Acts of faith (97 page)

The demand was made and was predictably refused. Quinette went back to Knight Air, the blockade runners. Doug orchestrated airdrops on the most ravaged areas, using his airline’s Antonovs. One mission took place over New Tourom. With the porters, she watched the plane come to a near stall low in the sky, its nose pointed upward as it dropped a blizzard of white sacks. The women swarmed into the drop zone, hoisted the heavy sacks onto their heads, and carried them into town.

After the food was distributed, the porters gathered around Quinette, singing and clapping their hands. Four lifted her off the ground and bore her through the town and set her down before a crowd of men, assembled beside a tethered cow. A young woman approached, a small mound of ashes in each palm, and while she powdered Quinette’s arms and legs, a man slashed the cow’s throat with a spear. Blood spewed and soaked into the dry ground. The animal wobbled and fell, thrashing its legs, and when the thrashing ceased and the large eyes stared still, the man dipped his spear into the wound, then stood in front of Quinette and flicked the blade, sprinkling her with blood.
Blessing
her. Ululations rose, hands clapped in rhythm, and she heard in those sounds a declaration that there would be no more whispers about spirits angered by the commander’s union with a stranger. She was the kujur now, the rainmaker who had delivered the people from hunger.

The crisis eased. One day as she left her tukul to go to the airstrip, she found Negev waiting outside the courtyard wall with five members of her husband’s bodyguard. They immediately surrounded her, two in front, one on each side, two behind, and walked with her, silent, vigilant, sandals made from tires slapping the ground. She turned to look at Negev, one of the duo bringing up the rear. “Commander’s orders, missy.” They shuttled her into the headquarters bungalow, where Michael stood studying his wall map. She asked him to explain the cloak of protection. He left off what he was doing and, taking her by both hands, wove his long fingers into hers. The face she loved so wore a complex expression—tender, stern, troubled.

“These men will be with you at all times. You are in grave danger.”

The SPLA had sources of intelligence in Khartoum, from one of which he had received a coded report earlier in the day. Quinette having granted so many interviews, her opinions and activities had not gone unnoticed by the government. An editorial about her had appeared in the official newspaper. Among other things, it accused her of—

“I can guess of what,” she said, and asked what danger she was in from an editorial.

“There are rumors you may be assassinated.”

The word jolted her. At the same time she felt somehow honored. A certain light must have come into her eyes, and through it Michael must have read her thoughts.

“This is not to be taken lightly,” he said, drawing her closer. “This is not cinema. Khartoum has infiltrated the SPLA. And with all these refugees coming in here, who can say who might be among them? So you will go nowhere while you are here without these men.”

“What do you mean, while I’m here? Where else would I be?”

“I have decided to send you away for a time.”

“Away where?” she asked, startled. She did not want to leave his side for a dozen reasons, and she was surprised that her jealousy was among them. She had thought she was over it.

“To Loki. You will be safe there, although Negev will accompany you just in case. Only a short time, long enough for us to screen these refugees. I imagine that if there are assassins among them, they would come after me as well as you. So you are not idle and bored, I suggest you talk with the assistance people about sending us more aid. And I have something I want you to do. It is not a small something.” He withdrew a sealed envelope from a drawer. “Our stores of antiaircraft ammunition and rockets are very low. The need for them is as great as the need for the other things.”

She took the envelope. “Another keyword?”

He nodded and instructed her to present it, as before, only to Douglas or Wesley Dare.

The following afternoon she and Negev, a sidearm concealed under his shirt, boarded Alexei’s Antonov—it had landed at New Tourom after making another airdrop. To avoid problems with Kenya immigration, they were given jumpsuits and smuggled into the country as crew members. Sneaked across an international border. Bodyguards. Assassins. A coded message. Despite Michael’s caution that “this is not cinema,” it was impossible not to feel that she was in a movie, and the thrill of it blunted the sting of missing him, the fear that Yamila would take advantage of her absence.

