As Megan walked along with Dr. Munira and her retinue, everyone turned and stared. She broke the spell by handing out Cokes—one to a girl who touched her sleeve; another to a grizzled old man who gave her a wan smile; a third to an adolescent boy who crossed his arms until he saw what she intended; and the last to a young mother with a baby in a sling. Her munificence softened the mood, and some of the people started to wave and smile. Others, however, gave her withering stares.
Eventually, the doctor led her into a grove of mango trees. “This is our Camp David,” she said. “It is where Dr. Hawa and the elders gather to sort out problems. Ahmed will meet us here.”
She dispatched the man with the clipboard to an outbuilding not far away, and he returned with a bespectacled man of indeterminate age—Ahmed. The maintenance man peered at her, then sat down in the shade. Megan sat across from him and the others formed loose arcs on either side.
“I will interpret for him,” said the doctor. “Please hurry. We have only ten minutes.”
Megan fixed her gaze on Ahmed. “Do you remember a young man named Ibrahim who worked at the hospital? He was here at the end of 2010.”
When Dr. Munira translated the query, Ahmed spoke a string of words in rapid-fire Somali.
“Yes,” the doctor answered on his behalf. “He remembers Ibrahim. He was a good boy, but he didn’t stay long. He doesn’t know where he went.”
Megan pressed in. “Can you tell me how he left the camp and who he left with?”
“He was like many other boys,” Dr. Munira said after Ahmed replied. “He just decided to leave. He might have gone with some others, but Ahmed doesn’t know. Ibrahim didn’t talk very much.”
Megan changed direction. “Did he ever talk about his parents or his brother or sister?”
Ahmed thought about this, then nodded. Dr. Munira translated: “He once talked about his sister. He wanted to find her.”
Yasmin
,
Megan thought, sitting up straighter. “What else did he say about his sister? Did he know where she was?”
Ahmed spoke a burst of Somali, and the doctor said: “He doesn’t know anything else.”
Sensing her time was short, Megan put her ultimate question on the table: “After Ibrahim left the camp, he went to Hobyo and became a pirate. Do you know why he might have done that?”
Dr. Munira gave her an inscrutable look. “I’m not sure you should ask that.”
Megan didn’t blink. “If he knows the answer, it could help Ismail.”
“All right,” the doctor sighed. “But he may not like it.” She translated the question in a gentle tone, like a mother breaking bad news to a child.
Megan was unprepared for Ahmed’s reaction. He jumped to his feet, barked something at her, and stomped out of the mango grove, disappearing into the outbuilding.
“What just happened?” she asked, shaken by his departure.
“It is what I expected,” said Dr. Munira. “Piracy is forbidden in Islam. It is also dangerous. The pirates are bad men. If Ahmed knows anything about it, he would never admit it.”
Megan looked into the doctor’s eyes. “Do you know anything about it?”
Dr. Munira hesitated. “Around that time, I heard rumors of young men in the camp telling stories about ships and ransoms. I don’t know what made Ismail travel to Hobyo. But if the rumors were true, perhaps he went with those boys.”
But that doesn’t explain why
,
Megan thought, exasperated by the chasm that remained in her understanding.
According to everyone who knew him, it went against the grain of his character.
After a moment, Dr. Munira asked, “Do you know if Ismail ever found his sister?”
Megan shook her head. “I don’t think he did.”
“So many sad stories. Sometimes I wonder if we have forgotten the meaning of peace.” The doctor looked at her watch. “Your time is up. We need to go back.”
Megan stood and followed Dr. Munira out of the trees, flanked by Isra and the doctor’s entourage. She saw the hospital in the distance and trudged toward it. For some reason, the thought of Yasmin stuck in her mind. She had the sense that she was missing something. Ismail had been taciturn about his past during his time in the village. But he had let one thing slip—his desire to find his sister. That he had dropped his guard suggested that she loomed large in his heart. Megan thought back to her conversation with Mahamoud and realized with a start that she had overlooked something. She took out the mobile phone he had given her after their meeting and called his number.
