The Templar Legion

9

For all its storied, bloody history, Khartoum is a relatively young city. Established in 1821 by Ibrahim Pasha as an outpost of the Egyptian army, Khartoum grew into a major trading town for slave traders. Nestled on a peninsula where the Blue Nile and the White Nile converge, the city was strategically located, and in 1884 the self-styled Mahdi, or Messiah, of the Arab people laid siege to and eventually massacred the Anglo-Egyptian garrison under British General Charles George Gordon. The British got their revenge thirteen years later when General Herbert Kitchener routed the Mahdist forces in the town of Omdurman on the other side of the river. Patriotic to a fault, Lord Kitchener laid out the new city of Khartoum with a street plan designed like the Union Jack.

Like many African cities Khartoum has two faces: the oil-rich city of lavish resorts, exotic architecture and luxurious apartment buildings and, at the same time, a city of terrible poverty, with children selling stale food products in the souks, or markets, massive inflation and unemployment, lack of fresh water or sewage treatment, an active criminal trade in women and children and a massive black market trade in just about anything you could name.

“This can’t be right,” said Peggy, looking out the grimy window of the Land Cruiser. They were on an unpaved street in south Khartoum. Most of the buildings were low, cheap industrial structures made from concrete blocks with flat, rusty, corrugated iron roofs. The majority looked empty, what few windows they had filthy and broken. At some time in the past there had obviously been a flood, as the marks of the high-water line could be seen clearly on the buildings.

“It’s what it said on that bit of hotel stationery in Ives’s dispatch case,” answered Rafi. “ ‘Trans,’ which we can assume means transportation; ‘Mutwakil Osman, end of Al-Hamdab Street, over railway tracks. Look for old abandoned Petronas station on left.’ ” Rafi pointed. “There’s the Petronas station, there’s the end of the street, and we passed over the railway tracks a half dozen blocks ago.”

“There’s nothing here except the Nile River and some barges,” said Holliday, pulling the Land Cruiser to a stop. Directly in front of the truck the road ended in a patch of weeds that turned into the rough, sloping bank of the Nile. A set of rickety wooden stairs led down to a narrow concrete walkway and several wooden docks that jutted out into the sluggish, wind-ruffled water. Several gigantic barges were moored to the docks, most of them clearly used for dredging Nile mud. Two others were fitted with large ribbed Quonset huts that appeared to be World War Two vintage. Holliday climbed out of the truck. Rafi and Peggy followed. It was hot but the light, faintly aromatic breeze coming off the river was refreshingly cool.

“Surely he didn’t take a boat,” said Rafi, frowning.

“Is the Kotto River a tributary of the Nile?” Peggy asked.

“No, but it’s the same drainage basin. In the Sudan it’s called the Bahr al-Arab,” explained Rafi. “I suppose you could take a boat of some kind but it wouldn’t be easy.”

“Crocodiles?” Peggy asked.

“Hungry ones.” Rafi grinned, throwing an affectionate arm across Peggy’s shoulder.

“Let’s check it out,” suggested Holliday. He headed down the wobbly steps to the rough concrete pier. The breeze was stronger here and there was something else in the air: the familiar smell of gasoline.

Rafi and Peggy came down the steps after him. They walked along the pier until they reached the first one of the barges fitted with a Quonset hut. There was a door set into the side of the hut with a cardboard sign ducttaped to it that read, OSMAN AIR SERVICES.

“I don’t see a runway anywhere,” said Peggy.

They trooped down the single-width gangplank to the Quonset hut. Holliday rapped on the door. It rattled on its hinges. Overhead a bright, iridescent Nile Valley sunbird flitted toward the riverbank.

“Dakhaltum!” called out a muffled voice. Holliday could make out the sound of something like a lathe and the muffled clatter of a generator.

“It either means come in or go away,” said Peggy.

“It means enter,” said Rafi. “It’s Sudanese. Open the door.” Holliday lifted the latch and stepped inside.

The front half of the gloomy curved structure was fitted out as a combination living space and machine shop. There was an area for welding, a lathe, a drill press, racks of welding and a brazing rod and something up on trestles that looked suspiciously like an elongated sheet-metal banana covered in rust-colored primer paint. The other side of the space was given over to a narrow cot, a kitchen table, cupboards, a small stove and a large laundry sink. The back half of the Quonset hut was blocked off by an unpainted plywood bulkhead. In the center of the bulkhead was a rolling garage-door mechanism with an overhead set of rails.

A man in a white apron was standing at the stove stirring something steaming in a small aluminum pot.

“Aasalaamu Aleikum,” said Rafi.

“Wa-Aleikum Aassalaam, effendi,” replied the man in the apron. He smiled pleasantly. “Chunky chicken,” he said, gesturing toward the pot with a wooden spoon. “Care to join me? It’s Campbell’s.” The man was short, slim, dark-skinned and wearing an ornately embroidered pillbox-shaped kufi on his head. He appeared to be in his middle forties. His accent was from somewhere in the American South.

“Mr. Mutwakil Osman?” Rafi asked.

“I went to the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia,” said the man in the apron. “You have any idea what it was like being named Mutwakil in Gainesville, Georgia? My friends call me Donny.”

