by Henry Porter
‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Samson. ‘If these men were known to be IS killers, why weren’t they taken out by a drone attack?’
‘They were providing very useful information on various aspects of IS. We were anxious not to lose that.’
Samson sensed the usual fuck-up. If they’d taken these men out they would not now be on the road to Europe and that surely counted for more than any intelligence they were providing. It reminded him why, after his interview with the HR people, he hadn’t minded leaving SIS. So much time in the Office was spent reacting to, or covering up, completely avoidable disasters. He smiled pleasantly, as he always did, but groaned inwardly. Hell, he wasn’t part of it all any longer – he could say what he damned well liked now. ‘So, you let them go, and now you want me to find the only person who can identify them by sight – a very young boy. You’re asking me to clear up your mess.’
Nyman was unfazed. ‘The product of the surveillance was good – we weren’t the only agency to benefit from their incontinent use of phones – the Americans were in on it too. Many were involved.’
‘I see,’ said Samson, after a long silence. ‘But someone screwed up and now they’re in Europe?’
Nyman looked at the others round the table. ‘Perhaps Mr Samson and I could have a moment.’ They all got up and left the room. Nyman’s gaze followed them then returned to Samson. ‘There was, I agree, an element of our missing an opportunity. We’re trying to locate these men with voice recognition techniques, but they don’t appear to be using phones.’
‘So all you have is the boy’s word that they were in the camp in Lesbos?’
‘Yes. That’s why we need to discover more about him, and, if we find him, talk to him. You’re well equipped for that.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘For one reason, your early life mirrors his. You’ve been where this lad is now. Lebanon in the eighties – almost as bad as Syria today. Your folk were made homeless and lost everything. The flight from the country of your birth and all that follows that – the disorientation and dispossession.’
‘There’s a very vague similarity, but that’s all.’
‘And you’re familiar with what’s going on in Syria. You’ve been inside the country several times. The story about the artefacts is all bullshit – right?’
‘Talk to Macy Harp,’ said Samson equably. ‘He handles these inquiries.’
Nyman put his hands together in an attitude of prayer and rested his chin on his thumbs for a moment. ‘Harp’s not going to say anything, but we know what you were doing. You were looking for someone. I cannot hazard at the status of your operation. Let’s just say that we’ll keep our ears open for information that might interest you and let you know if we hear anything – is that a deal? There are connections to be made – links between apparently different strands of the Syrian nightmare.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Samson
‘Look, you know these bastards and you know how they operate. My view is that it will take a person of your calibre to find the boy and lead us to these individuals. I’ve talked to the Chief and he agrees with me; he wants you to do this for us. And of course we will pay you – very well, as it happens.’
Samson said nothing.
‘Think about it – take a walk, go and have a drink. But give me a decision within the hour.’ And with that, Nyman got up and left.
There was nothing in it for Samson. He turned to his reflection in the window and thought that on the whole he’d prefer to spend the next few weeks wearing some nice suits and visiting the racecourse. The last trip into Syria had taken it out of him physically, and in his reflection he could still see that odd, rather eclipsed expression in his face. You mislaid something of yourself in the hell of that country, and it remained there forever. He thought of Aysel Hisami, the young woman doctor whom he had failed to find but whose photograph remained in his wallet. Maybe he could help with this young boy, and it surely wouldn’t be an arduous job. He’d like to help nail those bastards and if that meant pursuing a kid for a few days in Greece, he would be happy to oblige.
Two
Ten hours after his first conversation with Nyman, Samson left his former colleagues in the Secret Intelligence Service, in possession of a new phone and satellite sleeve provided by O’Neill, who turned out to be the communications specialist, and parked the dusty Toyota Camry a hundred metres beyond the entrance to the refugee camp, on the western side of Lesbos. He walked back up the road, passing three fruit stalls, half a dozen hustling taxi drivers and a couple of booths from which girls in red mini skirts were selling phone cards. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself by nosing the car through the camp’s open gate into the crowds beyond it, and besides, he needed to get a feel for the place before meeting the psychologist, Anastasia Christakos.
Sonia Fell had made an appointment with her, saying that Samson was just checking a few details of her story for the European intelligence agencies. In her experience it helped to elevate a national intelligence effort to a European level whenever you could.
He had fifteen minutes to spare, so he walked beyond the high razor wire of Compound B, where Christakos worked in the camp’s medical centre, into an open area that resembled a bustling marketplace, except there were no stalls and nothing to trade. Maybe a thousand people had divided into lines for registration, food, water, clothes and blankets. Huddles of men urgently debated issues about the route north, each man listening as if his life depended on it, which it almost certainly did.
The sun was bright, and the wind whipped up eddies of dust and paper, tugged at the headscarves and dresses of the Arab women and turned the foliage of the ancient olive grove that surrounded the camp silver. On the hillside above, scores of white shelters were placed among the trees, and between these and the trees were hung brightly coloured cloths to give shade. Shafts of sunlight cut through the smoke from countless little fires.
