Redman nodded. “We’re working on a subsurface infiltration plan to break the propeller and disguise the damage. But I won’t send in my dive team until we assess the risk. I need to know how many pirates are on the boat. The visual from the chopper was useless, and I don’t see any way to flush them out of the cabin. The sailboat has an A/C unit. They have everything they need down below.”
Masters looked thoughtful. “What if we put a camera on the radio before we offer it to them?”
Redman raised an eyebrow. “Not a bad idea. I’ll get somebody to take a look at that. Also, we should get someone from the family to send an email to Captain Parker. I doubt the pirates will let him use his computer, but you never know.”
“My people will make it happen,” Derrick said.
Redman nodded. “In the meantime, I want to get closer to the sailboat. I want the pirates to see that we’re not leaving. Any objection to five hundred yards?”
Masters shook his head.
Redman faced Derrick. “I need you to find a way to get Ibrahim back on the horn. I don’t care what you do. Call him every five minutes. Provoke him. Just get him talking. He needs to understand that he isn’t in control of how this ends.”
It was then that Ali Sharif, the Somali linguist, cleared his throat. He was a quiet man with salt-and-pepper hair and polished ebony skin. “There may be an easier way,” he said. “You are right that Ibrahim will not negotiate as long as he is strong. But you are wrong to assume that he will negotiate if you make him feel weak. He is Somali, and Somalis do not compromise. Look at our country—two decades without peace. But we love a good conversation. Ibrahim may talk to you if you have something interesting to say.”
Derrick was intrigued. “What do you suggest?”
The linguist gave him a wizened look. “How much do you know about Somalia?”
“Clearly not enough.”
“Then I will teach you.”
As the sun fell toward the molten sea, Derrick picked up the radio again and focused all of his energy on the task at hand. “Ibrahim, this is Paul.
Nabad iyo caano.
I don’t speak Somali, but my friend Ali here tells me that means ‘peace and milk.’ We don’t have anything like that in English. It’s one of the reasons I love the cultures of the East. You invented hospitality.”
Derrick met Ali’s eyes and saw the linguist nod his approval.
“
Yaa tahay?
” Derrick asked, reading one of the phrases he scratched out on his legal pad. “I’m curious what clan you’re from. We have all these fancy computer systems over here, and they say you’re heading to Hobyo. Ali guesses you’re Habar Gidir. Is he right? What’s your sub-clan? Are you Sa’ad, Suleiman, or Ayr? Ali tells me you can name your patrilineal ancestors all the way back to Irir Samaale. I understand that’s something like thirty generations. I’m ashamed to say I don’t know the name of my great-great-grandfather. That’s typical in America. We don’t think much about the past. Our country isn’t very old. Unfortunately, that means we don’t always learn from our mistakes.”
Derrick waited ten more seconds before pressing the button again and speaking into the void. “You may be interested to know that I’ve read the Quran from cover to cover—not in Arabic, but in English. Ali tells me you probably attended a
duqsi
where you memorized whole suras before the age of six. My favorite passage is from Sura Five:
If anyone slays a person, except for murder or spreading mischief in the land, it is as if he slayed the whole people; and if anyone saves a life, it is as if he saved the life of the whole people.
A lot of people ignore the significance of that passage, but the Prophet said it himself:
You won’t attain to faith until you love one another. Spread peace among yourselves.
Maybe I’m simple, but I think peace means peace. It seems to me that the violence perpetrated in the name of Islam isn’t an expression of true faith. Ali agrees. I’d love to know what you think?”
Rodriguez handed Derrick a glass of water, and he took a sip, offering Ibrahim an opportunity to respond. He looked around the bridge at the crew of the
Gettysburg
, their faces warmed by shafts of sunlight. It gave him inspiration for his next monologue.
“Ali tells me you can probably quote Somali poetry. He told me that when he was a boy he listened to the elders from his clan recite long verses from memory. He showed me how it’s done. Do you know Gaarriye? Ali recited a poem called ‘Passing Cloud.’ It was quite memorable. I’m going to get my sister some of Gaarriye’s work for Christmas. Her name is Megan. She loves that kind of thing.”
