by Carlos Luxul
‘I was first officer on the Astrid for Smit and Vermeulen,’ Dan said.
‘Oh really! We fix S and V often,’ Pinchon said, his sausage fingers crushing a vol-au-vent and bringing it up to his cavernous mouth.
‘And how’s the market now?’
‘Dire,’ Pinchon said.
‘Is the multipurpose size worth it? BDN’s a big operation.’
‘Yes and no. There’s less money in the smaller types, but from little acorns …’ He smiled. ‘Funnily enough,’ he continued, ‘some time ago we took on an outfit from the Emirates who’d just picked up some ships from Claus Reederie, very similar to your Astrid. OceanBird’s their name. Sharjah. Run by Bulent Erkan who was at Claus for a while. Do you know him?’
‘I was in their office a few years back – the tall skinny guy?’ Dan said, a punt to draw information.
‘No!’ Pinchon laughed, gesturing to about five and a half feet with the flat of his hand. ‘Short and fat. All Armani and Gucci and giant Rolex. But a great guy.’
Dan smiled. ‘I think I might have remembered him.’
‘Anyway, terrific little outfit. I knew Bulent when he was in Hamburg. Very sharp cookie. Very interesting company all round. One of their captains is a high-class backgammon player. Spends most of his leave at tournaments in Monte Carlo or Rimini. Anyway, we helped with a few things in the early days and now we represent them here. They’re doing very well, you know. I wouldn’t mind betting they make quite a name for themselves one day.’
‘Perhaps they will,’ Dan said. ‘The name OceanBird rings a bell.’
Pinchon grimaced. ‘You’re thinking of that dreadful business in the Indian Ocean over the weekend.’
‘Right … I knew I’d heard the name.’
He spotted some familiar faces from one of the big ferry companies, excused himself and made his way across, speaking with them about their work together for a while. Earlier he’d bumped into a contact from a container line whose ships were in and out of Felixstowe every week. Container security was another of the files on his desk.
Once or twice the Danske Prince was mentioned in memoriam. The information about OceanBird had been a bonus and, though nothing emerged concerning shipyards in Bar Mhar, it was not a complete disappointment. Events such as these always offered a little something here and something there. They helped build clearer pictures, with snippets of information, names, contacts, all of which were useful.
It was eight o’clock and time to go. Julie was having a drink with the press officer from an American-based think tank that was promoting liberalism and democracy in the former Soviet Union – though she was finding it neither liberal nor democratic about settling its bills. Dan had said he’d swing by the bar and they could go on somewhere to eat before the babysitter curfew.
Julie was alone at a table when he walked through the door. She looked up and smiled, but without enthusiasm. From ten metres away he knew there wasn’t a bank transfer slip in her bag.
‘Next week,’ she said, her brow furrowing.
Dan put his hand on hers. ‘They’re not getting my donation.’
~
Fish was on the menu in the Ocean Dove’s mess. Lines trawled over the stern had hooked some wahoo, fresh and gleaming, untainted by the slick from the Danske Prince’s ruptured fuel tanks hundreds of miles to the south.
The mess was rectangular with bench seating along one side and one end, and a large table dominating the space. A cool evening breeze drifted in from an open porthole. There were eight for supper; the other six were either on duty or in their bunks.
In the corner of his eye, Captain Mubarak saw Assam push his plate away. It was barely touched, mainly due to the khat habit Assam had picked up in Somalia. He sighed inwardly, reflecting with distaste that, though in the short term chewing khat leaves brought alertness and euphoria, in the long term it only resulted in loss of appetite, psychosis, and darkened, greenish teeth.
Next to Assam was Snoop, the gold chains around his long neck spilling out over one of the Snoop Dogg T-shirts he always wore.
‘How many did you kill?’ he said to his neighbour.
‘Just one on the bridge.’ Assam shrugged. ‘But I busted them all to make sure. One was just so cool – his head exploded like a melon.’ He shaped his fingers into a gun. ‘Poooof, amazing.’
