Acts of faith (81 page)

Douglas gave a rueful nod. “Yeah, we’re Avis, they’re Hertz.”

“With more aggressive marketing,” Adid began, then had a sneezing fit. Muttering “This damned dust,” he pulled a bottle of nasal spray from his pocket and tilted his head back to clear his nostrils. “I was going to say, with better marketing, you will not have to settle for second place.”

Fitzhugh protested that he’d done all he could, extolling the virtues of Knight Air’s larger and faster planes, offering generous “commissions” on sales.

“Ah, my friend the Ambler, I know you have, but you are the operations manager. Marketing should not be your department. So I am proposing that it’s time for the company to hire a marketing director.”

“Great idea,” Douglas said. “Got anyone in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I had a discussion with him last week. A man named Timmerman. He is now director of flight operations for the UN, but he wishes to quit and is interested in going to work for you. Or may I say, for
us.
”

Douglas flinched and shook his head, “Wrong guy. Completely the wrong guy.”

“Yes, you had some problems with him sometime in the past. He told me about that.”

“And did he tell you that I was the next thing to a hijacker?” Douglas’s tone indicated that he was still wounded by the remark. “That’s what he told everyone else around here.”

“There is an Arab proverb—
eli fat mat.
The past is dead. It is dead for this Timmerman; let it be dead for you.”

“Just how did you and that Dutchman get together?”

“I keep these and these open.” Adid pointed at his eyes and ears. “He could be of great benefit to us. But you are the managing director. I can only offer my counsel. It is your decision.”

“What the hell does Timmerman know about marketing?” Douglas asked, scowling.

“He doesn’t need to know anything. He has been here with the UN for a long time. He is personally acquainted with the heads of each one of those forty agencies—”

“And he can use his influence to steer them our way,” Fitzhugh said, venturing to interrupt.

With an inclining of his small aristocratic head, the Somali acknowledged that Fitzhugh had it right. “You could easily double your UN contracts. With intelligent management, you could take most of them and, who knows, all of them away from Miss Whitcomb.”

Douglas’s scowl faded. An alert expression came to his face, so that, with his raptor’s nose, he resembled a perched hawk when it spots prey in the grass below. And this must have been the reaction that Adid, that canny judge of men, meant to provoke by referring to Tara by name rather than to her company’s name or to some abstract term like “your competitor.” He knew that Douglas viewed Knight Air’s competition with Pathways as more than a business rivalry; it was a duel between Tara and himself.

“Of course, you would need more equipment,” Adid went on. “I’ve researched the market. There are three planes for sale, two Andovers for three hundred thirty thousand each and a Polish Let for one hundred thousand. At the moment, retained profits are not sufficient to purchase these aircraft, so I would put up the capital.”

There was the big news, and if any resistance to hiring Timmerman remained in Douglas, that overcame it. He looked at Fitzhugh and flicked his eyebrows. “The big mo, my man. We’ll crush her.”

“Crush her?” Fitzhugh said, alarmed. Aside from his liking for Tara, he realized that crushing her, were it possible, could affect his personal life. She and Diana were friends. “Why should it be necessary to crush her?”

“The Sudan market is saturated,” Adid answered. “I see no room in it for two cargo airlines.”

“I’ve never thought of Sudan as a market.”

“You should change your thinking. What did you call the football pitches where you made your famous name? Grass?”

And the dark eyes, those pinpoint black holes that took everything in and gave nothing away, released a little something for a change—an intention. It was only a flash, but Fitzhugh saw it, and he mentioned it to Douglas after they saw Adid to his quarters.

“I think our Somali friend wants more than to be our venture capitalist,” he warned. “First he corners what he calls the market, and then he means to take us over.”

“I’m not an idiot,” the American responded. “To me, he’s like the booster rocket on a space shot. He launches us, then he gets jettisoned.”

“I am quite certain he knows you’re thinking that very thought,” Fitzhugh said.

S
HE DECIDED TO
announce her decision to marry Michael. This, she believed, would stiffen her resolve, make it harder for her to retreat. She went about it methodically, tendering a written resignation to Ken, tacking on an apology for giving him short notice and a promise to return to Loki after the wedding to train her replacement.

