Djibouti

by Elmore Leonard

  “You have me, that’s all.”

  “You’ll be our gift to the Americans.” Harry dropped the cigarette between his legs to the floor and placed his boot on it. “But your partner, Jama the Amriki? I’m betting the Americans will pay more than ‘up to a million,’ once they discover he’s a traitor. What do you think?”

  “Why do you say I’m going to prison,” Qasim said, “and not be executed?”

  “You’ll get life for crimes against humanity,” Harry said. “Federal courts in America rarely decide on the death penalty. You’ll spend the rest of your years in a prison cell by yourself. One hour a day of recreation, rain or shine. They allow you to walk about in an enclosure about the size of a decent hotel room. Then back to the cell. You know what you’ll look forward to each day? Eating the dog food they give you on a tin plate and evacuating your bowels in a bucket. Ahhhh,” Harry said, “until one day you die of old age, finally a happy man.”

  “You say they won’t pay anything for me,” Qasim said. “Then why turn me in?”

  “I like to think of you as a lifer.”

  Harry opened his window to inhale fresh air rushing past—a bit cool—and closed it again.

  “Or,” he said, “I decide not to hand you over.”

  Qasim waited. He said, “Why?”

  “We know Jama’s an American.”

  “Tell me how you know.”

  “You call him Amriki, don’t you, for Christ sake? We both heard him speak English in Eyl the time I shot the first officer. Quit fucking with me, please. We both know he’s American.”

  “All right,” Qasim said. “Tell me what you want.”

  “His real name.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “And we let you go,” Harry said.

  Qasim listened to the sound of the car following its headlights on a road that came to no end.

  “If I had a match,” Qasim said. “I would strike it and look at your eyes.”

  Harry took his lighter from a shirt pocket and flicked it on. “You’d like to know,” Harry said, “if you can trust me. Look in my eyes, you bugger, and tell me. Can you?”

  What did they call this kind? So confident he believed you could see truth in his eyes. Or what would pass for it. Qasim saw nothing to encourage him. He said, “I walk away, you could track me in the desert and shoot me.”

  “It would be far better than prison, wouldn’t it? I’m kidding with you,” Harry said. “I give you my word as a gentleman, tell me his name and I’ll set you free.”

  “You’ll give up five million dollars?”

  “To get at least ten,” Harry said. “My offer for the name of a traitor they can look up in five minutes and know who he is, where he went to school or prison and got mixed up with Muslims. Without their knowing his name, he could speak Arabic to them, say he’s a former shepherd boy from the Holy Land. Crewed on the LNG tanker to raise money for his family, they’re lepers and can’t find employment.”

  You want to listen to him talk? Qasim thought. What difference is it, they have Jama, you tell his name or not? He said, “All right. When we reach Djibouti you will release me?”

  Harry waited a bit staring at the endless road in the headlights. He said, “That’s fine with me. What’s his name?”

  “I told you,” Qasim said, “when we reach Djibouti.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE FIRST THING XAVIER did, he got to Djibouti, was rent a Toyota, a white one.

  Dara was already back at the Kempinski, Dara in the same suite she had a month ago, with her clothes now, Xavier having cleaned out the Buster and had the boy bring up the bags and cases on his gold luggage cart. It was like the last time they’d seen each other was an hour ago, so used to being with each other. Xavier said, “I come off Buster, tied her up where we got her and was given back our security deposit, so we can give it to the Kempinski.”

  Dara, in her shorts and a bra, was lying across the settee with a flute of champagne and a cigarette, barefoot. She said, “We’re taking a time-out,” looking at her slim buddy Xavier across the room. “It’s too bad you’re an old man.”

  Xavier had to grin coming over to her.

  “Girl, you either cheeky or horny talkin to me like that, wantin me to prove the state of my manhood. Find out can I give you pleasure at my age or not. Want to put up some money?”

  “I was kidding,” Dara said.

