In Cold Blood (11 page)

“It is a dangerous thing you ask.”

“That’s why I’ll pay you a thousand dollars. Can you do it?”

“I can. You are lucky, madam. I am from the Boni tribe. My forefathers were hunter-gatherers on the border. They knew the land very well. They would whistle to the birds who would guide them to wild honey in the acacia trees.”

She flicked a hand at his prosperous dress. “I’m guessing you’re not much into the honey business.”

He laughed. “Indeed not. I am a trader. I take mangos from Somalia and sell them in Kenya and then I take bottled water from Kenya and sell it in Somalia. I do this again and again. Taxes and bribes are common at the border and I try to keep my expenses to a minimum. So, yes, I am very familiar with crossing. Where do you mean to go?”

“Barawe.”

He whistled through his teeth. “That will not be cheap. Barawe is a very dangerous place. The jihadists control it. A thousand dollars will not be enough.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand. All before.”

“Half before, half on arrival.”

He spread his hands. “Then I cannot help you.”

Beatrix called his bluff. “Fair enough.” She stood.

He let her take three steps away from the bar before he called her back.

“Very well. Three thousand now, two thousand on arrival. I am taking a very big risk, madam.”

“Fine. How do we do it?”

“I have a truck. I am taking a load of water tomorrow. Early morning. Can you travel then?”

“Just tell me where to be.”

BEATRIX WALKED back to the campsite. The night was hot, still and stifling, and there was an edge of incipient violence in the dark corners and rowdy bars. She stopped at a roadside shack for a meal of beans and rice and watched the Somali market alongside, still open, and it reminded her of a scene out of Aladdin. Children rode mule carts and hit the mules with long reeds to make them go faster. Goats chased each other. Women lay face down on prayer mats. A small crowd of kids collected around her and stood, staring at her eating as if it was something that they had never seen before. They stared unabashedly and did not avert their eyes when she looked at them. “Salaam,” she said. One of the children spoke pidgin English and introduced himself. She asked all of them their names and then the conversation fell silent. They scattered and left her to finish her meal alone.

She set off again. A large UN truck with a canvas-covered back rumbled by and the same group of children appeared out of nowhere to chase after it. She was a little surprised that the Land Cruiser was where she had left it. She went into her tent, took out a bottle of water and her morphine and drank down another two pills. The ache was steady now, almost constant, and she knew that the exertion of the next few days would exacerbate it further.

Nothing much that she could do about that.

She arranged her mosquito net and tried to ignore the roaches that scuttled beneath the sides of the tent, looking for food.

Sleep, when it came, was not particularly refreshing.

BEATRIX WAS already awake when the early morning call to prayer began to sound over the malfunctioning loudspeakers at the mosque that served this part of the camp. She rose and found her way to the outdoor shower where she stayed under the cold water for longer than usual because she didn’t know when she would be able to do it again. The tattoo on her shoulder had healed nicely, the colours particularly vivid now that the inflammation had receded. She dressed in a pair of white trousers and a sleeveless t-shirt, hauled her rucksack onto her shoulder and quietly left the tents.

Veins of light were just beginning to streak the royal blue sky and the temperature, for now at least, was cold.

Bashir said that he knew a place where she could park the Land Cruiser safely. It was a recessed space between two tents and, he said, a dollar a day would see the locals keep an eye on it. Beatrix had no reason to doubt their probity and she was further reassured when she was hailed by an elderly crone who was sitting in the dust before the open awning of her tent. In truth, having the vehicle here and in one piece was useful, but not essential. She did not know whether she would exfiltrate through Kenya or whether she might, for example, head north to Ethiopia. She had determined to solve that particular problem as it played out.

She was locking the Land Cruiser as a large, beaten-up truck wheezed up and parked alongside her.

Bashir opened the door and jumped down.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Morning.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Money, please.”

She gave him two bundles of notes and he made a show of thumbing through them and counting.

