The Exile
Authors: Andrew Britton
The Invisible
The Assassin
The American
For Valerie
Thanks to all my readers, I hope I never disappoint.
And continued thanks to everyone at Kensington, especially Steven Zacharius, Laurie Parkin, Michaela Hamilton, Doug Mendini and Meryl Earl.
To my editor Audrey LaFehr, for her continued enthusiasm, encouragement and exceptional patience. You're a wonder.
And to my agent, Nancy Coffey, for her unwavering support and encouragement. I couldn't have done it without you.
Readers familiar with the international security firm called Blackwater Worldwide may know it has been officially renamed Xe Services. This reportedly resulted from its association with United States military operations in Iraq, which continue to be opposed by many of Blackwater's client governments in Africa and the Middle East.
While Blackwater's name change did indeed occur, the journalists that covered the story were obviously unaware of Ryan Kealey's pivotal role in forcing the issueâas the following pages will reveal.
CAMP HADITH, WEST DARFUR
APRIL
T
o the untrained eye, the inhabitants of Camp Hadith might have seemed like any group of refugees the world overâa cluster of lost souls bound by poverty, persecution, and a complete lack of hope. To the untrained eye, they might have seemed tragically the same. But in reality their squalid existence was one of the few things they had in common.
They comprised a strange demographic made up of black Christians from the south, African Muslims from the north, and poor Arabs from the slums outside Khartoum. They came from a multitude of tribes, which was arguably more important than their religious differences given the lack of a single national identity in Africa's largest country. They were Dinka, Masalit, and Fur. They were Berti, Bargo, and Beni Jarrar. But while sharing only the terrible circumstances that had thrust them together, they could all agree on this: were it not for the womanâthe American nurseâtheir life in the camp would have been a living hell.
As it stood, they endured a daily struggle for survival despite the woman's devotion to them and their unrelenting plight, which was apparent to all. Situated one kilometer east of the paved road from Al-Geneina to Nyalaâthe capital city of South Darfurâthe temporary settlement consisted of nothing more than three hundred hastily constructed shelters. Most were crudely composed of clothes, rugs, and plastic trash bags draped over a rough framework of interwoven branches. A few lucky familiesâthose who had arrived in the early stages of the camp's developmentâhad access to sturdy canvas tents supplied by USAID, also known as the United States Agency for International Development; UNICEF; or Médicins Sans Frontières, the Paris-based organization better known as Doctors Without Borders.
Surrounding the entire camp was a two-and-a-half-meter fence as crude and impermanent as the tents it was meant to secure. Covered by black tarpaulin sheets, its wooden poles were spaced at three-meter intervals and thrust two meters into the sodden earth to provide a reasonably stable frame for the makeshift barrier. The fence, in turn, was topped by a single strand of barbed wire that ran the length of the perimeter. Beyond it there was nothing but the road and the sun-scrubbed landscape, which stretched for miles in every direction.
The hospital, the only permanent structure to be found within the flimsy tarpaulin fence, rose like an island from the sweeping sea of tents. It was a sprawling, one-story structure of reddish brown mud bricks, each of which had been forged by a careful pair of hands before being laid out to bake in the harsh African sun. The humble building was topped by a roof of corrugated tin, its windows sealed with clear plastic, which provided some protection against the tiny winged predators whose flights could be as lethal as that of any stealth assassins in that part of the world.
Both the flies and the mosquitoes could kill a healthy aid worker with a single bite or sting, especially when the rains came in late July. For the vast majority of Camp Hadith's residents, the risk was far greater. Unless caught at an early stage, malaria was a virtual death sentence in the internally displaced persons campsâthe young and the very old being at highest risk. African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, could be added to the long list of rampant scourges that included measles, tuberculosis, and the worst killer of all, the HIV retrovirus, which had held the continent in its iron grip for decades.
And, of course, there was the poverty and ignorance. The terrible, persistent unavailability of basic health care, education, and nutrition, which flung open the doors to every opportunistic strain of disease emerging from the steppes and woodlands to the north.
