The Exile

by Andrew Britton

  Cullen White had quickly seen the value of his ability to draw people in and secure their trust, even if he didn’t understand where it came from, and he’d done his best to use it to his advantage. At first, he had passed everything on to the CIA, mainly because he didn’t see any alternative. That was back when he still believed in the possibility of redemption. Later, when he realized they would never take him back, he still took notes and retained what he knew, but he no longer shared his insider knowledge…at least not until his posting to Liberia.

  That was when he had first met Joel Stralen, the man who had vowed to help resurrect White’s moribund career. He was one of the few men with the power not only to make that kind of promise but to actually follow through on it. And in the years that followed, he proved true to his word.

  Although it had been a decade since their first encounter, White could remember that meeting in its entirety. At the time, Stralen was a brigadier general in the DIA and the commander of the Directorate for Human Intelligence. As such, he was the primary liaison between the DIA and the CIA, as well as the head of the Defense Attaché System, the DOD program that provides military and civilian attachés to hundreds of offices around the world. White had been getting ready to leave for the day when he turned to find the general standing in the doorway to his tiny office. Stralen quietly asked him for a few minutes of his time, and White, assuming he’d done something wrong, reluctantly agreed. Five minutes later, over stale coffee in the ground-floor cafeteria, he learned the real reason for Stralen’s visit.

  It was the fall of 2000, and the UN Security Council was a body divided. Three of the permanent members—the Americans, the French, and the British—were in favor of imposing limited sanctions on the Republic of Liberia, while the other two—the Chinese and the Russians—were opposed. A similar measure had already been passed with respect to Sierra Leone. Security Council Resolution 1806 had placed an eighteen-month restriction on the export of so-called “blood diamonds” from the West African nation, the site of a decade-long civil war between the sitting government and the Revolutionary United Front. The RUF was a powerful dissident group funded primarily through the sale of black-market diamonds in Western Europe. Those sales were worth an incalculable fortune each year, proceeds that were naturally used to purchase small arms for the estimated 25,000 members of the RUF.

  The Security Council had seen evidence linking Liberian president Charles Taylor to key members of the RUF, and it was believed that Taylor was taking a cut of the profits in exchange for funneling the diamonds safely through Liberia to the waiting markets in London, Antwerp, and Prague. Before the Security Council was willing to move, though, it wanted hard evidence in the form of an eyewitness. Preferably someone in the Liberian government, a politician of note who could conclusively tie Taylor to the RUF. Stralen believed that the man they were looking for was the Liberian finance minister, Thomas R. Craven. In his opinion, Craven was the weakest link in the chain, and he wanted White to offer the minister immunity, asylum in the United States, and one million dollars in exchange for his testimony before the Security Council.

  White had not felt the need to point out the gross illegality of Stralen’s proposal, as it was plain enough to both of them. If the terms of the offer ever came to light, the U.S. government would soon find itself embroiled in a scandal of unprecedented scale. The dangers involved were very real and hard to ignore. At the same time, purchasing testimony from a foreign diplomat was not something easily done, and despite his misgivings, White was secretly flattered that the general had seen fit to entrust him with such a delicate task. More importantly, he sensed that Stralen was sizing him up for something more, and that was enough to seal his decision. He agreed to help, and one week later he attended a function at the presidential palace in Monrovia. Thomas Craven was also in attendance, and White, having already met and talked to the man on several prior occasions, managed to corner him long enough to relay the offer.

  Incredibly, Craven had agreed on the spot. Later White learned that the minister had been on the verge of dismissal, anyway, and was only too happy to have the opportunity to turn the tables on Charles Taylor.

  As it turned out, he never got the chance. The UN decided to move forward without Craven’s testimony, and Stralen’s offer was quietly rescinded. It was easily done; there was nothing on paper, and Craven could hardly go public, as that would have exposed his own treachery to Taylor, who was still in power. But the fact that White had succeeded in his task was not in dispute, and Joel Stralen—never one to forget a favor—showed his appreciation by offering him a unique, secret position in the DIA.

