‘And Karen Blixen lived here?’ Annika murmured.
‘This is really the foreman’s house, but she lived here for long periods as well,’ Halenius said, then disappeared to the left.
The darkness outside the windows was damp and solid. She remained where she was, in the middle of the floor, and found herself staring at an old harmonium standing against one wall. The keys were brown with age and she reached out a hand to hear what it sounded like, but stopped with her fingers just centimetres from the instrument. Did she really want to know? Could she even imagine what tunes were hiding behind those bellows, those keys? Or was there nothing but screaming and poverty?
Halenius appeared from the innards of the house with an old-fashioned key in his hand. ‘It doesn’t work,’ he said, nodding towards the organ. ‘And it wasn’t Karen’s. It was given to Bonnie.’
He picked up the bags of money – their weight made him sway – then set off out into the night. She bent down, picked up their bags and followed him through the darkness. Low lanterns lit some of the winding slate path with circles of fire-coloured light. They were surrounded by nocturnal noises she’d only ever heard in films: croaking, rustling, scratching, singing sounds that she could neither identify nor locate. The darkness pressed around them.
‘Where’s the hotel?’ she asked, into the shadows.
Halenius pointed to the left. She could just make out white stone walls behind a jungle of tropical plants.
‘Our own house? Each room is a separate building?’
She stepped inside a room with white walls and black roof-beams that hung high above under the ridge of the roof. White linen curtains on black metal poles, a crackling fire in an open hearth, to the right a living room. She looked at the four-poster bed that stood like a galleon in the middle of the floor, with a wrought-iron hull and sails made of mosquito nets. Carefully she walked across the highly polished floor.
She put their bags on the floor and opened a door. The bathroom, brown slate from floor to ceiling, bigger than the living room at home.
‘Will there be anything left of the ransom after we’ve paid for this?’ she asked Halenius, when she came out.
‘Costs the same as a shabby single room in New York,’ he said. ‘But there’s only one bed. I’ll go back to Reception and say we want separate rooms.’
She put her hand against his chest. He stopped and looked towards the fireplace. ‘What I did was unforgivable.’
‘To whom?’
He looked at the floor. ‘Thomas is my responsibility. I’m his boss. If he can’t trust me …’
‘Thomas is responsible for his own actions, just as you and I are for what we do.’
‘I exploited the situation,’ he said. ‘That was indefensible. You’re in a position of total dependence on me, and I’ve broken every code of honour there is.’
She stepped closer to him and let her hands slip round his back.
‘And when you see him again,’ Halenius said quietly, ‘how are you going to feel?’
‘We don’t have to decide anything tonight,’ she whispered, nibbling his earlobe gently.
He breathed heavily against her shoulder for a few seconds before pulling her to him.
DAY 10
FRIDAY, 2 DECEMBER
Chapter 21
Annika woke up to the sound of a waterfall. She was lying tangled in the sheet, close to Halenius, and didn’t know where she was.
‘It’s rain on the roof,’ Halenius whispered in the darkness. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
She lay there, just breathing, glimpsing the four-poster bed’s mosquito nets through the shadows. The noise rose and fell with the squalls. There was a faint rumble of thunder in the distance from the Ngong Hills.
Dawn was breaking when she woke again. The rain had stopped. Just a few drops from the trees were hitting the roof, like little gunshots. Halenius was pulling on his jeans on the other side of the mosquito net.
She pushed the sheet aside and got out on to the wooden floor. The room felt cool and damp. She went to stand close to him, and ran her fingers down his bare arm. She saw his jaw tense. ‘We’re the ones who decide,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re the only ones who know.’
‘Frida booked the room,’ Halenius said. ‘She doesn’t know for sure, but she suspects.’
She wrapped her arms round his neck and kissed him gently. He put his hands round her and kissed her back, then let go of her abruptly and went to get the shirt he had tossed over the back of a chair. He put it on, did up two buttons, picked up the bags of money and headed for the door.
