Report From Mali

By Mike Kennedy

One million Tuareg have crossed the Sahara for a thousand years, but only in the 20th century have these Blue Men of the Dune Sea crossed the black lines of maps. As the French were leaving North Africa, their cartographers drew Mali's unhappy shape. It is the map that condemns Mali. In this Arab Spring, the Tuareg will yield to the new world order or wreck it.

In early January 2012, shortly before the Tuareg revolt, a caravan of ten “technicals” breaks its desert camp outside of Tessalit, in Northern Mali. Eight of these 4 X 4 trucks mount either a heavy machine gun or a dual 20 mm cannon. The previous summer, Tuareg returning from the defeated Gaddafi regime in Libya have armed the 30 drum groups of the Ifoghas Massif. Their destination is Taroudant Pass in the valley between the Greater and the Lesser Atlas Mountains of Morocco—1,400 miles through the Sahara. There are roads for 250 of those miles. As for the rest, they must either find a way, or make one.

The Tuareg are the Blue Men of the Dune Sea and Masters of the Sahara. These 37 Tuareg tribesman will leave Mali as “white men” and they will arrive in Morocco, four days later, as “black men.” The Tuareg have their own slaves in Mali. 300,000 Bella People live among them in varying degrees of servitude. In the thousand years since the Tuareg branch of the Berber people have come south to live in proximity with the equatorials, the Tuareg have bred themselves out of their “whiteness.” And now, these genes will compel the Tuareg to fight their way back out of the narrow Moroccan mountain valleys.

The Reguibat have been lifted from their ancestral desert home by the Moroccan government, and relabeled as urban gentry. They have been resettled in a string of modern towns that dot the ancient caravan route through the narrow valleys of the Atlas, ending at Marrakesh.

The Reguibat are an ancient warrior tribe of white ethnic Arabs. They are Sharif; they trace their lineage back to the Prophet. They assimilate within a tense amalgam alongside the Berbers—the original indigenous people, the ones that took Hannibal across the Alps. The Reguibat are offended at the skin of the Tuareg, and by the insolence of their guns. It is not enough that the Tuareg follow the religion of the conquerors.

A sleeper agent of the Deep State has been activated and flown to the edge of the Sahara. The Tuareg will become led by Mr. Thorne du Havilland Chance (Yale class of ’92). French is the official language of Mali and much of West Africa. Chance speaks it fluently. In Washington and Bamako, he is known as a certifier of the World Bank—under contract to the Millennium Challenge Corporation of the United States Government.

In Casablanca, he has a “nom de amour.” In the north of Mali, it becomes his “nom de guerre.” In these places, he is known as Monsieur Louis Bissonet, until this moment, unconscious of his own reality.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf says of the manuscript: "This is a potentially important and significant novel on many levels, including formally..." Little, Brown says of the novel, “...our admiration for its ambition and the energy and high-octane force it applies toward these engrossing geopolitical events. Chance and his team are memorable characters."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Kennedy
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310447167

