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  He heard her climb out of the car below and behind him. It took her a minute to get her bearings and find him there on the crest of the gulley. Wordlessly she appeared next to him, closer than he would have liked, and followed his gaze out on the vast expanse to the east.

  “Don’t suppose you spy a Waffle House that I’m missing out there in the distance.”

  Court shook his head.

  “Did you get some rest?”

  “A little.”

  “I had some hellacious dreams. But I feel okay. Thanks for talking to me last night.”

  Court said nothing.

  “I got the impression you don’t do a lot of that. That you were chatting to help me relax.”

  Still nothing.

  “Anyway . . . I appreciate it.”

  Court just kept looking out at the vast expanse of land in front of him, willing her to take a couple of steps back.

  He was scanning the road, searching for vehicles in the hazy distance.

  “Did someone get up on the wrong side of the stolen car this morning?”

  He realized he was being an ass, was turning his anger at his openness last night into poor manners today. He felt even more childish now than when he woke up. He softened, turned towards her, but did not make eye contact. “I’m fine. Just thinking about today.”

  “Where are we, exactly? Do we even know?”

  “We’re about twenty-five klicks from the outskirts of Al Fashir. That’s really all I can tell you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Court looked past Ellen’s shoulder and saw it in the distance. A hazy, smoky apparition on the false horizon a few miles to the west. It rose from the desert track, what passed for a road out here in the Darfuri landscape, and from the size of the dust cloud he knew it was some sort of a convoy of large trucks. It took a while to be sure, but after a time he recognized the white paint on the vehicles. They were not government of Sudan; they were not private cargo transports. No, they belonged to some sort of nongovernmental relief organization.

  He pointed to the dust rising in the distance. “We’re going where they are going.”

  Ellen and Court moved quickly together down towards the road. The Canadian woman began running her fingers through her hair, trying to fix herself up a bit. Gentry looked at her with confusion.

  “It never hurts to make a good first impression.” She said it with a smile, continuing to do what she could to knock dust off her clothes now. “I’d ask you if you had a mirror, but I imagine I’d have better luck finding that Waffle House.”

  Court was fascinated by the odd behavior of womanhood.

  “Listen,” Ellen said to him. He could tell before she spoke again that she was a little uncomfortable. “Would it be okay if you stood back, maybe behind one of those little trees or something, while I get them to stop for us? I don’t want to scare off what might be our one chance.”

  Court didn’t mind at all. He was a scruffy-looking white man, out here, with a big pistol poorly tucked into his pants. He assumed the convoy would have a contingent of UNAMID soldiers, African Union troops loaned to the United Nations, and he had no doubt they would stop the convoy for a pretty white woman by the side of the road. Court would be perceived as a threat, and from what he’d learned about the UNAMID’s reticence to fight anybody around here, he didn’t want to run the risk of scaring them off. “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Don’t fuck it up, though. Lie down in the road in front of those trucks if you have to, but make sure they stop. And don’t tell them you’re with the ICC and were involved in the fracas with the secret police. These NGOs aren’t looking to get involved in that kind of trouble. Tell them—”

  “How ’bout I tell them I’m a reporter and you’re my photographer? We got lost in Al Fashir looking for our hotel and then got robbed, taken out here, and dumped alongside the road.”

  Court was ready to nix her idea for one of his own, but he stopped himself, thought about it, and realized her story was actually pretty good.

  Doing his best to mask how impressed he was, he said, “That might work. Let’s go with that.”

  Gentry moved off the road, down a small draw and into some scrub brush. Ellen Walsh walked up the road fifty meters to create some more distance.

  Ten minutes later, sixty-one-year-old Mario Bianchi followed the Canadian woman along the sandy dirt road, back down the row of trucks towards her colleague, an American photographer, or so she had just informed him. Fat flies half the size of one euro coins dive-bombed his face. He pulled off his safari hat and shooed them away, but it was a losing battle he soon gave up. It was going to be a hot one today, already at nine a.m. it was nearing thirty-seven degrees. He’d wanted to get his convoy up to Dirra by noon; they’d been running late, even before this surprising event he’d just stumbled onto.

