I came through the fence at a high point, up a rise sloping down to the camp and walked quickly through dark, dry grass rasping the legs of my jeans, until I reached the first tents. From there I strode with the obvious impatience of a man on a mission: a man armed with a clipboard.
Snores rattled from some tents, TV sounds from others, intense argument from a few. The air was rich with the aromas of urine, tobacco smoke, cardamom, curry and charcoal from the makeshift braziers set up outside some tents. I saw toys, basketballs, soccer balls and plastic-tubing-framed goals, secured behind still more chain link. There were fold-out clothing racks and clear plastic bags of personal possessions not worth locking up.
Glancing officiously at my clipboard I kept moving like a man with a plan, down haphazard separations between tents, stepping over taut ropes, kicking the occasional can or discarded bottle. The ‘streets’ were empty but for a few men smoking, or people making a dash to the toilet, none remotely interested in me.
I was on alert, nervous but not scared. No one was really going to call cops all the way out to Kofinou because some writer got into a refugee camp. The worst I risked was probably a roughing up from suspicious camp residents. And, too, there was a strange sort of comfort in the familiarity of my worries and emotions. I knew these worries. I knew these emotions: the adrenalin buzz of doing the forbidden, the sense of smug superiority because I was a predator and all the world was filled with sheep. Senses all tuned up, taking nothing for granted, analyzing every detail for possible threat or opportunity.
The cliché would be to compare it to a drug, but that wasn’t it, not really. A drug addict is a victim and I was not a victim. I wasn’t addicted to this rush, I wasn’t helpless to resist it. I had a valid reason for creeping the camp, but that was irrelevant to the feeling which was all tingle and buzz and instinct. As for fear? I felt more fear doing nothing, living the fugitive life, waiting, cringing, waiting. In the action, whether it’s a burglary or the closing acts of a con, you don’t feel fear, you can’t because you are the invader, the user, the one bringing the fear.
The truth was I was having fun, more fun than I’d had in a long time. I suppose it’s natural to enjoy doing the things you’re good at.
What was the line from Patton talking about war? ‘God help me, I do love it so?’
I had a half-dozen tents in mind as my targets and I listened carefully as I moved between them. A radio tuned to BBC, David Mitchell making a witty remark. Snores. Laughing conversation. The high-pitched voice of an imam ranting on a tape or maybe on the radio. More snores.
Many of the tents had rolled-up one or more sides to allow the cooling evening breeze. I saw cots and bare feet poking out from beneath thin blankets, often lit by TV light. I saw hard, weary men sitting hunched forward, dark faces emerging as cigarette ends glowed bright on the inhale, darkening on the exhale as ash obscured the tip. A skinny old man with a long, white beard sat naked to the waist on a child’s tricycle with a broken rear axle.
Then: sullen, monosyllabic male voices, and that, I suspected, was bingo. I would know in a few seconds.
I flicked the canvas in lieu of knocking, and said, ‘Hello? So sorry to trouble you. May I come in?’
What had been a murmur of male voices stopped instantly.
‘Who is there?’ Heavily-accented English.
I had no good answer for that, so I drew the door flap aside and stepped in, clipboard out like a shield. Someone had been frying fish on a hotplate. And everyone was smoking. It was a tobacco hotbox. The interior was not quite toasty enough to bake brownies, but the sides of the tent had not been raised to admit the cooling night air, suggesting that the population of this particular tent valued privacy over comfort.
At the far end were two cots occupied by two sleeping men. In the center, where I would just barely be able to stand up fully sat a small plastic table and four matching plastic chairs. One tent ‘wall’ was stacked high with water-stained cardboard boxes. An unsteady-looking bunk bed covered a second side. An ancient television was perched atop a bookshelf, which, naturally, I scanned for evidence of my books. (None.) The TV volume was low, tuned to a soccer match, though not one that held great interest for the three men lounging around the table.
I strode boldly forward and stopped, six eyes and three beards aimed at me.
‘Gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Salam alaikum.’
