and would have gone under eventually without a push from him. Fitzhugh urged him to keep his mouth shut. His commentaries on Tara’s mismanagement came off as gloating, while his repeated protests of innocence suggested guilt. For his part, suffering from a bad conscience, Fitzhugh could not face Tara. He dreaded the chance that he would round a corner one day and there she would be before him, unavoidable, her very presence a reproach.
But soon another matter commanded his and Douglas’s attention. The SPLA had failed to pay Yellowbird for two arms deliveries to the Nuba mountains. SPLA representatives in Nairobi and Kampala, from where the weapons shipments originated, promised to come up with the money, but after a full week passed without its appearance, Wesley declared that he was not going to fly another mission until he saw it. He and Mary were on strike. Douglas, whose zeal for the Nuban crusade had not diminished, appealed to him to call off his work stoppage. Michael Goraende was about to launch his dry-season offensive and needed every rifle and bullet he could get. A great deal was at stake, and that was more important than Wesley’s share of the unpaid charter fees, a mere eighteen thousand dollars. Wesley was unmoved. He wasn’t about to risk his and Mary’s necks for nothing. The disagreement degenerated into an argument, the argument into a scene, with Fitzhugh acting, unsuccessfully, as referee. He might as well have tried to mediate a fight between a long-married couple who hated each other. There in the cramped hotbox of the office, the two men said things best left unsaid. They never had been compatible, but the harshness of their words hinted at a deeper difference: a fundamental antagonism that they had repressed for the sake of the company and that now erupted.
It almost came to a fistfight when Douglas stated that the older man had lost his nerve and was using the nonpayment as a convenient excuse to put himself out of harm’s way. Thrusting out his chest, Wesley bulled him into a corner of the room. “I was taking ground fire when you were still shittin’ your britches,” he said, and with a sneer, tugged at the bill of Douglas’s cap. “You’re one to talk about nerve. I got the lowdown on your air force record a while back. Ran into a guy named Mendoza. Ring a bell?”
Douglas was silent.
“Yeah, it does. Ding dong. You’re worse than a fool and a hypocrite, you’re a goddamned fraud.” He gave Douglas’s cheek a contemptuous pat and left.
“What was he talking about, your air force record?” Fitzhugh asked.
Douglas stood rooted in the corner, looking at the door as if he could still see Wesley’s back passing through it. “No idea,” he replied.
The humiliated expression on his face said otherwise, but Fitzhugh did not press the issue.
Douglas sat down. “If I could fire that son of a bitch, I would.”
“What is going on with you?” Fitzhugh slapped his palm on his desk. “Are you trying to see how many enemies you can make around here?”
“Nope. But it looks like I’m going to have to take the next load in.”
“You will do no such thing. It would take one mishap, one small mishap, to have a plane registered to Knight Air discovered with weapons aboard. What we need to do is to get the SPLA to pay up and Wesley flying again.”
“Any ideas?”
He suggested they enlist Barrett’s aid. Barrett had high-level contacts in the rebels’ political arm in Nairobi. Possibly a word from him would convince them to convince their military brethren to pay the debt.
Combative as ever, Barrett was delighted to assist in any way he could. When, however, his discussions with his contacts produced nothing more substantial than more promises, he decided to play a direct role, offering to pay the sum in arrears out of his agency’s funds. That suited Wesley. As long as it wasn’t counterfeit, he didn’t care where the money came from. Thirty-six thousand dollars was then transferred from International People’s Aid to Knight Air’s account. Wesley withdrew his half and the next morning took off for the Uganda border to pick up a shipment of antiaircraft and mortar ammunition.
Now Barrett had to account for the expenditure. He arrived in Loki one afternoon to work alongside Fitzhugh to make sure that his books and Knight Air’s agreed, in the event his were audited by his agency’s board in Canada. They invented humanitarian aid flights, fabricating