  Mario had thought he’d seen everything on the road from Al Fashir to Dirra. Hell, he’d made this 125-kilometer trip well over a hundred times in the past eight years working for, and then running, the Rome-based aid agency Speranza Internazionale. Bianchi shuttled personnel and supplies from all over Europe to the SI-run camps just this side of Dirra, and he had become well accustomed to the heat, the smell, the bugs, the animals, and the dangers of this route.

  He’d encountered drunken rebels, highway robbers, government of Sudan military patrols, African Union “peacekeepers,” and, of course, the dreaded Janjaweed militia.

  But in all his trips along this poor excuse for a road, he’d never run into any English-speaking white Westerners on foot.

  What madness.

  Mario Bianchi enjoyed an impeccable reputation in the relief agency industry. He’d cultivated this in his forty-year career working all over the African continent. The Italian was known as the man who could get the job done, deftly negotiating not only minefields in the literal sense but also the minefields of street-level diplomacy. No matter who he was working for or where, his convoys got through, his aid camps got built, his clinics got supplied, and his staff got paid. He did this all without discernible trouble from the local heavies. It seemed nothing less than a miracle, considering where he had been and what he had done, but somehow the marauding ADFL rebels of Laurent Kabila passed him by, the RUF maniacs in Sierra Leone did not harass his efforts to evacuate civilians from their territory, even the teenage Liberian gang, the West Side Boys, who essentially slaughtered most anyone they saw just for shits and grins, pretty much let him do his thing in areas where they held control.

  He won award after award all over the First World. Hardly a season of any year went by that did not see Mario Bianchi in a tuxedo walking across a floor-lit stage to civilized but energetic applause by the elite, themselves in tuxedos and evening gowns. His successes had piled up over the years before Darfur, and the atrocities of Darfur called to Signor Mario Bianchi the way a flame calls to a moth.

  Here in Darfur his reputation had reached near mythical proportions. Somehow, when the UN wouldn’t dare run convoys without escorts, when private relief concerns were hunkered down in Khartoum, too bloodied and battered by the indiscriminate slaughter of Darfur to actually go to Darfur to work, Speranza Internazionale convoys continued in the region; their IDP camps and clinics and warehouses and water stations remained in operation. Of course, there were sporadic raids by the Janjaweed and even the local rebels, but they were a small fraction of what any other group had experienced in the region when they dared open up shop in the Land of the Fur.

  It was thought Bianchi’s successes were a result of his powerful personality, that he had somehow been able to cajole the devils of Africa for decades to permit his organization’s coexistence.

  But that was not it at all. Bianchi was, behind the false veneer of do-gooder naïveté, in truth, a deeply cynical man. A half century in Africa would do that to anyone, but the manifestation of his cynicism was a cold, brutal, realpolitik that, most would agree, had no place in the world of relief organizations.

  The truth of
Mario Bianchi’s success stemmed from one simple, common act.

  Mario paid bribes.

  Big bribes.

  To everyone.

  The West Side Boys in Liberia did not hassle his local operation because he paid them tens of thousands of dollars to let him work. Surely if the well-intentioned Americans and Europeans who donated money to his organization knew that a major portion of their tax-deductible donations was immediately converted into baksheesh that fourteen-year-old Liberian gunmen used to buy ganja, bullets, and porno tapes, the spigot of privately donated aid would be shut off instantly. If these same donors had a clue that after the Congolese death squads took payments for access from Speranza Internazionale, they immediately demanded payment from all NGOs working in their area of influence, and when the principled among them refused to contribute, they were targeted and butchered, thereby leaving SI as virtually the only relief agency in eastern Congo, well, they could be forgiven for feeling somewhat sullied by their well-intentioned funding of butchery.

  And here in Darfur, it continued. American film stars created advertisements at the SI camps, money poured in, and the money went, in no small part, to the Janjaweed killers who roamed north Darfur and raped and killed and burned, did so on the backs of the best camels from Chad, with the best AK-47s from Egypt, communicated with the best satellite phones from Japan, all paid for with American and European money.

