Chapter 4

 

A few minutes later Elaine and Stan met up with Dmitry.

He called Stan’s sat-phone right after Anneke did, and by flashing the lights of the SUV a few times, they quickly located him.

When Elaine approached the vehicle, she could faintly make out bullet holes, dents and deep scratches all down the side. She saw pockmarks in the bulletproof windshield, too.

“What happened?” she said, as she opened the back door.

Dmitry looked a little strange, almost comical—he was wearing the military-style night vision goggles, but they were flipped up on his head.

“Elephants attack me,” he said. “And then elephant poachers shoot at me.”

“Out here?” Elaine said, alarmed, peering over the top of the SUV and into the darkness.

“No, in Chad, yesterday’s morning.”

“Are you alright?”

He merely shrugged.

Elaine pulled off the backpack, which still contained the diamonds, and shoved it to the rear of the vehicle, beside Dmitry’s suitcase.

With the Glock still in her hand, she helped Stan climb into the back seat, which was not easy—bending his leg at the knee seemed especially painful. He sat slumped in his seat at an angle, directly behind Dmitry, and extended his leg out until it was almost straight, wincing as he did it. Elaine chose to sit beside him in the back, rather than up front with Dmitry, so she could keep an eye on him.

Dmitry was watching them both with interest—Elaine could only imagine what the two of them looked like. Their faces were smeared with dirt, her fancy designer clothes a dingy gray from fighting with Stan in the bat guano. They both stank of ammonia and sweat. She couldn’t tell if her cheek was bruised from Stan striking her with the pistol, but it was definitely swollen.

When Dmitry took all this in, and saw the AK-47 strapped to her chest, he knew the situation had changed, and that she was now in charge.

“We need to go to the Nertiti clinic,” she told him.

“Horosho.” Dmitry put the SUV in gear.

Stan glanced at her, surprised. “He’s Russian...”

She felt like making a smart comeback, like No shit, Sherlock—she had been in the Jenny Johnson persona for so long it was hard to drop. Instead, she simply said, “He’s a contractor,” as if this explained everything.

“What the hell are you doing with a Russian?” Stan shook his head as if she was a fool for trusting anyone east of the old Berlin Wall.

Dmitry hesitated and glanced at her in the mirror again. “You want that I keep lights off and use googles?”

When Stan heard the word “googles,” he looked at Elaine as if to say. Where the hell did you find this guy?

She ignored this. “Yes you better—we still need to keep the lights off. Be careful.”

Dmitry nodded, flipping the goggles down and starting the engine. He turned the SUV around and drove slowly along, dodging clumps of thorny scrub and boulders. The valley was relatively flat. But within a couple of minutes the vehicle was slanted back at an angle, climbing a rather steep hill that was cluttered with ruts from flash flooding. Elaine couldn’t see much ahead of them—the sky was growing brighter but the surrounding foothills blocked out most of the light.

Dmitry handled the SUV expertly, picking his way in between the ruts. The vehicle kept rocking violently left and right.

“Take it easy!” Stan gasped. “My leg!”

“He’s in bad shape,” Elaine explained.

“Sorry, Janyet.” Dmitry slowed down a little, but glanced guiltily at Elaine in the mirror—he realized he shouldn’t have called her by any name, but it was too late.

Stan noticed and gave Elaine a curious glance.

It really makes no difference now, Elaine thought.

After they drove another moment, the terrain smoothed out a little. Stan said in a lowered voice, “Can we talk in front of him?”

Elaine nodded.

Stan looked wary, keeping his voice low. “Are you going to tell me exactly how you plan on continuing to fund the clinics? What’s going to happen to the mine now?”

Elaine had to admit that she enjoyed Stan speaking to her this way—he seemed to have accepted that she was law enforcement. No longer a CIA agent, he was a civilian now, and he knew it. On top of that, he was a criminal, at least technically. Of course he had no idea how tenuous her position was with the Secret Service at this point, and she planned to keep him in the dark as long as possible.

She said, “The mine will be taken over by the Sudanese government.”

Stan’s mouth dropped open. “The Sudanese gov...are you kidding me?” He raised his voice, no longer concerned about Dmitry. “They’re worse than the Janjaweed! The Sudanese government arms the goddam Janjaweed!”

Elaine didn’t respond to this. Both Cattoretti and Ketchum had given her overly-complicated explanations of the myriad political forces in Chad and in Sudan, with differing details and motivations—trying to decide which of the many groups or governments were in the right seemed impossible. She only saw raw human suffering and she wanted to help stop it as much as she could.

Stan said, “Don’t you get it? The Sudanese government will grab hold of that mine and suck it completely dry and the politicians will pocket all of the money—the people here won’t see a penny!”

“That’s not going to happen, Stan.”

“And what makes you think it won’t?”

“Because I’m going to make sure of it.”

“Oh, really? And how do you think you’re going to do that?”

Elaine hesitated, and decided to speak from a law enforcement position. “Look, Stan, what you’ve helped accomplish with those clinics is admirable and noble, but it’s over now. You’re going to have to let go. The mine is out of your hands now.”

“But—”

“Do I have to remind you that what you’ve done is highly illegal? What if the Sudanese government found out what you’ve been doing the past five years?”

She thought she saw Stan wince. “They can’t touch me—they can’t prove anything.”

“Really?” Taking a chance, Elaine said, “I’m guessing you were stationed here in Sudan when you worked for the CIA. And I’ll bet you were on all kinds of lists—how shall we say, ‘a person of interest’? I really don’t think you want to chance them getting their hands on you.”

Stan set his jaw and glared out of the window.

At least she had shut him up for the time being.