handing out prescriptions through a window and writing in a cloth ledger that looked like an artifact from the nineteenth century. Ulrika was taking a child’s temperature. When she came out, looking much thinner than when Quinette had last seen her, her face drawn, her long hair limp in the heat, she said that the child was suffering from severe diarrhea and that she had sufficient medicine to treat him for only two more days.
“After that I will be like a kujur and feed him the inside of a baobab gourd. That is supposed to cure the diarrhea, but if it doesn’t, maybe he will die. I don’t know.”
She had heard that her supplies had been confiscated, and was that true? Her cheeks flushing, Quinette nodded.
“There was no way to stop them?”
“There were twenty, thirty of them with rifles.”
Never a choice between right and wrong, only between what was necessary and what was not. She pleaded with God to not let the child die, trusting Him to understand that swapping the medicine for weapons could save the lives of many children.
They sat down outside Moses’s tukul, in the shade of a mango tree. His wife had cooked a chicken that must have trained for the poultry Olympics, the meat was so stringy and tough. Quinette asked Ulrika about Dr. Manfred. The nurse had heard no word from him and very little about him, only that he’d returned to Germany and was recovering from his breakdown. “A temporary madness,” she said in her brusque way, “but I don’t think he is coming back for a long time, maybe never. He suffers from too much of Africa.”
After lunch Quinette returned to the church and conferred with Bashir. Speaking in Arabic, he affirmed that he and his associates would be able to act as middlemen in the Nuba, as they did in Dinkaland. But travel in the mountains was more difficult and more dangerous, and therefore he would have to charge a higher “risk premium”—seventy-five dollars a head.
Outside a dog barked, the sound jarring in the scorched stillness of the afternoon. “I’ll have to speak to Eismont about that,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll agree to it.”
“Sixty, then,” Bashir countered.
She regarded him, with his Rolex and rings and spotless jelibiya. “I can’t tell you how much you disgust me,” she said, smiling.
Moses looked at her, alarmed. “Miss, do you wish me to translate?”
She said no and returned to interviewing the meks.
HANDY WARMED UP for his debut as a combat cameraman by filming the training exercise, a live-fire rehearsal for the attack on the garrison. It was conducted some distance from town, on an open plain where there weren’t any people and the soldiers, thanks to the ammunition Dare had delivered, could practice with real bullets. They were a motley lot. Michael’s bodyguard and assault troops wore uniforms; the rest were got up like they’d looted an army surplus store and maybe the used clothing bin at a Salvation Army depot. There were men in bathing trunks and shorts and T-shirts so full of holes they showed as much skin as they covered; men wearing camouflage trousers and brightly colored shirts that negated the camouflage. A couple of soldiers had donned skirts and petticoats so that they looked like armed cross-dressers. They wore sneakers, sandals, and shower shoes and covered their heads with World War II British officer hats and heirloom pith helmets passed on by grandfathers who’d served in colonial constabularies.
Dare had a low opinion of African fighting abilities, except for the Ethiopians and the Somalis—who’d shown their prowess at Mogadishu—but he looked past the sorry appearance of Michael’s troops and observed that they moved well in the field, listened to their officers’ commands, and handled their weapons as if they knew which end to point. The Archangel had taught them the lessons he’d learned at Fort Benning. With bundles of grass and tree branches tied to their belts, they advanced in choreographed rushes, one platoon sprinting forward while another laid down covering fire—short, disciplined bursts, not the unrestrained volleys of amateurs who liked to make noise.
Handy had come down with a slight fever and diarrhea, but he’d rallied after an overdose of Lomotil and now brimmed with enthusiasm, his camera trained on a mortar crew drilling with smoke rounds. He focused on the one who dropped the shells into the tube—he wore a shiny crucifix around his neck, a regular Crusader. “This will look terrific!”