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“How many girls?” Piper repeated.

“Thirteen. Twenty. Dying fever or blood sick.”

Piper frowned. A fever from this region that killed people? The ebola outbreak that had ravaged West Africa last year had never really caught a foothold in the eastern part of the continent. “Lassa Fever?” she tried.

A vigorous nod. “Yes, yes. Lassa.”

Blood sick. What was that? “Hemophilia?” she guessed.

“No, no. All body make blood...” Fatima touched her gums, then pointed to her eyes and belly. “Blood everywhere. Then die.”

Comprehension dawned. The womanwastalking about a hemorrhagic fever. Here? In the Sudan? Piper breathed, “Ebola?”

“Ebola, yes.AndLassa.” A vigorous nod.

Why on earth would anyone ship truckloads of girls out into the countryside, or perhaps more accurately, away from Khartoum to places unknown? Was Dharwani running a prostitution or slavery ring? Is that how he got so rich? But with sick girls?

Fully a third of all Lassa victims died, and Ebola mortality could run in the 95 to 98 percent range under the right conditions. Even with the best medical care available, Ebolamortality ran a solid 50%. Although progress had been made in developing treatments during the big Ebola outbreak of 2014, commercial quantities of antivirals to fight it had been too slow in coming.

Regardless, with both of the fevers Fatima had named, the illness and death were messy, painful, and by the end, extremely contagious. Not the stuff of prostitution.

Piper reviewed the brief conversation so far, looking for more clues to the woman’s meaning. Fatima said The Black One was buying the girls.The Black One. A bolt of understanding struck her. “Black” translated tonoirin French.El Noor. Got it.

Piper leaned forward urgently. “El Noor is trucking girls with Lassa and ebola to the south. What’s he doing with them?”

A shrug. “No come home.Poof. Gone.”

“To South Sudan?” Piper asked. “Or just to the southern part of North Sudan?”

“South Sudan. Cross border. No follow. No find.”

Why was this woman telling her all this? Fatima was staring at her expectantly. Piper mumbled, “Uhh, thank you. That’s very interesting.”

The woman rocked back on her cushion, expansively satisfied. As if Piper had comprehended something vitally important at long last.

But she didn’t understand anything at all. Why in the world was El Noor shipping sick girls to South Sudan? Surely, he wasn’t trafficking the young women. They would be far too expensive to restore to health. God knew, there were plenty of impoverished, homeless,healthyyoung women who could be kidnapped into the slave trade.

She glanced up the table at Ian and was startled to see a grave look upon his face. Dharwani was leaning close, whispering in Ian’s ear. Apparently, this was the true confessions course of dinner.

Ian nodded once, tightly, and Dharwani leaned back, speaking volubly once more. He made a short speech about his gratitude for Ian’s rescue of his niece, and for exposing the El Noori spies pretending to be religious police.

Yeah, right. She would bet he’d be singing that tune to anyone who’d listen for the next few weeks. It was that or bring the local Muslim clerics and Sudanese government down on his back like a ton of bricks for allowing his people to tear two legitimate religious policemen limb from limb.

While servants commenced clearing the table, Fatima waved Piper to her feet. To her chagrin, Piper was led away from the men and into a small, stuffy sitting room with the other women. She felt naked and exposed without McCloud nearby to keep an eye on her and rescue her if need be.

Someone turned on a CD player, while Fatima pulled out a water pipe and commenced smoking. It smelled too sweet for tobacco. Must be hashish.

Blue, pungent smoke swirled thickly around Piper and a headache began to pulse at the base of her neck. Just what she needed. To get stoned with a bunch of Sudanese women while McCloud picked up all the hot intel. Which she had utter faith he would keep to himself and refuse to share with her.

Several of the teen girls began to dance, not in the traditional Middle Eastern style, however. Rather, they gyrated in a hideous parody of twerking that made her giggle uncontrollably. Crap. She was getting high on the fumes.

She fought to concentrate on the gossip floating around her. It took nearly an hour, but she was finally able to turn the women’s conversation—which was taking on a distinctly slurred quality—to the political events of the local neighborhood.

She was stunned by how much they knew. Apparently, men held private and even secret meetings with complete disregard for the women present. No doubt the assumption was thatwomen would not understand anything they were overhearing.Hah.

They casually related how Dharwani was getting rich buying black market food stolen from refugee camps in Ethiopia on the cheap and reselling it to the Sudanese government. They talked of how El Noor’s ambitions extended far beyond Sudan. How El Noor was getting funding from Muslim charities overseas, and bribing government officials to tolerate his power grab in return for his foot soldiers driving out the Christian coalition. And how two white men had come to town recently.

The haze from the hashish smoke cleared sharply from her head.Were the white men American?The women thought so. They had pale skin and one had orange hair—a fact which made the women laugh like drunk hyenas.