Andrew Britton - The Exile

“There seems to be a lot going on.” White was looking at him. “From what I can tell, it isn’t easy to find somebody in the city who isn’t upset about something or other.”

Saduq grunted. “A pity. Like Ishmael, I was born in the capital. And spent my childhood there.”

“You sound homesick.”

“It is always difficult when we must remain separated from our roots, Mr. White.”

White merely shrugged. That had never been among his problems.

The maid returned with a tray of cold juice, fruit and cheese hors d’oeuvres, set it on the table, and left. White reached for his juice and drank, appreciating its tangy sweetness. He realized he’d worked up quite a thirst during the trip.

“We should get right down to business,” he said. “Are you all set for the purchase?”

Saduq nodded. “I will be flying out tomorrow,” he said. “By the following night it should be complete.”

“A deal is done when it’s done,” White said, shaking his head. “For me that won’t be until the shipment is in-country. In the meantime a thousand different things could go wrong, and any one of them could spell serious trouble.”

“I understand your concern,” said Saduq. “But this transaction is not the first of its sort that I’ve brokered. Nor do I expect it will be the last. And my participation aside, it isn’t altogether without precedent.”

White met his gaze. He was remembering the RUF affair. And Iran-Contra, the ballsiness of which Stralen had always applauded, although he insisted the idea of negotiating with supposed Iranian moderates had been a foolish pipe dream. His objection to the former deal, and not the other, was all a matter of context-one fell within his system of moral and political values, and the other didn’t, and for Stralen that made things very simple. But his respect for the general aside, White hadn’t bought the comparisons. The ramifications simply weren’t proportional, not as matters stood, let alone at the scale they were quickly approaching.

“Precedent or otherwise, I need to know there won’t be any last-minute surprises,” he said after a long moment.

“If my personal guarantee is not sufficient, then I would hope my cousin’s would be, Mr. White.”

Mirghani hefted his vast bulk forward, took a wedge of cheese from the platter, and placed it on a slice of bread. “You should have no concerns,” he said, pushing the food into his mouth. “The merchants are reliable men.”

“They’re pirates,” said White.

“Yes.” Mirghani chewed, swallowed. “But it’s in their interest to deliver. They don’t want a reputation for reneging on bargains. While I have no doubt they’ll spend their skim in the bars and whore-houses of Eyl, it is worth remembering that President Ahmed’s Majeerteen clan controls Puntland, where they make their base. And that his transitional Somali government is in need of financial support.”

White turned his sweating glass in his hands. “May the circle be unbroken,” he said in an undertone.

“What was that?” Mirghani asked.

“American gospel.”

Saduq’s grin had reappeared, accompanied by a look of secret amusement. “Speaking of America, Mr. White, I believe your Revolutionary army had no qualms about buying thousands of weapons, and millions of pounds of gunpowder, from pirates. Without those supplies they could never have sustained their war against the British.”

White regarded him in silence, almost smiling himself now. He wondered what his former bosses in the Agency would have thought if they’d heard him elevated into the company of George Washington.

Finishing his drink, he lifted the rucksack from the ground and set it on the table. “Here you are,” he said finally. “With my thanks for the history lesson.”

Saduq took hold of the rucksack’s strap, pulled it across to his side. And that was that, White mused. There was no going back. For him, for Stralen, for anyone. And in an unexpected way, the finality of it took a weight off his shoulders.

He reached for a piece of fruit and reclined in his chair, admiring the barb in its corral across the field.

“A magnificent creature, is it not?” Saduq asked.

White looked at him, nodding. The broker didn’t miss much, a valuable trait in his line of work.

“The horse was bred by the Bamileke…an offshoot of the Bantu tribe that migrated into Cameroon hundreds of years ago,” Saduq said. “Driven from their home near the Niger basin by internal conflict, they overran the Pygmies in their new land. Exiles themselves, these tribesmen became conquerors by necessity.” A pause. “African history is different from yours, Mr. White. It is an ancient tapestry spun with many recurrent themes. Nothing here is new to us, and all that comes has been seen before.”

White continued to regard him. “Should I take that as another historical reminder?”

Saduq shrugged. “I would prefer you consider it a bit of perspective…volunteered without added cost.”

White considered that for a long moment, nodded. He again felt vaguely as if Saduq was toying with him.

“I’ll try not to forget it,” he said.

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON

Bumping up against the hotels and high-rise apartments between Avenue Monseigneur Vogt and the railroad tracks, running nearly to the wide front steps of the Cathedrale Notre Dame des Victoires, with its pitched gable roof, lofty white crucifix, and swirl of Christian hymns and animist chants spilling on the streets at Mass time, the Marche du Mfoundi was the busiest open-air market in Yaounde, the capital city of Cameroon.

Displayed under faded, slightly tattered pastel sun umbrellas were meat, fish, vegetables, religious totems, folk medicines, sculpted wooden figures, handcrafted rugs, garments, and baskets, and merchandise of countless other varieties. French and English could be heard mingling with Beti dialects as buyers and sellers haggled over prices at the crowded vendor stalls. Motorcycle taxis and yellow cabs weaved through traffic, cutting off cars, vans, and trucks of assorted vintage, startling pedestrians as they veered past. In the near distance, nestling Yaounde’s spaghetti tangle of streets and avenues on all sides, the Central African hills rose with their shags of green forest, tumbledown shanties, and rugged dirt roads, over which many of the vendors made their way down to the city’s marketplaces each dawn, carrying their goods in mule carts or flatbed trucks, hoping to return with lighter loads and something of a profit before nightfall brought its threat of predatory thieves and bandits.

A short walk from the market, Ryan Kealey emerged from his hotel into the warm noonday sunshine, feeling just a little the worse for wear after his trip, which had been long but fairly comfortable. The flight out of Johannesburg on Kenya Airways had been followed by an extended layover at JKIA, west of Nairobi, where his connection, a sleek Boeing 737, had arrived after an hour’s delay for the final sprint to Yaounde’s Nsimalen International. Informed he’d missed his hotel’s courtesy shuttle, Kealey had hailed a taxi for the thirty-minute drive to the Hilton on Boulevard du 20 Mai. As Harper had promised, a prepaid reservation had been made for him there.

He’d left South Africa at eleven o’clock the night before and spent nine hours in travel, reaching his hotel room at about six in the morning due to the difference in time zones. Gaining the two extra hours hadn’t hurt-it had given him a chance to rest up before he met his contact. Though he’d been convinced he was too wired and out of synch to sleep, he’d set his cell phone alarm for ten thirty just in case and actually dozed off on a chair while skimming through a complimentary copy of the Tribune, the country’s bilingual French-English newspaper.