by Henry Porter
Samson was silent for a couple of seconds. He was appalled, because he had for some reason believed that as long as they were looking for her, and as long as they kept the brave young woman in their minds, she would live. It was a kind of superstition with him when searching for someone. He had to think of them all the time, and even though he didn’t know the young doctor, this compulsive imagining of her had brought her close to him, and now he felt a very powerful sense of loss. ‘I feel for her brother,’ he said. ‘He’s a good man.’
‘I’ve just had him on the phone. He’s not giving up. He’s putting all the money that he set aside to bring his sister home towards the identification of her captor – the man who tormented her and caused her death. Knowing Denis, I don’t fancy that individual’s chances. How’re things going your end?’
Samson was silent.
‘You there?’
‘Yeah, I was just thinking about her – sorry, I err . . .’
‘I know – it’s very disappointing for you. You did everything you could, Paul. No one tried harder to get her out.’ He paused. ‘How’s it going with the boy?’
‘Some small successes – we’ll see.’
‘Let me know if you need anything. I’ll keep in touch with the authorities this end.’
Samson hung up and got back into the car. The driver read the anger in his face. ‘You okay, Mr Samson?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said. But he wasn’t. Over the last year, he had learned a lot about Aysel Hisami’s research into a particular type of brain tumour suffered by young children. He still had her picture in his wallet and on his phone. He’d showed it to hundreds of people in Turkey and Iraq and the reaction was always the same – what a nice-looking woman! She radiated integrity and dedication. It appalled him that those monsters pushed such a person to kill herself, while, of course, claiming that rape, torture and enslavement were part of their holy mission and the will of God.
Twenty minutes later they reached Idomeni. It was hot and the camp was heaving with people waiting for the border to open again. The Macedonians had closed it, saying that there weren’t the facilities to cope with the vast movement of people. The transit camp at Vinojug, just over the border, was overwhelmed and the platforms at Gevgelija station, close by, were crowded with migrants waiting for the next train to the Serbian border, which was not expected until the following morning. A government spokesman said the town could not cope and added that the Macedonian people would not continue to tolerate lawless bands of young men roaming their country.
He got out and this time the other phone – the encrypted handset, with the satellite sleeve – rang.
It was Sonia Fell with an update.
Ten individuals in Stuttgart had been identified as possible candidates for Naji’s uncle. They were being interviewed by the BND – the German Federal Intelligence Service – with the view to gaining information about the boy’s family and where they were in Turkey. Calls from Lesbos to Turkey had been monitored for the period of Naji’s stay on the island, as they were now from Idomeni. This seemed a hopeless task, except that they were looking for a comparatively rare caller – a boy whose voice had not yet broken. London had also reached out to contacts in the Balkans to get a clear understanding of the important figures in the smuggling networks that operated in the area, to see which might help trace the boy.
Sonia Fell was overseeing this inquiry. She also told him she was contacting the children’s services of the main NGOs working along the route to see if there were any patterns of behaviour of children travelling by themselves; anything that could help predict what Naji might do. She was becoming aware of the level of abuse and violence visited upon young women and children on the migrant trail. If these crimes were committed against locals they would provoke outcry, but because they were happening in the flow of the vast transient population they were rarely recorded, let alone investigated.
‘There are a lot of predatory men out there, Paul,’ she said, ‘and talking to aid agencies, I have no doubt that that this is going to be the greatest threat Naji faces on the road. We just have to hope you find him first, and that he understands what’s out there.’
Chris Okiri, meanwhile, was examining the possibility of placing coded messages on various websites. This had originally been Samson’s idea. Okiri was thinking in terms of a puzzle that referenced the dolphin and the rescue of the baby. It had to appeal to the boy’s intelligence and it must mean something only to him. A member of GCHQ’s staff, who was active in setting and solving challenges on various obscure puzzle websites, was helping to design the puzzle that might intrigue the boy.
Samson looked across the biblical multitude in the late afternoon sunlight. ‘We’re going to need more people on this,’ he said. There was a silence the other end. ‘Hello?’
‘I’ve put you on speaker,’ said Fell.
He repeated that he would need more people.
‘We’re not in a position to send anyone quite yet,’ said Nyman. ‘I’m hoping that Sonia will join you in a week or so. She was once stationed in Belgrade. And a man named David Cousins, whom you can call upon in extremis, is currently in that embassy – though I have to say that he may not be in the first rank of talent the service has to offer!’
‘I don’t think you quite understand the challenge,’ said Samson firmly. ‘We know this boy has very little money and no papers, so he’s likely to be travelling on foot. That means it’s going to be hard to pursue him by car, because they are using tracks and rail lines, as well as roads. But equally it would be crazy to attempt to follow him on foot because we might commit to the wrong route and lose a lot of time. We need at least two people – one on foot and one in a vehicle. In fact, I believe we may need three or four – the third and fourth would cover all the rail and bus stations and keep in touch with the aid agencies et cetera. The problems of communication in that territory are going to be huge, even with a satellite phone.’
