But I was feeling confident. This would soon be over. The tall man had assured us of this in his rough Swahili. We were just waiting for Kiongozi Ujumla, the great leader. The tall man clearly didn’t have the authority to sanction our release on his own. It had to be Kiongozi Ujumla who took that sort of decision, and we must understand that if you didn’t have authority, then you didn’t have authority. Everyone knew that.
Even Sébastien seemed satisfied. He had stopped demanding medical treatment for the wound to his head, from when he was struck with the butt of the rifle.
Annika was smiling at me in the semi-darkness. I could smell her shampoo.
These people didn’t mean us any harm. They were using us as pawns in an unpleasant game, but they were still people, just like us. They knew perfectly well that we were important people in our respective homelands, and that we had children and families. They were doing this to draw attention to their cause, and then they’d release us. The tall man had assured us of that several times.
And if they didn’t keep their word, it would cost them dear. The entire police forces of Kenya and Somalia would be after them, not to mention the whole of the EU.
I tried to turn my head to get away from the stench of excrement.
Soon I would be at home with Annika and the children again.
* * *
The façade of the building on Agnegatan had been scrubbed and repainted during their time in Washington. The nondescript dirty-brown façade was now sparkling white, with a hint of green. In spite of the cloud Annika had to squint when she looked at it.
Anders Schyman had sent her home after the meeting at Rosenbad. It had been a reasonable decision.
She tapped in the door code and took the stairs up. She dropped her outdoor clothes in a heap inside the door, walked into the living room with her bag, put her laptop on the coffee-table, went into the kitchen to switch the kettle on, then to the toilet. As she was washing her hands she found herself staring at Thomas’s towel, hanging next to the basin; he was the only member of the family who insisted on having his own.
She dried her hands on it.
She fetched a fresh roll of toilet paper from the top cupboard in the children’s room, plugged in the landline, made some instant coffee in a mug with the words ‘The White House’, then checked her email.
Halenius hadn’t sent her the report from the British woman who was guaranteed to be pretty and blonde.
She stared at her inbox with her hands tightly clenched in her lap. For some reason the picture of the fat woman on the front page of the Evening Post had stuck in her head.
Perhaps it was all just a terrible misunderstanding.
Perhaps the men at the roadblock had thought the EU delegation were Americans, maybe CIA agents, and as soon as they realized their mistake they’d drive Thomas and the others straight back to the airport in that town, Liboi. Thomas would have a beer in the bar and take the opportunity to do some duty-free shopping, perfume for her and maybe some half-kilo bags of sweets for the children. He’d get home tired and dirty, complain about the facilities at the airport in Liboi and moan about the food on the plane …
She checked her email again.
Nothing. No British woman.
She wondered if he’d slept with her yet.
She got up from the computer and went into the children’s room. Kalle had made his bed, but Ellen hadn’t.
Living with the children made it worthwhile. She’d tried the alternative, and it had driven her to the brink of madness. The year when Thomas had lived with Sophia Grenborg and she had had the children every other week had been a nightmare. Plenty of other people managed it, most of them, even, but not her.
She slumped down on Ellen’s pillows.
She really had made an effort.
When they’d got back together and moved to the USA, she had done her best, with sex and cooking and sensible working hours. She had masturbated when she was alone in an effort to build up some sort of sex-drive, bought cookbooks with Mexican and Asian recipes, and blamed the time difference when she wriggled out of the newsroom’s demanding schedule to bake chocolate-chip cookies for the school fête.
But she had always known there were other women. No one in particular, just women he could get into bed without too much effort. She assumed he must have done pretty well. He looked like a Viking, with his blond hair, grey eyes and broad shoulders. He laughed easily and was a good listener; he was competent at most sports, from bowling to hockey, and he was reasonably domesticated.
Conferences, like the one in Nairobi, were his prime hunting ground. The fact that he worked for the government did nothing to harm his chances. His involvement in Frontex wasn’t, of course, particularly sexy, so he usually said he worked in international security analysis. Which was probably true, at least in part.
She resisted the urge to make Ellen’s bed, went back to her laptop and Googled Frontex.
She was completely uninterested in Thomas’s new job. The knowledge that he would be going off to international conferences several times a year had been enough. She knew very little about the actual organization.
One of the first hits came from her own paper. The question of EU border security had been the responsibility of the Swedish EU commissioner for the past couple of years, which meant that a number of inquiries into the subject were being organized from Sweden.
And, yes, they occasionally landed on Thomas’s desk.
On the organization’s official website she read that its latest initiative had been introduced early: the waters off the Italian island of Lampedusa were being patrolled by air and sea to stop refugees from the turbulence in North Africa making their way to Europe. According to the Swedish EU commissioner, Frontex was there ‘to save lives’, which might be true. Refugees coming ashore on the beaches of Spain and Italy were so common that no one cared. They didn’t even merit a mention in the media now, not in the Mediterranean countries and certainly not in Sweden. If they ever came up, it was because some Swedish tourist had tripped over a body and not been granted compensation by their tour operator.
