Sudan: A Novel

Sudan: A Novel by Ninie Hammon Page B

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Authors: Ninie Hammon
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have slaves, did they? But he’d never asked; never brought it up. Both sets of grandparents had still been alive then; he could have questioned them. He didn’t. He didn’t say anything to anybody, and it was years before he understood that he hadn’t asked because he was afraid of what he would have found out if he did.
    Now it was happening again, as real as any bloodstained transport ship that crossed the Middle Passage from the coast of Africa to the auction blocks in America in the eighteenth century. Slavery. Here, today, right alongside cell phones, laptops and iPods. An evil buried deep under the years in an ancient and barbaric past had crawled like a bloated, poisonous spider out into the modern world—a world that was trying desperately to pretend it wasn’t there.
    He turned back from the window toward Olford. “What’s going on out there,” he gestured over his shoulder, “is an industrial-strength nightmare. You name the bogey man, and he’s there.”
    Olford puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and looked carefully at each image in the stack of pictures before he went on to the next.
    “Right now, I’m just looking for one particular bogey man, a slave trader.” Ron turned back to the window, pulled the curtain aside and leaned his head on the glass. “That bogey man’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to find him.”
    “Which is where I come in, I believe,” Olford said.
    “Yep, that’s where you come in,” Ron turned around and pasted his best imitation of an enthusiastic smile on his face. “I give you an exclusive; you blow the lid off the story all over the world—right?”
    Typically British, Olford instantly began to hedge his bets. He didn’t deal very well in absolutes.
    “Well, I shall certainly do the very best I can. This is a huge story, with many, many bogey men, as you say, and I have interested the powers that be in the slavery piece. They’re quite excited about this new angle.”
    The cynic in Ron’s head pointed out: Yeah, plain old blood, guts and gore doesn’t have a very long shelf life, does it. But he had the good judgment to keep his cynicism to himself.
    “So tell me what you’ve managed to find out.”
    Ron walked over, sat on the bed opposite Olford and told him about the interviews he’d had with slaves whose freedom had been purchased by Swiss relief agenciesand with a couple of slaves who’d escaped. Then he leaned toward Olford, closer than the Brit would have liked, given the rank odor that rose off the American’s body.
    “But I still haven’t managed to locate—and photograph—a slave auction. That’s what I’m looking for. That’s the brass ring.” He sat back and sighed. “The thing is, they’re slick, and they’re mobile. It’s not like an eighteenth-century Virginia auction, advertised in the local newspaper and open to the buying public. It all happens quickly and privately.”
    Olford let out a white puff of smoke with his words. “As I understand it, there are so many different sharks attacking at one time it’s surprising they don’t bite each other. Once they smell blood in the water...”
    “Oh, it’s become quite a feeding frenzy all right. Government soldiers drop bombs, blow up huts and cattle and people, massacre most of the villagers who survive and capture the rest. Slave traders’ hired guns, criminals and mercenaries swoop down out of nowhere and snatch hostages and then vanish without a trace. Murahaleen and Fedayeen guerillas attack with swords and machetes, hack the men to death and kidnap the women and chil--”
    “Fedayeen and Murahaleen? Who might they be?”
    Ron rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “The Fedayeen have been around since the ninth century. I understand they were even chummy with your Richard the Lionhearted during the Crusades.”
    “You don’t say. I knew there was a good reason I never liked that chap.”
    “Those guys were the original terrorists,” Ron

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