No answer. Not even a perfunctory ‘alaikum salaam.’ Just guarded looks. An old, bald guy with a thready ZZ Top beard and a skullcap was the boss, that was easy to see. Maybe an imam, maybe just some old tough dude, but definitely the boss.
To his left sprawled one of those men you never have to ask yourself whether you can ‘take,’ because you just can’t. He was roughly the size, weight, and density of an armored personnel carrier, but an armored personnel carrier with long, black hair and a patchy beard that couldn’t quite keep up. If I ever had to fight the guy, I calculated my odds would be improved if I just went ahead and choked myself.
The third man I made as the psycho, because there’s always one. He was too small, too birdlike to be a brawler, but he had nasty brown eyes and was way too still. Worse, he looked smart, which Muscle did not. This guy was a snake.
It was all reassuringly familiar, a scene from any common room in any jail or prison in the world: a boss, a thug and a crazy.
The boss nodded and finally, after looking me over from hair to shoes, answered: ‘Alaikum salaam.’
‘I’m afraid that’s all my Arabic.’
‘I speak English,’ the old guy said with a sniff of arrogance, like I was a jerk for implying otherwise.
‘I am Michael O’Shaughnessy,’ I said, hoping no one would ask me how to spell it, ‘and I am a researcher for the United Nations Agency For Lost And Abandoned Children. UNAFLAAC. I wonder if I could have a moment of your time.’
‘You are English?’ the boss asked.
‘Ach, begorrah!’ I protested in an Irish accent every bit as authentic as the Lucky Charms leprechaun. ‘Irish, please.’ I knew at least one Irishman from the old days who’d have stabbed me in the neck for that accent.
‘I am Sheikh Nawaz. And how may we be of assistance?’
I motioned to an empty seat and he nodded. I sat. I set down my clipboard and swung my shoulder bag forward and drew out the bottle of whiskey. ‘I don’t suppose …’ I said, tilting the neck toward them. The Muscle licked his lips, then glanced at Nawaz who jerked his chin, causing the Muscle to levitate out of his chair and reappear in two heartbeats with three glasses of varying cleanliness.
I poured. The sheikh took one, the muscle took one, the reptile gave no indication at all, so I took the third.
‘Sláinte,’ I said. I knew of no Arabic toasts, Muslims not generally being drinkers. Present company evidently excluded.
We drank.
By this point they were pretty certain I was not from the UN. They knew I was there to wheedle information. They weren’t sure yet whether they were going to beat me up or just tell me to fuck off, but if my opening gambit was a bottle of decent Scotch, they wanted to see what else I had.
I pulled out my phone, swiped a bit and held up the first enlargement of a kid, one of the boys from the recent boat. ‘I’m looking for this boy.’ I watched Muscle’s reaction. Blank.
‘Also this boy … and this girl.’
Muscle recognized the second boy, the same one Calix had recognized. His eyes widened and he overcompensated with a scowl. The tension rose a notch.
‘These pictures are all from a boatload of refugees who came ashore—’
The old man cut me off. ‘We are well-informed on the comings and goings of our brothers and sisters. But these three I do not recognize. Though my eyesight is not what it once was.’
Bullshit, old man, you see through walls when you want to. I’ve met guys like you, I know. I did not say.
I poured refills. Reptile was deciding whether to stab me in the heart or slit my throat. I wa
s deciding whether I would have a chance to scream like a little girl. Fear was back because I was decidedly not in control. Humans are by definition apex predators but I was the kind of apex predator who stole your stuff; Reptile was the kind who stole your life.
‘I wonder if you could take a closer look. UNAFLAAC has allocated funds for anyone who can help us.’ I drew a white envelope from my pocket. ‘You could use the funds to help your … brothers and sisters.’ I kept a straight face.
The boss was amused. He didn’t know what I was up to, but he wanted that cash. Sheikh Nawaz was a wily old con, but it’s hard to conceal greed’s glitter.
‘Mustafa, take a closer look,’ he told Muscle, who now had a name.
Mustafa took the phone from me, glanced at his boss for guidance, frowned, squinted, and looked again at Nawaz, who gave an imperceptible nod.
‘This one. I have seen him.’ The second boy.
