Derrick:
Ibrahim, do you recall what you said when we first spoke? You want something, and I want something. You have what you want—a bunch of money and a boat that will take you to the beach. You’re almost home. I still don’t have what I want. We need to help each other get to the goal line. Take some time to think about it. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.
Ismail:
No! You think because you have bigger guns, because you are American and we are Somali, you can make us bend? Read your history. That’s the same arrogance that brought down Corfield and Garrison. Our guns are pointed at the hostages. Back off or we will eat them like meat. Do you hear me? Back off or we will eat them like meat!
Derrick:
Ibrahim, please listen to me. I can’t do this on my own. I need you to help me—
When silence descended again, Vanessa realized that her hands were shaking. Her stomach felt as if it had been put through a blender. She didn’t know where to direct her anger. She heard Ismail’s words in an echo chamber.
You moved the ship . . . moved the ship . . . moved the ship. Back off or we will eat them like meat . . . eat them like meat . . . eat them like meat.
She wanted to scream out loud, but she didn’t know where to direct it—at the government or at the pirates. Ismail had demanded money for lives, and she had paid him every last dollar. That was supposed to end the standoff. But it hadn’t. The deal had broken down while she was still in the air. Daniel was dead because of it, and Quentin would probably never be the same. Someone needed to pay. But which party was ultimately to blame?
The sound of Quentin’s voice wrested her from her tailspin. “I remember there were
lights
. . . and more shouting. But it’s like . . . a fog. I can’t see it . . . I don’t
know
.”
At that moment, Vanessa felt pain in her fingers. Ariadne was crushing her hand like a vise. Her cheeks were pale as a ghost and stained with tears. Vanessa extracted her hand and wrapped her arms around the girl. Ariadne’s warmth steadied her heart.
“It’s okay,” she heard Derrick say inside the cabin. “You’ve done everything you can.”
“No,” Quentin said, in an anguished voice. “I
have
to remember.” Then something came to him. “
Wait!
I remember something . . . Afyareh said to my dad. He said ‘You make them listen . . . or you will die.’ I don’t remember when . . . but I think it was at the end.”
Quentin’s words brought Vanessa’s wrath into focus. It didn’t matter that Ismail had taught him phrases in Somali or rescued a few frigatebirds or shown him kindness before the Navy came. The government might have made mistakes, but they hadn’t turned the sailboat into a slaughterhouse. She remembered Ismail standing in the cockpit of the
Renaissance
as her plane passed overhead. She pictured him in the courtroom, his eyes soulless, calculating. There were a host of things she would probably never understand about what had happened. But she understood this much.
Ismail deserved to die.
Yasmin
Middle Juba, Somalia
April 15, 2012
The night was as black as the wings of a crow as Yasmin scaled the
higlo
tree and dropped down on the far side of the wall. The sky was overcast for the first time in months, and the air carried a hint of humidity. After the devastating drought and famine the year before, the clouds were a propitious sign. They meant the rains were coming. The
gu
—the lifeblood of the Somali nation—would not fail again.
She extracted the bag with her mobile phone and sighed with relief. The zipper was as tight as she had left it. After Jamaad, moisture was her greatest adversary. If water got into the bag, it would destroy the phone and sever her last connection to the outside world.
She turned the unit on and saw that the battery was dangerously low. She could only use it for a minute or two before she would have to take it inside and charge it again. Suddenly, the phone warbled in her hands. The electronic noise sounded impossibly loud in the quiet night. She searched the shadows along the riverbank for movement, but all was still.
She looked back at the phone and saw a notification on the screen. She had a message from an unknown number. She was sure it was a mistake. The sender probably thought she was someone else. Or her carrier was reminding her to add airtime to her dwindling account. She had long wondered what she would do when her balance ran out. The only way she could get more airtime was to steal money from Jamaad’s secret stash and buy it in another village. But that plan had two fatal flaws. If money went missing from the jar, she was the only suspect. And a road trip meant paying for petrol. Even if she invented a pretext, Jamaad would never allow her to shop alone.
Yasmin opened her Inbox and selected the new message, scanning it without thought. When the words finally registered, she stared at the screen in shock. After three years of waiting, three years of keeping the phone hidden and preserving the battery, sending messages into the void, she almost couldn’t believe the message was real. But the salutation didn’t lie. It was from Ismail!
He had written in English:
Qosol, are you there? I’m sorry it’s taken so long. I need to know where you are and if you are still with him. Madaxa.
She typed her reply in haste, cursing her wobbly fingers:
I’m still with him. I’m in a village in Middle Juba. What do you want me to do?
When she sent it, she tried to temper her expectations. His message was two weeks old. She didn’t know where he was or how soon he would receive her reply. She listened to the gurgle of the river and the chirping of the frogs.
I’ve waited this long
, she told herself
. I’ll survive a few more days.
Then she had another thought.
I need to silence the phone.
She opened the settings menu and disabled the sound. A moment later, she felt the phone vibrate in her hands. She nearly dropped it in surprise.
Is he there now?
Ismail asked.
If not, when will he come back?
Not now, but soon
, she typed, knowing the battery could die at any moment
. Where are you?
Somewhere safe. Are you close to Kenya?
200 km
.
You must tell me when he is coming
.
She frowned, not quite understanding.
He’s unpredictable
.
It’s the only way I can help you
.
What do you mean?
But he didn’t explain.
You must make yourself ready.
For what?
Patience, Qosol. Tell me when he is coming.
Okay. Please wait.
Always.
Soon after she read his final text, her phone died. She looked up at the dark sky, wondering how he could help her and why he had asked about Kenya. She answered her own question:
He’s in Kenya now. He’s going to hire a vehicle and come get me the next time Najiib leaves the village.
