Andrew Britton - The Exile

White was not dissuaded by this minor catch and quickly agreed to the general’s proposal. In the years that followed, he performed a number of tasks for Stralen while maintaining his pedestrian status with the State Department. The difference between his dual roles could hardly be greater. As a low-level staffer at State, he had spent years shuffling paper, filing reports, and placating angry Americans stuck in foreign locales. As a contract operative with the Defense Intelligence Agency, he had recruited agents, purchased classified material from foreign diplomats, and paid off assets on a sliding scale of importance, ranging from a custodian in the Jordanian parliament to a brigadier general in the Iranian army. Over the course of ten quiet years with the DIA, he had risked life and limb on any number of occasions…but never to this latest degree. He supposed everything that had come before was a precursor at best, a practice run for the main event.

White smiled as he considered the irony. In a way, he had proven his supervisors at the Bureau of Consular Affairs correct. They had told him he would never rise above the level of GS-12, and as it turned out, they had been right all along. He would never reach the top of the General Schedule, the government’s internal pay scale. At least not at the State Department. He didn’t care in the least. His work there was a thing of the past-all that mattered now was the task at hand. What he was doing in Sudan was easily his most dangerous and ambitious operation to date, and it could end only in one of two ways: with complete success and a triumphant return to the States, or with utter failure and a prolonged, agonizing death at the hands of Bashir’s secret police. Given the stakes, he could not afford the slightest distraction.

White was reassured by the fact that he wasn’t alone. He was supported not only by Stralen but also by Secretary Fitzgerald, Jeremy Thayer, and-if Stralen was to be believed-the president himself. His support on the ground was even stronger, and to White’s way of thinking, far more important. Ishmael Mirghani, the man sitting across from him, was his most trusted lieutenant. He also happened to be the first person White had met in-country-it was Mirghani’s back garden in which he had burned Harold Traylor’s passport less than an hour after landing in Khartoum.

But for all his skills, Mirghani was just one man. Standing behind him was the network White had helped establish over the past five weeks. These were the people he relied on the most, as they quite literally held his life in their hands. His survival depended on their silence, as well as their loyalty. He believed he could count on both. The network reached from Al-Geneina in the west to Sannar in the east, from Ad D mir in the north to Juba in the south. It consisted of seasoned fighters with the SLA and the JEM, men who would endure days of torture before breaking their word. Men who would die for the opportunity to bring down the Black Crow, the name they had given Omar al-Bashir in the secret training camps of the Nuba Mountains and the Jebel Marra, the volcanic peaks of central Darfur. It was an opportunity White fully intended to give them, and perhaps sooner than they might have imagined.

Perhaps most importantly, he was supported by the gifts he had brought to this impoverished region. White had seen the poverty with his own eyes, but he still found it hard to believe. In Sudan the average person earned less than twenty-three hundred dollars a year, though most survived on a fraction of that. The contents of the black duffel bag tucked between his feet could have fed 11,000 refugees for three months, were he to use it that way. But that would be a short-term solution at best, and it wasn’t part of the plan. The money wasn’t destined for the IDP camps of North Darfur, or for the SLA fighters scattered throughout the region. At least not directly. Instead, it was meant for one man, and one man alone.

During the endless round of meetings and briefings at State, they had referred to him as “the Exile.” Although the title seemed dramatic, that wasn’t the intention. Each of the six candidates had been assigned a code name, all of which were drawn from their respective personal histories. Those histories, in turn, had been compressed into a series of dossiers. The dossiers consisted of each man’s political and religious affiliation, criminal record, sexual orientation, and financial status, as well as a dozen other parameters by which they were secretly judged. Considering the stakes, it was a lot to take into account, and the heated debate had gone on for weeks.

Admittedly, the Exile had not been their first choice. A few of the other candidates had less controversial backgrounds, more palatable politics, and fewer skeletons in the closet, which automatically pushed them to the top of the list. But in the end, the Exile was determined to be the person with the necessary connections-the man with the grassroots support that would be needed to uproot the current regime. For these reasons, he had made the final cut.

White shot a glance at his watch as the engines reduced power, the pilot preparing for the final descent into Nyala Airport. The question had been bandied about by a dozen analysts from three different agencies, but its answer had come down to a lone, gutsy decision. It always did.

Joel Stralen had placed his wager on the Exile. In a very short time White would find out if the general’s bet had paid off.

Wearing beige linen trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a traditional kufi over his tightly curled black hair, Hassan al-Saduq was relaxing in the courtyard of his residence in Quaila when the cell phone trilled on the table beside his rattan chair.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Hassan. Kayf hallak, ” said the caller. He quickly shifted from the Arabic greeting to English. “I thought I would let you know we’ve landed.”

“And the car I sent?”

“It met us at once. We’re already on the road out.”

“Good, good,” Saduq said. “Edgard is my best driver. He knows more shortcuts from the city than my wives know ways to charm expensive gifts from me.”

Mirghani ignored his minor jest.

Saduq thought he’d detected a slight nervous edge in his voice. “How was your flight, my cousin?” he asked.

“ Ilhamdu lilla ’asalaama…I survived,” Mirghani said. “To tell you I’m in one piece would be to ignore the rattling inside me.”

Saduq chuckled. “And your fellow passenger?”

Mirghani hesitated at the other end. Then his voice lowered a notch. “I suspect nothing rattles him, inside or out,” he said in a heavy tone, back to speaking Arabic.

Saduq thought for a moment. Mirghani and their visitor would not take long to reach him from the dusty airport 100 kilometers to the south, and he saw no cause to be anything but relaxed when dealing with the foreigner. Like himself, Cullen White was a facilitator, which gave them much in common. The difference was that White would believe the men they represented each had at least as much to gain as to lose-that, if anything, the Americans held some greater leverage.

Saduq, however, understood better. He knew the true endgame, after all. If White even caught a hint of what he had been helping to set in motion-a mere hint — he would call their bargain off and go racing back to his Washington puppet master in a heartbeat.

“Does something beyond the crudeness of your transport trouble you?” Saduq said.

“Why do you ask?”

“I know you well enough to hear it in your voice.” Saduq shrugged to himself. “If you can’t discuss it now, though, we’ll talk when no outsiders are present to overhear us…recognizing Mr. White’s linguistic fluencies.”

There was another brief pause before Mirghani replied, “It’s all right. I’m simply a bit anxious.”