  A week after the UN announced its decision to proceed with the sanctions in Liberia, they discussed the terms over lunch in a Monrovia hotel, with two of the general’s men standing guard outside the door. Stralen envisioned him as a troubleshooter of sorts, as opposed to a full-time civilian employee, and White felt the same way. The offer came with just one caveat. Owing to his previous position with the CIA, which even then Stralen regarded as a rival agency, White would not be permitted to publicly acknowledge his new role with the Department of Defense.

  White was not dissuaded by this minor catch and quickly agreed to the general’s proposal. In the years that followed, he performed a number of tasks for Stralen while maintaining his pedestrian status with the State Department. The difference between his dual roles could hardly be greater. As a low-level staffer at State, he had spent years shuffling paper, filing reports, and placating angry Americans stuck in foreign locales. As a contract operative with the Defense Intelligence Agency, he had recruited agents, purchased classified material from foreign diplomats, and paid off assets on a sliding scale of importance, ranging from a custodian in the Jordanian parliament to a brigadier general in the Iranian army. Over the course of ten quiet years with the DIA, he had risked life and limb on any number of occasions…but never to this latest degree. He supposed everything that had come before was a precursor at best, a practice run for the main event.

  White smiled as he considered the irony. In a way, he had proven his supervisors at the Bureau of Consular Affairs correct. They had told him he would never rise above the level of GS-12, and as it turned out, they had been right all along. He would never reach the top of the General Schedule, the government’s internal pay scale. At least not at the State Department. He didn’t care in the least. His work there was a thing of the past—all that mattered now was the task at hand. What he was doing in Sudan was easily his most dangerous and ambitious operation to date, and it could end only in one of two ways: with complete success and a triumphant return to the States, or with utter failure and a prolonged, agonizing death at the hands of Bashir’s secret police. Given the stakes, he could not afford the slightest distraction.

  White was reassured by the fact that he wasn’t alone. He was supported not only by Stralen but also by Secretary Fitzgerald, Jeremy Thayer, and—if Stralen was to be believed—the president himself. His support on the ground was even stronger, and to White’s way of thinking, far more important. Ishmael Mirghani, the man sitting across from him, was his most trusted lieutenant. He also happened to be the first person White had met in-country—it was Mirghani’s back garden in which he had burned Harold Traylor’s passport less than an hour after landing in Khartoum.

  But for all his skills, Mirghani was just one man. Standing behind him was the network White had helped establish over the past five weeks. These were the people he relied on the most, as they quite literally held his life in their hands. His survival depended on their silence, as well as their loyalty. He believed he could count on both. The network reached from Al-Geneina in the west to Sannar in the east, from Ad Dmir in the north to Juba in the south. It consisted of seasoned fighters with the SLA and the JEM, men who would endure days of torture before breaking their word. Men who would die for the opportunity to bring down the Black Crow, the name they had given Omar al-Bashir in the secret training camps of the N
uba Mountains and the Jebel Marra, the volcanic peaks of central Darfur. It was an opportunity White fully intended to give them, and perhaps sooner than they might have imagined.

  Perhaps most importantly, he was supported by the gifts he had brought to this impoverished region. White had seen the poverty with his own eyes, but he still found it hard to believe. In Sudan the average person earned less than twenty-three hundred dollars a year, though most survived on a fraction of that. The contents of the black duffel bag tucked between his feet could have fed 11,000 refugees for three months, were he to use it that way. But that would be a short-term solution at best, and it wasn’t part of the plan. The money wasn’t destined for the IDP camps of North Darfur, or for the SLA fighters scattered throughout the region. At least not directly. Instead, it was meant for one man, and one man alone.

  During the endless round of meetings and briefings at State, they had referred to him as “the Exile.” Although the title seemed dramatic, that wasn’t the intention. Each of the six candidates had been assigned a code name, all of which were drawn from their respective personal histories. Those histories, in turn, had been compressed into a series of dossiers. The dossiers consisted of each man’s political and religious affiliation, criminal record, sexual orientation, and financial status, as well as a dozen other parameters by which they were secretly judged. Considering the stakes, it was a lot to take into account, and the heated debate had gone on for weeks.