There was a ping from her inbox, and there, attached to an email from Halenius, was the report from the pretty little British woman. It was in English, fairly short, and described the situation in the border town.
The crossing between Kenya and Somalia was mostly unmanned. A sign next to the police station in Liboi, saying, ‘Republic of Kenya, Department of Immigration, Liboi Border Control’, was the only indication that it existed. There were neither staff nor a permanent presence at the border.
At present there were more than four hundred thousand people, most of them Somali, in refugee camps in the neighbouring town of Dadaab.
Annika looked up from her computer. Where had she heard of Dadaab? Something about drought in the Horn of Africa?
She went into Google Maps and typed ‘liboi, kenya’ in the search box. She was rewarded with a yellowish-brown satellite image of parched earth. Liboi was shown as lying in the middle of a great expanse of nothing, and was no bigger than the head of a pin. A yellow road, identified as Garissa Road A3, ran across the image. She clicked to zoom out, and Dadaab appeared in the southwest, then Garissa, the sea and Nairobi. Kenya lay right on the equator, circled by Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania. Christ – what a bunch! She stared at the satellite image with a deafening sense of unreality. All those people, living and going about their business in those countries, and she knew absolutely nothing about them.
A phone rang somewhere in the flat. She pushed the laptop away and stood up, at first unable to work out where the sound was coming from. Then she realized it was the landline. No one called her on it except her mother, and that hardly ever happened. She ran towards the door to the children’s room and grabbed the receiver.
It was Jimmy Halenius. ‘Annika,’ he said. ‘We’ve received two messages from the group holding Thomas and the other members of the delegation.’
She collapsed o
n to the living-room floor, her mouth as dry as tinder. ‘What do they say?’
‘I’d rather not go into it over the phone …’
‘Tell me what they said!’
The under-secretary of state seemed to pause for breath. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s not really a good idea to hear this kind of information over the phone, but okay … The first message was picked up by the Brits. A man in a shaky video saying in Kinyarwanda that Fiqh Jihad have taken seven EU delegates hostage. The rest of the message consists of political and religious slogans.’
‘What did he say? In Kinyar-what …?’
‘A Bantu language spoken in East Africa, mainly Rwanda. The message really doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already suspect, that they’ve been kidnapped by an organized group.’
She looked round the room, at the little lamps in the windows, the throw that Thomas’s mother had given him for Christmas, the disks from Kalle’s video game. ‘So it’s political,’ she said. ‘A political kidnapping. You said those were worse.’
‘It’s political,’ Halenius said, ‘but there may be another opening. The second message came to Alvaro Ribeiro’s home phone number. His boyfriend took the call and received a short, concise message, in East African English, that Alvaro had been kidnapped and that he would be released in exchange for forty million dollars.’
Annika gasped. ‘Forty million dollars? That’s … what? In kronor? Quarter of a billion?’
‘Something like that.’
Her hands started to shake again – alien hand syndrome the whole damn time. ‘Oh, fuck …’
‘Annika,’ Halenius said. ‘Calm down.’
‘Quarter of a billion?’
‘It looks like there might be a number of different motives behind this kidnapping,’ Halenius went on. ‘There’s the political aspect, as indicated by the video, and then there’s the demand for money, which suggests a standard kidnap for ransom. You’re right about the second being preferable.’
‘But a quarter of a billion? Who’s got that sort of money? I certainly haven’t.’
Kidnap for ransom?
The words triggered something inside her, but what? She pressed her shaking hand to her forehead and searched her memory. An article she had written, an insurance company she had visited during her first year as a correspondent, in upstate New York: they were specialists, K&R Insurance – Kidnap and Ransom Insurance …
She jumped to her feet. ‘Insurance,’ she yelled down the line. ‘The department must have insurance! Insurance that will pay out the money and everything’s sorted!’ She was practically laughing with relief.
‘No,’ Halenius said. ‘The Swedish government has nothing like that. On a point of principle.’
She stopped laughing.
‘Insurance of that sort offers a short-term and dangerous solution. It increases the risks and drives up ransom demands. Besides, the Swedish government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.’
She could feel the ground opening beneath her and struggled to cling to the doorframe.
‘But,’ she said, ‘what about me? What do I do now? What happens next? Are they going to call me as well, on this number?’
‘That would be an excellent starting point.’
She could feel panic rising and her field of vision shrank. She heard the under-secretary of state’s voice from a long way away.
‘Annika, we need to talk about your situation. I know you don’t want me in your home, but right now I think that would be the most straightforward solution for you.’
She gave him the code to the front door.
* * *
The Frenchman was protesting again. He was shouting relentlessly to our captors, and ordering Catherine to translate his words into Swahili, which she did in a subdued voice with her head lowered. Now he wasn’t just raging about the wound to his head, but also our sanitary predicament. None of us had been allowed to go to the toilet since we were captured two days ago. Urine and excrement were stinging our skin and making our clothes stiff.
The German woman was crying.
I could see irritation and anxiety rising among the guards. They were nervous each time they opened the wooden door of the hut, and would explain quickly and angrily that they didn’t have the authority to let us out. We had to wait for Kiongozi Ujumla, the leader and general, but we had no idea if this was one person or two, but only he/they had the right to make decisions about prisoners, they said. (The prisoners were us, wafungwa.)