Derrick reviewed his notes. He had circled the word “kinship,” which Ali had repeated often in his tutorial.
I should tell Ibrahim about my family
, Derrick thought.
But how do I explain them?
An idea came to him unbidden:
He would understand the carnage. He’s probably watched someone close to him die. Perhaps it explains why he risked his life to hijack a sailboat in the middle of the ocean, and why he’s now defying the most powerful navy in the world to finish the mission.
Derrick was surprised by how deeply this intuition affected him. He blinked and scratched his chin, clearing his mind of distraction.
It was then that Ibrahim’s voice came over the radio. “If you have read the Quran,” the pirate said, “then you know the story of Iblis in Sura Fifteen.”
Derrick was so astonished that Ali’s gambit had worked that it took him a few seconds to respond. “I do,” he said, recalling that “Iblis” was the Muslim name for Satan. “He refused to submit himself to mankind, and God banished him from heaven until the Day of Judgment.”
“That’s correct,” Ibrahim affirmed. “Do you remember how Iblis responded to the curse? What he said he would do to mankind?”
Derrick took a breath. “He vowed to subvert our morality, to turn us into monsters.”
Ibrahim quoted the sura: “
Because you put me in the wrong, I will make wrong seem good to them on the earth, and I will put all of them in the wrong.
In what way has he touched you, Paul?”
Ibrahim’s riddle left Derrick dumbstruck. For a long moment, he forgot he was on a Navy ship, forgot he was a negotiator talking to a pirate. His brother’s words came back to him from beyond the grave. “
This is all your fault!
” Kyle had screamed, holding the Beretta in his hands. “
You made me do this!
” Derrick saw the pistol jump, heard the shots ring out, smelled the sick-sweet odor of his father’s blood on the carpet, and felt the hollowness in his gut, the horror and the grief, as if for the first time.
He took a painful breath and wracked his brain for an answer. In the end, he opted for the truth. “Most of my family is dead,” he said, struggling to put the psychological lid back on Pandora’s box. “That’s my confession. What’s yours?”
Ibrahim was quiet for a moment. “Death is his signature,” he said at last. “I know it well.”
Derrick saw the opening and went for broke. “There’s a way out of this. You know how the sura ends:
Over my servants you will have no authority, except those who put themselves in the wrong.
Let Daniel and Quentin go. Put them on the skiff and take the sailboat to Somalia. Don’t compound the evil and invite your own damnation.”
Ibrahim matched Derrick’s solemnity with his own. “If Hell is real, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Tell the captain of your ship not to come any closer, or he will see it, too.”
Derrick heard the line go dead. He sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, staring at the bundles of wiring on the ceiling. In his career as a negotiator, he could recall only two times when he had developed a personal connection to a kidnapper. On both occasions, the bond had taken weeks to form. With Ibrahim, however, he felt it after a single conversation.
Kinship
, he thought
. It’s about soul more than blood. Who are you, Ibrahim? Why do I get the impression that we understand each other?
Captain Masters interrupted his reverie. “I have a call for you from Brent Frazier. You can talk here, or you can use my office.”
“I’ll take it here,” Derrick said, accepting the sound-powered phone from Masters’s hand. He walked to the windows and looked out at the sea. The sun had just set, and the sky was burnt orange, like a field of poppies. The sailboat was much closer now. He could see the shrouds bracing the mast and smudges of lettering on the transom spelling out: “Renaissance. Annapolis, Maryland.”
He put the phone to his ear. “Brent, this is Derrick.”
“I hear you’re making progress,” said his boss.
“He’s starting to talk, but he’s going to be tough to crack. We need more time.”
Frazier grunted. “Prince is trying to get approval for the SEALs to disable the sailboat.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Derrick said. “You know we don’t work on a timetable.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For the time being we work off of the Navy’s script.” Frazier paused. “I have something else for you. It’s Vanessa Parker. She wants to talk to you.”
