“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”
When she hung up, she closed her eyes and blocked out everything but the thought of sleep. She felt it when the plane backed away from the terminal and taxied to the runway, when the engines revved and the aircraft rumbled down the tarmac, the overhead bins shuddering and jarring, and when its wings caught the wind and carried them into the sky. She gripped the armrest as the plane climbed through turbulence and only opened her eyes again when they leveled off, the danger of takeoff past. She reclined her seat to its lie-flat position and took two Ambien with a sip of water. This small concession to pragmatism brought her almost immediate relief. Within minutes, she felt her consciousness slipping away like water down a drain, swirling . . . swirling . . .
Until at last it was gone.
When Vanessa awoke, it was dark outside the airplane. She looked out the window and saw the lights of a city strung out like a necklace far below. She called up the map on her entertainment system and saw that they were over the boot of Italy. She watched the lights of Brindisi glitter and asked the stewardess if dinner was still available. She felt suddenly ravenous. The stewardess sprung into action, bringing her salad and bread and chicken with rice and asparagus. She declined the offer of wine to avoid dehydration and watched a travel show while she ate. Afterward, she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, took another Ambien, and fell back asleep.
In the fog of slumber, she began to dream. She was standing in a cemetery in the wet green of April. She knew the place—Cypress Hills in Brooklyn. The marble headstone was nearby, beneath the boughs of a maple tree. The inscription on it read: “Patricia Lee Stone, Beloved Wife and Mother, May 5, 1952 to April 1, 2007.” Ted was standing beside her, holding a rose and watching her cry. Words were coming out of her mouth, words she had felt a thousand times but never spoken, the cumulative pain of years, repressed, contained, and finally unleashed on the man who had given her an idyllic end to childhood but never quite loved her like a father.
“Do you know what my earliest memory of her is?” she said. “We were in a club in New York. She never had enough money for a babysitter and always took me to work. I remember her standing in front of a mirror half-naked, putting makeup on her face before she went out to dance. This man came in the room and pulled down his pants. She put a towel over my head and told me not to listen. Then she gave him a blowjob. Right in front of me. I was two.”
Tears rolled off Vanessa’s cheeks. “Living with her was like the circus that never left town. She was always riding high or crashing, spinning delusions about a future Lancelot or lamenting the day when she was the second prettiest girl in Virginia. Do you know how many times she called herself that? ‘Miss Alleghany Highlands 1968, runner-up for Miss Virginia.’ She was like a perpetual teenager. She never left the age of seventeen.”
Vanessa took a breath, then continued her rant. “She never told me who my father was. I asked her for years, but she didn’t give me a name. She never told me about her parents or siblings. I didn’t know anything about them until the Internet came along, and by then it was too late. She deprived me of family. And what’s worse—she never really acted like my mother. I was cooking my own meals when I was six years old. I was washing laundry and balancing her checkbook at eight. But you know what the crazy part is? Everybody adored her. Everybody treated her like she was special.” Vanessa’s voice trailed off and the last part came out in a whisper. “No one paid attention to me.”
She looked at Ted and he looked back at her, his hair fluttering in the breeze. He was dressed like he was going to a board meeting—dark suit and tie and wingtip Oxfords. An insurance executive, he was a paragon of consistency and clean living—the opposite of Trish in every way, except for his smoking habit, which he blamed on Woodstock, and his self-absorption, which he didn’t see as a fault.
“Are you finished?” he asked at last. “I loved her more than anyone in the world, but I won’t make excuses for her. She had a lot of faults. But she’s gone now. You have to make peace.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Vanessa asked softly. “She never admitted that she hurt me. Do you know what she told me when I was sixteen? She told me to have as much sex as I liked. I could get an abortion if I got pregnant. She said she would have done it if the laws had been different. Can you imagine telling that to your own child? No wonder I have issues.”
Ted shook his head slowly. “She loved you, Vanessa. She told me that many times.”
Vanessa wiped her eyes and looked out over the cemetery, shrouded in mist. “Then why did she make me feel like I was a cross she had to bear?”
