the quality of a lost and isolated world, a kind of Shangri-la. It was anything but—gun emplacements picketed the hills.
They walked on, past men threshing grain with heavy wooden paddles, women balancing on their heads the inevitable baskets piled high with sorghum ears. As in Dinkaland, Quinette attracted a retinue of teenage girls, full of excitement and curiosity. They took turns carrying her rucksack, tousled her hair and twined it around their fingers, and touched her arms, chattering incomprehensibly.
Michael’s garrison looked more like a Nuba village than a military base, except for the numbers of armed men moving about, the radio antenna sprouting from a nest of solar panels, and the SPLA flag flying over a mud-walled bungalow. Inside, several officers, among them the dour Major Kasli, stood at a table covered with maps. Another map, under a plastic sheet marked with arrows, circles, and rectangles, papered half of one wall. Wes, Doug, and Nimrod gathered with Michael around the radio, tucked in a corner atop a wooden crate. Wes called Lokichokio, and after a few minutes Fitz’s voice, high pitched and chipper, broke through the barrage of static. Quinette sat down and waited while the two men talked. Once Kasli looked up from the maps to cast an unwelcoming glance her way. He was an unattractive man, with close-set bloodshot eyes and an exceptionally narrow head—a kind of squashed oval; his pointed chin accentuated by a goatee.
“Okay, Fitz knows we’ve arrived,” Wes said, motioning to her to come to the radio. “Y’all better tell him to get a message to your boss, on account of you’re gonna be a little late getting back to work. Fuel shortage in Loki. Now it’s five days instead of three. Five at least.”
She couldn’t say that this news displeased her. Pulling the handset to her mouth, she gave Fitz Ken’s number, told him exactly what to say, and promised to pay the sat-phone charges when she returned.
“It happened for a reason,” she said to Michael as he walked her up a path. “Nothing happens without a reason.”
“And what could that reason be, Quinette?”
She was glad to hear her first name. “I don’t know, but I assume we’ll find out.”
Here at his base, his bodyguard wasn’t compelled to shadow him everywhere, but they weren’t quite alone. Her followers walked alongside, fussing with her hair.
“I’ve assembled several meks for you to talk to. They will give you numbers and names of people abducted from their villages. Also, that trader you mentioned on your last visit, Bashir.”
“He’s here?”
“Major Kasli located him. He knows where many of the captives are. You’ll meet everyone tomorrow in New Tourom. I’ll have a translator for you.”
“You won’t be there?”
“Very busy now. Planning an operation. We’re going on it day after tomorrow.”
“You’ll be leaving?”she asked, disappointed. “What sort of operation?”
“Military secret,” he answered. “This is where you’ll be staying.”
Ducking their heads, they passed through a low keyhole-shaped entrance into a courtyard formed by a ring of three tukuls, each joined to the other by a high wall.
“In here,” Michael said, beckoning her to the center hut.
The dim, windowless room was hot. When her eyes adjusted, she saw geometric designs and primitive figures of people and animals painted in red and ochre, black and white on the clay walls, which threw off a dull bluish gleam, as if they had been varnished or rubbed to a shine. The air was filled with the strong aroma of the bunched herbs and dried bean pods hanging from pegs high up on the walls. A crude bed—sticks lashed together between four thick crooked posts, with a mosquito net overhead—was the only furniture, while a few straw mats did for carpeting.
“No TV or refrigerator,” said Michael, grinning, “but you do have a shower.” He pointed at a little alcove, where a flat boulder lay on the floor and a large calabash hung from a pair of cattle horns more than six feet above. “You fill this up and take this out”—he pulled a wooden plug from the bottom of the calabash—“but use the water with care. The dry season is here and water is like gold.”
She loved its rough simplicity, and the gaiety and mystery of the wall paintings, and when they stepped outside into the courtyard, the feeling of cloister rendered by the encircled huts.
“This is my house,” he said, “but of course I can’t stay here with you.”
“Of course.”
“My daughter and her two cousins will be with you. Her name is Toddo, but you