‘Frida will be here in fifteen minutes,’ he said, and left the room.
She stepped on to the veranda and found herself in Jacques Cousteau’s underwater world. Cool moisture swept round her like a wave, as the light filtered through huge, swaying leaves, as tall as a man. She took several deep breaths.
She stepped cautiously into the garden. Pots, hanging plants, palms, trees with red leaves and orange flowers, wooden fences smothered with more plants. The air smelt of soil and rain.
A sandy-coloured cat jumped on to the path in front of her and trotted up it, tail in the air, miaowing inquisitively. A gardener, a huge man in wellington boots and dark blue overalls, dropped his spade and bent down to the animal. He tickled it under the chin, stroked its head. The cat lapped up the attention, purring and rolling over on to its back. It was clearly used to this treatment and was making the most of it.
She stopped on the path. For some reason she was finding it hard to breathe.
*
Frida was wearing boots and lilac clothes that matched her hair. ‘Sleep well?’ she asked.
Annika tried to smile and got into the back, where the bags containing the money were already installed.
Halenius came jogging out from Reception and got into the passenger seat.
Frida started the car and turned right on to Karen Road. Annika looked back and saw the leopard sculpture disappear behind the trees. They passed the Karen Blixen Museum and something called the Kazuri Beads and Pottery Centre, weaving between the puddles on the road. The traffic hadn’t had time to build up yet and they cruised past furniture stores with canvas roofs, rows of shacks selling everything from second-hand cars and tin giraffes to ornate four-poster beds and firewood.
Red earth, overwhelming vegetation and endless lines of people. Where were they all going? Did their trek never end?
Wilson airport was surrounded by barriers and yellow gates. Frida paid something at a security booth and they were let through. Low cement terminal buildings, with signs that didn’t mean anything to Annika, Departments Wanausafari, Delta Connection, Safarilink, then a runway behind some gates, and the smell of aviation fuel in the air.
Annika stared at the guards beside the gates, their guns slung across their chests.
Had she ever had an answer to her question of whether ransoms were legal in Kenya? The British (and Kenyans) who had been imprisoned in Somalia had been arrested at an airport.
Her palms started to sweat.
Halenius got out of the car, yanked the back door open and pulled out the bags of money. Annika climbed out on shaky legs.
‘Do we have to go through some sort of security check?’ she said.
Halenius didn’t seem to hear her. He went up to Frida with a bag in each hand, put them down and gave her a hug. She was a head taller than him in her boots, but he rocked her in his arms and muttered something in her ear that Annika couldn’t hear.
She looked towards the gates. Two men in yellow vests were weighing bags on a large set of scales. From beyond them she could hear the roar of aircraft engines. The terminal buildings had tin roofs.
Were they going to check the bags? What would happen if they found the money?
Frida walked over to Annika and hugged her tightly. ‘Take good care of him,’ she whispered, and Annika couldn’t tell whom she was referring to.
The pilot, William Grey, stepped into the s
unshine from one of the terminal buildings. He was wearing a dazzling white shirt and pale beige linen trousers. He had grey-blond hair and a sparkling smile. ‘So you’re heading up to Liboi?’ he said, greeting them with a hearty handshake. ‘A bit off the normal tourist track, you could say. We’re going in that one over there.’
He pointed towards a row of small planes at the end of the runway. Annika had no idea which he meant.
‘Are you ready? You’ve got everything?’ He looked at their bags.
Halenius nodded.
William Grey strode off towards the yellow gates and they marched after him. Halenius was carrying a bag in each hand, Annika could see his fingers turning white from the weight. Would the guards notice?
The pilot showed the guards a little bundle of papers. One leafed through them, then called his colleague over. They read and discussed them in a language she didn’t understand, Swahili, perhaps. She could feel the sweat running down her back and was concentrating on not fainting.
The guard folded the papers and opened the gate.
The pilot stepped on to the runway, followed by Halenius, then Annika. The guards looked at the bags but said nothing.