“Donny Osman?” Peggy laughed.

“Hey, it’s better than Mutwakil, believe me.”

“You’re American?” Rafi asked.

“Born and raised. My parents were both Sudanese. I’ve been living here since 2002.” He shrugged. “Things weren’t the same for Muslims after nine/ eleven.” He grimaced. “Especially if you fly airplanes for a living. I had a little puddle-jumper air transport company. It went bust in six months.” He shrugged again. “Anyway, that’s my story.” He poured the soup into a bowl, carried the bowl over to the little kitchen table and began to eat. “What can I do for you folks?” He eyed them carefully, paying particular attention to Holliday. “Nobody comes here by accident.”

“Archibald Ives,” said Holliday flatly.

“Archie? Sure, what about him?”

“What’s the connection?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“We found your name among his personal effects,” said Holliday bluntly, looking for a reaction.

“Personal effects?”

“He’s dead. Murdered.”

The Sudanese man’s face fell. “I knew it,” he said softly.

“Knew what?” Holliday asked.

“Knew it was trouble right from the start.”

“What was trouble?”

Osman put down his soup spoon and sighed. “I’ve been taking people into dangerous places for years,” he said. “But this time it was too dangerous. The whole thing smelled, you know?”

“What whole thing?”

“Matheson for one, Kukuanaland for another.”

“Because of Kolingba?”

“Limbani as well.” Osman nodded.

“What about Limbani?” Rafi asked.

“Limbani’s like Kolingba’s white whale, or Marley’s Ghost from A Christmas Carol.”

“Explain,” Holliday said.

“Limbani haunts Kolingba. He got away during the coup and ever since then Kolingba’s been worrying about Limbani organizing some kind of rebel army in the jungle like Fidel and Che. He smokes that iboga stuff or snorts it or eats it or whatever you do and he has visions of Limbani and his hordes coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches.”

“Limbani’s a myth?” Peggy asked.

“Who knows?” Osman shrugged. “The point is, Kolingba’s got patrols of his thugs roaming around in the bush shooting anything on two legs. There’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for Limbani’s head on a stick.”

“And you took Ives there?” Rafi said.

“Archie seemed like a big boy-was a big boy. I thought he could take care of himself. He said it was his big chance. The strike that he could retire on.”

“Well, he’s retired now; that’s for sure,” said Peggy.

“Where exactly did you take him?” Holliday asked.

“Pretty much the end of the world,” said Osman. “Seven hundred miles southwest of here. Just before the Bahr al-Arab River turns into the Kotto River there’s a little place called Umm Rawq. That’s where I took him. He didn’t tell me where he was going other than down the Kotto for a few days.”

“What’s in this Umm Rawq place?” Holliday asked.

“A fish market, a dock, a store, a village, or what’s left of it.”

“Why Umm Rawq?”

“It’s right on the border and he could rent a boat. That’s the last time I saw him, heading upriver in the local steamer.”

“Was there anybody with him?”

“A guide. A local. I think his name was Mahmoud.”

There was a pause. Finally Peggy spoke. “How exactly did you get him to this Umm Rawq place?”

Osman smiled. He got up from the table, went to the big garage door and pushed it upward. The door rattled along the rails and they saw what was on the other side of the plywood bulkhead.

“I’ll be damned,” whispered Holliday. “She must be fifty years old.”

“Sixty-six,” said Osman proudly. Moored in a waterfilled dock cut into the rear of the barge was a pure white Catalina PBY flying boat, its hull riding easily on the river, its single high wing making the aircraft look like a gigantic graceful bird about to take flight. The triple-bladed black-lacquered propellers on the twin engines gleamed. “I bought her from the South African Air Force nine years ago and flew her up here from Johannesburg.” He stepped out onto the dock and looked up at the aircraft affectionately. The others followed him through the open doorway. “I spent a year refitting her, getting parts and restoring her. She and I have been partners ever since.”

“She’s beautiful,” said Holliday, meaning it. The flying boat was a wonderful piece of history elegantly salvaged.

There was a long silence as the group stood there admiring the aircraft. Far out on the river a Nile sightseeing boat went by, the booming electronic voice of a tour guide echoing over the water.

“This is what you call a Bono moment,” said Peggy.

“A what?” Rafi asked.

Holliday sighed. “I think she means this is a moment of conscience.”

“You’ll have to explain that,” said Rafi. “Pop stars aren’t my forte.”

“It means we’re in a bit of a moral quandary,” said Holliday. “Right now Kolingba and his little crime patch are a bit of a joke. Give him a trillion-dollar mineral find and he won’t be a joke anymore.”

“What are we supposed to do about it?” Rafi said. “I’m here for the archaeology, not a pitched battle.”

“What do we do, Doc?” Peggy asked.

“We either do nothing, or we try to find Limbani and make it an equal playing field.” He turned to Osman. “You’ll take us to Umm Rawq?”

“Sure.” Donny Osman nodded. “I’m in.”

“Me, too,” said Peggy.

Rafi sighed. “I just wanted to find King Solomon’s Mines and now I’m going into a war zone.”