Mike Kennedy

A note to Kennedy's readers: "Like many of you, in former times I thought of myself as not merely awake, but vibrantly awake. I was wrong. Beginning in 2019 and connecting the dots as consciousness is wont to do, I began my Red-Pill experience. Recently, and to my amazement, I see that the writing of three of my novels was channeled experience. 'Mali' turns out to be a story of the Deep State. It was always, from the start, a story of the illusion of free will. 'Taggart' turns out to be a story of Trans-Humanism. And 'All Our Yesterdays' turns out to have been an unconscious metaphor of the inner sanctum of the Cabal and its malign design upon mankind. I have long known that my stories find me (and not the other way around). Two attempts at designing a story have both resulted in ten-thousand-word dead ends. I quote from Aeschylus (his work 'Agamemnon'): 'Pain, which cannot forget, even in our sleep, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our despair, and against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.' And we remember that 'grace' is an unmerited consolation. Finally, I see that my 'message to the publishing world' (final paragraph below) recognized the sad fact that agents & editors have betrayed their intrinsic debt to western civilization and consciously work in thrall to the dark side. One should keep in mind that the root word for 'inspiration' is 'spirit' and so must ever remain experience beyond the five senses. I have always written about those things that you know, but do not know you know."On a lighter note: "It is not too late to fall in love with language. You've just needed characters you wish you knew. I wish there were drawings, pictures, and maps in novels and short stories. Don't you? In the novel 'Mali,' a picture begins every chapter. So also, in these two anthologies. All in support of the magical movie in your mind. Go ahead and venture, 'It's showtime!'"Indianapolis author Mike Kennedy described by Trident Media Group, saying: "Kennedy has a way with words. Readers attracted to Hemingway and Mailer will love Season of Many Thirsts [A novel brought to E-Books under the original title: REPORT FROM MALI]." Publisher Alfred A. Knopf says of the manuscript: "This is a potentially important and significant novel on many levels, including formally." Little, Brown says of the novel: "Our admiration for its ambition and the energy and high-octane force it applies toward these engrossing geopolitical events. Chance and his team are memorable characters." Random House says: "Kennedy captures the strange, and intriguing world of Mali." Playwright Arthur Miller said of Kennedy: "Marilyn and I used to think there was something funny about Mike, and then we realized that he was simply hilarious."Kennedy's message to the publishing world, "I have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness from time to time across fifty years. During this, my most recent reading, it occurs to me that I am Kurtz and that all of you are Marlow. Kurtz lay dying in the pilot house of the river steamer. Marlow, the company agent, has found him and returns with him. Kurtz has spent years in the jungle pulling out ivory and sending it downstream. Finally, Kurtz agrees to return down river to civilization because he realizes that he has something to say, something with a value beyond his ton of treasure. Kurtz realizes that he has achieved a synthesis from out of his brutish experience. Kurtz imagines being met by representatives at each one of the string of railway stations during his return to civilization. He tells Marlow, 'You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability.' And then, sounding as though he steps into our own millennium, Kurtz adds, 'Of course you must take care of the motives—right motives—always.' Now I see that Kurtz is Conrad. Kurtz is not unique. He is every writer. It is only Marlow, the agent, who is unique, unique in his fidelity, not just to the job, nor only to the company, but to the civilization that sent him."Listen to the video essays of WrongWayCorrigan on Rumble. https://rumble.com/c/WrongWayCorriganCJ

Book preview

Report From Mali

Mike Kennedy

Copyright 2014 by Mike Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

THE CHAPTERS

Chapter 1

ALONG THE SENEGAL

Chapter 2

ALONG THE NIGER

Chapter 3

BAMAKO

Chapter 4

CASABLANCA

Chapter 5

PRISCILLA

Chapter 6

THE ATLANTIC SHORE

Chapter 7

SUBURBAN WASHINGTON

Chapter 8

WORLD BANK INSTITUTE

Chapter 9

CEUTA, ESPAÑA, The North African Coast

Chapter 10

AMERICAN EMBASSY, Bamako

Chapter 11

WAR COUNCIL, Marrakesh

Chapter 12

LAND OF THE THREE MASSIFS

Chapter 13

CHRISTMAS AT HOTEL MANDÉ

Chapter 14

WASHINGTON AFTER DARK

Chapter 15

LONGITUDE SEVENTY-SEVEN

Chapter 16

COLD FEET

Chapter 17

LAND OF THE DUNE SEA

Chapter 18

LAND OF FOSSIL WATER

Chapter 19

FLIGHT TO LONGITUDE SEVEN

Chapter 20

BANQUE DU CASABLANCA

Chapter 21

TEMPEST AT THE WORLD BANK

Chapter 22

FOUR DAYS ACROSS THE DUNE SEA

Chapter 23

REBELLION

Chapter 24

SUPREME COURT OF MALI

Chapter 25

BANDIAGARA ESCARPMENT

Chapter 26

HOMBORI TONDO

Chapter 27

FROM OUT OF THE DESERT

Chapter 28

KARUM NAMELECTE

Chapter 29

PEACE RETURNS TO MALI

Chapter 30

OASIS AT THE IFOGHAS MASSIF

END MATTER

About the Author

Other Fiction by the Author

Chapter 1

ALONG THE SENEGAL

With the end of war, comes this remembrance.  Restored to me always at dawn, it can only mean that I dream of it through the night. It persists to blend seamlessly into the morning.

Our convoy had not proceeded far into the desert, when the Antonov-24 dropped its port side wing to bank low in a great circle across the early morning sky. From one end of it to the other, Rafferty’s twin-engine plane soared across the vast backdrop of the spires and mesas of the Ifoghas Massif. Looking out my passenger side truck window, the Ifoghas seemed a study in charcoal. Then, as the sun first flashed, the massif glowed once in copper, then quickly again in rose—against a canvas becoming blue.