Never far from the nurse's mind, the many dangers that plagued the camp accounted for her sense of profound sorrow as she quietly made her way down the narrow aisle separating the hospital's forty beds. She always felt this way when she stopped to consider the magnitude of what the African people had suffered. Of what they
still
suffered on an hourly and daily basis. Lily Durant had been in West Darfur for just six months, but during that time she had come to see the true depth of hardship that her patients endured. Not to understand it, but to
see
it in front of her, around her, everywhere.
For Lily, that was an important distinction. She wanted to help these people, but she didn't claim to identify with them. Nor did she pretend to understand what they were going through. Her refusal to do so wasn't a matter of Western arroganceâin fact, it was the complete opposite. In Lily's eyes, the situation was simple. She was there to help. Not to judge, not to empathize, not to intellectualize. But to help. Nothing more, nothing less.
Reaching the end of the aisle now, she heard a small noise to her right. As she turned toward the sound to check it out, she moved quickly to the side of the bed and knelt by the hard mattress. Her calves and thighs immediately screamed out in protest, as if to remind her that she'd been on her feet for the past twenty hours. But Lily ignored the pain and focused on the patient lying before her.
She leaned forward, her fingers brushing against the mosquito net that covered the squirming figure.
“Hello, Limya.
Badai lo cadai?
” she whispered, asking the sick girl if she needed anything in the Zaghawa tribal dialect. It was one of many local phrases Lily had made it a personal imperative to master. While it was nearly impossible to absorb all the languages of the camp, she had found that even a few key phrases could help bridge the cultural and linguistic divide.
Do you need anything?
And they all did. More than any one person could give. But nothing was worse than nothing, and that was the sum total of indifference.
Lily felt she'd waited a long time before the patient replied. Then, without warning, the girl let out a short, high-pitched squeal that sent a shiver of alarm through Lily's body. She grasped blindly for the girl's fragile hand through the mosquito netting. When she found it, she squeezed it gently in an attempt to reassure her. Only then did Lily realize that the girl was dreaming, caught up in the tangled web of her own terrible past.
She continued to squirm and cry out for a few minutes longer. After what seemed like an eternity, the moaning began to subside. Then it stopped altogether.
Once Lily was finally sure that the girl was asleep, she closed her eyes and permitted herself a deep, weary sigh. She was mentally and physically exhausted and knew that the strain was starting to show. Even as she acknowledged the truth of this, though, she silently rebuked herself for being so weak. What business did she have complaining about her minor aches and pains when the people in this very room had lost so much? The sleeping girl whose hand she even now continued to hold was a perfect example of the terrible things taking place in the region.
Only sixteen, Limya Sanoasi had lost her mother, father, and two younger brothers one week earlier, when their village was razed by the government-backed Janjaweed militiamen who terrorized the non-Arab population of Darfur. Their methods were notorious. Rape, torture, and murder were all considered acceptable tools of warâand since they had the support of the country's ruling party, they were virtually unstoppable.
Lily freed her hand carefully, doing her best not to wake the girl. Then she got to her feet and started back down the aisle in her foam-bottomed clogs, heading for the building's single entrance. As she passed each bedâall of them were occupiedâLily silently thanked God for the relative security of the camp and its perimeter fence, however symbolic the protection offered by the thin tarpaulin walls might be. The Janjaweed had attacked the IDP camps before, but such incidents were rare, as they typically resulted in a diplomatic outcry against the regime of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president. Even al-Bashirâa man who topped
Parade
magazine's annual list of the world's ten worst dictators in 2006 and three years later was charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Courtâhad little interest in stirring up serious trouble with the UN or the United States.
At least, that was the general assumption. Personally, Lily wasn't so sure. Less than a month earlier, the United States had levied harsh sanctions against the North African country, adding to the heavy restrictions already in place as a result of the ICC's indictment. The punitive measures had touched the highest levels of the Sudanese government, most noticeably in the case of the defense minister, whose U.S. accounts had been frozen.
Al-Bashir had responded to the ICC arrest warrant through polite, if evasive, diplomatic channelsâa public fight with its 109 member nations was the furthest thing from what he wanted or needed. But the United States, a nonmember still trying to dig its way out from the global ill will generated by its Iraqi conflict, was another storyâ¦and a convenient target for his chest-thumping wrath.
