Andrew Britton - The Exile

White lowered the paper and shook his head in disgust. He had watched the demonstration gather outside the palace from the safety of a nearby rooftop and had seen what had actually transpired. Needless to say, it was nothing like what the paper reported. More than 4,000 people had been in attendance that day, and they had not run at the first sign of trouble, holding their ground against the rapid response of the state police and the brutal tactics they’d employed to put down the revolt. By the time the crowd eventually broke up, White had lost track of how many ambulances had come and gone. And though he didn’t have access to any hard numbers, he guessed that at least 100 protesters had been taken into custody before the square was finally cleared of people. The brutal efficiency of the state police made him grateful he had not tried to recruit their deputy commander, an act that would have surely resulted in his immediate arrest.

It was disheartening to see that his work was being so thoroughly dismissed by Sudan’s major news agencies, but with just five weeks in-country, he was already making some serious inroads, and he knew it was just a matter of time before the truth came out. To a certain extent, the regime could control what was printed, but many of Sudan’s most popular publications had flourished regardless, including the Tribune and the Mirror, two of the more successful independents. It was no coincidence that the former was based in Paris and the latter in Kenya. For Sudanese nationals, freedom of the press was something that could be found only online or outside the country, but it could be found. Sudan was not immune to external influence.

White couldn’t help but smile at the thought; he was proving as much with each passing day.

It had been ten days since he’d visited Walter Reynolds at the embassy in Khartoum, and he’d accomplished a great deal in the interim. He’d met quietly with public figures in and around Khartoum and the capital cities of the three federal states in Darfur: Al-Fashir, Al-Geneina, and Nyala, his current destination. Prior to the meeting with the ambassador, he’d spent several days in Juba, the regional capital of Southern Sudan, where he’d worked with the local SLA commander to stage a large demonstration in Buluk Square. That event had cost the U.S. taxpayers a hundred thousand dollars, but it had been a major success. A huge mass of people had shown up to protest the government’s nationwide expulsion of aid workers from the International Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. Most of those workers had been based in the south, where they had been in the midst of a campaign to eradicate the polio virus, which had popped up six months earlier, after seven years in remission. More than 400 children had been infected in Juba alone, and with the aid workers out of the picture, it seemed likely the virus would continue to spread. The epidemic had almost been enough to incite a revolt on its own, and with the support of the SLA, which carried a great deal of sway in the area, White had convinced the locals to stand together for much less than he’d initially anticipated. Most of the funds he’d dispersed in Juba had gone to families affected by the polio outbreak, and that was money he didn’t mind spending.

He put the paper aside and stared out the window, letting his mind drift. Technically, there was nothing surprising about the way things had progressed. He was, after all, adhering to the timeline they’d developed during those endless meetings at State, but he’d never really expected things to go according to plan. Even before his plane touched down in Khartoum, he’d come to terms with the fact that something would happen to throw him off track. Something to delay his forward progress. But much to his surprise it had never happened, and now he was about to finalize the arrangements they had made back in April. The importance of the meeting he was about to attend could not be overstated. As it stood, the work he’d accomplished over the past five weeks could all be undone with a single call, but that was about to change. The window for retreat was rapidly closing, and in less than two hours there would be no turning back.

White smiled to himself as he gazed into the pitch-black night. Everything was coming together as planned, and he had accomplished most of it all by himself, circumventing Bashir’s regime at every turn. As Harold Traylor, he had entered Sudan on a false passport without incident, a remarkable feat given the countrywide security clampdown that was put into effect after the massacre at Camp Hadith. As James Landis, he had bought politicians, recruited senior rebel leaders with the SLA and the JEM, and engineered mass demonstrations in five major cities in the largest country in North Africa. As Cullen White…

The smile faded, and he saw his reflection change in the port-side window. As Cullen White, he had made mistakes. That was the cold, hard truth, and though he had tried to run from his past, he had never been able to leave it behind. Over the years he had tried to console himself with the fact that he had been young, that there was no way he could have seen what was coming. But he had never really been able to convince himself. Nor had he been able to convince his immediate supervisors. As far as they were concerned, his age was no excuse for what he had done, or rather, for what he had failed to prevent, and they had reacted accordingly. He’d been with the Operations Directorate for less than a year when Jonathan Harper, the DDO at the time, had brought him back to Langley to ask for his resignation in person. That was in ’96, a few months after the incident that marked the end of his career with the Central Intelligence Agency.

The ensuing years had seen him drift from one meaningless government job to the next. After his embarrassing departure from the DO, he was shuttled over to State, where he worked as a passport specialist at the Washington Passport Agency, a consular officer in Gabon, and a cultural attache in Dubai. Those were just a few of the figurehead titles they had seen fit to saddle him with. Middle-management roles in thankless posts, the career path to nowhere-to becoming another Reynolds. White knew they would have loved to cut him loose completely, but it was a risk they couldn’t afford to take.

He never asked why they had kept him close, mainly because he didn’t need to. Despite his short-lived association with the Agency, he had seen and heard a great deal-much more than he should have, given his age and rank. It would be just as dangerous for them as it would be for him if the truth came out. But they had learned from their earlier mistakes. He was never again placed in a position of authority or given any real responsibility. Nor was there any chance of his security clearance being reinstated, and while his promotions arrived on schedule, his workload did not reflect his seniority. Nor did his staff. In his thirteen years with the State Department, he had never had more than three people working under him. At least to his way of thinking, that spoke volumes about the contempt his superiors felt for him.

At first, he had tried to make the best of it. He had sought in vain for some way to redeem himself, but nothing he did seemed to make a difference. As the years rolled past, his bitterness had gradually seeped to the surface. Much of his rage was focused on the people who’d sold him down the river, his former employers at Langley-and for good reason. After all, there was no question that they were the ones at fault.

He’d been twenty-three at the time, just six months out of the Career Training Program at Camp Peary. Twenty-three years old. Even now White had to shake his head at the sheer stupidity of it. There was no way he should have been given the responsibility they’d thrust upon him. But they’d done it regardless, and in retrospect, it was easy to see what a bad decision that had been. Even he could admit as much, though it pained him to do so…