Turning from the hills, the Antonov crossed over the beige desert. Rafferty straightened, to fly directly up our column of trucks.

Approaching, flying low, Rafferty waggled the Antonov’s wings side-to-side, waving good-bye. My throat tightened.

I leaned through my window, following him as he crossed over us. His plane’s singing engines fell off into the drone of a sudden Doppler shift, lamenting adieu mon ami.

I watched the Antonov growing smaller, gaining altitude. His engines sounded very far away. I watched Rafferty turn again, back toward the massif—east by northeast, flying onward to the Algerian Air Force base. It lay two hundred miles ahead of him, at the foot of the Ahaggar Massif.

There, he would slump with his usual pile of books near his F-15 Strike Eagle, waiting for our call for help, if we should make one. Otherwise, Rafferty would return to Bamako in the Antonov-24 on the seventh day—for the second shipment of cocaine.

I was alone among these Tuareg strangers. The desert teaches by taking away. My connection with Tariq Ibn Tanzir, far to the north in his office, became my slender hold on life.

My four days across the Sahara began. Swiftly, the population of stunted trees thinned, then ended. The wadis became shallow, narrow, fewer, then none.

Our forward progress seemed an optical illusion. The truck made the sounds and imparted the feel of movement. Even so, we remained staked in place. Instead, it was the great Massif that moved. It slowly flattened against the horizon. Its shadows pulled back from the desert floor.

Finally, an irrevocable flatness became everything. The hamada was flat beneath a flat sky. We moved into the slit between. I was overcome with the insane reflex to duck my head. A vanishing point hovered anywhere I looked.

We had entered some fantastic place where shadows did not exist. As the sun rose higher, I looked down from my truck window. Even the shadows of our trucks had disappeared. Never before had I been unable to find a shadow, but never before had I ever looked for one.

An ache grew behind my eyes as they squinted for perspective, for discontinuity, for shapes. For the first time, I was bereft of the third dimension.

Such a day should have seemed the delirium of a sickbed, or else the exotic accounts told in hotel bars by soldiers of fortune to stranded travelers. Yet this day was mine and glimmered only eight weeks into the future.

All great adventures begin with something out of place. A new inevitability takes over, at first without your notice, as the theme shifts into a minor key. Soon, every man will think himself Macbeth—that every man may become a Duncan. Wicked dreams will abuse curtained sleep, and the wolf with stealthy pace will howl his watch.

I begin with Friday morning, November 11. It was the year 2011. I did not recognize that day as the beginning of anything. Thus far, the day was marked only by the oddity of the three sets of eleven. On that morning, I still believed in a future determined by persistence. I marvel now at the perfection of the illusion. I was a sleeper dreaming. I would be awakened brusquely, and soon.

They let me sit in front, next to Rafferty. Cripe sat behind us, but leaned forward across the seats and talked for the entire ninety-minute trip. The view out the windows did not interest Cripe. In contrast, I remained busy the entire flight. My head spun continuously from the window in the door at my right, to the windshield in front, to Rafferty piloting on my left, and over my left shoulder to Cripe. Sophomoric perhaps, but the experience brought out the boy in me.

Before daybreak, when the temperature was still in the sixties, the three of us had pushed the helicopter out of the small hangar leased by the Embassy. The headsets dampened the engine noise and gave our squawky conversation the clubby feeling of shared confidences.

Rafferty was giving Cripe a lift to a construction site. He was to check up on the Chinese. The word was—they had bought themselves a project. The Chinese were building the Felou dam across the Senegal River upstream of Keyes. I was along for the ride. Rafferty was the ambassador’s jack-of-all-trades and go-to-guy.

He and Cripe had permanent rooms at the hotel where I had stayed every trip for eight years. Rafferty and Cripe had become professional drinking buddies in the five years they had been in-country. They said they had kept each other from becoming alcoholics. They wondered how I had managed on my own all these years. It was the weight of my responsibilities that kept me ballasted, but much of that was my closely guarded secret, or so I assumed.

They had met me only the night before, and had offered me this outing. I was unsure. This would mean one more day apart from Priscilla and my sons, but I had never left the capitol, even once in twenty-eight trips. All I had ever done was work. Of course, many people depended on me, but now it could be my turn, if just this once. I wanted to see the country, finally, more than just the capitol. Many tourists have come to grief in West Africa.

Things were about to change, and not just for me, but for millions.

