The man stopped and spat out a torrent of words. Someone shouted a reply and Jason thought he heard the words “duh nah” five or six times. The man turned back to Jason, his face a mask.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Hague
The halls of the palace were deserted when Hank and Catherine arrived
Saturday morning. The smell of freshly brewed coffee lured them down the corridor and grew stronger as they reached their office. “Aly,” was all Hank said. “I wonder if she went home last night?”
“Probably not,” Catherine replied.
They pushed through the door to find the young woman pacing the floor. Without a word, Aly rushed up to Hank and handed him his percom. “You left Cassandra here last night. She’s been buzzing for the last five minutes. I tried to answer, but she doesn’t recognize me.”
“Damn,” Hank moaned. He flipped the lid open and Cassandra’s face appeared on the screen. “I’m afraid there’s bad news. Jason’s helicopter is missing. We know it refueled at Beica in Ethiopia early this morning but it never reached the mission. We also have satellite imagery of a helicopter that crashed into a village in the Sudd not too far from the mission.” The voice grew worried. “The photo shows the bodies of two men wearing white shirts and dark pants staked out on the ground near the wreckage. One’s bald and the other is too short to be Jason. We think they’re the pilots.”
“But no trace of Jason,” Hank said.
“None.”
“Well, that’s good news of a sort.” He thought for a moment. “I’m going to have to tell Gus. Can you give me a print-out of the photo?”
“
It’s pretty gruesome,” Cassandra warned.
“Gus can take it.”
2
Hank didn’t recognize the woman sitting in the cell with Gus. “I don’t think you’ve met Doctor Therese Derwent,” Gus said. They shook hands in the European manner and Hank introduced Catherine and Aly.
Derwent read the situation correctly. “Perhaps I should leave.”
Hank sensed the psychiatrist was an ally and shook his head. “Gus, we’ve lost track of Jason.” He repeated all that Cassandra had told him and showed him the photo.
Gus’s face turned to stone. “That’s not him.”
“I helped Jason pack,” Aly said, fighting her tears. “He didn’t take a white shirt.”
“May I?” Derwent said, taking the photo. “I did field work in tribal villages in Africa. The bodies were left as a warning. If they had killed Jason, they would have displayed his body with the other two.”
Gus stormed out of the cell and paced the corridor. Hank started to join him but Derwent motioned him to stay back. “Give him time to work it out,” she said.
Gus slammed the palm of his hand against the steel door, sending an echo down the hall. Twice more he pounded the door without saying a word. Slowly, he reined in his emotions. He stood in the doorway as his breathing slowed. He spoke quietly, his voice under tight control. “God damn them to hell.”
“Tribal Africans have a simple, very primitive justice,” Derwent explained.
“Not them,” Gus said, his anger still boiling below the surface. “I understand where they’re coming from. It’s the bastards here. They live in some sort of fucking parallel universe where they have absolutely no responsibility for their actions.”
“You mean the court?” Derwent said, pushing him to focus his anger. Only then could she defuse it.
“Who the hell else? Look at Du Milan. She hasn’t got a clue what real life is like. It’s no concern to her that Jason is in harm’s way because of what she did to nail me. It’s like ‘Hey, I can do whatever I want because ‘humanity’ demands it. Tell me that’s justice.”
“That’s not what justice is about,” Hank said quietly.
Gus looked at his friend. “I know that, Hank. You want to make things better; you care about righting a wrong and protecting the innocent.” His anger was back. “But that is the last goddamn thing on her agenda.” He stalked back into the corridor, still seething with anger. Aly rushed out after him, tears streaming down her face. He held her in his arms as she cried. “It’s going to be okay, Love,” he murmured.
“How?” she asked.
Gus looked around to be sure they were alone in the hall and whispered in her ear as he pressed Suzanne’s business card into her hand. She nodded and held on to him, still crying.
Catherine held Hank’s arm tightly as they walked past the guard’s console in the main entrance hall. Hank paused long enough to sign out. He glanced at the bank of TV monitors in front of the guard. “The shrink Derwent is right behind us,” he said. “I think she’s in love with Gus.”
Catherine smiled at him. “You idiot. She likes him, but she’s too European, too much of a professional to let herself fall in love.”
Hank cocked an eyebrow. “Woman can do that?” The guard pressed a button under the screen monitoring the main entrance and the heavy entrance door slid silently back. They walked arm-in-arm into the cold, blustery afternoon.
