Acts of faith (53 page)

“Nuba Day!” Douglas cried out, closing the book with a clap and so startling the secretary that she accidentally hit the delete key on the desktop and sent an hour’s work into the ether.

“We must get a new computer. This one, you make one mistake and you lose everything and can’t retrieve it,” Rachel said.

“That’s what we’ll do! Nuba Day!”

Fitzhugh, working out flight schedules for the next day, looked up. He recognized from the tone of voice and the quick, mechanical pacing, like a sentry’s at a memorial tomb—one two three four turn about one two three four turn about—that Douglas was in the throes of what he called a “cool idea.” Cool ideas were not like ordinary ideas—he didn’t have them, he experienced them, as an epileptic experiences seizures.

“So we’ll do the same thing, only we’ll call it Nuba Day!” he said, coming to a halt to face his audience of two, though he seemed to be talking mostly to himself.

Fitzhugh asked what the purpose of this event would be. To make the relief agencies aware of the Nubans’ plight and convince them to send assistance—via Knight Air, Douglas answered, as if the purpose were so obvious it didn’t need explaining. Pacing the room, he outlined a plan in staccato bursts, and Fitzhugh realized he was making it up as he went along.

A representative from each NGO would be flown to the mountains, to—where? To St. Andrew’s mission, that would be the perfect setting . . . Michael Goraende would assemble tribal officials to describe what their people were going through and their needs . . . The agencies would hear it first hand . . . We’ll need translators and sound equipment, and a generator for that, maybe solar panels if we can’t get a generator . . . And Manfred! We’ll bring the German in to talk about his hospital and the problems he’s got, keeping it in operation . . . Okay, it shouldn’t be all work . . . The Nubans would do a traditional dance for entertainment, and wrestling matches . . . Michael could set that up, too, that would be a sight to see . . . And maybe we could stretch it into two days, have those agency people spend a night in a Nuban village and see for themselves what things are like up there . . . Media! Christ, if we could round up a couple of reporters . . . Hey, I know—that woman who works for those slave redemption people, Quinette? They deal with the media all the time, maybe she would help us get some coverage. The Arabs are taking captives in the Nuba, same as they are in the south, that should get her group interested . . . Okay, I’ll work with Michael and Manfred, setting things up at that end—Fitz, you’ll be in charge at this end, lining up the NGOs, and tell ’em we’ll fly ’em up there free of charge . . .

Douglas’s enthusiasm was infectious, as always; yet Fitzhugh foresaw any number of problems, with communications, with timing and coordination and security. And if the scheme didn’t work, providing nothing more than some amusement and an all-expenses-paid adventure for the aid workers, much time, effort, and money would have been wasted. He aired none of these thoughts. He knew from previous experience that it would do no good, when Douglas was gripped by a cool idea, to present the difficulties standing in the way of its realization and suggest they deal with them ahead of time. Something in his nature—the font of his confidence, his optimism, his immunity to self-doubt—prevented him from seeing obstacles to his plans until they confronted him directly. His misgivings aside, Fitzhugh thought the scheme could be made to work.

“I’ll get on it as soon as I can,” he said, then returned to the flight schedules. Finished with that task, he took a legal pad and ballpoint and began to list the things that would need doing to turn Douglas’s cool idea into a reality. This was expected of him, the right-hand man. He expected it of himself.

T
HE PLANE SHUDDERED
in wing-wagging leaps and sudden dips, and Quinette’s delicate stomach felt each one. A week of Cipro and Imodium had tamed the dysentery but hadn’t conquered it. As miserable as it had made her—it felt as if ground glass were in her belly—she’d welcomed the infection; it was part of her initiation into the sorority Lily Hanrahan and Anne Derby belonged to—the Honorable Order of Old Africa Hands, they called it. You couldn’t be considered for membership until you’d survived at least one bout of amoebic and another of malaria. She’d dodged malaria so far but figured she’d catch it eventually and in a way looked forward to it. She envied Lily and Anne their sufferings. They’d passed a test.

Lily was suffering now. Her complexion matched her name as she sat on the canvas jumpseat, her rucksack clamped between her knees. Even the Kenyan cameramen on Lily’s left appeared to be turning a shade of white tinged with green, and Phyllis Rappaport was holding a barf bag to her mouth. The reporter’s distress caused a bubble of pleasure to rise in Quinette. Phyllis was the same acerbic woman she’d met last year. It was hard to tolerate her, much less embrace her with Christian love. This morning, as they were boarding the plane, was a good example. Because of Quinette’s efforts, Phyllis had been included in the press pool, the first to go into the Nuba mountains. Did she say thanks? No. Attitude instead of gratitude, that’s what Quinette got from her. “What are they doing here?” she’d asked, indicating the other two correspondents. “You told me I was getting an exclusive.”