Rafferty and Cripe saw it coming. This fueled their incessant jabber with seemingly endless speculation. I had never known two people who had more to say to each other. People who know me say that it eventually rubbed off on me.

I wonder if Chance is expecting to see something like the Hoover Dam, Cripe asked from the backseat, speaking into his mouthpiece. We don’t want to see him disappointed.

It isn’t that kind of a dam, old sport, Rafferty said, turning toward me. Geography drives everything: history, politics, even engineering, right Cripe? Cripe is really the expert in these things.

"Right. Mali is too flat. The Hoover is an impoundment dam. Those engineers had some elevation to work with. The Hoover Dam backs the Colorado River up into Lake Mead. Mother Nature had already scoured the earth out. All we had to do was fill it up.

"In contrast, Felou will be a run-of-the-river dam which only channels the flow, but does not form a lake behind it. It is too flat around here. That is great for grading railway rights-of-way and highways, but it leaves dam work a little short. Flatness is why we have the Great Inland Delta of the Niger to the north. The energy of rivers is not only the volume of water; it is the change in elevation.

"Felou Falls drops forty feet over the length of a mile or so. It is about a half-mile wide. That is the extent of it. It is picturesque because it is wide, but width is a liability, not an asset. When you see it, you will find it does not stand up well to what we have back home. It does not make for much of a photograph.

"What it does have going for it is exposed bedrock. Not a very romantic concept, I’m afraid. You see, even a little dam like Felou is heavy, and it must seal. Otherwise, it erodes. A little leakage would not matter except it creates voids at the same time. Voids cause collapse.

"With bedrock close to the surface, it is cheaper to build at that location. Otherwise, one must dig down to the bedrock, to find it no matter how deep.

There is also some existing infrastructure. The French had built a fine little hydroelectric plant there about ninety years ago, which has been chugging along nicely ever since, but it only used about one percent of the river. The new dam will use the whole river. It will generate about a hundred times the wattage. The Chinese will reuse and enlarge the old diversion channel of the French. The rest of the falls will remain. It will simply dry up.

Rafferty spoke up to add what he knew. Mali will likely also throw one across the Senegal at Guina Falls—upstream of Felou about fifty miles. It’s got more vertical drop and some gorges upstream which they could flood with a taller dam, if they spend the money on it.

Without impoundment, they’re at the mercy of the dry season, Cripe continued. "Both the Senegal and the Niger flow north into Mali, but, at about the line of the railway, they part company. The Senegal continues northwest; the Niger northeast until after Timbuktu, when it turns south toward its delta on the Atlantic.

Both rivers begin over there, Cripe said, pointing out his window, off to our left, over the horizon, about two hundred miles from here.

Far away to the south, just across the southern border, the Guinea Highlands halt the Atlantic storms, and take their rain. From these mountains, the two great rivers green their way north together, before turning from each other, as if they had quarreled.

I rose in my seat to get a look out Rafferty’s window. From time to time, I noticed the rapid thumping of the blades. Then the rotor and engine noise would recede once more, as I retreated into his narrative—while taking care to miss nothing out the windows. Rafferty’s blue streak continued.

"God shed his grace on thee: gold, diamonds, uranium, bauxite, iron ore and, best of all, rain, and lots of it, one hundred and seventy-five inches per year. By comparison, Bamako gets about forty-five, and, as we all know, north of the capitol, it dries up rapidly. There might be places in the north of Mali where it has not rained in a thousand years. Luckily, differences in elevation work magic with the water table, allowing some degree of habitation.

Yeah, Cripe, geography is the great determiner. The mountains stop the rain and water flows out of them to enable civilizations. Even the shape of Africa has affected history because it has affected the trade winds and they took Columbus to the New World.

A blizzard of concepts, I had missed such talk.

The plan of a town now burst out of the low tree line—buildings not of mud, with roofs not of grass, pavement, vehicles, and crowds looking up.

"First, we’ll buzz Kayes, Chance, so you can see it. Kayes was the first colonial capitol, before Bamako. Until the French arrived, Kayes was just a wide spot in the bush. By Comparison, they think Bamako has been inhabited for 150,000 years.

Kayes has about the same population as South Bend, Indiana minus Notre Dame. It’s on the Dakar railway which Cripe uses—when all else fails. In the months of April and May, the average daily high temperature is 108 degrees Farenheit, making it the hottest town on the continent…officially. Good news, Cripe, now, in November, this drops a full ten degrees.

Thank you for reminding me. I feel better now, he said, sullenly.