‘Mad, yeah.’ Snoop nodded.
‘The boss did seven,’ Assam added, glancing up the table to where Choukri was loading his fork with a wedge of grilled wahoo.
He put it down and looked at the faces that had turned to him. ‘Not at the table,’ he said, glancing up to Mubarak before returning to his supper.
‘Is it true you met the Emir, yeah?’ Snoop Dogg said.
‘Where was this?’ Tariq added.
The table quietened as Choukri’s knife and fork clattered down on his plate.
‘Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.’
Snoop’s chastened eyes dropped. Tariq shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Who is the Emir? What is the Emir?’ Mubarak added, raising a finger and pointing sharply at each of them in turn, his voice challenging, as if dispelling a foolish myth. ‘If he exists at all, he’s everybody and nobody, everywhere and nowhere. Like our Network.’
He gestured irritably for a dish to be passed to him, signalling the subject was closed. The crew settled, making conversation among themselves. They knew only that they worked for the Shabaka – the Network. Two more things they understood were that discussing the Network was not encouraged and speculating about the Emir was not permitted.
Mubarak spooned some lentils and okra onto his plate and glanced around the quietened mess. Across the table from him, Tariq Al Bedawi took a swig of beer. There was always alcohol on the Ocean Dove and he knew that Tariq had grown up with it in Birmingham, with the more prosaic name of Darren Hussein – Daz to his mates. And he understood how he had been much like other young guys, cruising the clubs, smoking weed, snorting whizz and hosing premium lager while scoping for girls with potentially loose knickers.
Drink and drugs, porn and whoring, and un-Islamic behaviour of various kinds was tolerated if it deceived the authorities. In customs and immigration inspections, a ship without a suggestion of one or all of them was odd. The Ocean Dove needed to go about its business as a working ship, not as an annexe to a mosque. The imam’s beard was discouraged, as was ostentatious prayer, though few of them were especially religious and knowledge of the Qur’an was an ideal that many found difficult to attain. Now that they were far away from propagandists and proselytisers, the Network found it prudent to grant them a little leeway – a policy he did not wholeheartedly agree with but accepted for expediency.
His crew could conceivably all have shared the same pedigree as Tariq. It could have been an all-British crew, or a cocktail of any number of EU passport holders. He knew all their backgrounds; Mehmet, sitting next to Tariq, had been born and raised in Mannheim, Germany, to third-generation Turkish parents, and was now Faisel Ibn Bhakri, the ship’s second officer.
The crew list was more fiction than fact. They sailed under assumed identities, though their documents – passports and seamen’s books – were real enough. Why use forgeries when well-placed friends and sympathisers could supply the genuine articles? Only Choukri and himself were who they said they were. It helped the cause to have certain people in plain sight but under the global security radar.
They passed for a good crew. They were professional. Here, no one was concerned about former lives and lifestyles, youthful indiscretions or felonies, once they had seen and accepted the light. As a company, OceanBird was building a reputation, which allowed its ships to come and go as they pleased, all over the world.
~
For Choukri, the matter of the Emir was not closed. Injudicious questions had stirred his memory. In his mind’s eye he was back on a flight to eastern Saudi Arabia, checking into a hotel and waiting.
Three men had come for him
mid-evening. A car drove out of town, heading west into the desert. After an hour they stopped in scrubland. Choukri knew the routine. He stripped naked and handed over his clothes. His pockets were emptied and the contents put in a bag with his watch, shoelaces and belt. When he was dressed again, his hands were tie-wrapped behind his back and a hood pulled over his head. They drove for another three hours, changing cars twice, always with three men in the car and Choukri trussed up in the boot.
He listened for telltale sounds, to the traffic on the highway, the tyres whining on tarmac or muffled on sand as dust seeped into the stifling air around him. Sometimes he registered a slower speed and the commotion of towns, but no singularly identifiable sounds. Disorienting circling at roundabouts – or perhaps not at roundabouts at all, just diversionary manoeuvres to confuse and deceive – before more open highway.
