The light from the window was fading when the door opened again, and this time it was Amir and a swarthy tall man wearing western clothes – jeans and a polo jersey with salt stains beneath each arm.
“Stand up,” Amir ordered.
Salma rose unsteadily and the man looked at her like he was examining a horse.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
She did.
“Lift your arms and do it again. Arms to the side,” the man said.
Salma complied and almost fell down from another wave of dizziness. If either Amir or the customer noticed, they didn’t care, because they began negotiating a price for her while she stood six feet away, Amir extoling imaginary virtues with increasingly implausible claims, the man snorting in derision, listing real and imagined flaws down to the size and shape of her nipples from the photographs and a mole on one buttock. Salma kept her expression slack and didn’t react when they finally agreed on a price for her that amounted to three thousand dollars – the customer arguing that he could get younger and less spoiled for only a little more, Amir pointing out her creamy skin and athletic build.
The entire exchange sickened her, but it also meant that she would have a chance to escape, and she fought to remain outwardly calm at the idea. Amir was about to shake his hand when his iPhone beeped, signaling a text had come in. He read it and his eyes widened, and then he turned to the man and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, my friend. I can’t go through with the deal. My apologies for wasting your time,” he said.
“What! You agreed to my price. You can’t renege now!”
“I’m truly sorry, but I have no choice. Come. I’ll explain outside, where it’s cooler and doesn’t smell like dung.”
“No. I don’t want an explanation. I want my property. I bought her, as agreed.”
“True. But you haven’t paid. And we haven’t shaken. So she isn’t yours. Again, a thousand pardons, but I can’t sell her.”
“If you go back on this, you’ll have to contend with me tomorrow, Amir. You know my reputation. I won’t be cheated.”
“I haven’t taken a dinar from you, so you haven’t been cheated out of anything but a few minutes of your time. Which I’ll compensate you for with the first choice of our next batch, I swear. You’ll have your pick for a giveaway price.”
“Someone bid more than me? Is that it, you little conniver?”
“Of course not. I would never dishonor you like that.” Amir glanced at Salma. “Come. Let’s talk where there’s a breeze. I’ll explain everything.”
The customer reluctantly agreed, and the door closed again, leaving Salma to her thoughts. Her shoulders slumped and she felt herself tremble in spite of the stifle, completely mentally exhausted. She’d been so close to getting out of this prison, and at the last moment fate had intruded? It seemed impossible, but it was true.
Salma sat back down, her stomach growling from having not eaten for over twenty-four hours, and began her breathing again, eyes closed, refusing to speculate on what had soured the deal but determined to be ready for whatever came next, no matter how demanding.
Chapter 16
Tripoli, Libya
A dilapidated fishing boat sat in the middle of the harbor, loaded to the bursting point with refugees, the hull down well below the water line. Small wind waves lapped at the wooden planks as the packed humanity above, who had paid top dollar for the chance to get out of Libya, fidgeted, there being no space above decks or below to do much else.
What little moonlight there was seeped through the marine layer that blanketed the port, rendering the area dark except for ghostly shadows, the hulls of the far larger cargo ships jutting from the surface like islands. The fishing boat’s single diesel engine burbled quietly as the captain idled near the breakwater opening, waiting for a dinghy that approached with two men aboard.
When it reached the boat, the rubber watercraft bumped to a stop alongside the stern, and the captain and one of his deckhands pushed through the crowd of refugees.
“Got your message,” the captain said to the men in the dinghy.
“We’ve got a delivery for you.”
The captain shook his head. “We’re full up this trip, boys. Can it wait?”
“Afraid not. But don’t worry. Only weighs maybe twenty kilos.” The man patted a rough cloth sack in the dinghy.
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing you have to worry about getting caught with. Why? You expecting to be stopped?”
“Shouldn’t. Everyone’s been paid off.”
“Then why the twenty questions?”
The captain frowned. “I want to understand the risks I’m taking.”
“There is no risk. We’ve done enough business together you should know that by now.” The man tossed the captain a brick of euros. “That’ll make it worth more than your while. Just pass it off at the other end and there’s another half for you.”
The captain sighed and nodded. “All right. Hand it up, and I’ll find someplace to fit it.”
The man hoisted the sack and the deckhand grabbed it and pulled it aboard. It clanked when it struck the stern, and the captain stared at it suspiciously.
“Wasn’t expecting that. Most of your stuff is…softer.”
“I told you – don’t worry.”
“If you say so.”
The dinghy pushed off from the stern, and the captain looked to the deckhand. “Let’s get it below and have a look.”
“There’s no place to put it.”
“Worst case, we can stick it in the bilge. Sounds like it’s metal, so we don’t have to worry about it getting wet.”
They elbowed their way through the refugees and descended into the cabin area, which was also packed with human cargo, the air almost unbreathable from body odor. Even the captain and crew cabins were occupied to capacity, the profit from each refugee they could carry far greater than the discomfort of a few days sleeping in the pilothouse. Besides, the crew were being paid handsomely for the hardship and had gladly signed up for the voyages, where they could make in a week what they might in a month or more of ordinary work.