  “Unh-unh, you feelin horny. You have time now to entertain the idea. On the Buster you horny once in a while but never remarked about it to me. I’ll tell you what,” Xavier said, “I’ll put up all the back pay you owe me for two months, add to it expenses I’ve paid out of my pocket. It comes to ten thousand and somethin. You catch your breath and realize I won—sittin up now havin a cigarette—you owe me double, twenty thousand and somethin.”

  “I’ve never in my life,” Dara said, “heard of a bet like that.” She took a moment to say, “What happens when you lose?”

  “I let you call it. You keep what you owe me and I go to sea for a year, or into my savings to make up the difference. But either way,” Xavier said, “you know we gonna have more fun than a barrel of naked monkeys.”

  SHE BELIEVED HIM, SHE did, but told herself to say something funny. Not get serious.

  She had a buzz, halfway down the bottle of champagne feeling good, but still had to ask herself, Are you nuts? The times he held her and she’d press against him were comforting, his arms around her, but not as lovers.

  What would she say after?

  You don’t have to say anything, he’ll say it. He’ll be funny and you’ll laugh.

  Maybe sometime later on he’ll want to do it again.

  Yeah…? He’s seventy-two years old, how long can he keep doing it, if he ever starts? Being with him every day, it isn’t like you don’t know him. You even know his bathroom smell. How can you be any closer to someone?

  XAVIER SAID, “YOU A tired little girl, huh? Worn out from dealin with pirates. I tied up at the dock, there’s the CIA man waitin for me, Patrick Mackenzie and two of his boys. Patrick tells me he’s met you. They come aboard and take two hours searchin the boat. I ask him what he’s lookin for, contraband? Illegal shit like drugs? What for? This ain’t even your country. Patrick ask me was it hot enough for me. Been here three years, still talkin about the heat. I tell him, stay out of the kitchen. He frowns at me, don’t get it. They only talk straight at the embassy. Patrick takes me to meet the head security person, Ms. Suzanne Schmidt. She look at my passport and ask have I ever been arrested. I told her no, not for anything since I was a boy wasn’t piddlin. She serve me Turkish coffee without askin did I like it and we started smilin at one another as we talked. I asked her did she ever chew khat. Ms. Suzanne say no, she never tried it, and I said I’d get her some if she wanted. She said, ‘Oh, you can get it here?’ Sounding innocent. That’s my next project.”

  From living on the Buster Dara could go to sleep holding a champagne glass in her hand and not spill any. Xavier eased it from her fingers and finished it. Next he picked Dara up in his arms and laid her in her bra and short pants on the king-size bed and watched her curl on her side and stick her cute butt at him.

  Xavier looked at her thinking he’d been like the houseman with this woman long enough. Miss Dara, you like a cup of hot tea? I be happy to fetch you one.

  It wasn’t ever like that, Xavier serving the lady of the house, but it was a way he thought of it now and then. He’d see her spread the hammock on the deck and lie down on her stomach and unhook her bra to get her back tan. One time he said to her, “You leavin your ninnies pure white, huh?” She didn’t say a word but it was like she took it as a dare, rolling over to show her girlish breasts to the African sun. He said, “Careful you don’t burn your buns.” Not a word from her, eyes closed behind her sunglasses, ignoring him while he stared at her. One of Dara’s horny times aboard. He threw out a line and fished for supper. Like the houseman who’s seen all kinds of behavior and mi
nds his business.

  He said to himself, You not thinkin about gettin married and raisin a family, you thinkin about gettin laid. She wants to do it…Wants to try it, see if it works out…Like once in a while. It couldn’t be often anyway, the tank gettin low. He believed he was cool. Don’t say nothin, go at it, man. But looking at her on the bed he thought, No, you want to be tender, she’s a tender girl you’re holdin. Don’t say nothin, just be cool with the slow moves. See if you can get Miss Dara to scream and bang her blond head against the headboard. That’s all.

  After a while the phone rang.

  Xavier took it in the sitting room, picked up and said, “Dara Barr’s suite,” and heard Idris Mohammed’s voice.

  Idris saying, “That fucking Harry—I think he’s become crazy.”