It was all too familiar to Samson, reminding him of the refugee camp for displaced persons where his mother and sister had spent many months, while his father headed for London, looking for ways of getting them out and settling them in the damp, grey city, away from everything he knew and loved. He remembered the pall of anxiety, kids running wild, the garbage, the smell of food cooked in the open and the lassitude, particularly the hangdog expressions of the older men who’d lost everything and would never adapt to a new life.
He returned to Compound B, followed by three young men who wanted cigarettes. Samson smoked little, but he usually had a pack on him as a means to open conversations. He gave them each a couple and was cheered like a king.
At the gate, he was let in by a uniformed police officer and escorted to the medical centre, which occupied several large container cabins that formed a square. He entered one and a neat young woman, her fair hair tied back, rose from her desk and shook his hand lightly. As well as speaking fluent English – it turned out that she had trained at Bristol University in England – the psychologist took care of her appearance. She had a trim figure, clean white shirt, pressed chinos, good make-up, and a pair of large hoop earrings that framed her face.
They had coffee – rich Greek coffee – and Samson asked about her job, mentioning the stress and disorientation that he imagined were the chief problems she dealt with. This was a conversational gambit, nothing more, but the woman suddenly looked very serious. It had become part of her job as the camp’s child psychologist, she explained, to look after the grieving parents and to accompany them to the island’s morgue to identify the bodies of children who had been drowned on the crossing. Hundreds were washed up or picked out of the sea by fishermen, and it was her duty to help these people through this trauma, and, she added, to grieve with them and show her sorrow at their loss. This was how her day began two or three mornings a week.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Samson, ‘I didn’t mean
to be insensitive.’
‘That’s okay – really. It’s important visitors know the kind of pain these people have been through. Migrants are seen as a problem. We try to deal with them as individuals, not as problems.’
‘I’m sure you make a great difference,’ he said.
She lifted her shoulders and opened her hands. ‘Who knows? I do my best.’ She smiled. ‘So, tell me who you are. Do you work for an intelligence agency? Are you a spy?’
‘I’m not a spy,’ he said, smiling.
‘Then what do you do?’
Samson thought. ‘I find people.’
‘That’s what you do all the time – find people?’
‘Seems to be, though I didn’t set out to do this.’
‘And that’s really all you do?’
‘Sometimes these people are very hard to find.’
‘Is it dangerous?’
‘Not often.’
‘But now you’re working with an intelligence agency and you want to talk about our clever young man?’
‘I hope my associate made it clear that I am here just for an off-the-record talk. You okay with that?’
She nodded.
‘The report you sent to the camp commander found its way to our people and it intrigued my superiors. It seemed like there might be one or two things that fit with information that they have from other sources. This young man may have some really valuable things to tell us.’
She angled the desk fan away from her face. ‘How much do you know about his story?’
‘Very little.’
‘When his raft turned over in a storm and was destroyed on some rocks, he somehow grabbed hold of a baby girl and held on to her until some Spanish guys on their jet skis rescued them. He saved that baby’s life, but what was really fascinating is that rescuers say they saw a dolphin very close by and they believe it was keeping them both alive by holding them up in the water. The boy confirmed this. There are many dolphins around Lesbos and they often show interest in the rafts and follow them across, so maybe it’s not too incredible.’
‘That’s quite a story.’
‘Thank God the media hasn’t got hold of it. But you know there is a resonance here in Lesbos. Maybe you know the story from Greek mythology about Arion, the poet who was saved by a dolphin after being captured by pirates and shipwrecked near Lesbos.’ She stopped. ‘As with so many of these kids, we know very little about him.’
‘So, he isn’t registered – no photograph, no fingerprints. Did he have Syrian papers?’
‘No, but he told us he was Syrian, and the other boys who were held here with him accepted that he came from Syria because of his knowledge of their country.’
‘In your report, you stated that he had been in a Turkish camp. Do you know which one? He would have had to register there.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so – the situation is pretty chaotic and procedures are not always in place.’
‘So, when did he escape from here?’
‘Two nights ago, but this was the second time. We don’t yet know how he did it. The fence around the Protection Unit for Unaccompanied Minors is very high. You’ll see it on the way out.’ She pursed her lips and frowned. ‘You should know that this young man is very smart. He looks like an ordinary kid, but I did a test with him, just to establish his mental state and capabilities. His IQ was 145 to 150, the top 0.5 per cent of humanity. He could be the smartest person I’ve ever met. He has incredible language and technical skills. Let me show you something.’
She went to retrieve a folder from a filing cabinet and spread a few drawings on her desk. ‘I asked the boys to draw the place they would most like to be right at that moment. So they made pictures of their homes and their families – things like that. Actually, these tell you a lot about what these kids have lost.’ She handed him a drawing. ‘This is what the boy drew.’