I looked down from my window and asked, What is going on with all those people down there in the river next to the bridge? It looks like a block party,

Rafferty took this one. That’s the old bridge.

Old bridge? That thing is a bridge? It looks like a street that runs across a river.

It is technically known as a ‘seasonal causeway’, old sport.

Why don’t they take the new bridge?

"Word has it that the new bridge is up too high to suit them, and, really, I’d rather take the old bridge, too. You see, you can jump off the old bridge, if you must.

The new bridge is a bad mix of vehicles and pedestrians, a bad mix of the fast and the very slow—not the sort of place to learn patience, at least by example. The fast ones naturally want to get around the slow ones with the result that they have quite a few smash-ups. But…if you can leap out of the way…

The old bridge seemed more like a huge sidewalk, barely above the river’s surface. During the rainy season, it must surely be awash. Then—if your truck is heavy enough not to be swept away—you must steer along the line of white water and trust to luck that the old bridge is under you. For now, sluices let the water pass. It spanned the river, but curved to follow high spots on the river bottom.

The miracle was that something made of mud brick could be placed in a river and not dissolve. Its surface was paved with mud plaster. At points, there was evidence of old collapse. I saw that work parties had convened in the shallows to dig up river bottom, to make spot repairs, and to raise low spots where the splash of the river had ponded. It reminded me of my old summers at scout camp.

Perhaps for every grain of dirt the river washed away, it brought a new one and deposited it on the upstream side. If this were true, then the old bridge would slowly march upstream, maybe an inch per year, or so slowly, that no one would notice, until finally it would round a bend and disappear.

Work parties must tend to it constantly during the dry season. They must be attentive to the smallest of changes, as the river slyly tries to move the bridge away.

Kayes was on the edge of the Sahel. The climatic zones in this part of the world are narrow bands, crowding upon each other. Traveling north to south the scene out your window changes rapidly, but east to west not at all.

Mountains of rainforest scallop the Atlantic coastline below Mali. Their jungle flanks give way north to grassy savanna, and then comes the stubborn insufficiency of the Sahel. We reach a visible line where too little gives way to grainy nothingness. It is here we reach the madness of the Sahara, wickedly articulated into a myriad of obdurate forms.

The desert persists from the great bend of the Niger River north to the battlements of the High Atlas Mountains defending at the Mediterranean, with its barbican on the Atlantic—at the Pillars of Hercules. Everything about West Africa says division, border, separation, and disagreement.

We are each in the power of our place, like seeds that fall on stones, or else into receiving earth. Free will is the reverie of your dream remembering the illusion of someone else from a night that was not your own.

Rafferty now turned us away and gained altitude very quickly. Five minutes later, we were over the Chutes de Felou, as the French call the falls.

I thought I might see more activity, I said, looking to the ground.

Jobsites are the same the world over, Cripe answered. Most of the time, you see a disappointingly small amount of work being done. However, it is always steady and from the prospective of, say, a month, you can see the progress. It’s driven by economics, it costs more if too many men are working too closely together, and the trades generally work in series, not in parallel. Of course, here we also have the heat. But, it’s bearable once you’ve broken a sweat.

Tempers their enthusiasm, Rafferty added.

Care to look around a bit, Chance? Cripe offered.

The heat slammed inside when Cripe opened the door. I recoiled . It was like opening an oven with your head too close. We watched Cripe get out and walk beneath the slowing blades.

My god, Rafferty, this really is the hottest town in Africa.

"It’s the mountains in back of the town, old sport. They’re loaded with iron ore. Holds the heat, you know…like a forge. It is the West African parallel to the urban heat island of North America.

Cripe trudged away from us, quickly breaking his sweat. He disappeared inside the construction trailers. These, the Chinese construction company had arranged in a square with a connecting wooden deck. The window air conditioners blasted full force. Condensate ran in a steady trickle from each.

Rafferty lifted off. We rose straight up.

Felou was a vast, natural plaza of terraced table rock nearly a mile across, stretching down river for half a mile. Only a dozen sputtering, white flows remained to suggest what it once had been. The diversion channel hugged the south bank of the Senegal. Here, the river’s flow necked down into a faster stream through a new, white, concrete sluice.

Where do they mine their aggregates? I asked Rafferty. He launched himself into a freshman lecture, as the helicopter veered away.

"Very quick on the uptake, old sport. Yes, where indeed. The answer is out to sea…around the Cape Verde islands and then moved by sea to Dakar and then by rail to here.