The dream dissolved into static like the end of an old film reel, and Vanessa slept on as the plane flew over North Africa. She woke hours later to a hand on her shoulder.
“We’re about to land,” said the stewardess. “You need to raise your seat again.”
Vanessa blinked her eyes, feeling woozy but refreshed. She was still on edge from the dream, but she banished it from her mind and looked out the window, sipping nervously from a bottle of water as the plane descended toward Bole International Airport. The verdant Ethiopian landscape surprised her. The emerald hills and snaking rivers around Addis Ababa had more in common with the Irish countryside than the sun-drenched African savannah she had seen in books and films.
The plane touched down and glided to a halt, taxiing to a spot on the apron a few hundred yards from the glass-encased terminal. Vanessa collected her luggage and met Mary on the tarmac beside an airport bus. The morning air was cooler than Vanessa expected, and the wind blowing off the mountains was brisk. They crowded into the bus with the other passengers—mostly Africans speaking a myriad of languages—and took hold of rubber handles hanging from the roof.
“You look rested,” Mary said. “Were you able to sleep?”
Vanessa nodded. “I feel better.” She glanced at Mary’s BlackBerry. “Do you have reception?”
“It connected right away.” Mary lowered her voice. “Ibrahim has come down to three.”
Vanessa sighed, at once relieved that they were making progress and appalled at the outcome that seemed inevitable now. Their target—just under $2 million—was an extortionate sum, more than Trish would have made in two lifetimes. What was worse, the pirates would squander it. Duke Strong had been candid with her. “They’ll live like kings for a while—drugs, booze, women, you name it. They’ll give some of it to their families. And then when they’re broke they’ll look for another ship.”
Two hours later, they boarded their connecting flight and found their seats near the back. The plane took off on time and climbed into the tall African sky. The time passed swiftly, occupied by conversation and coffee, and soon they were landing again, this time at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport outside Nairobi. They cleared immigration and proceeded to the curb, where a well-tanned man in jeans and aviator sunglasses introduced himself.
“Ms. Parker, Agent Patterson, I’m Tony Flint,” he said, taking off his shades and focusing his startling blue eyes on them. “Welcome to Kenya. The car is this way.”
He led them across the street to a silver Land Rover and packed their suitcases in the trunk. As soon as they were situated, he navigated the vehicle out of the airport and drove toward the center of Nairobi. Vanessa cracked her window and watched the city pass by. Before long, the thoroughfare became a boulevard swarming with cars and taxies and surrounded by high-rises and green spaces. Apart from the fact that nearly everyone on the street was African, Nairobi looked much like any city in America—at once thriving and decaying and reconceptualizing and rebuilding.
At some point, Vanessa thought to check her iPhone. She found an email from Curtis:
Hope you enjoyed the flight. Ibrahim is at 2.5. Duke expects an agreement soon. I’m working on the wire details. Sit tight. We’re almost there.
She sat back in her chair, grateful, for once, to have her father-in-law at the helm of her future. For all his faults, he knew how to work a deal.
After traversing downtown, they entered a leafy district of bungalows and apartment complexes and turned down a driveway flanked by lush vegetation. They stopped at a gate and Flint exchanged a few Swahili words with a guard, who waved them through. They drove onto manicured grounds and parked outside a stately pink stucco building with wide-paned windows and a terracotta roof.
“This is the Muthaiga Country Club,” Flint explained, opening the door for Vanessa. “It’s comfortable and private. We can check in later. Let’s do business first. There’s a café in the back.”
Vanessa traded a glance with Mary. “I could use a bite to eat.”
“Me, too,” said the FBI agent, following Flint toward the entrance.
The clubhouse was a throwback to a bygone era, all wood and brass with parquet floors, area rugs, heavy draperies, and antique furniture. Flint led them through the lobby and out double doors propped open to admit the breeze. The courtyard beyond was a sanctuary with jacaranda and flame trees, flowering bushes, and a sprawling lawn abutting a flagstone portico and a swimming pool. They walked around the pool and took seats at a table in the shade of a fig tree.
