The Exile (34 page)

“Yes,” Mirghani said. “
Insha'Allah,
God willing, I have faith we will.”

He thumbed the disconnect button on his phone, wiped a hand across his brow, and glanced up from his chair at Seth Holland and Ryan Kealey, who were standing to either side of him in the CIA station chief's fourth-floor embassy office.

“There,” he said. “It is done.”

Kealey looked at him stonily. “For you, anyway,” he said.

 

In a traditional mud brick home near the defunct rail station at Kassala, a short distance from the city's famed outdoor markets and some 250 miles from Khartoum, Simon Nusairi sat looking across a simple wooden table at Cullen White. There was no electrical power in the dwelling, and an oil lamp burned between them to illuminate the room.

“It is as you suspected,” Nusairi said. His features showed a kind of simmering anger. “The CIA has taken Mirghani into custody, and he has likely told them everything.”

White mulled that a second. “How soon can you roll?”

“The second convoy of tanks and helicopters will not reach the outskirts of the city until tomorrow,” Nusairi said. “I can have my men stand by for action, but it would be the next day before we are properly organized.”

“Then the next day is when it has to be,” White said.

Another silence. Nusairi watched the shadows hurled off by the lamp's burning wick cavort across the rough brown walls of the brick house.

“Mirghani went out of his way to mention our rendezvous,” he said. “I think we should go through with it. As if we haven't yet met.”

“A setup?”

“Yes,” Nusairi said. “Clearly a net has been cast.”

White sat for a moment, nodded.

“We'll have to see who gets snagged,” he said.

E
nriched by the fertile soil of the Gash River delta, Kassala was known for the fruit groves and grape fields spread out for miles around the city proper, where its low, flat-roofed homes were laid out in a rectangle around a spacious open-air
souq.
There the crops were brought by donkey, truck, and camel train and sold from dawn to dusk, the citrus fruits, mangoes, pomegranates, and melons arranged around the market's ruler-straight borders, where they overflowed their baskets among the woven goods of Beja artisans and the silver bracelets, necklaces, and charms crafted by women of Rashaida origin.

The prevailing religion in Kassala was Islam; the ethnic mix varied. Brown jute waistcoats over their long white robes, turbans wrapped around their
taqiyahs,
steel longswords at their waists, and wooden boomerangs across their backs, the Beja clansmen, who composed the majority of the village's population, would often mill about the
souq
to trade for the superior livestock of the more colorfully dressed Rashaida nomads, whose sheep and goats were herded on seasonal migrations between the village and the Eritrean lowlands.

Kealey, Abby, and Mackenzie had driven from Khartoum in the crepuscular gloom before sunrise, Mackenzie at the wheel of the Jeep, their route following the main road out of the city southeast along the Blue Nile to Wad Medani, then turning due east across 150 miles of irrigated grain fields and parched sandy expanses to Gedaref, where the terrain gradually transitioned to rolling green hills.

Mackenzie drove mostly in dour silence. Just the day before he had helped lift the bloody remains of Jacoby Phillips from the rear section of the very Cherokee that he was now navigating toward Kassala. He and Phillips had been pretty good friends. They had often exchanged war stories—Mackenzie sharing some of his exploits in Afghanistan, Phillips speaking of his time disrupting Saddam's communications infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. They had talked, on occasion, of getting together when they finished with their hitches in Sudan. Mackenzie, who'd inherited a family home on the Tennessee River at the Kentucky border, had told Phillips of the catfish traps they would lay in the morning from his outboard, and had explained how they would go out on the boat that same evening and bring in a haul for the community fish fry. Phillips had laughed about it.
Community fry? We can catch that many fish in a single day?
Mackenzie had explained you didn't need to, not if you brought along plenty of bourbon to keep everyone happy.

The trio inside the Cherokee rolled on through the sunrise and early morning. By full daylight the uneven macadam beneath their tires had swung back north into flat plains and desert, clinging to the old British railway tracks near the Ethiopian and Eritrean borders as it took them first to the little village of Shobak, then under the loom of the twisted, humped Taka Mountains.

They had not been concerned with military checkpoints. Nor would they have to be as they neared their destination. The U.S. secretary of state and the foreign minister of Sudan had had a back-channel chat during the night and had arranged for a subsequent top secret conversation between their respective presidents. And when Omar al-Bashir and David Brenneman had spoken, Brenneman had advised Bashir of intelligence he'd received that vindicated him as far as having staged the assault on Camp Hadith and the murder of Lily Durant. While vague on many details, he had made it unequivocally clear that the United States, and indeed the world, had been deceived by subversive elements within Sudan who had planned to undermine the Bashir government, seeing that it was held responsible for the blatant atrocities committed against Camp Hadith's starved, sick refugees and the U.S. president's beloved niece. Finally, Brenneman had suggested that their mutual cooperation in bringing the conspirators to justice could lead to more than just a temporary thaw in relations between the two nations, but perhaps to a relaxing of trade embargoes and other long-term improvements in their relationship—including a U.S. reevaluation of its stance on Bashir's international criminal status. And naturally Bashir had jumped at the deal.