William Grey went up to a little single-engined aeroplane, painted yellow with black lettering. It looked like a wasp. He nodded towards the bags in Halenius’s hands. ‘So, what’s in them?’
Annika held her breath.
‘Money,’ Halenius said.
Shit, shit, shit.
‘Ah,’ the pilot said. ‘Are we dealing with a hostage situation here?’
‘Correct,’ Halenius said.
‘Frida didn’t mention that,’ William Grey said, still smiling. ‘A special rate applies in this sort of situation. In and out, no complications, five thousand dollars. Cash.’
Annika stared at the man. Was he serious?
He gave her a rather apologetic look and shrugged. ‘You never know if you’re going to make it back from an expedition like this. Has the army been informed?’
This last was addressed to Halenius.
‘I assume so. Interpol in Brussels is in charge of communications.’
‘Hmm. Do you have any co-ordinates for the site of the handover?’
‘Only that it’s somewhere near Liboi. We’re going to receive the co-ordinates during the flight. Are there plenty of landing strips up there?’
The pilot put on a pair of sunglasses. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but it’s semi-desert. It only takes a day or two at the most to clear a landing strip for a plane like this, fifteen metres by six hundred, that’s all you need. Clear a few bushes, keep the animals away, and you’re basically all set.’
Annika followed his gaze. ‘Do you do this a lot?’
‘A couple of times a month, usually at the request of the British Army. I’ll go and tell them we’re ready to roll.’
‘Can I use my mobile in the plane?’ Halenius asked.
‘Of course,’ William Grey said, then disappeared into one of the low terminal buildings. The sun had come out and it was going to be a clear, hot day. Steam was rising from the runway.
Annika gestured towards the plane. ‘Isn’t it rather small?’
It was smaller than her Jeep.
‘Any bigger and it probably wouldn’t be able to land,’ Halenius said.
‘Let’s go!’ the pilot called, pointing at the wasp.
William Grey sat in the pilot’s seat while Annika and Halenius squeezed into the two seats behind him. It was extremely cramped. The noise when the engine started up was utterly deafening. The pilot put on a pair of headphones with an external microphone, pointed at the headphones hanging next to their seats and signalled to them to put them on. Annika did so and found herself listening to a cacophony of voices. She assumed the tower was communicating with all of the planes that were ready to take off.
‘Requesting permission for Liboi, one eighteen north-east. We are ready for take-off,’ the pilot said.
A woman said something in reply that sounded like static. The noise of the engine changed and the plane began to move jerkily past rows of hangars. William pointed towards a large logo on one. ‘Those boys fly ransoms to the Somali pirates,’ he said in her headphones. ‘They put the money in watertight orange cylinders, then drop them into the sea. They look like fire-extinguishers, but with little parachutes.’
Annika watched the planes glide past, sparkling white in the sunlight. They were the largest, smartest ones in the whole of Wilson airport.
*
The plane left the ground with a gentle lurch and climbed upwards. Through the window on Halenius’s side she could see the slums of Kibera disappearing behind them. Behind the shacks the buildings of Nairobi city centre rose, the round bulk of the Hilton Hotel, the Kenyatta Conference Centre next to it, the four-lane Chinese motorway.
The plane shuddered. She clung to her seat and looked out of her window. The landscape was flat. William Grey pointed out various places and landmarks, the Nairobi river foaming with pollution, the snow-capped Mount Kenya to the north-west. The rectangular mirrors of water to their right were a sewage works. The video-camera was by her feet and it occurred to her that she should probably be filming, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘It takes two hours and twenty minutes to get to Liboi,’ the pilot said, through the headphones. ‘Are you hungry? There are sandwiches in the bag behind your seats.’
They got some out, and passed one to the pilot. Annika felt the bread swelling in her mouth until it almost choked her. She drank a little water and studied the door that separated her from the emptiness outside. It was thin and there was no lock, just a little chrome handle and a sticker saying ‘CLOSE’. Compulsive thoughts popped into her head and danced about. What if I didn’t close the door properly? What if I nudge the handle and it flies open? What if the glass breaks? If I fall out of the plane I won’t be able to deliver the ransom, Thomas won’t be released and the children will have to stay with Sophia.