“So here’s the deal,” Flint said without prelude. “Ibrahim’s deadline is twenty-six hours away. Assuming they reach an accord, Curtis will wire the funds to a bank account we control. I’ve spoken to the bank manager, and he has cash on hand—all hundred-dollar bills printed after 2005. In the morning, we’ll collect the money and package it in a watertight container with a cash-counting machine. The plane will fly out of Wilson Airport. There’s a charter company we work with that’s very discreet. Flight time to the drop site is under three hours. We’ll stay in contact with the pirates until we deliver the package, and then the Navy will take over and retrieve your husband and son. Pretty straightforward.”
Only if you make your living trading dollars for lives
,
Vanessa thought, feeling again the bizarreness of the moment. “How many times have you done this?” she asked.
Flint made no attempt at modesty. “I’ve organized two dozen drops in Somalia, mostly for hijacked ships but occasionally for kidnapped journalists and aid workers. But all of them were foreigners. This is my first time with an American hostage.” He looked thoughtful. “I’ll be frank: I’m damn surprised the Navy is taking a backseat on this one. When I was in Iraq, we gave no quarter to kidnappers. It was kill or capture, end of story. Somebody back home must be pulling major strings.”
Somebody is
, Vanessa thought, but inside she felt a pang of anxiety. She had now heard the same sentiment from multiple experts. Duke Strong’s words came back to her:
The government wants to eradicate piracy and hostage taking. In their minds, the way to do it is to confront the hostage takers with overwhelming force.
Mary had toed a softer line, admitting that international kidnappings were often resolved by ransom. And Paul Derrick had seemed genuinely sympathetic to her plea for a peaceful resolution. But the Bureau wasn’t in control. And while the Navy had made concessions to allow the negotiations to proceed, the Pentagon had little history of compromise. She recalled Curtis’s statement at the beginning, quoting the Assistant Secretary of Defense:
A ransom is not the government’s objective.
She glanced at Mary, wondering whether the FBI agent knew something she didn’t.
“Is there a menu here?” she asked Flint. “I’d love to see one.”
The security consultant stood quickly. “I’ll find a waiter.”
When he was gone, Vanessa turned to Mary. “He’s the third person who’s told me that what we’re doing isn’t in the military’s playbook. I need to know that they’re going to let this deal happen.”
Mary looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I’ve been assured that the Navy isn’t going to interfere.”
Vanessa examined the FBI agent carefully, an idea forming in her mind. It was wild and terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. “That isn’t good enough. Not with Daniel and Quentin’s lives on the line.”
Mary gave her an empathetic look. “I can imagine how you feel. But we’re all on the same side. We’re doing everything in our power to bring them home.”
“I believe you,” Vanessa said, seeing no deceit in Mary’s eyes. “But there’s a difference. It’s personal for me. It isn’t personal for them. I need to make it personal.”
Mary took a pensive breath. “What do you want me to do?”
Ismail
The Indian Ocean
01°04´26˝N, 47°33´55˝E
November 13, 2011
Ismail stared at the clock in the galley, watching the second hand make its ceaseless revolutions and wishing he could hurry it on its way. He had never liked waiting. As a young man, he had heard his father say that patience was the truest measure of maturity. But he had disagreed, seeing it as a dress rehearsal for death. “You never get back the days,” he told Adan at the age of seventeen. “I can learn to wait when I’m in the grave.” Tragedy had changed his opinion but not his instinct. There were certain enemies that could only be vanquished with time. But right now he couldn’t bear to spend another minute cooped up inside the sailboat.
Neither, it seemed, could his men. As the hours passed, he had heard them grumbling, seen the disenchantment in their faces. Just before sunset, a fight had broken out between Guray and Mas over use of the toilet. The others had quickly taken sides—Osman with Mas, Liban and Dhuuban with Guray—and Ismail had only been able to arrange a truce after five minutes of shouting. Then, during dinner, Sondare had stumbled into the bathroom and vomited all over the sink, and Osman had launched into a tirade about the food, complaining that it was giving him diarrhea. Ismail had refuted their theories, explaining that they were suffering from cabin fever and seasickness and needed fresh air. But the idea of going topside and facing the Navy’s snipers agitated them further.