To Quinette, after many months away, Lokichokio looked like what it was—a foreign country. Alexei gave her and Negev a lift to the Knight Air office. She blinked when Doug greeted her—his nose was covered in bandages. An accident, he said, sounding as if he had a bad cold. She handed him the envelope, and he passed it to Fitz, who wrote out the keyword. Actually, it was two words: Baker’s Daughter.

“Michael must be a man of many facets,” he said. “I didn’t know he read Shakespeare.”

“I don’t think he does,” she said.

“ ‘They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. We know what we are, but know not what we may be.’ It’s from—I don’t remember. From somewhere in Shakespeare.”

He went to work. Once more she watched him compose scrambled words into a coherent message. So many tons of 14.5-millimeter ammunition, so many shoulder-fired missiles.

“So we’ve got the order,” Doug said, “but no delivery truck. I’m sorry, Quinette. I really am.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Wes and I have come to a parting of the ways. There’s no way we can fly this stuff in. Not till we work out a new system.”

After absorbing this disturbing news, she said, “What do I tell my husband? He needs it right away. Without it, the government will have a field day. They’ll bomb and bomb and bomb.”

“I know, “ he said under his breath.

“Can’t you or someone else fly it in? The Antonov we came in on—”

“Quinette, it’s complicated, but we can’t carry military stuff in Knight Air planes, and Knight Air can’t take direct payment from the SPLA. The operation has to be covered. And like I said, we’re working out a new system. We’re not going to leave you people in the lurch. That’s a solemn promise, but it’s going to take a few weeks to set things up.”

Fitz gave her the decoded message. “Perhaps you could talk to Wes yourself. He might make one more trip. I doubt it, but maybe.”

She found him at a part of the Loki airfield known as Dogpatch, a graveyard for derelict planes and home to a few one-pilot, one-plane air operators. Tara Whitcomb’s Cessna was parked there, near Dare’s Hawker-Siddley. A ground crewman was spray-painting the canary under the cockpit window, and the word
YELLOWBIRD
bled through a thin undercoat on the fuselage. Inside the shabby hangar, with Mary looking over his shoulder, Wes was hunched over a desk, laboriously typing on a laptop with one finger. They looked up as Quinette walked in with Negev.

“Well, don’t y’all look stunning in that jumpsuit,” Wes quipped in his grating accent.

“You might try, ‘Hello, Quinette, it’s good to see you.’ ”

“Sure. Hello, Quinette, it’s good to see you.” He glanced at Negev. “Who’s this?”

“My bodyguard.”

“Y’all rate a bodyguard?”

“Actually, I rate six.”

“What brings you here from Ugga-Buggaland?”

When it came to provoking Quinette’s dislike, he was Phyllis Rappaport’s equal. She showed him the message. He gave it a quick look and said, “Guess you didn’t hear. We’re out of business.”

“I heard you and Doug aren’t working together anymore, not that you’re out of business.”

He folded his hands on his belly and tilted back in his squeaky chair. “So you’ve seen my ex-partner.”

“Half an hour ago.”

“It was me that broke his nose.”

“I won’t ask why.”

“Good. I wouldn’t of given you an answer. Know anyone interested in a right good airplane?” He indicated the laptop, on which he was writing an ad:
FOR SALE
—1967
HAWKER
-
SIDDLEY
748. Then some technical data and the price. “That’s reduced as of today,” he said. “A bargain.”

“Wes, we’ve been hit hard. If they start bombing again and we don’t have anything to shoot back with, I hate to think what will happen.”

“We?”
was all he said, twirling his sunglasses, his glance sidling away. She looked at Mary, who shrugged and said, “Like the boss said, out of business. At least the business we were in.”

“You’re here, and your plane is out there. Why can’t you make one more run?”

“Y’all want an explanation, I’ll give you two for your trouble. First off, my plan was to fly the hardware for six months. We did seven and change on account of I couldn’t get that Hawker sold for my original askin’ price. Second off, you people are a day late and eighteen thousand dollars short.”