Derrick absorbed this. “Any idea why?”
“I don’t have a clue. But you can probably guess.”
“Mary couldn’t handle it?”
“She did her best, but Vanessa insisted.”
Derrick grimaced. It was a complication he didn’t need right now. In a barricade scenario, it was highly irregular for the lead negotiator to communicate with the relatives of a hostage. The military was in charge. He was advising the government, not the family, and he had no control over the outcome. But this wasn’t really a siege. Nor was it a straightforward kidnapping. He was making everything else up as he went along. Why not this?
“Put her through,” he said and waited for Frazier to make the connection.
After a moment, a smooth feminine voice said: “Agent Derrick, I’m very sorry to bother you.”
“It’s all right,” he replied, affecting a genial tone. “Please call me Paul.”
“Thank you,” Vanessa said with transparent sincerity. “How are they?”
Derrick fixed his eyes on the
Renaissance
as it sailed on into the falling dark. “They’re well, as far as we can tell. I talked to your husband this afternoon.”
“That’s good to hear.” She sounded relieved. “Did you speak to Quentin?”
“No. Daniel spoke for both of them.”
Vanessa took a breath. “I don’t expect there’s anything you can do, but I want you to hear this anyway. Whatever they want, my family will pay. We just want Daniel and Quentin to come home.”
For a moment Derrick didn’t know what to say. He glanced at Redman who was chatting with Masters on the port-side bridge wing. He knew how the SEAL commander would respond. The policy of the Defense Department was inscribed in stone. The Pentagon would rather see a hostage ransomed with blood than with money. That was the only way to stamp out the kidnapping of Americans, or so they said. Derrick had other ideas, but it wasn’t his place to voice them.
“Vanessa,” he said as personally as he could. “I want you to hear me. We will not rest until we reunite you with your husband and son. The team we have here is the best in the world. I know you’re scared. I know the waiting is excruciating. If it were my family, I would feel the same way. But I need you to trust me. I promise you—we know what we’re doing.”
Vanessa allowed the silence to linger and then turned his words on their head. “Do you know what you’re asking, Paul?” she said softly. “If I trust you, then that means I hold you responsible for what happens. Maybe we’re different, but I wouldn’t want that burden.”
Derrick smiled. He had underestimated her. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, conceding the point. “And I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “That’s all I wanted you to say.”
Ismail
The Indian Ocean
03°13´02˝S, 53°31´31˝E
November 11, 2011
Ismail awoke before first light. The dream had come to him in the darkness and left him with a familiar ache. He saw it again, as he always did, the scene that never seemed to age. The Shabaab camp west of Mogadishu; the parade ground; the derelict barracks; the rusting technicals with their heavy-caliber guns pointed at the earth; the insatiable shouting of the recruits—“
Allahu Akbar!
”—and Yasmin, her tear-stained face upturned like a mystic in prayer, as Najiib dragged her away. She had cried out to him, but her words had been lost amid the roar of fighters denouncing their enemies and extolling the virtues of jihad. She had melted into the crowd, and then, suddenly, she was gone—one more shrapnel fragment blown into unremembrance by a land forever at war.
He shook off the sorrow and looked around. His men were scattered about, everyone asleep but Guray, who sat with his rifle and a tin of almonds, watching the door to the Captain’s stateroom, which he and Timaha now shared. The sleeping arrangements had been a puzzle, but he and his men knew how to adjust. It was the Somali way, at least that of his generation—adapt or die.
He checked the GPS unit first. They were still on course for Hobyo. The auto-helm was as trustworthy as a desert guide following the stars.
Six hundred miles
, he thought—in English, not Somali. All of the English-speaking he had done in the past two days, and the Western music he had listened to, had cleaved his mind like a machete. It astonished him how easily he remembered the patterns of Western speech. His father had drilled the lessons into him from birth, as he had with Yasmin and Yusuf:
Speak Somali with pride, but English for success.