Samson found himself looking at five tiers of red rectilinear shapes. Each plane had a distinct character with repeated features. The structure resembled an architectural elevation but was, if anything, more intricate. It was executed in a perfect perspective scheme and with different tones of red shading that were so even they might have been printed. There was an extraordinary precision and care to the work.
‘Isn’t it remarkable?’ she said. ‘And he has musical ability as well. He plays the Arabian flute quite beautifully. You are not dealing with an average kid.’
‘Well, it’s really impressive. Can I take a picture?
She nodded and he took pictures of the whole drawing and the signature.
‘Let me get this right,’ he said putting away his phone and handing her the drawing. ‘He told you he’d seen two, maybe three terrorists in the camp here – is that right?’
‘Yes, that’s why I wrote the report to the camp overseer. I can send it to you.’
Samson pushed his card with his email address across the table. ‘Where did he see them? Did he say what they looked like?’
‘He gave me no kind of description. He saw two near the entrance to this compound, and they saw him. He was sure of that and he said they would kill him if he remained here, because he knew where they were going and what they planned to do. That’s why he escaped the first time.’
‘He said that?
‘Definitely.’
‘Did you ask him details?’
Anastasia looked agonised. ‘No, I regret it, but I hear a lot of stories from these boys.’
‘What made you believe him?’
‘I’d had a bad day the day he told me – many difficult cases and a lot of stress. It was hard, you know? And the next morning I remembered one characteristic of this kid. He didn’t tell anyone about the dolphin and he didn’t brag about saving the baby, either. We only heard that part of the story after one of the rescuers from the beach brought the mother and father to see the boy so that they could thank him. Their gratitude was something to see. It was their only child, their firstborn, and yet he made nothing of it – he was just embarrassed. That got me thinking that this is a kid who doesn’t like to boast and he doesn’t make up stories. He steals a lot but he doesn’t lie. So that’s when I sat down and wrote the email. But he had already gone when I got to the camp.’
‘Could he still be on the island?’
‘Maybe, but I’m sure he headed for the port, which is where the police picked him up last time. A Blue Star boat for refugees left for Piraeus that night. He may have boarded that.’
‘Let me just get the timings right. If he sailed that night he would have reached Piraeus the next morning – two and a half days ago.’
‘Yes, then he would make for the border with Macedonia.’
‘How far’s that?’
‘More than five hundred kilometres. He’d have to take the train, but there are many wanting to travel so there’s a long wait. And the police might pick him up because he’s on his own and has no papers.’
‘So he could conceivably be in Athens still?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Can you give me an idea of his appearance?’
‘He’s about twelve or thirteen but he hasn’t reached puberty yet. He’s slight in build though I guess he’s about average height for his age; dark hair, quite a light skin, and light eyes – a brownish, pale green colour. They’re very striking. He told me they were like his mother’s.’ She stopped to think. ‘I only had two sessions with him one to one, and that was how I learned about his really amazing language skills. His father taught him English, now he’s learning German using the web. But there was . . .’ Puzzlement and anxiety flickered in her expression in quick succession. ‘I felt something was there – some big tragedy or shame in his life.’
‘He talked about a family – did he give you any clue which refugee camp they’re in?’
‘I don’t
even know if they were in the camp with him. That was the thing with him – he kept everything so tight. He never gave up anything voluntarily.’
‘Do you have any idea why he’s on the road by himself?’
‘I had the feeling that he’d been entrusted by his father with this mission. It’s quite a common story. If the family don’t have money, they send a boy to get asylum in Europe. It’s a huge responsibility for these children and you can imagine the psychological impact when they fail. They’re unrealistically optimistic about their chances and they have no idea of the dangers on the road. But this boy, he was the most determined I have ever seen. Maybe surviving the wreck when so many people were drowned has given him a feeling of invincibility.’
She straightened slightly. Through the window, her gaze followed two large men in Arab robes and loose red NGO vests who were making their way through the lines of people waiting for medical attention. A few seconds later they were ushered into the office by a Canadian aid worker, who pulled up chairs around a desk at the far end of the room and gestured for them to sit down. They were from the north of England, though Samson couldn’t quite place the accent.
He cursed their arrival. The psychologist seemed to have warmed to him and he had a lot more questions for her, but her manner had suddenly become formal again. She scribbled a note and handed it to him. Bar Liberty, Mytilene 9 p.m. – OK??? She walked over to his side of his desk, put her hand out and began addressing him in Greek. He nodded, though he hadn’t the slightest idea what she was saying.
‘See you later,’ she mouthed at the door.
Three
After sending Anastasia’s email to London, together with his notes on their conversation, Samson drove back to Mytilene and found a room in a hotel overlooking the port. Even though the boy might still be in Athens, he was sure Anastasia could tell him a lot more.
He took a can of beer from the mini bar and went out onto the balcony. He drew a cigarette from the pack and examined it before lighting up.