  Bianchi justified it easily. He was here, and he was working. He did what he had to do, and who the hell were you to judge him from your armchair while he was swatting flies out of his nose in forty-degree Celsius heat on a dirt road in the center of hell?

  And now his cynicism applied to his present situation. Two American journalists alone, out here in the Sahel? If he were honest with himself, he would admit that he now wished he’d ordered his drivers to continue on, to leave the white woman by the side of the road. Freelance reporters operating without GOS minders in Darfur were serous troublemakers, as far as Bianchi’s operation was concerned. He had to work with the leaders of the Sudan—rat bastards one and all—not against them. Even picking up this woman, taking her to Dirra, was dangerous to his organization. If the GOS somehow found out what he had done, he’d little doubt there would be repercussions from Khartoum that could hurt the flow of aid to his camps. Sure, he could bribe his way out of it, but the economic downturn in the First World had affected donations, and there was only so much in bribes that he could dole out in this economy.

  Bianchi saw the white man ahead.

  “Where is his camera? You said he was a photographer.”

  “He is. Like I said, robbers stole our car last night. Everything was in it. We’ve been out here for hours waiting for the right people to come along.”

  “You are twenty-five kilometers outside Al Fashir,” he told her.

  “Hey, don’t look at me, I wasn’t driving.”

  Mario did not doubt the woman. Highway bandits worked the road between Al Fashir and Dirra. In the rainy season, when the roads were slow and breakdowns were common, SI tried to travel with an UNAMID armed escort whenever possible, since it was impossible to bribe every Darfuri farmer or herder with an AK. But this time of year they could, more or less, race on by most any small group of men bent on doing them harm.

  Except for the Janjaweed, whom he paid well so that they would leave his convoys alone.

  The Italian was just a few steps from the American man now, the lone white talking to some of SI’s African drivers and freight loaders who’d left their vehicles to smoke by the side of the road. The American did not have any equipment with him, not even a pack on his back. He wore a sweat-stained brown T-shirt and some sort of local black pants. His T-shirt rode up on his back when he turned.

  The man was bearded and tan, and grime from the Sahel covered the parts of his face that the beard did not. He spoke in French to the locals. French was not uncommon here, as it was a common language in Chad, and Chad was just one hundred miles to the west.

  The American was facing the opposite direction. When he reached to shake the hand of another of his employees, a young Darfuri loader, Mario saw the butt of a pistol on his right hip.

  The Italian relief coordinator’s mouth dropped wide. He could not believe this man dared to carry a gun. An American cowboy! And he expected to just jump on one of the Speranza Internazionale trucks and get a ride out of here to safety? He would bring nothing but danger with that instrument of evil tucked so cavalierly in his drawstring pants.

  Without a word to the American, Mario Bianchi angrily walked up behind him and reached out to disarm him.

  And that, as it turned out, proved to be an extremely bad idea.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Putting one’s hand on the personal weapon of a man with Gentry’s training and disposition might not have been quite as dangerous as sticking one’s arm in a rusty bear trap, but it was damn close. As soon as Court felt the pressure, long before Mario’s fingers had fully wrapped around the grip, and way before he’d begun to tug the gun out of his pants, the American assassin spun towards the threat, used the momentum in his turning torso to sweep his right arm back up with incredible power and speed, knocked the arm of the threat up and away from his gun. His turn continued, and with his left hand shooting across his body, he reached in front of the threat’s face, swept his left leg out behind his threat’s legs, and slammed his left hand back hard under the threat’s chin. This sent the man reeling backwards, over the leg behind him, falling onto his back and into the cloud of dust kicked up by Gentry’s flurry of movement.

  Gentry drew his gun like a phantom’s blur, pointed it at the threat on the ground, and then scanned the area for more attackers.

  Ellen stood ten feet away, her face white with horror.

  Five minutes later all was neither forgiven nor forgotten, but the sixty-year-old Italian had been hauled back to his feet, brushed off, and his hat had been returned to his head. He needed a minute to compose himself, so he sat on the running board of one of the trucks, drinking a cold orange soda and smoking a cigarette. Ellen Walsh sat with him and spewed apologies, more like a diplomat than the lawyer she was, or the journalist she claimed to be. Court stood off the side of the road by himself, a pariah to all, for what he saw as simply having the temerity to carry a fucking pistol in the middle of a fucking war.

