by Mark Dawson
They drove down to the seafront. As they drew closer, Milton started to see signs of activity. Men gathered on street corners, shopkeepers began their preparations for the day, stallholders in the marketplace wheeled their carts into place.
Mustafa turned off the road and parked in a vacant lot that overlooked the harbour.
Milton looked out through the windscreen. There were boats docked below, but it was the busy activity around one of the vessels that told of the new direction that its entrepreneurial residents had taken. One of the boats was the centre of a busy scrum of activity. It was at the end of a long jetty, a mooring line tethered to a concrete bollard. It didn’t look particularly impressive. It was made of wood, perhaps fifteen metres from bow to stern, with a structure in the middle. Men were aboard it, checking the equipment. One man had removed the inspection hatch and was examining the engine. Other men were on the dock, guarding the way ahead. They were armed with automatic rifles.
Mustafa switched off the engine and sat quietly for a moment.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“What do we need to do?” Milton said.
“There will be a bus. Passengers are kept in houses nearby overnight. They will be brought to the boat and then loaded onto it.”
“Do I need anything? A ticket?”
“There are no tickets. This is not like taking a train. You just need to be in the group when they are put on the boat.”
“How do we do that?”
“I have spoken to one of the guards. I have given him half of the money you gave me. We will join the group with him.”
“And then?”
“He will try to help you, but you will be on your own.”
“That’s not very reassuring.” Milton turned and fixed Mustafa in his dead-eyed gaze. “You said you could get me aboard.”
Mustafa put up his hands in supplication. “It is the best I can do. Do you have more money?”
“Some,” Milton said.
“If anyone stops you, offer them money. Fifty dollars. No more. It will make them forget any questions that they might have.”
“That’ll be enough?”
“If you give them more, they will think you are rich. Then they will try to take more. No—give them fifty and they will let you go.”
“What about Ali?”
Mustafa frowned with anxiety. “If he is there, try not to let him see your face.” He took a deep breath and opened the door. “Come on,” he said. “We must get to the boat. It leaves soon.”
#
A SET of steep stone steps descended the hill down to the harbour. Mustafa led the way with Milton close behind. They were halfway to the bottom when a bus rumbled into view, passing around a bend in the cliff. Mustafa stopped and pointed, but Milton had already seen it. The bus was moving slowly, the engine backfiring as it struggled on. It was too far away for Milton to make out very much in the way of detail, but he could see that every spare seat must have been taken together with the spaces in the aisle. One man, holding an AK-47 aloft, was stood on the sill of the door, hanging on with one hand. The bus slowed as it reached the harbour and the horn sounded.
A second bus appeared around the bend in the cliff, and then a third. They were both as full as the first.
“We must hurry,” Mustafa said.
They set off again, descending the steps a little more quickly.
The second and third buses pulled up next to the first. Men with AKs gathered in front of the vehicles, conversing with one another as the passengers were kept inside. Milton could see the men and women more clearly now. He saw dozens of black faces looking out of the windows. As they drew nearer, he started to pick out the faces of children, and then babies in the arms of their mothers.
The men appeared to reach a decision and, with a curt shout, the doors of the buses were opened. The passengers were ordered to disembark, directed into the space that had been formed between the vehicles.
Milton noticed Mustafa was heading towards one of the guards. The man was at the edge of the group, away from his colleagues, marshalling the least-observed edge of the fast-growing crowd. Mustafa gave a low whistle and the guard turned in their direction. The two men exchanged discreet nods of acknowledgement.
“Now,” Mustafa said.
Milton overtook Mustafa and hurried to the guard. The man had a scar from his eyebrow down to the corner of his mouth in the shape of a sickle, the edges of the wound twisting as he chewed a wad of gum. He sneered at Milton, cocking an eyebrow, and then took a half turn to face the throng of passengers. That was Milton’s invitation to join the crowd. Without a word, he stepped past the guard, not looking at him as he passed.
He pressed into the crowd. There must have been two hundred of them there, and the third bus had not yet started to empty out. The crowd was dense, and Milton was able to hide in the middle of it. He glanced around and saw the faces of the men and women who were waiting to board the boat. There was no talk, just the shuffling of feet and the occasional barked instruction from the guards. Milton made his way to the centre of the crowd. There were some fairer-skinned passengers, the lighter tans and browns of those from north Africa, but most of the others were black, and none of them was as white as he was.
One of the guards raised his voice and barked out an order: “Get on boat!” The man spoke in broken English. There were a lot of different nationalities here; perhaps English was the most commonly understood.
Milton was jostled by the people behind him as the crowd was shepherded away from the buses to the concrete promenade that encircled the harbour. The guards followed them, penning them in tightly and then funnelling them onto the wooden jetty. The sound of their feet changed: the slap of shoes on concrete was joined by the shuffle of shoes across wood. The narrowing of the jetty was a bottleneck that slowed their onward progress, but the guards kept them moving.