Kealey hated that his government was now accommodating one bloody monster in order to stop another that it had given fangs and claws. He hated the facile blurring of moral lines and, most of all, hated feeling that he was being used as a pawn in a dirty political game.

But he had gotten involved with the Agency again for one and only one reason. For him it began and ended with the photograph that John Harper had shown him in that Pretoria bar, the snapshot of a plain, dark-haired woman in her midtwenties, an aid worker surrounded by starved-looking African children, her infectious smile somehow managing to catch hold on their gaunt, hollow-eyed faces.

He wanted the man who killed Lily Durant. He wanted him more now than ever. Call it justice; call it revenge; it didn't matter. He could taste his desire for it at the back of his tongue, as he had tasted it every moment since he'd seen that picture….

And it was bitter. Unbearably bitter.

“That's Jebel Atweila, about a mile east of us,” Mackenzie said. He pointed out the right side of his windshield. After passing through the main checkpoint into Kassala, he had crossed the Gash River over the bridge spanning its narrows and looped around the eastern edge of town, leaving the rutted blacktop behind for dirt and gravel tracks, then swinging completely off road toward the heaving escarpments. “The other two mountains are Taka and Totil.”

Kealey looked at his chronograph. “Almost noon,” he said. “Mirghani's people should be there about now.”

Mackenzie steered toward Atweila and was soon bumping over the pebbly deposits spread out around the slope, glancing repeatedly at his GPS unit to check his coordinates against those that had been preset for their meet. Sticking close to the base of Atweila, he continued around it until he spotted a rock-strewn switchback in the shadow of a large, anvil-shaped spur. When he got there, he swung onto it, twisted up the mountain for about 50 yards, jounced to a halt, and cut the ignition.

Kealey glanced around at their surroundings, reached for his door handle, and got out, Mackenzie and Abby exiting with him. Seth Holland's Glock 35 was in a sidearm holster under his Windbreaker, which also concealed the Muela combat blade he'd bought back in Yaoundé and carried in a sheath at his waist.

They had hiked 30 or 40 feet up along the switchback, taking several winding turns, when a group of fighters appeared from behind a knobby granite outcrop…almost all of them in khakis, head scarves, and combat boots, standing openly in the baking sun. All had rifles on their shoulders—M14s, AK-47s, Steyr and FAMAS bullpups.

Kealey and his companions stopped, waited as a wiry man with a short, dark beard on his tanned face approached.

“
A s'amaa zarqaa,
” Mackenzie said.

The bearded man gave his response to the code phrase.
“Wa quul id-diir.”

They shook hands, had a brief exchange in Arabic. Then Mackenzie turned to Kealey. “This is Tariq…Ishmael Mirghani's second in command,” he said, making their introductions. “Tariq, Ryan Kealey. And Abby Liu.”

The fighter extended his hand to Kealey and gave Abby a polite nod in keeping with traditional Islamic custom toward women. Then he returned his gaze to Mackenzie.

“Your trip has been without difficulty?” he said, speaking English now.

“Happily so.” Mackenzie gave a nod. “We are grateful for the invention of the GPS.”

Tariq grinned. But Kealey had noticed that not all the men were quite as demonstrative in their welcomes—quite a few of them eyeing the Westerners with narrow mistrust.

“Our camp is around the mountain in a…how do you say…kerf?” Tariq touched the fingers of his hands together to form a kind of wedge.

“A notch,” Mackenzie said.

Tariq nodded. “It is a short distance from here.”

“How many of your men have come?” Kealey asked.

“Half again the number you see with me now,” Tariq said. “We hope more will arrive before the day ends. The rest go north but will not take arms with Commander Nusairi.”

Kealey considered that. Mirghani had not wanted to arouse Nusairi's suspicions by holding back his guerrillas from the attack and so had sent them along as if to join his forces. But they would experience convenient delays that would keep them from sharing the same fate as the raiders—if things went as planned.

“Do you know where Nusairi is right now?” Kealey asked after a moment.

“He arrived in the city with some men yesterday and stayed overnight in Sikka Hadiid,” Tariq said. “That is where he met the other. There are still many
buyut—
”

“The other?” Kealey interrupted.