Next she notified her family. She started by writing her mother but found she could not express her feelings to Ardele and so wrote to Nicole instead. She rambled on for pages, drawing an idealized portrait of Michael in the hopes it would persuade her family that she wasn’t crazy to have fallen in love with him. She resented having to explain herself. Those dull people who had never done anything out of the ordinary and whose lives were set up to protect them from powerful emotions were incapable of understanding the ecstasy of a great love, the power of an overwhelming passion.
Love. Love. Love,
she wrote in conclusion.
Everyone wants it, but hardly anyone finds it. I’ve found it over here, and no matter what you think of me, I think I’m very lucky that I did.

She posted both letters through the UN’s mail service—to make sure they got to their destinations—and then biked to Malachy’s church to tell him of her decision and ask if he would perform the marriage ceremony. No date was set as yet, but could he do it? He could not—she and Michael weren’t Catholics. What happened to the bold priest who wasn’t afraid to break the Church’s rules? There were some rules he could not break, he replied, but he was sure his old friend Barrett would be pleased to do the service. Her final step was to break the news to Anne Derby. Her roommate was sorting laundry when she entered the tent.

“I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve resigned and I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?” Anne said plaintively. She turned around. “Back to America?”

“I’m getting married.”

“No! You’re not! Who is it?”

“Michael Goraende.”

Anne blinked in puzzlement.

“He’s a colonel in the SPLA. He commands the SPLA up in the Nuba.”

Anne continued to blink as she assimilated this information.

“I’m going up there as soon as I can get a flight, and then we’ll set the date. I’m going to need a maid of honor, and I’d like it to be you.”

Anne returned to folding her laundry, except now she wasn’t folding it but distractedly bunching her clothes into balls.

“I know it’s a shock,” Quinette said. “But could you?”

“I don’t know . . . I—I would need to . . .” She spun around to face Quinette again. “No. I’m sorry, but no. How long have you been involved with this colonel?”

“Long enough. Why can’t you do it?”

“You know the reputation the SPLA has around here. If they haven’t committed as many war crimes as the Muslims, they have sure given it a bloody good go. Your doing this, why it’s the next thing to putting on a uniform and joining up.”

“So that’s what’s wrong? I haven’t seen them commit any war crimes.”

“I don’t mean wrong, morally. Or because he’s African. It isn’t done, Quinette.” She tossed a T-shirt on her bed. “It simply isn’t
done.
”

“But I am going to do it.”

Anne gave her a searching look. “Yes, I can see that. I’m fond of you, but you’ll be throwing your life away, and I want no part in that.”

“Fine, then. You won’t have,” Quinette said, already feeling like an outcast and, what was surprising, welcoming it.

“I’ll just say congratulations and wish you all the best of luck. You shall certainly need it.”

“Thank you. If you don’t mind, keep this to yourself till I’m gone.”

“That I can do.”

For the next few days Quinette was busy organizing her office files and putting things in order for whomever Ken sent to take her place. This eased her conscience about leaving him in the lurch. When she learned that the Friends of the Frontline were going to the Nuba soon, she went to Tim Fancher and, without disclosing her reasons (fearful she’d get a reaction similar to Anne’s), asked to hitch a ride. No problem, he said. They were flying in the big Antonov and could take a passenger. She returned to her tent and packed her trunk.

“You are really going to go through with it?” Anne said, watching her. “I’d hoped you’d have second thoughts. I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Quinette replied, though she scarcely did herself. It was critical for her not to think about her actions but to carry them out. She recalled a war movie she’d watched with her father. It was about paratroopers in World War II, making a night jump into France. One soldier stepped up to the doorway and balked at the last minute. A sergeant behind him gave him a kick, and he plummeted into the darkness. She had to be her own sergeant, overcoming all reluctance, booting herself into the unknown.

The following morning, before sunrise, Fancher and Rob Handy came for her in their pickup. When he saw her bulging rucksack and trunk, Fancher asked, “Looks like you’re planning to stay awhile.”