“I don’t think I said that at all.”

“I think you did.” Phyllis took a step closer. “Look, Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen aren’t exactly glued to the TV, waiting to hear the latest news from Sudan. I sold the news desk on this story on the basis that it was a CNN exclusive. What do I say when they see it in
The New York Times
and on the AP wire? That I fell for your bullshit?”

Drawing a few words from the vocabulary she’d stopped using after she was saved, Quinette reminded Phyllis that the press release she’d sent to news bureaus in Nairobi had told everybody the same thing: a group of relief workers was going into the Nuba; there would be room on the plane for a limited number of media people; this was an exclusive opportunity to report from an arena of the war that had so far been uncovered. Exclusive opportunity didn’t mean the same thing as
an
exclusive.

“That’s cute,” Phyllis said. “You’re a real wordsmith. Okay, I’m here. Guess I’ll make the most of it, but I’ll thank you not to bullshit me again,
Mizz
Hardin.”

As she climbed into the plane, it was all Quinette could do not to crack her on the back of her red-haired head. She’d worked so hard on drafting the message, striving to make it as enticing as possible without going overboard. Fitz had given her a little help, but most of the wording was hers. Yes, she had changed “unique opportunity” to “exclusive opportunity” because she’d become familiar enough with reporters and their wants to know that the word
exclusive
would pique their interest; but it wasn’t as though she’d lied. She’d presented the final draft to Fitz for his approval. She was proud of her effort; proud too that the people at Knight Air had had enough confidence in her to admit her into their clubby circle and give her a role to play in one of their operations. Fitz had approached her, told her what he and Douglas were planning to do—they were removing the cloak of secrecy from their activities—and asked if she could help them get press coverage. She knew most of the correspondents in Nairobi—at one time or another, they’d gone with her and Ken and Jim Prewitt on redemption missions—and she gave him the names of two print reporters. What about TV? TV coverage was what they really needed. Quinette suggested CNN. Later, she contacted Ken in Switzerland, asking him to authorize her to go on the trip. It would be, she argued, a fact-finding mission to learn about the slave trade in the Nuba, though in truth her motives were more personal than professional. She was curious about that mysterious region; she wanted to see it.

Mary emerged from the cockpit, looking jauntily professional in her aviator’s shirt and cocked baseball cap with earphones clamped over it. She leaned for support against the cargo pallets stacked in the middle of the airplane and, raising her voice above the engine noise and the cacophony of bangs, rattles, and bumps, apologized for the rough ride. “We’ll be out of this soon and it’ll be smooth sailing. We should have you back on Mother Earth in about an hour.”

“An hour,” Lily groaned as Mary returned to the cockpit. “A bloody hour of this, and I’ll be ready for hospital.”

Quinette looked out the porthole, streaked with quivering filaments of rain, and watched the wing knifing through dense, roiling clouds, vapor trailing from its tip. Her heart nearly stopped when lightning lit up the gloom. The plane shuddered. She felt it was her responsibility to pray for all.
Don’t let any lightning hit us, Lord. Hold us in the hollow of your hand.
She couldn’t imagine that a merciful God would send them on this mission, only to have them die pointlessly in a crash.

“H
OW
’
S EVERYTHING BACK THERE
?”

“Much longer in this shit, and we’ll run out of barf bags,” Mary answered, looking a little peaked herself. “Good thing I thought to bring them.”

“Nuthin’ like a woman’s touch.”

“Right. Next thing I’ll hang curtains.”

Dare laughed, keeping both hands firmly on the yoke. He never felt so at one with an aircraft as in a thunderstorm, a unity he compared to a champion rodeo-rider’s with a bronc, anticipating each buck, jump, and twist so that he knew what the horse was going to do before the horse knew. Dropping his glance from the rain-webbed windshield to the altimeter and radar screen, he said, “A few more minutes, we’ll be there.”

“Wonder what our passengers would say if they knew they were guinea pigs in an experiment.”

“This ain’t an experiment.”

“Wes, you’ve got a college degree, why do you insist on speaking like a rube?”