“Alright,” he said. “Three thousand. It is here. Two thousand later. But you are still sure? You want to do this?”

“Can we just get going? I want to get over there as quickly as we can.”

They drove off. The camp was quieter, resting, although far from still. Bashir drove carefully until they were out on the main road and headed east, following the Garissa Road just as she had followed it yesterday, and then he accelerated. Beatrix looked out of the window and saw the red corona of the sun slowly rising above the prairie. Two tall giraffes kicked up the dust as they galloped with elegant nonchalance through the rough, drought-resistant vegetation on the left-hand side of the road. Five minutes later, he had to stop to allow a herd of camels to wander aimlessly across their way.

“This story,” he said as he settled back in the seat. “What is it about?”

“How women are treated in Somalia.”

“I can tell you that. Not well. Do you still need to go?”

“What do you know about al Shabaab?”

“Just that they are very bad. Very violent men. You would be wise to avoid them.”

“But Barawe is their stronghold?”

“They had more, once. You know the civil war in Somalia?” She said that she did. “A most brutal war. The Shabaab flourished, like weeds. They had most of the south until the Kenyans and the Ethiopians and the USA decided they were not good. They still make it impossible for aid to get into the country. You saw Dadaab. It is not a pleasant place to live. Al Shabaab have murdered aid workers and, those they do not kill, they tax. It is better now, and they have been pushed back, but Barawe is not a safe place.”

“For you or for me?”

“For us both. I will drive you to outside the town. If you want to go further, you must walk. It is too dangerous to take the truck further than that.”

THEY HAD TALKED about trying to resist after seeing what had happened to the chef. Joe had sent the steward to the door to make sure that they were not overheard and then he had started the discussion.

“What are we going to do?”

“I know what we can’t do,” Barry Miller said. “I’m damn sure we can’t do nothing. They’ll just work their way through us until there ain’t no-one left.”

“Alright,” Harry Torres said. “We try and overpower them. When they come in with our food. They only come down in fours now. We position a couple of us near the door and when they come in, we rush them. There’s more of us than there are of them.”

“Yeah,” Nelson said. “And they’ve got Kalashnikovs.”

“So a couple of us are going to have to suck it up for the team. If it’s a question of going out like that or going out like
that
”, he pointed up towards the courtyard, “then I know which way I’d prefer.”

“What then?”

“We take the guns and shoot our way out. Maybe it doesn’t work. Maybe we all get shot. But if it’s a choice, do nothing or fight, then I’m fighting.”

There was a low mumble of assent.

“Alright,” Joe said. “Anyone got a better idea?”

“What about them?” Torres asked, indicating the Manage Risk operatives. They had taken no part in the discussion. Rather, they kept to themselves, talking quietly.

“Yeah, Joe,” Miller said angrily. “What
about
them? They’re the fricking soldiers and they ain’t doing jack.”

“I’ve got to say, Joe,” Torres added, “seems to me that one thing we haven’t talked about is giving them what they want.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re all going to die if we just sit here and keep quiet, right? We know what they want. It’s a shame and all, but those boys aren’t crew and they’re not friends. I think we’ve got to consider whether we should tell them that they’re the soldiers they want. I mean, come on, it’s not like he doesn’t already know. You’ve seen the way he looked at them. They look like soldiers, it’s obvious. He just wants you to tell him.”

“I’m not doing that,” Joe said firmly. “We’re all in the same mess here. I don’t see that we’re in a position where we can just hand someone over knowing that they’ll get taken up there and killed. That’s not moral, Harry. You could even say that’d be murder.”

“Bull
shit
,” Miller said. “Murder? What you been smoking, captain? Come on, look at ’em. They’re not even interested in taking part in this discussion. And you think they wouldn’t hand us over to them if the roles were reversed?”

“You don’t know that. And it doesn’t matter what they would or wouldn’t do. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things and pointing the finger at them is the wrong way. One hundred per cent wrong. It’d bring us down to the same level as Farax. I’m not doing it.”

