had dinner with the president. I call the first vice-president by his first name.”
“Then you must go to Khartoum as soon as you can, and you will tell your acquaintances that you and I are going to give them a big propaganda victory, one they have been looking for. You will ask them for one concession, that there be no bloodshed. In fact, they will see that it is to their advantage not to shed any blood.”
Adid squeezed his eyes half shut. “What are you proposing?”
And there, far out in a wilderness, while looking at the grasslands reaching away and away toward the high white fire of Kilimanjaro, Fitzhugh presented his plan. When he was finished, Adid looked stunned.
“That is going to spare me trouble?” he asked with incredulous laughter. “It will cause me nothing but trouble.”
“But not near so much trouble as a story on CNN will cause. Think of the attention that will focus on you. But this—can we call it the lesser of two evils? By the time Douglas and Tony are in safe hands, you will have already done the preliminary work for dissolving Knight Relief Services and forming a new company. Let’s call it SkyTrain Relief Services. You will announce that you discovered that your managing director was engaged in gunrunning and had pulled the mask over your eyes and that you were about to dismiss him when, how amazing, he and his copilot were caught in the act. I don’t doubt that CNN will move very quickly to say that their reporter was working on just such a story when she met her untimely death. They will raise the question, Was she murdered? But by that time you and the company will be in the clear.”
Adid rubbed his forehead and said nothing.
“For someone who made millions selling poached ivory, this should not be a big problem.”
“I regret that day the three of you appeared in my office, you, Wesley Dare, and that fool,” Adid said.
“I am trying to make it less regretful.”
Adid presented a faint, rueful smile. “I am going to require you to teach my son to play soccer. I wish him to be the star of his club.”
“It would be a pleasure, Hassan.”
“Back to the lodge, please. I would like a swim before dinner.”
FITZHUGH BELIEVED HIS threat wasn’t all that had moved Adid to join in his plot. He wanted his own justice as well: to show Douglas that the cost of deceiving him could be very high indeed.
“My friends await your news,” read Adid’s fax from Khartoum. For the next several days Fitzhugh checked the flight plans filed with Loki tower—as assistant flight coordinator, he was authorized to see them. Finally he spotted the one he was looking for. The name BUSY BEAVER was written in the block where the air operator was identified. That and the crew’s names—D. Braithwaite, T. Bollichek—were the only accurate information on the form.
Returning to the flight office, he sent a fax to the same number in Khartoum to which he transmitted the UN’s daily flight plans. If Adid’s “friends” had done their job, the people at the other end of the line would be on the lookout for a special message from Fitzhugh. Suffering a bout of anxiousness and guilt—for all practical purposes, he was now an agent of the government of Sudan—he sent the identification numbers of Douglas’s plane, the type of aircraft, and what he knew would be its true destination—New Tourom—then tore up his copy of the fax.
Someone somewhere in Khartoum slipped up—Douglas and Tony returned safely that afternoon. A week later they took off at eight in the morning on another mission. Fitzhugh again alerted Khartoum, and this time succeeded. By noon, the news had been flashed all over Loki: The control tower had received an emergency call from Busy Beaver flight number such and such. It had been intercepted by Sudanese MIGs and was being escorted to an air force base. How desperate Douglas must have been to send the Mayday. Fitzhugh could only imagine what had gone through his mind when he saw the fighter planes appear outside his cockpit window.
The official announcement came within forty-eight hours. SUNA, the government news agency, reported that a plane carrying mortars and shoulder-fired missiles had been captured after it violated Sudanese airspace over the Nuba mountains. The two-man crew, one American and one Australian, had been taken prisoner and admitted to authorities they were delivering the weapons to the SPLA. Furthermore, they