"Stone is expensive around here…always has been…that is why they make such extensive use of adobe…especially farther north where it holds up better.

"You see, Chance, back home we had glaciation. Our retreating glaciers left deep deposits of aggregate called moraines. Then our abundant rainfall sorted this glacial till into economically recognizable sizes. God sheds his grace on thee. Back home we have only to dig it up.

The geologists have given the rock in Mali two names. In the south of Mali we have the Tuareg Shield and in the north we have the Reguibat Shield.

If only I could have known then how familiar these two names would become.

"These people are lucky in one respect, however. The railway follows the edge of the ancient courses of the river. Over time, the river prepared the topography to some extent.

"That means that this gravel did not have to be trucked in by road. It came by train. The river, the train, the dam, all side-by-side. Very cozy—right here in the middle of goddamn nowhere."

In a few weeks, the middle of goddamn nowhere would become drastically redefined.

"The French gold mines are located on the edge of this. One of them produced over half a billion dollars profit last year. That’s close to thirty thousand pounds of gold and all of it made in the furnaces of some dying star—cosmic ages ago.

It ends up here, of all places. It probably came down as an asteroid; as the earth was forming—a golden asteroid. I wish one would land on me. I wonder if the French worry about the Chinese coming so close to all of that money.

He knew they did. In fact, I was eventually to learn that the Chinese had caused everything—quite unintentionally, of course. For now, the Chinese were as much in the dark about things as I was.

It’s going to take him a few hours. He’ll call. Meantime, is there anything you want to see?

The desert? I wondered aloud.

In some places around West Africa the desert is interesting, but not around here. Say, I know one place. It’s in the desert and it’s kind of neat. Have you ever heart of a spot called The Green Eye of the Sahara?"

No. Is it far?

Just across the border with Mauritania. It’s got an old French fort which is now a police station. The story is that it’s a lost world down inside a crater about twenty miles across.

The edge of the river, the edge of the railway, the shoreline, a change in elevation— life yields to the underlying structures. Their work goes unnoticed. Man ascribes it all to his free will, or to his personality. It is a pathetic boast.

Life thrives at the margins where temperature, sunlight, and water come together. In a good deal of Mali, these boundaries often fail to intersect. But where it does, life abounds. We live on sunlight. We are light eaters. Each membrane-enclosed point of life is a chemistry shop. The organic mass of Earth grows a surplus. Above that, all are predators. It takes a lot of sunlight to grow a lion, or to grow a Rafferty.

Mali has always lain astride the Caravan routes—exploited by the nomad at the traveled edges. Climates crowd upon each other. Sea-bred storms quickly thin and falter. Forest gives way to savanna, which gives way to Sahel, which gives way to the deep desert.

This is where east gives way to west, and where north gives way south. This is where black encounters white. The great Niger River is the boundary between them.

At this margin, the river grows tired. It loses definition. It tells the people, I can go no farther. Here, between the Mandé in the south and the Tuareg in the north, at the edge where wet gives way to dry, the River makes its enormous bend. It loses its banks. It nearly loses its way. It sprawls idly across the land. This is the vast inland delta of the Niger: a tableau of swamps, sloughs, and oxbows; of ponds evaporating into meadows that become nibbled into drying pastures; of trapped fish choking in thinning lakes.

North of there is the deep desert. It is an ocean of grainy nothingness, except where it loses elevation and sinks dozens of feet, sometimes hundreds of feet. At these places, it forms a guelta. This is the fabled wetland of the deep desert. Here, underground water moves to the pull of its own weight, toward the low, hidden places. The oasis is an abundance of life on the edge of nothing.

Many years ago, some Frenchman with too much black ink and a long straightedge drew Mali’s unhappy shape. It encloses a lot of Africa that he did not know what to do with. Mali should have ended with the Dogon People and the cliffs of Bandiagara.

Governments must have borders. Where there are not borders, there is not government. Where the borders are wrong, there is war.

Miles to the north, just across the border, in the forgotten corner of Mauritania, next to the great angle of Mali, lays the vast, hidden oasis of Karum Namelecte.

In the days since we have been able to look down from space, we now see it for what it is. Today we call it the Green Eye of the Sahara. Here, in this ancient and forgotten place, a sunken civilization has thrived for well over a thousand years, walled off from the rest of the world by thirst and by emptiness. The French discovered it in 1901 and, nearby, at the great crescent dune that has always protected the place, they built Fort Jardin.