“Hank, I know you’re feeling responsible for Jason.”
“It was my idea to send him there.”
“Don’t do it,” she cautioned.
“Do what?”
“Blame yourself. You’re not responsible for what happened.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
The Sudd, Southern Sudan
Flies buzzed around Jason’s head as he lay on the ground, his feet and hands tightly bound. A girl of about nine or ten years of age came into the hut and brushed the flies off his face. She helped him sit up and held a plastic jug to his lips. The warm water tickled down his throat as she carefully let him drink. “Where am I?” he asked.
“The name would mean nothing to you,” a woman’s voice said. Jason tried to focus on the speaker standing in the doorway, but the bright light framed her and he could only see a heavyset figure dressed in combat fatigues. She moved into the hut and he got a better look. Her hair was cut extremely short, and he guessed her age around thirty-five. Her brown eyes and dark skin radiated with energy, and she moved with the same rippling grace as the village women. Like them, she was a tribal African, yet she was different.
“What happened to the pilots?” Jason asked.
“Dead,” the woman answered. “They killed seven people when they crashed into the hut, all women and girls. The family killed them.” She said a few words in Dinka and the girl untied the knots that bound him.
“Thank you. My name is Jason Tyler and I’m looking for the Reverend Tobias Person at Mission Awana.”
The woman stared at him, her face unreadable. “I’m D’Na.” To Jason’s untrained ear, her name sounded like ‘duh nah,’ the two words that had saved him.
TWENTY-NINE
Mission Awana, Southern Sudan
The two high-wheeled all-terrain pickups hurtled down the dirt track and
slammed to a stop in front of the makeshift roadblock, sending a cloud of dust over the sleeping guards. “What the …?” Jason muttered, coming awake. It was still dark and he slowly got his bearings. He was wedged in the cab of the lead pickup between the driver and D’Na. “Who the hell are they?”
“Arab militiamen,” D’Na told him. “The Sudanese Army pays them to blockade the mission.”
Jason was confused. “But that’s where we want to go, right? So why are we stopped here?”
D’Na gave him a condescending look. “We are stopped so we can bribe them to let us in.”
“Right. So they’ll take your money and let us through.”
“They like the money,” D’Na said. “And they understand.” She pointed to the top of the cab and made a shooting gesture with her forefinger and thumb, indicating the heavy machine guns mounted above the cab of each truck. “They are paid to blockade, not to fight.” She got out and struck up a friendly conversation with the guards. Money exchanged hands and she climbed back in. “All is good as long as the army is busy fighting the rebels.”
“Lovely,” Jason said to himself.
D’Na laughed. “Welcome to Africa.” They rode in silence as the two trucks raced down the rutted track, leaving a cloud of dust glittering in the first rays of dawn. “I love this time of day,” D’Na said as they barreled into the mission compound. “All is new and fresh.” The trucks coasted to a stop in front of a rambling single-story house with a tin roof and wide verandas. “Mission House,” she announced. It was the heart of the mission. “And my husband.” Toby Person was standing on the veranda waiting for them.
The Hague
Aly stood in the early-morning light and gazed out the office window. Below her, a woman hurried across the palace’s forecourt, bundled up against the cold wind sweeping in off the North Sea. But Aly didn’t see her. Catherine switched on the lights and was surprised to see her standing there. “You startled me,” she said. “How long have you been here?” Hank was right behind her.
“All night,” Aly replied, her voice heavy with despair. “I keep hoping to hear something.”
Catherine took her in her arms and held her, pulling her back from the dark abyss threatening to claim her. “Don’t give up hope,” Catherine murmured. She sat Aly down and handed her a cup of coffee. “We’ll find him.”
Hank nodded in agreement. He looked at the calendar. It was Sunday, December 20, and Jason had been missing for over twenty-four hours. He wanted to reassure Aly but he knew the odds.
“My father has a question that’s been bothering him,” Aly said. “Why do you hate the court?”
Hank welcomed the chance to talk, anything to get his mind off Jason. “I don’t hate it. Who can argue against prosecuting true war criminals and thugs who commit genocide? But I remember Alex once saying the court, in its zeal to get the bastards, is mucking it up. He knew the Rome Statute conflicts with our Constitution and the US can’t join. That doesn’t mean the two can’t coexist. But the moment the court asserted its jurisdiction beyond the countries that have ratified the treaty creating it, it became a political animal, a perversion of the law that Alex loved and respected. He was right to fear for the court.”