They swung open the engine room hatch and ducked through, and the deckhand turned on the single overhead light and held the sack out for the captain to inspect. He took it and peered inside, shook his head, and looked around.
“We should be able to fit it there,” he said, and laid it in the bilge near the engine.
“Might roll around in heavy seas.”
“Won’t hurt it, I shouldn’t think.”
They returned to the companionway and pulled the hatch closed behind them, and then made their way up to the cockpit, which was sealed off from the rest of the ship and had a tiny latrine and a single bunk in addition to the wheelhouse and the charting table. The captain and crew would dine on dry goods and drink bottled water the entire trip to Italy, and so wouldn’t have to leave except to check on engine fluid levels and ensure nobody had clogged up the head below in the cabin area.
The refugees would eat whatever they’d been able to bring, and would drink metallic-tasting water from the tanks, which were only half full in order to compensate for the weight of the overloaded boat. Even though the craft had been designed to haul dozens of tons of fish, the captain was pressing his luck, and the craft was beyond its limits with hundreds aboard – something he was normally loath to do, but with the weather calling for relatively calm seas, a risk he was willing to take.
The trip would be over in forty-eight hours, assuming the boat could maintain a steady nine knots, which was more than doable, even given the crowded conditions. The hull topped out at just shy of twelve, but at nine would combine optimal fuel consumption with speed. If he had to go slower, he could, although conditions on board would deteriorate with each additional hour. After having completed countless runs, he knew the drill.
“All right. Let’s get underway,” he said to his three crewmen, and put the transmission in gear and eased
the throttle toward the windshield. The boat hardly seemed to react at first, and then it slowly inched forward and pushed through the water until it was steaming along at jogging speed, rolling slightly from the swell as it rounded the breakwater into the Mediterranean Sea.
Nobody from the Libyan navy or its laughable coast guard would stop him, he knew, and certainly not after the terrorist attack that had shut down half the port. Nobody on the Tripoli side had the slightest interest in interfering with the refugee trade, which was a major source of income for many who worked the waterfront, including many of the families of the navy personnel. That, and the captain routinely paid off the coast guard, which ignored his nocturnal runs, he being one of the more reputable of the human traffickers – those in the nearby port of Zuwara were notorious for loading unseaworthy boats to the gills with the desperate, who paid anywhere from $750 to $2500 for a trip to Italy but would largely never make it. The strategy of the Zuwara smugglers was to pay several migrants who understood the basics of boating to guide the boats to international waters and then allow them to run out of fuel in the hopes of being rescued by one of the groups that patrolled the area to attempt to prevent senseless death that had become a staple of the trade.
The captain’s craft was in far better condition and more sturdily built than the open-air craft favored by traffickers who had no intentions of attempting to make it to Italy. It had started its life as a real working boat in Tunisia, and unlike the disposable craft that the captain’s competitors bought for single trips, was worth considerably more for its integrity and equipment. His operation charged top dollar for passage, but even so, with competition fierce and prices down, he was forced to overcrowd the craft past its safe limits.
The boat passed several other Libyan fishing vessels hauling in their nets, and the captain hailed each on the radio and exchanged pleasantries and gossip, exactly as he would under normal circumstances. The swell was three feet, and the boat so heavily loaded that it barely rocked, merely rising up and down on the inky water as the captain pointed the bow north, the breeze so light there was no whitewater at all as far as the eye could see. He switched on an old Furuno radar unit and set the range to twelve miles, and then turned to his crewmen. “I’ll do first watch with Ramzan here. You two get some rest. We’ll wake you when it’s your turn.”
“Okay, boss,” one of them said, and turned to the other. “I’ll take the bunk for the first half. You get it the second.”
“Fair enough.”
The men moved to the rear of the cockpit, and the captain climbed onto the seat while Ramzan took a seat at the charting table. The trip under the best of circumstances was a boring one, the worst that could happen a freak storm, which at that time of year was highly unlikely, or an interception by the Italian navy that wasn’t going to happen given how underfunded and overtasked it was. That, and the captain had paid off the Italian coast guard to look the other way as he entered Italian waters, and busy itself with other more important matters than three hundred and eighty miserable souls willing to risk drowning at sea in exchange for a better life.
Chapter 17
Sebha, Libya
Jet traversed the dusty streets from her hotel, taking a different route to the mosque than the previous day in case her attackers had decided to return better prepared. Beneath her robe she had not only the pistol but the MP7A1 and several spare magazines in the event she got cornered and needed more firepower. She doubted that would happen – Jet was expert at reading character, and the men who’d tried to abduct her had been cowards – but sometimes cowards were emboldened in larger groups, and she didn’t want to underestimate them.
She’d spoken with Leo, who had assured her that they hadn’t heard from Salma and advised her to try the rendezvous again today in case Salma had been unaccountably delayed, and Jet resigned herself to spending another few hours baking by the mosque, waiting for the woman to show. Jet had no opinion one way or another – it was as good or as bad a plan as any she could come up with – but she wasn’t optimistic. If an operative missed a key meet, there were few positive reasons.