The longer she pondered the notion, the more excited she became. She could escape in the night and meet him on the road to Marere. By the time Najiib went looking for her, they would be across the border.
The flight of her musings ended as suddenly as it began. The border was no protection against Najiib. The Shabaab had spies in Kenya. If they claimed asylum in Dadaab or Nairobi, Najiib would find them. They could take shelter in Ethiopia, but getting there would require time and money, and they had no relatives there. The only certain way to escape Najiib was to flee the Horn of Africa.
Then she had a thought:
Najiib would never find us if he were dead.
She shook her head in fright. She couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—consider it. His crimes were appalling, and too numerous to count, but his life was in Allah’s hands. Once the idea struck her, however, she found it hard to banish. What if Ismail intended to do it? What if he meant to avenge Adan’s death and rescue her at the same time? It would be almost poetic—that after years of living in the underworld and murdering with impunity, Najiib’s lust would bring him to ruin.
She raised her eyes to the heavens and whispered a prayer: “Take me home to my brother. And bring us justice. Amen.”
Megan
Norfolk, Virginia
April 18, 2012
Megan sat with Kiley Frost, reviewing her notes for the depositions she was about to take. At her request, Barrington had arranged for her to use the NCIS conference room in Norfolk where Ismail had negotiated his deal with the government. After months of compiling evidence and interviewing witnesses from the Navy, the FBI, and the Parker family, Megan knew the timeline of the hijacking as exhaustively as a person could. She had also succeeded in reconstructing Ismail’s past and clarifying his motivations. Yet the Holy Grail of the case—the truth about the shooting—still eluded her.
Only six people were privy to that information, and the four who were talking were telling lies—in her view, at least. Their story was too convenient. They had drawn a portrait of Ismail the zealot that she had thoroughly refuted. Today, she would examine the pirates under oath and judge their mannerisms along with their words. In her fifteen years as a trial lawyer, she had learned the body language of a liar—the shifting eyes and subtle hesitations, the gaps in an otherwise cohesive narrative that suggested facts were being shaded and memories suppressed. She couldn’t tell any of this from a transcript. She needed to look the pirates in the eye and ask them questions that made them squirm.
She heard a knock on the door. Agent Matheson poked his head in. “Your client’s here,” he said. “Do you want to see him before you start?”
She nodded. “Bring him in and unshackle him, please.” She turned to Kiley. “Will you give us a minute? I need to talk to him alone.”
“Of course,” the young associate said and slipped out of the room.
Matheson returned shortly with Ismail. He looked dapper in his charcoal suit and blue tie. She complimented him and he grinned. “You have a nice smile when you let people see it,” she said. “Take a seat. I have good news.”
He sat down and looked at her pensively. She had never seen him nervous before.
Megan leaned forward in her chair. “I heard from Bob. Yasmin responded to your message. They had an exchange. I think he did a pretty good job being you.”
She pushed a printout across the table and watched as he read it, enjoying the way his eyes widened and began to glow. Then she explained the plan that the intelligence specialist—she was certain he was CIA—had outlined on the phone. Ismail gave her a look that bespoke his misgivings, but he had no choice. He had bought Yasmin a chance. To survive, she had to take it.
“Is there anything you want to tell me before I talk to your pirate friends?” Megan asked.
Ismail shook his head, implacable again.
She sighed. “The trial is two months away. The longer you wait to tell your story, the less likely people will believe it.”
He angled his head. “That’s a risk I have to take.”
“You don’t want to tell me about Mas?” she asked. As a favor, Barrington had sent her the recording of Quentin’s conversation with Paul on the
Renaissance
. “I know the two of you argued.”
She thought she saw a flash of irritation in Ismail’s eyes, but it vanished before she could be sure. “It was an intense situation,” he said ambiguously. “I had many conversations with my men.”
She grimaced. “I’m getting tired of this game.”
“You can leave if you want,” he said equably. “I’m not paying you.”
And throw you to the wolves? You obviously don’t know me.
Then it came to her:
I’m as much of an enigma to you as you are to me.
“I’m not going to quit. But you made me a promise.”
He met her gaze. “It hasn’t changed.”
She stood up then, her decision never really in question. “All right. Let’s do this.”
When they entered the conference room, Megan greeted the Somali interpreter, a white-haired man named Sado, Eldridge Jordan, Barrington’s second, and Clifford Greene, an octogenarian solo practitioner who should have hung up his hat years ago. She sat down with Kiley and Ismail beside the court reporter and across from Greene and Sado. Jordan took a seat at the head of the table while Agent Matheson departed to get Greene’s client—Dhuuban.
A minute later, the NCIS agent ushered the young Somali into the room and led him to the chair opposite Megan. She had seen Dhuuban only twice before—at his initial arraignment and his plea hearing—and always at a distance. She studied him as he slumped into his seat, his leg and ankle irons jangling like keys. He was a gangly kid with reed-thin limbs and eyes too large for his face. He stared at the table, saying nothing to his lawyer and refusing to look at Ismail.
After introducing herself, Megan worked through the preliminaries. “Dhuuban” was actually a nickname—a reference to his slender frame. His full name was Sahir Ahmed Shirma. He was a member of the Hawiye Habar Gidir Suleiman clan, and hailed from a village near Hobyo. His father owned a number of tea shops and had three wives and fifteen children. Dhuuban was the youngest of seven siblings born to his mother. He wasn’t sure of his birthday, but he knew it was sometime during the
deyr
rains two years after the civil war began. By Megan’s calculations, he was nineteen.