‘You see that green area down there?’ the pilot said. ‘Del Monte’s pineapple plantation. And the slightly darker green? Coffee trees.’
A chirruping sound in her headphones told her when their mobile phones were picking up a signal from the various ground stations.
‘That’s the road to Garissa. We’re heading over the area occupied by the Wakamba tribe. They’re skilful farmers.’
The countryside below them turned into a surrealist painting, with broad, sweeping strokes of soft colours, overlapping and circling each other. A river wound through the landscape, which was cut across by straight, light brown roads.
‘That’s the reservoir that supplies Nairobi.’
A lake spread out to their left.
Is he down there? Are we flying over him right now? Can he see the plane? Does he know I’m on my way?
Tanzania disappeared to the south; Uganda came closer to the north-west.
They passed Garissa.
‘There aren’t any more landmarks now until we reach the refugee camps in Dadaab. All the way to the border there’s flat bushland. I’m going to climb to four thousand metres. It might get a bit cold. There are blankets on the floor.’
The chill came creeping up her shins, damp and sharp. She pulled up one of the blankets, a dark blue one, a Polarvide fleece from Ikea. ‘How often do you fly ransom payments?’ Annika asked.
‘Mostly I fly tourists from Kenyatta who want to get straight to the safari lodges, and I do quite a bit of crop-spraying. But I know other pilots who’ve stopped carrying tourists and only fly ransoms now.’
His words felt almost like an insult. Was this just an ordinary working day, one of many? Was she just this week’s desperate wife? ‘What do you tell the authorities? Do they know you fly ransom payments?’
He smiled at her. ‘Not exactly,’ he said, handing her a document stamped with Office of the President and Police Headquarters.
Clearance Certificate is hereby granted …
She skimmed thr
ough the text. Under the heading Purpose, the reason for the flight was explained: ‘To carry out EU conservation and community development project.’ For Kenyan Customs officials, this flight was registered as a charitable project, an attempt to support development and improve the lot of people living in the Garissa district of north-east Kenya, along the border with Somalia. The document was signed Commissioner of Police. She handed the sheet of paper back to the pilot and wiped her hand, as if it had left her dirty.
‘How often do you take hostages back with you?’ Halenius asked.
‘That’s what usually happens,’ William Grey said. ‘The kidnappers are mostly fairly civilized. They look upon this as nothing but business, so it doesn’t make sense to kill too many hostages. Bad for business.’
Annika swallowed the barbs in her throat.
The ground beneath them was dusty with drought. Sometimes there was a flash among the bushes far below, a sunbeam hitting a tin roof, a car, a water tank. On a few occasions they saw groups of buildings inside grey rings.
‘When are we getting the co-ordinates?’ the pilot asked.
‘During the flight. The kidnappers didn’t specify a time. I’ve told them when we set off, and gave them a description of your plane, so they know we’re on our way.’
Halenius took out his mobile. ‘There’s no reception here. Where’s the next mast?’
‘Dadaab.’
A red lamp had started to flash insistently on the instrument panel. William Grey tapped it gently. ‘The radar’s getting stronger the closer we get to the border. They know we’re on our way.’
‘Who?’ Annika asked.
‘The Yanks. They’ve got an unofficial base down by the coast. They’re keeping an eye on us.’
That must be the base Halenius had mentioned, the one that had sent the helicopter into Somalia to pick up the Spaniard.
‘We mustn’t be visible on radar,’ Halenius said. ‘The kidnappers were very clear about that. How are we supposed to deliver the ransom without anyone seeing?’
‘We head down towards Liboi but we don’t land. Instead we fly under the radar at a height of about thirty metres until we reach the designated site. Then we head back the same way, climb when we reach Liboi and switch the radar back on.’
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