Before the year is out, the nomadic band of the Archpriest of the desert will travel across the empty quarters of the Sahara to settle into Fort Jardin. An inscrutable god—whose mistakes, if he has any, can only be those of an easy patience—will send him to us.

Father Montpellier has compounded his Chautauqua from a blend of religions, and it offends each of them. He converts his followers to the teachings of four prophets: to the love of Jesus, to the duty of Mohammed, to the prudery of St. John of the Cathars and to the determination of Brigham Young—each arising in a historical pattern 600 years apart.

This is a three hundred and sixty degree jihad. It is waged upon them all. It shall root itself at Karum Namelecte, during the new season of the Arab Spring.

Chapter 2

ALONG THE NIGER

My name is Thorne du Havilland Chance. My father bestowed my overarching sobriquet upon me as an infant. He had the expectation that, on me, it would eventually not look too big. This was like giving a child a shirt three sizes too large, and telling him that he must lift weights and drink milk until it fits.

Destiny takes the high ground, he would admonish. Father explained his concept of tall men. Tall men are lucky. Tall men are privileged. Tall men are calm—usually with a latent temper that persists once aroused. Had I been a shorter man, I believe that none of this would have happened to me.

It was early Thursday evening, November 10, 2011. The sun was setting on the last normal day that I would ever have.

My life up to this point had been anything but the rule, and yet soon it would seem to have been lifted straight from the pages of the Farmer’s Almanac.

I had been on the dinning terrace of the hotel for the entire day. I preferred to work out there in the dry season. The island that it is on is much less congested than the capitol, which I could see upstream from where I sat.

The dinning terrace juts out into the river on pilings, like a dock. It has a pitched roof whose eaves overhang balustered railings all around. Here they seat seventy-two at tables that are as well appointed as any back in Washington D.C.

I found myself at loose ends. My last visitor had just left. Invariably, I knew, my visitors stick around, after work, as my guest for dinner at the Hotel. It is the best food in town. This one did not. He had begged off. I recall thinking at the time that this was highly unusual. Everyone wants a free meal at Hotel Mandé.

Some motive always lies behind every action in Bamako. Caprice and whimsy do not exist. This land cannot support them yet.

The Americans were here simply trying to give money away, but in the most convoluted manner possible. The French were here to dig for gold in the western mines. The Chinese were here to coax as much as possible from the Malians. The Malians did not get to keep any of it for very long.

In the dry season, which had arrived only this month, I did my business out on the covered dinning terrace. I remained at the corner table, which I had occupied all day, and, as dusk approached, I absently sipped my bourbon, and watched the other diners arrive.

Far to the north, while I lounged by the bank of the Niger River, the Arab Spring raged all along the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean Sea—the Maghreb. The Libyans had found Gaddafi, and had killed him. The leaders of Tunisia and Egypt had fallen. Protesters swarmed in Algeria and Morocco. Syria boiled over.

What is not just is not law.

Two men, each about the size of linebackers, dressed in dark suits, now stepped on to the terrace. I recognized them. Each had dark brown hair, cropped short above deep set, penetrating eyes, and square jaws. Many times over the years, I had noticed these two, quietly reading in the hotel lobby, each silently engrossed in his book, each invariably in the company of the other. And now, they wind up at my table without my ever having that first stray thought about unlikely coincidences. It began oddly.

One of them pointed toward me and absently waived off the maître d, hovering in front of him, as if he was a mosquito. They walked past the waiters and toward my table, at the back of the terrace, in the corner. They walked as if they had been with the military. That is common in Bamako. I later learned that Rafferty had been a marine and that Cripe had graduated West Point. One never knew at first blush whom you were actually rubbing shoulders with, but you learned to proceed with discretion.

I would eventually find out that these two chaps were damn smart and that they comported a number of finely honed skill sets—of great use when sudden emergencies arise. It is during such occasions when one hopes one’s friends do have something handy they have been holding back.

These two understood their own competence, and had no interest in proving anything to anyone.

Rafferty and Cripe were all smiles. That too is common in Bamako. Smiles meant little here. The Mandé call this the land of the Joking Uncles. The joking stops where the Mandé stop, and where the rain stops.

According to the popular description of local folklore, you must be Chance. You’re hard to miss. I’m Rafferty and this is Cripe. Would you mind some company for dinner?