When they finally stopped and the boot opened, his aching legs stood on solid ground. He was led away, his footsteps echoing in the still night as if they were in a high-walled yard.
Then he was in a building. They took his hood off in a dark corridor and showed him through a door, alone. The room was hot and airless. A glimmer of light came from a single candle in a corner. A man was sitting on a low divan. He gestured to a chair opposite before picking up a slender metal pot and pouring two small glasses. Choukri could smell mint, the thought of home flashing through his mind.
The man said, ‘As-salamu ‘alaykum.’ Peace be upon you.
His accent reminded Choukri further of home.
‘Wa ‘alaykumu s-salam.’ And upon you, peace, he replied.
The accent suggested its roots were in Algeria’s Ghardaia region, close to Choukri’s childhood village in the M’zab valley. Perhaps it was from Ghardaia itself, the hilltop desert town three hundred miles south of Algiers where sugar-cube houses in white, pink and ochre climbed the slopes. Under his feet could have been a Mozabite rug, though it was difficult to tell in the gloom.
Choukri was thirsty. He drank his mint tea, gratefully accepting another, careful not to touch the long fingers offering the glass, conscious of observation, conscious of avoiding small talk and any suggestion he might have recognised the accent or may share some kinship with the man. Sitting across from him, he assumed, was a man with no name, unknown to him personally, known only as the Emir, the Network’s leader.
‘Choukri,’ the man said, leaning forward. ‘I watch your career. You’ve come a long way from the banks of the M’zab, but are you becoming too ambitious?’
‘It will work,’ Choukri replied, beginning to pick out the Emir’s features in the half light: the high forehead, the sharp eyes that seemed not to miss a detail.
‘This I believe. But at what cost? And I don’t mean financial. I must think of a bigger picture than you. And I must be cautious. It is not the act I fear, but the aftermath.’
‘Do we not want to take it to another level?’
The Emir scoffed. ‘Another level?’ He looked away for a moment before turning to fix his eyes on Choukri’s. ‘And you are impatient. There is always a status quo, and for good reason,’ he added, prodding the air with a bony finger, his voice quietening to a whisper. ‘Be careful what you wish for, my young brother. You are brave and strong, perhaps wilful – or maybe I should be more generous and just say you are dynamic.’ He paused, looking across intently. ‘Or is it that you imagine they will speak your name in a thousand years in the same hushed tones they use for Saladin?’ He left the point to settle before bringing his fingers together around his nose, under his probing eyes.
‘Or perhaps you seek to replace our protégé, Bin Laden?’ he continued, his mouth twisting with distaste, before a shake of his head. ‘God rest his soul. Our poor little rich boy, idly disaffected, searching for a cause. We amplified the propaganda. We fanned the flames and the public warmed their hands on his downfall. And the security services congratulated themselves. They thought the head of the beast had been removed and the body had splintered into factions – Al Qaeda was now DAESH, ISIL, ISIS, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf and any number of names and allegiances in distant places. And they perceive we are isolated and weak, lacking cohesion and a common purpose.’ He paused, looking questioningly at Choukri. ‘But what has changed? Nothing has changed. I ruled over it then as I do now, and having that self-appointed cliché as a figurehead was the perfect cover.’
With an eyebrow raised he sat back and rearranged his cushions. ‘So, your plan, once again. And take your time.’
Tapping a fingernail on a tooth, the Emir listened, asking no questions, making no notes, his face set in scrutiny.
When Choukri came to the end, he thought he could hear a muezzin calling early morning prayers in the distance. The room had no windows and he could only estimate the time: around dawn. He cleared his dry throat. ‘September 11? That was just two buildings. This will be thousands and …’
The Emir raised a hand. ‘This I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I will give my answer in a month.’
Choukri’s memory of the meeting was clear, but not of the man. Should he ever be taken by the security authorities, he knew he would truly be unable to help them identify the Emir. But then again, the authorities weren’t looking for the Emir. They were not even aware of either him or his organisation.
