“What did you think about going back?” Barrington asked.
Quentin’s bottom lip quivered. “I didn’t want to. I told my dad I wouldn’t go with him. I should have listened to him. None of this would have happened.”
Vanessa felt tears well up in her again. It was then that she realized that his trauma had another layer—the guilt he felt for putting his father in danger. She had the sudden urge to abandon decorum and take him into her arms. She wanted to carry the burden with him. It was too great a weight for anyone to bear alone. Suddenly, she felt her hand being squeezed. She looked at Ariadne and saw the truth in the girl’s eyes. Quentin
had
shared the burden. He’d shared it with her.
Barrington next inquired about the night of the hijacking. Quentin answered his questions succinctly, showing little emotion. When the prosecutor asked him to describe the pirates’ behavior, Quentin told the story of Afyareh and the frigatebirds. It was at this point that he looked at Ismail for the first time. It was just a glance, but it seemed to shake him and he looked away quickly.
As if sensing his disturbance, Barrington skipped over the ransom negotiations and moved straight to the drop. “What was it like to see your mother in the plane?” he asked.
Quentin met Vanessa’s eyes. “I thought she was brave. She hates flying more than anything. I couldn’t believe that she’d come all that way. Neither could my dad.”
I’d do it again
, Vanessa wanted to say,
because I love you more than anything.
Barrington took a step toward the jury box. “Where were you and your father sitting when the pirates counted the money?”
Quentin blinked. “We were both in the dining booth.”
“Who operated the cash machine?”
“Afyareh. He went through the first briefcase, but he didn’t finish the second before the helicopter took off.” Quentin narrowed his eyes. “That’s when everything changed.”
“What changed exactly?” Barrington probed.
Quentin looked down at the floor, concentrating. “Afyareh went to the radio. He told the Navy to put the helicopter back on the ship. The Navy didn’t want to. Some boats had launched from shore. They wanted to check them out. Afyareh didn’t like that. Neither did the others. They had an argument. We were scared. My dad told me if they started shooting to use the table as cover.”
When Quentin took a moment to think, Vanessa realized that the courtroom was completely silent. Even the judge looked like she was holding her breath.
“Did they start shooting?” Barrington finally asked.
Quentin shook his head. “Not then.” He paused. “I’m sorry. Some of this is hard.”
“Take your time,” said the prosecutor.
“After that, the shouting stopped,” Quentin went on. “We thought it was over. But then Afyareh pointed his gun at my dad. He said: ‘Make them listen, or you will die.’”
Vanessa frowned in confusion. She seemed to recall that when Quentin talked to Paul on the
Renaissance
he had placed Ismail’s threat just before the shooting, not while the helicopter was still in the air. For some reason the disparity seemed significant.
“What did your father do?” Barrington asked.
Quentin closed his eyes. “He called the Navy, and they agreed to bring back the helicopter. Afyareh wasn’t happy with that. He wanted the helicopter inside the hangar. It took time for that to happen. I seem to remember . . . yes, there was another argument—Mas and Afyareh. They shouted at each other in Somali. Then Paul called back, and Afyareh accused him of moving the ship. He gave the Navy a deadline. I think it was five minutes.”
Vanessa saw the surprise on Barrington’s face. Quentin had never mentioned the argument before. “What happened in those five minutes?” the prosecutor asked, a trace of tension in his voice.
It took Quentin a while to formulate his reply. “I think . . . there was another argument. Yeah, Mas was upset. Afyareh talked to him. Then . . .” Quentin shook his head. “I don’t know what he said, but it made all of them go crazy.” He thought some more. “I remember being scared. My dad was scared, too. Everything was spiraling out of control. That was when Paul called the last time.”
Barrington traded an anxious glance with Eldridge Jordan. It was clear that the prosecutor had no idea where this was going. “Do you remember what happened after that conversation?”
Quentin closed his eyes again, focusing all his attention on remembering. “I think some time passed. Yes . . . they were watching the windows. Then there was more shouting. I don’t . . . I don’t remember who was doing it. Then . . . the lights came on. It looked like daylight again. I don’t . . . I don’t remember.” Quentin grimaced. “I think . . . that’s when—”
He opened his eyes and gave Barrington a look of distress. Vanessa’s heart went out to him. He had crossed light-years of psychological distance in the past eight months, but still the final seconds before the shooting eluded him.
“It’s okay if you don’t remember,” Barrington said.
“It’s
not
okay,” Quentin retorted. “The memories are there. I know they are.”
It was then that he did something Vanessa never expected. He turned and stared at Ismail. She looked at the pirate and saw the gravity in his countenance, the recognition in his eyes. She sensed something passing between them, an acknowledgment of some kind. She faced Quentin again. His mouth was hanging open, and his pupils were dilated.
Where are you?
she thought.
Are you there again?
Without warning, Quentin began to tremble. “I see it,” he said. “I see the lights going on.” He gripped the chair. “They were shocking . . . like the sun. We were terrified . . . I see a shape moving away from the window. He’s aiming the gun. Oh, God, he’s shooting. I see the blood. It’s everywhere.” Quentin buried his head in his hands. “I couldn’t stop him. Oh, God, I couldn’t stop him.”
“Who couldn’t you stop?” Barrington asked because he had no choice.
“It was Mas,” Quentin blurted out.
Bedlam erupted in the courtroom. The judge tried to contain it, rapping her gavel and calling for order, but no one seemed to listen. Vanessa saw three things at once: Clyde Barrington rooted in place, Ismail hanging his head, and Quentin’s lips moving, forming words she couldn’t hear.
“He’s saying something,” she exclaimed, enraged at the mob for drowning out her son.
“Order! Order!” the judge shouted over the din. “Come to order or I will expel you all.”