There were two guards at the end of the jetty, adjacent to the middle of the boat. They, too, had AK-47s and the passengers were embarking between them.
They were going to get a good look at Milton’s white face.
He reached into his jacket pocket for his money, felt for the edge of a note, and pulled it away from the others.
One of the guards was distracted as a man struggled to help his heavily pregnant partner cross the gap between the jetty and the boat and, for a moment, Milton thought he was going to get across without interrogation. But as he waited behind a man with two young boys, the other guard glanced across at him and then performed a quick double take.
“You,” he said. “Come here.”
The man reached into the queue, grabbed Milton by the elbow and pulled him to the other side of the jetty. Milton looked at him. He was no more than a boy, barely out of his teens. The AK looked big in his hands. Milton would have been able to disarm him in an instant; he could have taken the gun away from him and tossed him into the water, but that would get him nowhere. There were too many guards. He was trapped on the jetty, with nowhere to go but the sea below.
He would have to play this out as best he could.
“You. Where you from?”
“Tripoli.”
“Nah,” he said. “You are white. You don’t come from Tripoli.”
“I’m from Qaser Bin Ghashir.”
He looked dubious. “You have paid?”
“Yes.”
“I do not believe you.”
“How would I be here if I hadn’t paid?”
“You have more money?”
“Yes.”
He put out his hand.
Milton started to speak, feigning indignation, and the man nodded down to the AK. Milton looked suitably fearful, reached into his pocket and handed over the note. The guard looked down at the balled-up note and fingered the end so that he could see the fifty in the corner. He curled his lip, and Milton thought that he was going to ask for more, but, instead, he stood aside and nodded his head toward the boat.
“Mov
e.”
Milton did not need to be asked twice. He knew that he had been fortunate. He reached across for the frame of the flying bridge, stretched his leg across the gap between the gunwale and the jetty, and hopped over.
The boat bucked on a swell, the wood creaking ominously.
Milton wondered just how fortunate he had been.
Chapter Thirty-Three
THEY LOADED MORE AND MORE passengers onto the boat until there was no more room.
Milton was shepherded to the top deck and found a small slice of space that he could slide into. He was up at the front, near the mizzen mast, and he looked back and assessed the rest of the boat. It had two decks and a flying bridge in the middle, with a hatch that led down to the hold. The entire vessel was made of wood, painted two shades of blue, and with signs of repair where large sections of the hull had been taken out and replaced. What was left was in dreadful condition. The wood was rotten almost everywhere, and Milton was only able to examine it above the waterline; there was no way of predicting what condition it was in below the surface. Milton guessed not very good.
There was a lot of nervous chatter now as the prospect of the voyage became a reality rather than just a vague possibility. The chatter became more animated as the engine started, the diesel unit grumbling ominously before it settled into a more regular chug.
Milton looked back at the harbour and saw that a Mercedes had pulled up next to the jetty. It was a new model, in excellent condition, and it looked out of place next to the three dilapidated buses and the cars that some of the guards had used to reach the waterfront. He watched as the door opened and a man stepped out. The behaviour of the guards changed in an instant: they had been slouching around, smoking cigarettes and sharing jokes, but, at the approach of the newcomer, they stood a little straighter and became a little more alert.
Milton had never seen him before, but Mustafa had been right: he knew Ali Tessema when he saw him. He was taller than most of the guards, at least six feet tall, and dressed in clothes that were clearly expensive. Milton saw the gleam of a gold necklace and gold rings on his fingers that, if they were visible at this distance, must have been significant.
Ali had a strut about him that spoke of confidence and authority. He made his way to the jetty and spoke with the guards. Milton watched anxiously as Ali took the arm of the younger guard whom Milton had bribed and started to ask him questions. Milton had no way of knowing what they were talking about, but, as Ali turned to the boat and gestured toward it, he was worried that they were talking about him. He knew very well that his white skin was an anomaly among the other passengers around him, and he felt as if a spotlight was being shone on him. He pulled his cap down a little, as if that might obscure the obviousness of his difference.
Ali took out and lit a cigarette and then gazed over to the boat. Milton watched him and wondered, as he stood there, if he was calculating how much money the trip was generating for him. If there were three hundred migrants aboard, and they had each paid a thousand dollars—not including the money that they would have paid to be brought across the border and then the desert to the coast—then he must have been looking at least three hundred thousand dollars. The new Mercedes, the sharp clothes and the jewellery were put into context.
Ali Tessema was a rich man.
The smuggler said something to the guards, and two of them hurried down the jetty to the bollards where the mooring lines had been fastened. They unlooped them and tossed the ropes back onto the deck, and one of them barked out an instruction to the man who had taken up position behind the wheel in the flying bridge.
The engine growled loudly and the boat slowly pulled away from the jetty and out into the harbour. Ali had moved over to a group of three guards and, as he pointed to the departing boat, he said something that caused the others to laugh raucously enough for Milton to be able to hear them. They kept laughing, one bent double he was laughing so much. Ali took his cigarette from his mouth, looked at it, and then flicked it into the water. It was difficult to imagine how he might have looked more at ease, starkly at odds with the three hundred passengers he was sending out onto the ocean in a boat that was not fit to make the voyage.
