Patterson, James - Alex Cross 14 - Cross Country

“No use arresting the Janjaweed,” Adanne said. "They know the government. The government knows them. It only brings more trouble to the camps. The UN can't help. No one can

I kept the Janjaweed's rifle, but motioned for him to get on his horse.

And then the strangest thing happened. He laughed at me. He rode away laughing.

Cross Country

Chapter 87

THE UN CAN'T help. No one can. This was what the refugees in the camp at Kalma believed, what they knew to be true, and now I knew it too.

But the survivors at the camp also knew how to be thankful for small favors and good intentions.

That night, several of the women used their precious firewood to make a meal for the three of us, as thanks for helping them. I couldn't imagine taking food from these people, but Emmanuel told me it was the only proper response.

He shocked me by showing up for the supper, bandaged and smiling, with a bag of onions he'd nicked for the occasion.

Then we all shared kisra and vegetable stew around the cookfire, eating right-handed only from a common bowl. It felt like the right thing to do, almost like a religious experience, special in so many ways.

These were good people, caught in a terrible situation not of their making.

And yet, even they talked freely of frontier justice, the violent kind. A woman proudly told us how criminals were dealt with by the people in her village. They would all rush forward, stab the offending person, put a tire filled with gasoline around his neck, and then light it. No trials, no DNA testing, apparently no guilt from the vigilantes either.

Adanne and I were treated like guests of honor at dinner. There was a steady stream of visitors and a lot of laying on of hands.

When Emmanuel wasn't around to translate, I got the gist of the Dinka or Arabic from the warmth in the voices and the body language.

Several times, I heard something that sounded like Ali in the middle of sentences. Adanne picked up on it too.

She leaned near me at one point and said, “They think you look like Muhammad Ali.”

“That's what they're saying?”

“It's true, Alex. You do look like him, when he was world champion. He's still very well loved here, you know.” She nodded with her chin and smiled at a group of younger women hovering nearby. “1 think you've made a few girlfriends in the bargain.”

“Does that make you jealous?” I asked, grinning, happier and more relaxed than I'd been in many days.

A little girl crawled uninvited onto her lap and curled up.

“The word's not in my vocabulary,” she said. Then she smiled.

“Maybe a little bit. For tonight anyway.”

I was finding that I liked Adanne very much. She was courageous and resourceful, and Father Bombata was right about her: She was a good person. I had seen her risk her life for the wood gatherers today, and maybe because she felt responsible for me.

We stayed late into the evening, as the crowd got steadily bigger. Actually, the adults came and went, but the kids pooled all around us. It was an audience I couldn't resist, and neither could Adanne. She was very free and easy around children.

With Emmanuel's help, I got up and told an improvised version of one of my own kids' favorite bedtime stories.

It was about a little boy who wanted nothing more than to learn to whistle. This time, I named him Deng.

“And Deng tried-” I puffed out my cheeks and blew, and the kids rolled all over one another as though it were the funniest thing they had ever heard. They probably liked that I could be silly and laugh at myself.

“And he tried-” I bugged my eyes and blew right in their faces, and when they continued to laugh, it was more than a little gratifying, like an oasis in the middle of everything that had gone on since I'd come to Africa.

“You like children, don't you?” Adanne asked after I'd finished the story and come back to sit beside her. She had tears in her eyes from the laughing.

“I do. Do you have children, Adanne?”

She shook her head and stared into my eyes. Finally she spoke. “I can't have children, Alex. I was…when I was very young… I was raped. They used the handle of a shovel. It's not important. Not to me, not anymore.” Adanne smiled then. “I can still enjoy children, though. I love the way you were with them.”

Cross Country

Chapter 88

THE NEXT MINUTE or so seemed like they couldn't be happening. Not that night. Not any night.

The Janjaweed had come back. They seemed to appear out of nowhere, like ghosts out of the darkness. The ambush was brazen and sudden; they had come right into the camp.

It was hard to tell their number, but there must have been a couple of dozen of them. I thought I recognized one, the man I had released, the one who'd laughed at me.

These Janjaweed were on foot-they had no horses or camels. They had guns and also knives and camel whips; a couple of them wielded spears.

One man waved the flag of Sudan as if they were here on the state's business, and possibly they were. Another carried a flag with a white fierce horseman on a dark blue background, the symbol of the Janjaweed.

The women and children of the camp, who had been laughing and playing just a minute before, were screaming and trying to scatter out of harm's way now.

The attack was satanic in its viciousness; it was pure evil, like the murder scenes I'd visited in Washington..Grown men slashed away at defenseless refugees or shot them down. The thatched roofs of huts were set on fire not twenty feet away from me. An elderly man was lit on fire.

Then more Janjaweed arrived, with camels, horses, and two Land Cruisers mounted with machine guns. There was nothing but killing, cutting, slashing, screaming to heaven-no other purpose to this attack.

I fought off a few of the bastards, but there wasn't anything I could do to stop so many. I understood the way the people of this camp, of this country, understand: No one can help us.

But that night someone did. Finally, Sudanese regulars and a few UN troops arrived in jeeps and vans. The Janjaweed began to leave. They took a few women and animals with them.

Their last senseless and vengeful act: They burned down a grain shed used for storing millet.

I finally found Adanne, and she was cradling a child who had watched her mother die.

Then everything was strangely quiet except for the people's sobbing and the low winds of the harmattan.

Cross Country

Chapter 89

IT WAS GETTING close to morning when I finally laid myself down in a tent with a straw mat on the floor. It had been provided to me by the Red Cross workers, and I was too tired to argue that I didn't need a roof over my head.

The flap of the tent opened suddenly and I got up on one elbow to see who it was.

“It's me, Alex. Adanne. May I come in?”

“Of course you can.” My heart pumped in my chest.

She stepped inside and sat down beside me on the mat.

“Terrible day,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

“It's not always this bad,” she said. "But it can be worse.

The Sudanese soldiers knew a reporter was in the camp. And an American. That's why they came to chase away the Janjaweed. They don't want bad press if they can possibly avoid it."

I shook my head and started to smile. So did Adanne.

They weren't happy smiles. I knew that what she had said was true, but it was also ridiculous and absurd.

“We're supposed to share the tent, Alex,” Adanne finally said. “Do you mind?”

“Share a tent with you? No, I think I can handle that. I'll do my best.”

Adanne stretched herself out on the mat. She reached out and patted my hand. Then I took her hand in mine.