  Admittedly, the Exile had not been their first choice. A few of the other candidates had less controversial backgrounds, more palatable politics, and fewer skeletons in the closet, which automatically pushed them to the top of the list. But in the end, the Exile was determined to be the person with the necessary connections—the man with the grassroots support that would be needed to uproot the current regime. For these reasons, he had made the final cut.

  White shot a glance at his watch as the engines reduced power, the pilot preparing for the final descent into Nyala Airport. The question had been bandied about by a dozen analysts from three different agencies, but its answer had come down to a lone, gutsy decision. It always did.

  Joel Stralen had placed his wager on the Exile. In a very short time White would find out if the general’s bet had paid off.

  Wearing beige linen trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a traditional kufi over his tightly curled black hair, Hassan al-Saduq was relaxing in the courtyard of his residence in Quaila when the cell phone trilled on the table beside his rattan chair.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “Hassan. Kayf hallak,” said the caller. He quickly shifted from the Arabic greeting to English. “I thought I would let you know we’ve landed.”

  “And the car I sent?”

  “It met us at once. We’re already on the road out.”

  “Good, good,” Saduq said. “Edgard is my best driver. He knows more shortcuts from the city than my wives know ways to charm expensive gifts from me.”

  Mirghani ignored his minor jest.

  Saduq thought he’d detected a slight nervous edge in his voice. “How was your flight, my cousin?” he asked.

  “Ilhamdu lilla ’asalaama…I survived,” Mirghani said. “To tell you I’m in one piece would be to ignore the rattling inside me.”

  Saduq chuckled. “And your fellow passenger?”

  Mirghani hesitated at the other end. Then his voice lowered a notch. “I suspect nothing rattles him, inside or out,” he said in a heavy tone, back to speaking Arabic.

  Saduq thought for a moment. Mirghani and their visitor would not take long to reach him from the dusty airport 100 kilometers to the south, and he saw no cause to be anything but relaxed when dealing with the foreigner. Like himself, Cullen White was a facilitator, which gave them much in common. The difference was that White would believe the men they represented each had at least as much to gain as to lose—that, if anything, the Americans held some greater leverage.

  Saduq, however, understood better. He knew the true endgame, after all. If White even caught a hint of what he had been helping to set in motion—a mere hint—he would call their bargain off and go racing back to his Washington puppet master in a heartbeat.

  “Does something beyond the crudeness of your transport trouble you?” Saduq said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I know you well enough to hear it in your voice.” Saduq shrugged to himself. “If you can’t discuss it now, though, we’ll talk when no outsiders are present to overhear us…recognizing Mr. White’s linguistic fluencies.”

  There was another brief pause before Mirghani replied, “It’s all right. I’m simply a bit anxious.”

  Saduq believed he understood. Ishmael had no shortage of courage; his problem, rather, was a lack of audacity and vision. It had been like that since they were children—Ishmael willing to be bloodied in fights, but always in reaction. It had left Saduq the clever student to engineer the bully’s fall, as it now left Saduq the trader to give the fighter encouragement. “We’ve gone far along a precarious course. And now the goal is in sight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Again, cousin, we can speak of things later. In the meantime my advice is to keep your eyes on the short step. Look too far beyond and you’ll stumble. It’s a lack of attention to the small things that trips us up.” Saduq reached for his glass of mixed fruit juice, gulped what was left in it, and produced an audible sigh of pleasure. “I’ll expect you within the hour. Tell our guest I extend my welcome and goodwill.”

  Saduq ended the call and gazed out at the field behind his house, the curved stucco walls of its U-shaped court shading him on two sides from the sun, his loafers off so his bare feet rested on the warm granite tiles underneath them. He had built the home near the waterfall above the village, close enough to the Jebel Marra for its rugged volcanic slopes to be easily seen from his bedroom window. Farther back across the dry grass, beyond a meandering stand of flat-crowned acacias, he could see the favorite among his horses ambling tranquilly in its expansive corral.