“Yes,” she said coyly. “Quite a while.”

“We’re going to be neighbors then,” he said, driving to the airfield. “Rob and me figure we’ll be up there three, maybe four months.”

The Friends of the Frontline were embarking on a campaign to set up ministries throughout the Nuba mountains. Fancher and Handy would base themselves in New Tourom and, in the manner of the circuit-riding preachers of old, range out from there, evangelizing, training civilian pastors and SPLA chaplains, giving support and encouragement to beleaguered Christian congregations, seeking converts among the Nuba’s Muslims. Quinette was happy to hear that familiar faces would be around for a while; it would help her through the transition into her new life.

At the airfield, ground crews were loading the Antonov while Alexei and the aircrew readied the plane for takeoff. The Friends were bringing in an awesome amount of supplies and equipment: a ton of schoolbooks, hymnals, and Bibles in Arabic and several Nuban languages, another ton of food and medicine, along with generators and fuel, solar panels, bicycles, movie screens, TV sets, tape recorders, mosquito nets, and boxes labeled
EVANGELISM KITS
or
JESUS FILMS
.

“We think of what we’re doing as a spiritual offensive,” Fancher said, gazing at the band of light that belted the sky to the horizon. “And of all this”—he jerked a thumb at the cargo—“as our weapons and matériel.”

“Satan is strong in Sudan,” added Handy, flexing a muscular arm. “We have got to be stronger.”

Quinette remarked that their “spiritual offensive” would be a dangerous undertaking.

“The hand of God never takes you to where the grace of God cannot keep you,” Handy said.

Quinette’s trunk was the last item to be taken on board. The loadmaster secured the cargo nets and motioned to her and the two men to get in. They strapped themselves into fold-down seats on one side of the fuselage.

“So what’s taking you up there for an extended stay?” Fancher asked.

Judging on instinct that he and Handy would react more positively than Anne had, she told him. It took them a minute or two to recover from their surprise; the plane had begun to taxi before Fancher spoke again, and his words confirmed that her judgment had been correct: raising his voice over the noise, he asked if she and Michael had chosen a minister. She answered that she hoped Barrett would fulfill that role.

“I’m ordained in the ECS, too,” he said. “So if you can’t get him, I’d be happy to do the honors.”

She could not have asked for a more auspicious beginning. Then the engines built to a deafening pitch, the plane rolled and lifted off, and she felt in its rise an escape from the gravity that had held her to all she knew, all she was.

T
HE AIRSTRIP WAS
thronged with people—hundreds were needed to transport the cargo—and ringed by watchful soldiers manning antiaircraft machine guns. Quinette was greeted by Negev, by Pearl and her cousins Kiki and Nolli, and by a crowd of women and girls crying out
“Kinnet basso!”
which meant, Negev informed her, “Quinette has come!” By this time the bush telegraph had transmitted the news that Michael and the white woman were to be married, and the calls of
“Kinnet basso!”
told her that the marriage would meet with general approval. If she was an outcast in Loki, she was welcome here, loved by the Nubans for casting herself into their lives. She loved them back, unbidden tears coming to her eyes.

“Had no idea you’ve got so many fans,” Fancher said, struggling to get through the swarms of people. He and Handy didn’t seem to know what to make of her reception. A few young women were fighting for the honor of carrying her trunk.

When she got to the garrison, she learned that Michael had been called away to a conference of high-level officers planning a dry-season offensive and wasn’t expected to return for another three days. Bitterly disappointed and a little angry, not with him but with the obligations that had taken him from her at such a critical time, she went to the radio room and sent him word that she’d arrived and was waiting for him. His reply came ten minutes later—“Please be patient. I will be back soon.” The happiness of hearing his voice was shattered by Major Kasli, commanding in Michael’s absence. With a reproachful look on his narrow face, he reprimanded her for using the radio to send a personal message, chewed out the radio operator for allowing it, and for good measure reprimanded the junior officer who’d explained why Michael was gone. That was confidential information. Quinette wanted to pull his goatee till he howled. “That’s right,” she snapped. “Us spies might tip off the CIA.”