Mary, he’d come to find out, was big on proper grammar and syntax. “It’s my way of stayin’ in touch with my roots. Like I said, this ain’t an experiment. I’ve done it dozens of times. What this is, it’s part of your postgraduate education, darlin’.” Now that they were officially lovers, she’d ceased her objections to that term of endearment. “We don’t waste fuel goin’ around thunderstorms, we fly into ’em and use ’em to get a free ride up. There’s good pilots and then there’s really good pilots, and really good pilots know how to get the most out of every drop of gas. Gas is money.”

“Okay, professor.”

His skills and knowledge—as long as he held on to them, he would hold on to her. The plane jumped, as if yanked by a string; then the string parted, and it fell. A few moments later it was out of the turbulence and in the aerial equivalent of a millpond. The altimeter began to tick upward without a change in altitude.

“We’re in the elevator now,” Dare said, meaning the shaft of warm air rising in the heart of the storm. The Hawker rose with it toward the anvil as effortlessly as a soaring bird riding a thermal. “No stops till the penthouse. It’s rough goin’ in, and it can be rough goin’ out if the storm’s big enough—y’all want a big storm because then the column of hot air is big enough for you to stay inside the shaft—but it sure is smooth once you’re inside. Now we ease up on the gas pedal.” He pulled the throttle levers back. “See? It’s as easy as losin’ your kid’s child support money in Vegas.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Heard from yours lately?”

“Me and Bobby mostly communicate by rumor,” Dare quipped, masking a hurt that had never healed completely. “Last I heard—it was a year ago—he’d started University of Texas at Austin.”

“How much do you reduce power?” Mary asked, returning to her lesson.

“Depends. One time—this was in Honduras—I rode one of these, and it spit us out at thirty-two thousand with both engines damned near on idle.”

“My hero!” she said in a falsetto to make sure he didn’t take her seriously. In case he didn’t get the message, she turned to him and stuck out her tongue. A little innocent razzing mixed in, he judged, with some genuine resentment.

In the weeks following their romp in Malakal, she’d managed to duck the consequences by sleeping with both him and Tony; with Tony in the tent they shared in Loki, with Dare on a sleeping bag in the Hawker after they were finished with an offload—the aviator’s version of getting laid in the backseat of a car, but with more room. He was surprised at Mary’s capacity for compartmentalizing her emotions. They would finish up, she would dress and climb into her first officer’s seat and be all business; and at the Hotel California mess, she would sit next to Tony and feign that everything was as it had been, feign so well that Dare began to entertain serious doubts about her. Her ability to pretend suggested a sociopathic personality, though he was doing a credible job of pretending himself. Sometimes he felt sorry for his former copilot, which made him all the more uneasy about his present copilot—if she could lie so convincingly to Tony, then she could lie to him, too. Still, he found the arrangement convenient if not altogether satisfactory. Like an affair with a married woman, it spared him from making a commitment that could draw him into another marriage. As much as he loved her, he didn’t think he could take that drastic step ever again. He’d once heard a second marriage called “the triumph of hope over experience.” By that standard, a fifth would be considered the triumph of sheer insanity. So he was content to let things go along in their sordid, furtive way. But Mary wasn’t.

Whether her conscience got the better of her, or the tension got to her, he couldn’t say. Whatever, she told him, one day on a short hop into eastern Sudan, that she was “sick of living a lie.” She was going to break it off with Tony, as gently as she could. Dare’s feelings were mixed. He was gratified she had found a bottom to her reservoir of pretense, but he was anxious. “Y’all don’t have to tell him everything,” he’d advised. “Just say your feelings have changed, you want to move out.” That isn’t what she told Tony. She didn’t tell him anything. Her nerve failed her, and all she did was to stop making love to him, pleading the standard excuses from the female playbook. That he fell for this, not for a few days but for two full weeks, caused Dare’s pity to sour into contempt. If the Aussie was that lunk-headed, he deserved to lose her. Finally, Tony confronted her, asking what the hell was going on, and she broke down and confessed. Confessed to it all and took the brunt of his anger, which included a backhanded crack that knocked her down and blackened her eye. She said she didn’t mind the blow, she’d earned it and felt that it paid her debt in one installment. Dare wasn’t so tolerant. He went to Tony’s tent. “I’m the worst pig there is,” he said, “but I ain’t never laid a hand on a woman. You had best not even think of hurting her again.” Tony was silent but not intimidated. “Y’all need to hit someone, here I am.” Tony said, “In my own time, mate. You’ll hear from me in my own time, my own way,” and gave a look that Dare wouldn’t forget soon, hurt, betrayal, and wrath congealing into a glare that could have frozen meat.