Mark Greaney - On target

"Charles Stevens." Walsh smiled briefly. "A fellow Canadian."

The man looked into the book for several seconds, nodded sourly, and then put it down.

Court had just begun to relax again when he glanced over at Gennady on the other side of the woman under interrogation. The pilot had noticed something on the page with the drawing and info about the Il-76, and he peered at it intently. Confusion grew on his face now, and to Court that could only mean trouble.

Gennady spoke softly. "Ellen. The aircraft represented here is an MF variant."

She shrugged her shoulders. Too quickly and nonchalantly for Court's taste. It seemed an artificial reaction.

"It is?"

"Yes. The UN does not fly the Il-76MF." The Russian was looking up at her now, but her eyes remained to the front, towards the NSS officers.

"They don't?"

"No… they don't."

Shit, thought Court. Gennady was suspicious now. Hell, Court was suspicious now himself. Why would a UN do-gooder have a hand-drawn diagram of the Russian plane? He really hoped she could talk her way out of this predicament because there wasn't a damn thing he could do to help her.

"Who are you, and who do you work for?" Gennady asked, louder now, reaching out and turning the woman around by the shoulders to face him.

The Russian pilot spun her around. He'd figured her out, and she knew she could not play dumb with him like she could with the NSS.

It was time for a counterpunch.

When she was a kid her father had a saying, and she had turned it into her mantra. "Go big or go home." All her life she'd pushed herself to the limits of her abilities, did not accept second best or half measures. And now, clearly she'd found evidence of illegal weapons transfers between Russia and Sudan, exactly what she knew had been going on, and exactly what she wanted to prevent by moving to Holland and joining the International Criminal Court.

This was not a time to be demure, to be compliant, to run and hide. She would use the weight of her position, the power of her organization, the strength of the international community to get herself away from here, away from these thugs, and back to her office, so she could reveal what she'd discovered. Back in Khartoum, she had stared down Sudanese government officials a half dozen rungs higher up the ladder than these two little black-suited buffoons, and she was not going to let these men intimidate her. And the Russian pilot was an arrogant bastard who needed to see that women were not placed in front of him just to bow to his will.

Go big or go home?

Ellen wasn't going home until this dark secret, the secret that many had suspected, had been revealed to the world.

She was about to go big.

Say something lady, Court said to himself. She just stood there, staring at the tall Russian. Court needed to get this over with, to get this woman tossed into the little cell here at the airport until he and his waste-of-time flight could get wheels up and out of here.

Say something! Anything, Court silently implored the woman, but when she did break the silence, he immediately regretted her opening her mouth.

"Very well, gentlemen. My name is Ellen Walsh. I am not an employee of UNAMID. I am, in fact, an inspector with the International Criminal Court, here in the Sudan to investigate sanctions violations concerning weapons sales from abroad."

Oh, shit, woman, you just got yourself killed, Court thought, near disbelief at what he was hearing. How could she be so stupid?

The NSS men's eyes grew impossibly wide, and Gennady looked away from Walsh and towards Gentry, an expression on his face like he'd just been poleaxed.

Walsh continued. "We've known about this flight for a long time. I was sent here to see it for myself. I can assure you my entire agency, both in Khartoum and in the Netherlands, is well aware that I am here. If I am not immediately allowed to communicate with my staff, there will be-"

Gennady shouted at her, "You lie! We were not supposed to come to Al Fashir. We were only diverted at the last moment. No one sent you here to spy on us!"

The secret policemen recovered from their surprise and stormed around the table, heading straight for Ellen Walsh.

"ICC!" Gennady began shouting outside the room to the rest of the flight crew, who were standing out in the terminal. Court couldn't stop him from doing so. The two NSS men immediately confronted her, spun her around, and put her arms behind her back. These guys did not possess more than two speeds-off and on-and she had just flipped their switch. No doubt they were concerned about their own careers, their own lives even, allowing this woman to wander the airport while the Rosoboronexport flight was parked on the tarmac.

"You fucking Canadian whore!" shouted Gennady, turning back to the woman.

The big Russian slapped her face with his powerful hand. Court started to move forward with the objective of breaking Gennady's jaw and pushing the NSS officers back, but he stayed himself. He was in two forms of cover at the same time, and neither of these alter egos would have any incentive to stop the secret police from detaining this woman. He could not show the Sudanese that he was anything more than a Russian cargo aircraft crewman, and he could not show the Russians that he was anything more than some dispassionate agent they were bringing into the country.

So he just stood there, watching, as the NSS men handcuffed her, and she kicked out at Gennady as he stood in front of her shouting in Russian. Soon four armed GOS soldiers stormed in, alerted no doubt by the shouting and wrestling in the interrogation room. Gentry's Russian cohort scooted back out the door, and a couple of the other Russians peered in, with gawking stares of fascination and even amusement.

The older secret policeman grabbed her by her chin and turned her face towards his. "There is a place we take unwanted guests. I promise you that within minutes of arriving at the Ghost House, you will regret your espionage against the Republic of Sudan."

"Espionage? I am not a spy! I have every right as a member of the international community to-"

"Don't say another word, lady!" Court shouted aloud, no attempt now to hide his American accent and stay in cover. This fool was making her own situation direr by the second. "Just shut up and do what you're told. You don't know anything. Get out of here and do what you have to do, but don't let on that you know any-"

"You speak English?" She looked at Gentry, confusion replacing her fury.

Court tried to reason with the woman in short bursts so the others would not understand. He switched to French. He hoped like hell that, as a Canadian, she understood it and hoped, also like hell, that the Sudanese did not. "You are not ICC! Do not say you are ICC, or they will kill you! Tell them you were lying. Tell them you are nobody. UN, that's all." One of the NSS men looked up at him in surprise but was too busy trying to pull the strong woman over to a chair to stop what he was doing.

Ellen began crying, screaming at the same time, "I don't speak French, asshole! Do you speak English or not? Help me!"

After she was led to the chair, her small hands still cuffed behind her back, some of the soldiers cleared out, and one of the NSS men left the room to use the phone. The Russians had all returned to the concourse, sensing that the show was over.

Court remained in the room with the girl, pacing back and forth. He stepped in front of her and leaned close. Her lip bled where Gennady had slapped her, and her rust-colored blouse was torn at the shoulder from the soldiers' rough treatment.

He spoke to her softly, quickly, so the NSS would not pick up all of it. "Listen carefully. Don't fight with them, but be firm. Demand to speak to someone from UNAMID. Don't say anything else. You are not in the ICC. You saw nothing. You know nothing." Gentry looked down at the floor. Not up at her eyes. "You'll be okay." He turned away and headed back out the door slowly. "You'll be fine."