“I thought that got settled weeks ago.”

“It did. What you might call a benefactor paid the SPLA’s debt, but the man can’t make a career out of that. What happened was, the glorious rebel army stiffed us again, the last flight we made. That makes this many times”—Fanning three fingers—“and that many times means out.”

“You owe it to the people up there!” Quinette said, her voice ricocheting off the hangar’s walls of corrugated iron.

“Don’t lecture me, girl. We’re the ones that are owed, me and Mary. I was you, I’d walk out right goddamned now, unless you want to see me forget my manners.”

Outside on the scorching tarmac, she thought of five thousand refugees jammed into an exposed tent camp. It would take one plane to slaughter and maim hundreds, and Wesley Dare would leave them without a shield for eighteen thousand dollars. Such mercenary greed was beyond her understanding. She no longer disliked him, she hated him.
Forgive me, Lord, for that, forgive me.

As she stood, perplexed about what to do—really, there was nothing she could do—a pickup truck swung across the asphalt and parked between the Hawker and the Cessna. A familiar figure climbed out and, after staring at Quinette for a second or two, walked over. Put together as always. Not a strand of tinted hair out of place. Pressed white shirt tucked into creased khaki trousers.

“I thought it was you!” Tara said. “Didn’t recognize you in that.” She gestured at Quinette’s apparel.

“A disguise. I guess it worked. How are you?”

“Fine.” Tara hesitated a beat. “Actually not. Had a run of bad luck. Bad luck with a shove from behind. Never mind.
How are you?
”

“We’ve had a run of bad luck, too.”

“Bloody awful, I’ve heard. How long are you in for?”

“Not sure. A few days maybe.”

“Good! We’ll have a chance to talk. Sorry I can’t now. A flight. Picking up your old boss, as a matter of fact.”

“Ken? Ken Eismont?”

“He is your old boss, isn’t he? I’ll be overnighting. Hope to see you tomorrow then.”

Tara began her taxi to the runway. As she shielded her eyes from the prop-wash, Quinette saw what she could do. Because the idea wasn’t the product of her own mental labors—it came to her as a lyric might come to an inspired songwriter—she concluded it was heaven sent. God wanted His Nuban children to be protected and was directing her to be the agent of His will. Thus she was confident, absolutely so, that she could make it happen.

Telling Negev to wait for her, she went back into the hangar. Wes was looking at a printout of his ad.

“Would you do it if I guaranteed you’d get your eighteen thousand?”

“Jesus Christ! What part of
no
is it that you don’t understand?”

“I don’t know what went down between you and Doug, but I can see”—she spread her arms and moved her head to point out the ad in his hands, the run-down hangar with engine parts racked along a wall, the tired airplane outside—“that you’re not on top of the world. You could use the money.”

“It wouldn’t be eighteen. Thirty-six. Eighteen for the flight we didn’t get paid for, eighteen for the one you want us to make.”

The peculiar, bashful, sidelong look. He seemed to realize that he’d taken a step back from categorical refusal—he was bargaining.

“I can’t promise thirty-six. Eighteen. If I can raise a little more, you’ll get it.”

“Raise it!” he scoffed. “Y’all gonna hold a bake sale? A raffle?”

“Never mind the how. I know I can put it together and fairly quickly.”

He swept a hard, appraising look across her face. “Wish I could be as sure of you as you are of yourself.”

“Wes . . . ,” Mary said, indicating a corner of the hangar with a jerk of her head. In whispers, the two conferred there for a few minutes. Mary appeared to do most of the talking, Wes with hands on his hips, looking at the floor.

“No less than twenty, “ he said when they came back. “Can you guarantee that?”

She made a rough mental calculation and nodded.

“Hold your bake sale right quick. The Hawker gets sold before you’re done, you’re out of luck. And here’s the important part—you put the money in our pockets
first,
then we fly.”