The First Casualty (22 page)

49

Sankore Mosque

Timbuktu, Mali

Thirty Minutes Later

Emphani stood outside a heavy wooden door set into a wall from which regular rows of timbers extended, serving as a foundation for the mud brick beneath the adobe facade. He was reminded of a porcupine. To his left, men splashed water from a trough on face, hand, and feet, a ritual ablution preparatory to entering preparatory to
Dhur
, still several hours away.

Festooned with three cameras with varying sizes of lenses, he walked the sandy street along the outside wall to an arched opening. Inside was a courtyard surrounded by arcaded galleries. It was here, he thought, the great madrassah, Islamic university, had flourished in the fourteenth century. The city had been a crossroads of trade then: salt from the Arabic north, slaves and gold from the black African south. All that remained of the epicenter of culture and learning were a pair of anemic date palms with dusty fronds and the ever-shifting sands from the desert.

From the corner of his eye, that part of the human eye that best detects movement, Emphani saw something move in the shadows of the arcade to his left. Slowly, as though simply scratching, his fingers reached to touch the Glock in the small of his back.

Two figures emerged into the near blinding sunlight, both of whom wore Bedouin clothes.

“
As-sal
ā
m 'alaykum,”
one said, hand over his heart. A typical Sunni greeting.

Emphani had spent enough time in North Africa for his ears to pick up a mispronunciation like an orchestra conductor a false note.

But he replied,
“Wa 'alayakum as sal
ā
m,”
the appropriate response.

Emphani kept a little more than two arms lengths' distance, avoiding the handshake that would customarily follow. There was no profit in having his gun hand otherwise employed should he need it. Particularly as he could see neither man had the angular facial features or the dark desert-tanned skin of a Bedouin.

“You are a Moslem brother,” the one who had spoken before said.

It was not a question but Emphani answered anyway. “Yes,” he said also in Arabic.

For the first time, the other man spoke. “You are a visitor in Timbuktu.”

Another statement.

“Yes. I am with a crew from the American magazine
National Geographic.
Perhaps you know of it?”

The reply, more grunt than words, had equal chances of being negative or affirmative.

“You live in the United States?” the first man wanted to know.

“No. I live in France among other Moslems.”

The two exchanged glances before the first one said, “I hear of great oppression of our brothers and sisters there. The women are humiliated by being prohibited the wearing of the veil.”

Emphani had to bite his tongue not to smile at the thought of his daughter, Margot, being told she had to wear a veil. Either open-mouthed disbelief or, more likely, unrestrained guffaws.

“The infidel oppresses the believers,” he said simply.

“But you are employed by the infidel,” the second man observed.

Emphani shook his head, holding up one of the cameras slung around his neck. “I am a photographer who takes work where he can find it. I am not in a position to refuse pay from a wealthy American magazine.”

The answer seemed to satisfy whatever doubts the men had. The first one nodded in appreciation of financial realities. “You are a stranger here. Perhaps you might honor us by letting us guide you through both this holy mosque and the city so that you will have identified and photographed the important places.
In shā' Allāh.”

To refuse would only arouse suspicion if these men did not already know his real mission. “
B
ā
raka All
ā
hu,”
may God bless you, the traditional response to a gift or gratuitous kindness.

Like so many mosques, parts of the Sankore had been used for secular purposes. Some, like this one, included schools. Others had and did encompass hospitals, tombs, libraries, gymnasiums, and civic centers. But when entering the
masjid
, the part that, once so designated, would remain holy ground until the last day, certain rituals had to be observed by all. Emphani sat on the sand-strewn floor, removing his boots. He placed them on one of several shelves beside the sandals of his companions and perhaps a dozen more of worshipers already inside.

Emphani stepped back, his camera raised. “Perhaps you would do me and the magazine the honor of letting readers see how the faithful remove their shoes?”

