He told the boys that he did not want any trouble from local authorities, being a foreigner and all, and they’d helpfully suggested, via common Arabic words and pantomime, that he bury himself and his pack in the straw if cars passed or checkpoints loomed. The boys made a game of it, and he’d bought them lunch and tea at a roadside stand set up for those heading to Suakin to catch the Jeddah ferry. He’d even bought the donkey his own lunch at the stand, identical to what the humans ate, which the kids found hysterical.
In the afternoon, as the Red Sea coastline appeared in the hazy distance, Gentry dug himself deep in the straw and stayed there. He tried not to choke on the dust and avoided thinking too much about the constant creepycrawly sensations in his pants and his shirt. Traffic on the road had picked up considerably: buses, donkey and horse carts, men on foot, occasionally the odd private car. Twice even military transport trucks passed. Sidorenko had provided Gentry with a good deal of reading on Suakin. Court had ignored the majority of it, other than a map; the folio on the ancient port city had not seemed germane to his mission. But he had read a brief article on the city, and he was fascinated by its rich history. As well as being famous for its daily ferry to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Suakin was also known as the last active slave port in Africa, only cutting off the traffic in humans in 1946. Suakin was key to the African slave trade, whether Egyptians or Ottomans or British controlled the town. Many of the big, beautiful buildings in the town, virtually all of them in disrepair, were built in the furtherance of this cruel but lucrative industry.
He knew not to expect much as far as infrastructure here, but President Abboud had a farm nearby and enjoyed performing the morning call to prayer in the high gallery of the tower in the mosque that looked out over the Red Sea.
And that’s what put it on Court Gentry’s travel itinerary.
THIRTY
Nightfall found the Gray Man just to the north of Suakin, looking out to the water of the lagoon. The Red Sea itself was three miles or so farther to the east. This finger inlet protected the small port and had made the water-way a natural transportation route for centuries, until 1907, when the opening of Port Sudan, forty miles to the north, rendered Suakin irrelevant. Gentry still wore his Sudanese clothing, Western in appearance but not at all out of the ordinary here. With his tan skin and his dark beard and hair, with the dust and grime of a full day of travel, with his white taqiyah prayer cap, he could pass from a distance and in the night as an Arab, perhaps a Rashaida, if no one looked too closely. The Bosnian pilgrim cover story was always there to pull out in a pinch, though it was no more plausible here than it had been twenty miles to the west.
He’d stowed his pack deep in the boulders ten yards from the warm water’s edge. He’d found a dark cavelike indention in the rocks, and this he’d made a temporary LUP, or layup position.
The breeze from the ocean was not cool, but it was moving air, certainly less hot and stifling than had been Al Fashir or his six hours on the donkey cart. Compared to most of the last ninety-six hours, the steady currents of air off the water here in the dark shade of the boulders felt like the soft touch of a woman, not that Court had much experience with that in the past several years. He lay back, let his mind drift, let his bare feet dangle in a pool of seawater while his head rested on his boots, and he wanted a painkiller to help him relax one last time before the action and danger of tomorrow morning.
But he did not have time to relax now; he had to call Zack, needed to meet with him to pick up some equipment he’d need the next morning. He also needed to meet with Mohammed, the Suakin cop who was on the payroll of Russian intelligence.
He pulled out the Thuraya phone, pushed a couple of buttons, and then waited.
“You here?” Zack was all about the mission now. He was still angry at Court about Darfur, the teasing macho banter of their