Jet’s hotel was adequate, nothing more, but well-guarded and fortified against attack, which meant that she could actually sleep without keeping one eye open. Even so, she’d gotten only marginal rest, and her eyes burned and she found herself yawning periodically on the way to the mosque, following two other pedestrians going in the same direction for a modicum of security in numbers.
When she arrived, it was the identical scene as the prior day, the sidewalk café empty and her table waiting. She took the same seat and the owner greeted her with a smile, which Jet returned as she ordered tea, her eyes already scanning the area for Salma, as well as any miscreants. Seeing nothing obvious, she settled in after checking her watch to confirm that she still had forty minutes before 10:00 rolled around again. The tea arrived and Jet handed the man a ten-dinar note, telling him to keep the change. That earned another smile and a curious look. Berbers weren’t known for effusive generosity or wealth, so by those standards, Jet was an anomaly.
She’d barely taken two sips when she spotted a woman carrying a basket, wearing a headscarf exactly like the one Leo had described. Jet watched her amble down the sidewalk, stopping to inspect goods being sold from the shade of doorways along the way, her body language relaxed. When she crossed over to the mosque, Jet choked down the rest of her cup and rose to follow her, glad that she’d decided to show up early again.
Jet didn’t want to run to catch up, but she increased the length of her stride, puzzled by why Salma wouldn’t have stuck to the program and waited by the mosque. Maybe she’d seen something dangerous that Jet had missed? Perhaps she was planning to swing back around when it was closer to ten? Jet didn’t want to speculate, and put her effort into closing the distance between them without being obvious about it.
The woman turned a corner, and Jet speed-walked to it. The street she found herself facing was full of people, but none wearing the telltale headscarf. So where had she gone? And why had she disappeared?
Jet saw that the traffic was headed toward another side street, and she went with the flow, picking up her pace as she walked. At that street she rounded another corner and almost ran headlong into a crowd of people – mostly women in robes much like Salma’s, shopping at the sidewalk stalls of an outdoor market. Jet blinked at the vision of hundreds of robed figures examining fruit and nuts and exchanging views on their quality, and squinted to try to locate the headscarf in the throng.
She felt a tugging at her robe and looked down to find an urchin pulling at it, a dirty palm uplifted, begging. One of the boy’s eyes was swollen shut and crusted over, and Jet looked away as she felt for a coin. He was perhaps Hannah’s age, but with no chance of anything but a hellish existence. Her fingers found one, but she released it and instead pulled out a five-dinar note and handed it to him. His good eye widened in surprised delight, and he squealed and ran off at top speed after a shouted thank you. In spite of the urgency of her chase, Jet smiled and felt a pang of regret at not giving him more.
Up ahead a flash of color drew her attention, and she spotted the headscarf stopped at one of the stalls. Jet edged past groups of intently shopping women until she reached the stall, and stopped beside her quarry to study her more closely.
It wasn’t Salma.
Not even vaguely similar.
Jet exhaled in frustration and then reached for one of the dates the woman was inspecting. “What do you think?” Jet asked.
“I’ve seen better. And he’s asking a fortune for them.”
“Ah. Then best to keep looking.”
“That’s my plan.”
Jet flashed her a friendly smile. “That’s a gorgeous hijab. May I ask where you bought it?”
The woman’s hands flew to her head. “This? Oh…thank you. I…I don’t know where you could buy one, honestly. But it is beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Was it a gift?”
/> “Not at all. I actually found it at my work.”
“Really? And where’s that?”
“I’m a housekeeper at a small hotel not far from here. I do their laundry, that sort of thing. One of the guests must have forgotten it. It was under one of the beds.”
“I would never have left that. It’s really nice.”
“I know. My lucky day someone was in a hurry. You’d be surprised at the things you find over time.”
“What hotel do you work at? Would I have heard of it?”
“Oh, no. It doesn’t really even have a name. It’s over on the corner by the old bus depot.” The woman named a street, and Jet pretended to understand the direction.
“Sure. That place. Do you like it?”
The woman tossed the date back, suddenly unsure about the discussion. “It’s a job.”
“Listen. I love that headscarf so much, I just have to have it. Would you sell it to me?”
The woman looked confused. “You want to buy it?”
Jet gave an embarrassed laugh. “Well, we are at a market. Bargains everywhere. Would you sell it? I’ll give you a fair price, and you could buy another one right here.”
“I…I wouldn’t know what it’s worth.”
“How about fifty dinars?”
Shock washed over the woman’s face. “Are you serious?”
Jet felt in her pocket for her Libyan money and pulled out a handful of bills. She counted out fifty and gave them to the housekeeper, who removed the scarf and snatched the bills away before Jet could come to her senses for agreeing to pay almost a week’s salary for a strip of fabric.
“Thank you. Thank you so much! You’ve really made my day.”
“And you made mine. I appreciate you parting with it. It’s really lovely.”
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