“Ms. Derrick,” he said brusquely. “Are you still in Mogadishu?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m at Hawa Abdi Village.”
For a moment he didn’t speak. Then he surprised her with a compliment. “I didn’t think you would go. You are a brave woman—foolish, but brave.”
His generosity emboldened her. “There’s something I didn’t ask you before. I need to know about Yasmin. I’m wondering if Ismail left the village because he wanted to find her.”
Mahamoud was silent again, breathing. At last, he said: “We will talk when you get back.”
“Where?” she asked, electrified by the possibility of a breakthrough.
“I will come to you.”
A few minutes after noon, the AMISOM convoy reentered the airport complex and trundled down the dirt road to the car park. Megan took off her helmet and body armor and wiped the sweat from her brow. When the Casper rolled to a stop, she climbed out and gave Isra a grateful hug.
“We made it,” she said. “Thank you for everything.”
Isra smiled. “I’m glad we could assist.” She pointed at a minibus idling on the fringes of the lot. “I think your ride is here.”
Megan turned in surprise. Sure enough, Manny was waiting for her. Her heartbeat quickened when she recognized Mahamoud in the back. She bid Isra farewell and walked to the minibus.
“Where are we going?” she asked Ismail’s uncle, taking a seat in the front.
His reply was cryptic. “I thought it would be nice to take a stroll on the beach.”
Manny pulled out of the car park and took the perimeter road around the airport. They passed the graveyard of disabled vehicles and turned into the tangle of brush. Halfway up the hill, Manny braked to a stop and let them out at the head of a rugged path that led down to a beach strewn with seaweed. Megan saw the coral jetty in the distance, jutting out into the bay.
“After you,” Mahamoud said.
Megan stepped carefully around rocks and vegetation and walked out onto the sand. The breeze off the ocean was strong, taking the edge off the midday heat. She strolled beside Mahamoud without a word, watching the waves curl into thunderous lines of sparkling white. Eventually, he began to speak.
“What I am about to tell you is for you alone. Do you understand?” When she nodded, he continued: “Ismail left Hawa Abdi’s place in November 2010. I heard from him again in April. He called from a Somali number. He said he’d gotten some money and wanted me to take care of it. I didn’t ask questions. I put the money in a bank account in Nairobi. It’s still there.”
Ismail’s cut from a prior ransom payment
, Megan deduced.
“How much was it?”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars. The next time I heard from him was last November. He called from an international number. I’ve since learned it was a satellite phone.”
Dear God
, Megan thought.
He called from the Renaissance
.
“He said he was in trouble,” Mahamoud went on. “He asked me to bring a Land Cruiser to a beach twenty miles north of here at sunset the next day. He told me he was bringing six men.”
A chill ran down Megan’s spine. There were seven pirates on the sailboat. That means Ismail meant to release the hostages. Then another, more dreadful possibility dawned on her. Or he premeditated their murders. She shook her head. When Ismail called his uncle, he had no motive to kill the Parkers.
Goddammit
, she thought,
I wish Mahamoud could testify. But the government would charge him as an accessory
.
“Did you do what he asked?” she asked softly.
Mahamoud nodded. “I was there. I saw the warship through my binoculars. After the sun went down, I lost sight of it. But then the lights went on. I don’t know what they were, but they were very bright. I saw the mast of the sailboat above the water. After a few minutes, the lights started moving. Then I saw helicopters in the air. That’s when I left the beach.” He took a breath. “I looked back from the bluff and saw a boat in the water surrounded by lights. I couldn’t see detail, but I guessed Ismail was on it. I read the story the next day on the Internet.”
Megan pondered this. She had deposed Captain Masters and the
Gettysburg
sailors and received affidavits from the SEAL team in lieu of depositions. All of them had mentioned the floodlights, but none had given much detail. “Did you hear the gunshots?” she asked quietly.
