Acts of faith by Philip Caputo Read Free Book Online

the Koran, everybody to follow Islamic law. Makin’ that bloody oil pipeline secure gives ’em a perfect excuse to do what they’ve been wantin’ to do for a long time.”
    “But worse. You said it could get worse,” Fitzhugh said. “Like I said, what you’re telling me doesn’t sound any worse than—”
    “Because the Nuba is so isolated,” Barrett said, cutting him off. “No pryin’ eyes to report on what’s goin’ on up there. Khartoum has declared that the whole bleedin’ place is a no-go zone, thirty thousand square miles, a million people. A few Nuban meks— that’s what they call their big chiefs up there—somehow got word to the UN and appealed for ’em to send in some assistance. A couple of NGOs were ready to, but those outfits are under the UN umbrella, and the UN muckety-mucks said no.”
    “Another excuse to do nothing,” Douglas interjected. “Sometimes you have to take sides.”
    He gave Fitzhugh a glance whose meaning was ambiguous.
    “I have no problem taking a side, if I think it’s right. I believe I’ve shown that.”
    Douglas eked out a thin smile that hovered between arrogant and self-assured. “Fitz, if you hadn’t, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
    They were through testing him, if that’s what they’d been up to, and at last clued him in. Barrett said he had presented the board of International People’s Aid a plan for delivering assistance to the Nuba. Obviously the group would be operating independently, off the UN reservation. Barrett’s strategy was to provide disaster relief at first and then development aid to rebuild bombed-out roads and devastated farms and above all St. Andrew’s mission, where, after his conversion to Protestantism, he had preached as a guest minister.
    There had been nothing like it in all the Nuba, he said, with its fine church of brick and granite quarried from the surrounding hills, with its clinic and primary and secondary schools, its guest house for visiting clergy, its training center where agriculture, carpentry, and tailoring had been taught. A lodestar of progress and education, a refuge for the sick. A prosperous town, called New Tourom, had grown up around it, and so the fanatics had had to erase it from the map. Bombed it first with cluster bombs, armed and incited a tribe of Baggara Arabs from the plains to raid it. The minister, the canon, and three teachers were killed, along with sixteen schoolchildren and an unknown number of townspeople. More were captured, to be taken to the camps or sold into slavery. Others fled deep into the bush.
    Barrett had returned there a month ago to inspect what was left and was sickened and outraged by what he’d seen. He must have delivered electrifying sermons, for he painted a vivid scene of biblical desolation. The town that had once harbored twenty-five hundred souls now counted under a thousand. Houses had been devoured by red ants. Terraced farm fields had gone back to scrub. The ruined church was a nest for rats and snakes.
    “The only bright spot,” he went on, “is that the SPLA has opened up a Nuban front—War Zone Two, they call it. They’ve moved troops into the mountains and the rebel headquarters are near New Tourom. A full regiment, nearly a thousand men. Man in charge is a Nuban himself, Lieutenant Colonel Goraende. Splendid soldier. He’ll provide you with security.”
    Fitzhugh wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Me?”
    “Who else would I be talkin’ about? Rebuildin’ the mission, that’s our long-range goal, but for the meantime there’s more immediate needs to be addressed. IPA’s board has to have an estimate of what those needs are and their costs. I can’t give ’em the costs without knowin’ the extent of the needs, and that’s where you come in.”
    Fitzhugh was beyond incredulous. “You want me to assess what they are? I’m to go into the Nuba mountains? Alone?”
    Everyone was silent for a moment or two; then Diana turned