  “No guns! No guns!” One of the African aid drivers, a middle-aged man with silver hair, stood ten yards away from the American and waved his hand in a no-no gesture over and over as he chastised.

  “You aren’t getting my gun,” Court said, definitively.

  “No guns. No guns!” Court listened to what was, apparently, the only two English words this man knew, over and over and over, and watched him wag his finger back and forth.

  “Say that one more time, dickhead,” Court snapped. The man did just that—twice more, actually—before he stopped and stepped to the side to allow his boss and the white woman access. From their gait and fixed expressions, Court could see that Ellen and Signor Bianchi were still mad.

  Court looked to Ellen. “You don’t put your hand on someone else’s weapon,” he said.

  “You mentioned that already, Six,” she responded angrily. “Look. I’m riding to Dirra with them. They will still take you along, as a personal favor to me, if and only if you give Signor Bianchi the pistol.”

  “What’s he going to do with it?”

  Mario Bianchi spoke for himself. He was still rubbing the back of his neck. He wondered aloud if there was a physical therapist or a chiropractor at his Dirra clinic doing volunteer work today. Then said, “I will throw the gun out in the desert. What were you going to do with a gun?”

  Court rolled his eyes. “I might have come up with something.”

  “We don’t need guns in our convoy. We aren’t looking for trouble.”

  Court eyed the older Italian for a long time. Finally he said, “That’s the funny thing about trouble. Sometimes it comes looking for yo
u.”

  Bianchi’s stare was every bit as intense as Gentry’s; it conveyed the same measure of loathing for the man in front of him. “You do not get in one of my trucks with that gun.”

  This was a dangerous waste of time, and Court knew it. No other car had passed in the ten minutes they had been in the road with the Speranza Internazionale convoy. If he wanted to get out of here before either brigands, the GOS Army, or the secret police happened by, he was going to have to play along. With an exasperated sigh he drew his weapon. Bianchi reached out for it, but Gentry turned away from him, back towards a shallow dry streambed on the south side of the road. He dropped the magazine from the pistol and thumbed the bullets out onto the ground, kicked them down the indentation. Some fell into the cracks of the dry earth, some remained visible. Then he ejected the round from the chamber and disassembled the weapon, pulling off the slide, popping out the slide spring, the barrel. He threw these items as far as he could in the distance.

  Ellen stepped up to him. Her voice was softer; she wanted to put the matter behind them. “Now then. Was that so hard?”

  Court looked out at the vast landscape and scratched a fresh sand flea bite on his left wrist.

  “I’ll let you know in a couple of hours.”

  Ten minutes later Court was in the center seat of the third truck of four in the convoy. He could see little out the windshield ahead save for the dust of the two vehicles in front of them. Ellen was with Mario in the lead vehicle. The Italian had segregated the two, probably, thought Court, so that the geezer could hit on the dust-covered but still attractive Canadian. In the cab with Gentry was Rasid, the white-haired driver, and Bishara, a young loader for SI. Bishara spoke surprisingly good English, even if his geography wasn’t quite as practiced. He asked Court if he was from the same town as David Beckham. Court said no, ignored him mostly, and kept his eyes peeled out the windows. He knew they weren’t free of the NSS just yet. It would be another couple of hours to Dirra, Mario had told them. They should arrive just about midday. Once there, he would get Ellen to safety in the Speranza Internazionale camp for internally displaced people. She would have access to communications there and could arrange some way out of here either via air with a helicopter or overland with an escort of UNAMID troops. Court, on the other hand, planned to hire a car and driver to take him right back to Al Fashir. In the city he would find someone who could sell him a black market mobile phone, and he would call Sid, put as much blame for his missing the Ilyushin flight on the Russian flight crew, the pilot’s canoodling with the girl from the ICC, and he would get Sid to find him some other way out of Al Fashir. If he could do all this in a day and a half, he would still just be able to make it to Suakin in time for the operation there.