killed or captured. Kasli escaped with fifty or sixty, possibly more.”
Abruptly, it got dark. A soldier lit an altar candle, so the church appeared to be illuminated for a vespers service.
“Kasli?” Quinette murmured.
“Suleiman was brought in this morning. Kasli knew he would confess, as he did, and so he was forced to make his move before he’d planned. A good thing. He didn’t have time to organize. If he did, we’d be fighting for days.”
“Are you saying, a coup?” Fancher asked, his face drawn by tension.
“Attempted,” Michael answered, and turned to Quinette. “Kasli was to be the assassin. Yours and mine.” He sat on the altar step, shoulders stooped from an exhaustion that was more than physical. “Suleiman confessed to most of it, and I have guessed the rest. My adjutant volunteered his services to the government when I sent him on that recruitment mission. Ha! What he did was to recruit men for himself. Through him, Khartoum smuggled the radios into the Nuba. They gave him his instructions. ‘First, assist us in destroying the airfields’—Kasli organized the entire thing!—’next, foment an uprising of Nuban Muslims against the SPLA. In this uprising, the commander and his foreign wife will be killed. You, Major Muhammad Kasli, will then take over, proclaim loyalty to the regime, and deliver the Nuba to us.’ He got Suleiman and the Muslim elders to join him. Two escaped with Kasli. We caught the other two.”
Quinette sat beside him. In the candlelight, they and the missionaries and the soldiers standing all around cast huge, grotesque shadows on the church walls.
“Those two and Suleiman will be shot tomorrow. It won’t be done in secrecy, oh no. I want everyone to see the consequences.”
There was a prolonged silence until Fancher cleared his throat and said in a low, measured tone, “I know you’ve been through a lot, but this is God’s house. It’s not the place to issue a death sentence.”
“Kasli intended to murder the both of you,” Michael said. “After my wife and me, you were next on the list.”
“We came here knowing the risks. We would ask you to show mercy.”
Michael rose, and although he stood a step below the missionary, he was able to look him in the face. “Why?”
“For its own sake. And because executing them could create more recruits for another Kasli. And because it would create resentment and make our work all the harder.”
“Your work,” Michael replied, “gave those men a reason to join Kasli, and I allowed you to give it to them. So you see, all of us here made this situation. But I see no cause for mercy. Go to the graves of the women who were killed at the airfield and ask if they would show mercy.”
With an exchange of glances, Fancher and Handy passed some message to each other.
“If you can’t commute the sentence, could you postpone it?” asked the younger man.
“For what purpose?”
“We’d like to talk to them. We’d like a chance to bring them to Christ. Maybe knowing they’re going to die will help them see the truth. Things like that have been known to happen. It’s a question of saving their souls from hell.”
Michael greeted this request with a look of amazement and a cold laugh. “My friends, that is precisely where I wish to send them.”
The missionaries turned to Quinette, silently imploring her intercession.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, casting her eyes toward her husband. He showed no reaction other than to blink and cock his head, as if he weren’t sure he had heard her right. These were far from the circumstances under which she’d hoped to tell him. “I found out only this afternoon, and if I had to shoot those men myself to protect my baby, I would do it.”
Both men blinked at the rawness of her statement. Or was it the illogic? For Fancher asked her meaning. How would postponing the sentence endanger her baby?
“I saw a young girl die three days ago, Nolli—” she began.
Fancher interrupted. “If you love God, Quinette, and his great commandment to love one another, you won’t argue with us.”
She felt as if the wires and pegs and cords holding her together had pulled out and come apart and were now reassembling themselves into some new configuration. And from this incomplete, unfamiliar form came an unfamiliar voice. “I do love Him, and I love Him by hating the people who hate Him. Ecclesiastes says there’s a time for hate. Well, now is the time for some healthy,