“Getting close may mean selling guns,” said Danny.
“I can play the arms dealer,” said Nuri.
“Uncle Dpap has already met you.”
“They probably think that story was bull.” Nuri had made such switches before, but he realized that going from a milquetoast professor to an arms dealer presented a believability problem.
He could have Hera do it. She came off like a she-devil.
“I can handle it,” said Danny.
“Well, put on your glasses and look threatening,” said Nuri, rounding the hill. “We’re just about at the meat market.”
What Nuri called a meat market was actually an old convent about three miles out of town. It was now under the control of Herman Hienckel, a German expatriate. Hienckel did not own the property, which was still on the rolls of the church that once sponsored the sisters who’d lived there. But he was clearly in control of it, as he had been for the decade.
Hienckel was not a man to have moral qualms. At seventeen he had joined the East German army; by nineteen he was a sergeant, one of the youngest if not the youngest. After washing out of special operations training for a “lack of discipline”—he’d gotten into a fight with a fellow soldier — he left the army. He was lost in civilian life, living on the dole, everything complicated by the reunification of the two halves of his country. Out of desperation he took a job as a military trainer in Iraq before the first American Gulf war.
It was an extreme mistake, one that he could easily have paid for with his life, as the unit he helped train was among the first to occupy Kuwait. But in what would prove to be a career-defining stroke of luck, Hienckel managed to hook up with a British MI6 agent two days before the allied invasion began. He supplied the man with a few tidbits of intelligence and helped keep him from being detected by the Iraqis. When the invasion started, Hienckel tried to escape to the allied side. After being captured — or surrendering, depending on one’s point of view — Hienckel played his intelligence connection to the hilt and was eventually released.
He ended the war by helping an American Marine unit interrogate prisoners. His language skills were not particularly good, but they were far better than the Marines’, and Hienckel was easily able to gloss over anything he didn’t understand. From there he became a useful facilitator for different forces in Kuwait and the wider Gulf, occasionally doing business with the CIA as well as British intelligence, until his list of enemies grew so long that he found it prudent to move on.
A brief stint in Somalia cost him the hearing in this left ear and left him with a permanent limp, but it also gave him a bankable reputation as a soldier of fortune, and a tidy sum locked in a Swiss bank account. He moved to Ethiopia and began providing services there to whatever force could afford them.
While some members of the Ethiopian government had accused him of forming a private army, his business model was much more modest. Hienckel was more like an employment counselor: He trained men interested in getting work as security guards and mercenaries — there was no meaningful difference in Ethiopia — then pocketed a portion of their salary after arranging jobs for them. Adjusted for inflation and the exchange rate, the amount he earned was barely greater than the dole wages he’d made back in Germany. In Gambella however, they made him a rich man.
Nuri’s appearance troubled him. He did not know for certain that the American worked for the CIA — it was too easy for poseurs to suggest that they did — but he had all the earmarks, especially a studied disregard for the difficulties an entrepreneur like Hienckel faced, and an almost whining determination to try and talk his price down. One could not afford to refuse to do business with the Western intelligence services. Angering them would not only cut down on referrals, but could prove extremely hazardous if word got around that you were no longer one of their friends. A known CIA connection was considered safer than a bulletproof vest.
“My friend, you are coming up in the world,” Hienckel said to Nuri and Danny when his men escorted them into his office. It had been the chapel of the convent. “You are driving Land Cruisers now.”
“Not as nice as your Ratel,” said Nuri, referring to the South African armored personnel Hienckel had parked in the yard.
“Very poor gas mileage,” said Hienckel. “And who is your friend?”
“I’d rather not say. He needs to hire some escorts for a few days, perhaps two weeks. Men who ask no questions.”
Hienckel glanced at Danny. Dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a long African shirt, he exuded an air of quiet control. His eyes held Hienckel’s without emotion. He was clearly not Ethiopian, but Hienckel couldn’t tell if he was American, like Nuri, or a European returning to his homeland.
Did he trust him?
Of course not. But so long as he paid, there was no need for trust.
“I specialize in men who ask no questions,” he said. “Let us make the arrangements.”
18
The Toyota Land Cruisers shone like black diamonds in the desert sun, gleaming nuggets topped by a bar of yellow emergency lights and lined with chrome. The trucks had every conceivable option, including and most importantly a full complement of hired men, who flashed their Belgian-made MP5 submachine guns as they flew out the doors, forming a cordon for their boss as he exited the vehicle. They were dressed in identical khaki uniforms, no insignias. Their headgear consisted of a camo-style do-rag tied around their close-cropped scalps. Each had a pair of sunglasses, and a radio with an earphone and microphone discreetly tucked up his arm. And though they were standing only a few yards from each other, the men used only the radio to communicate.
“Clear,” said one of the bodyguards.
The front doors of the lead Land Cruiser popped open simultaneously. Danny Freah — known to the bodyguards as Mr. Kirk — stepped from the passenger side. His driver — Boston — came out of the other door, pistol in hand.
Way over the top, Danny thought. But the young soldiers who’d been lazing around near the front of the church had risen to their feet, staring with awe and envy.
Danny had always hated the clichés of American gangsta rap. To his mind, they glorified the worst misconceptions about black life, doing for honest African Americans what mafia stories did for Italian Americans. But the images conveyed power overseas, where they were taken as a blueprint for how outlaws should act.
And he was definitely acting the part of an outlaw — Mr. Kirk, a supposed renegade from America, or maybe Libya, or maybe parts unknown — with guns and ammunition to sell.
If the murmurs around him were any indication, his act was going over big.
“Where is Uncle Dpap?” said Danny, using an Arabic phrase he had carefully memorized. “I have a business proposition for him.”
A few of the older rebels exchanged glances. One headed toward the church door, where he was met by Commander John.
The guards at the northeastern end of town had alerted Uncle Dpap to the Land Cruisers and their occupants. The vehicles alone made it clear what the man was up to, and Uncle Dpap had told the guards to let them proceed.
“Who are you?” demanded Commander John.
“You can call me Mr. Kirk. I’m here to see your brother,” said Danny, still sticking to the script.
“My brother is not here.”
Danny had to wait for the Voice to translate.
“This is incorrect,” added the Voice, which was monitoring the bug Nuri had placed inside the headquarters two days before. “Uncle Dpap is working at his desk.”