‘As I say, you will soon be joined by Sonia,’ said Nyman, cutting him off. ‘And we have also arranged for a top man to act as your driver and fixer while you’re there, a man named . . . What’s his name, for God’s sake?’
‘Vuk,’ said Sonia Fell. ‘Vuk Divjak.’
‘Who’s Vuk?’ asked Samson.
‘Vuk is an old contact of ours,’ she said. ‘A legend in the Belgrade embassy during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.’ She stopped. ‘He’s unusual, but absolutely reliable, and you’ll need an interpreter. He’s going to meet you in Macedonia if you don’t catch up with the boy before then. And he will stay with you as long as you need.’
‘Vuk!’ said Samson doubtfully.
‘Yes, the name means Wolf,’ said Fell.
‘Right,’ said Samson. He hung up and went to tell his driver that he would no longer be needed. Then he shouldered his pack and headed to some trailers on the far side of the camp. On the way, he passed close to a group of women sitting in a circle. Suddenly, a squat female in a brightly coloured headscarf rose from their midst and launched herself at a much younger woman on the other side of group, shrieking abuse and tearing at her face and clothes. Samson sidestepped them and kept moving. Three men rushed to drag the assailant off. One of them remonstrated with Samson for not intervening. Samson shook his head good-naturedly and wished them luck over his shoulder. The woman was their problem, not his.
*
Naji, who was just a little distance from the same disturbance, waiting for an opportune moment to join the huge food line, also ignored it. For a boy as camp-smart as he, the spat between the women represented an excellent opportunity and he plunged into the line while everyone was distracted. He did not notice the man with the pack walk past the fight, for he was on the lookout only for signs of his pursuers. The number of people in the camp had almost doubled during the day and the aid workers were frantically trying to cope with the demands for food
, water and shelter. He surged forward and grabbed a couple of extra bread rolls, shouting that they were for his family, and then joined a crowd around a pickup that had just arrived with thousands of water bottles. He took three, drained one and placed two in the side pockets of his pack.
There was still over an hour before he needed to go to the Fire of the Africans. He wandered around, his practised eye alert to any opportunity. He noticed a stick leaning against a car and took it, then an elastic tie on the ground by one of the tents that would help to compress his sleeping bag a little more. He thought a sheet of plastic that had been spread out to dry after the storm might come in handy, too. He folded it neatly into a manageable square and strapped it to his pack over the sleeping bag
The scavenging over, he wandered over to a trailer emblazoned with the UNHCR logo, inside of which were several people working at computers. He found a woman smoking a cigarette outside the trailer door and smiled at her. She exhaled a huge plume of smoke and smiled back. ‘How’re you doing?’ she asked.
‘Thank you, I am well,’ he replied. ‘Please, missus. Do you have Wi-Fi? I want communicate to my sister.’
‘You know there’s free Wi-Fi over there,’ she said, pointing in the direction of the tents.
‘Not good,’ said Naji. ‘Too many people using.’
She stubbed the cigarette out and picked up his hand and wrote the password on the inside of his arm with a Sharpie. ‘Keep it to yourself – okay, sport?’
‘Thank you, missus,’ he said, with what he imagined was his most charming smile.
She found this amusing. ‘Where did you learn your English?’
‘From my father – he is teacher,’ he said.
‘Well, he did a good job.’
‘You are from where, missus?’
‘Saint Paul, Minnesota in the US of A – and you?’
‘Hajar Saqat in Syria.’
‘Well, you go easy now. I hope you speak with your sister,’ she said.
Naji liked talking to the American woman: it made him feel that he wasn’t just some kid from a village in the middle of nowhere in a country that didn’t exist. Naji looked down at the phone in his hand and turned it on. He wondered if there was something wrong with it – although he had charged the battery in Thessaloniki for an hour, it was only a quarter full.
He patted down his hair in the reflection of the trailer window, put on his broadest smile and took a photograph of himself against the UNCHR logo, which he texted to his eldest sister, Munira. He waited for a reply. None came, so he sent a message saying he was safe, happy and well and would call her soon. There was no reply to that, either. He guessed her phone wasn’t charged or that she had no money on it.
Munira was the only member of his family who owned a phone. He was wary about calling, because on the only occasion he’d spoken to his family since setting out – to say he was safe and in Europe – he had found himself overwhelmed. He had stood there with tears in his eyes, unable to speak and at the same time desperate that his mother, who had seized the phone from Munira, should not guess he was upset. He kept it together – just – but afterwards told himself that if he was going to complete his journey and bring his family to safety in Europe, he had to behave like a man, and that meant that he should call Munira very rarely. He thought of her for a few moments. If he hadn’t packed all his possessions so efficiently, he would have taken out the little goatskin-and-silver picture frame and gazed at the photograph of his family, especially the face of his eldest sister, the person he was closest to in the world.
