Page 45 of Soul on Fire
There were different shades of black in the world, he realized. What the world saw when they looked at him, and what the world saw when they looked at Africans. They looked at Ikolo and Keise and sawnothing.
At least Elliot earned the world’s disrespect. There was an acknowledgement in that bitterness, in the virulence. The opposite of love wasn’t hate; it was apathy.
No one in the world would care about Keise and his people after he left.
“Elliot?” Ikolo’s voice called to him, winding through the forest and fading on the mist. He wanted to disappear, fall into the earth, let the ground swallow him whole. He wanted to go back to the night and into Ikolo’s arms. He wanted everything to be different.
“I’m coming,” he said, pushing through the brush. Ikolo waited at the edge of the village. His face was set in a tired, fateful acceptance.
He grabbed Elliot’s arm, stopping him as he passed. “We are used to despair in Africa. Especially here, in the Congo. We’re used to losing everything. It’s you Westerners who aren’t.”
* * *
Maybe there wassomething he could do. Maybe he could put his hand on the other scale, push things back to equal.
“Admiral, I need you to do something for me,” he said when Kline answered in theKearsarge’sCDC. “This morning in the village we’re in, a kid came down with Ebola.”
“Are you in danger?”
“I’m fine. But these people have nothing. They have no medicine, no defenses, no way to quarantine and isolate the people who are infected. They—”
“What do you think I can do, Lieutenant? You think I can airlift a medical team out to the middle of the jungle for one village?”
“You can contact the UN and they can send a medical response team out from the WHO, or work with one of the NGOs. They just need to be told to come. You can make the call.”
Silence. “You know I have a million things to do other than contact the UN about a single village in Congo? You know how hard the rest of us are working, trying to find this guy? Trying to find out more about Syria? Syria’s gone dark, and we don’t know what they’re planning with this Ebola strain they’ve acquired. We’re facing a two-front catastrophe and I’ve gotallof Washington crawling up my ass over your little side mission. The CIA’s threat assessments keep getting worse. There are millions, maybe billions, of lives at risk if that Ebola strain is weaponized, and we still don’t know what Majambu is getting in return for passing it along or what their next step is.” Kline paused. “And you want me to drop all that and send the WHO out to one village?”
“Yes, I do.”
Kline sighed.
“It’s the right thing to do, Admiral. Would you be hesitating if we weren’t talking about African children? None of those millions of lives you want to save are worth sacrificing the lives of these people, right here.”
“Sacrifice? What are you talking about—”
Elliot paced, running one hand down his face. He tried to breathe, tried to stop his hands from shaking. “You want me to press on. You say this mission has priority. Well, here’s your problem: Doctor Ngondu is my guide. The chief of the village has asked him to stay so he can save these people. And he could, he could help them survive this. But I can’t go on without him. I need him if I’m going to have any chance of finding Majambu. So you want to pop smoke and pull me out, go ahead. I’ll leave Doctor Ngondu here to treat these people. You tell the CIA and DIA and NSA and State and everyone else, all the way up to the president, that they can give it their best shot finding this guy. Good luck. I’m on the ground, and I’m the best chance anyone has of tracking Majambu down. And I’m telling you right now, Admiral: this mission hangs on this village. Now you tell me, what’s it going to be?”
Silence.
“How many African lives equal one American one, Admiral? Is it three-fifths?”
“Give me your God damn GPS coordinates.”
Elliot read them off the sat phone’s display. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“You’re on a razor-thin line, Elliot, and you are going to cut yourself if you push much further.”
“When does hands-off neutrality turn into complicity, Admiral?”
“Lieutenant—”
“I’ll call in twelve hours.” He hung up before Kline could speak. Tipping his head back, he let the dew turn to rain and fall on his face, and let the humidity crawl up from the ground and over his skin. He breathed the forest air, the woodsmoke and palm oil and wet earth smell. Woman sang as they worked. Children laughed and darted through the trees. He heard the men talking together, low voices urgent, almost frantic.
I will not stand by. I will do something.
When he opened his eyes, Ikolo was there, watching him.
* * *
