by Finn Óg
Then there was a slightly different tone coming from the water, a new urgency to attract the beam. Sam jabbed and swiped the torch like a dagger but couldn’t find a face, which must surely be turned towards the light. Suddenly two images were revealed and he juddered back to catch a veiled woman and a child. Of all the thoughts he might have mustered, his first was pointless: why hadn’t she taken off the niqab? The child was clinging to a pathetic life jacket, half inflated; the sort of useless article found under the seat in a passenger plane.
“Come and take the wheel, Isla,” Sam ordered, confident in his little woman’s ability to hold the boat steady to a compass bearing. He reached for a line out of the aft locker and tied it around his waist.
“Keep the boat at zero-six-zero, darlin’, ok?”
“Ok, Daddy,” Isla said, half frightened, half excited.
He kicked off his shoes, tore off his fleece, stepped over the guardrail and dived in.
Habid lay between the fragrant crisp white linen sheets of the largest bed he’d ever seen and wondered whether the job had been done.
He took comfort from his surroundings as the wind rattled the shutters outside. He imagined the fuel must be close to exhausted as his cheek plunged deep into the spongy pillow. Habid hadn’t cared about the outcome of previous trips – he hadn’t given them a second thought, but this one was slightly different – if it worked out then a much grander plan could be put into action. So, try as he might, his thoughts prevented him from dozing off.
Sam pulled fifteen hard strokes before the line snagged at his waist. His strength in the water had been hewn long before his years in the Special Boat Service but that had its drawbacks: he swam face down. It had been drilled into him in childhood, during the 6 a.m. training lengths he’d hammered out every morning in a Belfast pool as one of his bleary-eyed parents gazed on from the gallery. Because of that he’d taken his eyes off the woman in the water and now had to relocate her in the moonlight. He needn’t have worried.
Treading hard and breathing fast, he kicked round to confirm his bearings and find Isla but was gripped from the sea by a birdlike claw. He span in shock and was confronted with the menacing mask of the niqab and rabid eyes cutting through even the blackness of the garb. How the woman managed to remain afloat in the sodden shroud baffled Sam, but he barely had a second to ingest the image of the frightening figure before a girl of similar age to Isla was thrust towards him, unconscious, her head lolling back into the sea.
It took all the power in his legs to remain afloat in the waves as he extended the child, unfolding her like a tripod. He raised her head and rolled her slightly towards him. With his left arm curled all the way round her neck and over her face, he managed to pinch her nose and place his mouth over hers, forcing it open with his chin.
The woman immediately started screaming, slapping and grabbing at him in protest and Sam wished she would just succumb to the deep. He breathed hard into the tiny lungs and used his right forearm to bellow the child’s stomach as if playing the pipes. All the time he was being scrabbed and punched by the woman, and it was after he’d exhausted his second lungful that he turned and pushed her back, lifting his legs to give her as hard a kick off as he could. But she had somehow caught the life jacket and the rope between him and the boat, so wasn’t going anywhere. He’d no choice but to keep kicking and breathing for two. Every exhale was matched with a glance up towards the boat and Isla and at least two slaps or punches from the woman to his rear. He was about to give the effort up as hopeless when the child’s body started to gently convulse in his arms. He raised her further from the sea and she vomited heartily all over his half-submerged face. The result quieted the mother and placated Sam until he became aware of an entirely more frightening risk.
He looked up at their boat, now thirty feet away, and saw another woman emerging from the water, up the bathing ladder towards where Isla stood, alone.
3
Despite the decadence, Habid couldn’t enjoy his treat. It wasn’t his conscience that prevented rest, he possessed little by way of guilt or regret, nor was it concern that events at sea may not have gone to plan – that would have annoyed him, but it wouldn’t have surprised him. No, Habid was worried about getting caught. Not so much about being arrested, but the prospect of losing his earnings. He’d worked hard for his money and if some hotel worker alerted the police, the spoils would vanish. Baksheesh, they might call it. Corrupt wouldn’t come close to characterising some police officers.
Deportation he could deal with – it was his intention to return to Libya and repeat the process anyway, refining nicely as it was. Losing the loot, however, wasn’t attractive. He’d spent years taking border backhanders in the eastern desert, so he knew that capture would result in his money being pocketed by some low-level Egyptian official.
Greed got the better of him. He twisted around for a while and eventually sat up in bed, decision made. His clothes were still soaked from the wash he’d given them in the enormous bath, so he couldn’t just dress and leave, but in gazing at them hanging from the retractable line in the marble bathroom, his eye was drawn to a hatch above the toilet. Presumably an access point for the recessed spotlights.
Habid rushed to the main suite and looked at his phone and navigation kit but decided the cash was of more consequence, so he lifted the booty bag and stood on the toilet seat to deposit his wages into the ceiling.
“Daddy!” Isla screamed.
If anything, the woman on the boat was even more concealed than the woman in the sea. A burka clung to her body, shrink-wrapped and wringing. She moved with efficiency for someone who’d been struggling in the sea.