I would like that very much, gentlemen, I said, standing. Cripe sat across from me, and Rafferty to my left. "You’re both Americans? I asked, sitting.

Right. The flavor of the month around here. You’re the man with the World Bank Institute, are you not? asked Rafferty.

Yes, we do some of the foreign aid certifications for Mali.

Cripe spoke, smiling. Making sure they toe the straight and narrow, eh Chance? I provide the oversight on those construction projects funded by your compact. I’m Millennium’s resident engineer and tattle-tail-in-chief.

I absently added, Apparently neither one of us is winning the popularity contest,

The strangest expressions now flashed across their faces—as though I was secretly the most popular man in town and the truth of it was being kept from me for my own good. This was the nuttiest idea, although I could not shake it.

Shortly these reveries became worse. My next irrational thought was that these two knew of a parallel universe alongside mine and were trying not to make the mistake of talking to me about the wrong one.

Several times, I casually touched my forehead to see if I was warm. I have always heard that tropical fevers can begin with crazy thoughts. I absolutely did not have time to come down with a tropical fever.

Cripe got us back on level ground. You must have played some basketball.

No, I’m afraid not.

You mean all that height has gone to waste.

I was on Yale’s fencing team. I could see that was not enough, so I added one thing more. I had some reach. They paused respectfully, seemingly unsure of what to do with this.

Rafferty, with a level gaze, quietly exclaimed, "A swordsman! This is good to know, Chance. If we run out of bullets, we’ll be looking for you."

This was worded like a jest, yet it sounded like the sober reflection of someone envisioning the result of the Athenian spear-thrusts at Marathon.

Such sudden calculations from the back of the mind might predict with stunning clarity if we did not dismiss them heedlessly. Some power of suggestion had appointed this evening to be a midwife for nutty ideas, and the eventual accuracy of these passing whimsies would be stunning.

By reflex, I changed the subject. What do you do, Rafferty?

"Me? Oh…I am just the…local agricultural attaché.

Is that your background, farming, or ag-science?

Rafferty looked at Cripe who burst out laughing. Rafferty can’t even read the Burpee seed catalog. You know how things go, Chance. You’re a man of the world. Let’s just say that no one knows who signs Rafferty’s paychecks and what he did between high school and right now is a sealed file.

I wondered about that. Should Cripe be talking like this? Rafferty did not seem to mind Cripe’s ribbing. Still, a spook should not like his cover discussed publicly in front of a stranger. Even though French was the official language—and everyone spoke a dialect of Mandé—there might have been someone within earshot who knew English.

Perhaps they did not consider me a stranger. This was all done in smiles. It seemed that these were each the type of man, who liked talking to the type of man, who liked to talk. And they had been in constant practice.

They had been planning this encounter for years.

I then opted to take the conversation off work and onto the news, which I assumed would be easier neutral ground. Really something about ‘ole Gaddafi finally getting his just deserts last month, wasn’t it?

At this, they both looked up across their eyebrows. A touchy subject maybe, I wondered.

"Oh. That is really one hell of a problem, old sport, really one hell of a game changer, Rafferty advised. People are calling this by the pretty name ‘Arab Spring’, but for Mali, it will become one of the plagues of Egypt. Have you noticed a little tension in the air?"

No, it looks normal to me.

"Hmmm, well…they are really quite worried…all of them…bureaucrats especially. They are looking for all hell to break loose. America doesn’t care too much who rules the north. America just wants stability…just wants it open for business…just wants it policed. If the Bambara can do it, well and good. If not, maybe the Tuareg can do it. There’s just one group that’s disqualified, ipso facto: the Islamists.

"That means war for America. We’re trying to avoid war. We’re trying to do this on the cheap with foreign aid. That’s where you come in. The smuggling is a problem too, but we might have a fix coming up.

You see, all that business up in Libya shook the branches for eight months, and during that time, a lot fell out. Do you know much about desert people, Mr. Chance?

I said that I did not. Rafferty carried on at length. Cripe settled in to enjoy the lecture. It was still early. We had the entire evening in front of us. I was glad that we showed no sign of running out of conversation, especially as we had just met. It certainly beats awkward silences. Had these chaps not arrived at my table, I would have made an evening out of one, long, awkward silence.

"You’ve heard how nature abhors a vacuum? Well, northern Mali is that vacuum. Northern Mali was empty, and it sucked everything right in…men, money, ordnance, fanatics, and crooks. Bamako owns the north, but does not govern the north. Up there, government