‘Ah, well, that is glorious news, sure it is,’ I said, recalling belatedly that I was the Lucky Charms mascot. ‘Saints be praised. Might I meet the young laddie?’
Nawaz’s eyes moved slowly to the envelope. It wasn’t subtle, nor was it intended to be.
‘For a chance to speak with the young man, ah, well, I could see that being worth, say, two hundred?’ I’ve never bribed a Syrian refugee crime boss before and did not know where to start the bidding.
Nawaz sighed.
‘I might go as high as three hundred,’ I allowed.
‘The number three is very unlucky in our culture.’
No it’s not, you old fraud. I did not say.
‘Indeed?’
‘Better if we make it a thousand. You see, the concept of the zero, essential to all higher mathematics, is an invention of our Egyptian brothers, almost two millennia before your Christ.’
As a spreader of bullshit myself, I rather admired that. And it calmed my concern about Reptile, since we were now in the bazaar haggling over prices.
‘There are two zeroes in the number five hundred,’ I pointed out, and he couldn’t argue that.
This was getting expensive. Getting to the point where I was going to submit an invoice to Agents K. and D. I sighed and shook my head slightly and counted out the cash. Mustafa Muscle rose and disappeared out the back door of the barracks, which left me to make small talk with Nawaz and the snake. We chatted amiably about the weather, and about the TV show Homeland, and about what rotters the British are. (Sykes-Picot, dontcha know.) In the process, I was able to teach them the word ‘cunt,’ its literal meaning, and its common usage in the UK where it is often substituted for ‘asshole.’ We passed some time just saying the word.
Then, there was Mustafa again, his massive fist resting paternally on the narrow shoulders of a boy dressed only in a long T-shirt emblazoned with the Hooters logo. His spindly legs ended in bare feet, one of which was clubbed. I looked at the photo. I looked at the boy. I showed the picture to the boy.
‘Is that you?’
He was fascinated, a sleepy, shivering but curious kid, maybe ten years old. After a while of scanning faces and reacting, I pressed him and only then realized that of course he did not speak English.
Mustafa translated my question. The boy nodded.
‘Would you ask him if he knew these other two?’ I swiped to the other enlargements.
His nod did not require translation. Nor did the guarded look or the quick sidelong glance at Nawaz.
‘Does he know where they are?’
A long stream of Arabic was translated by Mustafa as, ‘No.’
I counted out another two hundred. And I handed the kid himself a fifty. Nawaz must have nodded, because Mustafa suddenly remembered more of what the kid had said. ‘He says men took them.’
‘Men took them? When?’
More Arabic, the gist of which was apparently, ‘When they are on land.’
‘You mean as the boat landed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who were the men?’ I asked. Arabic, Arabic, shrug, shrug.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘How about this: does he know where they were taken?’
He did not.
‘Why those two? Why not this kid?’
That took some back-and-forthing before the boy, shamefaced, looked down at his clubbed foot.
Silence followed, during which Nawaz watched me to see just how clueless I might be.
I don’t know anything about the Syrian or Iraqi criminal world, but from the sneer forming in the old man’s eyes I guessed their view of short-eyes was roughly the same as ours. He was wondering if I was one.
I poured us all another round and the kid was sent off into the night, clutching his cash.
‘A person I know once suggested that those who harm children deserve to be impaled on a telephone pole,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you would drink to that?’
It was an instinct move. I made these guys for professionals, gangsters, and Nawaz for a boss. No doubt they were involved in smuggling, maybe some weed or khat, maybe protection, the occasional regrettable but necessary beating. Maybe they ran some hookers. But my instincts told me this was a conversation between criminals – not nice people, but not animals.
Nawaz relaxed a bit. ‘To telephone poles,’ Nawaz said, and kept his eyes on me as he raised his glass and drank. He didn’t know why I was chasing after refugee kids, but cons have an analogue to what used to be called ‘gaydar.’ We know each other. He made me for some species of crook, but not, probably, the kind who went after kids. Which left him intrigued but not willing to question me further. Maybe he had another appointment, or maybe he was just sleepy, but either way he was done with me.