When faced with a choice: your child or someone else’s, it doesn’t need computing. Sam pushed the girl towards the woman who’d been attacking him and tore the line arm over arm as he drew himself towards his boat. As he did so the woman on board turned to face him, and although he couldn’t see her eyes or face he sensed some indecision.
Isla kept her station but looked with alarm at the woman in the cockpit. She’d never seen someone in a burka before and was clearly afraid.
“Daddy, please!” she yelled, panic setting in.
Sam hauled harder as the woman turned towards his daughter. Even the adrenaline wasn’t enough to launch him above the freeboard to grasp the toe rail, so he had to swim to the transom and mount the bathing ladder just as the woman had. He kicked his body from the water, but as he rose the rope snagged, holding him back. His eyes opened in panic as he realised what had happened. The drifting slack on the rope had caught the propeller shaft, and he realised it would soon wind the line back beneath the boat and pull him under.
“Knife, Isla!” he panted, as his numbed hands worked at the knot at his chest.
“What, Daddy?” she shouted, the wind and engine muffling her hearing.
“Knife!” he yelled, and she immediately ran to the life raft where they kept a timber-handled blade in a sheath. She drew it and ran in her little Crocs towards her father. At the same time Sam caught a feint from the woman in the cockpit, as if she’d been inclined to move or assist but had instinctively decided against it.
Isla presented the knife just as Sam’s ribcage tightened and the rope began to draw him back into the sea.
“Stop the engine, Isla!” he yelled as he was dragged back.
The waves caught his breath. He became wedged against the hull and he tried to get the blade between the rope and his skin, but it was dug deep into his flesh. His body rolled with the pressure sucking him towards the slowly rotating prop. Under water he flailed for the rope tail that was now behind him, dragging him towards the centre of the hull. He lashed wildly and his hand hit the propeller, snapping the knife from his paw. His breath began to combust and he was forced to gently exhale.
Then came a dawning: this is it. His mind hummed and pulsed; his heart, straining for oxygen, beating like a bass. But then a switch flicked from disciplined calm to desperation. His t
houghts shuttled through what his drowning would mean for Isla – left with the woman on the deck, the people in the sea. There was something wrong. He felt the prop hit his belt, his back, rip at his flesh.
Then slowly the judder in the hull stopped and the propeller halted. Isla had strangled the engine. The realisation summoned a second chance, a last effort. He rolled as far as he could and forced his stomach towards the skeg in front of the prop shaft. The air was gone from his lungs and his chest began to whoop and buckle. The skeg wasn’t sharp, designed only to prevent weed or sea debris from fouling the propeller, but with the vigour of what little panic was left in him he rubbed the rope against it, his face lacerated by the blade-like barnacles gripping the hull. His rhythm slowed as he asphyxiated and Sam didn’t even get to see the rope part and his hands open as a priest’s might during the offertory. What air was left in his bloodstream carried his spent body towards the surface.
They didn’t knock. Habid didn’t suppose they were obliged to. Egypt was a law unto itself these days – the Spring had seen to that. No matter how authoritarian any regime had been, the rising had wiped out the established order like a societal tsunami sweeping east; no matter how long any leader held power, nothing was stable any more. Rank and privilege had all but vanished along with any and all accountability.
That’s probably why they kicked the door in. Because they could.
It fell like a concrete slab and landed at Habid’s bare feet. Two suited men walked across as if it were a drawbridge. Each grabbed an arm. They dragged him into the corridor and down the opulent staircase.
Later he sat, like the fishermen he’d laughed at, in his underpants. His frame shook behind a rickety desk to which his hands were manacled as the two men – one small and one huge, took it in turns to reach across and slap or punch his face and head.
“Why did you come here?” they wanted to know. They’d obviously worked out that there was a game in play. It didn’t take much detective work, thought Habid, staring at the small Garmin handheld GPS they’d bagged and tagged and placed before him along with his phone. But they were confused. “Why not just use the coast of Libya?”
Habid held out for a short while until they went to work on his genitals, and then he pretended to crow like a cock.
“They’re too expensive,” he gasped, to save a testicle.
“Who are?” inquired the small suited man, his eyes slight as a snake’s.
“The tribesmen. They charge to let boats through to the beach. And the others.”
“What others?”
“Officials. The coastguard is difficult,” he said. “The men at sea, they cannot be bribed. But their bosses,” his voice tailed off, “too expensive.”
“They’re supposed to stop the boats.”
“They do. This is the problem.” Habid just shrugged.
Of course they were supposed to stop the boats, but why stop them when you could tax them? Everyone has to make a living.
“Where did you get the boat?”
Habid said nothing, so the skinnier one nodded to the brute who unlocked the cuffs and dragged him to the wall. Habid started to panic as his arms were raised to a hook and he was half hung to an inverted and painful dangle.
“We carried it,” Habid said.
“I asked where you got it!” screamed the skinny suit, who found Habid’s apex with a shiny loafer.
For some reason Habid noticed its leather tassels as he slunk towards the grimy floor but found himself dangling from his bloody wrists.
“A man, from Suez,” he managed, as he was unhooked and shoes began to dance on his head.