  He had named the white barb Jaleid, after the Arabic word for snow. With its powerful brow, flowing mane, long, straight back, and proud posture, the creature was of rare pedigree, bought from Bamiléké horsemen whose stock had a lineage traceable to the nineteenth century. One of the oldest known African breeds, it was loyal, intelligent, and a swift, supple runner for its size, famed for its ability to negotiate the ravines and slopes of its native environment. The ancient horse people of the northern steppes had rendered the steeds in the cave paintings of Hoggar and Tassili. Hannibal’s troops had mounted them in battle against the Romans. Brought to Europe along with other African plunder after the sack of Carthage, they would become warhorses in Julius Caesar’s cavalry a millennium later. Centuries after Rome itself fell to conquest, the Berbers, from whom the breed inherited its name, had stormed into the Iberian peninsula atop their backs. In the First World War German occupation forces would saddle them to patrol Macedonia’s rugged terrain, while decades later Rommel boasted that his soldiers were prepared to ride them through the streets of a vanquished Moscow in a symbolic show of power and triumph.

  It was, Saduq mused, one of the few instances in history when the hooves of the ancient warhorse had threatened, and then failed, to drive their pounding thunder into the minds and hearts of an enemy.

  Whether or not Rommel had taken a lesson from that unkept promise, it was eminently apparent to Saduq. However confident one was of one’s plans, it was a mistake to declare them in advance. Victory held its own moment for the warrior. Trumpeting its glorious noise before the strike was an error born of pride and arrogance.

  Now Saduq reclined in his chair. In a few hours it would become uncomfortably hot and he would have the stallion returned to its stable. For the present, though, both would enjoy soaking in the late morning warmth.

  He closed his eyes, relaxed. When his maidservant came out to stir him with the gentlest of touches, he was surprised to realize he must have fa
llen into a light sleep.

  “Yes, Ange?”

  “Sayyid, Mirghani has arrived. With another.”

  Saduq yawned, checked his wristwatch, sat up. Incredibly, he had dozed for almost an hour.

  “Give me a minute and then show them out here,” he said. “We’ll need cold drinks. And something for them to eat.”

  Ange bowed her head and turned toward the house. Saduq watched her retreat, then meshed his fingers, stretched his sinewy arms out in front of him, and slipped his feet back into his shoes.

  A moment later he rose to meet his company.

  “Mr. White…Ishmael. Please make yourselves comfortable,” Saduq said and gestured them toward chairs facing the one from which he’d stood. “We’ll have some refreshments in just a bit.”

  White shook Saduq’s hand, looking around the courtyard. The split-level home through which he had passed was relatively simple in design, but spacious and well appointed. The art on the walls was expensive, and its furnishings and fixtures modern, as were the appliances he’d glimpsed while following the young female servant who had met them at the door. Even in the States, it would have been considered upscale; here in Darfur it was lavish beyond most people’s dreams.

  Skirting the village along the ungraded dirt road that brought him from the airport, White had seen plenty of its more typical dwellings—family compounds made up of crude, rounded huts with conical thatch roofs and mud foundations grouped together within irregular wooden fences. Each hut held anywhere from eight to ten family members, with some having zarebas, or animal pens, outside for their shared livestock—a few cows, goats, and pigs, a smattering of chickens, some bowed pack mules, and the lean, mangy dogs meant to guard them against poachers. Other flat-roofed earthen structures within the compound were used primarily for the storage of millet, onions, and dried tomatoes, or contained basic farming tools, or held fire-wood, used to provide heat and fuel the cooking pits for the extended family’s common meals. There was, of course, no electricity, with the only available water carried in buckets from the haftir, earthen reservoir tanks built near the beds of the wadis before the winter dry season approached and the streams ceased to flow for long months on end.