Nawaz exchanged a few words in Arabic with Mustafa and detailed him to escort me out. I left the bottle behind.
‘Where did you come in?’ Mustafa asked.
I pointed. ‘Up the hill. I cut the fence.’
He snorted. ‘The fence is already cut in three places. Where did you leave your car?’
‘At the abattoir,’ I said, and he turned and led me in that direction.
I was mostly sure that Mustafa wouldn’t kill me as we walked through the sleeping camp. I lit a cigar with my torch and puffed.
‘Are you a good man?’ Mustafa asked me suddenly.
‘No, not really,’ I admitted. I had dropped my Irish brogue. Instinct suggested honesty. It does that every now and again.
‘Why do you want these children?’
‘It’s complicated,’ I admitted. ‘The short answer is I have no choice.’
He stopped, turned, looked me up and down. ‘You are being pressured? Who pressures you?’
I sighed. ‘People who wouldn’t be squeezing me if they could do this job themselves.’
‘And those people?’
I laughed softly. ‘They’re not people I like. They aren’t friends. In fact, they’re people I’ve done my best to avoid during the course of my … career. But they don’t target children. Most people would say they’re the good guys.’
I had misjudged Mustafa by a good twenty IQ points. He wasn’t slow.
He asked, ‘If you find these children …’
I shrugged. ‘If I figure out what’s going on, I’ll be in the clear.’ Maybe.
‘But the children,’ he insisted. He was looking me straight in the eyes, albeit looking down about six inches, and said, ‘I had two children. A daughter and a son.’ No disguising the quiver in his voice. ‘Do you have children?’
It was not the time for a smart-ass remark. I’d registered the past-tense, ‘had.’ Had children.
‘No,’ I said.
He thought it over. Then he reached inside his coat for a knife! No, not a knife, a pen. With which he wrote a number on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. ‘This is my mobile number.’
I raised an eyebrow.
He said, ‘If you should need help with …’
‘Telephone poles?’
White teeth in the darkness.
THIRTEEN
&n
bsp; I slept late and was awakened by a blinding ray of light coming through shades I had failed to draw completely. Out on the patio it was both as bright and as hot as the surface of the sun. As soon as the caffeine had revived me, I called up Special Agent Delia.
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if you and Almost-as-special Agent Kim could meet me?’
‘Your villa?’
‘No,’ I said, remembering the Land Rover. ‘The tiki bar.’
She allowed that she could meet me there but not till evening, and that she would be alone. Agent Kim, it seemed, had gone back to Rome. Or Athens.
Interesting.
Our five o’clock rendezvous left me with plenty of time to get some work done. Dammit. So, I banged out a scene I didn’t much like for my latest opus, then thought up a few coy drolleries for the GQ piece.
The tiki bar was at a distance that could either be a walk or a drive. I decided to walk. A less-than-professional surveillance team would assume that I was with my car, and thus that I was at home, and thus that they should not ransack the villa. The maid service would not appreciate a ransacking.
The sun was heading for the western horizon and a breeze stirred, slowly lowering the temperature from boil to simmer. The sea was smooth as glass, fading from turquoise and sparkle, to deep blue and mystery. I passed a squat stone church so small it couldn’t have held a dozen people, and so old that Babylonians might have built it.
Cyprus has been conquered and occupied by a who’s who of ancient colonialists and exploiters: Egyptian pharaohs, Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, the Assyrians who were the Nazis of the Iron Age, Persians, back to Egypt under Alexander the Great’s kid Ptolemy; Rome when it was still arguably ruled by its Senate, though later on Trajan came along to murder all the Jews, as one does; Byzantium, Crusaders led by no less than Richard – best sobriquet ever – Lionheart, who sold it to the Knights Templar, who were essentially a Frankish (French-ish) religio-murder cult. Toss in some Hospitallers, too, because the Templars got the cooler name but the Hospitallers were better at handling money. Then came the non-Roman Italians in the form of Genoese and Venetians, the Turks for quite a spell, and finally the British. Don’t forget a couple of random years of Holy Roman Empire in there and you’re left with one question: what, no Vikings?
A Sudden Death in Cyprus Page 11