Aly started to cry. “But why Gus? He isn’t a war criminal.”
“No, he’s not. He just happened to kill a lot of people in combat.”
“Does that mean he’s a political prisoner?”
“Yeah, it does.” Hank’s jaw hardened. “And I’ll destroy the court if that’s what it takes to free him.”
Mission Awana
Jason wondered if he was in the same world. A shower, shave, and clean clothes had worked a magic he had never experienced. Now he was sitting in the large open room in Mission House as two golden children played at a game of sticks on the floor. He sipped at the cool herb drink that carried a special power of its own. D’Na swept into the room, a transformed woman. She was wearing a sarong-like wrap that reached to her ankles. A pattern was woven into the cloth that changed with the light as if it had a life of its own. The two children ran to her and cuddled to her side. Her laughter filled the room.
“Any luck this time?” Toby said, a sad look on his face.
“No.” She gestured at Jason. “Just this one.”
Toby explained. “D’Na follows slavers around and tries to buy the children back. Slavery never died out in this part of Africa. The Sudanese consider the Dinka and Nuer subhuman, and a twelve-year-old virgin can bring up to ten thousand dollars in Omdurman. Unfortunately, Islam only discourages slavery, not prohibit it, which is enough to open the window.” Toby’s face turned hard. “We’ve experienced a resurgence in the last ten years.”
“Why doesn’t the United Nations stop it?” Jason asked.
Toby gave him a disgusted look. “And violate Sudanese sovereignty? If the UN got involved simply because the Sudanese were engaged in a little slavery and genocide in their own country, what country would be next?”
Jason was shocked. “Genocide? I thought they ended that five, six years ago.”
Toby shook his head. “They stopped the genocide in Darfur, five-hundred miles to the northwest of here, and signed a so-called permanent cease-fire. They do that every now and then but it’s temporary at best. We’re caught in a civil war between the Arab north and African rebels in the south. It’s been going on over fifty years and I don’t see it ending soon.” He unfolded a map and spread it out for Jason. He pointed to large tracts of land blocked in with squares and rectangles.
“The prize is oil. These are the oil concessions located about a hundred miles to the west of here. The oil reserves are not huge like the Middle East but they’re nothing to sneeze at – about the size of Columbia and Venezuela. The government in Khartoum parceled the concessions out to foreign consortiums and takes eighty percent of the gross. We never see a bit of it down here, and as far as the government is concerned, the tribes are unbelievers and not entitled to a cent. To make their point, the Sudanese Army has recruited Arab militias called Janjaweed to drive the tribes out of the concessions.
“For the most part, they’ve left us alone. The mission has a fairly high visibility in Europe and the States, so rather than draw attention to what they’re doing, Khartoum has ignored us. It was working until an exploration team from Westcot Oil discovered a large reserve in block five, here.” He tapped an odd-shaped, penciled-in area on the map that was located two hundred miles south of the mission.
“Dad said that Westcot Oil had bailed out of the Sudan,” Jason said.
“It had. But it got back in when Max Westcot bought the Canadian consortium that holds the concession to block five, which the rebels control. But Khartoum has a greedy eye so they called for jihad against the rebels to get it back. The rebels fought back and turned the area south of the river, that’s the Bahr el Ghazal or the White Nile, into a no-man’s land. Unfortunately, we’re in that no-man’s land. The rebels want to make the White Nile the de facto boundary and Juba their capital.” He pointed to the large town 350 miles south of the mission, on the far side of the oil concession. “Unfortunately, we’re caught between the Sudanese and the oil – a victim of geography. There was some heavy fighting here two years ago when the US Air Force was flying C-130s out of the mission for the UN Peacekeepers. We were almost overran and destroyed, but things have calmed down – for now.”
“Why don’t you move to some place where it’s safer?” Jason asked.
Toby waved his hand at an aerial photograph of the mission hanging on the wall. “The mission goes back over a hundred years and I can’t walk away from it.” He looked at his children. “There are two more very important reasons. This is their home.”
“And the other reasons?”
A wry grin crossed Toby’s face. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”
“You sound like my Dad.”
Toby stood up. “It’s time for church.”