“I’m sorry, skip, you’re wrong.”

The other men grumbled their agreement. Joe knew that his authority was tenuous. They weren’t aboard ship, they were all in the same hole together. It was only his residual command that was keeping them all in line. If he flouted their wishes, that wouldn’t be relevant for very long.

“Look, I’ll talk to them, alright? Chances are they know what they’re doing and they’ve got something in hand they just haven’t told us about yet. But I’ll see what they say.”

THE SOMALIS appeared with their food ten minutes later. Joe looked at Harry Torres and Barry Miller and gave a quick, stern shake of his head. Not yet. They both nodded. It was goat stew again and they ate it quietly, determinedly, and Joe knew that he was on a countdown. The next time they wouldn’t agree with him so easily.

He approached Joyce after they had eaten.

“Alright?”

“Captain.”

“They men have been talking.”

“We noticed.”

“They want to do something. They don’t want to just wait.”

“What do you want?”

“Truthfully? I can see where they’re coming from.”

He leaned forwards. “So what’s the plan?”

“We wait for them to come back down again and jump them.”

Joyce shook his head and laughed bitterly as if that was something that a child had come up with.

“What?” Joe said, his cheeks reddening with indignation.

“Look where we are,” he said. “We’re in a basement. The only way out is through that door and then up the stairs.”

“But we’d have a gun. Two, probably.”

“You know how many rounds you get in an AK?”

“No.”

“Thirty. You could chew through that in ten seconds. You know how easy it would be for them to take us down? All they’d need to do is wait.” He shook his head, correcting himself. “No. They wouldn’t even need to wait. Did you notice what some of them had on their belts?”

Joe shook his head.

“Grenades. They’ve got grenades. They could very easily just roll a couple of them down into here and blow the shit out of all of us. Confined space like this, you wouldn’t believe what the shrapnel from a grenade can do.”

“You said you were going to do something.”

“Yes, and we’ve talked about it. We’re thinking of a way.”

“When? We don’t have the luxury of time, do we?”

“We’re thinking of a way,” he repeated. “You have to be patient.”

“There’s no time for that.” Joe shook his head vehemently. “Look, you don’t have to take part if you don’t want to. Just stay out of the way and leave it to us.”

“I can’t let you do something stupid like that. You’ll get us all killed.”

There it was, that arrogance again. “You can’t
let
me? What does that mean?”

“It means that if you try and do something idiotic, we’ll stop you.”

Joe kept his voice low. He didn’t want to argue in front of the others. “Who made you in charge?”

“You think it should be you?”

No, but…”

You’re out of your depth here.”

“So what’s your big idea? We’ll put it to a vote.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“We’ll see what the others say, shall we?”

Joe started to get up until Joyce reached across to him and rested his fingers lightly on his arm, in the fleshy part just above the elbow. He squeezed, just a little, and just with a couple of fingers, but the jolt of pain that shrieked up his arm was dizzying. He sat down again, leaning back heavily. Joyce released his grip. No-one else had noticed what had just happened.

“Just relax, captain. Take it easy. You need to trust me. I told you before. I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to wait here for them to slaughter us all. And I’m not going to let you do something that will get us all killed. I
will
get us out.”

THEY CAME DOWN as the sun rose, the light filtering down through the ventilation bricks slowly gaining strength. Farax was in the front, again, but there were four others with him. Two of the men had AKs, as they had before, and another two had pistols. The Somalis knew that they would have to be more careful this time because there would be no surprises about what they had come down to do. The men with the rifles stayed at the door, training their weapons on the hostages and Farax came forwards, kneeling before Joe.

When he spoke, his voice was so soft and gentle that Joe could almost forget the hateful diatribe that he had heard from the yard outside before the chef was murdered.

“I ask again. Who had the long gun, captain?”

“I told you. There were no snipers.”

“But that is not true. We know that your employer had a contract with a company to provide security to your ship. The company is called Manage Risk. You have heard of them?”