  XAVIER HAD STUDIED THE Gold Dust Twins, saw Idris as a gentleman, though a wild one, he was a pirate. He had to be crazy to board ships, do all that pirate shit. Harry was something else. Idris couldn’t put his finger on it but saw him as a man not to trust, even though there wasn’t anything not to trust about him, not even his trying to sound like a Brit. Took after his mom. What’s wrong with that? What Xavier wanted to do was go home and let the Arabs do their Arab shit and not worry about it. They were all crazy.

  Xavier let her sleep for an hour and got a Coke ready for when she opened her eyes and saw him. It wasn’t a bad look, but it wasn’t horny either.

  “Idris called.”

  Dara said, “Wait,” went to the bathroom first, then the sitting room for her cigarettes and dropped on the settee.

  “Idris called…”

  Dara showing her cool now.

  “They not gettin along. Idris say Harry’s tryin to fuck up the deal. He wants to find out without comin out and askin if the reward’s for dead or alive.”

  “Alive,” Dara said. “The feds want to parade them around first. They’ve got a major terrorist they can use, get him to tell on some of the other al Qaedas.”

  “If they can’t deliver them dead,” Xavier said, “Harry wants to give them Jama under his real name and negotiate up his price. Harry believes he’s worth at least ten million bein an active traitor and a black man. Thinkin the things they can do with that combination.”

  Dara lighted a cigarette.

  “Where did he get Jama’s real name?”

  “Qasim’s the only one knows it,” Xavier said, “but Idris don’t think he’s told Harry yet. Like Qasim wants to make sure he’s out of there before he tells.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Right now they hidin out in the African quarter.”

  Dara smoked her cigarette.

  “Harry’s too glib for me. I ask him a question, he always has an answer I’m not expecting.”

  “All Idris wants you to do,” Xavier said, “see if you can settle Harry down. Idris says he’ll take whatever reward they offer and leave town. Harry wants to shoot the moon, see if he can score big off Jama.”

  “They know what’s going on,” Dara said, “the embassy people, they’ve been following this since the Toyotas left Eyl. Remember we tried to find out who was taking pictures?”

  “I thought we might’ve been hasty,” Xavier said, “but it didn’t matter to us that much. You want to talk to Harry? Or let them fuck up their deal without your help.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It ain’t up to me. I’ll tell you, though, that boy Jama, I keep thinkin of him. I wouldn’t mind chattin with a real terrorist from back home.”

  “How do we find them?” Dara said.

  “Idris give me directions. He’s gonna be waitin for us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THEY WERE IN XAVIER’S Toyota, feeling their way south through the African quarter.

  “Idris say to go down past the circle by Avenue Thirteen and it becomes rue des Issas. We keep straight ahead…all right, we on rue des Issas now and we keep goin till we come to Avenue Twenty-six.” Now they were looking into the narrow side streets they crept past, sightseers taking in the native quarter: streets full of junk and rubble, chunks of cement worn from walls to lie where they fell. Laundry hung from clotheslines above the decay.

  “It’s a slum,” Dara said. “Maybe the worst slum in the civilized world.”

  “How you know it is?”

  “How could you make it slummier?”

  “Some in India bug your eyes out. But their slums don’t seem as busted up and put back together, old boards and strips of corrugation from someplace else. There’s what looks like a mosque I’ve seen in this quarter, made of old strips of tin they painted blue. They pray five times a day and make four hundred fifty dollars a year. How come Allah don’t listen and give ’em a raise?”

  “Or a kick in the ass. Why do they live here, with the rats and the roaches?”

  “It’s they-all’s home.”

  “They could leave.”

  “Go where?”

  “Those two guys under their umbrellas,” Dara said, “what are they talking about?”

  “What khat’s selling for today.”

  “I could do an entire documentary,” Dara said, “on the African quarter. You know it? Shoot the European section for contrast, an area somewhat less depressing.”

  “Show the Foreign Legion in their short pants.”

  “The Eritrean girls,” Dara said, “dainty hookers making a few bucks a day.”

  “If that,” Xavier said. “Cover the nightlife you want some contrast.”

  “I’d have to do another project first,” Dara said, “like Eskimos.”

  “Take your time. Djibouti’s always gonna be here.”