Months after the new sanctions were imposed, he'd given a fiery speech condemning them. And while he'd stopped short of threatening outright retribution, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was on the verge of striking back at the world's lone superpower and sending out an indirect, albeit powerful, message to the ICCânamely, his intention of submitting to foreign justice was nil. He was not going down without a fight and had cast himself in the convenient, familiar role of a victim forced to retaliate against the imperial American bully.
The question, in the big picture, was how, and when, the first blow would come.
Lily Durant's recent experiences at Camp Hadith, however, had given her a more close-up perspective. For Lily the focus narrowed down to a little refugee camp in the middle of an African nowhere, a teenage girl caught in the throes of her fever dreams, and her fear that the inexorable madness of attack and reprisal would come, rolling them into the ground.
Â
The cold air of the desert night seeped in through the open door and clawed at the exposed flesh of the commander's face and throat. He stood inside the darkened compound and watched as his men gathered on the hard-packed dirt of the parade ground in front of his office. The building was pitch-black, but the lights of the compound were ablaze, rendering him invisible to those milling about in the open area. They were laughing, joking, and slapping each other's shoulders. They were full of
life,
and watching them, the commander could not help but smile himself. He could feel their excitement, and it reminded him of the first time he had embarked on a similar ventureâthe first time he had successfully probed the fragile constraints of his own moral character.
He could not fully relate to these men, as they were not real soldiers in his mind, but a disparate collection of animals bound loosely by the promise of separate rewards.
Now he watched as they checked and rechecked their weapons, an assortment of small arms procured from every possible source: Kalashnikovs from Ukraine, PP-19 submachine guns taken out of Afghanistan, and Belgian-made FAL rifles left over from the bloody civil wars in Liberia and Mozambique. A few carried AR-15s, the civilian version of the U.S. Army's M16. Their favored tools, however, were not the battered firearms they carried, but the knives, hatchets, and machetes that hung from their belt loops.
Just as they carried a variety of arms, the men wore a wide range of clothing. A few had desert fatigues of the sort used by the U.S. military, a uniform that carried a certain level of prestige in the mixed unit. The rest wore police uniforms, tracksuits, or T-shirts and jeans. Like the inhabitants of the camp they were planning to strike, they were bound only by exigencies. His mercenaries, with their uneven training and wild temperament, accepting a slight degree of discipline in exchange for the promise of combat and treasure. The dedicated and more practiced mujahideen sharing their desire for earthly plunder, but seeking to pad their material bounty with the eternal gratifications of Heaven.
A patchwork force, yes. Still, the commander knew how to keep them primed and motivated as they prepared for action, knew what heady elixir was drunk by his ragtag coalition of zealots, godless infidels, and outlaws, whose dutiful prayers were only to assure they reaped the rewards of the destruction they were about to deal out. He'd savored its taste many timesâand welcomed it.
They were bound now by anticipation. Anticipation for the work they would soon carry out with brutal, unrelenting purpose. Anticipation for the job he had given them, for the blood they were about to spillâ¦and for the rewards that were sure to follow.
Their raucous laughter poured into the night and over the dark buildings like a rippling black tide.
The commander did his best to maintain a stoic bearing as he watched them, although he shared their contagious enthusiasm. The façade was necessary to preserve the fragile balance of power that existed in the small garrison. He held control over life and death in his hands, and there were few limits to what he could do. In the space of a five-minute telephone call, he could seal the fate of 100 Masalit villagers. With nothing more than a polite suggestion, a whispered word to the major in charge in Nyala, he could condemn a dozen Dinka children to death by fire. It was the ultimate authority, and he had never used it sparingly. In that respect, at least, this night's work would be no different from all the rest.
A sudden noise pierced the commander's thoughts, and he stepped through the open door into the cold night air, where the sound of approaching diesel engines was more pronounced. He shivered as he waited impatiently, his broad face twisting into a frown. As bad as it was during the day, the desert was even less accommodating at night.
Fortunately, he did not have to wait long. Less than a minute after he stepped out of the building, the trucks rolled into view and stopped next to the parade ground, a cloud of dust rising into the air, mixing with the stench of diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, and un-washed bodies. There was a loud babble of voices, and the keyed-up men began moving toward the vehicles.