Six
In the glorious light of the late afternoon, Samson’s luck continued. After an hour of searching, he found the man running the transit camp, a personable Englishman named Stephen Ingersoll who worked full-time with the UNHCR. More importantly, he had been at the University of Oxford at the same time as Samson and they knew each other vaguely. He suggested that Samson wait in his camper van until the 6.30 p.m. update, when most of the transit camp staff would be reporting on various aspects of the day. A huge influx was anticipated the following day and, with the frequent border closures, the camp would be at breaking point. There was no hope of providing more shelter, and food and water were in short supply.
‘Things look serious for you,’ said Samson.
‘They are – very,’ said Ingersoll, looking up from his checklist. ‘Every time a border is closed, or there’s a problem in one of the five countries these people have to pass through to get to the Schengen area, a chain reaction occurs down the Balkans. A border closes in Slovenia and a thousand kilometres away the Macedonians close theirs, too. And guess who’s left with the problem – us.’
‘But none of this applies to the illegal migrants,’ said Samson, ‘the people who get through the borders without papers, like the boy I am trying to find. Most of the migrants you’re dealing with have to pass through Macedonia within seventy-two hours of entering, is that right?’
He nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘But an illegal can stay as long as he wants,’ said Samson.
‘True, but the borders are much harder to cross illegally. I mean, look at the Hungarians’ fence. And the Balkan police forces are tough.’ He paused and looked out of the window. ‘What we’re seeing is nothing new. Mass migration across the Mediterranean is thousands of years old. It is the way of things. The fascinating part is that migration actually works. Economies grow because of migration, the jobs that no one wants to do are filled and money is sent back to less well-off countries, making them richer and less dependent on the West. This is how it should be – that’s the point, Paul.’
Samson nodded. ‘I know. My family relied on the kindness of people like you, Steve. We were refugees in the eighties.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that about you.’ Ingersoll looked genuinely surprised.
Samson told him briefly about his own experiences in a camp, which were so present in his mind since Lesbos. He told him that nothing much had changed, except that the people probably had more in the way of possessions and they all had phones. ‘In Lebanon, we had nothing,’ he said. ‘But you can see why this number of people might frighten Europeans.’
Ingersoll looked irritated. ‘I don’t want to get on my high horse, Paul, but it’s a bloody good thing for Europe to be reminded there’s an outside world where people suffer and have nothing. We have a duty – it’s as simple as that. These are people we’re dealing with, not rubbish to be disposed of and forgotten about.’
Samson nodded. It was people like Steve and Anastasia Christakos who stood between humanity and chaos.
They walked a short distance to a tent where twenty key workers of the camp waited. They all looked tired and apprehensive.
At the end of the meeting, Ingersoll introduced Samson.
‘This is a delicate matter,’ Samson started. ‘My job is to find a thirteen-year-old boy who is travelling alone. We believe he’s been here within the last twenty-four hours – he may still be here, for all we know. He’s a Syrian, recently come from Turkey via Lesbos, where he was very nearly drowned. He’s in great danger from some extremely bad people who are actively searching for him. They may be here, too. The point is that he will certainly not survive these next few weeks unless we find him. I can’t go into further detail, but let me just say that finding this boy is regarded as a priority by several European governments. In a moment I am going to show you a picture of him, which, for reasons of security, I cannot distribute electronically. I hope you’ll take a long, hard look to see if the photo rings any bells.’ He stopped and swept the exhausted faces in front of him. ‘And can I ask you one more favour? We are working against the clock, and it is of vital importance that neither the boy nor any other party learns of our interest. So, I’d be very grateful if you didn’t mention what I’ve said outside this meeting. Rest assured that my primary concern is to save this boy’s life. Tha
t’s why I’m here.’
He walked to the front row and handed his tablet to a woman. She glanced down then looked up at him with astonishment. ‘I saw this boy this morning – he was stopped by the border police. I tried to bring him back here but he ran away from me.’
‘So he didn’t cross,’ said Samson, equally surprised that she recognised him.
‘No, he pretended to be a member of large family and they caught him and sent him back. Then he escaped because he can run a lot faster than me,’ said the woman, who told him her name was Patricia and she was from Switzerland. ‘Il est un délinquant?’
‘A tearaway,’ said Samson, giving a kinder translation.
‘Yes,’ she said nodding vigorously.
The other aid workers gathered round the tablet. One recognised him from the food line because he’d pilfered two bread rolls and the other, an American named Anne-Marie Millet, had actually spoken with him. They were all certain it was Naji, and moreover, two could say definitely that he seemed to have hooked up with a group of illegal immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa, who had gathered beside the camp and were generally making a nuisance of themselves. Patricia saw him head in their direction and Anne-Marie Millet watched him join the Africans there just half an hour after they spoke. Samson thanked everyone and asked Anne-Marie if she could give him five minutes.
They talked as he walked with her back to her trailer. Naji had told her the name of his village in Syria – that was helpful confirmation, if any were needed, of his identity. He had mentioned a sister and that his father was a teacher – almost certainly of English – both useful details that would help trace Naji’s family. Anne-Marie had noticed that he held a phone that was contained in a ziplock bag.
They reached the trailer. ‘So it was right here that he used his phone?’ Samson asked.