  Xavier said, “We turn left on Avenue Twenty-six, go down a few blocks…Look for a place to get a beverage has Arab writing all over it, the front open…Hey, and there’s Idris raisin a glass to us.”

  “He doesn’t look worried,” Dara said.

  “No, ’cause he has you now.”

  IDRIS HAD TO HUG Dara and tell her she was a lifesaver for coming. “But we don’t want to stand here talking, police driving by. Harry spoke to the chief of police and promised him a reward from the reward we get and the chief said okay, they let us finish our business. We didn’t tell the police where we’re hiding the two Qaedas, I don’t want them following us.” Idris said, “What I want to ask you first, do you know Jama Raisuli’s real name and where he’s from in America?”

  Xavier thought she might tell him “Sean Connery” the way she gave him a glance. But then shook her head and asked Idris, “Why?”

  “Let’s go away from here,” Idris said, “and I’ll tell you.”

  Xavier followed Dara and Idris, sometimes single file, into the heart of the African quarter, winding through streets of litter and crumbling walls. No different than it was thirty years ago once Djibouti gained its independence. Who needs fresh cement on the walls when you got fresh khat to graze on? They sat talking to each other with jabs of words. Man sitting under an awning made from his wife’s old hajab. The man said to them in half-assed English, “What you doing here?” Got no answer but didn’t give a shit. They turned a corner and were in front of a home from colonial times, its stucco peeling, a house of rooms with high ceilings, three floors of them, tall shutters hanging on the windows, rickety shutters once a shade of blue.

  “Here,” Idris said, getting out his keys to unlock the door.

  Light filtered through the shutters. Two Somalis sat with their tea and AKs on a formal dining table repainted green. Idris took them past the Somalis and up an aged staircase from another time, telling them, “We kept the Qaedas tied up in separate rooms. They behaved so we let them share a room during the day, so they can talk, think of a way of escaping. I ask them, ‘What do you want to be handcuffed to, a chair or the cot?’ We let them talk and smoke. I gave them a glass of wine and Harry had a fit. Not the kind you imagine but a Harry fit. He becomes cold and talks to me in a superior way, as though I’m only an assistant. I would never work for
him.”

  Idris reached the top of the stairs where a Somali stood with his AK. Idris turned to Dara and Xavier a few steps below saying, “Harry wants to sell Jama for nothing less than twenty-five million.”

  Dara said, “Harry’s a gambler?”

  “I don’t know him well enough. We play cards, he doesn’t care if he loses. Harry dreams of being known by important people in the world.”

  “Stuck in Djibouti,” Dara said.

  “Harry will tell them we want twenty-five million for Jama—why not—and include Qasim, a notorious al Qaeda, throw him in as part of the deal. Harry says he’ll wait until they stop laughing in their cultured way and tell them, ‘Once you pay the reward, we will give you Jama Raisuli’s real name, an American-born black now a traitor.’”

  “He has a passport?” Dara said.

  “I believe still on Aphrodite.”

  “You’re sure Jama doesn’t have it?”

  “Harry searched him. We tell the Rewards people they can have the terrorists, reveal to the world how they have cracked open al Qaeda. Harry has it all in his head, what they say and what he says in return.”

  “I can hear him,” Dara said. “But does he have Jama’s real name?”

  “Qasim,” Idris said, “is the only one knows what it is, but won’t tell Harry until he’s sure he can walk away from here. Qasim has been causing terror I believe most of his life.”

  “What’s the problem?” Dara said.

  “Harry wants to get the name from Qasim and still turn him in, with Jama. But Qasim wants to be sure he’s free and then telephone Harry and give him the name. He swears by Allah any promise he has made in his life he has kept. Harry’s trying to think of a way he can work it.”

  “Follow him,” Dara said. “He makes the phone call, bring him back.”

  “Harry’s thinking of something like that. But who brings Qasim back? Harry doesn’t trust the Somalis.”

  Dara said, “Is he here?”

  Idris motioned them up the few steps to the second floor saying, “He went out for a stroll, Harry says so he can think with a clear head, without all these Somalis about.”