Ali turned and walked back to the Mercedes.
Milton turned, too. He looked out at the shoulders of the harbour as they moved out into the open sea. He inhaled the salty tang of the air, felt the splash of the spume on his face, and tried to ignore the churn of anxiety in his gut.
Chapter Thirty-Four
THE BOAT was slow, and progress was laborious.
After an hour, the coast of Africa had blended into the haze that marked the horizon. It was difficult to judge distances without landmarks to set as waypoints, but Milton knew that a boat like this would travel at around ten knots. They would cover eleven miles an hour at that speed. There were approximately two hundred and fifty miles between them and Malta, and three hundred and fifty between them and the coast of Sicily. It was going to take a day or a day and a half to make land again, and that was if the weather remained kind. If they ran into a storm, they would be looking at a much longer crossing, and that was on the assumption that the boat could make it at all.
The boat’s general seaworthiness was of concern. Milton had looked askance at it while it was waiting to be loaded at Sabratah, but, now that they were underway, he was even more worried. It was obvious that it had been loaded down beyond what was reasonable for it to bear. Milton wondered whether he had underestimated the number of migrants aboard, all of them crammed into whatever space they could find. He had not had the opportunity to look down into the area below decks, but he had watched as the smugglers had sent dozens of men and women down through the hatch, and the sound of dozens of voices was audible from beneath him.
Milton counted two hundred men, women and children on the deck with him. Most of them were North African, lighter skinned than those from sub-Saharan Africa who had been sent below. They were pressed up against the side of the boat, like him, or stood up so that they could cling to the metal housing. Others were atop it, some grasping the line that ran between the two masts to aid them in maintaining their balance. The passengers were watched over by two smugglers, each of whom was armed with a pistol. The combined weight of this human cargo meant that the boat had sunk down low in the water, so that the rubber tyres that were roped to the hull sloshed through the surf and clouds of spray occasionally kicked up over the gunwales.
The metal structure in the middle of the deck was badly corroded with rust, and, looking back, Milton saw that the engine was spewing a cloud of fumes and that a slick of oil was trailing behind them. The sea was reasonably calm, but the way the boat pitched and yawed across the gentle waves made Milton fearful of what might happen to them if the wind picked up.
He wondered, again, about the good sense of his plan.
The sun was only three hours above the horizon, yet it was already burning hot. The structure atop the deck would provide a little shade for two or three hours, but, once the sun was above it, there would be no respite. Milton pulled his cap down so that it was low on his head. He took off his jacket, turning it around and hanging it off his head so that it covered his face. It was quickly warm and stuffy, but Milton felt more comfortable. It would be easier when the sun went down, but, for now, the longer he could remain inconspicuous, the better.
The to and fro of the boat as it rolled over the waves became hypnotic and soothing, and, as Milton closed his eyes, he allowed himself to sleep.
Chapter Thirty-Five
MILTON SLEPT FOR SEVERAL HOURS.
He awoke and, as he blinked his eyes and gently came back to his senses, he realised that something was missing. He closed his eyes again and concentrated. He worked out what it was: it was the engine. He couldn’t hear it.
He removed the jacket from his head and blinked into the sudden flood of bright light. The migrants around him were looking in the same direction, toward the stern. Milton raised himself up a l
ittle so that he could look, too, and saw one of the smugglers signalling to the captain. There came a loud grumble as the captain tried to start the engine, but it spluttered and didn’t catch. He tried again, and, after another loud splutter, there came a whine and a groan and then a more insistent chugging.
The passengers cheered and clapped with relief.
Milton turned to the young man to his left. “Do you speak English?”
“A little,” he said.
“What happened?”
“The engine stopped.”
“For how long?”
“Ten minutes. We have just been drifting. They couldn’t fix it.”
Milton looked back to the stern. The slick of oil behind them had become wider, the viscous fluid refracting rainbows in the bright sunlight.
“I was worried,” the man said. “I have never been on a boat before.”
Milton looked at him more carefully. He was in his late teens or early twenties, with clear skin and bright eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Kolo.”
“I’m John,” he said. “Where are you from?”
“Somalia. And you?”
“Libya.”
Milton did not want to draw attention to the differences between himself and the others. He changed the subject. “How did you get to Sabratah?”
“They drove us through the Sahara.” The boy’s English was surprisingly good. “It took one week. They kept us in a house in Tripoli until the boat was ready. Three days. I thought we would never leave.”
“What are your plans?”
“I get to Italy; then maybe I try to get to Denmark or Sweden. I have friends there. They have jobs; they can send money home. My parents are old. They have no money. I want to help them. And you?”
Milton had considered a number of cover stories. “I have a friend who works in France. A vineyard.” Kolo looked at him blankly. Milton added, “Where they grow grapes for wine.”