Mahamoud shook his head. “The surf was loud. I heard nothing.”
“Why are you telling me this? I asked you about Yasmin.”
Mahamoud looked out at the sea. “Because I believe Yasmin is why he did it.”
Megan stared at him transfixed. “What do you mean?”
“When Ismail came to me after Yusuf died, he told me what happened to her. He was obsessed with finding her. I almost offered to help, but then he told me the name of the man who took her. I couldn’t do it. It would have been a suicide mission. I took him to Hawa Abdi’s place instead.”
Megan’s head spun in the vortex of revelation. “What man?”
“His name is Najiib,” Mahamoud replied darkly. “He is a killer and a ghost. But his story isn’t important. What matters is Ismail. He wanted to know if Najiib might release Yasmin for a sum of money. I told him I didn’t think Najiib would negotiate, and that even if he would, it would take more money than we could ever afford. When I said that, I wasn’t thinking about piracy.”
The epiphany hit Megan with explosive force. “That’s why he went to Hobyo,” she whispered. “That’s why he hijacked the
Renaissance
. He wanted to buy her freedom.”
Mahamoud exhaled. “I think so.”
The transformation from victim to victimizer
,
Megan thought.
At last I understand.
“You said you almost offered to help him. What did you mean?”
Mahamoud took a mobile phone out of his pocket and punched a few buttons. “I took this from Khadija before she left Mogadishu. See for yourself.”
Megan saw a text message on the screen. She read the words in disbelief. “
Hooyo, I’m alive. I need your help.
” The date was January 29, 2012. The sender was Yasmin.
“This was only two months ago!” Megan exclaimed.
“There were others before it,” he said. “I received them all.”
Tears gathered in Megan’s eyes. “Do you know where she is?”
Mahamoud shrugged. “Somewhere in the south, I suspect. I can’t be sure.”
She read the message again. “Is there anything you can do—?”
He interrupted her. “There is nothing. If I tried, I would be killed.”
Megan felt a pang of despair. “Should I tell him?”
“That is your decision. I don’t know what I would do.”
She watched a tall white bird swoop down and land on the water in front of them. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
Mahmoud met her eyes. “Because it wasn’t relevant. I thought you were just another rich American trying to soothe your conscience by helping a poor Somali. When you risked your life going out to Hawa Abdi’s place, I saw how much you care.”
Thirty minutes later, Megan locked herself in her room at SKA and paced the floor, thinking about Ismail and Yasmin. The crimes Ismail had committed were unspeakable, but his devotion to his sister was pure. She thought about Paul and wondered what he would have done in the same situation.
He would have come for me
, she decided.
He would have gone to the ends of the earth
.
She shook her head angrily. There had to be a way to help Yasmin. Whoever Najiib was, he wasn’t omnipotent.
She sat down on her bed and opened her laptop, connecting to SKA’s wireless network. There were forty-five new emails in her Inbox. She scanned the headers and saw one from Kiley Frost, her senior associate. The subject line read:
URGENT—FBI Lab Reports
. The message had a bevy of attachments.
Finally!
Megan exulted.
We’ve been waiting forever for these.
She opened the email and read the summary. A graduate of Vassar and Harvard Law, Kiley had never been one for hyperbole. So when Megan saw that she had underlined three phrases and ended the last paragraph with a triple exclamation point, she knew the scientists at Quantico had stumbled onto something big. She read the words twice, then three times, and her heart began to race. Why was it that progress always seemed to come in waves?
Kiley had written:
After analyzing the trajectories of the bullet holes on the sailboat and the rifling on the recovered slugs, the Lab determined that there were five clusters of shots. Clusters One and Two (a three-shot burst and a single shot into the coachroof) happened sometime earlier and came from the same gun. The Lab noted that Ismail (a.k.a. Ibrahim) fired a single shot while transmitting over the radio on November 11 and inferred that the warning shot was Cluster Two. They inferred that Ismail probably fired Cluster One around the same time.