At last, the spectators quieted down and Vanessa heard Quentin’s voice. “There’s more,” he said, staring at the floor. “I remember . . . there was a fight between Afyareh and Mas. Everyone was yelling. Then . . . Afyareh picked up a gun. It happened so fast I couldn’t . . . get under the table. He pointed it at me. Oh God, I see his face . . . I see him pulling the trigger.”
When Quentin stopped speaking, no one in the courtroom made a sound. All eyes turned toward Ismail, who was sitting perfectly still, a trail of tears on his cheek. Vanessa felt as if her world had been turned upside down and shaken until she had lost all sense of direction. Mas had killed Daniel, but Ismail had shot Quentin. She felt the wrath again and held on to it for dear life.
Then Quentin spoke again and her heart inverted a final time. “I remember his eyes . . . He was afraid . . . There was another gun . . . It was pointed at his head . . . He didn’t want to do it.”
A depthless silence descended on the courtroom. After a moment, the judge focused on Clyde Barrington and cleared her throat. The prosecutor looked shell-shocked. The only witness the jury would never disbelieve had just exonerated the man he was seeking to put to death.
“Who was pointing the gun at him?” Barrington finally asked, just above a whisper.
Quentin’s eyes were full of pain. “Mas,” he replied. “Mas made him do it.”
Barrington winced. “You’re absolutely certain of that?”
Quentin nodded. “I see it now.”
The prosecutor took a ponderous breath. “I have nothing further.”
As Vanessa watched, Megan stood and spoke to Quentin. “I’d like to say that what you did today was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen. I have no questions. Only gratitude.”
Quentin shrugged, looking embarrassed.
Judge McKenzie smiled at him. “Thank you for your testimony, young man. You may step down.” She looked at Barrington. “Do you plan to put on any more evidence?”
Barrington shook his head slowly. “Your Honor, we’ve presented our case.”
“I’ll take up any motions after lunch,” the judge said. “Then we’ll hear from the defense.”
Vanessa heard the gavel of the law clerk and the clamor that ensued, but she tuned all of it out. She met Quentin at the bar and wrapped him in her arms, telling him how well he did, how proud she was of him, how proud Daniel would be if he were here.
He hugged her back. “It’s over, Mom,” he said. “It’s time to let it go.”
Ismail
Norfolk, Virginia
July 17–18, 2012
Ismail saw it all laid out before him, the entire record of wrong, and that is what he told the jury. He told them of the wrongs that had been done to him—Adan’s assassination, the Shabaab kidnapping, the coercion that led him to take up arms against the government, Yasmin’s long imprisonment, and Yusuf’s terrible death. These were the axial events on which everything else had turned, the incitements that drove him to compound the evil in an attempt to restore what he had lost.
He gave the jury no excuses, only explanations. He told them of his escape from the Shabaab, his sojourn at Hawa Abdi’s place, and the day he overheard young men from Hobyo talking about the money they could make hijacking ships. He told them about the scheme he had conceived to save Yasmin, about joining Gedef’s crew, about taking the Malaysian cargo ship, and about the genesis of the mission to hijack a ship near the Seychelles. He traced the arc of wrong from the abortive attack on the
Jade Dolphin
to the decision they had made to take refuge on Mahé.
“It would have been better for the Captain and Timaha if we had died,” he said to the jurors. “But it was not to be. I saw the sailboat in the night. I knew it wasn’t mine. But I took it anyway. There was no going back. There never was.”
He told them about the Navy next, the way the ships came, one after another, and penned him in, forcing him to take an unprecedented step that ultimately blew up in his face. He explained how ransoms are usually negotiated—by the pirate commander in concert with the investors once the ship is resting at anchor, not by the attackers at sea. And then he told them about his plan to take the boat to Mogadishu, to divide the spoils among his crew, and to take his share and find Yasmin.
He confessed to the jurors that he had deceived his men, that he had sworn an oath to Mas on the name of Allah, and that he had changed their course surreptitiously. He knew he was endangering them. He knew he was putting their families at risk. But he saw no way out of the dilemma. He couldn’t return to Somalia with nothing. But neither could he negotiate with the Navy. He knew the story of the
Maersk Alabama
. He knew America would never let him take the hostages to land.
With help from Megan, he didn’t belabor the obvious, skipping over the negotiations and moving to the night of the shooting. “My agreement with the Navy was simple,” he said, glancing at Paul in the gallery. “After the drop, we would count the money, leave the hostages in the sailboat, and take the small boat to shore. Paul promised me the Navy wouldn’t intervene.”
“Did your men know you were near Mogadishu?” Megan asked.
Ismail shook his head. “I planned to tell them on the beach. They could take the money or not. It didn’t matter to me. I would get them to the city. After that, they would be on their own.”
Megan met his eyes. “Did you trust the Navy to honor its word?”
“I trusted Paul. But I was foolish. He wasn’t in control.”
“What happened when the helicopter took off?” Megan asked.
Ismail took a breath. “That was when everything began to unravel. My men were afraid. Mas accused me of betraying them. We had an argument.”
“Tell us about that,” Megan said.
Ismail looked at the floor and recalled the scene—the noise of the departing chopper, the terror in the eyes of his crew, his ineffectual conversation with Paul, and his dispute with Mas. The words came back to him as if they had been spoken yesterday.
Mas:
You were a fool to trust them. They’ll never let us go.
Ismail:
I’ll get them to ground the helicopter.
Mas:
It doesn’t matter. We’re taking the hostages to the beach.
Ismail:
That’s not the deal!
Mas:
Fuck the deal! For all I know you’re working with them.
Ismail:
What are you talking about?
Mas:
The skiff. How did it get loose? And your meeting with Paul. You looked like friends drinking Pepsi together.
Ismail:
You’re an imbecile. Why would I work with them? They want to put us in prison.