Toby led his family and Jason to a makeshift amphitheater on the side of a low hill facing north. Jason sat on the rough planks that served as benches and the two children bounded into his lap as Toby unpacked a lunch basket. It was a simple meal of bread, cooked vegetables he didn’t recognize, and a cool drink of the same herb tea. Groups of families wandered in and found places under the canopy of fronds and tree branches as they unpacked their lunches. Their numbers kept growing until Jason estimated the size of the crowd at over a thousand. Everyone was talking, laughing and eating. “When does it start?” he asked.
“When the time is right,” Toby replied. “We’re on African time here. Be patient.” A song leader stepped to the front and started to sing. One by one, the families stopped eating and joined in. Soon, all were singing and they were a congregation.
“It’s beautiful. I wish I understood the words.”
“It’s a local dialect of Dinka,” Toby explained. “They’re great singers.” He translated. “We give thanks, Oh Lord, we give thanks. We give thanks for our food, we give thanks for each other.” A lone woman sang out and, again, Toby translated. “I give thanks for tomorrow.” The congregation repeated it and a man gave his personal thanks. Again, the congregation sang back. The song continued for almost ten minutes before it died away and the families went back to their lunch.
“Who wrote it?” Jason asked.
“No one really wrote it,” Toby answered. “I sort of started it one time and it took on a life of it’s own.” Another song leader stepped forward and began to sing. Again, the people joined in. “They’re singing about their families.” This time, Toby joined in and Jason was surprised by the rich quality of his voice.
The congregation continued to sing until the sun reached its zenith. Toby made his way down the hill, touching people as they extended their hands to him. He stood in front and spoke for a few moments in Dinka. Then he raised his right hand. He chanted a few words of benediction and the congregation responded. It was over and they made their way back to Mission House.
They sat on the veranda as a gentle breeze cut the heat of the day. “So what is worth the lives of two pilots and an expensive helicopter to bring you here?” Toby asked.
“It’s about my Dad,” Jason said. He talked quietly, relating the entire story. Not once did Toby interrupt him. When Jason finished, Toby walked into Mission House and returned a few moments later with a mini CD player. Without a word, he fast-forwarded it to the section he wanted and let it play. A stream of Arabic filled Jason’s ears but Toby’s voice was unmistakable. Then Toby translated.
“Question: Are these Snake Eyes or CBUs precision-guided weapons?
“Answer: Absolutely not. That’s why we called them dumb bombs.
“Question: Were you aware that civilians were in the convoy?
“Answer: Absolutely not.”
Toby hit the stop button. “Son of a bitch,” Jason whispered. “The fuc …” he caught himself in time.
“The fucker lied,” Toby said, completing the sentence. “Will it do any good you getting this to The Hague?”
“Based on what I’ve seen of the court so far, I doubt it. We need to get you on the stand.”
Toby pulled into himself. “I can’t leave.”
D’Na took charge. “Yes, you can. We don’t need you to run the mission.”
Toby touched her cheek. “My warrior queen.”
“Any chance we might get a message out?” Jason asked.
“We can try,” Toby replied. “Landlines have been cut for weeks, and the Sudanese Army is jamming the HF radio and satellite communication channels, which they do periodically. They claim it is because of the so-called ‘emergency’ they’ve created.”
The Hague
It was late Sunday afternoon when Hank and Aly trooped into Gus’s cell. Aly carried a pizza box and deposited it on the table. “I hope you like
pannekoeken
.” She opened the box to reveal what looked like a big pizza.
“They’re great,” Hank added. “It’s more like a big crepe with all the goodies piled on top. Dig in before it gets cold.” The three sat at the table and devoured the pancake. When they were finished, Hank called Cassandra and asked if there was any news on Jason. His face lit up at her reply. “I’m with Gus, go loudspeaker please.”
Cassandra’s voice filled the room. “A listening station monitored a garbled high-frequency radio message from Mission Awana. There was a reference to a Tyler but the rest was lost in static, probably jamming.”
Gus pounded the table. “Damn! He’s alive.”
“We can’t be sure,” Cassandra cautioned. “The Sudanese Army and the rebels are fighting north of the river, about ten miles away, and jamming all communications. Arab militiamen have sealed the mission off. The situation down there is very unstable and fluid, to say the least.”
There was no doubt in Gus’s mind. “You don’t know Jason. He’s alive. Can you get him out?”
“We’ve contacted the State Department,” Cassandra explained. “As expected, they refuse to get involved in the Sudan.”
“I’ll contact Max and see what he can do,” Hank said, breaking the connection. Without a word, Hank handed Gus his cell phone to call home.