May 6, 2017

The convoy of Land Cruisers rattled down a dusty road near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, plunging into the remote forest stronghold controlled by fighters from Boko Haram. If everything went to plan, they would arrive at the rendezvous point before 4 p.m.

Inside the trucks sat five captured fighters, freshly extracted from prison, the first piece of the government’s proposed bargain. In a separate vehicle, according to people involved in the deal, a security detail guarded Nigeria’s principal concession to the Islamist terror group, a black duffel bag containing €2 million in plastic-wrapped cash.

The journey had started under a drizzling rain in a town torched by insurgents and bombed by jets during a decade of war. Lookouts were charting their progress, the passengers assumed, and the road was notorious for improvised explosives. One misstep could derail months of planning.

The two men most responsible for engineering this moment had split up that afternoon. For nearly three years, they had roamed the world together, organizing secret talks with Boko Haram. One of them was Zannah Mustapha, a former Nigerian barrister who had founded a school for orphans. He had listened to endless diatribes and broken up fights at the negotiating table. He had mourned when other deals collapsed in a hail of gunfire.