When he came round he stared in horror at what they were doing to him and more fuzzy details were imparted. He lied about organising long courier journeys from China and Bangladesh west to Arabia and beyond. He was asked about the process at sea. The suits didn’t take any notes but wanted names and know-how, and Habid realised he was being fleeced for commercial rather than criminal information. He might as well have hosted a webinar.
They forced him to explain the plan, the route. He’d created a life based on dishonesty and disinformation and had no intention of changing now, so he reserved a lot and shared a little in the hope of retaining a bollock. They’d already deprived him of a finger and toe.
When he talked he conjured the hallucination that he and these cops might work together, these people who’d disfigured him. Despite the kicking he hunted for an opportunity. How else could they get the required flock? Egyptians didn’t really want to leave their country, not yet anyway. Even if they did, they wouldn’t possess the sort of money Habid was becoming accustomed to. He dealt with Libyans – and not just any Libyans either – taking them across the desert, the sands. Habid’s happy place.
“How do they get out to sea?” barked Tassels.
“The boat comes with engine,” Habid said, trying to impress them with the efficiency of his operation.
“Where does the engine come from?”
“Container. Stolen engines, from Europe. They are wrapped in the rubber boats. Then we collect and carry.” Habid paused at his mistake, which apparently went unnoticed. “It takes only four people to lift the package to the sea, then it is pumped up.” Habid made as much movement as he could with his leg to suggest a foot pump, but he didn’t want to draw attention to his good leg with its complete complement of toes, lest he should be deprived of a digit.
“What about fuel, gas?”
“In plastic cans,” said Habid.
Until this trip he hadn’t ever checked and didn’t really care how far offshore the boats had managed to get.
“So what happens when they get out to sea?”
“They keep going. They have compass, and moon and sun, north and west.”
“They know how to do this – the people in the boat?” Tassels asked incredulous.
“We have ways,” said Habid, shelling up, keen to keep some information for himself, conscious he’d already gone too far.
His reticence earned him a hammering – blows to the lower back, stomach and kidneys. When he could breathe again he was treated to a smack in the face.
“We put someone on board who knows the sea.”
He then returned to lying while forging a plan of false information.
“But the fuel must run out?”
“Then they wait.”
“What for?”
“For NGO or foreign navy to pick them up.”
“But foreign navies won’t always pick up refugees,” said Tassels, his curiosity growing.
Habid felt he was drawing the small suit in.
“Ah,” he replied, keen to show he had the knowledge. “This is where I can help you.”
He got a slap for the suggestion.
“When they see lights, they must knife the boat.” He thumped the table with his good fist.
“So they get rescued or drown?” said Tassels.
“Yes, makes it hard not to pick up.”
“And they do it – the people? They destroy the boat? They go into the sea?”
Habid neither knew nor cared. In the past the boats had left his mind the moment they left the sand. This time was a little different though. This time there was another play. But he didn’t tell the suits about that, or that the boat wasn’t the only thing due to get stabbed on this outing.
4
A damp drape lifted up Sam’s neck and chin as if he’d been stroked with a facecloth. He opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of the lithe neck of a woman before the flap of her head covering fell back as she righted herself. He could hear his daughter’s forceful little temper.
“Get away from him!” she was shouting. “Leave my daddy alone!”
He scrabbled upright, seeking grip on the cockpit floor. He rose to find another, slightly broader, woman sitting beside the child he’d rescued. The smaller woman scuttled back to join them. He felt no threat from her but turned to Isla for some sense of what was happening.
; “Daddy, they wanted to start the boat but I wouldn’t show them how,” she said, in a mixture of proud conviction and desperation that almost immediately gave way to tears. She threw her little arms around his neck.
“I thought you were dead, Daddy,” she said into his waterlogged ear.
“I’m not dead, darlin’,” he said, wrapping her tight and feeling a heavy pain in his right arm. He looked beyond her hair and saw that his hand was covered in blood – his own, he assumed. In fact, the floor around them seemed awash with the stuff. His back ached too, the slab of meat at his hip – a pain he’d never felt before.
“It’s ok, wee love. I’m ok, I’m ok.”
“No, you’re not, you’re cutted really bad and you’re still bleeding and they just looked at you,” she sobbed.
He wondered how he’d managed to get back on board but Isla was in no fit shape for explanations.
“Ok,” said Sam, now only half caring about whatever had gone on while he was unconscious, “get me the first aid kit and we’ll get sorted out.”
Isla’s muscles didn’t flinch; she stayed clamped to his neck.
“Isla, come on, get me the kit and we’ll get cleaned up.”
“No, Daddy, they might kill you,” she whispered into his ear.
“They’re not going to kill me, Isla. They couldn’t kill me,” he said, looking at the two women and the little girl.
But then, Sam didn't see what Isla saw.
Two days in the dark and Habid didn’t know what way was up. The throbbing had kept him awake. He’d tried to elevate his arm and his foot to reduce bleeding through the congealed stumps of his extremities, but he’d tired quickly. A chain had been clamped around his arm which prevented him from reaching a wall to rest his limbs against. Big Suit had wanted to clamp it around his neck but Tassels didn’t want him hanging himself, which gave Habid hope that his usefulness wasn’t yet exhausted and he might still strike a deal with these cops, or whatever they were.