When I heard a diesel vehicle pull up outside I actually felt relieved. The Frenchman fell silent and listened, along with the rest of us. We could hear muttering.
The sun was going down. It was almost completely dark inside the hut.
It seemed an extremely long time before the door was opened again.
‘This is completely unacceptable!’ the Frenchman cried. ‘You’re treating us like animals! Have you no decency?’
The black silhouette of a short, thick-set man filled the doorway. He was wearing a turban on his head, a short-sleeved shirt, loose trousers and heavy shoes.
His voice was high, like a young boy’s. ‘You no like?’ he said.
The Frenchman (I had stopped using his name: I was trying to dehumanize him, distance myself) replied, c’est vrai, he didn’t like our situation.
The short man shouted something we didn’t understand at the guards. When he turned round I saw a large knife, curved like a scimitar, hanging from a strap across his back: a machete.
Fear, which had settled like a lump in my stomach, exploded with a force I had never experienced before. All the guards were armed, so it wasn’t the half-metre blade itself that had provoked my reaction, but something else about the short man, something in the way he moved, or his ice-cold voice. He must be Kiongozi Ujumla.
Two of the guards came into the hut. It was dark and cramped and they trod on us. They went over to the Frenchman, picked him up by the feet and shoulders and carried him to the door. The German woman screamed when the tall one put his foot on her stomach and almost lost his balance on her soft bulk. They carried him out through the doorway and, for the first time, the view through the opening was clear. Fresh air swirled through the hole, and I breathed deeply, blinking up at the light. The sky was red and yellow and ochre, incredibly beautiful.
They stood the Frenchman on the ground immediately in front of the doorway, and his feet were quickly covered with the billowing dust. The opening was so low that we could only see up to his shoulders, even though we were lying on the ground. The short man went and stood in front of the Frenchman in the twilight.
‘No like?’ he asked again.
The Frenchman started to tremble, either from fear or the effort of having to stand upright after lying down for so long. His feet and hands were still bound with cable ties, and he was visibly swaying. ‘This is a crime against international law,’ he began once more, in a shaky voice. ‘What you’re doing is a breach of international rules and regulations.’
The leader and general stood with his legs apart and folded his arms over his chest. ‘You say?’
Catherine, who was lying to my left, pressed closer to me.
‘I am a French member of the European Parliament, the EU,’ the Frenchman said, ‘and I demand that you release me at once from this situation.’
‘EU? Work for EU?’ The short man smiled a broad but stiff smile. ‘You hear?’ he said, turning towards us. ‘Work for EU!’
With an agility that was surprising, considering his bulk, the short man reached back with his arms and, with a sweeping gesture, swung the machete down in a wide arc to the left side of the Frenchman’s groin.
Catherine screamed and hid her face in my armpit. I wished I’d had the sense to hide my face in an armpit, but I looked on wide-eyed as the Frenchman collapsed, like a sawn-off pine-tree, letting out a wheezing sound as the air went out of him.
It was rapidly getting dark outside.
Chapter 5
; Annika was standing by the window in the living room, staring up at the concrete sky. She was empty inside, just a shell, fumbling for some sort of reality. Part of her still thought the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding, a communications breakdown in Africa. Soon Thomas would call her mobile, annoyed that his flight hadn’t taken off on time. Another part of her was worrying about little things, such as the fact that she would be alone with Jimmy Halenius again. And what would she say to Thomas’s mother? Who would write about the dead mother in Axelsberg?
Jimmy Halenius was on his way. Perhaps her anxiety could be traced back to the photograph that had been taken outside the Järnet restaurant a few years ago. She had gone for dinner with the under-secretary of state to pump him for information, and as they were leaving the restaurant a paparazzo had snapped a picture as Halenius was demonstrating to Annika the Spanish way of air-kissing. When Bosse from the rival evening paper had confronted her with it, she had been scared. She knew what could happen once the media had got its claws into you.
When the bell rang she hurried into the hall and opened the door. Jimmy Halenius walked in and stumbled over her boots. Annika turned on the ceiling light, kicked her boots towards the bathroom and snatched up her jacket from the floor.
‘So what have you done with Hansel and Hansel?’ she asked. ‘Have you left them at home?’
‘Yep, busy making gingerbread,’ Halenius said, putting down his briefcase. ‘Have you had any calls?’
She hung her jacket on a coat hook and shook her head.
‘Are the children at home?’
‘They’ll be back at five. That’s when I normally leave work. They don’t know I’m at home.’
‘You haven’t told them anything?’
She turned to him. He took his own coat off and reached for a hanger, surprising her. She wouldn’t have thought him the sort of man who used hangers for his outdoor clothes.
She shook her head again.
He stood in front of her, and she was struck by how short he was. Only a few centimetres taller than her, and Thomas called her a pygmy. ‘It’s good that you haven’t said anything so far, but you’re going to have to tell them now. The story will be in the media this evening, tomorrow morning at the latest, and the children have to hear it from you.’
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