Smiling, the two reenacted the sandal removal before the three proceeded through Moorish-style archways to the
musall
ā
, or prayer room. By far the largest chamber in the mosque, it was two stories high, apparently the maximum height for mud-brick structures without supporting wood beams. Around the walls about ten feet above the floor, Islamic calligraphy spelled out verses of the Koran in faded gilt. The religion strictly forbade portrayal of any of Allah's creations, so there was no other art. To Emphani's right, the
qibla
wall ran perpendicular to a line directly to Mecca so that those before it would be facing the holy city. Several worshipers, on knees with foreheads touching prayer rugs—or, in this impoverished section of the world, reed mats—were already attending to their immortal souls well ahead of
Dhur.

Emphani raised a camera only to feel a hand on his arm. The second man was scowling, shaking his head. No pictures during prayer. Emphani nodded his acknowledgment.

Passing out of the
musall
ā
,
the three came to the base of one of the mosque's two minarets. An open entrance showed steps leading upward, but only a few before an iron gate blocked access.

“I would very much like to take pictures from the top,” Emphani said, noting another pair of “Bedouins” had suddenly appeared.

“I fear that is not possible,” the first of his escorts said. “The minaret is old and in poor repair, unsafe. With the
adh
ā
n
, call to prayer, prerecorded, there is no need for anyone to risk going up there.”

Perhaps, but Emphani noticed that the lock securing the gate was new, shiny brass. And there were footprints in the sand that coated the steps, prints the dry breeze would have obliterated in less than an hour.

50

Djinguereber, the Great Mosque

Timbuktu, Mali

Thirty Minutes Later

Lieutenant Commander James Whitefoot Andrews, USN (Ret.), noted Timbuktu ran not on horsepower but donkey power. Donkeys pulled two-wheeled carts loaded high with bags of grain, charcoal, or vegetables. Donkeys carried bulging sacks across their backs. Men rode donkeys, their sandals nearly touching the sandy streets as they urged their diminutive mounts on with thin whips cut from branches.

An occasional mud-splattered truck roared by, trailing clouds of blue smoke, its muffler little more than a memory. Noise and air pollution maybe, but the trucks did not leave something for the unwary to step in.

Young boys in what Andrews guessed were school uniforms chattered like monkeys as they dashed by for the first class of the day, each laden with a knapsack.

In the square to his right, brightly striped fabric provided shade to women in garish-colored hijabs who squatted beside clay pots of what looked like fish or hunks of meat. There was no effort at refrigeration. Was Andrews only imagining he could hear the buzz of the clouds of flies attracted to the display? Other pots contained rice and vegetables not all of which he could identify. Babies, naked and semi-naked, dozed in mothers' arms while those slightly older chased one another noisily through stalls of weavers, fruit grocers, knife sharpeners, and bakers' ovens. The sound was a babel of voices, each trying to be heard above the others as merchants haggled with customers. The smell of charcoal, fresh dung, rotting vegetation, and human sweat hung in the air like an early morning fog.

He paused a moment, unslinging a camera from his shoulder. He framed a picture. Then from a slightly different angle. His subjects were colorful and exotic, so much so he might even like to keep the images being recorded on the camera's card. If it even had a card.

He was focusing on a woman taking something out of a mud-brick oven when two figures in white blurred in the lens. Irritated, he lowered the camera. Two men in what he would describe as Bedouin dress were carefully sorting through a collection of cheap beads on strings in front of a wrinkled woman who gestured wildly extolling the virtues of her wares.

Andrews knew next to nothing about Bedouins, but he'd bet a bottle of reasonably good scotch they didn't wear beads. Pretending to ignore them, he moved about the bazar, snapping pictures in what he hoped looked like a professional manner. Wherever he moved, the two positioned themselves so he was between them, classic surveillance technique.

Seeming only interested in what he could catch in his lens, Andrews carefully noted the available alleys and doorways. He could probably give these guys the slip, but to what end? Suddenly disappearing was not something a man on a legitimate mission would do. Better to continue the charade.

Leaving the bazar, Andrews walked purposefully toward Djinguereber­, the Great Mosque, whose twin minarets were already visible. Like Sankore, this structure was largely built of earth although the northern facade and one minaret had been repaired in the 1960s with limestone blocks rendered with mud, according to the Google site he had called up earlier. Also like the Sankore Mosque, Djinguereber­ had been built in the fourteenth century. The two, along with the Sidi Yahya Mosque, had formed the University of Sankore.