He had gone deeper underground, thinning his personal retinue while tightening overall control. The command structures were hidden, but the operations moved out to the high street, the business park and the financial communities. They filed their returns, paid their taxes, fronted by people with clean backgrounds who simply did not register.
The Network’s public face was manipulated to express chaos and nihilism, strong hands and second-rate minds. Its private actions were directed corporately to finance, IT, secure communications, management systems, human resources and the development of people who could influence outcomes. It was enriching itself. Money was power. Though its operations had become more sophisticated, it didn’t turn its nose up at cash from the street. Across the Islamic world it controlled the drugs trade, human trafficking, money laundering, and lucrative scams in bogus charities and creaming off foreign aid. Attacks and atrocities might seem random, but they were usually built around sophisticated market plays by their specialist financial teams in Switzerland and Dubai. Fortunes could be made during the hiatus from the swing of a percentage point.
Prized above all were the executive cadre, those with a growing sense of disillusionment who were distancing themselves from the Western mores that had once held so much appeal, but no longer seemed to offer fulfilment. They felt keenly how that lifestyle clashed with the ideology of their upbringings and were drawn back to those early simplicities, propelled by a seething resentment at Western interference and a deeply held belief that injustices were being done to their culture and people.
They might already be in positions of influence in corporations or government bodies and might be encouraged to stay there as sleepers. Or they could be transplanted into some other enterprise controlled by the Network. Their faces were plausible, likeable; they were the guy who organised the fun run at the shipping conference, the Rotarian, the charity fundraising businessman, the nice guy who had just moved in next door.
The truth was, it had always been a network, the Network. And now it had never been stronger, more sophisticated or harder to identify. As those at the mess table had said, it was everybody and nobody, everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing.
~
Mubarak looked up from his pudding, aware of Cookie standing patiently at Choukri’s shoulder.
‘But Choukri, it’s your favourite,’ Cookie said. ‘Mangoes and ice cream. And you did not answer me. You were away with your dreams.’
Choukri glanced round. ‘I was.’
‘You were back in Algiers with your loved ones.’
‘Something like that …’
‘It’s the last of the fresh mangoes.’ Cookie sighed. ‘But there’s still p
lenty of ice cream in the freezer.’
Across the table, Faisel stirred in his seat. ‘Choukri,’ he said, ‘can I ask you something? Doesn’t the Qur’an say it is forbidden to harm women and children, and civilians?’
‘That’s right,’ Tariq added. ‘We were wondering.’
Mubarak caught Choukri’s eye and took the question up. ‘You are correct,’ he said. ‘But the book is also very clear – if you are transgressed against, you are entitled to turn that transgression on the transgressor. You don’t start it, but if they do, you are permitted to do the same to them.’
‘And who started it?’ Choukri added, stabbing the air with a spoon dripping ice cream. ‘The West, that’s who. Look at our cities, our women and children, our old people. Look at their suffering.’
Heads nodded as they pondered. It made sense and the Qur’an justified it, but they turned their attention at the sound of Faisel’s voice again.
‘But aren’t they only civilians? Is it not just the military and government we should target?’
‘And who empowers the government and the military? Those same civilians,’ Mubarak said. ‘Are they not complicit? Are they not truly the guilty ones in their so-called democracies? Why aren’t the governments the innocent ones – are they not mere servants of these civilians?’
‘Exactly,’ Choukri said. ‘Look at America. Look at this Trump. Look at their world.’
‘And many Americans will die?’ Assam said, his tongue circling his lips.
‘Many,’ came Choukri’s eventual reply. ‘Many thousands.’
Eyes lowered and the mess quietened before a new voice broke the silence.
‘Choukri and the captain are right,’ Cookie said. ‘Hear their words. America and its lapdogs,’ he spat.
Mubarak saw the faces turn to Cookie, leaning against the door frame, his burly, burn-scarred forearms folded across his chest. He was someone to listen to, older and more experienced. Snoop and Assam turned too, partly in respect for his opinion, but mainly because he cooked well, though Assam’s growing khat habit was killing his appetite.