“A Westerner like yourself,” replied Tariq.

“About the same age and height? Brown hair?” Kealey asked.

“Yes.” Tariq touched his own eyes. “He wears
naddaaraat.
”

“Glasses?”

“Yes,” said Tariq.

Kealey turned to Mackenzie. “Cullen White,” he said.

“So the son-of-a-bitch bastard flew out of Khartoum after he shook me,” Mackenzie said, nodding. “The Sikka Hadiid is Kassala's old railway quarter…. I'd guess it's three, four kilometers west of these mountains and across the Gash. I've been there before. Tell you about it later.” He briefly raised his eyes to Kealey's to indicate it was something he wanted to discuss in private. “The British railway station was built right around the turn of the last century. It was abandoned a long time ago, but most of the structures are intact. When you walk around the area, you see some big colonial buildings where the Brit administrators lived, and then rows and rows of round huts built for the workers and their families…. They're spread out pretty good. Some are modernized inside, kind of like bungalow hostels, but a whole lot of them have hardly changed in a hundred years—there's no electricity or running water. The locals have short-term rentals for travelers. Student backpackers, different types.” He gave Kealey another confidential glance. “They're what Tariq called
buyut.
”

The rebel was nodding.

Kealey stood rubbing his chin in thought.

“What about the tanks and helicopters?” Abby said, breaking her attentive silence. “Have you seen them?”

“See, no,” Tariq said. “But I know they came ashore at Zula in Eritrea and were brought across the border by truck. And I know they are to strike in two places. Some go toward the Nile between Khartoum and Ed Damer…perhaps two hundred fifty kilometers to the west of us.”

“Where the oil pipeline from the fields down south follows the bend of the river to the Suakim oil terminal outside Port Sudan,” Mackenzie said. “It runs for almost a thousand miles and delivers three or four hundred thousand barrels of crude a day.”

“And the rest of the attack force?” Abby asked.

“It goes north.”

“To the Suakim terminal—and the nearby refineries,” Abby said.

Tariq's head went up and down.

“All right,” Kealey said. He looked at Tariq. “I assume you have men keeping watch on Nusairi?”

“Yes, of course,” Tariq said. “He remains for now in Sikka Hadiid…and I do not believe he will try to leave until after nightfall.”

Kealey grunted, massaging his chin some more. “I think you'd better lead us to your camp so we can talk about making sure that doesn't happen,” he said.

 

“Brynn, hello. I'm sorry I wasn't able to return your call earlier,” said Israeli prime minister Avram Kessler over his secure line. He was staring out the window of his study at Bet Agion, his official residence in Rehavia, Jerusalem, watching night settle over the ancient city. “I'm afraid it's been one of those days….”

“It's like old times at Northwestern, isn't it?” Brynn Fitzgerald said from her White House office. “Some things never change, Avi. You and I were always trying to make arrangements and going back and forth with our voice messages until it was too late. And then, of course, Lee would try to join in and further complicate things.”

Kessler had heard her tone suddenly grow subdued. Kessler, whose parents were American Jews, had done his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University along with Fitzgerald and their mutual friend Lee Patterson, the U.S. ambassador who had been killed riding alongside Fitzgerald when her motorcade was attacked in Pakistan the year before.

“I suppose the only difference is our game of phone tag's just gone international,” he said. “What's going on, Brynn? Your message sounded urgent, and I had a strange premonition it meant your esteemed commander in chief had decided on taking overt military action against Omar al-Bashir.”

Silence.

Kessler's face drew taut. “Brynn…I was right, wasn't I?”

“Let's say your psychic receptors were well tuned but the signals hit interference somewhere over the Atlantic,” she said. “Avi, we need your help.”

“If you mean insofar as providing a staging area for an attack, I'll need to bring the Defense Ministry into this conversation—”

“I don't, but he'll need to be brought in, anyway,” Fitzgerald said. “And probably several other members of your cabinet. Internal Affairs, Internal Security…but these talks will have to be brief.”

Kessler's thoughts suddenly did a double take. It was something she'd said a moment ago. He had had a long day meeting with heads of the Knesset, and he was feeling laggy. “What kind of ‘interference'?”

“I was thinking back to February oh-nine, when your planes hit that arms convoy in Sudan.”

“Reportedly,” Kessler said.

“Right, I stand corrected. When a squadron of F-sixteens reportedly hit seventeen trucks full of illegal Libyan arms in the Hala'ib Triangle. This occurred as they were reportedly being driven toward the Egyptian border by smugglers from Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, who intended to slip them through tunnels in Gaza to Hamas.”