The narrow street, lined with mud and mud-brick buildings, made a perfect frame for a photograph of the building as its earthen walls were turning a rich chocolate brown in the morning's sun. His two escorts, one on either side of the street, were making no efforts to conceal their interest in him. Ineptness or threat?

Andrews reached the wall of the mosque just as the last worshipers completed their ablutions, entered one of the three courtyards, and disappeared into the building. His two uninvited companions made a show of washing face, hands, and feet, but demonstrated no immediate intent to enter the prayer service. He resigned himself to their company.

51

1270 Arnold Avenue

Andrews Air Force Base

Prince George's County, Maryland

At the Same Time

Colonel Wild Bill Hasty had a corner office, perhaps the only one in the building occupied by anyone below the rank of brigadier general. His was a suite of three second-story offices facing the threshold of Runway 01R, the right of two parallel runways with a compass heading of ten degrees, almost due north, where a pair of DC Air National Guard F-16s were shooting touch and goes.

The colonel was too busy collecting the data necessary for tomorrow's flight to notice. He had already made certain his Jeppesen approach plates to both Cairo International and the military field, Cairo West, and his high altitude charts were current, both those in the loose-leaf binder and their electronic duplicates fed into the aircraft's GPS electronic display system. The ones published by NOAA, the AJV-3s, were furnished free by the Air Force; but, like so many products, those by the privately published Jeppesen Sanderson Company were superior to those offered by the government. They were both more likely to be current, and certainly more detailed.

He had already called up the Global Operators Flight Information Resource website. This privately owned company was the one place all applicable SIGMETs, METARs, and NOTAMs could be found. Turbulence above 35,000 feet over the Philippines, runway repair on 07R at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, all in one place. There were none applicable to tomorrow's flight.

Now he was calculating fuel burn based on the winds aloft. He frowned. The Air Force Weather Agency's prediction varied by a good six knots from NOAA's. The Boeing 747 had a potential range of 9,600 miles with all tanks topped off, but the destination was only 5,818 miles distant.

Rarely did the aircraft take off with full tanks. The weight of the unneeded Jet-A would only slow down the plane, burning yet more fuel. But a discrepancy of merely a few knots in wind speed could necessitate extra fuel. Conversely, the old pilot's adage noted few things were more useless than fuel left in the pumps back at the base.

Hasty got up, crossing his office to where a small blackboard hung, his pre-flight to-do list. There were already two numbered items. He added: “3. Check current winds aloft.”

There were some parts of pre-flight planning that were best left to the last hour before takeoff, when he would file his international flight plan. His eyes went to a small frame on his desk where two lines of poetry reminded him,

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

Gang aft agley
.

The eighteenth-century Scottish poet Robert Burns thought like a pilot.

52

Hotel la Colombe

Rue Askia Mohammed

Timbuktu, Mali

7:23 p.m. Local Time

Jason believed the closer the equator, the briefer the dusk and sunrise. This evening had done nothing to disabuse him of that tenet. The bloodred African sun had seemed to visibly slide down that point at which sky met earth. Darkness followed sunset by minutes, heralded by pinpoints of bright stars in the pale blue between horizon and total nightfall.

The four men sat in Jason's room, two on the bed, one on the floor, and Jason in the sole chair. Emphani was speaking.

“. . . Many, perhaps a dozen, men around the mosque in Bedouin dress though not Bedouins. The minaret with the western opening is closed off because it is said to be unsafe. But I saw tracks in the sand. Someone had been there within an hour.”

“Guess those were the same Bedouins who kept me company,” Andrews drawled from the bed. “Persistent as bedbugs. Didn't make a hostile move but didn't let me out of sight, either.”

“Same,” Viktor said. “Men in robes watch but do nothing.”

“Sounds like we were right, it is the Sankore Mosque,” Jason said.

“Now what?” Andrews asked.

“We do a little nighttime recon, maybe right after
Isha
, the last prayer of the day. That would be when, Emphani?”

“The last prayer before bed. Last night, the call to prayer was around nine p.m.”

“OK, guys,” Jason said. “Here's the plan.”