock in Kosti, the same smell of rotted fish carcasses met the mercenary and the tall tribal that had met Ron, Masapha and Koto when they walked down the same dock the day before.

Their barge trip downstream had taken them through swamp and wetlands, and past savannah that slowly became dry plains like the one they had crossed on foot. But in the last few days, Omar and Idris had moved into the Sahel, the hot, arid next-door neighbor to the Sahara, where brush and stunted acacia trees dotted a desolate, sandy landscape.

Kosti was an Arab city. Men wore long white or black robes, with Arabian shora scarves or kuftis on their heads. Women wore flowing kaftans and shayla wraps that revealed nothing but their faces. A few women were dressed in burkhas. Idris had never seen a world like this one, and he gawked unashamedly at everything around him.

Omar signaled for Idris to follow him up a set of steps that led to the market. He found a rock wall where no one was sitting, put down his backpack and rifle and motioned for Idris to stay there to watch them.

A few minutes later, he returned with two wrapped packages of blackened perch and some peaches. He laid Idris’s portion on the ground beside him, then sat down on the rock wall and began to eat his.

But Idris did not eat. He knelt in front of the mercenary and made motions with his hands in an effort to communicate. Omar looked at him blankly, so Idris began to draw in the sand with his finger, crude stick figures. He pointed from the drawings to the crowd in the marketplace and then back to the drawings. Suddenly, Omar understood.

He looked out into the market and could see them everywhere—Arabs accompanied by two or three dark-skinned Africans who carried their bundles, held their purchases and moved along slowly behind them. Omar looked at Idris and nodded his head; yes, Idris was looking at slaves.

The tribal was stunned at first, then horrified and outraged. Omar watched the emotions play across Idris’s face. Then he followed his companion’s gaze to a young black girl on the other side of the street behind a fat Arab woman. The girl carried a large bundle and walked with her head down. When she looked up briefly so the men could see her face, the expected look of despair wasn’t there. What was there was worse: resignation.

Omar turned and studied Idris as the tribal watched the child. Even though his own mother had been a Haratine, he had never before considered slavery from a tribal’s point of view. He felt a momentary sadness for the thin black man beside him, then brushed the emotion aside and turned his attention back to his fish.

After they’d eaten lunch, Omar left Idris with his gear and went in search of information. Julian had given him the names of people in Kosti involved in all sorts of enterprises, both legal and illegal. He’d find out what they knew about recent slave auctions. He’d bribe or threaten whoever he had to bribe or threaten. He’d find out something. Tomorrow, he and Idris would head inland to follow up the leads. And to do that, he would need a jeep.